Natural Dominance

Look, Bondage Blog is very one-sided. Our motto is “taking pleasure in the beauty of restrained women” and 99% of all posts are about M/f, male-dominant, female-submissive BDSM of one kind or another. The reason? Because that’s what I like. (And you don’t run a blog for as many years as this without trailing off into nothingness and oblivion if you don’t like your subject matter.)

But one trend in BDSM “thinking” that I try to avoid promoting is the school of thought that John Norman and his Goreans took to the extreme — that idea that women are “naturally” submissive and men are “naturally” dominant. As near as I can tell, it’s highly individual to the person, and I don’t have any population data. Do there seem to be more dominant men and submissive women in the populations I’m familiar with? Yeah, but my info is a collection of anecdotes, there’s selection bias issues out the ass, and even if the raw numbers could be proved out that way, it still wouldn’t tell us anything about human nature because of the compounding (and in this case, surely overwhelming) variables of culture.

So you’ll see lots of “Here’s so and so, she’s pretty in chains” from me, but not so much of the “I am Man, thus I am Master, hear my dick roar” bullshit.

Why mention this now? Because I just stumbled over Calico’s blog (previous Bondage Blog posts featuring Calico are here, here, and here) and found her saying this on the subject:

So you may have noticed I play submissive to men. Lately I am trying to own it more.

But I don’t, in any way, think men are “more dominant” than women.

I believe that if we got over our cultural baggage, we would have as many dominant women as we have dominant men. I believe that women wouldn’t grow up quashing their inclinations as unfeminine and unattractive, molding their passions into “feminine” channels, feeling isolated and wrong, or assuming they must be butch, queer or even men. (Not that there is anything wrong with being those things, if you want to be.)

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4 comments on “Natural Dominance”:

Sean commented on February 24th, 2011 at 2:20 pm:

Women can be and are dominant. Example is Carmenica Diaz – talented, warm, bisexual but very dominant. Use your search engine to find her blog to see.
I am a fan of hers and post on her blog so Im biased.

Rope Guy commented on February 24th, 2011 at 2:24 pm:

Of course! Never suggested otherwise.

But if you’re a submissive man, just try finding a dominant woman for a non-commercial relationship. It’s typically a long hard search.

Azmuk commented on February 24th, 2011 at 6:49 pm:

Virtually every professional “domme” or commercial “dungeon” caters almost entirely to men. A very lucrative trade, by all accounts.
An author who is now teaching English at a prestigious college recently published a tell-all of her years as a professional domininatrix at a NY “dungeon” by which she financed her college education.
The submissive clients were exclusively men…

Jenny commented on March 3rd, 2011 at 11:54 am:

I’m a mostly dominant woman, but sadly for het submissive guys, I think women are prettier and more fun than men generally. (Which is why I like this blog: pretty, restrained women! Yum!)

That said, I can’t claim to be gay; I’m happily married to a man.

I tend towards Dan Savage’s definition of BDSM: cops and robbers for grownups (with full frontal and orgasms.) Whether I’m tying my husband up or he me, or we’re doing nasty things to a lady, when the rope comes off equality comes right back on.

That Gor stuff is funny and stupid. And bad economic theory.

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