It seems pretty common for dominant women not to have any interest in online play. Obviously I can’t speak for all women (and oh how I hate it when men ask questions as if women are a hive mind and one of us can speak for all of us), but here’s my take on it.

First of all, by online play I’m talking about playing on cam where one person gives instructions and the other one carries them out and sexy chat, where the people playing describe what they would do to each other and how they would react.

For me play is about personal connection, so my biggest stumbling block with online play is that it always seems to be strangers asking for it. Dude, if you want someone to watch you jerk off on cam, you should talk to a sex worker. I’d rather play video games or frankly do literally anything other than watch some random jerk off and pretend to care. If I’m looking for porn Archive of Our Own has me covered, thanks. Quick disclaimer here: I’m not saying all fanfiction is porn, I’m saying that there is some delightfully filthy fanfic out there and it’s way more fun than watching somebody do stuff he wanted to do anyway but expects you to pretend you ordered him to.

But even if I did have a personal connection with someone who wanted to play online, there’s still the problem that play is fundamentally physical for me. There’s something incredibly satisfying about giving someone a good flogging and I just can’t get that feeling by telling someone to hit themselves. I also really love hitting someone when or where they’re not expecting it and watching them yelp and squirm. It’s pretty hard to surprise people when you’re telling them what to do, and unless the person I’m playing with has a really good microphone I’m going to miss out on a lot of the little pain noises I love so much. While I’m complaining about tech, the video quality of most webcams/internet connections is not all that either. If I’m going to watch someone do things to themselves I wanna see, dammit.

There is an argument to be made that playing on cam is personalized porn, and that’s maybe not a terrible argument but it just doesn’t work for me. If we don’t have some sort of relationship already, then I don’t care to watch you on cam unless you’re smoking hot and have a really good camera setup so I can actually see what’s going on. Note that I wouldn’t expect some random stranger who I have no relationship with to want to watch me on cam either.

I also think I’m just too much of a control freak to really get into online play. If I’m going to play with someone, I want to hit them where I mean to, when I mean to, as hard as I mean to. With someone I trusted to follow orders that could maybe work, but not with some random stranger. It’s just not fun for me to hope the person I’m playing with will do what I told them to do and not, say, tap themselves with a cane and then move on to their favourite kink or nag me relentlessly until I “order” them to do the thing they really wanted to do (or more likely end the video call and block them).

TL;DR I feel both bored and used when people expect me to pretend I’m dominating them while they do what they wanted to do anyway. I imagine plenty of other women feel the same.