A comment by “Aileen” on Bitchy’s blog, which just says things so well:
One of my pet peeves (or should I say, rage-inducing vexations) is the frequent marriage of the PVC/leather/vinyl fetish, and kink in general. The outside world often sees us merely as vaguely inhuman freaks dressed in ludicrous plastic clothing. “Leather” is often used as a synonym for “kink”. Clubs run by us, intended for us, often have dress codes which segregate against those of us who simply don’t want to dress up like human-sized novelty dildos or shiny purple piratic prostitutes with masks covered in enough zippers and snaps and bells and dangles to amuse a small toddler in a crib for hours. Dress codes like this aren’t just restrictive, biased, and unfair, they are indirectly insulting.
I don’t, I really don’t, much mind what other people do to arouse themselves, no matter how strange, silly, or even hypocritical I may find it, because sex is a strange thing…but I’m royally pissed off when it’s insinuated that I’m not a real sadist because I don’t wear “fetish gear”. I don’t like “fetish gear”; I like making pretty things bleed and cry. I like to wear attractive, flattering, tailored, comfortable clothing in which I can feel confident, sexy, and powerful. Isn’t that the entire point? I think I would feel very undignified and weakly, whipping a man while wearing wobbly skyscraper heels with rat-stabber toes and a latex corset that made my skinny, muscular, broad-shouldered bosom heave like a dying consumptive’s.
I have a huge issue with the notion that sadism is an extension of innately masculine urges (as is mentioned in my antique copy of Psychopathia Sexualis and as seems to be the generally accepted assumption). I am alarmed that dominant women and sadistic women are expected to love strap-on sex and forego vaginal sex, and the belief that an attached rubber penis is better and more natural an extension of myself than my own personal cunt to which I am quite attached. I’m not saying that penetration cannot be dominating or sadistic, or even that I don’t, occasionally, like using strap-ons. But one does not negate the other; sometimes a phallus is just a phallus, they’re fun and I like them because they’re phalli, not because they’re mean and scary. I am mean and scary without one.
I plan on writing an manifesto on this. My sadism is pansexual, but aspects of it are innately female. What about vagina dentata? The Dark Mother? The goddess Kali? Hell, the dark aspect of a vagina is DEVOURING. In fact, I first realised I was a sadist when, as a child, I was forced to reconcile myself to my intense, almost painful desire to absorb and symbolically consume what I loved, to tear it down to its barest, most vulnerable truths and swallow it whole or in quivering parts. It’s symbolic and subconscious, and I’m not aroused by vore per se, but there is a very distinct aspect of hunger and consumption in my sexual desires.
And it fits. Women are hungry. Women are more likely to use food for comfort, or to use it to torment themselves. Women are more likely to feel actual guilt for experiencing hunger, or lust, both of which involve PUTTING THINGS INTO OUR BODIES, and the guilt, I really feel, is entirely on account of cultural, sexist pressures.
And, odd though it may seem, when I eat, I never feel that the food is dominating me. When a man has sex with me, I never feel that his penetration is dominating me. Why the Hell should I? He’s giving me something that I want and I enjoy and I desire, and there’s absolutely nothing dominant about that unless I WANT there to be something dominant about that.
The entire concept sexist and insulting, and worst of all, it’s stupid and its patently wrong and I really must write said manifesto before I rile myself thoroughly.
...sometimes almost magic... 
