I think that you're right about the dominance vs. courtship clash (I would still have queried Duv on "backwards" because I'm also a pedant and, as it occurs to me, I've been academically conditioned to make certain assumptions and associations as soon as I hear the word "power").
What you are also making me think about is this: that the other (an other?) major influence on this kind of relationship, with its completely explicit power asymmetry but also its baseline of mutual benefit and respect, has to be 20th- /21st-century BDSM and kink culture, especially as trope-ified in fandom (hence, I think, your warning at the top "not to take this too seriously"). [My knowledge here is very limited, but it's hard for me to think of other historical, explicitly asymmetrical sexual relationships that aren't exploitative and brutal by nature. Or is it that BDSM relationships finally make explicit and upfront the asymmetry historically present below the surface in many sexual relationships?] Again, there's an obvious extra-textual explanation, but I'd love to read the section of Duv's paper about it!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-05-24 04:41 pm (UTC)What you are also making me think about is this: that the other (an other?) major influence on this kind of relationship, with its completely explicit power asymmetry but also its baseline of mutual benefit and respect, has to be 20th- /21st-century BDSM and kink culture, especially as trope-ified in fandom (hence, I think, your warning at the top "not to take this too seriously"). [My knowledge here is very limited, but it's hard for me to think of other historical, explicitly asymmetrical sexual relationships that aren't exploitative and brutal by nature. Or is it that BDSM relationships finally make explicit and upfront the asymmetry historically present below the surface in many sexual relationships?] Again, there's an obvious extra-textual explanation, but I'd love to read the section of Duv's paper about it!