A question on Fetlife:
Is your dominance shaped by a reaction against anything?
The answer to this is complicated. I think we all look back into our past for confirmation of ‘who we are’, so there is a lot of bias in that kind of hindsight.
Sexually I vividly remember rape play with barbie and ken dolls (my sister was horrified and never let me play with hers again), and finding a deliciously dirty non-con sex novel outside a church while riding my bike. Both made me tingle in that breathless way that doesn’t quite have a focus when you are so young. Both experiences were filled with shame because I got caught and it was clear that this was not what normal girls did. Both of those memories were M/f, so if I identified as a submissive now, I could easily use those isolated experiences to say how I’d been submissive for-ev-ah.
So revisionist history is an interesting and personal thing because we manipulate our memories to fit our view of ourselves.
Still, I’d say that kind of, yes: my dominance WAS shaped by a reaction against something.
I grew up as an attractive young women in a world where that meant that I had to put up with attention and demands from boys and men that I wasn’t interested in and wasn’t comfortable with. I was essentially an object when I walked around in the world.
How that manifested was in a pretty strong ‘let’s see how much of a bitch you will put up with then’ kind of attitude where I would ‘test’ my power against them. I probably started doing that in my teens. Truth is, boys would put up with pretty much anything I threw at them to be with me, which was both empowering and baffling to me.
And still, I felt sexually stifled in my young years. I felt intensely sexual, would masturbate ALL THE TIME, craved touch and intimacy and sensuality, but what I got from most boys was a bombardment of their desires hammering at me incessantly all the time from everywhere. Sex wasn’t a mutual exploration, it was a battlefield. When I wanted to spend hours kissing and touching and feeling intense pleasure and enjoying each other, they would be fighting me to get their fingers in my cunt, grabbing at my breasts, shoving their dick against my thigh as if I was a thing to be used and not a person they wanted to bring pleasure to. I hated it, I recoiled from it, I was perpetually frustrated.
Then I found a girlfriend with whom I shared my early sexuality in a way that was perfect for me, removed from all of that demandy expectation, genuine mutual pleasure that I could never seem to get from boys.
When I started dating men again, I was more mature and I knew better how to manage my own experiences (versus just being a bitch). Part of that was taking control of those experiences, and by extension, of those who wanted to share them with me.
I learnt that if I clearly expressed what I wanted and accepted no less, rather than being turned OFF, men would step up to meet my expectations, which was (frankly) amazing. And those who wouldn’t step up, I would easily discard. As a result, I started to have relationships with men who were absolute sweethearts, while my girlfriends had men who treated them like many callous young men treat young women.
So in all of that (and in hindsight), I would say that my dominance grew out of wanting to take back my own power in a society that was constructed in a way that denied me sexual agency, that prevented me from having the romantic, sensual, and sexual experiences that I wanted. I actively took that control back rather than fall into a role of passive acceptance. There were still MANY ways that I was stifled before I found out that D/s was ‘a thing’, but I’d say my roots were there.
37 comments
What a sweet post and a very interesting look into the life of the Almighty Ferns! .
Seriously, that caused a very deep reaction in me thinking about myself, also finding a dirty magazine while riding my bike, and my reactions. I think that is what good writing is supposed to do, huh?
Anyway, awwww.
XOXOOOOOOOO
*smile* Thanks Drew, I’m glad you enjoyed it and that it made you think.
I’ll just put the hugs and kisses away for later…
Ferns
Oh!
I’ve never seen you explain it so succinctly and clearly before.
It can take a long time and a lot of pondering before a story about one’s life can be put together that way, can’t it?
(To add: I’m still struggling mightily with how rape play involving Barbie and Ken dolls might actually work.)
I think hindsight is always an interesting thing, and it’s genuinely difficult to know what’s true and what’s just a story you tell yourself.
So yes, I think you need quite a bit of time and mulling things over to try and unravel what and why.
“I’m still struggling mightily with how rape play involving Barbie and Ken dolls might actually work.”
Ha! Come on now. How does playing at anything work when you’re a kid?
Ferns
I used to have my male dolls in drag. My parents never really thought much of it and my brother thought it was funny. I had a variety of things that really lead to me being me, though. That’s just one of the things.
I enjoy seeing the view from a Dominant perspective, though. It is very interesting to me.
Keep up the great blogging.
-HH
Ahh, interesting. And yes, there’s always a variety of things, I think.
I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Ferns
Thanks for sharing this. Loved this part especially:
I think it speaks to the ‘root’ of our kinks / orientations may or may not be tied to what we think they are. I’ve seen quite often where someone just says “Welp; this happened, so therefore X” — similar to “I am shy so I’m submissive” or “I’m outgoing so I’m dominant” — you went deeper here (if that makes sense) and I like that. I wonder what some others would discover if they went deeper. But deeper might be hard / scary.
“the ‘root’ of our kinks / orientations may or may not be tied to what we think they are.”
I totally agree with this.
I’ve identified how I think it played out for me, but I imagine that our development is all pretty icebergy (for all of us), and there’s a ton of stuff that I’m not aware of that influenced ALL THE THINGS.
And I think deeper IS often hard and scary, which is why therapy is so useful. As a nation, we don’t really ‘do’ therapy, so we get to just skim the surface and then make shit up about our psyches if we want. Much easier.
Ferns
Most people are unwilling to accept that anything has helped shaped them. They are wrong, and lack the honesty and insight to understand how this is so – or even that this can be so.
You’re pretty cool. Far cooler (i.e. smarter, funnier, perceptive) than I. You also talk about a personal revisionist history. That’s god tier blogging (and indeed personal philosophy).
None the less, I do have a dick-level question; if your “dominance grew out of wanting to take back [your] own power in a society that was constructed in a way that denied [you] sexual agency” (and I do completely believe this), is there any chance that having regained your own power in a sexist society (i.e. our Western Society that is most certainly incredibly sexist) that echoes of your history could negatively impact on possible future relationships that you absolutely deserve to have?
Oh, and why shouldn’t any man have to meet your expectations? All partners should meet their partners expectations. And all should want to. If they aren’t prepared to try then they should simply fuck off.
Oh my Christ.
I should stop offering Gin Philosophy. Filled with fierce “good” intention but numb to nuance and subtlety.
I apologise for, like, everything.
*laugh* Apology for, like, everything accepted.
Ferns
*smile* Thank you for the kind words. You weren’t apologising for that were you? :P
“is there any chance that having regained your own power in a sexist society… that echoes of your history could negatively impact on possible future relationships that you absolutely deserve to have?”
I really have no idea: maybe.
But my history is pretty much every woman’s history (that is, I don’t think my experience is at all unique), it’s just that we all feel it and deal with it in different ways, so I don’t think I’m any MORE negatively impacted by it than anyone else.
I DO know that I still stifle parts of myself and that it’s ingrained now (I rarely flirt, for example, because it gets mistaken as genuine sexual interest vs a fleeting mutual pleasure, and that gets un-fun and awkward and ugly fast). I think it makes me reserved and quite closed which is part of why I’m ‘difficult’. Perhaps I would have been like that regardless or there’s some other reason for it, I have no way of knowing of course.
Ferns
*laugh* No, I wasn’t apologising for anything that you might have considered to be “kind words”, but rather for engaging myself with the topics of your various posts as a hammer might accidentally engage itself with a finger and thumb holding a nail.
I do appreciate your response though.
It’s strange to think of you as someone reluctant to flirt, given how confident and generally aware you appear to be (I don’t flirt either, but in my case it’s because I flirt like a hammer hitting a finger and thumb).
“Difficult” isn’t necessarily bad, by the way, just so long as there is actually a route through for a decent partner. Nothing good comes easy, right?