I keep seeing newbie submissive guys ask whether dominant women prefer men who are totally submissive to everyone in every part of their lives (doormats) or “alphas” who are super duper dominant in everyday life and wouldn’t dream of even considering submitting to any woman who hasn’t bested him in single combat. The answer to that question is very simple: NO.

No, I don’t want a doormat. No, I don’t want someone who I have to fight to get him to submit. NO.

What I want, and what it seems like many many many other dominant women want is a man who submits because of the personal connection he has with his dom. No doormats, but no fighting either. If you don’t want to submit, fine, there’s the door. If you fling your submission at every woman who comes within ten feet of you, I don’t want it.

There is absolutely no reason you have to bend yourself into a pretzel to try to attract a dom. Not only is it unlikely to get you anywhere, but trying to embody the doormat or alpha (god I hate that word) stereotype will very often actively repel the women you want to attract. You’re allowed to just be a person, guys. When you try to embody one of those stereotypes, I feel like you’re trying to cast me in the role of the fantasy dom counterpart whether I like it or not. That’s kind of a turn off.

My theory about where both of these stereotypes come from is, of course, porn. To be fair, instant submission because the dom is just that amazing is a hot fantasy. So is breaking down the captured warrior and forcing him to submit. Just like being a world famous rockstar or actor is a fun fantasy that would probably be terrible in real life, instant submission and forced submission just don’t work in everyday life.

I mean, let’s think this through. For starters, I’m a person. I have bad days and make mistakes and get sick and I’m just not “on” all the time. I need someone who will let me know if he thinks I’m making a mistake – letting me do something stupid because I’m the dom is unhelpful and just unkind. Just like you’d tell your partner if she had something in her teeth, you should be able to tell her that you think she’s making a mistake. If I did something that turned out badly and later found out that my husband knew it was a bad idea but didn’t say anything about it, I’d be pissed off. Partners are supposed to help each other, not stand around and watch the other person fail.

In case you’ve fallen into the trap of assuming submissive behaviour is a binary of perfect obedience on one end and open defiance on the other, that’s just not true. Guys, there is an enormous amount of room between “Yes ma’am” and “That’s fucking stupid, do it this way.” How about “Hey Stabbity, I think if you do x, y will happen. What do you think of doing z instead?” or “Wait a sec, let me help you with that” or even “I’m convinced this is a bad idea and we need to talk about it.” Questioning your dom is not automatically unsubmissive (and if she says it is that’s a huge red flag you should be very concerned about) and is not automatically disrespectful.

As for the forced submission fantasy, that would be exhausting in real life. I want someone to want to submit to me, I have no interest in fighting them on every little thing. Again, I have bad days and make mistakes and get sick and I’m just not “on” all the time. I do not have it in me to fight someone to submit every time I need something done. This is really the other side of the same unhelpful coin as the doormat submissive – partners help each other, they don’t make everything a battle. While I’m totally willing to earn someone’s submission, I want to do that by showing I’m an honorable person who can be trusted to look out for my submissive’s best interests, not by fighting them for everything. If you put up enough of a fight for long enough, I’m going to assume you’re not ready to submit yet and cut you loose until you are.

To be fair, unquestioning obedience and resistance aren’t absolutely always terrible either. Nuance, it’s good for you 🙂 Sometimes I really do want someone to just do what I fucking told him. For me personally, that’s going to be on low-stakes stuff like making me dinner. If it’s something that could have long term fallout I definitely want my submissive’s opinion. And sometimes resistance play is a lot of fun. If it’s just for a scene and it’s what everyone signed up for, have fun!

The best submissive you can be is the one you naturally are, not the one you have to fake being. Doms are people, we want actual people as partners, not stereotypes. Relax guys, you’re fine the way you are.

Information is for everyone, even if you’re uncomfortable with underage people seeing it. Keeping them ignorant just makes them more vulnerable to abuse. Like Franklin Veaux says in this tweet:

Leveraging newcomers' ignorance is a common (and easy!) tool of abuse in BDSM. #ccon #cconbreak

— franklin veaux (@franklinveaux) September 12, 2015

On a very much related note, you should also have a look at Why I Deeply Dislike Your Older Boyfriend by Heather Corinna. Basically, the less information someone has about how they should be treated or how a relationship or a scene should work, the easier it is to get away with outright abusing them or just treating them badly. It’s just as true when we’re talking about people just getting into kink as it is when we’re talking about young women dating creepy older men.

Let’s take hypothetical teenaged girl Alice for example. She probably got the half-assed talk in sex-ed about how it’s not okay for your boyfriend to hit you and if he does you should dump him. That’s better than nothing, but what if Alice’s boyfriend just says mean things to her? If he doesn’t hit her it’s not abuse, right? So why does she feel shitty all the time if her boyfriend isn’t abusing her? It must be because she’s a bad girlfriend and needs to try harder.

It might sound like I’m exaggerating there but I’m honestly not. That is exactly what I went through with my first boyfriend. When I was a teenager I really, honestly thought that it was only abuse if he hit me. It took literally years for me to put the label of emotional abuse on the way he complained about literally everything I said, did, thought, or felt. If I kept quiet I was cold and secretive and why couldn’t I just open up to him? And if I tried to open up, well, I was stupid and wrong about everything. Because I didn’t know to call that abuse I thought I was just a shitty girlfriend and needed to try harder. I mean, we didn’t scream at each other every night like my parents did, so that meant we just needed to keep working on our relationship right?

If I had been taught that it’s not okay to make your partner feel stupid and worthless and that’s just as abusive as giving them a black eye, maybe things would have been different for me. If I had even known the phrase “emotional abuse” maybe things would have been different. If I had had the slightest idea what a healthy relationship looks like and what’s reasonable to expect from a partner and what’s completely fucking ridiculous, things could have been different for me.

It’s pretty clear that a big part of preventing abuse is education, right? Well, that and building up people’s self-esteem or at least not systematically destroying it, but that’s a fucking gigantic topic so I’m going to stick with education for now. The more you know about what a healthy relationship looks like and what a good partner does the easier it is to recognize it when something isn’t right. “My boyfriend is a jerk sometimes” may not feel like a good enough reason to dump him, but “that’s emotional abuse, the word for what he’s doing is emotional abuse” might be able to get someone over the hurdle of dumping the fucker.

Just like teens (actually people of literally every age) should have access to all the age-appropriate relationship and sex-ed information they want to protect them from having shitty vanilla relationships and sex and to help them leave a bad relationship, I think people should also have access to all the age-appropriate information about kink and d/s relationships they can handle.

Ignorance makes people easy to hurt. How many horror stories have we all heard about the new submissive whose douchebag older dominant told her that if she really trusted him she wouldn’t want to have a safeword? And how do you protect that girl and everyone like her? By fucking telling them that people who are safe to play with will never try to talk you out of having a safeword! By telling them how many s-types never have a no-safeword scene in their entire lives! By telling them how much more fun they can have if they insist on taking the time to really build trust with a dom!

Education is what keeps people safe, not keeping them in the dark and hoping they just never develop an interest in kink.

To be fair here, I don’t have kids and don’t want to. And I totally understand why a parent wouldn’t be comfortable with their kid freely roaming Fetlife. I sure as fuck wouldn’t want my hypothetical kid talking with Master Douchebag from the secret European house, but if I can’t keep them from ever talking with anyone else who’s kinky (which is completely impossible, let’s just be honest), then I sure as fuck want them to also be able to talk to Sir Reasonable and Lady Normal Grown Up and Slave Been There Done That and Submissive Regular Guy. As much as I believe that kink in general and d/s relationships in particular are advanced stuff and everyone should get comfortable with vanilla sex and relationships first before making that even more complicated by adding kink, it’s not realistic to pretend that there are no teenagers who already know they’re kinky as fuck.

We know that abstinence only “education” (it’s not education goddammit, education involves teaching actual facts) doesn’t work, so why can’t we admit that not teaching kids about kink doesn’t keep them safe? I know, I know, it’s super fucking obvious that our society is all fucked up around sex and especially taboo sex, but I really wish we could get the fuck over ourselves when it comes to keeping people safe.

My favourite part was toward the end where Emily says of Flibanserin (a drug that’s slightly effective for a small minority of users for lack of spontaneous sexual desire in women and has shitty side effects): if there was a drug that made you feel like going to parties more, would that make the parties worth going to?

In which Stabbity spends some more time yelling about the fucking morons who treat women like kink vending machines. Eventually I’ll get this out of my system, right?

One of my many, many problems with the idiots who lead with their kinks is that they don’t seem to realize women have personalities (mine is pretty grumpy, in case you hadn’t noticed 🙂 ). Even if we’re just talking kink (which we’re not, but I’ll get to that) some women love ritualistic, high protocol scenes and other women just want to hit you with stuff and see if you make interesting noises. If you just ask whether she’s into _____, you haven’t learned anything about whether the two of you are compatible.

If you’re looking to actually submit to someone, then unless the two of you lead very compartmentalized lives you are probably going to spend time together outside of scenes. I mean, if you like someone enough to submit to her, don’t you like her enough to chat about that interesting article you read and how her side project is going for a little while? I just don’t understand how guys think you can have a d/s relationship without ever talking to each other like people. You’ve got to figure out whether you trust her enough to submit to her somehow.

And guys, how exactly do you think you’re going to negotiate with a woman who you can’t stand? Seriously, d/s requires a lot of talking. If your personality clashes with your potential dom’s, how exactly are you planning to get through all the negotiating and debriefing and adjusting you’re going to need to do? Yeah, you assumed you could just skip to the naked hitty part without any boring talking like in porn, didn’t you.

Speaking of boring talking, isn’t wanting to please your dom kind of an important part of the whole d/s thing? Why would you want to please someone (or even spend time around her) if you think she makes terrible personal choices? D/s generally involves the dom having some control over the sub’s life, so you know, it might be a good idea to figure out whether she’s any good at running her own life before you let her make decisions about yours. Not that she has to be perfect to be worthy of dominating anyone, but if you don’t respect her, don’t pretend submitting to her has any chance of working. And how do you come to respect a woman enough to bottom to her without getting to know her at all?

Oh that’s right you fuckers don’t respect any women, so it doesn’t make a difference to you if you respect this one even less than that one. Who a woman is as a person doesn’t matter when you never believed she was really a person in the first place.

Seriously, that’s what you assholes are really saying when you act like the only thing that matters about a woman is whether she’s willing to do the stuff that makes your boner happy, and that’s why I’m so fucking pissed about it. If you can’t pull your head out of your ass for five goddamn minutes and treat me like a human being, you deserve to go your whole life wishing for a dom and never finding one.

Sure, there are probably women out there who have dealt with one too many subs who have a fetish for one of her hard limits and actually do want to know up front if you have a kink that doesn’t work for her at all, but you can literally never go wrong by treating a potential dom like a person first. If she wants to know what your kinks are I promise she will tell you. Just shut the fuck up about your boner for a couple minutes and talk to her like she’s a person first. If you really don’t care who your dom is, a) stop calling yourself submissive, that implies you give a shit about your dom’s needs, b) stop bothering the lifestyle doms, and c) tip like a motherfucker when you see a pro because you’re an asshole and she deserves it for putting up with you.

I was meaning to talk about how dorky my sense of humor is anyway, and then some douchebag on the internet had to comment on how if a woman likes guys who are funny she’s probably vanilla. Fuck that noise. Some kinky people certainly take themselves too seriously, but saying that if you actually think I can’t have a sense of humor (or be a total dork) because I’m dominant you can fuck right off. I’m a person, you assholes.

So, let’s see some examples of the stuff that cracks me up.

Out of Context D&D Quotes is fucking hilarious. If you’ve never played D&D you probably won’t get much out of it, but if you’re that kind of nerd, it’s pretty great.

Another one of my favourites is Texts From TNG, which is a totally ridiculous mashup of texts from last night and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sadly it’s over now, but it’s still funny.

My favourite part of Texts from TNG is showing the terrible jokes to my husband and seeing his “I don’t even know how to explain what’s wrong with you” face.

On the twitter side, Poly Horror is both funny and kind of horrifying. If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you’ve probably seen people who sincerely believe the stuff Poly Horror shares as horror stories.

I'm not allowed to date lesbians because they won't have sex with my boyfriends.

— Poly Horror (@polyhorror) August 25, 2015

You know you’ve seen a post in Novices & Newbies from that poor girl. Sometimes you have to decide whether to laugh or throw chairs.

Every time we meet a girl who's perfect to complete our family she disappears after a few weeks. Why are poly girls so flaky?

— Poly Horror (@polyhorror) January 16, 2015

I’ve seen entirely too many person ads from this guy. Some people just deserve to be laughed at, because god knows they’re never going to make the connection between their bad behaviour and their bad results.

In general I love parody twitter accounts. Very Lonely Luke and Emo Kylo Ren are some of me favourites lately, but for the sake of not spoiling anyone for Star Wars: The Force Awakens I won’t embed any tweets. Paul Graham Googling is also funny as long as you’re a big enough nerd to know who Paul Graham is, but not such a self-absorbed Silicon Valley asshole that you think he can do no wrong.

Something that might have a little broader appeal is Simple Zen, which is here to make fun of all those schlocky “inspiration” accounts. What’s not great about the bio “I’m mostly about finding ways to include arson in a simple Zen lifestyle”?

My children may lack food and clothes but what they don't lack is poetry and oh I see it now, yeah take them this is not a good home

— Simple Zen (@Simple_Zen) November 11, 2015

To you who say the true meaning of Christmas is to fake your death and let your loved ones deal with the aftermath, I thank you for the tip

— Simple Zen (@Simple_Zen) December 5, 2015

Nightvale Radio, on the other hand is just delightfully weird and morbid.

See? You never needed that wand or that cape. The power to feel unfocused shame and anxiety was within you this whole time.

— Night Vale podcast (@NightValeRadio) November 11, 2015

History is written by the lizards.

— Night Vale podcast (@NightValeRadio) October 13, 2015

Texts from Superheroes is also fantastic.

That one is originally from here, I just reblogged it to my own tumblr so wordpress would embed it nicely.

And what could be better than cute animals being funny? I’m sure this isn’t the original source for this video, if anyone does know where it actually came from let me know in the comments. Have some penguins tripping over a rope.

Oh, almost forgot Windows 95 Tips!

…we’re clear on the fact that I’m a total dork now, right?

Every so often you’ll see personal ads by men who think that offering to go down on a woman for hours is a selling point. It’s not.

First of all, do you know any women who actually want a guy to give them head for hours at a time? No, you do not. The vast majority of us have shit to do besides lie around while you indulge your obsession with pussy. Guys, it’s not service unless the master wants it. You may be so obsessed with your penis that you would actually want someone to worship it for hours on end, but I have about a thousand other things I could be doing.

Second, not all women can have multiple orgasms. Many of us are done after one orgasm. If it takes you hours to give someone a single orgasm, you are fucking terrible at oral. Imagine if someone told you they were willing to scrub your floor for hours. Wouldn’t the first thing you asked be “Why would it take hours? Are you terrible at cleaning?”

Third, if it seriously takes you hours to give a woman an orgasm, you’re going to bore her to fucking tears. If you actually find someone patient enough to let you give her bad oral for hours, at least offer the poor woman a book or hang a tv from your ceiling or something.

Fourth, we know you’re lying. You do not actually have the stamina to give someone head for hours on end. You might not even have the stamina to get a woman off orally at all. If you ask around, say in the Ask a Female Questions group on Fetlife, you’ll hear that women need firm and above all consistent stimulation to actually orgasm. Without consistency, we often get anxious about whether we’re going to come at all (which makes it even harder to have an orgasm) and how to gracefully tell the poor guy to give up, it’s not going to happen. There’s a reason vibrators are so popular: they never get tired.

Sure, giving head for hours is a hot fantasy. Jerk off to whatever you like, but when you’re writing a personal ad you’ve got to keep fantasy and reality straight. Saying that you enjoy eating pussy and that you’ve gotten compliments on your skills is plausible. Saying that you can go down for hours is not. Assuming that the women reading your ad/profile are too dumb to know the difference is really not a selling point.

And again, because this point really needs to be hammered home, It Is Not Service Unless The Master Wants It. Wanting to go down on someone for hours is about your fetish, not what your partner actually wants. Acting like “wants to give head for hours” is a selling point only tells me that you don’t know or don’t care what women actually want.

Edited for the person originally quoted’s privacy.