specifically that a valorisation of traditional gender roles seems to be happening in the BDSM community absent a context of what things were (are) really like for sexually subjugated women.
Oh, yeah. But this is also par for the course, not just in BDSM but also in fantasy in general, so I'm not surprised that people play with it. BDSM in particular can be about playing with the forbidden and exploring the erotic attraction of taboos. Not just traditional gender roles, but also the valorisation of slavery absent any context of what slavery was really like.
And even in the broader world, consider the rampant valorisation of medievalism, feudalism, and similar social structures in the fat fantasy novel genre. I'm stepping out on a limb a bit here with a generalization, but it's my impression that many of people's fantasies and much of people's fantasy life involves picking up on pieces out of context and enjoying the pieces they like without the surrounding context and drawbacks that in real life would naturally follow. BDSM certainly seems to me to be build strongly around this concept.
(And, as a result, discussion of it can be strange because in order to dive into that aspect of BDSM, one has to step outside the fantasy, since the discussion from within the constructed fantasy sounds completely different than the discussion outside of that fantasy. I've seen conversations about BDSM go horribly haywire just because one person was presuming the discussion was happening outside of the fantasy context and the other person was unwilling to meet them there.)
re: valorisation w/o original context
Oh, yeah. But this is also par for the course, not just in BDSM but also in fantasy in general, so I'm not surprised that people play with it. BDSM in particular can be about playing with the forbidden and exploring the erotic attraction of taboos. Not just traditional gender roles, but also the valorisation of slavery absent any context of what slavery was really like.
And even in the broader world, consider the rampant valorisation of medievalism, feudalism, and similar social structures in the fat fantasy novel genre. I'm stepping out on a limb a bit here with a generalization, but it's my impression that many of people's fantasies and much of people's fantasy life involves picking up on pieces out of context and enjoying the pieces they like without the surrounding context and drawbacks that in real life would naturally follow. BDSM certainly seems to me to be build strongly around this concept.
(And, as a result, discussion of it can be strange because in order to dive into that aspect of BDSM, one has to step outside the fantasy, since the discussion from within the constructed fantasy sounds completely different than the discussion outside of that fantasy. I've seen conversations about BDSM go horribly haywire just because one person was presuming the discussion was happening outside of the fantasy context and the other person was unwilling to meet them there.)