If the Patriarchy Were Benevolent, It Would Look Like BDSM.

A few months ago I started a series exploring the different kinds of apologists sustaining patriarchy. The kickoff piece, The Apologists of Internalized Misogyny, introduced six variants of “pick-me” women ranked by how dangerous they are to other women. But there was one archetype I deliberately left out.

Not because she wasn’t relevant, but because she was too complex for a quick breakdown. She required her own conversation. Her rituals are more intimate. Her logic more psychological than performative. And the danger—like the pleasure she seeks—is hidden behind the safe word of “choice.”

Women who roleplay rape and/or abuse.

This isn’t about kink-shaming. It’s about asking necessary questions in a patriarchal society where rape and abuse toward women is endemic. So what does it mean to simulate powerlessness in a world where women’s power is already systemically undermined?

What makes BDSM so appealing, especially to women, isn’t the pain or the power imbalance. It’s the structure required to make it safe. The communication has to be explicit. The respect must be mutual. Aftercare is expected, not optional. Consent is negotiated, not assumed. And what holds it all together is a deep sense of consideration, trust, and emotional responsibility. To practice BDSM well, one must listen, check in, and be attuned to their partner’s needs, not just during the act but before and after. In many ways, it demands the very qualities women are constantly asking from men in traditional relationships: loyalty, reciprocity, presence, care. The irony is that a kink built around domination often requires more emotional maturity than most monogamous, heteronormative dynamics ever do.

If patriarchy were ever to rebrand itself as progressive, sensual, and mutually fulfilling, it would look like BDSM. And I’m not sure women would resist.

Dom/sub dynamics are about structure. Negotiated power imbalances. Roles chosen, not imposed. But patriarchy is also a structure. It’s just not safe, not negotiated, and definitely not designed for mutual pleasure. It’s coercive by default.

So when the system wants to soften its edges, when it wants to appear “less oppressive,” it doesn’t stop being patriarchal. It becomes performative. It puts on the costume of BDSM: the rules, the roles, the contracts. It frames obedience as devotion. It makes dominance feel earned. It borrows the tools of liberation to reinforce control.

And this is where the woman who plays submissive becomes an apologist. Not because she’s sexually deviant—but because she’s spiritually complicit. She has confused negotiated degradation with empowerment. She believes control is safe as long as it’s sexy.

Roleplaying rape/abuse in a patriarchal society is paradoxical because it mimics the very ambiguity patriarchy exploits to excuse real harm.

That ambiguity is often referred to as the Gray Area.

Which is meant to confuse women because the patriarchy relies on negotiating your consent. Coercion, Drunk Sex, CNC, Stealthing, Ignoring Nonverbal discomfort, or Continuing After You’ve Gone Silent. The “gray area” she enters isn’t ethically neutral—it’s structurally imposed. A woman can say “yes” to the reenactment of rape/abuse, but what she’s really agreeing to is a simulation of something society already doesn’t take seriously.

She’s the woman who wants aftercare after the roleplay, but doesn’t question why she needs to be “cared for” after a consensual interaction. She calls it healing, I call it evidence.

I mean I too would need emotional support after role playing being pinned down by man for sex.

That’s the real threat. Not the kink itself, but the cognitive dissonance it requires. The rewriting of instincts. The acceptance of discomfort as proof of desire. The very idea that submission could be chosen without asking why she wants to be submissive in the first place.

Especially, in a society where women are still fighting to be believed, protected, and fully autonomous—sexual dynamics that mimic violence, subjugation, or silence cannot be treated like they exist in a vacuum. They are not just fantasies.

They are reflections of a social reality that many of women are still trying to escape.