How the hell do I dominate a man? If your partner has any kind of submissive tendency, and if – like me – you’re enthusiastic yet clumsy when it comes to wielding a whip and calling someone a ‘filthy puppy’, at some point you may have heard the two most terrifying words in the English language:

“Surprise me.”

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Yes, we live in a patriarchy. And in our patriarchy, men are generally at a bit of an advantage in terms of money, power, opportunity, and so on. But I’m not going to talk about that today – I want to talk about power and penetration. Specifically the idea that the power in any kind of sexual play is, by default, in the hands of the penetrator.

The other week I wrote something disgustingly filthy about pegging (aka strap on sex). In subsequent discussion, a few people talked about me ‘having the power’ and ‘being the dominant one’, which was interesting. Even when I’m fucking a guy with a big fake cock, I don’t tend to feel that dominant. I get waves of it occasionally, but it struck me that we do tend to assume that strap on sex gives the wearer an immediate power boost. That it’s the cock that’s synonymous with power. That no matter how doe-eyed and submissive I usually am, just by strapping it on I have performed a transformation into a powerful sexual superhero.

Are strap ons powerful?

Of course, there are a lot of expectations around being the penetrator. Watch most mainstream porn, or even most mainstream romance, and men tend to be seen as the ones in control – the ones doing. Men fuck, women get fucked. But of course, although this is the way the story tends to play out, there are a hundred different problems with it, as there are with most of our expectations around gender.

Naturally the obvious point is that not all men have dicks, or indeed want to be the penetrators. Likewise there are many women who can be powerfully sexual, who can penetrate and fuck, while their partners (male or female) prefer to be more passive, more laid-back. And – in the kind of situations I enjoy – there are many people who switch between the two.

I enjoy sex in which I am the fucker rather than the fuckee, and to be honest I don’t usually need a strap on in order to do that. In the right mood and with a fair wind behind me I can shag a guy using only my delicate, weak, unpowerful vagina and he’ll still feel as if he’s been used like a fucktoy.

Your dick as your weakness

Not only can you be powerful with no dick at all, but there are certain sexual situations in which a penis can be the very opposite of a powerful tool: it can be your weakness, your misery, and one of the ultimate symbols of submission.

Knowing you can penetrate me with your dick might give you power in the eyes of a society with a skewed view on genitals, but it’s not going to make you feel that powerful when you’re lying on my bed, constrained by an order not to come, twitching and moaning as I rub lube gently into the aching head of it. Nor when I squeeze it to just before the point of pain and you beg me to put it in my mouth. And certainly not when I lie on my back, with your bound wrists behind my neck, and tell you to fuck me without coming.

As you pull out, shaking with the need to come and pleading with your eyes, your penis doesn’t feel very powerful, does it?

A dirty story to illustrate the point

So are strap ons powerful in and of themselves? The fact that they don’t give direct pleasure to the wearer does give the wearer a certain element of control. Maybe I’m the ‘powerful’ one when I fuck a guy with a strap on purely in virtue of the fact that I feel nothing – that I’m wholly focused on what I can do rather than what I can feel.

Except even that doesn’t really work, because this lack of feeling can also be harnessed to make the wearer feel deeply cowed and submissive. Ask the guy who loved the trembling feeling of submission so much that I used to wrack my brains in bed at night trying to think of new and better ways to make him feel small – the guy who, eventually, I ordered to fuck me with a strap on.

He got hard and shook and begged me to let him fuck me – wrists bound behind my head, as above. I turned him down and dressed him in the strap on harness instead, letting him fuck me with cold, rubber strokes until I came – twitching and clenching around a cock that couldn’t feel it. A cock with no desire, no sensation, no power. Then I told him I was done, and he curled up hard and aching and unable to fall asleep.

What makes a powerful dominant?

Power isn’t contained within a penis – real or fake – and it doesn’t accrue to you just because you are the penetrator. This is one of the many myths we’ve been fed for a number of years, which we still tend to play up to in much of our fucking. I certainly do most of the time – as a straight female submissive, dominance and dick usually go hand-in-hand. I want to be on the bottom, I want to be penetrated: I need to get fucked.

But it’s nice to take a step outside this every once in a while – think about what it is, exactly, that makes someone powerful. It might be different for different people: what makes him powerful is his voice, and the way he has with commands and words. What makes her powerful is the way she can speak volumes just with her eyes or a turn of her head. What makes them powerful is their imagination – the fantastic new things they can order their sub to do, that brings both parties to the brink of shivering climax.

Power isn’t contained within a particular object, or act, or person: it’s a complex, intricate thing. And it’s good to remind myself of that every once in a while – not only does it give me a better perspective on what I truly love about dominance, it also gives me loads of new ideas.

Five years ago, if you’d asked me if I’d like an ‘erotic massage’ I would have told you to fuck off to Ann Summers and take your gentle vanilla sex with you. I used to think that ‘erotic massage’ was basically a cunning way to delay a fuck, and thus an unnecessarily cruel trick that a partner might play on me when he didn’t really want to shag me and hoped I’d fall asleep before things started getting sticky.

I think it’s partly because the word ‘erotic’ is, to me, anything but. It evokes a gentleness and romance that I don’t find particularly hot. Filthy? Yes. Hot? Yes. Erotic? Nah. It’s why I’d always rather say that I write ‘filth‘ than that I write ‘erotica’. For many people that word may well mean total cunt-throbbing power, but for me it sounds like soft strokes and feathery kisses and the tickling touch of a considerate lover. Erotic massage, to me, never felt like something I could enjoy with the all-out aching lust that I look for in a decent fuck.

I was wrong.

Erotic massage as powerful filth

It’s late, and as usual I’m in bed first. Face-down on the pillows and just nodding off as he comes into the room.

“Are you awake?”

“Just about.”

He grabs a bottle of moisturiser from the shelf and pulls the bedcovers down so that I’m exposed from the back of my neck to the tops of my thighs. He slaps me on the arse. He straddles me.

I’m tired – so tired. I’m struggling on the edge of sleep and torn between wanting to fall into it, and wanting to stay awake for his touches. I hear the slick squirt as he grabs a handful of moisturiser.

“Do you want a massage?” He asks like it’s a gentle thing – a generous thing, but I know in this instance it’s not. Because, over the course of a year or so, he’s changed my opinion of the ‘erotic massage’ – it’s become something exquisitely filthy, dirty. An excuse for him to touch me. It’s something he’ll only do when his dick is hard and he’s throbbing and he wants to coax my cunt into throbbing in the same way.

He puts his hands on my back. One at the top, pressing down just below my neck so my face is forced deeper into the pillow. The other slides roughly down, snaking from my shoulder to my spine, down below the line of my knickers and into the crack of my arse. The wetness from the moisturiser spreads. He pushes his hand back up to join the other at my neck, then pulls both down hard, dragging along my wet skin, forcing my back into an arched curve. His hands reach the small of my back, and he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of my knickers.

His dick is pushing into me – hard and urgent through my crotch. His hands work more quickly. Pressing, pushing, dragging along my naked skin. Not gentle: rough. Not generous: desperate. He squeezes me, presses me, moulds my back into willing shapes. Up again to the nape of my neck to push my face further into the bed. Down to the small of my back to force my stomach tight against the sheets. Up to grab a handful of hair and make me gasp. Down to my arse, squeezing at me, spreading the cheeks so he can shove his cock right up against me.

I’m awake now – wide awake. Arching and pushing against him, lifting my arse and spreading myself to guide his dick into me. He drops the moisturiser and grabs lube.

As he did with my back, so he does with my cunt. Moistening, pushing, shaping. Rough hands and slick fingers working lube all over me. Every inch of his cock and every line and fold of my crotch. He pushes dripping fingers into me, and uses wet hands to pull me open. I grip the pillow with my fists and push back, begging him to fuck me.

“Please,” as I can feel the tip of his dick stretching the entrance to my cunt. “Pleeeease.” A whining, desperate moan, and his hand is on my neck again. One hand at my neck, and one on the small of my back, holding me in the perfect shape. He holds still. Waiting. Twitching. Controlling.

I urge him forwards but he won’t move – he’ll never move. He’ll wait until I make it on my own, as I struggle against his grip and try to pull myself down right onto the shaft of his swollen cock.

“Please.”

I push harder, straining against his solid grip. Finally, I feel it – the rush and twitch in my cunt as I ease backwards onto him. As he fills me up with his lubed-up dick and tells me I’m a dirty girl.

Then – and only then – does he really start to fuck me.

Belts are fascinating and filthy in a way that makes me genuinely squirm. In my opinion they’re the best of all the hitting devices. Why? Because they are long, meaning they can be used to reach and beat places you might be out of reach for otherwise. They also come in all thicknesses, which means you can exactly graduate the level and type of pain you like, and balance it with other things that are specifically hot. The delicious ‘thud’ sound of a thick one, or the shivery ‘whish’ of a thinner one. Something thick that can be hefted with strength and inflict a dull, spread-out pain, or something lighter that must be used more delicately in case it leaves a trail of narrow red welts.

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