If for some reason you haven’t already subscribed to DD’s blog, you should go there now and read my interview. I also highly recommend the rest of the interview series, DD asks a lot of interesting questions.
Sadly, DD’s blog is gone now but I had a copy of my interview in my email. Enjoy!
How would you describe yourself, your sexual tastes, and your power exchange preference?
To riff on your post about personality, thinking styles and kink, I’m an INTP and abstract sequential thinker. Friends have also described me as an angry little hermit J As for my sexual tastes, I like a lot of things that are often considered ‘submissive’ acts by the tragically misinformed. For example, I like the missionary position with me on the bottom, and giving blowjobs. I also like tying men up and pegging them, so my Official DominantTM card should be safe for now. My power exchange preference is dominant, but a very low key, low protocol sort of dominant.
How and when did you discover your power exchange preference?
I discovered my interest in topping seven or eight years ago thanks to the glory of the internet, but didn’t discover my interest on domination as opposed to just topping until much more recently. The novelty of getting to hit people with things and having them thank me for it was all I was interested in at first, but after a few years the novelty wore off. Eventually, I figured out that the nebulous something I was searching for was power exchange. My current relationship also helped me figure that out. I’m convinced we get along as well as we do because my boyfriend is willing to give me my way practically all of the time, which does tend to point toward me being dominant.
Compare your first sexual experiences to sex now, different? What’s the most important thing you’ve learned?
Very different. Believe it or not, I used to be almost totally unable to initiate sex. I didn’t do anything ‘kinky’ until long after my first relationship ended. The most important thing I’ve learned is that kink isn’t just a crazy impossible thing that only happens in porn, regular everyday people like me have just as much a right to get their freak on as the most physically perfect porn star.
How did you come to understand you were dominant?
Actually, it was a long and gradual process. I used to read a lot of written femdom porn, but even though I was fascinated by those stories I just couldn’t make the connection to actually wanting to do something like that. I think part of that was that I’m not an especially severe sadist, so I assumed that because I didn’t want to enact those exact fantasies in real life just the way they were written, no one else actually did that stuff either and it was all just make-believe.
Eventually I stumbled across some femdom forum sites (now defunct or I’d have some links. I miss those sites), and started reading what people had to say about kink when they weren’t writing porn. I found that a lot easier to identify with, and a little seed of an idea started to sprout. Maybe I wasn’t that different from the people who seemed to actually be doing kinky things. That was a bit of an adjustment for me, since I spent my whole childhood as the weird, quiet kid with no friends. Clearly I couldn’t possibly be anything like the impossibly perfect dominatrixes in the porn I was watching.
In a weird way, the wankers of the world actually really helped me when I was finding my feet as a dom. No doubt my first profile on a kink dating site was just awful, but fortunately the sad, desperate hordes didn’t care how bad my profile was as long as there might possibly be a woman behind it. The attention I got was really encouraging, and through chatting with people on bondage.com and collarme.com, I started to figure out what I really wanted (shockingly enough, not body worship from random strangers). After I moved to Victoria and finished college, I started going to events in the local scene (which was just terrifying at first, I really don’t do well with large groups of strangers). I met and played with a few people, who luckily were nothing but perfectly sweet to me, and actually started playing in public at parties.
But all that time, I still didn’t feel comfortable calling myself dominant. I couldn’t say exactly where I picked it up, but I had this idea that an actual dom is in control of every little thing every minute of every day, never has a bad day, never just needs someone to hold her and stroke her hair, never feels unsure about what to do, never gets a little lost in the middle of a scene, etc, etc. But the more I read about power exchange, the more it sounded like the people who were actually doing it, were, uh, people. Not infallible robots, just people. One thing that really helped me was a blog post by Mistress Matisse (oh no, the heresy! I’m saying something nice about a prodom!) in which she talked about enjoying dominating people in small doses because having a full time slave was a lot of work for her. I figured that if someone who was so good at this she got paid for it was allowed to not want to be in charge of all the things all the time, I was allowed to be dominant without being superdom too.
I’m still working on that minor detail of actually finding a submissive of my own, but you know, one day.
Tell me what it is about domination/sadism that appeals to you.
I just really like getting my way 🙂 More seriously, I love the intimacy of domination and sadism. There’s nothing like showing someone this scary, dark part of yourself and having them ask you for more. Another thing I love about sadism is reactions. People make the best noises when you hurt them.
Who is kinkier, you or your partner?
Me. My partner doesn’t identify as kinky at all, even though the way he acts toward me could easily be called submissive. For example, last year my old wallet finally died, and the tyvek wallet I was interested in cost more than I wanted to pay for something essentially made out of a heavy-duty envelope. One day I came home, and sitting on top of my mouse was a tyvek wallet my boyfriend made for me. I was so excited about the wallet I almost didn’t notice he had also replaced my (half-broken) mouse with one almost exactly like the old one, except the new one works.
How do you handle being kinkier than your partner?
Conveniently, he’s fine with me playing casually with women, and is happy to come to play parties with me (and he insists on carrying my bag and fetching my drinks, it’s just adorable). What’s a little more complicated is my growing interest in exploring d/s, which would of course be much less casual than the odd bout of hitting people at parties. We haven’t figured that one out yet, but I think if we go slowly and he gets to know and trust any potential submissive of mine it’ll work out.
Do you think there is a connection between feminism and femdom? If so, how would you characterize it?
I think there is a connection in the sense that thanks to feminism’s effects on society, it’s no longer completely unthinkable that a woman might want to be in charge. I don’t think feminism made more women dominant, but it did make a little easier for us to express our dominance.
The cultural image of women who prefer to take the lead sexually is rarely positive. How has that affected you?
For starters, it made it extremely difficult to figure out I wanted to take the lead sexually. I used to think that domination was only for people far cooler than some nerd from a little town in the mountains. It’s certainly made it more difficult to find a partner, because there are a limited number of men who are both interested in a woman taking the lead sexually, and secure enough to ever admit it.
You are involved in a community of like-minded people, locally and online, how is that experience for you? What do you see as the benefits/downfall of each?
I really enjoy being with ‘my people’, online and off. Locally, there’s just something nice about going to the pub with some kinky friends and having long, meandering discussions about kinky topics like fear play, or power exchange, over drinks. It’s also pretty awesome to get to go to conferences like Sagacity’s Birthday Bash and Westward Bound. However, all local scenes (as far as I know) have their downsides. As a shy, soft-spoken dominant woman, I’ve had to deal with people assuming that I’m not dominant because I’m not loud or abrasive. There’s also the sexism in the scene, which is not in fact a magical oasis or perfect equality, no matter what people might like to think. It’s hard not to notice that the vast majority of people wearing revealing outfits at play parties are women, while the majority of men get to wear clothes that actually cover their bodies.
Being involved in the online scene gives me access to people and opinions I might never meet in real life. It’s also easier to ignore sexist expectations when I can just stay the hell out of the Gor groups on Fetlife. I particularly enjoy blogging and commenting on other people’s blogs because the medium gives me more time to sort my thoughts out than chatting with people in person does. The only downsides I can think of to being involved in the online scene are pretty minor: because text lacks the nuance of tone of voice and body language it’s easier to misunderstand people, and sometimes you just really want to hang out with kinky people in person.
I wouldn’t say either online or offline is definitely better when it comes to socialization (online play is another story, I’m just not interested in playing without getting to touch my bottom), I like both of them for different reasons.
Does being dominant in a non-sexual setting (work, etc) energize you, does it turn you on?
Theoretically I could like being dominant in non-sexual settings, but in practice I just get really nervous about whether other people think my ideas are stupid. I find it a lot easier to go along with what other people are doing.
Which of the 5 Love Languages would you say you prefer?
The love languages I need to receive to feel loved are physical touch and acts of service. Oddly enough, I hate being touched by almost everyone except my partner, who I snuggle and hold hands with constantly. It took some time for me to realize acts of service were really important to me, largely because of the pervasive idea that people (especially women) who insist on having other people do things for them are selfish jerks. In particular, I feel really loved when people make food for me. So much so that a person who refused to feed me would have a hell of a time convincing me he cared about me.
To express love, I primarily use physical touch and quality time. Being an introvert, I only have so many hours I can spend with people before I need to hide and recharge, so I have to really like someone to spend very many of those hours on them.