Crap People Say About Dominants #1

Frankly, it's stupid and unhelpful to make
dominance look any more complicated
than it actually is. 

Sometimes I see something on the Internet and feel a little despair for the younger generation of kinksters, and for those older ones just finding themselves.

This particularly pernicious meme is a good example.

It implies that a "true dominant" take on some sort of paternalistic leadership role in the relationship. Not all dominants or subs actually want this!

It also doesn't really make sense. Dominant is a sexual orientation (or near as damn it). Substitute in "Gay Man" for dominant, and the meme is revealed as... special.

"Would you still be a Gay Man even if it meant that there would be absolutely no sex involved?"

I mean, really?

And what parts of the lifestyle are non-sexual? Speaking as a sub, power exchange itself is sexy, and any resulting punishments, commands, standing orders and protocol turn me on.

Frankly, it's stupid and unhelpful to make dominance look any more complicated than it actually is.

Especially if you are a sub, think twice before you pass on stuff like this.

Ask yourself whether this would encourage or discourage a young dominant from exploring his or her sexuality! 

Beyond that, I suppose its heart might be in the right place. 

There are reputed to be a lot of (mostly) men who use dominance as "just" a way to get the sex they like, and lots of it.

To me that is actual dominance: using BDSM to get what you normally couldn't or shouldn't have. For a certain kind of sub, that kind of dominant would be fantastic. The only challenge would be not giving it away for free: insisting that they use the tools of BDSM to get what they want.

"Dominants: If you don't like service
topping, please don't pretend that you do." 

However, this type of dominant is dishonest because they misrepresent themselves as more mainstream kinksters, interested in negotiation and fulfilling their partners' needs... essentially dominants who service top.

But then if your submission is all about your needs, then don't you really need a "top"? Aren't you really mostly a bottom misrepresenting yourself as a sub?

If I was less charitable, I would find this situation amusing: Fake sub encounters fake top... hilarity ensues...

A better meme might be: "Dominants: If you don't like service topping, please don't pretend that you do."

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Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

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Please don't identify as a submissive if you are not

The point about being a submissive

is that you... submit.

Click to find out how!

The point about being a submissive is that you... submit.

It's not about one-true way, it's about truth in self-advertising.

Submissives can - must - have limits, but they mark the edge of the sandbox for the dominant.

Submissives usually have fetishes and fantasies, but they present these as tools for the dominant to get what they want.

If most of the kinky sandbox is off limits, if your fetishes and fantasies are must-haves or preconditions, then really you are a bottom.

It's OK to be a bottom.  Bottoms are kinky hedonists who negotiate and horse trade with tops to get specific kicks.

Submitting and bottoming are different activities and offer different benefits to your partner or playmate. The dominant expects to be in charge. The top expects to enjoy building a scene together. (And sometimes dominants like to top, but that's a different story.)

 The top expects enjoy building a
scene together.

It's tempting for bottoms to present themselves as submissives, not least because the term "bottom" has become unfashionable and the waters muddy.

Bottoms may be carried away by the fantasy around their preferred kink, or like to use the fantasy of submission to justify going through with a degrading activity.

Also, though bottoms have the edge on dignity and self determination, some protestant streak in our culture rebels against pure hedonism: it's sometimes more comfortable to embrace a submissive identity than that of a mere kinky pleasure seeker.

Finally, misidentifying looks awfully like a dishonest dating strategy in order to gain access to dominant women: the kink equivalent of one of those awful Red Pill tricks.

Presenting as a submissive when you are a bottom is like taking somebody for a meal then telling them what to eat! It's rude and dishonest, makes real submissives look bad, and drives dominants away from the dating scene.

If you don't want to use the term "bottom", describe yourself as having "submissive fantasies" or as enjoying "submissive kinks."

Just don't identify as an actual submissive unless you are.

Please.

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Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

GET THE "FOR HIM" MANUAL RIGHT NOW!
GET THE "FOR HER" MANUAL RIGHT NOW!

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)

(For ebook format, 

Lulu or iTunes.)

Why it's more dignified to be a bottom than a submissive

Via Femdom Artists.

Here's what mainstream culture thinks about male bottoms (right):

A bottom is a wealthy older man who can pick his painful pleasures a la carte  from a professional dominatrix (though it could be an indulgent wife, perhaps a younger one with an engaging foreign accent: "'ave you been a naughty boy cheri?").

He's rakish, boyishly gleeful, and charmingly debauched.

For all that he enjoys being whipped and chained, he's not remotely dissempowered because he's calling the shots.

...sex workers facilitating
fantasies 

It's the picture we get in modern crime dramas and comedies, and best exemplified by the film Personal Services: sex workers facilitating the fantasies of men who can afford to pay for their services.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

I mean, it's OK to be a bottom (or a top... and non-charging tops are so rarely portrayed in mainstream media) and it's a good thing pro-dommes exist.

Have you been a naughty boy?

Granted. there's something a little wrong with the picture, because tops and bottoms come from all corners of society.

However, I imagine that it's nice - empowering - to be able to point to aspirational role models.

The real problem is that all this makes it far less embarrassing to be a male bottom than a submissive.

That leads people to misidentify and - worse - get into a Sub Panic and start clinging onto the power they want to relinquish by topping from the bottom.

But then, that's what the Internet is for...

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Learn how to how to walk the same Femdom path with your partner! 

GET THE "FOR HIM" MANUAL RIGHT NOW!
GET THE "FOR HER" MANUAL RIGHT NOW!

CLICK HERE to download my Femdom Erotica (all written while chaste!)

(For ebook format, 

Lulu or iTunes.)

Top and also Dominatrix? Why this matters if your partner is vanilla...

Top

I just had an interesting discussion over on Reddit that hinged on the distinction between "Topping" and "Dominating".

Of course definitions are not set in stone, but "Topping" tends to refer to activities that are the BDSM equivalent of lovemaking.

Rather than bringing her partner to the peak of ecstasy through her pelvic muscles and oral technique, the Top renders him a quivering wreck or pleading cum-monkey, depending on her objectives. Just as in love-making, the reactions of the partner - the "Bottom" - shape the actions of the Top. This often-negotiated experience is interactive, a conversation in pain and groans, and is known as a Scene.

Sadist

The Dominant, however, is simply the person in charge in BDSM relationship, whether it be part-time, permanent or a fleeting hook up. The Dominant does not need to top, may never feel like it.

In the real-world BDSM club culture, I doubt this distinction matters because public play is all about Scenes, i.e. Topping and Bottoming.

However, this is a critical distinction where the BDSM is part of an actual Domination and Submission relationship. It just doesn't work if the ostensible sub is really after specific scripted experiences... the "do me sub" who tops from the bottom.

Ice Queen

This distinction is even more critical if your dominatrix (or dom but I'm a male sub) is "vanilla".

If you're read my Getting her to be a vanilla dominatrix,  then you will have encountered my PIRI modes.

They're just a way of mapping the moods of your partner. This is not a manipulative technique so much as a systematic reality check, something male subs seem to need:

Goddess

There's nothing magical about this. People - your partner included - have four possible ways of relating with other people and their environment:

• Interact: Talking, playing, making love. Interacting with the people around her.
• Project: Bossing, managing, creating, expressing, discoursing, lecturing, playing music. Giving a blow job. Projecting herself on the people around her.
• Resonate: Listening, basking in adulation, watching, absorbing. Receiving cunnilingus. Resonating to the people around her.
• Ignore: Getting on with things in her own space. Masturbating. Ignoring the people around her. 

Obviously, different sorts of BDSM activities. Her are some typical BDSM archetypes for each mode:

• Top: Engages with your experience in order to toy with you.
• Sadist: "Forces" an experience on you. (NB most BDSM folk would count a sadist as a kind of top.)
• Goddess: Basks in your adulation. 
• Ice Queen: Gets what she wants. Doesn't care what you think.

Well and good, but think about how her energy levels dictate her PIRI Mode. Everybody is different, and each person has their own prohibitions and injunctions - which is why you need to read my book! - but two typical personality types are are "introvert" and "extrovert".

Here's how Introverts and Extroverts pass through the PIRI Modes as their energy levels diminish - not just in BDSM, but in real life too:

• Extrovert begins in Interact. Paying attention to other people requires effort so as she becomes tired, she drifts into Project and stops listening to other people. Finally, when exhausted, she enters Ignore.
• Introvert also begins in Interact. However, she finds exposing herself to be exhausting, so as she fatigues, she drifts into a passive Resonate, before shutting down in Ignore. 

Ignore Mode

Now we can see the problem with Topping! 

For both Introvert and Extrovert, the interactivity of true Topping is tiring. She has to really want to do it before it's worth the effort. 

Energy wise, it's much easier to - respectively - slip into being worshiped or making the sub suffer in the manner of her choosing, and even easier for both to switch off and enjoy being served in Ignore Mode.

There's more, of course. It's generally easier to persuade somebody to be selfish than cruel. However, even if you can get past self image and moral qualms, in the long run, it will be energy levels that determine what kind of Femdom you enjoy as a couple.

For help in introducing your vanilla wife or girlfriend to Femdom, try my BDSM self-help guides....

How to negotiate D and S without topping from the bottom

When I'm a slave, it’s real. I can't think outside that role. The chastity belt is a fixture, my owner's word is law, and her pleasure inevitable.

It's a very sustainable approach. She gets to suit herself, meaning she always knows what to do and it's always worth the small mental effort of switching roles.

Being a real slave means that the word "negotiation" is not in my lexicon, not part of my. Literally unthinkable.

Even so, I get the kind of slavery I enjoy.

How? It's all about not giving it away for free.

Can the slave-owner roles really be real?

When I'm being a slave, am I a real slave?

The chastity belt is certainly real!

Philosophically, I'd argue "yes", since even historical slaves had their hard limits – after which they'd rebel or abscond – and real owners were constrained by laws or at least practicalities; a slave is valuable property. So the difference is one of degree.

However, it's not philosophy that gets us hot, hard or wet!

What matters is that emotionally and practically, the slavery is real. Parts of the brain simply can't tell the difference between role play and role, and role and wider self. We easily lose perspective.

Take the Stanford Experiment where students were divided into prisoners and guards, and quickly slipped into abusive relationships. Or take the way people behave differently depending on whether they are in the office, or the car, in the bar, or in bed.

So, erotic slavery can be as real as you make it, and if you want that reality, then that means letting go as soon as the collar goes on.

But the collar is the point.

The value of a real slave

If your slavery is real, then it must hold some value for your "owner". This value will be exactly as vanilla or as kinky as they are.

Assuming your partner - like mine – is mostly vanilla, then the value of a slave is measured in service without the need to reciprocate; one-sided pampering, foot rubs, oral sex etc.

These are things your partner couldn't, or shouldn't get through a normal relationship. If, e.g. they want to roll over and sleep after oral sex leaving your frustrated, they need a slave, not a lover or spouse.

The same goes for historical slaves. Men and women purchased them for a reason.

Don't give it away for free

What? No collar?

For people like us, it's tempting to give away our submission for free without enjoying the slavery that goes with it. After all, submission is submission and we like doing that. Call this "stealth submission".

However, if you are supposed to have a modern equal relationship, this stealth submission doesn't strike me as very healthy for either of you. You're training your partner into a way of thinking they don't subscribe to—old fashioned chauvinism if he's male—and at the same time relinquishing some of your adulthood. It's better to have a firewall around the D&S area of your relationship.

More importantly, stealth submission means that you're missing out on the rest of your kink, and denying your partner a guilt-free chance to extend their existing vanilla tastes.

So, it's probably better and more fun if you make your slavery strictly part-time, and get a fair price in return for the real value your slavery brings to your partner.

Not without a collar first...

What's a fair price for your slave? In a word, "slavery". A collar, a chastity belt... anything that acknowledges the slave-owner relationship and makes it real for both of you.

How to turn stealth submission into real submission

I've written a whole book on how to get your vanilla partner to dominate you and how to get some of those extras your crave. However, here are some pointers...

If you don't ask, you'll never get...

Humans are most comfortable with like-for-like. 'Fessing up that bringing your lover a cup of coffee gets you wet or hard... well that might be a little creepy or freaky. And, since D&S looks erotic to an outsider, it's probably a bad idea to rush to reveal any kind of submissive pleasure from any non-sexual act.

Instead, when you're doing something obviously one-sided in bed, share what's in your mind.

For example; "Giving you head turns me on because I'm pretending I'm your slave."

Then, depending on their reaction, float the idea. Don't make a big thing of it, and don't be apologetic either. All you’re asking for is a spice. "Next time I'm going to wear a slave collar."

Then follow through and actually produce—in this example—the collar.

From then on, refuse to perform the submissive act without that collar. At the same time offer your slave whenever appropriate, and make it clear that the slave is available on demand.

Isn't this negotiation?

Yes, it is—technically—negotiation. However, it's not about demanding particular scenes or actions. It's about bringing what's already there to the surface where you can both see it, and about making a distinction between your everyday self and your slave self.

It's not unreasonable to say "I will happily be your slave if you will treat me as one."

It's also—possibly—permission for your partner

We subs forget that taking the dominant role requires playing at being evil. This is especially true for service-orientated. (If the dominant partner is mostly topping, then they are fairly obviously giving pleasure to their sub.)

This means that very vanilla people with dominant leanings will rarely admit how much kinky pleasure they get from your submission.

Who knows? Perhaps when you're giving your partner oral service, he or she is privately imagining you are wearing a steel collar and can shortly be dismissed back to your cage. There's only one way to find out...

For more on how to get your vanilla wife or girlfriend to dominate you, take a look at my Femdom manual...

The perils of paying for Femdom

There's a good post on the problem with paying for Femdom over at Romance and Bondage, the blog of a well-grounded Canadian Domme. The upshot is, by paying a professional, submissive males may only get their fantasies mirrored back to them, and then get an odd idea of what dommes would really do for fun.

As many flavours of femdom as there are couples...

If he's wearing a chastity belt, then it's
still Femdom!

There's a nice reminder on Robert Anthony's blog that there are as many flavours of femdom as there are couples.

He and his wife have an ongoing chastity "game" - she decides when he gets to come and sometimes enjoys teasing and denying him. However - as far as I can gather - that's it. No whips and chains, no domestic service, not really any cringing either. He's not even in a chastity belt! Yes, the chastity - as he reports it, and I tend to believe him - works entirely on the honour system.

That's a lesson it's worth holding in the mind. You don't have to get your Femdom off the shelf, there's no one size fits all.

In fact, your fantasies are probably less important than the power exchange - the raw Femdom.

Don't believe me? Rewind a little.

Before you had relationships, and before you settled down, you probably had all sorts of ideas about the kind of relationship you would have.
And then, when you you fell in love for real, did much of that come true? I'll bet, not.

It takes both parties to build a relationship. The end result is bound to be different from the preconceptions each party brought with them. Some old ideas just don't fit, and some new ideas turn out to hit the spot.

The same goes for a Femdom slave-mistress relationship.

If she's being a dominatrix for her own pleasure, and not just "service topping", then her preferences just aren't going to be a perfect counterpart for yours, not least because some kinks require far more in effort  than she could possibly get out in pleasure.

Even if you feed in ideas... even if she treats your kinks as a kind of menu and adds none of her own... the end result is going to be hers, not yours.

If you've read my book on how to turn your wife or girlfriend into a dominatrix, then you'll know that I  don't think that's a bad thing.

There's a deliciously dark terror in submitting, really submitting, in letting go and becoming a real slave, albeit for an evening or a weekend.

Why communication is overrated in an authentic Femdom relationship

Well Robert Anthony has discovered that it's a bad idea for his wife to read his blog.

It's not that she objects to him blogging about their Femdom relationship. The problem is that she's on her own journey that's supposed to be about her own empowerment, and reading his blog is making her second guess herself.

In short, by communicating (rated a good thing in fetish circles) he's been topping from the bottom  (a bad thing in the same  circles).
 WTF?

The problem is that there are lots of modes for Femdom (all equally fun and valid):

• Femdom as service really is all about communication. She's there to make your dreams come true. The prerequisite is that she enjoys facilitating your fantasies, more than once. This is the equivalent of a blow job.
• Femdom as trade is all about negotiation. She'll force you to wear panties, if you'll agree to let her beat the crap out of you, but only so much... The prerequisite is that she has very specific BDSM needs, and is happy to trade them against yours. This is the equivalent of taking it in turn to go down on each other.
• Authentic Femdom is  not about communication or negotiation. She's in charge and you do what you're told. This is the equivalent of going down on her, but not expecting her to reciprocate. The prerequisite is that she accepts being in charge... only it's not that simple.

Now, if you're trying for a FLR, or - as per my femdom manual - creating a Femdom corner in your relationship, then you're after the last option. And, if your partner isn't particularly driven to kink, then this is your default. Femdom as service is fine for a lazy sexy Sunday afternoon, but not for a Friday night when she's tired from work, or when life saps her mental energy. Femdom as trade is no good if she has nothing to trade for. So that leaves Authentic Femdom: even a vanilla person enjoys being selfish if there's permission and freedom from consequences.

The snag is that we male slaves (using the term as short hand) have usually spent  a lot more time thinking about all this than our mistresses. It's up to us to set the table for the Femdom relationship, and provide a menu... which is a tricky balancing act.

If we say, "Here's a place in our relationship where you're really in charge and here are some of the things I think you might enjoy - and yes I really will enjoy this," then in that space, our partner really is in charge. We're really being used, objectified, whatever - not being made to feel that way. There's no illusion.

But, as soon as we force things onto the menu that don't belong, try to nudge our customer to eat the tofu, and whine if they don't, we're manipulating her into service role, and the fun goes out of it for both of us. The same goes if we give her detailed feedback... "That turned me on, that didn't". We're turning Femdom into a game of Cluedo.

So once underway, communication has a minimal role in an authentic Femdom relationship:

• Safety ("Not the throat...!")
• Permission to extend what she already does: "It's OK to hit me harder/lock me up longer/not let me come..."
• Extensions to the menu via sharing noncouple-specific fantasies (rather than wish lists): "I have this fantasy about being a Roman slave..."

But that doesn't stop us wanting and yearning. And that's fine. There's even a meta turn on. When I'm bored being a slave, the knowledge that I am trapped in that role is a turn on.... and I bet you're the same.

The thing is, not to share that yearning. She can't be empowered and service you at the same time.

So, if you blog like Robert and I do - and others - by all means have no secrets. Tell her you have the blog. Let her know the name of it so she can Google to it. But, don't ask her to read it!