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Identifying as ‘a dominant’

It's taken me many years to become comfortable identifying as ‘a dominant’. A common kink trope is the concept of the supposed ‘natural dominant’: a cis man, before whom anyone lesser will feel faint and compelled to submit. A more general trope is that men just need to have an air of confidence in order to be attractive to women[a]. These two tropes get combined by an army of cis men behaving like entitled douches towards people they haven't actually negotiated a consensual power dynamic with. For example:

“I'm a dominant. If you're lucky, I might consider you as a possible submissive.”

“As I'm a dominant, you will address me solely as Sir / Master / Lord.”

“Oh, you're a submissive? I'm a dominant, so although we've just met, you're obliged to do whatever I say.”

It gets somewhat farcical: there are those who describe themselves as ‘ultimate dominates’, the misspelling making it difficult to even _begin_ to take them seriously.

All too many women have had to deal with this phenomenon - not only women who identify as submissive or switchy, but women in general. This, combined with the dominants of the kinkier-than-thou crowd[b], meant that although i was happy to identify as a domme[c], i avoided identifying as ‘a dominant’ for many years.

The problem, however, is that i am in fact a dominant. Not only are RACK[d] d/s power dynamics typically central to my intimate relationships, but i only switch in very specific circumstances (usually involving me having regularly interacted with someone over an extended period of time).

i had a number of discussions about this with one of my current partners, who very strongly identifies as submissive. She was adamant that i shouldn't abandon the term to the entitled and arrogant, and that if i'm comfortable identifying as ‘a top’, i should be at _least_ as comfortable identifying as ‘a dominant’ - she feels i'm dominant in particular more than i am ‘a top’ in general. So i now identify as a dominant, and i'm comfortable with that.

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[a] @sgrstk once said on Twitter, “The only thing more attractive than confidence is intelligence. Don't believe me? Have a conversation with a confident idiot and let me know how horny it makes you.”

Source [image]

Cf. also the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which people with low skills overestimate their skills:

Wikipedia: ‘Dunning-Kruger effect’

[b] i.e. the group who has granted themselves the ‘responsibility’ of deciding who is and isn't _really_ kinky, or is or isn't a _serious_ kinkster.

[c] The ‘feminine’ form of ‘dom’, and not, as a number of people seem to think, just a fancy French spelling of the latter.

[d] ‘Risk-Aware Consensual Kink’.