Dominant

What is a dominant?

A dominant (in the scene shortened to Dom) is the one who takes the lead in a BDSM scene or relationship and is responsible for how it ends. The dominant sets the pace, gives the orders and watches what the other person can handle. That power is given, not taken: without the submissive’s consent, the role does not exist.

How a dominant works in practice

A dominant does three things at once: steering, watching and adjusting. The steering is the only part you see from the outside.

Take an ordinary evening. Beforehand a conversation about what is allowed, what is not, and which word stops everything. Then the scene, in which the dominant sets the order and the other person has nothing left to decide. Afterward aftercare: water, a blanket, a little talking. Of those three parts, the middle one usually takes the least attention.

The second form looks like nothing at all from the outside. One arrangement that runs the whole week, for example about how something is asked or who decides what gets eaten, without a session around it. That is how almost every 24/7 dynamic starts.

There is one thing about this practice that has been measured. Sagarin and colleagues took saliva samples from 58 sadomasochistic players before and after their scenes and published it in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Cortisol, the stress hormone, rose in the participants who were tied up, received sensation and followed orders. In the participants who gave the sensation, the orders and the structure, it did not rise. So the dominant’s body does not go through that wave, which right away explains why a dominant easily overestimates afterward how fresh the other person still is.

Where the word dominant comes from

The word goes back to the Latin dominari, “to rule, to govern.” That comes from dominus, “lord, master,” and dominus in turn comes from domus, “house.” That is how Etymonline has it, dating the English verb form to the 1610s. Linguistically, then, a dominant is the master of the house. Not a warrior, not a predator. Someone responsible for the people under their roof.

That fits how the role works better than the word “power” suggests. The encyclopedia describes power exchange as the empowering of the dominant through the submissive surrendering to their control. So the movement begins on the other side. What the dominant gets is on loan.

In practice that exchange consists of three steps, and they stand in this order because the first carries the other two:

1. Negotiating. Wishes, limits and needs are discussed beforehand. Without that conversation there is no frame within which the dominant is allowed to do anything.
2. Handing over. The submissive gives away an agreed amount of decision space, for an hour or for a year.
3. Giving back. At the end of the scene or the period that space comes back, and that moment should be just as explicit as the start.

Why people want to be a dominant

The pull is rarely in giving orders. What people name is the feeling that someone entrusts themselves fully to you, and the concentration that goes with it: for an hour your whole head is about one person.

What it gives differs per person involved.

• For the dominant themselves, the nine dominants Hébert and Weaver interviewed named self-confidence as one of the gains of their role, alongside pleasure in the other person’s pleasure and the freedom to not be the weekday version of themselves for a while.
• For the one who surrenders, the reward is that nothing needs to be thought up anymore, because someone else already knows the order.
• For a couple together, there is the finding from Sagarin and colleagues that participants whose scene went well reported greater closeness afterward. If it went badly, that outcome went every which way instead.

That people with a dominant preference are not worse off psychologically has been studied. Wismeijer and Van Assen compared 902 BDSM practitioners with 434 others and found the outcomes more favorable for people in a dominant role than for people in a submissive role, and for both groups more favorable than for the control group. What that does not say: that the role makes you that way. It is about who signs up, not about what it does to you.

That same interview study also asked about the hard sides of their role, and the dominants named more work and more responsibility. That is not a detail. Whoever fantasizes about taking the lead rarely fantasizes about the twenty minutes of preparation and the day after.

How people are dominant in practice

The most common form is the smallest: someone who takes the lead within one agreed evening and arranges nothing outside it.

Alongside that you see a handful of variants that really exist and that set themselves apart mostly in tone. The caring side, where steering and caring coincide, as with a Daddy Dom. The strict side, where rules and correction carry the play, with a brat on the other side who likes to push back. And the ongoing side, where the role does not stop when the evening stops.

Someone who has both the one role and the other in them is called a switch. That is less exceptional than it sounds, and it is one of the reasons “dominant” is not a personality type but a position.

Interesting is what the participants in Hébert and Weaver said about themselves. They described dominants as empathic and caring, able and willing to take control, attentive and responsible. Some added right away that their role in the play clashed with who they are on a weekday. So the quiet accountant who takes the lead in a scene is not a funny exception, but one of the forms.

The difference between the careful version and the sloppy one is not in hardness. It is in whether someone dares to change their plan during the scene.

Misunderstandings about dominants

“Being dominant means being bossy.” The dominants in the study by Hébert and Weaver described themselves as empathic and caring. That is not window dressing: without attention to the other person you do not have a scene, but a monologue.

“The dominant has control.” Only the borrowed control. The limits are set beforehand by the one who gives them up, and they can take them back at any moment.

“A dominant does not need aftercare.” The opposite happens so often that there is a word for it: domdrop, the crash that can hit the dominant afterward.

“Dominant and top are the same.” A top carries out the act, a dominant holds the authority. They often coincide and they are two different things.

What I see of it myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, in the BDSM world since 1990 and with a background as a psychotherapist. My own profile describes my dominance as natural and calm, and that is exactly the point where I see most people startle.

Someone who books me because she wants to be dominated often expects volume. A hard voice, big gestures. What happens is quieter: I talk less than she expects, I watch more, and it takes longer before anything begins.

Men who want to learn to be dominant prepare the scene and forget the conversation after. Then the play succeeded and the evening failed all the same.

And this I see every time: the dominant notices the other person’s dip sooner than his own. That is why I plan my own landing just as well as hers.

What you can do yourself

• Ask about the limit before the fantasy. Start the conversation with what does not happen, then the rest is free after that.
• Agree on one stop signal that always applies, outside the scene too, and say out loud what happens the moment it falls.
• Build in series, not in one line. Doing something for two minutes, then stopping and looking, gives you information you do not get while you keep going.
• Plan the aftercare before you begin, including the question of when the other person has to leave and whether she still has to drive.
• Arrange your own landing. As a dominant you notice the other person’s dip sooner than your own, and a domdrop often comes only the next day.
• Feel free to change your plan halfway. Holding on to a scenario that is not landing is the mistake beginners make most often; saying that you are going to do something else costs you no authority at all.

More on being a dominant

On this site, the blog category on dominance is about the two sides of power exchange, and a dominant gigolo describes why the fantasy of giving up the lead is so persistent. For the longest form of this role, 24/7 is in this list.

Beyond this site, the interview study by Hébert and Weaver is the best starting point. It is the only study in which dominants themselves describe why their role suits them and what disappoints about it.

Sources

• Perks, Problems, and the People Who Play: A Qualitative Exploration of Dominant and Submissive BDSM Roles. Ali Hébert & Angela Weaver, The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 24(1), 49–62, 2015. Interviews with 9 dominants and 12 submissives; provides the self-description of dominants as empathic, caring, attentive and responsible, the gain in self-confidence, and more work and more responsibility as the hard side.
• Hormonal changes and couple bonding in consensual sadomasochistic activity. Sagarin, Cutler, Cutler, Lawler-Sagarin & Matuszewich, Archives of Sexual Behavior 38, 186–200, 2009. 58 participants; cortisol rose in those who were tied up and followed orders, not in those who gave the orders and the structure, and closeness increased when the scene went well.
• Psychological characteristics of BDSM practitioners. Wismeijer & Van Assen, The Journal of Sexual Medicine 10(8), 1943–1952, 2013. Comparison of 902 BDSM practitioners with 434 others; the outcomes were more favorable for the dominant role than for the submissive, and least favorable for the control group.
• Etymology of dominate. Online Etymology Dictionary. Provides the origin of the Latin dominari from dominus (“lord, master”) and domus (“house”), and the dating of the English verb form to the 1610s.

Related terms

• Dom. The abbreviation of dominant, and what the capital in D/s means.
• Domina. The female title, with a Latin history of its own.
• Dominatrix. The professional variant, and the profession behind it.
• Domdrop. What can happen to the dominant afterward.
• 24/7. The same role, but without an end time.
• Domme. The female spelling, and why not every woman chooses it.
• Domspace. The state a dominant can end up in during a scene.
• D/s. The relationship of which the dominant role is the D.
• Handler. The same leading role within animal play, with a counterpart who does not talk.
• Maledom. The relationship in which a man carries this role, and why that word is almost never used.
• Master. Not a role but a title, and what that difference means in practice.
• Mistress. The title of address for a female dominant.
• Submissive. The role on the other side, and what exactly is given up.
• Pro Dom. The same role as a paid profession, with the Dutch rules around it.
• Sadist. The other axis: who chooses the sensation, which is separate from who decides.
• Switch. Someone who takes this role only part of the time, and along which axes that shifts.
• Top. The one who carries out the act, which is something other than who decides.