Is she the Dominant or the Submissive? Or is he?

By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com
www.sensuoussadie.com 

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I used to have a handyman named Jerry, and as he looked over the botched job that the last handyman left he’d inevitably joke "that guy jerry–rigged it!" This was my first home, and I eventually realized that most handypeople say this same thing about whatever’s been done on your house. It’s some kind of code for "don’t worry little lady, I’ll fix you right up." My sister – who happens to be a contractor – also fits into this category so it’s not just the guys either.

That said, I’ve noticed the same kind of dissing behavior among the Dominant set in our community. I can’t say that I’ve done a survey, but darn near every Dominant I’ve known feels that they know that A. What a Real Dominant is, B. That they are one, and C. That they only know a few of them, say less than two handfuls. It’s a lot like most religions believing they are the chosen ones of God with everyone else going to hell. They can’t all be correct, because that would make no sense! Well, all those Dominants can’t all be right either.

So, it’s left to me, a modest Submissive to deconstruct the great mystery of why so many Dominants think that there are so few great colleagues in the world. Although of course, I have yet to meet a single Dominant who thinks he or she is not in the category of excellent! On a side note, I do want to mention that I have a wee issue with Dominants who self proclaim that they are so darn excellent. My sense is that this is only something that a Submissive can bestow, and even then isn’t this by nature subjective? And doesn’t boasting about your capacity as a Dominant in itself say something about your capacity one way or another? I’ll have to chew on that one a bit. My friend Jon, as he often does, has something to add to this:  "It is true that only a submissive can bestow praise on a Dom. Boasting about what a submissive said about me is realistic; boasting about what I think about myself is self-serving, to be suspected, and likely to be inflated." Not to mention that one person may think you’re the hottest thing on the planet and the next may think quite the opposite. After all when a Submissive is in love or even just turned on, a Dominant can seem far more sophisticated than they really are. And consider this: Dominants who date young and novice Submissives are far more likely to receive accolades from their partners if only because a novice won’t know any better. In other words, who’s making the judgement of your greatness? Now I will note that Jon reminds me that even when you do please a novice Submissive, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not great as a Dominant, only that in my opinion, a novice is not going to be the best judge of what makes for more complex and mature play.

Now, let’s look at other ways you could determine whether someone was practiced at the art of dominance, whether you are a Dominant or Submissive yourself. I see four possible avenues, with only one being truly valid as I see it. Say you are a thoughtful and experienced player, and submitted to a Dominant and made a judgement based on your personal experience. (If you are a Dominant of course, I’m presuming that you either switch or that you’re doing it as part of your training) That said, it’s still only one opinion and as we all know, opinions are subjective and can be swayed by chemistry and your state of mind. Still, I’ll give that the benefit of the doubt. The last three are far less dependable. You could have observed the Dominant in a public event such as a munch, playing at a play party, or heard stories about them from one or more Submissives.

First let’s look at behavior at a public and non–playing event. I have a dear friend Larry who is one of the most experienced Dominants I know. In public however, he has a serene persona and exhibits a gentle way with his Submissive who he’s been with for many years. Many people mistake him for a Submissive himself because of his quiet ways. This would be a very big mistake, and is just another example of how people so often judge a book by its cover. This is not so different than how people judge me, more often than not, to be a Dominant because of my assertive way of moving through the world. And they could not be more wrong. For these and other reasons you should never judge anyone’s ability to dominate or submit based on their public behavior.

But what about observing play behavior? Can you judge whether someone is a quality Dominant by observing their abilities in a play situation? In some ways you can. You certainly can tell how well they can flog, spank or do whatever it is they may be doing. And if you believe that these activities are the whole of being a quality Dominant then it is your thinking process that’s immature, because these overt activities are only a small percentage of what goes on in a BDSM relationship. Part of this is that you are only seeing a public scene that is in a sense, theater. This couple knows they are being watched so they are going to do certain kinds of things that they feel comfortable with doing in public. Jon puts it this way, "Public players play to the crowd, whether they know they are or not. Private play is necessarily different than public play, and is by nature is something that we cannot see or know. I would also say that all good scenes have a sense of theater in them. A beginning, excitement, anticipation, a climax, and then aftercare. Just hitting a girl periodically all day long is not a scene, and it is not satisfying to anyone. Public play does indeed have the issue of ‘playing to the crowd,’ but dismissing it as theater diminishes the real need for theater, even in private."

In addition, you cannot see how that Dominant treats his partner outside the public eye, how he manages conflict, and all the other intangibles of a relationship. In short, public play shows a sliver of a relationship, but only the sliver that the couple wishes to show you. We all have our public personas and those include only about as much data on a person as a resume does.

Finally, let’s address the stories we hear about this Dominant or that. Whenever a couple splits up, you’re bound to hear lots of painful stories from one or both of them. Of course, you’re less likely to hear the good stories but there must have been plenty of them or they wouldn’t have been together, but we don’t hear those much after the fact. Are the stories true? Well they are, and they aren’t because they too come from the perspective of the people who experienced them and like all things there are always two sides to every story. I often write about my own experiences in my columns and they are the truth as I know it. But I also know, and I hope that you know too, that if you asked the Dominant in question they would have their own version. That’s the nature of experience and there is really no way of getting around it. In the end, you have to be very careful about judging people based on hearsay – and it’s always hearsay.

The bottom line is that if you ask the Submissive who just left a Dominant; well that Dom was "jerry rigged" and needed to be fixed because there were a million things wrong with him or her. But ask a Submissive who is newly with someone and is in love or lust, and that Dominant will be the greatest on the planet. Who is truly great on an objective level? That’s a really tough one, and probably no one can really say. I have my own opinions about what makes a sophisticated Dominant and you can read my article on that, but even the ones I know have good days and bad days because they too are human beings like the rest of us. So really, I’d rather stay away from the boasting titles and recognize that most Dominants and Submissives have our moments of being great, and also our moments of being, well, not so great - even me. So all I can say to the next Submissive in line is "don’t worry little lady, the next one will fix you right up."

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Read Sadie's Article The Sophisticated Dominant

Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene. Read an excerpt and more at Sadie's Kinky Goodies http://www.sensuoussadie.com/sadieskinkygoodies.htm. She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn, Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com or visit her website at http://www.sensuoussadie.com/. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright 2007 Sadie Sez Publications