Girl on the Net

As someone who very strongly identifies with certain submissive nicknames (‘good girl‘ – unngh) and utterly recoils from others (‘babygirl’ – meh), I’m always fascinated by the details of other people’s kinky identities. Are you more of a ‘Domme’ or a ‘Top’? Do you see yourself as ‘Sir’ or “Daddy’? Are you a nonbinary kinkster with a fucking cool gender-neutral moniker like ‘Boss’ or ‘Your Majesty’? Love it. Today’s guest blogger, Anna Syrma, responded to my call for guest blogs from women that might be suitable for International Women’s Day with this gorgeous piece about her kinky identity. I was inundated with amazing ideas, by the way, so we’re gonna stretch IWD out for at least another month (subscribe for updates!), but I picked this as the first post because it’s all about how Anna Syrma discovered, then embraced, her kinky identity as a Goddess.

I’m not a ‘Mistress’, I’m a Goddess

The discovery of my kinkiness happened the way so many people’s do: by being ever so slightly too interested in certain pop culture staples.

Stumbling across the genderfucky lingerie parade of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, catching Interview with the Vampire on TV late at night and realising I desperately wanted to be bitten, getting slightly confused as to why actors in movies pretending to be in pain sounded rather hot actually.

It was with the guy I started dating at university that I first got to properly explore these glimmers. His preferences were hinted at before we got together when a group of friends – with his permission – went poking around the external hard drive on which he kept his porn.

He’d clearly cast his net wide, and sheepishly admitted that he hadn’t actually looked at everything in the bulk downloads he’d accrued, but there were some common themes: powerful women and adorably submissive men.

It wasn’t long after we got together that the explorations began.

I had been something of a late bloomer, and the boys I’d been with beforehand had left me quite disillusioned – I only started masturbating when it became clear that my first boyfriend had little interest in getting me off, and while the second was far more enthusiastic I was never able to really articulate my desires.

My university boyfriend already knew them.

The contents of the hard drive were an icebreaker, and he was shorter than me and easily teased. Plus, he looked so cute squeezed into my cast-off lingerie.

Don’t pity him – it was only going to get ruined anyway.

Not all of our encounters strictly had somebody in charge – but if they did, it was definitely me. And that was fine. More than fine. In fact, it was nothing short of an epiphany.

Something clicked, and it felt like I was tapping into an entity that was unfathomable. Powerful. Divine.

But all good things come to an end.

The secular “goddess” is an archetype you encounter quite frequently if you move in certain circles.

Although perhaps less secular to some.

As someone drawn to spooky things who was once a baby – and is now an ageing – goth, I’ve found myself getting into the occult and the witchy, as well as having a bit more of an intentional dabble here and there.

I got into candles, continue to collect tarot cards, and have an altar or two – but I draw the line at crystals (I’m sorry, I just don’t vibe with them). I affectionately refer to people who are into such things – including myself – as being “weewoo”, and consider weewooness to be a spectrum that I am perhaps not as far along on as some.

Digitally, I’ve found that the weewoo space often intersects with that of the contemporary feminist one, with many of its denizens having books, courses, and one-on-one coaching to sell. You might find someone speaking of ways to honour The Goddess, but you also might find someone else advertising a 10-week course to release your inner goddess. Some might speak of both. Perhaps there’s room for a little polytheism in the interests of sisterhood.

Many even coyly refer to their services as “offerings”, and I too have partaken of – and learned from – the teachings of the goddess industry.

But deities differ, and one goddess can be quite unlike the next.

It was after my original tarot deck but before my inaugural altar that someone first called me Goddess.

I had come into another relationship, chaotic and ill-fitting, but it recaptured that spark I had felt with my university boyfriend and craved ever since – and that, for a time, was enough.

It came about, as our domme/sub sparring intensified, when we had a conversation about what we would like to be called.

They liked “good girl”, a source of gender euphoria for them alongside the other, less wholesome connotations, but what about me?

I’d not had a title before, and the initially proposed “Mistress” felt way off. It implied a level of severity and put-togetherness I could not identify with. I thought of all the perfectly coiffed and be-latexed capital M Mistresses I’d seen in my time lurking the internet. No. I was not a Mistress.

I don’t quite remember who said “Goddess” first, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it – and all the fun thematic stuff was already baked in.

What could you do for a Goddess but worship her? There was something intrinsic to it. Primal. A Goddess is a force of nature, one that would subsume you and you would welcome it with ecstatic bliss.

Yes, Goddess. I’m sorry, Goddess. Please, Goddess. Please.

It seemed something clicked again.

A good girl for a (mostly) good Goddess.

As time passed, I settled into what most would term a switch, especially as I encountered Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are on a weewoo course’s reading list and learned about things like responsive desire and sexual brakes (and accelerators) – and the ebb and flow of a body and brain with physical and mental health issues.

The same reading list also included F*ck Like a Goddess by Alexandra Roxo.

So how does a Goddess fuck?

It’s always fun to imagine the perfect scene, if neither money nor reality were there to bind you.

Would supplicants seek you in a temple of black marble? Crawl on their knees to an altar strewn with fresh-cut flowers and thick, hot candles weeping wax?

Would they kiss your feet or be crushed beneath them?

Where would they finish if you let them?

Would they survive?

Perhaps one devoted penitent is enough for you – for now.

Light a candle.

Build your altar.

What type of Goddess are you?