If you don’t want to top from the bottom, don’t

Every so often I see threads started by men who say they have terrible trouble not topping from the bottom when they play. It will surprise nobody that I’m bored by that shit. They usually phrase it as needing a super mega dominant woman to “tame” them, or needing some fearsome punishment to make them behave. Guys, that’s complete fucking bullshit and you’re wasting everyone’s time.

And no, nobody is impressed with how “alpha” you are. What you’re telling people when you say that you can’t stop yourself from topping from the bottom is that you’re bad at submitting. Being bad at your part of a d/s relationship isn’t exactly a selling point.

It’s not about needing a stronger willed mistress or some magical punishment method that will somehow make you into a decent human being. If you don’t want to top from the bottom, don’t. Seriously, what’s stopping you?

If you need the scene to go the exact way you want it to or you won’t have any fun, welp, there’s a word for that and it’s not “submissive”. Like I’ve said before, dominant bottoms exist. I don’t even think there’s anything wrong with being one, it just irritates the shit out of me when men try to order dominant women around when they know we’re fucking dominant. You’re allowed to run your scenes the way you want to, you just can’t do that and say you’re submissive. Fucking admit you’re a dom and stop bothering dominant women.

Alternately, maybe you’re scared of really giving up control but you don’t want to admit you’re scared so you fixate on whatever your poor partner is doing “wrong.” As I control freak myself I get where you’re coming from 🙂 If that’s the case you’re probably going to want to find a kink friendly therapist, though. If your partner is extraordinarily patient you could try taking baby steps toward actually giving up control by having short simple scenes and gradually stepping it up as you get comfortable, but honestly I think therapy would be more efficient.

And of course, I can’t rule the idea that you’re just a bratty fucking manchild who can’t stand it when reality isn’t just like your fantasies. I can’t help you there, you’re just going to have to grow the fuck up. Some people really are happier fantasizing about kink than they are doing it, maybe that’s how it works for you.

No matter what is actually going on with you, saying that you can’t stop topping from the bottom is a lie. You goddamn well can, you just don’t want to put in the effort.

Fuck beauty

You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.

Erin McKeanA Dress A Day

Fuck beauty. Fuck the idea that women have to be decorative, fuck the idea that’s all we have to offer, fuck the idea that anyone, anywhere, anytime, gets to demand that we look the way they want us to. And especially fuck the idea that physical beauty tells you anything about how worthwhile a person is.

Physical beauty is nice, I’m not saying it’s not. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t be interested in clothes or makeup or jewelry or generally getting fancy either. I’m especially not saying you don’t have the right to turn someone down for a date because you’re not attracted to them.

What I am saying is that if you can’t be bothered to speak to a woman who doesn’t give you a boner, you can fuck off forever.

Also, not everyone is fucking beautiful. Can we stop insulting people’s intelligence by telling them they’re beautiful when they know perfectly well they don’t fit the standard of conventional attractiveness? Not everyone is equally beautiful just like not everyone is equally tall and both of those things are equally unimportant when you’re not looking to get laid.

What’s actually helpful is doing your best to set the entire concept of beauty as worthiness on fire. So fucking what if you’re not pretty, the purpose of your life is not to be decorative. Are you kind? Do you go out of your way to help lost tourists? Do you give to charity? Are you a good cook? A good writer? Can you run a marathon? Paint a picture? Keep a project on track? Fix a car? Have you had interesting adventures?

All of those things are about a zillion times more important than whether you can make some rando feel funny in his pants.

Porn vs f/m

Many many dominant women complain a lot about how much femdom porn sucks and how men who watch too much of it end up with ridiculous ideas about what they can expect from dominant women. To be clear, most femdom porn is fucking awful and men who probably weren’t all that bright in the first place do get ridiculous ideas from it. That said, there is such a thing as porn women actually like and it’s not just the lack of realism that makes so many of us hate average femdom porn so much.

Porn for women is a thing. Have you ever read a romance novel? No seriously, have you read any? If you have, you know where I’m going with this 🙂 Yeah, women are fucking filthy. Some romance novels are really explicit. No, more than that. They’re full on porn, just in words instead of pictures. And no, they’re not realistic, that’s entirely beside the point.

Here are the two three big differences between porn that women actually like and porn that women can’t fucking stand:

  1. The women in romance novels are relatable – sometimes they feel uncertain, unsure of themselves, they occasionally have flaws and bad days and make mistakes
  2. Romance novels answer the question “why should I give a fraction of a shit that these two people are fucking?”
  3. At least some romance novels aren’t openly insulting to women.

That’s pretty much it. High bar, huh.

Oh if you want to be picky there’s usually something at least vaguely appealing about the male love interest. Why yes, women do experience desire. We just don’t experience desire for stupid bullshit that someone who has never spoken with an actual woman thinks we’re probably supposed to want, he guesses.

If you want to make porn that doesn’t send women screaming, read a fucking romance novel. I’m not saying none of them are profoundly fucking problematic, of course they are. Read a few of them, and look for commonalities. One of the big things you’re going to see is some actual emotions. If I don’t care about any of the characters, I sure don’t care that they’re fucking. It’s also nice if the characters actually seem to be attracted to each other and having a good time while they’re getting it on.

One of the things I hate most about shitty femdom porn is the baffling popularity of bitchy ice queen doms who don’t seem to be having any fun. If I was having that bad of a time slapping a guy around, I would call red and go home to play videogames. Seriously, you want me to relate to a woman who clearly wants to go the fuck home and put her feet up? Okay I do relate to her, but not in a sexy way. If I’m going to watch porn rather than read it, I prefer gay porn. I’d even rather watch maledom porn most of the time because at least everyone is willing to fake being happy to be there.

One of the things I find most insulting about the majority of femdom porn is the idea that I’m supposed to believe that a woman who clearly takes no personal enjoyment whatsoever in what she’s doing is actually in charge. No dude, if she was in charge she’d be doing literally anything else. That annoys me so badly I had to go back up and change my two big differences between porn women like and porn we can’t fucking stand to three big differences.

It is honestly not that fucking hard to make porn women like, the problem is that to do that you have to believe women are people and frankly that’s a bridge too far for many, many men. If you believe that we’re people, then it follows that our wants and needs both exist and matter. If you start from there you can’t help but make porn women like. Only a subset of us, of course, because we are not a motherfucking hive mind seriously what does it take to get that through you fucker’s heads, but you will undoubtedly make stuff women like if you start by assuming we’re people.

And the next time you hear about how much women hate porn in general or femdom porn in particular, just mentally translate that into “shitty porn” and “openly insulting femdom porn.”

“domina advise wife”

Another one from the search terms! What I assume this person wanted when they searched for “domina advise wife” was “domina, tell my wife how to dominate me.” What I’m actually going to talk about is what I wish vanilla women knew about domination.

First of all you don’t have to do shit that you don’t fucking want to. Not only do you not have to try domination at all, ever, even a little bit, but you don’t have to do a goddamn thing you don’t personally enjoy.

Husband wants the porn dominatrix look? Too fucking bad unless you get a kick out of it.

Husband wants a weekend long heavy impact play heavy bondage heavy verbal humiliation scene? Lolno. Not gonna happen.

Husband wants you to “dominate” him and won’t tell you what that means to him? And then complains that you’re doing it wrong? He can fuck right off.

Domination absolutely does not mean that you have to do a bunch of shit that doesn’t turn you on, makes you feel ridiculous, feels like a chore, or feels like you’re acting out a scene for your husband and being pressured to pretend that you’re in charge when you’re not even slightly in charge. Domination is about what you want. If you like getting your way, there is something for you in domination.

And to be clear, you absolutely do not have to want to be in charge every minute of every day forever to enjoy domination. When my brain gets tired or I’m too hungry to make a decision, I ask my husband to make a decision for me. That’s completely normal, no one can make all of the decisions all the time forever and it is not even slightly fair to ask that of someone. You are allowed to have bad days and get sick and get terrible news and need your partner to take care of you for a little while. Doms are allowed to be human.

You are also allowed to be any kind of dom you damned well feel like. You can 100% be the icy porn dom if you want to, run with it if that’s what does it for you! But you could also be a sensual dom – you don’t have to have any interest in pain whatsoever to be dominant and to take charge. You could be a giggly happy sadist like me. You could be a dominant little, a dominant kitty, a queen, a boss, a seductress, you can be nurturing, you can be strict, you can be tricky or completely straightforward. You can enjoy bondage or not care for it at all, you can love using toys or just your hands and teeth, you can use your voice to get inside your sub’s head or never say a word during a scene, you can love inflicting pain or never want to raise a hand to your partner, you can do whatever works for you.

Obviously you can’t do whatever you want to your partner without regard for their wants and needs, but you don’t have to do a single thing they want that does not do it for you even a little bit.

You don’t have to be good at it right away, either. Literally nobody is, if they tell you that they’re a liar and not even a good one. It’s completely normal to feel uncertain, out of place, or like you don’t know what the hell you’re doing when you first start dominating people at all and/or when you start playing with a new partner. It’s normal to worry that you’ll screw up or lose your train of thought or whap yourself on the ear with a whip or get the tails of your flogger all tangled up. Again, doms are allowed to be human.

It’s also okay to try to have a scene and discover that you just can’t tonight. It’s okay for things to fall apart in the middle and to decide you’d really rather eat some icecream and cuddle on the couch together. It’s okay to need aftercare even if you’re the dom/top/sadist. It’s okay not to want to do it all again right fucking now, you’re allowed to take a break and/or to not want to get your perv on every single weekend. It’s okay to try something and find out it just doesn’t work for you.

You are okay and what you want is okay and the way you like to dominate/top is okay. If what you like doesn’t work for your husband, you are still okay.