The Illusion of Power

This writing is to elaborate on:

When a Woman’s domination is conditional upon the desires of Her submissive, She is not exercising power but performing it within a patriarchal script that grants Her only the illusion of authority.

From my last article: Returning Femdom to Female Authorship and Power – Part One: The Mistress: Man’s Fantasy of Female Power

So, it is a side-step from the original topic, but important nonetheless. I have received a few inquiries about it and I just wanted to extend it a little, especially for clarification.

Disclaimer: Just keep in mind, I am all about female-centric Femdom. I don’t discuss other power dynamics or other relational structures in BDSM. My information is for those who practice Femdom – Domina and femdom submissives. A lot of my points are from my own Femdom philosophy – I do not talk generically. Some may call Me a “Femdom Feminist”, as I diverge from the typical vanilla feminist theories and innovate to make them relevant to Female Domination.

For the sake of clarity, I refer here to the heterosexual dynamic as the example.

In the vanilla world, men are taught that dominance is a natural extension of masculinity, while women are conditioned to be submissive—to support, adapt, and yield. Even in modern relationships that appear equal on the surface, the underlying grammar of interaction still tends to centre male desire and preference. This background conditioning shapes how both men and women understand power, even when they move into alternative spaces such as BDSM. When a Woman first begins to dominate, She often carries this unconscious vanilla script with Her. She may not even notice that Her domination is modelled after male domination, to “take charge” in ways that still align with how men define command. What results is domination that may look powerful but is, at its core, still responding to the male imagination, not Female desire.

Hannah Arendt observed that the end or reversal of a tradition does not mean its concepts lose influence. Often, they grow more coercive once detached from their living origins, exercising “their full tyrannical power only after their end has come and men no longer even rebel against it” (Arendt 1961, 26). That is precisely what we see in contemporary kink culture. The tradition of male dominance may have lost legitimacy in society, yet its influence on Femdom continues to structure the BDSM imagination of power. Even as we believe we have moved beyond patriarchy and male systems of power in Femdom, we remain captive to its “formalistic and compulsory thinking” (26). “Consciously inverting the traditional hierarchy of concepts” is not enough (26).

This is the illusion of power. Many Women appear dominant, yet their authority exists only within boundaries that men find exciting, manageable, or flattering. When the submissive sets the limits, shapes the scenes, and outlines the conditions under which the Domina’s authority is valid, She is not exercising power—She is performing it. Patriarchal culture thrives on these performances because they maintain the fantasy of female control without requiring any real loss of male centrality. The submissive still holds the power, even as he kneels. His desire remains the architect of the experience, and Her dominance becomes the service that caters to it. What looks like surrender is often the choreography of male fantasy.

Much of modern BDSM reinforces this dynamic by adopting an egalitarian model of negotiation that, while well-intentioned, quietly preserves patriarchal logic. The standard rule—“everything must be discussed, agreed upon, and approved by both partners”—sounds perfectly ethical. Yet when you look closer, it produces a form of Domination/submission that is conditional and revocable at any moment. This is for protection, but it also steals away any real Domination/submission. The Domina’s authority lives only within the limits of the submissive’s desire, and the moment She exceeds his expectations or disrupts his fantasy, the illusion breaks. This is not real power; it is faux power, dependent on continual validation. The irony is that the culture that claims to celebrate Domination/submission is often the one least capable of sustaining it.

Yes, the so-called egalitarian system of power dynamics is the very same patriarchal structure that produced the “Mistress” figure in the Victorian era—it simply changed currency. In the nineteenth century, men paid women to simulate domination for their amusement. Today, in many kink dynamics, they offer consent instead of money but maintain the same controlling logic: “I will give you something of mine (my submission, my compliance, my consent) in exchange for you giving me the fantasy I desire.” It is still a trade, and in any trade the buyer sets the limits of value. The submissive dictates what the Domina may or may not do by determining the price of his participation. Even when phrased as mutual negotiation, the economic grammar remains intact: bidding, bargaining, compromise, and approval. The Domina becomes the contractor, not the sovereign. This is why egalitarianism feels fair yet keeps power masculine—it re-casts authority as a transaction instead of a relationship of rule. As Catharine MacKinnon noted, the liberal ideal of fairness is itself a patriarchal concept, grounded in the marketplace rather than in moral reciprocity (MacKinnon 1989, 163). Fairness may ensure that everyone gets a turn, but it cannot produce equality of authorship. In the Absolute Femdom model, by contrast, the exchange is not economic but ethical. The submissive does not purchase scenes through consent, he grants allegiance to the Domina’s structure of governance. Her authority is not negotiated, it is entrusted.

Feminism, for all its progress, has also contributed to this confusion by promoting the idea that equality is the ultimate moral good in every context. In daily life, equality is essential—it protects, empowers, and ensures fairness. But equality inside a BDSM power exchange is something else entirely. It undermines the very structure that makes domination work. When both parties hold identical influence over how control is expressed, the experience can no longer produce the asymmetry that true Domination/submission requires. The result is a kind of neutralised domination—safe, polite, endlessly negotiated, and, for many, emotionally flat. It feels fair, but it doesn’t feel powerful. It’s a dynamic that allows everyone to participate safely but prevents anyone from truly dominating or submitting.

I’ve known many Dominas who admit that they don’t feel powerful at all because they have to do what the submissive wants, or he simply won’t submit. Their authority lasts only as long as he’s entertained. And, just as often, I’ve heard submissive men complain that they didn’t feel truly dominated because the Domina was merely acting out what they had asked for. Both sides end up performing, not inhabiting, their roles. This is the paradox of so-called “safety through equality.” It creates the appearance of security by flattening the very hierarchy that gives BDSM power exchange its existence. When power must be constantly negotiated to keep everyone committed, the exchange stops being an exchange of power and becomes a managed collaboration. Nothing challenging, nothing transformative—just a controlled simulation – actors playing a script.

This is where the Absolute Femdom model diverges. Absolute Femdom recognises that ethical hierarchy and equality of human worth are not opposites—they can coexist. The difference lies in how power is distributed, not in how respect is maintained. In Absolute Femdom, both partners remain equal in humanity, but not in authority. The Domina leads because Her knowledge, vision, and erotic truth form the structure of the dynamic. The submissive consents to that leadership, not to a list of acts or scenes, but to the Domina’s authorship itself. This transforms consent from a continual bargaining process into a framework of trust. The submissive’s safety is preserved through the Domina’s ethics and responsibility, not through his micro-management of Her choices. Within this structure, power ceases to be a performance and becomes a lived reality—a form of governance grounded in care, clarity, and deliberate asymmetry.

In this sense, the illusion of control collapses the moment a Woman stops performing power as an aesthetic and begins embodying it as authorship. The Domina who commands from Her own desire, rather than performing within a man’s, is no longer acting out domination—She is defining it. Her power is not a costume to be put on for effect, it is a language through which She orders Her erotic world. And the submissive who enters that world does not lose dignity by following Her; he gains access to a structure capable of transforming him precisely because it is not built around his desire.

When domination flows from female desire rather than male fantasy, it becomes something entirely different. Not a show of power, but the practice of it.

Breaking the Script and Reclaiming Real Power

Here I am getting deeper into power and ethical hierarchy – and it is based on my own personal Femdom philosophy. This is advanced power dynamic ethics and philosophy in BDSM – it is not for beginners of power dynamics, but I am putting it here because I believe in information freedom and access.

The promise of equality has always been seductive. It feels moral, progressive, and safe. Yet within intimate BDSM power exchange, equality can become a trap that disguises the endurance of patriarchal logic. When partners insist that power must always remain balanced—such as negotiating preferences—they preserve the very system that once confined Women to sexual service and submission. Catharine MacKinnon warned of this decades ago. She argued that liberal equality simply allows women to “join men on male terms” rather than redefining those terms altogether (MacKinnon 1989, 110) “which means attractiveness to men, which means sexual attractiveness, which means sexual
availability on male terms” (110). In BDSM culture, this pattern reappears when the male submissive retains structural influence over how the dynamic unfolds—deciding when it starts, how far it goes, the type and intensity of sexualness, and when it stops. On paper it looks egalitarian; in practice, the Domina is still operating inside his container. Her authority exists by permission, not principle.

This is the hidden cost of egalitarian BDSM. While it protects both parties through negotiation, it also dilutes the intensity that gives Female Domination its depth. The moment power must be continually balanced, it ceases to be Hers. What emerges is a kind of bureaucratic kink—meticulous, cautious, and emotionally flat. As bell hooks observed in her reflections on feminist reform, inclusion within existing systems rarely creates freedom, it simply asks to share the master’s house (hooks 1989, 27). Audre Lorde famously stated “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” This means that using the systems and ideologies of patriarchy to fight that system will only ever achieve superficial change, not genuine liberation, because it inherently reinforces the structure they aim to overthrow (Lorde 2018). When a Domina co-authors Her own authority with the male submissive, She becomes an employee within the “male house”. She may decorate Her room, but She still lives under his roof .

This dynamic often plays out through what I call the negotiation paradox. Negotiation is framed as mutual empowerment, yet its language assumes that both parties have equal authorship. In a patriarchal culture, that assumption is already biased. Men are socially trained to define, assert, and bargain, while women are trained to accommodate. Even in kink communities that champion “informed consent,” women often find themselves editing their own desires to seem reasonable or fair. The Domina learns to think in percentages—how much She can take without being called selfish, how firm She can be without losing a partner. Feminist psychologists have long noted this conditioning toward relational and sexual compliance (Showalter 1985, 132). It begins in girlhood and follows women even into spaces that claim to be liberated. So when a Woman brings this instinct into negotiation, She does not enter as a neutral agent. She enters already predisposed to compromise Her desires.

True power exchange cannot exist within that social reflex. The structure of Absolute Femdom challenges this by restoring asymmetry as an ethical choice. It reframes hierarchy not as oppression but as a clarity of role. In this system, both partners remain equals in human worth, but their responsibilities are distinct. The Domina carries authority because She holds the knowledge, the vision, and the ethical weight of the dynamic. The submissive consents not to specific acts but to Her authorship. It is, to borrow from Hannah Arendt, the difference between rule by force and authority grounded in responsibility and recognition (Arendt 1961, 196). The submissive’s surrender becomes meaningful precisely because it is not contingent upon his desire. His consent remains active and respected, but it no longer defines the Domina’s scope. The Domina’s ethics—not his preferences—form the boundary of action.

This approach does not reject feminism; it extends it. Feminism sought to dismantle male entitlement and restore women’s subjectivity. Absolute Femdom carries that mission into the erotic sphere by allowing Women to lead from their own centre. It rejects the notion that domination must imitate masculinity to be credible. Where patriarchal power demands obedience through fear or ownership, female power organises through insight, care, and relational intelligence. Luce Irigaray described female alterity as a form of difference that resists absorption into the masculine economy of control. The problem with male dominance, she argued, is “its power to reduce all others to the economy of the Same,” to “eradicate the difference between the sexes in systems that are self-representative of a masculine subject” (Irigaray 1985, 74). However, Femdom is not a mirror image of Maledom. The Domina does not need to borrow male aggression to assert Her will; Her authority arises from integrity, not imitation. This is why ethical hierarchy feels so different from the theatrical “power play” that dominates popular kink practice—it is not a performance of strength, but a practice of sovereignty.

The most accurate metaphor for this model is the teacher–student relationship. Both share equal dignity as human beings, yet the teacher leads because she possesses the knowledge to guide. The student consents to be taught and, in doing so, surrenders to learning. The hierarchy is not oppressive; it is functional. It exists to facilitate transformation. This is the structure that underpins every serious apprenticeship, from martial arts to medicine. It works because both sides understand the purpose of asymmetry. In Absolute Femdom, the same principle applies. The Domina’s leadership is not an ego trip—it is an ethical duty. She holds authority not to indulge in unexamined power, but to create a space where surrender can occur safely and meaningfully.

The problem with patriarchal domination is not hierarchy itself; it is the absence of ethics within hierarchy. The problem with egalitarianism inside kink is not fairness; it is the absence of transformation within fairness. Absolute Femdom resolves both by joining power and ethics into one structure. It refuses the illusion that equal influence automatically means mutual respect. True respect comes from integrity, clarity, and accountability—not from constant compromise. As Beauvoir warned, equality without redefinition simply re-centres the masculine as universal (de Beauvoir 1956, 13-17). The Domina who insists on Her own model of rule, built from female desire and moral authorship, does not reject feminism; she fulfils its unfinished work.

To practice Absolute Femdom, then, is to rewrite the erotic contract. The submissive no longer approaches as a consumer negotiating for experiences; he approaches as a devotee consenting to Her design. The Domina, in turn, governs that consent with care, intelligence, and self-awareness. What emerges is not patriarchal control painted pink, but a genuinely new moral architecture—one that demonstrates how hierarchy can be both ethical and liberating. When power begins from female authorship rather than male fantasy, the illusion of control finally dissolves. What remains is real female domination.

For those Domina who are apart of my Femdom Masterclass group, I will soon be posting up additional information about how to put these concepts into practice.

References

Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. New York: Viking, 1961.

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York: Knopf, 1956 [orig. 1949].

hooks, bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press, 1989

Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Lorde, Audre. The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. London: Penguin Books, 2018.

MacKinnon, Catharine A. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980. New York: Pantheon, 1985.