Why on earth would anyone want a sub?

And thoughts on what a sub might do to be wanted

Pre-script: there is a lot of confusion in me these days because I have associated submission so deeply with my male self, and as that falls away, I am finding that there is still submission there, but I don’t understand it as well.  Maybe because I haven’t lived with it for as long.  It is also bound up in finding myself in a kind of sapphic sexuality that I don’t understand yet.  I don’t know the rules of this game.  I don’t know how to interact with women as a woman, a trans woman, as a non-man.  As a result, this post is a bit all over the place in terms of who is who, dominant woman, submissive man…and as a trans person I feel a bit of both, and that confusion is reflected in the words. And separately, I am no authority on this. My thoughts have not proven to be effective in my own life, so why should anyone find this to be advice? They shouldn’t. But it would be great to hear from either Dommes or subs on how any of these musings might resonate.

Some of my favourite writers on the BDSM scene and lifestyle opine from time to time on the frequent lament of submissive men that “there are no dominant women”…or at least that they are rare.  A part of me agrees that they are rare.  And that has been my experience in dating and trying to find a dominant woman to be partnered with.  And the things my “coaches” would say I should be doing to cultivate this are all being done but it ain’t coming together in a way that would allow me to say that the statements made by frustrated subs aren’t true—”there are few dominant women.”

But the truly submissive man is equally rare.  Maybe even more so.  A lot more.

Oh, there may be plenty of men who call themselves submissive.  My wager is that most are not really submissive but simply infatuated with the image of the dominant woman.  Does it matter?  Well, yes, it does.

Why?  I can’t help but think that this is a weird form of gaslighting.  To say something doesn’t exist when it does.  

I have a new theory.  I went to a munch a while ago and met a lovely dominant woman.  She settled straight into some very gentle domming of me.  And I say ‘very’.  I love the gentle cues and responding to them.  So much subtlety in play that even a crowd as switched on and sophisticated as those at a munch would have no idea.  And she guided me with artistry for the evening through vocal cues, gestures, and touch and I would bet anything that not one single person there, other than the two of us, knew what was going on between us.

And as we nibbled and talked in our group, she talked about what it was like to be a dominant woman with an ad on FetLife.  It was grim.  Harassment.  Threats.  Explicit, unsolicited images.  Explicit propositions.  And worst of all?  The aggression.  And how, when she didn’t reply, her dominance was challenged.  “It’s enough to make you want to give up!” she despaired.  And there is a really powerful truth in this.  If a dominant woman finds male aggression so draining that she gives up, is it a wonder that the male lament rings true to male ears?

And let me ask this.  What if what a woman means and feels and needs in dominance, her own, has nothing to do with what a man or popular culture thinks it is, or should be, or is titillated by?  What if her dominance is just her?  I am.

I loved a Twitter thread (yes, it was a Twitter thread, not this curious beast X which has devoured its own parents) where a dominant woman decried how many men wanted to be chained up in her basement…and she was like, “and what good is that to me?”

These threads make you begin to ask, what does she get out of being a domme?  And I am not talking about the professionals, who can clearly find professional fulfilment.  No, the people who are dommes because that’s what they like.  Lifestyle.

Well, first, what they like does not appear to be what the men approaching like or seem to get off on.  In other words, no compatibility.  Would a man who liked what they liked still say there are no dommes out there?  And I don’t mean that he wants a beating and she gets off on giving one, because that might be enough to satisfy him, but it is unlikely that even if she enjoys it will it come anywhere close to satisfying her.

Second, what is submission anyway?  Surely submission is to bend to the will and desires of the dominant.  So, how did we ever get into this mess?

The male gaze absolutely shapes the dominatrix archetype.  The black rubber or leather or whips and chains.  Many women find it hot too, but I wonder if that is largely because wearing the uniform means co-opting a set of iconic images that already have meaning.  You step into the uniform, you own the energy.  Never mind the social construct around how that iconic uniform was formed.

Two women in my life are actively exploring what it feels like to be a domme, what it might feel like.  Neither one has explicit intent of being professional, but one says she might, only she wants to find out what she likes first.  I like very much the trust that is embodied in their conversational and occasional behavioural explorations of this.  Part of me wishes to see this continue, but I am not sure that my motives are pure.  The idea that a woman finds her dominant voice or takes her first steps in that direction because she gained the confidence to explore from me feels good and leading at the same time.  In other words, I worry that I am projecting my desires onto her.

I am living some weird stuff right now.  On the one hand, as I become increasingly female, and am facing more of the world as a trans woman, I am experiencing more discrimination and unwelcome behaviour.  I don’t get the same kind of harassment as a beautiful woman would, but I get something equally corrosive in word and stares.  And that makes me want to fight back.  

[In Italy, the majority of the criticism, laughter, aggressive stares come from women, but men do it too.  Maybe 70:30.  But it is 100% of women who make up the people who give me positive affirmation.  That’s Italy.  In England, I have also had many men be supportive in public.  NYC is best.  I digress.]

Experiencing these things (discrimination) is like finding turbulence on the flight path of life.  As someone who lived in the slipstream of male privilege (despite rampant gender dysphoria), where life really did pass smoothly, I can feel this difficulty as quite heavy.  As a man, everything was as smooth as silk.  Every woman experiences life with turbulence.  This is what I signed up for, and did so consciously when I accepted myself as trans on the night that I came out to the world and to myself through Ayahuasca.

The turbulence, the discrimination, is the fuel for making so many trans women just wish they could pass.  I may be kidding myself to say that I don’t care if I pass.  I may be kidding myself to think and say to myself that 99.9% of the women who give me nasty looks are not half as pretty as me, and the men who judge me are just as likely to be at home in private squeezing one out as they fantasise about me as they are being troubled by my existence.  Either way, I am an existential crime.

What is it doing to me?  It is making me want to beat men.  And when I say “beat men” I really mean it.  Not out of malice, but out of a desire to educate, and also a desire to take the toxicity back to the source and to lose it by dominating.

I don’t know at all whether this is a feeling that resonates with dominant women, and I will ask.  But over breakfast this morning, my companion recounted a story of her true first experiences as a dominant woman.  She went to an educational play party on her own, felt comfortable even though she thought she might not, and an hour later she was having her feet sucked and shortly after that, was taking a man for a walk on a leash. “I really loved puppy play,” she said.

“How did you know what to do?”

“I didn’t, I just made it up.  I treated him like a dog.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“It was.  It made me feel really good.”

We lingered on the topic for a bit, and she thought that it was pleasurable to her to tell men what to do without any hint of comeback because it is so different from her daily life, despite her executive position.  As if she had to “apologise” for herself all the tie, even though she is the boss.

It felt a bit like the idea of “taking up space”.  So many women describe how they don’t feel they can take up space.  And while I am sure I take up a lot of space, probably a lot more space than most women, a holdover, I assume, of having been male for so long, I am also very conscious that on oestrogen I am “shrinking” in every way.  My shoe size is 1.5 sizes smaller.  I am two cm’s shorter in 18 months.  And over time, a lot of time, even my hands will get smaller. Bone is bone, but the physical changes are real.  But this is definitely not linked to being physically smaller.

I am physically weaker, and I can feel the difference.  I know it.  Its amazing, but the endocrinologist can see it in my blood work–that literally my body is getting rid of muscle and replacing it with fat stores and water.  I happen to love this, but for any man it would be scary.  I embrace the vulnerability that it makes me feel.

That last one is an important part of this.  But energetically, as an increasingly female person, I feel energetically smaller.  And this is linked to some of the psychological things I have been grappling with, and not wishing to be a doormat.  The need to please.  The avoidance of confrontation.  They are becoming stronger, but so too is my desire to not become that kind of women.  I don’t want to be bullied or pushed around.

And I can’t fight back as a man anymore.  That world is increasingly less accessible to me.  On the phone, when someone doesn’t know, but already on zoom, I can hide only so much.  And in real life, forget it.  I have even less power than a woman.

And when I experience this, it makes me want to domainte.  To assert myself.  And I fantasise about whoever it is, naked at my feet, drooling, begging me for something or other.  Yes, the dominatrix in me is strong.

And I wonder what the heck is going on.  Because on the one hand I have these feelings, and I have to say that they are all directed at men, exclusively men, even though plenty of women given me bad energy.  So, while all of a sudden I am ready to beat men, to dominate men, I am not interested in doing that to a woman, with a woman.

With a woman, to a woman, I wish for submission.  And I realise I can’t quite imagine that this applies to any more than one woman.  Right now, she is me.  And I do play from time to time, but that seems a world that is further away, that my interest in being a client has diminished.  And a part of that is that once you become a client, you are always a client.  Does that make sense.  When you kneel and take the collar, you can never go back.  In other words, I am becoming really wary of who I might be willing to do that with.

And this brings me back full circle.  What is a dominant woman looking for?  Affirmation?  Empowerment?  The woman at the munch was definitely looking for those things, particularly given the toxicity she faced.  My companion was deeply aroused by the feeling of power that came with a man prostrating himself at her feet.  The underlying motivation is the same.

Insofar as this might fit in with a pattern that a male sub likes, then great.  But how many times can pupply play, for example, be repeated for the domme to tire of it?  Will whatever it triggered in her continue to deliver?  And that relates to the sexual frisson of BDSM.  But what about everything else?  What about a whole relationship?

There absolutely has to be something deeper than this in a lifestyle dynamic.  And I use that to mean people who are truly dominant and truly submissive.

The most obvious answer is that there must be a symbiosis between the two.  The dominant must articulate and guide the sub to that which fulfils her: I want you to listen to me, I want you to hold me, I want you to deal with things around the house that I hate doing…I also want you to defer to me, to fill me, to build me, to support me…you can insert your own words.  There is no magical set pattern.  Every person is unique.  Every woman is different.  That which she wants, needs, expects is always different.  That is the guide.

The genuine submissive needs nothing more.  The fulfilment of such a person is the pleasure of the person he serves.  

In my dabblings in BDSM, and I am no expert, and in my encounters with pro-Dommes, I have been told that this mindset in a sub is very rare.  One veteran of the profession once said to me, “true service subs are as rare as the rarest of diamonds.  When you find one, you don’t let them go.”  I happen to agree.  Ahem.  

But my date over the past few days said to me, “I wasn’t ready for a sub,” as she explained why she killed the budding relationship with her puppy after 30 minutes.  And indeed, therein lies the conundrum.

What is the meaning of a slave or a service sub in the modern world?  And if you are or think you are such a person, then how might you find your bliss?  And get this.  What she expressed is not unique to her…it harks back to what the Twitter storm over the man who wanted to be chained in this domme’s basement touched on…’why on earth would I want that?’

A fellow reader and I ran up against this in relation to a fabulous educator domme…so many slaves, including us, aspire to a kind of dog-like devotion to its master.  It is aspirational.  She was very dismissive of this, and of its value.  And rejected the comparison, “but that’s my dog,” she said, as if that explained things.  And to us, it didn’t.  “What’s wrong with that?” was our thinking…but if submission to a particular human were in play, and she expressed that notion, then how does the sub move away from fantasy to reality and engage with her reality?

So, what does she want?  I am tempted to bring forth Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  What do any of us want?  Love.  Security.  Freedom.  And what does it mean, therefore, to be a slave or a sub in the context of helping your domme really feel strong in these feelings?  What is art?  What is really great art?  What is art that moves the soul?  And why does it get moved?

Because it transcends.  It isn’t about earthly pleasure, about you and me, it is about something much deeper.  Dear Slave, service and submission are about tapping into this deeper thing.  Setting aside the self and pouring yourself into someone in love and effort.  And while I am biased, I believe that the essence of the divine masculine is to do just this.  To revere and support and feed the divine feminine, mother, chaos, desire, fertility, life itself.

I don’t know if I am making too much sense.  But as sure as I am alive, the idea of being submissive is not to get off, to have a fantasy fulfilled, it is to submit.  My companion asked me, “I mean, I get what a submissive gets out of it—who wouldn’t want someone to take over their life—but what do I get?”  

“That’s up to you.  What do you want?  Knowing what you want.  Being able to ask for it.  Being able to receive it.  Daring to ask someone to give it to you.  Holding enough space for that person to enable them to grow into you.  To become what you need and want.  Just like the master gardener trains the vain to give the most fruit, to be in the best position, that is what you do to the sub, so that the sub becomes the best expression of his or herself, and you do that because the fruits are yours.”

Her eyes were glassy.  I think she was high on the thought.  We went shopping.

For the submissive, there are some very practical lessons here.  You are not a wimp.  You are not a simp.  You are not a sissy.  You may love to be treated like these things, you may love to do many things which are outside of polite discourse.  But what you are is a force of nature.

What that means to me is relentless self-improvement, incredible professional and life success, moving mountains, being a Hercules.  Why is it that so many dommes go on to become life coaches?  Well?  You want to be in service to an incredible woman, be her slave, then be the most incredible man.

A true and good sub is going to invest in him or herself.  First, to feel good in their own skin.  Second, to develop and grow, to always be better today than you were yesterday.  That is your duty.  To yourself, but then also, to whomever you call Queen.

Be the most beautiful and perfect to adorn their arm.  Be the most cultured, learned, effective, productive, incredible human you can possibly be.  And find a domme that wants to own that, to leash it, to enlist it in service, to feel it serenade her soul.  One who wants to cultivate that.

And you know what?  It can be a lot of work.  Or it can be very little work at all.  It is a dynamic that will flow naturally if you are able to genuinely to adapt to what she wants.  If she doesn’t want the work, then be light and fey.  Give her no burdens.  Make it easy.  Make it fun.

And if you say, well, that doesn’t sound like much fun…find words that describe what it is that moves you.  Find better words to articulate what you really want.  Maybe the dominant femme (or butch dominant man) is what excites you, as an archetype.  And it is okay to be turned on by this…but it doesn’t make you submissive, it just makes you attracted to powerful women.

So, what do I think of all this?  The true sub is actually just as rare or rarer than the dominant woman.  And it is very likely that if you are a true submissive man or woman who is looking for a dominant woman partner, you may just have to help her find her voice.  You may just have to serve her in ways that are about her, and not about you, and hope she finds a love for it.  And I am not saying to be manipulative.  I am saying to be open and communicative and genuine.  And if she is listening still, then you are on the right path…and if it really is about her, then she will stay with you all the way.

Good enough in theory.  I’d love to hear whether this resonates with anyone.