You know what’s funny? I just wrote half a blog post and realized I’ve actually already written another version of it when I went looking for a link. The first version of this post is “Women can get laid any time they want” and the quote I was looking for was:

Virtually all heterosexual men are reliably orgasmic from penile-vaginal intercourse, while only about a quarter to a third of women are. Another third of women are sometimes orgasmic from penetration, and the remaining third of women are never or almost never orgasmic from penile-vaginal penetration. These results have been replicated over and over, in the lab and by self-report.

That’s from Emily Nagoski‘s post about orgasm differences, and I think it does a pretty good job of explaining why casual sex is a waste of time for so many women. Why fucking bother (pun totally intended) if you’re not even going to get an orgasm out of it?

But that’s not the only reason I am so heartily sick of hearing from whiny manchildren than women have it easier when it comes to dating. Are you afraid of getting drugged and raped if you meet a stranger for dinner? Are you painfully aware at all times that if someone decides to sexually assault, stalk, abuse, or otherwise terrorize you, they will almost certainly experience no meaningful consequences? Are you afraid to even turn someone down because you know they might assault or murder you for rejecting them? No? Then shut your fucking hole, fuckface.

You know why it’s easier to get a man to fuck a stranger than to get a woman to do the same thing? Because by comparison, the man experiences practically no risk. If he goes home with a woman and she asks for something he doesn’t want to do, he can very likely say no without worrying that she’ll physically force him to. If he sees that woman later, he doesn’t have to worry that she’ll point out the filthy slut to her friends and talk about him like he’s a piece of meat. Oh, and he’ll definitely get to have an orgasm, which is kind of the point of a one night stand.

While we’re at it, can we stop fucking pretending that men will fuck anything with tits? It’s actually tremendously insulting to men to keep saying that they’ll fuck literally anyone who is a) not obviously disfigured and b) showered that day. Men are people and as such, have preferences. Talking about how you and any other man would fuck anyone is just so much macho posturing. At this point I’m not sure who you think you’re kidding.

And no, you would not actually fuck the hypothetical woman in a room with n guys who says “Who wants to fuck?” Unless you were already very drunk, you would worry that anyone who did something so extremely unusual for a woman was mentally ill, had an STI (because nothing gets men laid like judging the shit out of women who are willing to have casual sex), or both. And if you were being really honest with yourself, you would feel weird about being nothing but a piece of meat to someone who was willing to fuck literally anyone. Okay if you’re here reading my blog that might well be your fantasy, but there’s still a difference between role-playing being used with someone who cares about you and will cuddle you afterward, and actually being used by someone who doesn’t give two shits about you.

While I’m at it, I don’t want to hear any fucking whining about how expensive it is to take women out on dates, either. It’s not my fault if you’re not creative enough to think of anything that’s both fun and inexpensive and you’re too lazy to google “inexpensive dates in [your city].” Also, the wage gap is still a thing (don’t cry about that in the comments, I’ll just ban you permanently), which sharply limits my sympathy. I’d be happy to pay for dates if I made at least dollar for every 79 cents you made (the stats are even worse if you’re not an able-bodied cis white woman) and got promotions and raises at the same rate you did.

Which is a very long winded way to say I’m not planning on publishing any more comments about how women have it so easy when it comes to dating and couldn’t possibly understand the misery men go through. You want my harddrive space and my bandwidth? Fucking be more interesting.

I’ve been thinking about the advice to talk about what you bring to the table in a relationship in your profile and there seems to be a lot of confusion about what that actually means. It does not mean that you have to, say, learn how to repair stuff around the house or give manicures or clean gutters or make a really great lasagne in order to make up for your terrible submissive urges. It does not mean that being submissive isn’t inherently valuable. It doesn’t mean that dominant women don’t actually like submissive men and have to be bribed to put up with them (unless you’re one of those assholes who think dominant women exist to make your boner happy. If you’re one of those then you really do need to bribe us to put up with you). It just means that there has to be some reason for people to want to spend time with you. You enjoy spending time with your friends for a reason, right?

Sure, some people feel stuck in friendships with people who have nothing to offer out of pity and/or not wanting to be “mean” by admitting they don’t actually like that person, but most of us spend time with our friends because they’re funny, or have interesting hobbies, or go on adventures with us, or have interests in common with us, or are supportive when we’re having a bad day, or are fun to chat about nothing with, or are nice to us, or just understand us when we talk about our lives.

So if you wouldn’t be friends with someone you didn’t like, would you date someone you didn’t like? No? Then it shouldn’t be a surprise that nobody else wants to date someone who has nothing to offer them, especially when they could just binge watch House of Cards instead.

Another part of it is simply that you must be this tall to ride the ride. That is, you have to be a grownup if you want to have a grownup relationship. A really great way to signal that you’re a grownup is that you have interests and hobbies and are good at something and can generally manage your own life. If you’re not good at anything, either you have such crushing self esteem problems that you’re not ready for a relationship, or you’re not really a grownup. People want to have relationships with their equals, not with sad dependent children who can’t do anything on their own.

And no, d/s relationships are not that different. No matter how much a dom enjoys giving orders or even micromanaging, that doesn’t mean they want someone who is incapable of running their own life. The fun part is when someone who is perfectly capable of running their own life chooses to let you run it for them. If they’re incapable and need a parent, that’s not only no fun, but it’s not sustainable either. No one, no matter how much they love giving orders, can do it all day every day forever. Sooner or later everyone gets sick or gets crushingly busy at work or needs to help a sick friend or family member or just needs a fucking break. If you really can’t suck it up and help when things are tough, then your relationship is going to fall apart the first time your dom experiences any stress. Is that really what you want?

“What do you bring to the table?” isn’t about a businesslike negotiation where you offer to take your partner to the movies twice a month and give them a great foot massage and they offer home made kahlua and regular floggings and you shake on it and start dating, it’s about what makes you more fun than another night at home with Netflix and takeout. Talking about what you bring to the table in a relationship shows potential partners that you understand they’re people with their own lives who need more a reason to date you than you wanting a partner.

You want to make a connection? Give people something to connect with!

As you might have noticed from earlier rants on the subject, it irritates the shit out of me when people decide they are so special that reality doesn’t apply to them. Today’s particular irritation: people who believe that they can give up the right to end their relationship.

I want to be as clear as possible here: if you honestly believe that you can give up the right to leave your dom, you are delusional. I’m also sincerely scared for your safety because the kind of dom who would say “Oh absolutely, you don’t have the right to dump me no matter how unhappy you are” is bad fucking news.

I’m not saying that’s not a fun fantasy or that nobody is allowed to role play things that would be super fucked up in real life (honestly, isn’t that the point of role play?), I’m saying that it’s really fucking important to be clear on the difference between role play and real life. Somebody who isn’t clear on the difference is simply not safe to play with. If you believe something as ridiculous as being able to give up the right to leave a relationship, I and everyone else with the slightest scrap of common sense starts worrying about what other stupid bullshit you believe.

Seriously, that’s scary as fuck. If you’ve turned away from reality so hard that you believe it’s possible to give up the right to end a relationship, well great, now I’ve got to check on literally everything else you believe that could possibly be relevant to kink because if I can’t trust you to tell me that you’re not having fun anymore, I’m not going to play with you. If you might believe that nerve damage only happens if you’re not submissive enough so you don’t need to tell me your hands have gone numb, I’m not going to play with you. I’m not going to try to have a good scene with someone so out of touch with reality that they might believe a Real Dom ™ will magically know what they want. Someone who is so invested in their fantasy that they actually believe that it’s possible to give up the right to end a relationship, undoubtedly believes other ridiculous bullshit about whether s-types are allowed to have needs, or wants, or likes or dislikes or other responsibilities that override whatever wildly bizarre promises they made to their dom.

I want to be clear here, I do not mean to pick on people with actual mental health problems. Having a mental health problem or a mental health crisis or a break with reality does not mean you’re a bad person or that nobody should ever play with you. You probably shouldn’t play too hard when you’re in the middle of a manic episode and you shouldn’t take what someone says about themselves in the middle of a depressive episode as gospel, but that doesn’t mean that an illness that’s flaring up right now is never going to settle down again.

The people I mean to pick on here are the ones who do not have an actual problem, but have chosen to stick the fingers in their ears and yell “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU” and generally turn their backs on reality. Those people are a danger to themselves and others and need to knock that shit off.

We hear all the time about how subs have to be careful choosing their doms. Newsflash: as a dom you have to be careful about choosing your sub too. If you play with someone flying that big of a red flag and things go poorly, am I supposed to feel bad for you? As the dom it is literally your job to think things through (not saying s-types shouldn’t think shit through either, I just have very strong feelings about my responsibilities as a dom), you need to get your shit together if you’re going to dominate anyone.

Everybody does have a slightly different definition of what bottom/submissive/slave and top/dom/master all mean but that’s mostly hammering out details. Figuring out those details is a lot easier when you start from a shared, stable idea of what’s real and what’s not. If you don’t have that basis to start from, well technically I could negotiate very very carefully with someone who deliberately turned their back on reality, and then renegotiate very very carefully every time we played and check in all the time because I’m worried about what ridiculous bullshit they’ve decided is true this week, but you know, I could also just not.

I could just play with someone who isn’t a walking red flag and feel confident that what they tell me before during and after our scene will still be true tomorrow and next week and next month. That’s so much easier than trying to work around a total lack of trust in someone who has decided they don’t want to pay attention to the difference between fantasy and reality. Fantasy is great, but I’m just not playing with anyone who won’t take a break from it now and then to talk like fucking grownups.

If you want to make terrible choices in life I can’t stop you, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Another one from the search terms, thank you random person for giving me an interesting post topic to run with 🙂

Most of my profile advice is aimed at men because frankly they can be pretty fucking terrible about thinking with their dicks instead of even vaguely considering what a dominant woman might want to know about them. But you know, I actually do have some tips for dominant women so why not even things up a little?

First of all, spend a little time thinking about what you want out of having a profile in the first place. If men tend to think only about their dicks when they fill in their profiles, I think women tend to think way too much about how they’re “supposed” to present themselves on a kink site like Fetlife. You really and truly don’t have to put anything on your profile that you don’t fucking want to. You do not have to make yourself out to be the domliest dom who ever dommed to get anyone to show an interest in you. You also don’t have to tone yourself down if you do want intensity. There are definitely plenty of wrong ways to write a profile, but clearly expressing who you are is not one of them.

If you’re strictly on Fetlife (or whatever other site) to participate in discussions, there’s no reason you need to fill in your profile besides enjoying expressing yourself that way. On the other hand, if you want to enjoy some fantasy chat with people or meet anyone in person for play or for a more involved relationship, you’re going to want something on your profile that tells people why they should message you.

A lot of people seem to think that having a profile on a kink site means you have to make your avatar obviously kinky and/or sexually explicit. You really, really do not, and if you’re looking for a long term partner, you will probably have better luck if you choose a picture that says something about who you are beyond “Hi! I’ve got tits!”

You do not have to prove you’re “kinky enough” by getting out every last piece of your fetish wear (for that matter, you absolutely do not have to own a single piece of fetish wear) for your profile pictures. If you live in t-shirts and jeans like me, it is completely fine to have a picture of yourself in a t-shirt and jeans on your profile. Of course, if you want a relationship where you and your partner get dressed up in beautiful formalwear to go to dinner and the opera, maybe don’t have a t-shirt and jeans pic as your avatar 🙂

As for the non-picture parts of your profile, do not try to sound like a fantasy unless you want people to treat you like a fantasy. You would think that would be obvious but I’ve seen more than one thread by a woman who didn’t understand why she got so many timewasters in her inbox when there was an obvious connection between the image she presented in her profile and the kind of person who was interested in the image she was presenting. The more your profile sounds like the set up for an erotic novel, the more one-handed typists you’re going to hear from and the fewer awesome submissive men who just want a dominant girlfriend and some kinky play now and then you’ll hear from. Sadly, submissive men get targeted by scammers a lot, so if you want to hear from submissive men who aren’t idiots you need to avoid looking and sounding scammy.

If you make money selling erotic stories, phone sex, or actual in-person sessions, by all means sound like a fantasy 🙂 If you’re looking for a partner, on the other hand, you’ll get farther with a simple description of what kind of relationship you want, what you have to offer, and what you’re looking for in a partner. I’ve had pretty good luck with very blunt and down to earth profiles that say next to nothing about my kinks. I try to be upfront about the fact that I’m a sadist and that I’m not super interested in painless play, but beyond that I’m pretty flexible and more importantly, totally uninterested in hearing about what makes strange men’s dicks happy.

You’re going to hear from a certain number of idiots who are typing one-handed no matter what you do, I personally think trying to convince them not to message me is a waste of time. Just block them, make fun of them in Return to Sender, and move on with your day. To be fair, I have heard from other people that the angry notes in large red letters saying stuff like “Do not message me if you are a man, I am not interested in men” do reduce the number of messages from idiots, I just don’t like devoting that much space on my profile to barely literate assclowns.

In general, I think a profile should be a simple explanation of who you are as a person. If you’re interested in some kinky play now and then, just say that. If you’re looking for a serious long term romantic relationship, just say that. If you’re interested in an online-only relationship, just say that.

Not all of your profile has to be for other people. I added a list of my hard limits to my profile a while ago, not because I expect any of the idiots out there to actually read it and not message me, but because I like feeling justified when I block people for bothering me even though we’re obviously completely incompatible. Hey, I gave those sad bastards a fair warning 🙂

Of course, all of that advice assumes you’re writing a profile on a kink site like Fetlife and can be completely upfront about what you’re looking for. If you’re writing a dating profile on a site like OkCupid and want to be a little more subtle, I would use phrases like “looking for a man who can follow my lead,” “looking for someone who doesn’t think he has to be in charge all the time just because he’s the guy,” or “control freaks need not apply” to describe what you’re looking for and phrases like “I have a strong personality,” “I like to get my way,” or maybe “I’ve been told I’m bossy before.” Take that last bit with a larger than usual grain of salt, though. I’ve never written a “vanilla” personal ad trying to attract subs and don’t actually know what would work.

Readers, do you have any profile advice specifically for dominant women?

You know what irritates the shit out of me? Okay, okay, you know one of the thousands of things that irritates the shit out of me? When douchebags tell people “money can’t buy happiness!”

Just to get it out of the way, money can’t buy things like friendship or a sense of accomplishment, there is certainly more to life than the pursuit of money, and only caring about money pretty much guarantees you are a terrible person. Now can we move the fuck on and admit that people who have enough money to live on are happier than people who don’t?

Admittedly, studies about income and happiness do disagree. Some of them say that after $75,000 per household more income doesn’t make you appreciably happier, and other say that more income always makes you happier. Gee, it seems like there’s some sort of relationship between income and happiness.

The exact relationship between money and happiness isn’t the point. If someone is making enough money to pay all their bills while having good quality of life (yes, we could save a lot on rent if we moved to a one-bedroom apartment in the boonies and commuted an hour each way to work, but I’m totally unwilling to take the hit to my quality of life), save for emergencies and for retirement, and go on nice vacations or have expensive hobbies, then I think it’s totally reasonable to tell those people that maybe instead of looking for more money they should do something meaningful with their lives.

I personally took a pay cut to leave a job that was making me desperately unhappy, so I’m by no means saying money is the only thing that matters. But keep in mind, it’s an enormous privilege to be able to do that. People who are less lucky than I am slog along in terrible, soul crushing jobs because they have to or they don’t eat.

But the shitstains who go around saying that money can’t buy happiness don’t say it only to the lucky ones. They run around spewing that shit all over the place, including in front of the people I see trying desperately to fund necessary medical care or to make rent so they don’t become homeless every fucking day. Sure, some of those are undoubtedly scams. Crowdfunding is so popular these days that there’s just no way that every plea for money is honest. But if even just 10% of the people who say they need money for an extremely good reason are telling the truth, that’s an enormous number of people who would instantly be happier if they had more money.

Admittedly, people who desperately need x-hundred dollars so they don’t get evicted are an extreme case. What about the working poor? What about everyone who is barely scraping by and lives in constant fear of a surprise car repair or medical bill or layoff financially ruining them? Can you honestly tell me those people wouldn’t be happier if they had enough money to pay their bills and put something aside for emergencies?

“Money can’t buy happiness” seems to be a meaningless platitude assholes like to throw around so they can tell themselves that being unhappy about living in crushing poverty is just a personal failing. If you think it’s reasonable to tell people that their failure to be happy in objectively shitty circumstances is their fault then not only are you sociopathically self absorbed, but you’ve also obviously never seriously needed anything you couldn’t pay for and have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.

Unless you’re talking to people who are working themselves to death for their next million while destroying their relationships with their families and friends, shut the fuck up about how money doesn’t buy happiness. Unless you’re already rich, it goddamn well does.