The Ephemeral Quality of Dominance

This post has been coming for a while, and then a twitter conversation with @DarkGracie sort of kicked me into finally writing it.

If you’ve been reading my writing for a while, you’ll have noticed I seldom use terms like dominant or submissive in my stories. I tend to leave the labeling to my readers. That’s not to say I don’t write about power dynamics in sexuality or eroticize it. I do, constantly. As far as I know, I’ve never written a story that doesn’t feature some element of D/s, but I do try to explore the nuances of it without naming it. Because to name it is to limit it; to define it is to constrain it. My experience is that power is, at its sexiest, quite a complex thing. It never truly runs in one direction unless it’s rape or abuse.

Anyone who plays under the constraints of consent, top or dominant or whatever, still gives power over to the concept of consent. If that consent can be withdrawn, then ultimately power lies in the hands of the person who might refuse it or withdraw it.

The biggest problem with labels is that they allow other things to hide beneath them. There are a considerable number of men who purport to be dominants but are just incredibly immature and so insecure about their sexual skills as a lover, they figure the way to circumvent having to prove themselves is by completely ignoring their partner’s experience, and hiding the tactic under the guise of being in charge. Being a dominant doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility of caring whether a partner gets off. In fact, he or she takes on the entire responsibility of the when, the where, the how and how often.

One of the reasons I don’t identify myself as truly submissive is that I am reluctant to trust or burden anyone with the responsibility for my pleasure.  And a dominant IS ultimately responsible for it. They don’t have to read minds – they can demand communicativeness in order to take that responsibility – but that’s the deal. It’s all in their hands.

I’m not sure if it is true for anyone else, but the dynamics of D/s have more to do with the chemistry I feel on meeting someone and getting to know them, than on any presented ‘orientation.’ There’s a kind of neuro-chemical magic that occurs when I meet someone. They may be a perfect dominant to someone else, but not for me.  I’ve met people identifying as dominants who, once they got to know me even a little, toned it right down. Conversely, I’ve met people who didn’t identify as having any power-dynamic preference at all, who, upon more intimate acquaintance, turned into rather yummy dominants with me.

Beyond the initial presence of mutual sexual attraction, I think the most successful experiences occur when people are open to a certain amount of reorientation and reconsideration of how the lines of power will play themselves out. Unfortunately, this seldom happens with insecure people.  They’ve come armed with an understanding of the way things will be and blindly attempt to force the encounter into the box they’ve constructed before hand. That very rigid and cramped box is usually a consequence of a closed mind. People who bring brittle expectations with them are already fighting to establish control, trying to impose an experiential template they’ve premade long before they knew of your existence. It’s an encounter that’s doomed, if not to failure, then to a lack of depth or genuine engagement. Fantasy projections are seldom as complex or rich as reality.

I’ve had my share of comic meetings. Meetings with ‘dominants’ who were so frightened, so intent to establish their domminess that, for all intents, they were the only person in the room. Insecurity, much like narcissism, precludes the other party being real. On the other hand, I’ve met dominants who, after 30 minutes of conversation, grinned at me and said: “This isn’t going to work, is it?”

You can be incredibly sexually attracted to someone but not feel the power-surge at all. When I was younger, that was okay; I was more amenable to a happy romp in vanilla sex world than I am now. In more recent times, I’ve realized that, if they aren’t ringing dominant bells for me, I end up being on top, even if they don’t realize it. And, to me, that’s not the happiest of situations. It leaves me cold. But I end up switching because, at some visceral level, I figure someone ought to be in control and, if it’s not going to be them, then it’s going to be me.

So, if you are considering the pursuit of an encounter in which you are dominant, I’d like to offer you a few bits of advice, take it or leave it:

1. Dominant doesn’t mean self-centered or fascist pig. Control is about taking responsibility for everyone’s experience, not just your own.
2. If you don’t feel the power chips fall in the right place with your clothes on, it isn’t going to happen once you take them off. Not truly. What you may get is a masquerade, but it’s not the real thing.
3. Dominance isn’t physical; it’s mental. Superficially, it might be nice if you can toss your partner around in a bed, but you shouldn’t have to. If you’re in control, you can move someone with a single finger touch to the hip.
4. Dominance isn’t necessarily penetrative. You can dominate by envelopment just as surely. I don’t mean this as a concrete (genital) statement; I mean it in the abstract. To put it another way, flanking is just as aggressive a military strategy as spearheading.
5. Dominance isn’t about props. It’s about language and presence.
6. For me, dominance is almost exclusively about intelligence and the appetite for power, not sex. Of course, for me, it’s essentially sexual, and I don’t get off on D/s with no sexual aspect. But it is a ‘will to power‘ and not a ‘will to fuck‘. Being uber-horny doesn’t make you uber-dominant. In fact, quite the reverse.  So much so that, if I perceive a man to be too much at the mercy of his sexual appetite, he’s just handed me the reins of power, whether he knows it or not. He’s a ‘bottom’ the minute he’ll compromise to get off.
7. Finally, and I really hate to have to say this, but apparently it’s not obvious: if all you really want is to get off and not give a shit about your partner’s experience, get a doormat, not a submissive. You aren’t a dominant, you’re just bad in bed.

Luckily, I have a pretty good nose for #7. #6, however, is the bane of my existence. Perhaps because I am so capable of critical thought myself, even under the influence of extreme arousal, I find it impossible to ignore the tremendous power advantage in being able to show restraint or disinterest. The moment I think I can lead you by the dick, my sadistic side comes out to play.

I want to close by underscoring that this isn’t an attempt at a universal definition of dominance. It’s just my take on it.

Postscript:

After some twitter chat, it occurs to me that I should be clear as to what I mean by insecurity. I’m not talking about the universal little insecurities that every human has (my tits are too big, my ass is too flat, my cock is too short, I’m too fat, too skinny, not buff enough, too old crap). Few people are truly unafraid of how they may be judged in intimate situations. But there is a threshold of familiarity at which that stuff disappears or at least fades into the background.

I’m talking about a fundamental level of insecurity that is essentially a form of self-obsession. It refuses intimacy because the fear of negative reaction is so acute, the suffer refuses to truly process any incoming reaction just in case it might be negative.

Every sane dominant has had moments of self-doubt, of ‘Fuck, am I actually in control? Can I control this?’ They may not show it, but they’ve felt it. If they haven’t, they’re sociopaths.