Since moving to New York, I've discovered that I really enjoy scratch baking and cooking.
I like making delicious things from basic ingredients. I like knowing that I
can make these things, that I can produce buttercream frosting as good as the buttercream frosting served at overpriced cupcake shops. I like how old fashioned it feels, how pretty desserts can be, how it feels like making order out of chaos. I like that it makes me feel close to my great-grandmother, whose kitchen skills were locally famous in her small hometown.
Sometimes, I worry about my kitchen proclivities. Are they regressive? Are they anti-feminist? Is my desire for yummy food made from scratch, food like my great-grandmother made, a sign that I secretly want to return to the times when a woman's place was in the kitchen? Is the pleasing, desirous feeling get while looking at
the Joy of Baking somehow a sign of creeping, covert sexism? Because I swear to god I feel something like lust when I see that picture of the vanilla cupcakes on that site, with their perfect, perky paper wrappers and charming blue frosting. And feminist women aren't supposed to lust after the ability to make perfect cupcakes, are we?
And then I realize I'm being a jackass. My obsession with perfect, pretty baked goods or extra-delicious mac and cheese made from scratch is because...I like baking, I like cooking. I like
making things. It only becomes bad if I decided that
all women have to love making perfect baked goods. Actually, in my parents' house when I was growing up, my dad did most of the cooking and was really into making things from scratch with fresh ingredients, and my mom and I would bake bread with dark beer on her days off from her various interesting jobs. Also, um...I like food? I love eating, most of my best friends are really into food, and eating and sharing delicious things is one of my favorite social activities. And if you're a lady who doesn't love baking, that's awesome. It's totally your right and choice to bake or not.
It's all about choices. Feminism is about having choices. If I want to bake things, I get to bake things. Baking is not inherently sexist just because it's sometimes reminiscent of a time when women
didn't have choices. If I don't want to bake, I can do any number of other things...like go bowling, something my other great-grandmother loved to do. When she wasn't busy riding motorcycles, that is. And if you're a woman, you should totally have a choice to bake or bowl or sew or ride motorcycles if you want to do any or all of these things.
So why is it so hard to apply these things to sex? Much like I know lots of dudes who like cooking or baking, I know plenty of guys who are submissive or masochists. Like cooking, BDSM only becomes a problem when someone decides all women everywhere are inherently submissive and should bow before all the inherently dominant men. It's also all about consent. If I'm not in the mood to cook, Jack can make dinner or we'll order take-out. If I'm not in the mood for a scene, or decide I don't want to play, I can safeword and say "Hey, not right now."
Sometimes I think that saying all BDSM everywhere is inherently misogynist is just as silly as saying that about all baking.
