I performed Dominatrix for the first 5 or so years of my 30’s at an all-Asian commercial dungeon. My limited and narrow idea of Dominatrix - tightly leather-clad vixen teetering in platform thigh high boots and a lipstick scowl, exerting seductively relentless control for her insatiable appetite for sadism, this Pain Vixen lives in many of our psyches as an archetype that is both thrilling and terrifying, wildly dangerous and full of feminine mystery, yet shallow. I embodied this idea as a jumping-off point and I performed her as I learned of each client’s various fetishes and wide array of desires, but with a lack of psychological understanding of these interactions. For me, The Dominatrix was simply an overall shell for a Fetish Service Robot. We were groomed to center male pleasure and to deliver an orgasm as the end goal, calling it a “reward”. The Hitachi magic wand was of frequent use. But somehow, teetering in Pleasers on the office carpet, saying “cum for me” honestly didn’t feel like real dominance, more of a job. I knew there had to be a more. The idea of real dominance began to emerge as more than just a one-hour interaction with someone, centered on their orgasm. But what did more entail?
Every so often, a truly submissive client would boggle my expectations. Isn’t she who they wanted? I recall my first chastity client - a thoroughly baffling concept- who wanted me to keep him locked in this little dick-shaped cage and keep the key. He was gifting his own chastity to me, but I personally didn’t care much about controlling a man’s dick beyond the allotted time we spent together. At the time I was unaware of how little control they really had over their loose flesh cannons. I wanted to do a good job and keep my clients coming back, so I performed the enthusiasm and desire of making men “cum for me” or telling them that I control their orgasm. This felt like that time at the strip club when Dr. Dre came with his homies and one man handed me a twenty and told me to make his dick hard. There has to be more than this. Research ensued.
The idea of focusing on one part of a person’s life, while is important to acknowledge and honor that part of the person, can be tangentially distracting to the ultimate wellness factor of focusing on the person as a whole. A holistic approach from Femdom takes into consideration the whole - including the context - of each person containing multitudes and layers. The sexual is but one part. There’s the emotional, the mental, the pathological, the spiritual, and so on, and they all work together. It’s one thing to tell someone they need to get genitalia aroused for you, it goes beyond to acknowledge that in old age, a man may need boner shots and administer them to him as you keep him in a neoprene sleep sack under leather straps and chains with locks. And to demand they stay hydrated and meditate every day for at least 5 minutes.
This Femdom journey just keeps getting more interesting.
I became more interested and focused on integrating this idea of Femdom into other parts of my life and wanted to explore and expand what Femdom meant to me. It was way more compelling to be a Kinky Dominant Woman in the real world than in the bubble of the kink community. But the things I learned at the dungeon stuck with me and it took a long process of evaluating and unlearning that brought me to embrace a more holistic approach to Femdom. Many of my friends and colleagues also serve as inspiration for a consciousness of Femdom.
Femdom that address the whole person. The mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health of who She has ownership over. Redefining ownership as stewardship rather than solely possession.
This is one of the fundamental premises behind Holistic Femdom, I believe. While femdom does not exist in a binary or even a spectrum, performative Femdom is not inherently less than Holistic Femdom, but is a part of a greater whole in the Femdom universe/ecosystem. My explorations of the balance between performative and Holistic Femdom are still developing and it’s this exploratory journey that keeps me humble and curious.