Start up any kink forum, and the same standard questions come up, time and time again: “How the hell do I get a Mistress/Domme/Dom/Dominatrix?!” Sister to this plaintive cry is the equally desperate call of the dominant women “How the hell do I make these guys figure out how to approach me properly?!”

This is the awkward part: trying to give advice. As observed by Beej, there’s a lot of hand holding Mumsy advice, often downright basic things about regular baths and wearing some pants on the first date; a hell of a lot of idealistic twiddlings on the true beauty of kinky sex and the difficulty in doing it; there’s a whole suitcase full of books about starting out kinky in any particular orientation you want, many of which have been around since before absolutely everyone had the internet; and of course there’s an active scene in most communities of a certain size, where at least one person fancies themselves to be a mentor.

This is not even getting into the websites people have put together giving various shades of advice, from pornographic fantasy like the abysmal Elise Sutton to fussy little tripod and archived Geocities pages that were labours of love of some well meaning person about a decade ago, and still bear their black backgrounds and white or coloured text, (because anything about kink has to look like something I thought was cool when I was a 15 year old goth) and “under construction” GIFs. But your question is probably- Where are the fem doms at and how do I approach one without getting devoured like a male praying mantis or shunned like I was president NAMBLA?

Where do you find dominant women?

The place where you’re most likely to meet a dominant women is the same place where you’re most likely to meet vanilla women, which is to say your work, hobbies, classes, neighbours, friend-of-a-friend introductions, regular dating services, the children of your parent’s friends they keep trying to hook you up with, and so on. There’s no super secret hideout that’s filled with single dominants pining for submissive men and the majority of dominant women won’t be found wearing sneers and tight shiny black corsets. Even the ones that do, whether out of professional obligation or personal desire, reliably have other preferred costumes for groceries, walking the dog and their niece’s sixth birthday. Finding a kinky partner is surprisingly similar to finding a non-kinky one, with good chemistry and things you can talk about (other than what a worthless piece of meat you are and how awesome she is) being just as important as the bits with the whipping for establishing a lasting relationship.

This is despite of the existence of local kink scenes and other methods of meeting self labelled, openly advertising women. There’s plenty of direct targeting dating services out there: collarme.com and alt.com let you search by location and fetish, while lonely hearts groups on fetlife.com are regularly created for the larger communities.. The reason why I say your chances are better outside the kink bubble is because kinky women in the scene make up only a small fraction of the total number of kinky women out there. Not every woman is aware of her local scene, fully in touch with her kinks or thinks of them as a big enough part of her identity to devote the social time to attending kink events. Indeed, for many people public participation runs counter to their sexual interests, because they are strongly private monogamists, or not interested in involving multiple people in their sex lives, even on the periphery. Even putting that aside, women openly wearing the dom hat are being constantly mobbed with attention, and this leads to knee jerk reactions for self protection, and not the nice ball busting kind. I’m not saying you can’t, I’m saying that statistically speaking the women who are easily found are only the tip of an iceberg. So, to extend the metaphor to ludicrous lengths, if you’re looking to get your Titanic of loneliness shattered, you’re better off including the whole ocean in your search, not just a few sheltered bays and harbours.

That being said, I appreciate that sorting out who will be enthusiastic about whipping you from who will be vaguely uncomfortable and never call is more than a little bit of a social headache. Don’t despair quite yet. It is more than a little bit of a nuisance to reveal your sexual tastes to a new person, especially when you’re just getting to know her and you’re already sniffing each other out. The trick here is intelligent flirting. Let us say you meet a new woman and the chemistry is good. Maybe she’s a co-worker, or you’re volunteering at the Gay-Straight Alliance together or she plays on the same WoW servers and roleplays a charming orc. Either way, whether you’ve gotten as far as making the bed springs sing or you’re still at the sharing-a-coffee-in-the-break-room stage, there’s ways of asking that don’t explicitly come out as “Can you please zip me into a peanut butter filled gimp suit?”

Use the freedom that flirting has to play make believe, and pay attention to her dynamics with you. For example when I and a potential man of the sub type are getting our flirt on there’s often a decidedly predatory dynamic. I don’t mean that you should tolerate unsolicited abuse from a sociopath, I mean that people typically reveal themselves in what they are willing to joke about. For example very subtle jokes about being taken captive, gentle bullying on her part, mock aggressiveness, enjoying acts of female boost chivalry like carrying her crap or asserting her own desire for autonomy including lots of bossy female friend advice are all bits of bait that might tell you she’ll be more open to kinky topping (but may mean she’s socially aggressive but vanilla inside, nothing being perfect). On your side you can try to lure out cues by joking about being punished or, if you think you won’t make an ass of yourself, tease a little bit and watch to see if she responds with a playful smack down.

How do I greet an openly dominant woman?

Let’s say that you do meet some pretty awesome people in the scene, or someone catches your eye on a kink socializing website. How do you go about contacting this woman while avoiding coming across as either creepy or forgettable?

Thankfully, in many situations some of the work is done for you. Kink websites usually have profiles that tell you a bit about the woman, including her preferred form of address. Some women are really into strange men calling them “Mistress”, some women feel the term is closer in intimacy to being called “my darling wife”, and hearing it from a stranger is downright disturbing. In any case, read her profile, and she’ll usually tell you up front how she approaches kink, and therefore if she’s into protocol from everybody, if she takes things seriously, or is more of a bedroom player, and a bit more of her likes and dislikes. Tailor your approach accordingly.

Do not start the conversation based on how hot she is, how horny she makes you or the list of things you want her to do, or even a big long list of your turn ons and fetishes with no particular expectations. All these will cause women to write you off even if your intentions were honourable, and are best saved for after she’s decided you are safe and passably sane. Get introduced as a person and then bring your libido out.

If you met on a forum, a blog or as part of some sort of open soapbox situation like a workshop, you can continue the conversation you were having. This little bit of small talk is a heck of a lot easier than trying to formally introduce yourself as a possible partner- since if she’s single(or poly) and looking, the potential exploration of chemistry will be implicit in your conversation.

Responding to hot internet pictures are a bit more tricky, since you don’t have much to go on. Rather than going straight for the kill and calling her sexy, cute, pretty or even beautiful, try to approach from a technical angle. Was it a self portrait? Did she enjoy the event she was at? Where did she buy the whip she was holding? Is the scene easy for a woman her age (whatever her age)? Remember that even online profiles that have no pictures get messages from guys calling them gorgeous, so the only thing a woman will take from this sort of compliment is that you’re announcing you’re a heterosexual male. Polite flattery is fine, but you’re not going to stand out if all you can do is positive commentary on her looks.

In person meetings follow the same lines, where small talk and trying to find other things in common than your kinks is much better than dropping to your knees and kissing her feet. If you’re shy, many events have hosts, or at least super involved social volunteers who can get you introductions to the people attending. Even the event organizer, who will usually include contact information with the event announcement, should be able to help you as they will know some of the people attending.

So the trick here is to treat women like humans you want to get to know better and not fetish filling objects. You’ll waste a lot less time calling random strangers “goddess!” while trying prove your perfect submissiveness and when you do get a nice dominant lady to pounce you you’ll have something to talk about while she’s smooching your bruises.

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