Am I a dom, a sub, or both?

My friend Mira was here again last week and we were talking about doms and subs the other day, as we do. :)

It’s been several years now that Mira has been exploring what it means to be a submissive, how that feels on her skin and how it translates into who she is as a person.

“I don’t even know if ‘kink’ is the right word to use anymore, but I find kinks so interesting because of how they interact with the rest of my life, values and ideals. I’m a feminist 100% of the time, but I’m only a sub some of the time,” she explained.

Back when we started talking about her foray into the world of submission, I remember her telling me that she felt confused about why this kind of thing appealed to her. She couldn’t fathom why she felt so turned on at the prospect of wearing a collar or being spanked.

“Outside of a sexual context those things sound so alien to me. Like there is no way I’d actually feel empowered if someone spanked me without permission. But somehow, if I’m on all fours, wearing a collar and anticipating the force of that first spank, and there is an agreement of just how far I’m willing to go, well then, you have my attention, sir,” she laughed.

“The thing is, at first, I was kind of ashamed that I felt this way. Here I was screaming from the rooftops about equal rights and powerful women and simultaneously wanting some dude to dominate me. It felt a bit like my body was betraying me. And yet it also felt like maybe I had been brainwashed into thinking that as a woman, I had to be more submissive in bed, and it took me a while to reconcile all those feelings with the unruliness of my desires.”

Like Mira, there have been times where I too have wondered whether as a woman, I had to be submissive in bed.

Even though kinks are in this “niche” space (and I’m going to argue that it isn’t really that “niche” at all and that we all have desires and kinks that feel ‘other’), they are also too often somehow moulded into conventional binary categories. Men are dominant and women are submissive. How unimaginative!

“How did you figure out that’s what you liked?” I asked her.

“Well there was a more intense party than normal in my pants that happened when I watched this kind of thing in porn. I was definitely imagining someone doing that to me, wondering what it would feel like and how my body would respond. But then I also didn’t think too much about it as I figured it was a passing phase, probably something I wouldn’t be able to turn into a reality.”

“And how did you finally do that?”

“It was a combination of working up the courage to let go and see what it would feel like to truly “submit” to this desire, but I was also with a partner at the time who wanted to explore being a dom. I wouldn’t say that we knew exactly what we were doing, but I was thankful for the opportunity to explore this further and see whether what I was turned on by in my head was also what turned me on IRL,” she explained.

I feel lucky that my work gives me the opportunity to investigate and explore the many different ways our sexualities grow and change over our lifetimes. But I know that isn’t always the case for everyone.

There are so few spaces created for us to experiment with and confront our many desires. Even things like recognising whether you are more dominant or more submissive are presented to us as these very out there subcultures. Those people do that. Not us.

But these desires are not so far-fetched and you’d be surprised at how many people might share your wildest fantasies. It’s not so dissimilar from when you are in a classroom or a meeting and afraid to ask a question about something you’re confused about and then a few minutes later someone asks the very question you had in mind. That feeling of relief, like, “Thank god I’m not the only one who was thinking that” is so reassuring, right?

So is finding out other people have similar desires and fantasies!

From my twenties to my thirties, as I’ve traversed the path of my own sexuality, I’ve discovered incredible things about myself - including, but obviously not limited to the fact that I actually really enjoy being dominant in the bedroom!

In my 20s, I primarily dated men who were significantly older than me. So the power dynamics were present even outside the bedroom where they held gender, age and socio-economic status.

Those dynamics then filtered back into the bedroom where I kind of thought as the younger woman I was to please and to make them feel like the one in control, and to a certain extent I even enjoyed it. I liked the idea of this powerful person providing care and love to me.

But I think what I actually really wanted was to be worshipped, not babied.

In my twenties I allowed myself to be more submissive than I actually wanted to be because I thought that was what was expected of me, that that was the kind of femininity men thought was desirable. I had much less self-esteem and self-knowledge then, than I do now.

I allowed myself to fall into the male fantasy of the submissive woman, which is quite different from how Mira explores submissiveness, and it took me time to see this distinction.

In my thirties, I’ve been exploring being dominant, which is so new for me, as a chronic people pleaser.

I no longer feel the need to shrink myself in the ways I had in my twenties. I realise I really do rather enjoy calling the shots. But I also enjoy being soft. Severe pain is something I’m still not able to inflict, even if that’s what a partner may want. That’s a part of the journey I’m still on, but being able to clearly and authoritatively state what I want, to feel entitled to pleasure and give instruction, is something I find really hot and I’m so glad I discovered that.

Btw, I want to quickly take a moment to circle back to the language we use around this stuff.

“Kink” is a term often used to describe sexual fantasies or practices that aren’t conventional. The variety of so-called kinks is huge, ranging from light spanking to wax play to scat play. Of course there are some things on the long list of kinks that have fewer members, but there are loads of things that don’t seem so fantastical at all. The fact that power exchange can be really hot is hard for anyone to deny.

And yet kinks are too often presented as a thing that “we” would never desire. All those things are for other people, weird people, kinky people, who live very different lives than all of us. But who are “we” and who is “them”?

I happened to attend Kink Con last year which is a gathering organised by the Kinky Collective, India’s oldest kink organisation. It was so exciting to witness so many different age groups coming together to learn about, explore and discuss their kinks. The ages ranged from people in their twenties to sixties and people from all walks of life. The idea that people must look and dress a certain way, like perhaps that they walked off the sets of 50 Shades of Grey, is a lie! Your librarian, accountant, or neighbour’s mom might be kinky. They might wear a salwar, shorts, trousers, or leather. They’re poor, rich, young, old, fat, thin and come from all genders - there is absolutely no way to tell if someone is kinky or not just by looking at them. That’s just another way of othering, exoticising or fetishising what a kinky person should look like. This is something I have also been guilty of until I recognised my own kinks more overtly.

Once I started to really pay attention to how sex, sexual fantasies, desires and pleasure are presented to us, I began to notice how our inclinations and appetites are constantly being policed - and not in a way to keep us safe, or teach us about consent, but instead in a way that aims to keep everything in neat and tiny little boxes. To tame desire of its inherent and wonderful unruliness.

It’s also worth recognising that there is more to the kink arena than just BDSM and male doms and female subs. This is just what’s over represented in the media, with books and movies like 50 Shades and the like. Some peoples’ power exchange may not involve any latex at all and may simply include being completely clothed while your partner is naked or setting a non-sexual task for a partner or being particularly interested in feet. The list goes on.

My work affords me the opportunity to dig deeper into questions like why many of us feel shame around the desires we have, or what society stands to lose when sex education isn’t part of school curriculums, or whether I’m more dominant, more submissive or most likely, a switch.

I want the work I do to open up safe spaces for you to explore some of these questions too. Is it possible for Mira to be a raging feminist and want to be spanked and have a daddy? Yes. Can I sometimes swing toward the dominant side of things and sometimes the submissive? Yes. Is it possible that most kinks and fantasies are shared by hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of people around the world? Yes!

It certainly helps to have friendships like the one I have with Mira to have open and honest conversations about all things sex, and I know that is rare - though I wish it wasn’t! But you can still explore your own interests by giving yourself the permission to consider your own sexual curiosities. Let’s step out from under the shadowy misconception that kinks are for “those other people”. We are those other people!

I believe the key to true sexual fulfilment and pleasure is to get to the bottom of what makes our toes curl and our heart rate quicken, what makes us squirm (in a good way) and makes our eyes roll (also in a good way ;)). The only way we can make that happen is to let go of shame, cultivate a deep understanding of consent, and embrace curiosity, adventure, and the spirit of play.

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