What I’ve learned about love, feminism, and being a badass from male submissives

 I have always been of two minds about most things. Maybe, being a Gemini, I’m a born contrarian. I’m confirmed Catholic and would still consider myself somewhat religious, but I’m also deeply critical of the Catholic Church as an institution. I am not above self-crit- I’m a part of an institution that does shitty things, and that makes me complicit in it to some degree. As a person with an autoimmune disease and muscular conditions, and who started suffering from OCD and anxiety as a child, I also glean hope from and find peace within it. Both can be true and do not negate the other entirely. I’m a biochemist, but I strongly prefer the company of musicians, comics, and even artsy pedants over the (often unearned) self-satisfaction and lack of emotional fluency that marks many in STEM.  I’m a ranty, buzzkill feminist who thinks choice feminism, while at one time a good starting point, often hurts women (as our oppression is often repackaged in appealing ways to us as a “choice”). I’m a sexually dominant Mistress in the bedroom that loves to tease and tease and…tease. I love control- is it an externalization of my OCD? A defense mechanism, or me absorbing the riot grrl era a little too enthusiastically in my formative years? Honestly, more than anything, I think I just like seeing how much more intense a man’s orgasm is after you make him squirm a little. 

More than this, I’m a bleeding-heart, hopeless-romantic crybaby who loves dresses, perfume, kittens, puppies, hugs, and- don’t let this surprise you- men. 

Sexual orientation truly isn’t a choice. Most of my close friends are LGBT+ folk- badass lesbians, irreverent and wickedly cool trans people, gay men full of heart and honesty. Yes, these are archetypal tropes- but they are also the people I love most, breathing and incarnate. 

As a domme, I find the social scripts imposed on both straight men and women in relationships to be stifling things, like a tight dress I can’t pull over my sweaty shoulders in a sweltering changing room. They’re rooted in sexism, and often replicate it, even when enthusiastic, bumbling male doms (note: unless a male dom proves to be unusually introspective, honest with himself, and chill- I’m talking, <5% of the ones I’ve met- I’m not a fan) try to sell women on the liberation of caricature. I’ve had male friends tell me they just want to make their girlfriends cum, but they’re given confusing messages on how to do that, and their girlfriends have been conditioned to keep coy about sexual desire. It sucks for everyone involved when gender roles assume full control over people’s bedrooms- it doesn’t allow for the dirty, freaky, romantic, beautiful, radical individuality that breeds intimacy and orgasms. 

While I roll my eyes and the theatrical sexism of maledom/femsub scenes, I don’t believe in policing what people do consensually in their own bedrooms- in fact, I’m very much against that. After all, it’s cruel and futile to ask people to stop being turned on by something that gets them hot and bothered. In a vacuum, devoid of patriarchy and rape culture, there will still naturally be some straight men who are sexually dominant, and some straight women who are sexually submissive, for the same reason that I love horror movies, roller coasters, bruising deep-tissue massages, and spicy salsa. I’m just glad I was born a domme and don’t have to try to disentangle that shit (though, let’s be real- most straight male doms don’t care enough to introspect on it beyond creating rationalizations). I just don’t think you can call every choice a feminist one, and acknowledging your kink is subconsciously informed by societal sexism would go a long way in cooling the flames of the feminist sex wars (I’m addressing women here, too). It’s just like how I view my faith- Catholicism has helped me through some incredibly rough times. It’s helped me through my borderline mother’s dissociative episodes while my dad had to work 1,000 miles away to support our family. It’s helped me when my anxiety was so bad that I couldn’t stomach food for days at a time. This same religion, which has given me hope when I had none, denies equality and agency to LGBT+ folk and women. Its rhetoric makes gay people, people like my boyfriend’s brother and my uncle, both devout Catholics, feel hopeless. This isn’t okay, and I will always, always try to fight it from within. I know, even then, that will never fully make up for it. 

What I’m getting at is, none of us are perfect feminists, perfect allies. Almost all of us derive pleasure from institutions which create suffering for those less privileged (it’s not lost on me that most BDSM practitioners are white, including myself, though I find white supremacy raceplay to be abhorrent and disgusting and I will die on that hill). We don’t have to be perfect- we just need to acknowledge these cracks, rather than double-down in gilding over them. 

I want to choose my words carefully here. 

We don’t need to put big dicks on a pedestal, or denigrate smaller ones. As someone who loves the male body, I truly find all male forms- and all penises- beautiful. Sexy. Desirable. I have vaginismus, caused by pudendal nerve damage from a running injury, though lidocaine injections and dilation have helped tremendously. Believe me when I say, a smaller-than-average penis sounds heavenly to me. I have had my pussy punctured with over 100 syringes just to be able to use a tampon. 

Still, you know what’s interesting? I’ve had sex with two men in my life- both quite sexually submissive. Both of them have absolutely massive dicks. Like- both of them could act in porn, and seem big even then. Both of them have to buy the largest condoms available, or the rubber won’t roll down. These are statistical outlier penises (well, in America. My boyfriend is Lebanese, and data shows that there must be something in the water over there). It would be so easy for them to ham it up- to self-appoint their dicks as pussy-punishers and peacock (heh, cock) about their endowments. But for a lot of sub men, there’s this alluring, quiet confidence. It’s not about the dick size. It’s about the mojo a submissive guy has to go against the grain and be authentically himself. 

Sub men have it pretty damn hard in the BDSM world, as far as hetero couplings go. Don’t get me wrong- it isn’t always easy for dom women, either, not the least because we’re women, but I find it to be- if you’ll indulge me in using a gendered term here- pretty damn *ballsy* for a man, so shackled by society’s tight confines of what a man could and should be, to say “You know what? That’s not for me. I like this instead.” Especially so for a submissive guy that truly respects, loves, and values the women he has sex with. Sadly, I think we as humans struggle to respect one-another in general: men to men, women to women, men to women, women to men, and any other permutation involving other genders. Sexism adds another layer on top of this, of course, but humanity lacks empathy and kindness overall. It would be easy (though of course, not right or fair) for submissive men to go the incel route, to feel rejected by women and scorn us in turn. It takes grit and strength of character to resolve not to walk down this path, even if it provides seductive deceptions.

Willingness to be fully, authentically oneself is why I have so much admiration for LGBT folk. While I would never say what a straight, submissive man faces is comparable to that, I still think it’s pretty badass that sub guys show such daring, and it’s something I find very attractive in the men I’ve dated. That willingness to be gentle, vulnerable, and unencumbered to the prescribed scripts of our gender role security blankets is really goddamn sexy. It’s also a pleasant surprise, a pleasing contrast. I love my boyfriend’s mountain-man beard, and I love his long curls. I love the way he growls, lowly, in my ear as he cums, and I love the softness in his voice when he begs me to *let* him cum. I love the cozy warmth of his flannels when we hug, and I love feeling the cool surface of his Karelian shungite necklace pressed between our chests- a necklace he wears, because I, his Karelian girlfriend, gave it to him. I have similar one. 

I love the way he worships my femininity- my breasts and hips and thighs, my pussy that can only handle gentle caresses, the roundness of my face- not because it matches any ideal, but because he loves women, and he loves *me*. I love the way he is fully, completely devoted to my pleasure. I love that he has limits that we will not go past, because he honors himself. I’m proud of him for honoring himself. It’s not easy.

You want to know a secret? I’m just as eager to please him. Of course, I have my limits as well. Very few people want the not-fun kind of pain during sex, and neither of us want me to degrade or hurt myself for his orgasm. It turns out, even though we’ve agreed to let me hold the reins, love makes most of us willing servants. I like to be in charge, but I *love* to see the rapture and relief and adoration in those beautiful azure eyes when he cums for me. I love to kiss his perfect mouth while his breathing is still ragged and needy, and to caress the pad of my thumb over his heated, angular cheeks. His “love language” is physical touch, and I relish in finding ways to show him the contents of my heart with my hands, lips, and skin. 

See? I told you I was a sap.