I'm Cathy; born in 2000, queer, agender lesbian, switch irl but sub-leaning on this blog.
She/they works in a pinch, but I honestly really prefer my name over any pronouns.
Taken since 2018- not currently looking for other partners, online or elsewhere. Desperate for kinky friends, though!
My hardkink blog is @mamasdumbbaby.
DNI: If you don't have your age readily visible on your blog, you will be blocked! Besides the obvious (minors, pedophiles, racists, etc), please don't interact if you post pro-ed content/thinspo/ect.
This post is basically a transcript of a speech I give to newbies to the D/s scene all the time IRL. I figured it might be useful not only to people curious about kink IRL but also to smut writers here on the smut writing website.
For the purposes of this post, I am sending specific physical acts out of the room. Right now they don't matter, because you can meet an emotional need through any number of physical acts. So when I say that there are many ways to dom and many ways to sub, I am not referring to many kinds of physical acts. I mean that there are many emotional needs that doms and subs bring to scenes, and those can change the scene more than the choice of physical acts that will occur in that scene.
I say this to newbies to the scene because they tend to have a narrow view of the motivations and needs that bring people to D/s, biased by both the newbie's own preferences and the depictions of D/s they've seen in media. The same is true of people who write kink fic. Kink fic is very biased to a narrow subset of the wide range of emotional needs that people might bring to this kind of play.
It's really important to understand this in D/s IRL because a mismatch or miscommunication about these needs can lead to a bad scene. For example, let's take the approaches of sub-as-beloved-pet and sub-as-object. If a dom treats a sub as a beloved pet when what they really want is to be treated like an object, then a sub who went into a scene needing to be ignored, or at the very least the illusion of being ignored and disregarded, is suddenly in the spotlight of a lot of intense attention and affection. Again, I will note that both of these scenes could potentially involve the same physical acts, just approached differently. Let's say it's a service submission scene where the sub is naked and cleaning the room for the dom. Sub-as-beloved-pet would get frequent praise and lots of patiently repeated instructions, while sub-as-object would get one detailed instruction at the beginning and no reinforcement except a punishment if they get part of the instruction wrong.
I'm going to go through a bunch of different styles of dom and sub, with the emotional needs that underlie them. This list is not exhaustive. I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of or encountered, so feel free to reblog with additions. It may also be a bit dom-biased because I'm a dom, but I think that might be for the best, because the emotional needs of doms are generally less understood than those of subs.
Various consensual kinks discussed below. Kinkshamers in the notes will be blocked with extreme prejudice.
Dom-as-control: This may seem obvious or even trivial, but it shouldn't be dismissed: many doms are motivated by an emotional need to have some part of their life where they have total control over what is going to happen. Something that I love about this style of domination is that I always know exactly what will happen next (except if there's some emergency, safeword, or other issue to address.) There are no wild cards in a controlled D/s scene except for those I explicitly allow (like if I ask a sub to choose which whip I'll beat them with.) This is also a reason why I personally have a very hard time switching; I have difficulty with the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next. It should be noted that this style of domination is fairly incompatible with the bratty style of submission, as the brat is constantly throwing wild cards into the scene.
Sub-as-blankspace: The other side of this coin is the sub who needs to not have to think anymore. They've spent all day deciding what to wear and what to eat and which toothpaste to buy and they just want to stop. This is a very common motivator. This sub needs specific and clear commands from a dom, without too many steps, or else needs to have a well-established protocol of kneeling and service that they can do by pure muscle memory. This sub does not want the dom to offer them a choice of whips they can be beaten with, because that forces them out of the blissful blankspace of not needing to choose.
Dom- or sub-as-service: The same emotional need can sometimes motivate domination or submission! Many people dom or sub out of a desire to please their partner. It's about taking on a defined role that you know will meet your partner's needs. It feels good to be needed, after all. This motivation for D/s is generally the best understood by the public, especially as a motivation for doms. It's generally more socially acceptable to want to control and torment people if you're doing it selflessly in order to please them. A big part of my motivation for making this speech to people, and for writing this post, is to point out that this is far from the only style of domination, and pleasing their subs is far from the only emotional need that doms might have.
Dom-as-whumper: I'm using this terminology because of the website I'm on. I'm not into whumpfic, but I recognize in people who have a visceral need to see their blorbos whimpering and bleeding the same need I have to tear apart a cute kitten with my bare hands, or to crush a sub beneath my booted foot. It's the cuteness aggression approach to domination: sometimes your sub is so cute your hands itch with the urge to destroy them. This is where domination and sadism bleed into each other; this style of domination does not work well for the sub who wants to submit without being hurt or humiliated.
Sub-as-object: Subs who like to be treated as furniture, robots, or objects are often motivated by a need to enjoy a sexual or kink situation while being free of attention and scrutiny. Obviously, some baseline level of attention is needed for BDSM safety; the dom needs to be able to notice if the sub is injured or upset. But beyond that baseline, it can feel very freeing for a sub to be turned on, blissed out in subspace, crying, drooling, whatever, without anyone closely watching or listening to them, so long as they fulfill whatever their purpose as an object is.
Sub- or dom-as-flex: Both doms and subs can be motivated by a need to feel competent. I definitely feel awesomely powerful and competent when I do a style of domination that requires specialized skill, such as hypnosis. Submission can also provide a feeling of competence: look how long I was able to stay kneeling on the hard floor! Look how perfectly I cleaned the room, exactly as Mistress told me to do it!
Dom-as-troll (or mad scientist): The sibling to this kind of dom is the writer who thinks "wouldn't it be fucked up if....?" and then writes a freaky nasty little horror story about it. A great thing about D/s is that you can have a thought like "wouldn't it be fucked up if I tied up my sub and then ate their favorite snack right in front of them?" and then you can just do it (provided you know your sub likes to be tied up and tormented.) Then you can find out how your sub would react to your terrible ideas and laugh evilly at the results. The emotional need being served here is the goblin part of your brain that wants to break things just to see how they shatter. All you need to do is find someone who wants to be broken.
Sub-as-brat: Brats are often discussed as a single type of sub, but in my experience, there are two rather different emotional needs that drive brats. Some people are brats because they need the assurance that they can act out all they want, and it won't derail the action; the dom is strong or skilled enough to subdue them no matter what nasty tricks their goblin brain gets up to. Other people are brats out of a need to live in a predictable and fair moral universe. Those brats want a very clear system of rules and punishments for those rules. Then they test the rules, and they get meted out exactly the punishment they were promised. Within the world of this scene, the world is fair, and the same misbehavior will always face the same consequences, something that rarely happens in the real world. These types of brats are rather different, because the first kind of brat doesn't care as much if the consequences of their misbehavior are inconsistent, while the second kind cares a lot.
Sub-as-beloved-pet: Or beloved child, if they're an ageplayer. I find that subs that like to be a beloved puppy are driven by an emotional need to be loved, treasured, and supported unconditionally, even if they make mistakes, even if they behave messily or clumsily, even if they look silly, because that's how a good pet owner should treat a pet. There might be discipline involved, but the discipline is very supportive and patient.
Dom-as-nurturer: Some doms are motivated by a need to be in a nurturing role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a man who wants to express affection and tenderness to his partner but has a hard time doing so because of the way he was raised may be able to unlock that ability if his partner plays a sweet puppy and he's playing the puppy's doting owner. Basically, the D/s scene creates a little world and a set of roles in which it's expected and normal for the dom to be nurturing, even if that's not true for the dom outside of that scene.
Dom-as-enfant-terrible: The other side of the coin is a dom who needs to be in a role where they can be unreasonable, demanding, and selfish, a role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a mother who spends all day thinking about her family's needs may relish the opportunity to center her own desires without worrying if she's being "too much." She can be impatient and fussy and demand the sub do things over and over until she's satisfied, all of which she can't do when she's working as a teacher or other caring role.
Dom-as-artist: I think this is a hugely under-appreciated motivator for doms. Many have a need to be creative and imaginative that they fulfill through domination. I've been to workshops and demos at kink conventions where I've been awed by another dom's fiendish creativity. I once watched a hypno dom with a sub who got off on being afraid, and he hypnotized her and crafted an extremely elaborate horror scene in the room, filling it with menacing shadows and phantasms. This is where I'm contractually obligated to link A Dom DM because this is where domination overlaps a lot with game running and game design.
Sub-as-aesthetic-object: The flip side of this coin is that many subs enjoy being an aesthetic object or canvas for a dom's art. Very often these are subs chasing a need to feel beautiful, or at least enjoyable to look at. Subs who want to be aesthetic objects may enjoy wearing special outfits during scenes, or being posed in sexy or appealing positions. Subs in this kind of scene may enjoy letting go of worrying about whether they look good to the dom, because the dom is shaping them to their own preferred aesthetic, whether that's via poses, makeup, shibari, or something else.
Sub-as-sexual-creature: A lot of subs enjoy being called sluts, offered up for free use, or otherwise being hypersexualized. Why is that? Well, our society has a lot of shame and repression around sex, and it can feel much easier to relax and enjoy sex if it's couched in the fantasy that you have no choice because you've been reduced to a purely sexual creature. The sub has an emotional need to give up responsibility for choosing to have sex and be sexual, because that responsibility is a heavy weight to carry.
Dom- or sub-as-taboo-breaker: This is a huge motivator for both doms and subs. We all live in a society, and sometimes we feel a need to break the rules of that society. Both domination and submission provide opportunities to do so. It's taboo to piss yourself as an adult, but a watersports scene creates a space where it is acceptable or even desirable for a sub to break that taboo. As a dom, I personally get a huge taboo-breaking thrill from slapping a sub across the face. There's something about the sheer disrespect of it, and the memory of being scolded for doing it as a child, that fills me with impish glee.
Dom-as-hunter/sub-as-prey: For the hunter to catch the prey, there must first be a chase, or at the very least an ambush. This need not be a literal chase (we sent physical acts out of the room, remember?) but it is a dynamic to hunter/prey-flavored BDSM: the hunter has to earn it. This fulfills an emotional need for both dom and sub: a dom who struggles with feelings of unworthiness can feel like they've earned their partner's submission, and a sub can feel that the dom cares enough to put in the effort to catch them. Hunter/prey also allows dom and sub to explore some pretty dark emotions within the safety of consensual kink, such as fear, obsession, and consumption.
Dom-as-shadow: I mean shadow here in the sense of shadow work. Many doms take inspiration from people who bullied them in school (and many subs enjoy re-enacting scenes of childhood bullying in a safe and consensual context.) There is a real emotional need served by claiming the power of those bullies for yourself. Those childhood cruelties can be utterly transformed by the change of context. For example, the catty whispers and sneers of straight girls who bullied me for being queer comes out very different when I perform those same catty sneers as a genderfucky adult.
Sub-as-lesser-being: While some subs like to be beloved pets, and others like to be disregarded objects, some like to be pond scum. There can be a real freedom that comes from occupying a role of being disgusting and horrible. Nothing good or useful can be expected of you, and nothing you do will ever earn praise, and so you're free from worrying about or pursuing any of those things. Sub-as-lesser-being is also a space to explore difficult emotions like shame and humiliation in a safe context.
we gotta normalize being trans okay i was talking about how awesome sucking dick is and the person i was talking to was like "huh i thought you were a lesbian" dude first of all i have never sucked a male dick in my life i only suck female dicks like god intended. if you don't understand this we can't have a conversation. i kinda forgot male dick even exists. it's not real to me
Learning from every source in your life that sex is disgusting and sinful, that you should be ashamed of your feelings, thoughts and desires and then having someone in a dog mask tell you, "No, it's all cool, actually," is mind-blowing lol
In the comments seeing a lot of aces saying "Yeah I appreciate that kinksters are often accepting of ace people" and that is because there are many asexuals in kink! Sexual attraction or behavior is not essential to kink/BDSM.
My spouse and I are both a-spec kinksters who do a lot of Kinky Activities and exactly zero traditional genital-involving sex. I write about being nonsexual kinksters professionally as well.
"One funny thing: At most of the kink parties Selena went to, no one was doing anything that seemed to be sexual. People would say, 'I'm tying someone up, that's sex,' but much of the time it didn't seem to feel sexual and nobody could explain how this made sense. Was tying someone up really sex, or was it a rope and some trust? Selena didn't care about sex, but she did love rope, so it was unclear exactly what was happening here, and what she actually wanted.
Intimacy, it turns out. Selena cared about intimacy, and kink was a way for her to be intimate with others. Intimacy and sex are not the same. Intimacy can be in service of sex or sex can be in service of intimacy, or they can be completely separate..."
-Angela Chen, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex
Even if the popular and oft-maligned traditional ageplay dynamics (eg diaperplay, caregiver/little, etc) don't interest you or actively turn you off, I think that understanding the degree to which ageplay dynamics underly and interact with many supposedly "non-ageplay" erotic concepts and dynamics is essential for any complete kink education.
Why is it hot to call your partner mommy? Why is it hot to have your partner control what you wear? What imagery do you allude to to depict a partner as having reduced agency by virtue of reduced knowledge or awareness? When you speak in a harsh voice to compel a response, what are you alluding to? When you work around childhood trauma or lean into that trauma, what does the potential invocation of that trauma say about how the kink dynamic is viewed? Why are age gaps hot? What does the word 'brat' imply? What does spanking allude to?
To be clear, this isn't just true of kink, but this is a kink blog and I just want to communicate this relatively simple idea.
There are literally scientists who went into these studies genuinely believing in porn addiction who were eager to study it and its effects who came out no longer believing in it. Why? Because they're good scientists who changed their minds in the face of new evidence.
The key point in studies like this is that they always expect porn-related problems to go up as porn use goes up, and you would expect that because that's how every addiction works from gambling to cigarettes to alcohol to crack cocaine, but what they actually find is that the people with the most distress over their porn use is actually related to how religious they are, not how much porn they're watching. This is significant, because it means people who identify as "porn addicts" are not actually watching more porn than the average person; They just feel worse about it because they think they shouldn't be watching it AT ALL.
I really can't stress this point enough; Are there people whose lives are badly impacted by watching 22 hours of porn a day? Sure, they do exist and they have my sympathy, but the majority of cases of "porn addiction" are completely religiously motivated and have nothing to do with how much porn people are actually watching.
The key takeaway here is that shaming people for their sexuality is harmful. It's bad for people's mental health to make them feel shame over something they have no control over, like how horny they can get. It's wrong to force people to suppress their emotions and make them feel guilty for not harming anyone. As Drew of Genetically Modified Skeptic once said; You can't shame someone out of feeling horny any more than you can shame someone out of feeling hungry.
Christianity often does this as a form of control by selling you the sickness and the cure; We are created sick and commanded to be well.
I feel like people completely miss that so-called "submissive training" is also training for the dom.
Like, your rule about how you should be addressed feels undermined if you overdo it with a punishment, instead of a casual verbal reminder.
Your rule about how much water to drink doesn't feel like care when you don't call out when they need to drink more.
Your rule about bedtime is meaningless if the bedtime itself isn't consistent.
Training for the sub is to learn how to perform an expectation for a dom, and the flipside for the dom, is learning how to perform authority and understanding what kind of authority your sub will respond to in which situations. Being an authority figure is less like being the boss and more like being a gardener.
Rules that you train your submissive to follow are not something that you 'set and forget;' no, rules are like gardenbeds. You must actively care for and tend to the rules that you and your sub plant. Weed out the rotten rules that don't work or tweak a rule that's struggling so that it can thrive. Have a healthy soil for your rules to take root and grow and blossom. You don't "just know" how to be a good gardener. If you don't tend to them, rules wilt. Like with anything else, you have to learn and practice authority.
You don't have to be domineering when you practice authority either. In fact, I'd say that most rule enforcement feels warm and cozy when you're doing it right, but that can be subjective depending on your D/s dynamic. You have to show that you care both about your sub and about your garden of rules and that you are the authority that they specifically crave to be cultivated by.
So, what kind of garden have you planted? What parts of your garden need weeded? What rules grow and thrive easily there? How are you going to cultivate your authority?
Our garden has a clematis (rule for what title to use for me), but we needed to put up a lattice for it to climb in order to give it the structure (a public-friendly title) it needed to thrive year-round. That rule doesn't need much tending to in our garden, just a good structure and healthy foundation and it can be easily maintained.
Aesthetic control is so hot. Paint your nails this color because spring is coming. I'll braid your hair when I want it made up and I'll tell you when to take it down. Wear the mermaid eye makeup today, yes I'm still going to make it streak down your face later and I want you looking up at me with your eyes decorated when I do. Use the vanilla scented lotion, I'm in a baked desserts mood today. Wear the jewelry I got you on our trip because we're going out with friends later and I want them to compliment it so we can tell them where it's from.
I love this post I wrote and I thought of what my process was behind deciding what my sub wears and stumbled into a larger concept of being a good dominant that I thought I'd share here. So if it may help some doms out, here's a tip for how I implement aesthetic kink with my sub. Using the phrase "Wear <blank> because <reason why you think they should wear that clothing>, okay?" is a great way to tell your sub to wear something.
It shows that you're taking care to consider what is appropriate to wear and shows your reasoning, but it's also open ended enough as a question that your sub can still feel empowered to say "but what about <reason why that clothing choice might not be compatible in this instance>?" because even if you choose their clothing 100% of the time, there will always be that random occurrence where something completely out of your realm of knowledge as a dom affects what they can wear.
Having that wiggle room for your sub to give you feedback is really important for building a mental library of what your sub wears at what times (morning, daytime, for sleep) and in what settings (at home, at work, hanging out with friends, going out) during different conditions (hot/cold temps, weather, having their period, exercise, mental health, seasons) what they feel comfortable wearing, what materials and clothing they like or avoid, and when they think it's time to retire a piece of clothing.
Pay attention to those things, write down notes if you need to. With their consent you can also start deciding what gets bought for their wardrobe in the first place if you both would like that in your dynamic. And when you go to choose an outfit, makeup, and accessories consult these 5 points:
What does the weather look like?
What is on the schedule for when they wear it?
How are they feeling?
What do YOU want to see them wear?
Is it clean/available to wear?
Do you have any other parameters, either as D/s rules, individual preferences/tendencies as a couple, or submissive limits that would affect this choice? (Do you need to match metals/leathers, do you have a rule about no underwear worn in the house, do they like showing off jewelry you bought them, do they refuse to wear a certain cut of clothing because of how it looks on them, etc.)
If the weather is warm and clear skies, they have an open schedule, they're in a good mood, you want them to wear something sexy, and that doesn't clash with any other rules or limits for your sub then that's great! Just check if it's clean or available and set it out for them.
Don't wait for them to do it or ask later. Physically set the clothing/makeup/perfume/accessories aside yourself as much as you can. You're taking decisions away from them so they can enjoy themselves and feel relaxed and taken care of by submitting to you in this way. The best way to make them feel that is to physically set the items out for them.
You can also always do a stricter form of this kink later where the dom just decides everything and either doesn't need feedback because they choose so well, or you as a D/s couple enjoy the complete loss of aesthetic control the submissive gives the dominant. It just depends on your style/preferences and level of trust with each other.
But starting with "Wear <blank> because <reason why you think they should wear that clothing>, okay?" is so foundational to getting the most out of aesthetic kink as a dom or sub, especially if you're a beginner kinkster.
And beginner doms, your sub does want to be ruled over, that's true. But it's about the intention of how you rule over them and what you do with that control. Doing this regularly will help you practice that intentionality with aesthetic kink until you're freaking impeccable at choosing complete outfits for them.
Applying this lesson of intentionality in aesthetic kink to your dominance over other areas of their life is how you become the dominant of their dreams they brag to their kink friends about.
No kink will have the same process as another, but developing a thought process to how you exert control over your submissive for different kinks builds happy and healthy habits that turn you both on regularly. And then actively engaging with that thought process every time prevents things from going stale and keeps your sub feeling seen, cared for, and safe in the dynamic. Even for the more taboo, intense, and sadistic kinks.
Thanks for reading this post, I hope it helps you enjoy and safely navigate choosing things for your sub or being the sub that's having things chosen for you, especially in regards to deciding a sub's outfits and looks. Of course, this post only scratches the surface, and you should always do further research on each specific kink you engage with to come up with a relevant thought process.
