This is an opinion piece, which means I am making judgments from a lifetime of experience being a Dominant woman, my connections with over two thousand men who have submitted to me over the years, and interactions with hundreds of thousands of kinksters. These days, people donât like opinions from people with experience or pull on a topic, so I’m just giving a heads up.
Background from the last article:
For centuries, men have been positioned as the initiating sex, the central character in history, and the architect of relational meaning. When that centrality is withdrawnâeven slightlyâwhat they experience is loss. Psychologically, this shift parallels with the experience of a firstborn child losing the privileged attention of parents to a new sibling. The child feels not equality, but displacement. In social psychology, this is known as âdominant group threat,â the perception that equality feels like oppression when one is used to unchallenged power. Thus, Domina are not just merely dealing with male ego when it comes to submissives, but a whole system of cultural programming.
When applied to Femdom, this sense of âlossâ means that many men experience female-centric power as a form of personal diminishment. It is a subconscious thing, but it is what precisely prevents a male submissive from truly surrendering. Now imagine introducing them to Absolute Femdom, a structure in which the woman does not merely share power, but defines and leads it, without apology or compromise. To men already destabilised by social uncertainty around their worth, relevance, and role, this does not generally feel like erotic truth. It feels like an extension of cultural punishment.
This is why many submissive men, despite their sincere longing to submit, struggle to stay in the dynamic once things get real. Their resistance is not always about kink. Itâs about existential anxiety: âIf Iâm not in control, am I still a man? If Iâm not leading, do I still matter?â These questions reveal the heart of what power has historically meant for male identity.
R.W. Connell (2005) and Michael Kimmel (2008) note that masculinity is a performance coded around dominance: professional, emotional, and sexual. Men are trained to pursue, to lead, to solve, and to impress. Their worth is externalised, measured by what they produce. So when they are invited into Femdom where their role is to be shaped, not to shape, their very sense of self is destabilised. In Femdom, manâs desire no longer dictates the structure of the relational dynamic, and thus his identity is now challenged.
Because manâs sense of self is often built around his capacity to lead, to provide, and to be in command, the removal (or denial) of that command, is not simply removing the role of dominant, but disrupting his entire sense of selfhood. The psychological literature on masculinity and the male social role consistently affirms that when male power is challenged, men often experience it as a threat to their dignity, not just their dominance. (And thus the misunderstanding of most men who think they must strip away their dignity in order to demonstrate submission, which in fact is usually the very opposite of what Domina want.)
This is why full surrenderâtrue, embodied, “no-backsies” submissionâfeels so terrifying for men, because for many, control equals relevance. And relevance equals value. And value equals safety. When they give that control over to a woman, they are not just submitting; in their mind, they are risking being considered obsolete. So men often can only muster a half-hearted submission, and that can be so intense for them, it deceives them into thinking they are the real deal.
And this is why, in real Femdom, particularly Absolute Femdom, the work for Domina (and yes, domination is labour) is rarely about the pegging, installing their protocol, or judging and dealing out punishment. The real work is the structural reorientation of the male psyche. The rewiring of his power from entitlement to offering… from centrality to service… from direction to devotion.
Femdom Is a Philosophical Realignment for Men
Absolute Femdom is not designed to punish men for the sins of patriarchy. It is not about historical payback or vengeance. It is reorientation and transformation.
At its core, Absolute Femdom offers men a structure in which they no longer need to dominate in order to be desired. It provides an erotic architecture where surrender is not shameful, and their value is not contingent on conquest. In Femdom, men are not devalued, hey are de-centred to give space for feminine power to rise.
To add more background before I continue:
- Male-centric desire is desire that assumes it should be satisfied. It expects fulfilment as a condition of participation. It has narrative authority.
- Female-centric desire does not impose, demand, or negotiate itself into being. It is origin-based. It emerges from within and then structures the world around it. It is not transactional; it is sovereign.
In Relative Femdom models, both partners often enter the dynamic with âdesire listsâ and compromise until there is mutual satisfaction. On the surface, this may look like fairness. But structurally, male desire retains co-authorship. A submissive can withdraw, protest, or bargain if his preferences arenât met. The result is a Femdom that is often softer, diluted, or shaped to accommodate the submisisve’s desires. What remains is not Female Domination, but female facilitation. This concept of female erotic facilitation to male masochism has been identified and reinforced by both medical (Kraft-Ebing, Ellis, Freud) and philosophical (Deleuze) theorists alike.
To be clear: compromise has its place. But it is not the foundation of power. And when a submissive offers his submission on the condition that his needs be met, he is not submitting. He is negotiating.
In Absolute Femdom, the Dominaâs power is not up for negotiation. She does not lead on the basis of male-centric desire or performance. Her power is an expression of Her erotic truth. And while a submissiveâs desires may be heard, appreciated, or even celebrated, they are not used to architect the dynamic. They are not structural material, but are used to enrich a dynamic, not to define it.
Absolute Domination is not exploitation, but asymmetrical ethics.
As feminist philosopher Iris Marion Young argues (1990), fairness is not always about equal input. It is about recognising difference and distributing power accordingly. Equal participation in a hierarchical structure, (such as in egalitarian and Relative Femdom structures), nullifies the hierarchy. In Absolute Femdom, there is no contradiction between ethics and asymmetry. In fact, asymmetry is what allows ethics to be directional, potent, and erotic. (Thus, the Absolute Femdom structure is quite groundbreaking for relational ethics.)
Cultural Erosion of Male Submission
Many men approach Femdom with sincerity, however, most have suffered from the social vengeance of their historical dominance that has culminated into a cultural emasculation. This weighs heavily on submissive men, both socially and within a Femdom context, and they become stuck between protecting themselvesâtheir identityâand truly surrendering. These submissives are aching for intimacy where power does not equate to worth. They do not want to dominate. They want to matter without having to dominate.
But what they often donât realise is that surrendering power also means surrendering their inherited centrality. This is the point many are unprepared for. They expect to be wanted for who they are, which includes being shapers of the structure, but they need to realise, in Absolute Femdom especially, they are not the sun, but the moon orbiting Her.
Most submissive men are introduced to Femdom through porn. And pornâespecially Femdom pornâis built almost entirely on male-centric fantasies masquerading as submission. It is men asking to be degraded in the exact way they want. It is domination-by-request and it reinforces the illusion that submission is just another way to get your rocks off by outsourcing them to a costumed woman with a strap-on.
Femdom porn is not Femdom, but young men absorb it as gospel. It often takes submissives years to unlearn this. Even after they recognise that porn is not Femdom, they may still approach real Domina with the same hidden scripts. They still expect to be rewarded for good behaviour, their good introductions, and their good submissiveness. They still imagine submission as a gateway to their kinks being fulfilled. They still want âdeservingâ to mean âreceiving.â And so many submissives, after years of trying with Femdom, become resentful when they are rejected over and over again for not being truly submissive.
The Culture We Are Creating for Submissives
At this point, Domina must turn the lens gentlyâbut criticallyâtoward ourselves.
To orient you on my point of view, because I very well know this topic is quite controversial: I have been a teacher throughout my careerâeducating thousands of people in theatre and danceâand so I well know that âproblemsâ with attitudes and behaviours do not develop in isolation, but are usually systemic. And in fact, it is often a teacherâs mindset, attitude and approach that carves out the atmosphere and respect in the classroom, and shapes Her dynamic with students. And⊠thus, as a Domina, a leader, and part of a BDSM community, I believe in stepping up to the plate. To continue:
A significant number of Dominas I speak with express exhaustion from DMs, from selfish men, from the staggering volume of clueless, porn-programmed submissives who donât even realise how offensive or juvenile their messages are. We consistently have to protect ourselves from the emotional labour demanded from and extracted by these men. The pain is real. The exhaustion is valid. It is a consequence of living in patriarchy and navigating Femdom on a platform that has been saturated with male-centric models for decades. Dominas have every right to protect their time, their attention, and their sovereignty.
But we must also ask: is the way we are responding to that exhaustion reinforcing a structure that keeps good men from ever becoming authentic submissives?
We have, in many spaces, created a culture of learned defeatism in submissive men Youâve likely got these messages in your DMâs, I have got them too:
âI know Iâm probably not worthyâŠâ
âYou donât have to replyâŠâ
âIâm sorry to bother youâŠâ
âI know you must get hundreds of messages like thisâŠâ
âI know Iâm not specialâŠâ
These are not just the ramblings of unconfident men. They are the symptoms of a kink culture that has told them, over and over, âYouâre the problem.â And some of that messaging has come from us. We shame them, unapologetically. We are trying to protect ourselves, yes. But the tone we setâcollectivelyâhas consequences.
Just as women have spent generations being conditioned to silence their desire, men are now being conditioned to assume they are worthless and unwanted. So, submissives routinely preemptively apologise for existing, not because they are submissive, but because they are men. And this is essentially creating a problem: they canât ever be truly submissive if we make them feel irrelevant.
Submission requires self-worth.
Not arrogance. Not entitlement. But enough self-trust to say:
I have something worth offering⊠even if itâs not the centrepiece of the structure.
When submissives donât feel that, they compensate. They self-efface. They become our self-fulfilling prophecy: a nuisance. And that breeds exactly the kind of submissive we donât want.
BUT⊠to be clear: I am not suggesting we coddle and excuse poor or disgusting behaviour. I am suggesting that as women who wield erotic power, we can set the tone of our culture in which that power operates. Simply put, we can be wiser in our approach to create a culture that doesnât traumatise submissives out of submission. With great power comes great responsibility.
So, more than ever, submissive men are struggling to reconcile their desire to surrender with their need to preserve dignity. They simply donât know how. Contemporary culture tells them to dismantle their pride, to deconstruct their so-called âtoxic masculinityââbut offers little guidance on how to let go of dominance without letting go of self-worth. (And this is why Femdom is so brilliant because it is structured to help them do this with safety and care.) In trying to shed their inheritance of male power, they risk shedding their entire sense of identity. The result? They speak the language of submission, but their actions reveal the quiet desperation of men still trying to matter.
In my own Femdom practice, My men give Me their absolute submission for one reason: they feel deeply valued in the act of being dominated. I desire them. I teach them how to be desirable through surrendering their social dominance, their leadership, control, and centrality, but replacing those with a developed capacity to open, to offer, and to serve. This unbalances them at first, but they know I will always catch them. That is what makes them able to fall.
Men need to fall back down to earth, and the Domina is who inspires them to jump.
Yes, My submissives know they are very lucky to have a Domina who practices Absolute Femdom. But after connecting intimately with thousands of men over the years, I can say this with certainty: there are many truly promising submissivesâ”submissives in waiting”. They are just buried beneath a Femdom culture that has told them they are irrelevant. And perhaps, if weâDominasâstop reinforcing that irrelevance, we will begin to entice them out of hiding. In so doing, invite them into the kind of deep, ethical, powerful surrender we all deserve.