Nostalgic? Not a bit!
It's sometimes suggested, not only by our critics but also by avid Taken in Hand fanatics, that what we're about is a return to the pre-feminist past. And it's true that lots of us are attracted by misty fantasies about the 1950s, when men wore suits, not soccer shirts, and women wore stockings, not ski pants. In fact, a 'fifties fetish isn't even confined to us here: I once dated a woman I met her on a BDSM site who, explaining what kind of relationship she was after, told me she wanted to be “a 'fifties wife”. It's no surprise, of course—there are books from that period about how a housewife should behave for instance, that make us feel as though we'd be very at home back then. But, as an unapologetically pro-feminist dominant man, it seems to me that we're mistaken if we really believe any of this has anything to do with the real 1950s.
I think it's tremendous fun to brace and button up in an old suit, and I love my date to wear a vintage frock. But I for one am sceptical about how great life would have been for me fifty years ago. Being unable to communicate with other men like me or with the women who like us, I doubt I'd have become conscious of my sexuality—I'd have known about my desires, yes, but almost certainly wouldn't have got beyond the stage of knowing something needed to be repressed. And how would I have met my wife? I might have got lucky and ended up with a lovely, submissive woman, but I don't think sexual or emotional fulfilment would have been likely, really. Sure, I'd have been the breadwinner and got a good deal on housework, but for me, like for many dominant men, there is a dark side to sexuality, and I have needs that many 'fifties wives—in an age that was unfriendly to homosexuality and no doubt to other unusual sexual practices—would have been simply horrified by!
When we talk about the 1950s, then, we're playing with ideas about the past, but self-consciously, as a kind of retro fetish—a fetish that's very much of our time, a time when we can be self-conscious as dominant men and submissive women, and can actually look for partners who know they need us.
If you really want to see how unlike the 1950s our world is, though, have a look through the posts here—how many of them are by women? I'd guess at least two thirds. Taken in Hand is largely about women understanding and accepting their own sexualities, and actively seeking satisfaction in their relationships. They're discussing women's feelings and needs, and in a sense are demanding and requiring men to live up to fulfilling those needs. Now, firstly that means that female sexuality is recognised and celebrated in a way that's only really been possible since the late 1960s; and secondly, that Taken in Hand is simply one more example—in fact, to my knowledge the clearest example—of women getting together and announcing to the world that they're dissatisfied with the ordinary sexual and emotional lives most women experience, and are looking for ways to get men to shape up and give them what they need. How pre-feminist is that? Not at all, in fact. This is the age in which women are standing up and shouting for what they want from men, and Taken in Hand is absolutely in the vanguard of that movement.
So there's nothing ironic about us knowing each other via the loveliest dot.com there is. No, no: this is the only suitably contemporary medium for such an exciting start-up enterprise. The Taken in Hand ideal is no nostalgic one. Our ideas aren't located anywhere near the 1950s: they're very 21st century indeed.
Comments
I'm not nostalgic
Submitted by Lucy Ellis on
There are many things I admire about the 50s, but few have to do with family relationships with one exception. I do like that the decision for a wife to stay home and take care of her children and home rather than pursue/continue a career on the outside was much more socially acceptable back then. I have a career and no children at this point in my life, but I think that staying home to personally raise your children is a noble choice, though much less respected it seems these days.
I wasn't even alive back then, but from TV and movies I've seen, it would seem it was acceptable for men other than husbands to refer to women as "darling," "sugar," "sweetie," etc. I find that kind of talk quite demeaning, as I would pats on the fanny from someone other than my husband. I can't even imagine that kind of thing going on now and I'm glad for it.
Lucy
"Choice" to Stay Home
Submitted by a Taken In Hand reader on
In today's world, with lots of other options, I chose to stay home until my son was about 15. I'm still mostly home and working temporarily. That's a choice, because I can go out to work and make a decent living.
In the 50's there was no choice. Women were expected to stay home. Some worked but there was social disapproval. And the kinds of jobs they could get were very limited.
I don't think being home has to be boring but if it is not her cup of tea today a woman can make another choice. In the 50's she got to sit home and quietly drink or tranquilize herself to death.
"Pat"
Choices
Submitted by Kani on
My mom was a homemaker for many years. She did not work until we were in Jr. High. Like "clock-work" our home was clean, organized—set dinner, bath & bed times. When she did go to work my grandmother was there to meet us after school and she aways had a "yummy" snack. To this day I still recal her warm puddings and happy smile.
Fast forward to today and both my mother and I work outside our homes and I will admit the balancing act can be challenging. My daughter and I still make my grandmothers pudding and "clock-work" is breakfast every Saturday at our favorite diner.
There are many Pros & Cons to homemaker versus career but in the end we are all women making a difference and I commend both groups for the exceptional job and the men who support our choices.
"working"
Submitted by truheart on
Sorry, Pat, but the women I knew in the 50s did have choices, and while some were expected to stay home, or chose to do so, there were also those who had careers and worked outside the home. Remember that these were the women who entered the paid work force during and after WWII, and their daughters expected to go out and make money of their own, even if it were working in stores. A lot of us went to college and prepared for other careers. I have worked both inside and outside the home, but I did not know any of the people who stayed home and quietly drank or took tranquilizers. They were a very small minority, at worst. I don't know where you got that idea that it was common, but if you were not part of the culture then, don't believe all that you may have heard.
Young, But Part of the Culture
Submitted by a Taken In Hand reader on
Well, there seemed to be a lot of resentment over the housewife role of the 50's that exploded into the second wave of feminism in the 60's and 70's. And those women were claiming to be bored, bored, bored!
I said the 50's, not WWII. During WWII the men were off at war so there was deliberate propaganda to get women into the factories to keep things running on the home front. Films like "Rosie the Riveter" showed women in the role of working outside the home.
But at the end of the war, the men came back and women were pushed back into the home, and there was reverse propaganda pushing the joys of being a housewife with all the new gadgets to make the work so much easier.
Yes, SOME women worked, but that was hardly the majority, and I do remember hearing men say, "My wife doesn't HAVE to work." They were very proud of this. My memory of childhood is that all the mothers were home. I don't remember a single one of my friends who had Moms who went out to work.
Also, the jobs that were open to women weren't the greatest. "Working in stores" isn't necessarily a great, high paid job. Even in the seventies, when I was in college, I remember a conversation with a young man who wanted to date me. He asked if I was going to become a secretary, teacher, or a nurse. Those were the roles for women! When I said I was going to law school, he said, "Oh, you're one of THOSE," in surprised tones.
My mother worked when I was older (over 12) but she worked part time and she was generally home once I got back from school. Latchkey kids were a rarity.
So that's what the culture was...and I do remember it.
Now that doesn't mean that all the women who stayed home were unhappy about it, but, for a LOT of women it wasn't the choice that it is today. If you were a woman and wanted to work outside the home you had to fight for it. Another friend of mine, who is in her mid-sixties, went to college and became a teacher. But she had to go to a tuition-free university, because her parents' viewpoint was that a girl was just going to get married and pop out babies...so why waste college money on her?
I'm well aware of what the culture was at that time..women who were able to go out and work nonetheless fought an uphill battle and there's no denying it. Staying at home was the expected, prescribed way to go, and for most women, the path of least resistance.
Just because I have chosen to stay home until my son was 15, does not mean I would fit happily into the 50's culture that demanded it.
"Pat"
Great article
Submitted by Louise C on
I think it is so true that Taken In Hand is a 21st century thing, not a 50s thing, I'm sure you are right that more people were conventional in their thinking about sexual matters back in the 50s, and you would be much less likely to get your desires fulfilled back then if they were in any way unorthodox.
I think it is also a mistake to imagine that all wives were docile and obedient back in the 50s, my own mother was a 50s housewife, and she was anything but docile.
I've noticed that quite frequently people bring up 'I Love Lucy' as an example of a 50s wife living in a Taken In Hand relationship, but I've never been able to see it at all. Although lip service is sometimes paid to Ricky being the head of the household, Lucy runs rings around him most of the time, and although she occasionally gets spanked, it never stops her going ahead and getting what she wants, mostly she pays no attention to Ricky's authority at all.
"For once in my life I'm not going to do as Ricky tells me" she says to Ethel in one episode. "For once in your life!" Ethel cries "You never do as Ricky tells you!"
I strongly suspect that many fifties housewives, even if they did pay lip service to the idea of their husbands as head of the household, probably paid about as much attention to their wishes as Lucy pays to Ricky's.
This is the Golden Age of Taken In Hand, not the 1950s.
Louise
50s housewives
Submitted by truheart on
I agree with Louise about this. Real life did not mirror the movies or TV in the fifties, or probably any other time. Cetainly my mother was not docile, but a real powerhouse. For the most part, I think that the "little wifey" waa a myth like the poodle skirts, which were a very short lived fad.
However, I guess a lot has to do with personalities and family dynamics. I was married in 1958 and went from being controlled by my mother to being controlled by my husband. Then I got angry and found that I had a lot more backbone than I knew. Over the years I began to be a lot more controlling than I intended to be, and I regret it.
I find myself wishing that we both knew about the Taken In Hand way from the beginning. He was much more dominant then, and it seemed natural for me to submit, at first. It seemed to me that I, a very shy creature, was so lucky that this great big, important, sophisticated "man of the world" would want me.
In some ways, he was unreasonable in his demands and attitude, hence my anger. But surely there would have been a way for both of us to grow up and still have a Taken in Hand relationship. We play at it now, but it is not the same.
So right...
Submitted by Hera on
You're so right. I think of the 1950s and I think of women bored at home on either G&T or addicted to tranquilisers, forced out of the work place they'd been welcomed into in the war years into splendid isolation and completely boredom at home. The feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s was borne of that unfairness and unhappiness felt by some many women and I'm so please we got rights to equal pay etc.
I have not been out with a dominant man who hasn't been interested in and glad I work and they specifically say I'm interesting because of my career plus the femininity and submissiveness. I don't think I'd be such an attractive partner if I were chained to the sink. My core belief if all people are created of equal value, albeit different from each other, that we need equity/fairness at work and at home and in relationships but that that can sit perfectly well with a D/S choice. That's the key point. It's a choice. I would hate to live in Pakistan where some of my neighbours send their daughters back to be married. I would hate to live in Saudi where I wouldn't be allowed to drive or vote. I also think it's inherently wrong and morally repugnant to say all women even thouse who are dominant and even those who have no interest in submitting should be in a relationship where they're takeninhand, particularly when large numbers of submissive men exist and also many couples where both want a very different kind of relationship from that which appears inherently satisfactory to me. So to have the choices we have and the political and domestic frameworks that exist in the UK/US leads to a much better backdrop for takeninhand relationships for those who are that way inclined and above all is a matter of free consent....to the extent I do consent which is another interesting separate point given I have an innate response to dominance.
Isolation and boredom
Submitted by Louise C on
I don't personally think that being a housewife need be boring. I don't find housework interesting,but then I didn't find most of the jobs I had before I was a housewife interesting either. I can take a break whenever I feel like it, I don't have to worry about who's going to look after the children while I'm at work,or what I'm going to do with them in the holidays (working mothers always seem to be frantic with worry about that). When I'm sitting out in the garden reading on a sunny day I'm glad I'm not stuck in an office. My mother was not bored being at home, and she wasn't isolated either. We lived in a terraced row of houses where all the women were in and out of each other's houses all day long, having coffee, chatting, they had leisure to go shopping whenever they wanted, spend time at the hairdressers, pursue hobbies (my mother was a keen gardener and enjoyed painting pictures). One of our neighbours, who had six children, nevertheless found time to have a torrid affair with one of our local GPs, she wouldn't have had the time for that if she'd been at work!
I'm not chained to the sink in any case because we have a dishwasher (and one day, my husband believes, I will learn to load it the way he says it should be loaded). My husband seems to find me intersting even though I don't have a careeer, and personally I think a woman who hasn't got the wit to keep herself amused in her own home is unlikely to be a very interesting person anyway. "I'd be bored if I didn't go out to work" I sometimes hear women exclaim. "What, you haven't got ANY interests apart from your job?" I always want to reply. Possibly my husband would find me more attractive if I had a career, but I'd advise him not to hold his breath, I am not going to start 'juggling' at my time of life. If I thought that only having a job could make me interesting to him, I'd be worried.
I think everyone should be able to choose how they live their lives, and I don't think that whether or not you go out to work has anything to do with whether or not you are Taken In Hand or D/s or whatever, but I don't think that women who don't have careers are necessarily any less interesting than those who do.
Working women vs. housewives
Submitted by truheart on
Amen Louise! I barely have time to get around to my many interests. By the way, I hate to add to the age old argument, but housewives DO work. They just don't get paid in the same way. For that matter, I have never been married to a house, but to a man. Unfortunately, my house often shows this,:) but our marriage is still steamy after all these years, even if I do wish he were more dominant.
Amen Louise!
Submitted by Z on
(I'm reading through the archives) And absolutely I agree with you. I stay at home and take care of the house and I don't think of myself as needing a career to be interesting. I'm happiest at home. It gives me the time and space in which to write.
I also don't feel that one need be cut off socially if they stay at home. Most of the time during the day I don't go out a lot, unless it's to the coffee shop a block away, but I have friends and social interaction on a regular basis.
It's sometimes suggested, not
Submitted by a New Taken In Hand reader on
I think most the critics don't actually understand what this is about. A submissive woman can say 'Stop' while a woman in a "tradional gender role" cannot and in fact will learn not to try due to the consequences. I find bondage to be a good illustrator of this; in the end, despite all appearances to the contrary, the person tied down is in control because the ropes come off, and the gag disapears if they say it does. Further, the person tied down is being dominated *because* they have submitted; they have put themselves in a position to be taken care of and if their partner does not take care of them nothing will get accomplished.
In my mind, "traditional gender roles" are a perversion of this. They are completely one-sided and only the wants and needs of the dominant person matter, the submissive person cannot say 'No.'
That is assuming my impression of this place is correct. I've only just encountered this site but it seems in line with my own feelings.
Ron
A different mythology
Submitted by Stephen on
Perhaps there is "retro 50's fetish" as Carl suggests, represented by a longing among many men and women for an earlier time when things "were less complicated" and "men were kings of their castles". No doubt there has been a certain mythologizing of that era by many people, but feminist are just as guilty of mythologizing the 50's for their own reasons. Caitlin Flanagan, formerly a contributing editor for the Atlantic Monthly and now a writer for the New Yorker has written several excellent articles concerning domestic life in America. In a long essay published in the Atlantic Monthly titled, "Housewife Confidentials" (Sept. 2003) she exposes the mythologizing by a feminist elite who contemptuously refer to wives of the 1950's as June Cleavers. Mrs. Flanagan (oh excuse me, Ms. Flanagan) convincingly offers a very different view on this era.
She contradicts the idea made by the "Betty Friedan generation that was implied in countless nitwit books and articles", and elsewhere in popular culture—especially on the college campuses. "The idea was that housewives were prisoners, but that women gained liberation as shift-work riveters in World War II munitions factories. Then, after the war, they were kidnapped by a bunch of rat-bastard men, deposited in Levittown, and told to mop. This mythology was largely the work of professional-class feminists who never set foot on a factory floor".
Ms. Flanagan argues in part, "that the success of the women’s movement depended on imposing a certain narrative of boredom, of oppression, of despairing uselessness, on an entire generation of women. This narrative has left people with a skewed and rather offensive view of those derided as housewives". She, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, refers to herself, not as a housewife, because that would be politically incorrect, but rather as a "stay-at-home-mom". The word housewife has come to imply servitude to house and a man whereas stay-at-home-mom is somehow more ennobling. Recognizing their error, feminists will reluctantly admit it is OK to stay at home if one is taking care of children, but not a husband. Heaven's no!
What Ms. Flanagan does so well in her article is demonstrate that these "oppressed" housewives were very good at what they did. “What I remember most clearly about those housewives, was not their ennui but, rather, their competence.” She points out that beyond the skills they developed while taking care of a home, children, and their husbands, they also made real contributions to their communities. These were not women who, according to the myth, numbed themselves into oblivion with "mothers little helper", but were active members of their communities and quite good at what they did. So let us put to rest this mythology that falsely argues that women of the 50's led a miserable existence. Considering the working mothers of today, we could equally say that for many of them theirs is truly a miserable existence. These same women are worn out by work and torn between the desire for a fulfilling career and the wish to be home taking care of their family.
Then there is the myth that women in the 50's were too uptight to enjoy sex. It could be argued that married couples had more sex then than now. In recent years there have been countless magazine articles and talk shows dedicated to the subject of sexless marriages.
I'm not sure if I totally agree with Carl's thesis that women are so much better off now. I agree, it is a good thing that women now have more freedom. But it would be more myth making to assume that the freedom to choose has given women a happier and more content life. There are demographic studies that show large numbers of well educated women, women who were supposed to wrestle top level positions from men, who have instead, returned to their homes to take care of their children and husbands. Not because they must due to financial reasons, but because this is where they believe their needed. Then there are the countless women sitting in office cubicles that wish they were home, but financially don't have any other choice. Although Carl does not say it, I think he and I would agree that nostalgia for the 1950's is a hopeless fantasy simply because we can not travel back in time. The 50's are gone, just like all the epochs of the past, never to be revisited. But the one thing that does endure is the values that center on family and home. These values are ageless and in need of some refocused attention by society. At the risk of having a 50's "retro-fetish", it is my contention that women, among many things, are the center of a happy home.
And...
Submitted by Hera on
And Stephen there are also a lot of housewives who wish they were back at work. There are lots of web sites for stay at homemothers in the UK and lots of publicity and articles from those who thought it would be great and find it mind numbingly boring. Some people are never content. Anyawy women have the vote, rights to own property, rights over their own children and rights to equal pay which not very long ago at all they did not have.
I really do find this hard to accept—the connection between submission which for me is a sexual orientation like if I were gay and nothing at all to do with if I work or don't work and women as housewives. I think it just muddies the waters to mix the two issues. Men and women should each have a choice as to whether it makes sense for either of them to stay home and care for their children when young (children need fathers as much as mothers of course) or whether it's better they both work or one or neither. I think I've always been the centre of a happy home and large family here even though I've always worked and mostly been the principal wage earner.
Good dominant loyal men who aren't staying town in the week to go to bed with their mistress, try to get home to see their family, play with their children and help ensure there is fair contribution of effort in the house.
My own mother who had worked for nearly 15 years and indeed supported my father through his medical studies before her children were born was unhappy not there could have been lots of reasons for that but I remember all those lunch times when my father would talk about his work and my mother would sadly say... "and I did 4 loads of washing but you're not interested in that..." Then she drank. For some women staying home was not what they wanted. Now there are more choices for men and women.
Muddying the waters
Submitted by Louise C on
I agree that the issues of being a stay-at-home-wife and being Taken In Hand are entirely seperate. Whether you want to stay at home has nothing to do with a desire to be Taken In Hand. It is important to have the choice, though for some women economic necessity may override any choice they might wish to have.
Louise
Every Generation Thinks It Is Somehow Different
Submitted by Noone on
Surely, any tales of divine comedy must include endless amusement as each generation thinks it is somehow unique from all those stuffy ancestors.
Forgotten in the rewrite of the 1950s is that many American housewives of the day built ships and aircraft, assembled and tested weapons, ferried high-powered aircraft over great distances, and so forth a decade earlier—before marriage and motherhood. Otherwise, their would have been no paradigm for the sexual revolution of the 1960s—with men absent from the homes, women doing the work of men, and the government looking after the children.
Thirty-somethings in the 1950s had been children during the Great Depression. They had experienced both those deprivations as well as wartime rationing and attendant hardships—including the sudden loss of fathers, husbands, and brothers.
Although the 1950s had its share of divorce and otherwise bad marriages, it also had its quota of women who respected their husbands. Prostitution in the United States actually declined during this period.
Many couples build something together—becoming prosperous in the process—rather than destroying each other with petty squabbles.