Fixing femdom

A woman poses awkwardly, hand on hip, bent forward pushing her tits out. She's stood on a tropical beach in tight fitting latex, lots and lots of heavy makeup and with the kind of massive backcombed hairdo I term "Deanna Troi crack-whore". It's the kind of BDSM event flyer that I hate.

Thus far four people have waved the advert for Domme Trips at me giggling about how it's "perfect" for me. Whilst remaining out of reach of a punch or projectile they have joked that clearly I should pay to go on one. Aside from the fact that I'm a natural redhead city slicker who wears dark sunglasses for 11 months of the year and can't function in temperatures above 22C, the idea of spending a "holiday" pandering to the desires of the male submissive gaze makes me vomit slightly in my mouth.

On the one hand, it's nice to know that people recognise my style of domination as being basically the antithesis of this. On the other, it's a ghastly pain that images and scenarios like this one remain the mainstay of femdom. When we think about female domination these are the pictures we paint for ourselves. And with a small handful of glorious exceptions such as Ms Tytania it is the kind of femdom that is on offer. A vicious circle. This is what femdom looks like, therefore to be a female dominant you need to look like this.

Rossetti and I are drinking endless cups of coffee and pondering this problem. It's part of a wider issue of female sexuality and sexual agency, which is reliant upon male approval and projections of generic male desire which means tits-out, blowjob lips, long legs, long hair. You know what it looks like. It's the same in the BDSM world except covered (well, sort of covered, more exposed, really) in latex.

The same can often be said for styles of female submission (and to be honest if it weren't for collars I'd struggle to tell female subs and female doms apart sometimes). The look is everything, and the look is all about displaying the goods. We hit upon the Queen/princess dynamic which is similar to virgin/whore. The "sexy female" within BDSM is either a Queen or a princess. She is beautiful, superficially powerful or important but above all she needs a man to complete her.

Now, as I've said regarding male submission, presenting what is on offer is an important part of signalling availability and desire to play. But it's just the cover of the book, and especially with domination where elements of mystery and power come to the fore, then presentation should not be everything.

We dress to impress and I understand that, but the more images I see the more I realise that it is all the same. All of it. So far from representing ourselves we are covering up in layers of looking like everyone else. There are minor variations in colour of skin and hair, maybe. The same-ness of it is worrying on many levels. It seems that there is little room for personality or unique style within femdom. The "look" is so ubiquitous it raises the suspicion that it is all about the looks and nothing to do with, well, domination - by which I mean a power exchange between one individual and another.

Lots of women wear the stereotypical femdom outfits. Why do we do this - let's be clear, I will sometimes dress in a deliberately sexy femdom way. I might be doing it for effect, for irony or because I think the situation requires it. But I'm still doing it. Still using it to exert sexual power by playing on social perceptions of what I should look like in order to be attractive. In all honesty, we will probably never know whether we are doing this because we want to or because we think we should. It's a difficult thing to unpick, it requires a high level of personal honesty and it's almost impossible to strip yourself completely out of the societal and cultural pressures around you. It also cuts to the heart of what we mean by "dominance" and how "being dominant" sits with "looking dominant."

Here's another one. We talk a lot about the "male gaze" within feminism. This isn't saying that men are causing women to look like this, in fact I rather suspect that the "male gaze" is something that is taught to men, just as "this is what femdom looks like" is taught to women. Men find that look attractive because they have been instructed to find it attractive by the constant and persistent use of these images as associated and representative of female sexuality.

Messy, isn't it? So, how to un-mess it.

Rossetti, myself and other members of The Ladies Who constantly marvel at the level of attention given to how femdom should look rather than how femdom could look - how women could express sexual desire in different ways. Going further, there is shockingly little discussion of how femdom could be, in terms of what that desire entails and what skills are needed to get there. This morning we acknowledged how hard it is to ask for help or mentoring as a female dominant, that you don't want to be seen as weak or inexperienced for fear of being patronised or seen as not very good. Despite the fact that everyone has something to learn. And that there's always room to go over the basics. We can support each other in this. In getting the skills, and in being able to ask for the skills, to be a dominant and not relying on simply looking like one.

Individually we can certainly make inroads into the "looking" part as well. Me, I wear boys pants, combats and vest tops as often as I sport cute dresses, doc marten boots and knives in my anime cartoon bag. Each of us can wear what the hell we want and be as dominant in our pajamas as we are in latex catsuits. We can also support each other in doing this, and that includes making room for traditional femdom attire without dismissing it as stereotypical. I will struggle at this, but I'll try if you try to see me in my shirt and trousers as just as sexy and dominant as the lady in the pretty corset. That goes for everyone, incidentally, men, women, submissives, dominants and you lovely, filthy switches.

Like the emperor and his invisible clothes (an interesting parable on power in and of itself), the more we look at the dominant and the less we look at their clothes the better we might all be.