You may have seen the video for Beyonce Knowles’ new single. It’s slick, sexy, and – at a glance – full of Femdom imagery.

In what seems to be an awkward nod in the direction of this year’s Arab Spring uprisings, our protagonist and her dancing desert harem aim to tackle the full force of the patriarchy. Could this be a breakthrough? Is the ninth most powerful woman on the planet finally leading a revolution in gender equality? Do girls actually run the world now? Well, no. Beyonce’s revolution appears to consist entirely of stroking the men’s chests, writhing around in the sand at their feet and pelvic-thrusting a skimpy gusset at them. At the end, the women stand before the men and salute. It’s a disappointment, to say the least.

Popular culture has never been great at feminism. The Girl Power craze of the ’90s taught teens that what women should really, really want are eye-catching outfits, a rich footballer as a husband and whatever the arsing hell a “zig a zig ah” is – as opposed to an equal status in politics, religion, the economy, sexuality and any of the multitude of other fundamentally skewed bases of human society.

Femdom, as a fetish, means different things to different people. However, if being empowered means nothing more than a woman putting on a corset and catsuit to pander to a man’s sexual peccadilloes whilst ignoring her own, a Dominatrix may as well be a slave. We can teeter around on our high heels and sing Beyonce lyrics as much as we like, but if the power we have is only aesthetic, we don’t even run ourselves, let alone the world.

Anyway, here’s an angry woman on YouTube: