I’ve seen an awful lot of hate for financial doms on the internets and you know, I’m starting to wonder if it’s actually about the money at all.

First of all, when I say “financial doms” I’m talking about people who are completely open and honest about wanting money. People who pretend to want a kinky boyfriend and then start asking for money are scammers, and I already wrote about avoiding them.

To be fair, there is a bit of grey area with financial doms who are just complete assholes about it. I’m not sure how much I care that you’re “just catering to a fetish plenty of men have” I think it’s a dick move to write openly about how you think submissive men are worthless and only good for opening their wallets without making it really clear that’s a fantasy roleplay. It’s also scary easy to financial domination to devolve into financial abuse, but then again that’s true of any power exchange relationship. I’m not sure a bad financial dom is fundamentally that much worse than the bad dom who says if you were a real submissive you would _____.

Depending on where you get your information about dominant women, it can be sickeningly easy to get the impression that doms don’t actually like submissive men, they just like the cash they can extract from them. No doubt that’s a terrible feeling, but guys, how bad am I supposed to feel for someone who can’t be bothered to google “healthy bdsm relationship“? There is not exactly a shortage of dominant women out here yelling about how we just want to be treated like people.

All that said, I have some serious doubts that the assumption that women who ask for tribute are money grubbing whores or contemptible opportunists is about the money they’re asking for at all. A big part of it is about men feeling entitled to women’s time/effort/emotional labour and being absolutely incensed that everything they want isn’t immediately offered to them on a silver platter. I mean, have you seen all the chatter on the internet lately about how/whether to bother a woman who is wearing headphones? Some manbabies just cannot handle the idea that any woman, anywhere, is for any reason not available to them, and they flip their shit like the little brats they are.

When someone isn’t available to you, whether that’s because she’s sending incredibly fucking obvious signals that she wants to be left alone or because she insists on a kink that doesn’t work for you, isn’t the simplest and easiest response to shrug and move on? Guys, if a women isn’t compatible with you that doesn’t mean she’s wrong, it just means that you’re incompatible. The world will keep spinning, I promise. Would you all get so up in arms about a woman who wanted her submissive boyfriend to actually make himself useful, not just show up for play and then bugger off while she cleans all the toys and puts them away?

Wait, bad example, I’ve already seen that the answer is yes. Women who want anything in return are the worst, amirite?

Speaking of women being the worst, you actually don’t have the right to contact any dom you want. If someone says directly on their profile that they only want to hear from certain kinds of people (“no men” is the most common condition I’ve seen) you leave her the fuck alone if you don’t fit the criteria. She doesn’t belong to you, her time doesn’t belong to you, she did not agree to waste her time on every jackass out there just because she’s committed the crime of being a woman on the internet.

I just don’t get this massive indignance about women daring to tell men that they have to pay up if they want attention. If someone is totally incompatible with you, isn’t it better to learn that before you get attached? That’s why (well half of why) I’m so blunt about my hard limits on my profile – I think the kindest thing I can do for people potentially interested in me is to get all the potential dealbreakers out in the open so they don’t get any terrible surprises later on. Of course, the other half of why I’m so blunt is that I just don’t want to hear from people who want stuff I don’t have to give and like to feel justified in blocking them for not reading my profile 🙂

While I personally think asking for tribute for the purposes of weeding out fakes and time-wasters is poorly thought out, not going to work, and likely to scare off guys who are worried you’re a scammer, I can’t be bothered to freak out about it either. I mean, I’m willing to blog about why I think it’s a waste of time, but as long as you’re not actively harming people I can only get so excited.

And again, if someone is so bad at vetting potential partners (play or otherwise) that she’s resorted to asking for money upfront, isn’t that something you’d want to know upfront? Can we all just chill the fuck out about people doing the honorable thing and being upfront about not being compatible with you?