Femdom: The Word

I'm not sure if or how often I've used the word Femdom in this weblog. And can't say that I'll never use it in the future. If I just wanted to milk the search engines for hits I'd use it repeatedly. This entry will probably gets lots of visitors from Google, few if any of which will be happy to have arrived here to read my demurral.

I don't really like the term Femdom. OK, it is just short hand for female domination. Though some illiterates seem to think it means female dominants and post personals saying they are looking for a "a Femdom." S&M, BDSM, WIITWD, SSC all serve similar purposes.

Unlike the others for me Femdom has too many unhappy accretions. We owe this to the websites that seek to exploit the desire to be dominated by a woman. No fetish has more capitalists ready to grab a dollar from the unwary web surfer.

I've come to prefer the phrase Woman Worship myself. Though given my sexuality it doesn't have to be a woman. Man Worship sounds odd to my ears. For me it is really worship of a specific person: in my case someone feminine.

For me Femdom has come to embody the personal ad phonies who promise, "I'll make you wish you were dead." Really, now, why would I want that? Not that I don't get the appeal of a demonic female.

Femdom has come to seem a series of silly cartoons for me. Exaggerated, manufactured cruel women. There's no place for loving them as well as suffering under them. I regret the oversimplification, the dehumanization of the dominant woman.

It makes the Domina a caricature instead of a person. Easily the Domme becomes the creation of the man who imagines himself her slave. He, not her, is the tyrant; the one who must be satisfied. Instead of being a woman with needs and desires she becomes a machine who exists only to match the tiniest details of his fetishes.

If you are paying a ProDomme or just masturbating there's nothing wrong with that. I've done the latter myself for hundreds or thousands of hours. But if you want more than that then you shouldn't blind yourself to the truth that it is subtler and can be much richer.

Not that I expect the term Femdom to vanish. Or would suggest that it should. But being too comfortable with the clichés surrounding it may deprive both the dominating and the dominated of a wealth of emotion and pleasure.