In the interests of fairness, after my ragey blog post last week, I want to talk about the perception that dominant women who are interested only in what they can get submissive men to do for them and treat play like an afterthought or a necessary evil.
If you don’t care about the guy or the dynamic at all and you just want your house clean, hire a fucking maid. Not that I really need to say that, because if housecleaning is all you’re looking for, kink is probably the worst way to get it. Seriously, you’d have better luck getting your house actually clean if you find a broke college student willing to do it for sandwiches. There absolutely are service submissives out there who will actually show up and make themselves useful, but I’m pretty sure they’re massively outnumbered by ignorant and self-absorbed manchildren who think “service” means “hand-washing her panties in a maid outfit while she verbally humiliates me.”
With that out of the way, I think what’s much more common is acting like submissive men are inherently undesirable and are only tolerated because they’re sometimes useful. I’ve seen way too many discussion threads about what submissive men should be able to offer a dominant woman that talk about pointless bullshit like being able to do a manicure or knowing how to properly shine boots or being able to cook a certain kind of meal.
That’s all incredibly stupid. A dominant woman looking for a partner is looking for a PARTNER, not hiring a fucking assistant. If you don’t like someone as a person, how could it possibly matter whether he gives the best manicures ever? Not to mention, it’s a lot easier to ask somebody to take a course to learn the thing you want them to do than it is to find someone you really like. A d/s relationship is about personal connection, not being able to drop yard work from your budget.
Acting like what skills a guy comes into a relationship with actually matters (beyond, you know, basic life skills) just makes it sound like there’s nothing inherently likable about submissive guys and they have to bribe dominant women to put up with them using service. Even if some guys really don’t have anything to offer besides doing chores, I think it’s totally counterproductive to let all submissive guys get the impression that that being submissive (which is actually awesome) is a terrible flaw that they have to make up for by making themselves useful.
Okay fine, it’s not terrible if a guy goes out and learns skills that might make a potential dom’s life easier. Self improvement = generally a good thing. The problem is that assuming you know what a woman you haven’t even met yet wants is kind of stupid. You know how I keep leaning on the manicure example? I actually hate getting them. I did it once as an experiment, discovered I really hate the feeling of having my cuticles pushed back, and haven’t gotten another one. Picking the skills you want to learn off a list thought up by random strangers is kind of dehumanizing when you think about it. If you do that, you’re assuming women are enough of a hive mind that whatever skill you pick is something your eventual partner will actually want.
You know what actually would be universally useful to any dom you ever get involved with? Self awareness! Communication skills! Knowing what you want and being able to describe it! Knowing what you don’t know! (never been spanked and don’t know if you like it? say so!)
And for the love of god, learn that women are people. Like Captain Awkward frequently recommends, read books by women, watch shows by women, listen to music by women, play games by women, etc, etc. No, I’m not going to tell you which ones. If you actually care, you will google it. If you read/watch/listen to enough stuff by women you may eventually come to understand that we are people who have needs, wants, dreams, hopes, and ambitions that have NOTHING to do with you.
If you don’t understand that, nobody will fucking care if you’re the best housecleaner who ever lived.
The idea that submissive guys are the only ones who have to tempt a dom to be interested in them is also fucked up. They have just as much right to say no as any dom, and really ought to if the dom in question thinks being the dom doesn’t mean she has any responsibilities to her sub. Yes, subs have to hold up their end of the deal and I rant about that a lot, but that doesn’t mean doms don’t need to do their part either.
If you want to have a d/s relationship, you need to make your s feel appreciated. Why the hell should he stick around if you take him for granted? And honestly, why would you even bother having someone as a sub if you don’t like him enough to make sure his needs get met too? I mean, you do realize that identifying as submissive doesn’t mean submissive guys magically stop having needs, right?
If you just want your house cleaned, hire a fucking maid. If you want a submissive of your own, act like you want a submissive, not free maid service.
I don’t often disagree with you, but this time I do, with a small part:
“I think it’s totally counterproductive to let all submissive guys get the impression that that being submissive (which is actually awesome) is a terrible flaw that they have to make up for by making themselves useful.”
Well, yes. Submission IS awesome and not at all a flaw to be made up for – if one defines submission like I do – i.e. giving over control and doing what I want. Buttttt. A lot of guys seem to think that being submissive means they lie there passively and suck up all of a dominant’s attention. And, y’know, even if I happen to enjoy the things dude wants to passively suck up, I’m not going to enjoy doing them with HIM because he clearly isn’t interested in giving anything back – not even energy. There’s an energy flow to play (for me, anyway) and when someone absorbs instead of reflecting, it kills my buzz.
So, I freely admit that I’m one of those people who asks subs what they have to offer a dominant. Only when they’re clearly trying to use FL to meet people and their profile is all “do me! Do me! Do me!” though.
And while specific skills won’t appeal to everyone, mentioning what skills one has will help establish compatibility, so I really don’t see anything wrong with asking about that stuff. “I like service. Do you do service-y things? I want to know if what you do matches up to what I like” is not a terrible thing to ask.
Although, when I ask “what do you offer a dominant?” I’m not even meaning service skills per se. “I’m told I moan really nicely when hit” or “I love to make my partner’s fantasies come true” would also be perfectly lovely answers as far as I’m concerned. I just want to know that he’s thinking in terms of satisfying his potential partner at least a LITTLE bit.
In hindsight I think I could’ve worded that better, because I’m pretty sure we totally agree.
There’s a guy who keeps posting in my local personal ads group looking for someone to peg him. I look at those ads, look at his profile (well, before I preemptively blocked him because if his ads are that bad I never ever want to hear from him directly), and think “that’s nice, but why should I give a shit?” And it’s not because I’m in a monogamous relationship, I wouldn’t fuck him with someone else’s dick if I were single and desperate.
Not that you don’t already know exactly where this story is going, but I hate Mr PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEDOTHINGSTOMYBUTT’s ads so much because there is absolutely nothing in there about what he has to offer. All I know about him is that he’s obsessed with his own ass, he comes across as a black hole of need. And it would be so easy to write an enticing ad! He could talk about how great he is at helping newbie tops gain confidence pegging a guy, or reach out to experienced tops who want to go hard or who are tired of having to talk guys into stuff they obviously want to do anyway. Even just writing an ad as if he were a human being with interests besides his own ass would do wonders for him.
So yeah, it irritates the shit out of me when submissive guys think all they have to do is show up. It’s not an energy exchange if you drain me dry and don’t give anything back. I just think learning random service skills is a weird way to do that. I mean, not all women are into service, and not all women are going to want the specific type of service dude happens to have learned. It feels really impersonal to me to learn some skills because they fit your fantasy of what a dom should want or because some random woman on fetlife said you should learn to give a manicure in the “what should submissive guys have to offer?” thread.
It seems we do agree.
I do see how a n00b might see women asking “what do you offer?” and assume it means he needs to compensate for being submissive, or something. I wonder if there’s any way to prevent that? (I’m PRETTY sure when I’ve asked it, I’ve specifically pointed out “your profile is a big list of things you want done to you. Do you actually OFFER anything?” which I should hope would make my stance clear to lurkers. But who knows?)
And while I agree that learning random skills in case a dominant woman wants them is maybe kinda silly, I HAVE encouraged guys to develop skills they already have/enjoy in case a dominant woman wants THOSE. I don’t think there are that many subs eager to do chores they hate for a dominant, so it seems pointless to have them learn things they’re not really into (and that whoever they end up with might not be into, either!) but I think having a guy who likes to cook for people learn more techniques and how to accommodate food allergies, for instance, would be kickass. It would turn him into an even more appealing prospect for someone who was looking for, well, someone like him. 😀