Creating a Dom Persona

transcending myths + subverting gender roles

Does being a dom always mean donning leather, holding a whip, and dishing out militant commands? What about holding silence or prolonged eye contact? What about whispering softly into someone’s ear about all the ways you’re going to pleasure them? I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be dominant, both sexually and in daily life, thanks to this podcast episode.

Being a dom can mean many things. It can include explicit, abrasive directionals but it can also include so many other feelings, moods, and actions. Recently, a partner and I decided that our intention for the evening was to turn into complete puddles. This led to me submitting to their touch, relaxing back into them as they slowly kissed the open landscape of my body, caressed my skin, decided when it was time to strip my clothes off. I felt myself melt under their dominance. And dominance, in that moment, meant: relinquishing my urges to control; allowing myself to relish in the ways they were adorning me with their hands and mouth; letting them set the pace.

There are times when I want to be of service, my aim to pleasure a partner completely, maintain influence by urging them to relax, submit, enjoy. There are times when I want to be more domineering, when I use language to assert myself, to pin someone under my presence. How bad do you want it? No, not yet. Dominance has meant toying with withholding and giving, setting the tempo. How long do I make them wait? How slow do I go? How do I hold it, not give in even when their body is begging for it?

Playing with these dynamics has also helped me subvert stereotypical gender roles. In On Women, Susan Sontag writes:

“Masculinity” is identified with competence, autonomy, self-control, ambition, risk-taking, independence, rationality; “femininity” is identified with incompetence, helplessness, irrationality, passivity, noncompetitiveness, being nice.

Sexuality has been this playground where I can experiment with these roles, dance between and around them, free myself of them. I get to choose which characteristics I lean into, relish in elements of myself I’m not “supposed” to. I’ve been noticing the ways that playing with this in the safe, sensual space of intimacy has helped me assert myself more in daily life; set boundaries with more confidence; speak up for myself; choose when I want to be softer, when I want to yield, and when I want to push back. It is teaching me how to ask for what I want, how to resist the learned behavior of bookending that declaration with an apology.

A piece I wrote inspired by creating a dom persona:

I hitch my head to the right, signaling them to lay on the floor. They place their head on a pillow and spill the rest of their body onto the rug. I am so used to being verbal. This act of silently directing, of using my body’s cues to command, feels slightly clunky but also electric. I hold their gaze, my eyes speaking of all the ways I want to take care of them, undo them into a puddle of pleasure.

I crawl over to them, frame their body on all fours, and lower my head until my mouth is hovering over theirs. There is an advance, their head lifts quick like a pecking bird. I pull back. Not yet, I whisper. I’m deciding if you deserve it or not. I scan their face, look directly into their eyes, smirk, hold just a second longer, and then plunge my mouth into theirs. The act of withholding makes our kiss rapturous, feral.

Between mouthfuls I become verbal again. I want you in my mouth. I want to kiss and lick every inch of you. I flush with power, embodying an authority I am not used to in my daily life. I am no longer a woman. I feel gender lift from my body. I am no longer beholden to the labels I was assigned: submissive, passive, helpless, nice. These scripts are burned under the heat of my breath as I skim the runway of their body with my mouth, touching down from time to time to land a kiss on their chest, belly, inner thighs.

In this space of play, I can be the things I am not supposed to be. I can access those pieces that are elemental to who I am but have not been given the courage to flourish. I am freed into other parts of me. I spill all my fanciful desires onto them. Their body softly shudders as I tease them, as I skirt around their most aching parts. I am keeping the tempo, controlling the pace.

thanks for reading and being here xo