Or, more bitching about particularly stupid threads on Fetlife. The latest one is about “discreet” sub/dom relationships. I’ll spare you the original poster’s terrible English and summarize it here:

He’s yet another married man whose Madonna/whore complex means he “can’t” talk with his wife about kink, and wants us all to give him permission to cheat on her. Because hiding things from her is totally cool as long as he doesn’t actually put his dick in another woman. Oh, and this is all strictly theoretical. Pay no attention to how very very attached he is to the idea that this theoretical sub can somehow ethically cheat on his theoretical wife, and how suspiciously defensive he gets when people point out that hiding things like that from your wife is cheating. Nope, nope, this is just an interesting discussion and he has no idea why everyone is being such jerks about the idea of him shitting all over his marriage vows.

Sigh. First of all, if you’re hiding an intimate relationship from your spouse, then congrats! You’re cheating. Maybe it’s the least terrible option in your situation, maybe it’s not, but don’t kid yourself. It’s cheating.

Second, the whole “please give me permission to cheat” thing is just so goddamn boring. Really, it never occurred to you that a Fetlife group full of women and men who actually do love women might not be delighted when you ask for our blessings to cheat on your wife? Or that this question hasn’t been asked over, and over, and over? Seriously, it’s very nearly as overdone as the good old “Where do I find a dom?” and “How can I tell a woman is a dom without asking her like a grownup?” questions.

Guys, if you have to ask random people on Fetlife to tell you it’s okay to cheat, you know damned well it’s not okay. If you believed you were totally in the right, you would never have bothered to start a thread about it. Also, what the fuck? Even if you could convince a bunch of people you’ve never met to tell you it’s A-okay to cheat, why would that matter? Do you think that your wife will feel less betrayed when she finds out if you can show her a thread full of people saying “go ahead and cheat”?

For that matter, do you think these theoretical people saying it’s fine to cheat are going to help you convince anyone to help you cheat? I hate to break it to you, but the words of a bunch of random people on Fetlife are not going to convince me that it’s ethical to help you break a promise you made to your wife. Even if you’re one of the rare few people who might actually be justified in cheating*, your Fetlife thread isn’t going to make me want any part of the inevitable drama or the being treated like a dirty little secret.

*Situations that might justify cheating include but are not limited to: your wife both being unwilling to discuss you getting your kinky needs met elsewhere and having a disability that doesn’t allow her to support herself, or a medical condition that she needs your health insurance to manage, or very small children, or an ailing parent she has to care for. However, you can’t know she’s unwilling to discuss your kinks unless you fucking try! For all you know, the theoretical woman who is dependent on your care may feel more secure, not less, if you can get your kink on without leaving her. At the very least, she deserves the chance to say “I know it’s going to suck, but I’d rather get divorced than pretend I don’t know you’re cheating.”

While I do believe that in those situations cheating is probably a less terrible option than divorce, for practical reasons I’m not particularly likely to want any part of it. For starters, how am I supposed to verify that a guy has a “good enough” reason to cheat without meeting his wife? From the outside, “my wife understands but doesn’t want to meet you” looks an awful lot like “my wife has no idea what’s going on and would be devastated if she found out”. And since I’m a shitty liar, how am I supposed to talk with his wife without her figuring out that something is up? Even if I could somehow be really really sure that everything he was telling me about his situation was true I still wouldn’t be interested in constantly worrying that his wife would find out, or in managing the drama when she did find out, or in being hidden away from the rest of his life as though he’s ashamed of me.

And finally, the whole Madonna/whore thing is just pathetic. If you really loved your wife you would embrace all of her, not neuter her and put her on a pedestal. Yeah, yeah, kink is nasty and dirty and you just couldn’t expose her to your dirty nasty dirtiness. Alternately, you could give her a chance to make her own choices about *gasp* sex instead of making the decision for her like she’s a child. You’re not protecting her, you’re protecting yourself. At least be honest about it. You’re scared she’ll reject you, so you want to go behind her back instead of talking to her like a grownup. I get that it’s scary to consider your wife freaking out and demanding a divorce, but it’s pretty fucking insulting to assume that she’s so close minded that she would throw away years of marriage because you want to get a little freaky now and then.

Every Friday the 13th Maggie McNeill of The Honest Courtesan asks allies to speak up for sex workers rights. I think that prosecuting people for having consensual sex is idiotic, so why not rant about that?

Maggie makes a lot of very good points in her posts from both today and the last friday the 13th, which you should absolutely read.

My biggest objection to prostitution being illegal is that I own my own body. I should be able to do whatever I like with it, because it’s my fucking body! If you don’t like what I do with my body, fine. If you would never in a million years make the choices I did, great. But if you think for one second you get to tell me what I can do with my own body, you can go fuck yourself.

What truly blows me away is that there are feminists, feminists! who think sex work should stay illegal. No feminist (if you don’t believe that women own their own bodies, you are not a feminist by any meaningful definition of the word. If you want to debate that, you will do so elsewhere. I will not have that kind of stupidity on my blog) would ever tell a woman she doesn’t have the right to birth control or abortion, so where the fuck do you get off telling women that they shouldn’t be allowed to have consensual sex for reasons you don’t like? Who are you to judge anyone else’s reasons for having sex? Again, it’s my body and I’ll do what I want with it.

Aside from how deeply it offends me to be told what I can do with my own body, keeping sex work illegal is just such a waste of time. Exchanging money for services doesn’t hurt anyone. Instead of badgering harmless sex workers, couldn’t our law enforcement officers and court system maybe work on real criminals? You know, the ones who actually hurt people?

Even if you do believe that being a sex worker is bad for absolutely everyone all of the time and that all sex workers are victims in need of rescue (which is stupid, wrong, and extremely insulting to grown women who can make their own choices), isn’t it kind of a dick move to saddle an innocent victim with a criminal record? I mean, if what you want is for all sex workers to leave the industry, shouldn’t you want that to be as easy as possible? This may come as a shock to you, but it’s kind of difficult to get a job when a), you have a criminal record, and b), you can’t tell potential employers what you’ve been up to for the past few years because it’s illegal.

Not to mention, if what you really want is to keep women from being victimized, victimizing them more with bad laws isn’t super helpful. Think social services, employment and training programs, non-douchebaggy immigration policies. You know, stuff that would actually help.

But if all you want is to punish naughty naughty women for being awful dirty sluts, go right ahead and fight to keep sex work illegal. Just admit that you don’t give a shit about the women who suffer so you can feel righteous.

People often talk about kinks like they’re set in stone, but they’re really not. It’s actually not unusual to acquire a kink from a partner (play or otherwise), almost as if they’re contagious 🙂

First, the obligatory disclaimer:

Absolutely none of this should be considered in any way licence to pressure anyone to try something they’re not comfortable with. If a kinky activity turns you off, scares you, or just doesn’t feel right, you have absolutely no obligation to ‘be a good sport’ and try it. I’m strictly talking about things that you’ve never really thought about, or are puzzled by, or tried once with someone else and are willing to try again even though they didn’t do much for you the first time.

There are three main ways that ‘catching’ a kink from someone else tends to work.

1. If someone you like really enjoys something, and you like seeing them happy, doing the things that they like so much can set up an association in your mind between that thing and happy fun times. I think this is especially powerful with sexual kinks, but I’m sure it can happen with non-sexual things too.

2. It’s a particularly intimate form of explaining what it is that a particular kink does for a person. If a kink doesn’t make sense to you, of course you’re not going to be interested in it. But if someone can explain it to you and you can see how they react to it, a kink can suddenly become much more interesting.

3. Making a connection between the new kink and something that already does it for you. This is pretty closely related to seeing what it does for somebody else, but slightly different. Some people kink on specific things just for themselves, but sometimes people also kink on things because of what they represent. Rope bondage, for example, can be about the aesthetics of it and it can also be about having someone completely at your mercy. If it’s about the latter, then handcuffs or mummification might also do it for you.

I never used to have any idea why people were interested in chastity devices. Most of them are still just weird looking to me, and not being super into delayed gratification I don’t tend to like strange contraptions getting between me and what I want. What changed for me was a former play partner who really, really liked chastity play and finding a device that didn’t totally turn me off. For me, metal = sexy while plastic = ‘meh’.

Seeing somebody enjoy chastity play made the whole thing make a lot more sense to me. Anything that turns someone on so intensely gives me power, and what’s not fun about power? Plus, it ties into one of my core kinks, helplessness. If someone desperately wants something and can’t have it, I am all over that.

Basically, if you don’t know if you’ll like something, give it a shot, you might end up loving it.

On my recent post “Oh, just stop worrying what other people think”, a commentor made a very good point about dominance and gender roles:

…

I don’t know how to flirt, I act too masculine and scare men away. Femdom doesn’t solve the issue because I am very far from the common idea of domme – I identify a lot more with male dominants. Which just makes me feel twice as bad, it’s one thing to fail at being what vanilla men want, I even fail at being what submissive men want.

…

Society has very strict expectations for women, and it’s only more complicated when you add dominance to the mix. For starters, dominance itself is assumed to be masculine. To be dominant and a women is only acceptable to the extent that we turn submissive men on, and not at all acceptable if there aren’t any of them around.

And that’s even if we perform femininity “correctly”. God forbid we fail to be passive and receptive, to look fuckable at all times, and to always put men’s feelings first. Then no amount of hot, sexy dominance will make us anything but man-hating lesbians in the eyes of everyone around us.

Look at the way we describe women who take charge: pushy, bossy, bitch, man-eater, overbearing, domineering. Men get to be assertive or natural leaders, but women who act the exact same way somehow become unlovable freaks, destined to die alone and possibly get eaten by their many, many cats.

No wonder there are so few dominant women. Who wants to embrace a part of herself that she’s rightly worried will mean no one will ever love her for who she is?

Sadly, just being submissive doesn’t mean a man understands how restrictive society’s gender roles are for women (just because he thinks it’s hot when a woman he’s attracted to is assertive in just the right context, that doesn’t mean anyone else appreciates her), or make him secure enough in his masculinity to be able to deal with a woman who isn’t traditionally feminine, at least outside of the bedroom. Dominance is all well and good when it’s actively getting a man off, but what about submitting when the floor needs mopping and it’s not fun or sexy? Or when you’re tired and you just assume you can have a night off whenever you want one?

Or, and I realize this is kind of ridiculous and would never actually happen, but what if she’s not hot? What if she’s not tall, thin and pretty, with long hair and large breasts? What if, and now this is really out there, but what if she dresses or acts masculine? Do women who don’t look like Dominatrix Barbie get to be dominant too?

And that’s all just on the personal relationship level. What about telling your friends that you and your girlfriend started dating when she asked you out? What if they notice that you dress nicely to please her but she doesn’t dress up for you? Or that she doesn’t make excuses for it if she openly disagrees with you or outperforms you in some way?

With all the reasons even the most traditionally feminine dominant women have to feel like unlovable freaks, it’s a wonder any woman at all identifies as dominant.

No.

 

Alright, alright, I guess I could elaborate. First of all, by feminist, I mean in the sense of Rebecca West’s quote that “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” Actually identifying as a feminist is entirely unnecessary, particularly given the many problems with mainstream feminism such as racism, transphobia, and whorephobia (which I’m calling whorephobia because that’s what sex workers themselves call it). Second, it should be blindingly obvious that a man cannot in any meaningful way submit to a woman without believing she’s a person.

Here’s an example: recently on fetlife a disgusting sack of shit who obviously hates women started a discussion called Rawlsian Ethics and BDSM: Should femdoms be required to be kink dispensing machines? The title pretty much says it all, but here’s an excerpt in case you still had any hope for the human race.

How (from this viewpoint) would you feel about a law requiring dominant females to spend, say, an hour a week dispensing kink to random sub males?

For example, you may be thinking: well, if I turn out F, it may be a little creepy to be whipping random guys’ butts or having them lick my boots, but I guess I could live with that. And if I turn out to be m, maybe I couldn’t find a kink partner at all, and being allowed to lick a femdom’s boots once in a while would be at least something and would vastly improve my happiness.

The question again: from this perspective, knowing that you might be m after birth, if you could vote, would you vote to enact a law requiring femdoms to dispense kink? Would total world happiness, in a Rawlsian sense, be greater with such a law?

Wow. Where the fuck does this asshole get off calling himself submissive when he thinks women ought to be enslaved for the greater good (of his boner). Literally enslaved! Oh, but don’t worry, this monument to entitlement acknowledges that it “may be a little creepy” to be forced to do things you don’t like to people you would never share a room with if you had a choice. Or, you know, go to jail, which is obviously where those heartless bitches belong. What kind of black-hearted hag thinks her rights matter when there are neglected penises in the world?

Believing that women should be enslaved for your pleasure is not only reprehensible, it’s the exact opposite of submission to them. People, this is not complicated. The word submit means “To yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of another.” There is no bizarre parallel universe in which forcing people to do things for you even vaguely resembles surrendering yourself to their will. Just admit you’re a dominant bottom and a terrible human being, then go home and never interact with the outside world again. It’s better off without you.

There are subtler forms of this hateful bullshit as well. The expectation that of course a “real” dominant woman is going to dress in the exact kind of outfits that get your dick hard is also the opposite of submission, it’s just not quite as disgusting. If you want a woman who gets off on being told what to wear, you need to find yourself a submissive woman. Oh, I’m supposed to conveniently happen to really enjoy dressing up in whatever fetish gear most does it for you? Well that’s completely different! You know, if you’re a complete fucking moron. If you’re too stupid to see how dehumanizing it is to assume that I only have needs that conveniently dovetail with yours, there’s just no hope for you.

And there’s the expectation that a “real” dominant woman just happens to like whatever kind of play the so-called submissive man does. If you expect to be told to do only things that turn you on and only when it’s convenient, you’re not submitting to anyone. At best you’re going through the motions of submission to a fantasy I’m acting out for you. Stop kidding yourself that any of that bullshit is about submitting to anyone at all or to me personally and we’ll both be a lot happier.

Guys, you can have the belief that the world revolves around your dick, or you can have meaningful submission to another person, but you can’t have both without deluding yourself. It is very simply not possible to be submissive to women in any meaningful way without believing that we’re people.

Most critiques of ‘One True Wayism‘ point out that as long as no one gets seriously injured or traumatized, there’s no wrong way to do kink. There are certainly far more right ways to do kink than there are wrong ones, but to quote Mistress Matisse:

There actually is such a thing as a bad personal choice.

She was talking about One-Penis policies in polyamorous relationships, but I think the idea applies to kink just as well as it does to poly. Along with Mistress Matisse’s original article and further comments, this post was also inspired LegallyBinding’s post about “Insta-subs”: The Issue Everyone Loves to Ignore, which recently went Kinky & Popular on Fetlife.

While I mildly disagree that everyone is ignoring the issue of people making poor decisions while in sub-frenzy, I think it’s worth talking about the fact that some personal choices are simply not good ideas. I’m not saying that people don’t have understandable reasons for making poor choices, or that they don’t have the right to do what they like with their lives, I’m just saying that you’re kidding yourself if you think that all choices and all ways of doing kink are equally likely to turn out well for you.

So just what do I think are bad ways to do kink?

1. Not figuring out why you like what you like. Not in the sense of some unachieveable deep understanding of exactly why being spanked turns you on, but in the sense of understanding whether you like the physical sensation or how it makes you feel, and why you like one or both of those things. For example, if you like the physical sensation of being spanked, and you play with someone who likes giving spankings as a form of humiliation play, odds are good that the the two of you will leave that scene unsatisfied and annoyed with each other.

It’s absolutely fine to not have everything completely figured out before you ever even meet another kinky person, but if the answer to “What is it you like about spankings?” is “I don’t know”, be honest about that! It’s very common for kinky people to enjoy giving each other new experiences, so don’t be afraid that someone will turn you down because you aren’t an Olde Guarde Master with 25 years of experience.

2. Making assumptions about why you like what you like. This is one of my big pet peeves. I’ve seen far too many people assume that enjoying bondage and pain play means that they’re submissive. No, it really really doesn’t. You can enjoy the physical sensations of bondage and pain play without having even the slightest interest in submission. In fact, you could be dominant and like those things. There is such a thing as a dominant bottom!

Giving the people you play with inaccurate information about yourself will lead to mismatched expectations and bad scenes. You should not be surprised when a dom declines to play with you again once they find out that you lied about being submissive.

3. Assuming kinky compatibility is the only thing you need to make a relationship work. Hot scenes are great and all, but there are only so many hours a day you can spend tying someone up and hitting them with things. Even if you’re only going to spend a weekend with someone, it’s a good idea to think about what you’re going to do when you’re not playing. And for the love of god don’t move in with anyone before making sure you get along with them outside of the dungeon.

4. Getting all of your information about kink from one source. Sure, it sounds romantic to have your shiny new master be the one to teach you everything about d/s, but that’s just fucking dumb. Nobody knows everything about kink. Your new master could be the most honourable and trustworthy person alive and still be wrong about some things. Her last three subs could’ve had much higher tolerances for risk than you do, you could have physical limitations or phobias or triggers she’s never dealt with before, there are a huge variety of things she could be wrong about without having any bad intentions.

5. Giving up control or giving out rules before your partner has earned it. It’s great to have a new sub who says he’ll do whatever you say and is excited about being given new rules, but what’s going to happen when he has to actually live with all those rules? Or when you have to remember all of them and catch it if he messes up? I don’t actually have a huge amount of experience with d/s, but I’m pretty sure that’s more likely to be overwhelming and a huge pain in the ass than fun and satisfying.

I’m sure there are many more bad personal choices people can make, but this post is long enough already. If there are any huge pet peeves of yours that I’ve missed, let me know in the comments.

If you do any or all of those things, you’re not stupid or a bad person. Everyone was new once, and like everything else, kink takes time to get good at. However, if you do these things over and over and act like no one could’ve seen the trainwreck coming, don’t be surprised if no one comes to your next pity party.

It’s not at all unusual for submissive men to have a little trouble coming to terms with the fact that they’re submissive. A depressingly common piece of advice I’ve seen given is to “just stop worrying about what other people think”. That’s not advice, that’s a goal. The men looking for advice want to be able to stop worrying about what other people think. If they knew how, they’d already be doing it!

It’s seriously insulting to act like submissive men asking for advice are all too stupid to realize that they should just stop caring what people think. If your problem is that you’re worried people will think less of you/that you’ll lose friends/that no one will ever want to date a submissive guy, then it’s pretty fucking obvious that you’d be happier if you somehow didn’t care what people think of you. The problem is that it’s not a simple thing to do, which is another thing that makes that advice thoroughly unhelpful.

Humans are social animals. Even the most misanthropic cave-dwelling hermit who only visits the nearest town once a year to stock up on supplies still needs to worry about what people think of her for the duration of her supply trip. If she’s enough of an asshole, she may get thrown out of town before she picks up everything she needs. If she acts weird enough around other people, they may decide she should be hospitalized whether she likes it or not.

Or for a less extreme example, people do lose friends and partners when they come out as kinky, particularly if their kink is especially hard for people who don’t know anything about the scene to accept. It’s considered normal for men to be dominant, so it can throw people for a loop when they find out a male friend or partner is submissive. People also tend to have a lot of stupid assumptions about submissive men (and submission in general) which can lead them to look down on submissive guys in particular. Even if you’re able to educate them, that can put a serious strain on a friendship. Sure, you can argue that it’s silly to even want to be friends with the kind of close-minded jerks who would look down on someone for having a harmless kink that doesn’t involve them, but what good does that do someone who’s worried that everyone he cares about will abandon him? Seriously, you’d have to be a sociopath to just not care if your friends stop having anything to do with you.

Outside of the kink scene, people tend to assume that submissive men are failures at being men, weak, pathetic, and undesirable. Inside of the scene, they’re still often seen that way, plus they get to worry about being lumped in with the thousands of self-obsessed submission-fetishists who’ve made dominant women extremely cynical about every man who says he’s inexperienced but eager to learn. The idea that “just not caring what people think” will fix those problems is ridiculous. Accepting yourself will make things easier, but it won’t magically make all your problems go away.

Unfortunately, all I have to tell submissive guys who are having trouble accepting themselves is that it’s totally normal to be a bit freaked out, and that you shouldn’t feel bad about having a little difficulty throwing out everything you’ve ever been taught about how to be a man. If anyone has any real advice on accepting yourself, I’d love to hear it.

Safewords get held up as this magical talisman that will protect you from all harm, which is ridiculous and actually less safe than not having one at all.

A safeword is only as safe as the person you’re using it with. If they don’t stop when you say “Hey, my hand is going numb”, why would saying “rutabega” make a difference? There are people in the scene who will do whatever they think they can get away with, and these people do not give a shit about your safeword. There are also people who aren’t outright malicious but are kind of clueless. They’ll probably stop when you say stop, but five minutes later they’ll go back to doing what you just told them wasn’t working for you. There are also people who will tell you stupid bullshit like “A safeword is only for serious call-a-doctor medical distress”, which is complete and utter idiocy. Unless you have psychic powers, you simply cannot know whether someone really needed to use their safeword. And there are people who will pay lip-service to the idea of a safeword, but they’ll make it clear that if you’ll regret it if you ever try to use yours.

A safeword will not protect you from any of those people, but believing that it will can get you into trouble. If you believe that your safeword will save you, that everyone everywhere at every time will absolutely always listen to a safeword, you might end up taking much bigger risks than you meant to. BDSM is never risk free; the idea is to mitigate the risk or take calculated risks.  That doesn’t work so well if you’re kidding yourself about how risky a given scene is.

Safewords can be risky from the top’s side, too. Assuming that a bottom is willing and able to use their safeword may make the top feel more comfortable, but it’s just not true that everyone will call “red” when they need to. It’s not uncommon for subs to try to prove they’re tough enough to take it (I believe this is more common with male subs, but feel free to correct me in the comments), or to refuse to ask to end the scene because they don’t want to disappoint their dom. It’s also quite possible for a bottom to be flying high on endorphins and simply not know how hard that whipping really is. Ending a scene while the bottom still wants more may disappoint them, but it’s a lot better than getting a call the next morning from someone who is freaking out about how bruised they are. Finally, some people get nonverbal when they get into subspace, and may not be capable of any kind of safeword or signal. To be clear, that’s neither better nor worse than being able to safeword no matter what’s going on, but it’s a good thing to tell your top ahead of time.

As a top, I firmly believe that if my bottom needs to use their safeword (outside of a scene that’s specifically negotiated to find out how much they can take), I’ve failed to read them as well as I should. Sometimes you do hit an emotional or physical landmine with no warning, but in general if you’re surprised when someone uses their safeword you either don’t know them well enough to push them that hard, or you just aren’t paying enough attention.

The reason the concept of a safeword exists in the first place was to allow people who enjoy resistance play or consensual non-consent to yell “Stop!” without worrying that their top would actually stop. Unless you’re doing a scene where “stop” means “I’m really into the role I’m playing” and “no” means “Keep going!”, then plain English will probably do you more good than a special safeword. “I think I’m losing circulation in my foot” gives the top a lot more information than “yellow” does. I’m not knocking “red” as a convenient shorthand for “something is badly wrong and I need the scene to end right now this instant”, but in general saying what you mean is clearer than using a code word.

Safewords can be useful, but they are absolutely not any sort of guarantee of safety.

In the kink scene (particularly online) it’s not unusual to hear that so-and-so isn’t dominant, they’re just domineering. But what does that really mean?

According to dictionary.reference.com, domineering means:

inclined to rule arbitrarily or despotically; overbearing; tyrannical: domineering parents.

and dominant means:

ruling, governing, or controlling; having or exerting authority or influence: dominant in the chain
of command.

While dictionary.com isn’t talking about dominance in the kinky sense, there is still something there to work with. Domineering and dominant both involve ruling, but being domineering also involves a lack of interest in the well being of whoever you might be in charge of.  Or to put it another way, you might be domineering if it has never occurred to you that submissive people submit because it turns them on, not because it turns you on, as an awesome commentor on xojane put it.

Dominance in the kinky sense is supposed to be a symbiotic exchange. It may not always be obvious what everyone is getting out of it, and it may not always be pretty or comfortable, but everyone involved should be getting their needs met. It makes me sad that I have to spell that out, but I’ve seen far too many questions in groups like Novices & Newbies to assume that everyone understands that the dominant is supposed to care about their submissive, and that you should feel good after a scene. If your dom acts like you aren’t supposed to have any needs of your own, that asking for your needs to be met is completely unreasonable of you, then you’ve probably found someone who is just domineering, not dominant.

While some people are blatantly domineering jerks who shouldn’t be in charge of a goldfish, there’s enough grey area between dominant and domineering for the distinction to be pretty confusing. I’ve certainly seen plenty of personal ads from men who insist that they really do want a woman to use them however she likes without worrying about what they get out of it. Even though I’m pretty sure most of these men are lying to themselves or are unclear on the difference between fantasy and reality, there could well be a few of them who just want someone who will let them serve without getting uncomfortable with it and insisting on doing things for them. The perfect dom for one of them might be someone else’s lazy jerk. If someone’s style of dominance isn’t right for you, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a bad dom.

The most important judge of whether someone is dominant or just domineering is the submissive who’s dealing with them, whether that’s an email flirtation or an established in-person relationship. If you feel used, does it really matter if I think your dom isn’t so bad? If you’re happy, does it really matter if I can’t fucking stand your dom?

And for the doms out there, while it’s not the end of the world if one person calls you domineering, I think it’s a good idea to keep this saying in mind:

The first time someone calls you a horse you punch him on the nose, the second time someone calls you a horse you call him a jerk but the third time someone calls you a horse, well then perhaps it’s time to go shopping for a saddle.

When I first started lurking at the edges of the kink scene, I thought I was a strictly a top, not a dom. Eventually I figured things out, but I would’ve done that a lot sooner if I had been able to read Ferns‘ amazing post about how she handles it when her submissive says no about six years ago. Note: the rest of this post will make very little sense if you haven’t read Fern’s post.

The reason that post would’ve been so helpful is that I thought if I was a “real” dom, I’d just magically know exactly what to do if I told my submissive to do something and he said no. Since I had no fucking idea how to handle that, I just assumed I wasn’t meant to be a dom. In hindsight that’s pretty silly, but it’s what I thought when I first got into the scene.

Somehow, I never made the connection between saying no in a d/s relationship and doing something equally disrespectful in vanilla relationship. To quote Ferns:

In my relationships, this is a signal that there is something really wrong. It is the vanilla equivalent of him saying ‘Fuck off!’. It is hugely hurtful and awful and I completely understand why dominants struggle with it. [emphasis mine]

Of course new doms struggle with how to deal with someone suddenly throwing out the agreements they made about submitting! Would you expect a teenaged girl to magically know how to handle it if her first boyfriend tells her to fuck off when she asks him if he wants to go for a walk with her? Of course not! But I had the idea that d/s relationships were somehow fundamentally different from vanilla relationships, so it never occurred to me that my submissive saying no to me is breaking his agreement to behave a certain way, and that’s at least as much his fault as it is mine. If the dom does a bad job of communicating expectations that certainly doesn’t help, but if the sub just says “No” when he means “Wait, what? I thought we were taking a break from the d/s thing since we’ve both been so busy at work”, then it’s not solely the dom’s fault when things go wrong.

I also had the idea that it’s the dom’s and only the dom’s job to make a d/s relationship work. To quote Ferns’ again:

I think some submissives cannot get their head around the fact that D/s takes two people. As a dominant, I CANNOT be second guessing whether he will do what I want or not, I need to trust him to submit.

I’m sure the whole d/s thing would be a lot easier for many submissives if they didn’t have to take any responsibility for holding up their end of the agreement, but that’s just not how it works. I can’t make a d/s dynamic work all by myself. I need my submissive to, you know, submit. I understand that it’s not easy for everyone to submit, and some people just find a “How about you make me” dynamic more fun, but I’m not here to take the blame for not being dominant enough when the problem is really that my submissive doesn’t really want to submit to me. Maybe he’s more interested in bottoming than submitting, maybe our styles just don’t mesh well, but either way, pissing on the agreement he made is not the way to get what he needs out of the relationship.

If there’s anyone else out there who doesn’t know what to do when their submissive says no, you’re not alone. You’re not a bad dom either. It’s not your job to hold up the dynamic all by yourself, no matter what all the porn tells you.