“But You Don’t Act Like a Domme…”
“But you don’t act like a domme.”
It’s something I’ve heard more than once. Sometimes it comes after a conversation. Sometimes it appears in my messages, usually accompanied by some variation of: “You’re too nice.”
I’m gently spoken. I can be warm, caring and, dare I say it, quite pleasant to talk to.
Apparently, for some people, this is rather confusing.
I think what they expect is the archetypal bitch: a woman who is perpetually angry, dismissive, cruel and ready to tell anyone within a five-mile radius exactly how worthless they are.
Now, before anyone comes for me, I have absolutely no problem with a woman who wants to express herself that way. If that is who you are, or a side of yourself you enjoy bringing out, then please continue. I’m certainly not here to tell another woman how she should behave.
But if I were to act like that all the time, I would be performing someone else’s idea of dominance. And I have spent enough of my life trying to fit into other people’s ideas of who I should be.
Besides… don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. It isn’t.
Who decided what dominance looks like?
When people tell me I don’t seem dominant, I often wonder what they mean by it.
Are they expecting someone louder? Someone more aggressive? Someone who takes up space by making sure nobody else can?
I think many of us have inherited an image of dominance that looks a lot like a particular idea of masculinity: forceful, confrontational, emotionally detached and always visibly in charge.
And while dominance can look like that, why would we assume it always has to?
There’s an idea in psychology called role congruity theory. In simple terms, it looks at what happens when people’s expectations of a group appear to clash with their expectations of a role. Women are often expected to be warm, accommodating and caring.
Leaders, meanwhile, are often imagined as assertive, decisive and commanding.
So what happens when a woman is both?
For some people, she becomes difficult to categorise. If she is gentle, they may question whether she has the authority to lead. If she is forceful, they may decide she is unpleasant or unfeminine. Somehow, whichever way she turns, somebody is waiting to tell her she has got it wrong.
I find that interesting. Even when a woman steps into a position of power, there can still be a set of rules waiting for her: This is how you should look. This is how you should speak. This is the kind of woman you need to become.
And I can’t help asking… why?
My definition is mine
For me, dominance isn’t simply being the person with a title, or the person making the most noise. It is the ability and the desire to take charge, and to do so effectively.
What that looks like will depend on the person and the circumstances.
I can be direct. I can be demanding. I can also be an arsehole when the situation and the person call for it. But I don’t believe I have to be an arsehole all the time to prove that I am in control.
Some people enjoy a dynamic that is consistently severe, punitive or emotionally distant, and when that is what everyone involved wants and consents to, that is their choice. I’m not suggesting my way is more legitimate or more effective for everybody.
I am saying that, for me and the people I tend to work with, warmth and attention have a place alongside intensity. My approach attracts people who are sensitive, thoughtful and often quite soft themselves. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to be challenged, or that I don’t enjoy challenging them. It means I pay attention to the person in front of me and to what we are creating together.
That is part of how I understand my dominance. It doesn’t have to be how another woman understands hers.
The power we overlook
I think this conversation reaches far beyond my particular corner of the internet.
Consider the woman running a business who makes difficult decisions and holds her ground. The lawyer who stands firm in a room full of people waiting for her to back down. The mother who makes decisions, organises a household and carries responsibility for the people within it.
Consider a young woman finding the courage to speak up after being sexually harassed. Or the woman who challenges racism, knowing that doing so may come at a cost to her. Or the women who stand beside one another when it would be easier to look away.
I’m not suggesting all of these women are dominant, or that they would want to describe themselves that way. Speaking up, caring for someone and taking responsibility can be expressions of courage, strength and agency without necessarily involving the desire to take charge.
But they do ask us to look more closely at what we recognise as strength, and at the qualities we overlook because we have learned to see them as ordinary, domestic or simply what women are supposed to do.
Take care, for example. How often is the work of looking after people treated as something instinctive and effortless? As though recognising what someone needs, making decisions and taking responsibility require no skill or judgement?
Of course, caring for somebody doesn’t automatically make a person dominant. And women shouldn’t be expected to care for everybody simply because they are women.
But in my own life and work, care can be part of how I exercise authority. Sometimes the person taking charge is also the person thinking about the agreed boundaries, the wellbeing of everyone involved and what happens afterwards.
I don’t think power should only be measured by who can make themselves the most visible.
I think it is also worth asking what a person does with the power they have.
The part people don’t always see
In my work, people often come to me with a desire they may not have shared with anyone else. Sometimes they know exactly what they want. Sometimes they have an idea, but are still trying to understand what it means to them.
That is a vulnerable position to be in.
I think part of my responsibility is to listen without judgement, to talk through what the person is looking for, and to agree on boundaries together. It is about understanding the person, not simply taking a request and assuming I know everything behind it-or deciding for them what they really need.
There can be a great deal of intensity in what we do. There can also be care, attention, laughter and conversation. None of those things makes the experience less authentic.
For me, connection is what gives it depth.
Some of the people I work closely with talk to me about their lives, their fears, their interests and the things happening outside of our sessions. That rapport takes time to build. As trust develops, a person may feel more able to explore a side of themselves they normally keep hidden.
And that goes both ways. I have my own inhibitions, too. Trust can give me more freedom to express myself, just as it can give the other person more freedom to let go.
Not everyone is looking for that kind of experience. A shorter encounter, or one focused on a particular fantasy, can be exactly what somebody wants. But when someone is looking for connection and only finds a performance, I can understand why they might feel that something is missing.
What makes an experience feel whole is going to be different for everybody. For me, it is the knowledge that there is a person on the other side of the role, and that we have made space to meet each other there.
Performance, masks and authenticity
“But Kismet… isn’t all of that still a performance?”
Well… yes. To an extent.
I am expressing a particular side of myself, and the person with me may be doing the same.
But performing a part of yourself doesn’t necessarily mean that part is false.
We all wear masks. There is the version of ourselves we take to work, the version we bring into a social situation, the version we use to get through an uncomfortable conversation without telling someone precisely what we think of them.
And sometimes those masks are useful. I’m not suggesting that we can, or even should, discard every single one.
What I am asking is this: does the mask serve you?
Does it allow you to move through the world while still making room for who you are? Or have you become so accustomed to being acceptable that you have forgotten there are other parts of you underneath it?
That is a question I have to ask myself, too. I work in a space where people arrive with expectations, and where certain images and behaviours can be easier to recognise-or easier to sell.
There is nothing inherently inauthentic about enjoying a role that other people also enjoy watching. But I think there is a difference between choosing to express a side of myself and keeping it on because I believe it is what people want from me.
And sometimes that difference might not be immediately obvious. We can grow comfortable in a role, or become so used to being rewarded for it, that it takes some honesty to ask whether it still feels like ours.
Carl Jung’s idea of the shadow offers one way of thinking about this: the parts of ourselves that we push away because they don’t fit with the person we believe we should be. I don’t present it as a scientific explanation for everybody, but I have always found it an interesting idea.
I’ve often been drawn to villains. Superman bores me shitless, if I’m being perfectly honest. The characters I find compelling are usually the ones allowed to be complicated: ambitious, angry, selfish, strange, perhaps a little frightening.
I do wonder why we are so quick to divide human qualities into “good” and “bad”, as though having an uncomfortable thought or an unconventional desire makes a person wholly one thing or the other.
For me, my work offers a consensual space in which I can express parts of myself that might otherwise be considered undesirable. The caring parts come with me, too. They don’t cease to exist because I enjoy control, intensity or exploring something darker.
I don’t think we become more complete by pretending those different parts cannot coexist.
Who are we performing for?
Women are often given conflicting instructions about who we should be. Be confident, but not arrogant. Be kind, but don’t let people walk all over you. Be successful, but don’t make anyone else uncomfortable about it.
And sometimes we pass those instructions on to one another. We criticise another woman for being too loud, too soft, too sexual, too ambitious, too much or not enough. In doing so, we can end up enforcing standards that were never created with our freedom in mind.
When people struggle to recognise a woman’s authority unless it looks a certain way, that expectation doesn’t come from nowhere. It reflects wider ideas about whose authority we recognise-and what we expect women to be.
That doesn’t mean every woman needs to be dominant, or that there is one correct way to resist those expectations. Surely the point is that we get to decide for ourselves.
For me, learning to occupy my own authority has had practical effects outside of my work. I find it easier now to ask for what I want, to say that something needs to be done in a particular way, and to accept that I cannot be palatable to everybody at all times.
That doesn’t mean I never doubt myself. It doesn’t mean I never soften something, or that I have somehow escaped every expectation placed on women. But I am more aware now of when I am making a choice and when I am simply afraid of making somebody uncomfortable.
And that awareness matters.
Because I am not interested in replacing one restrictive definition with another. I don’t want every woman to discover my version of dominance. I want her to have the space to discover whatever strength, authority or freedom means to her.
I am gently spoken. I am kind. I can also be demanding, decisive and perfectly capable of taking control.
I don’t need to discard any one of those things to make the others believable.
And if that doesn’t fit someone else’s idea of what a domme should be…
Well, perhaps it’s their definition that needs a little attention.
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