O Miss Pearl is the latest blogger to venture into the debate around the intersection of pro and non-pro female dominants. She has two recent posts on the topic here and here. I’m going to try and avoid getting deep into the details of her posts. I’ve touched on similar issues in the past (e.g. a series of posts on kink and money here, here, here, a debate with DD here), and while I may quibble about parts of Miss Pearl’s posts, I do agree with the majority of her points. I’m a huge fan of pro-dommes in general, but I still think it’s a bad thing that they’re commonly seen as the primary representation of female domination.
I will say that I think it’s important in these discussions to avoid purely binary classifications. There’s not a single type of pro/client interaction, in the same way there’s not a single lifestyle interaction. These things exist on a continuum. There’s also not a single role that people are uniquely assigned. It’s often acknowledged that a pro-domme may also be a lifestyle dominant, but that same flexibility should also be attributed to her clients. It’s not wrong to occupy multiple categories. What’s wrong is to take a dynamic unique to one and apply it to another. Pro-dommes aren’t looking for a date and lifestyle dommes don’t exist to service male submissive fantasies.
Shortly after reading Miss Pearl’s thoughts I came across this post by Ms Maya Midnight. She’s talking about clients who ask for an ‘easy session’ and what a pain in the ass they usually are. Their definition of what an ‘easy session’ is rarely chimes with hers.
My definition of an easy session is one where I can wear and do more or less whatever I want — or at least have a very wide variety of enjoyable activities to choose from. It also means an easygoing, responsive sub with good communication skills who doesn’t top from the bottom. It does not require much if any prep.
I thought it made for an interesting statement in the context of the pro/lifestyle debate. Often the complaint from lifestyle dominants is that guys expect them to dress like a fetishists wet dream and focus with laser like intensity on the submissive’s very specific fantasy scenarios. i.e. The stereotypical pro/client scenario. Yet, for a pro, her best clients are those who care about the dynamic (rather than an activity or outfit), communicate well and actually submit. I suspect the above list of attributes would strike a cord with lifestyle dominants just as much as professional ones.
The image is taken from Ms Maya Midnight’s website. She’s a NYC based pro-domme. Her interests and a link for booking a session is available here.
“her best clients are those who care about the dynamic (rather than an activity or outfit), communicate well and actually submit.”
I don’t think, outside of emotional masochism, anyone wants an interaction with someone who is a poor communicator, or doesn’t have a nuanced awareness of dynamics, dom or sub. And I think it’s wrong to characterize things as pro VS non-pro.
Furthermore as much as said dom would like that kind of client, the difference between the pro and the non-pro is that she can’t be picky if she wants to make a living, past a certain point- her ideal client is my minimum standard, which is always a challenge sex workers have. Of course maybe some prodoms get off on it and every day they feel like they have the biggest secret to job satisfaction in the world. But if you didn’t pay them to dom, real or not, they would stop doing doming. Where as I can’t stop being me.
What I do think is that much how vanilla female sexuality has been hijacked into man pleasing, femdom sexuality has been hijacked into some very specific things. Of course some clients and paid doms have nuanced relatinoships! But the inability to separate the professional fetish queen fetish kabuki show from people like me who are not voluntarily a part of that has created a vicious feedback loop. Women like me who are dominant don’t explore that segment of their sexuality, so male subs and female doms both reinforce the idea that being paid is not just okay (which it is) but is the average and the norm.
And as soon as you add money that way, while some doms are totally getting off (just like some bartenders really are your best friend) there is a product being sold, and that is going to be packaged according to what the client wants. Frustratingly this always gets turned into a competition over who is “real” or “true” or debating over whether you can truly dominate for cash, and none of those things are the problem. The problem is that me and many, many women like me who got this sexual kink are being shunted out of femdom because we learn we have to wear a silly outfit and sell ourselves as expert man pleasers.
And many, many sub men are told their desires are so unworthy that they’d better be ready to pay if they want any hope of getting them met. Which is bad for them and their sense of self worth in a way that even M/m doesn’t have to put up with.
I am a loyal and longtime slave/client of Mistress Maya Midnight. Our best sessions are when I just schedule the session and she does whatever she wants. By doing this she has pushed my limits further then I thought possible. I feel that as a slave it is my responsible to make my Mistress happy however she feels to do that each session.
Thanks for the comment and context paul. Nice to hear from someone who has built up such good chemistry in his sessions. Ms Midnight looks like a domme who’d be a very interesting person to session with.
-paltego