Mistress

What is a Mistress?

Mistress (Dutch: meesteres) is the title for a woman who leads in a power exchange. In Dutch the word is the feminine form of meester, master, and it works the same way: it is a form of address, not a description of what happens. Mistress can hold for a single evening or run continuously.

How the Mistress title is used in the Dutch scene

As a form of address, and usually with a capital letter.

The Dutch encyclopedia redirects the search term Meesteres to the entry on the dominant, and there names three words for a female dominant: Dominatrix, Meesteres or Domme. Of those three, meesteres is the only genuinely Dutch word, and you can tell from where it shows up. Ad copy runs Domina or Mistress more often; a conversation between two people who know each other runs meesteres more often.

Here is what that looks like in practice. A woman agrees with her partner that he addresses her this way during their dates, and not otherwise. Outside those hours she goes by her first name. This site has an article on hiring a BDSM gigolo in which the author, herself a Mistress, notes that commercial Mistresses are plentiful while the supply on the other side is thin. That too is the title in use: as a job description.

What meesteres meant for four hundred years

The woman who led, in nearly every setting where leading was needed.

The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, the great historical dictionary of Dutch, published the entry MEESTERES in 1905 and separates out eleven senses. The first is “leader, a woman at the head of an institution”, with a quote from 1541 in which a beguine speaks of “onse meesteressen”. Further down the meesteres stands as lady of the house against her subordinates, as a woman who excels at a craft, and as “supreme commander” in a broader sense.

Two of those eleven senses matter for the scene. Sense 8 is the commander of someone’s heart: around 1600 Hooft wrote of the “meesterss’ van myn ghedachten”, mistress of my thoughts. And sense 10 is “kept woman, mistress”, which the dictionary already marked in 1905 as “now entirely out of use”. That is precisely the sense English kept alive, and it is where the confusion comes from that Dutch speakers meet in the word mistress.

When the scene took over the word meesteres

Around 1980, and at first almost only in one fixed combination.

Marc De Coster added the word to his Woordenboek van Neologismen: 25 jaar taalaanwinsten (1999), as you can read on Etymologiebank. His description: “meesteres, a woman who fills the dominant role within a sadomasochistic relationship.” He notes that the term shows up from the early eighties, at first mostly in the phrase strenge meesteres, and cross-references dominatrix. His two attestations are a 1991 novel, in which someone asks for “the strictest mistress they knew”, and Nieuwe Revu of 30 September 1992: “If you want to get established quickly, you should work as a mistress. You have to be the type for it.”

That second quote shows the professional side was there from the start. The word did not come in as a form of address and turn commercial afterward. It was both at once.

What the Mistress title gives a woman

A clear line between who she is in that moment and who she is the rest of the week.

For a lot of women the draw is not in the word but in what it marks off. As long as the title holds, nothing has to be negotiated, and that spares exactly the friction an evening otherwise breaks on.

• For the woman herself Mistress is a switch. She flips it by letting herself be addressed that way, and flips it back by asking for her first name again.
• For the one who serves the weight sits in the saying, not in the hearing. Whoever speaks the word has already done half the surrender.
• For a couple the Dutch title is practical because it needs no explanation. Anyone who speaks Dutch knows what meesteres means, even without ever having seen a scene.

The word is heavy. Meesteres carries four centuries of authority with it, and for some women that makes it sound like a costume that does not fit. Anyone who notices that has the wrong word, not the wrong role. Domina is shorter and Domme is looser. A first name does the job too.

Misconceptions about the Mistress title

“Mistress means money changes hands.” No. The title is used both professionally and privately. With Domina it is different: in German-speaking regions that title is nearly always commercial.

“Meesteres and mistress are the same word in two languages.” In origin yes, in use no longer. Dutch lost the “kept woman” sense before 1905, while English held it. So anyone reading mistress in an English-language setting has to work out from context which of the two is meant.

“A Mistress does pain.” The title is about who decides, not about what happens. An evening under that title can consist of orders and waiting and nothing else.

“It’s a trendy word from the scene.” It has been in the great Dutch dictionary since 1905 and the quotes in it go back to 1529. The scene added one sense.

What I see myself

I’m Victor. A gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM, trained as a psychotherapist. I am not a Mistress myself and I play the other side, so what I have on this comes from conversations and not from the role.

The title almost always comes first for women. The question of what you do when someone bursts into tears halfway through almost always comes last, and that is exactly the work. I was once interviewed in a podcast by a Mistress, and it was she who started on aftercare rather than on forms of address.

And a small thing that keeps coming back: Dutch-speaking women find saying meesteres about themselves more awkward than Domina. The same word in your own language lands harder, even when you mean it.

What you can do yourself

• Put a start and an end time on it. A form of address that never stops turns awkward on its own; let your first name come back the moment the date is over.
• Try the word out loud first. If Mistress does not sit right in your own mouth, you know that at once, and then Domina or a first name is no step backward.
• Book on what sits behind the title, not on the title: ask how much experience someone has and how she does aftercare, because the word is free for anyone to use.
• Say beforehand what does not belong under it. What happens with money, with work, or with someone’s health belongs in an ordinary conversation and not under a form of address.

More reading on the Mistress title

Within this glossary, dominant covers what the role itself asks, Domina is about the Latin title with its commercial charge, and femdom explains the arrangement in which a Mistress is the leading side. On the blog, hiring a BDSM gigolo is about the same market from the other side.

Beyond this site, the full entry MEESTERES in the WNT is free online, with all eleven senses and the quotes from 1529 to 1901, and Etymologiebank collects what the neologism dictionaries wrote about the word.

Sources

• MEESTERES. Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, entry published in 1905, via the Integrated Language Bank of the Dutch Language Institute. The historical dictionary of Dutch and so the right source for what the word meant before the scene. Provides the eleven senses, among them 1 “leader, a woman at the head of an institution” with the beguine quote from 1541, 6 the lady of the house against her subordinates, 7 “supreme commander”, 8 the commander of someone’s heart with Hooft’s “meesterss’ van myn ghedachten” from around 1600, and 10 “kept woman, mistress; now entirely out of use”.
• meesteres. Etymologiebank, Dutch Language Institute, which reproduces the entry from M. De Coster, Woordenboek van Neologismen: 25 jaar taalaanwinsten (1999) in full. The standard work on Dutch lexical additions from that period. Provides the description “a woman who fills the dominant role within a sadomasochistic relationship”, the dating “since the early eighties”, the fixed phrase strenge meesteres, the cross-reference to dominatrix, and the two attestations: Barend Toet, Het Kathmandukomplot (1991) and Nieuwe Revu of 30 September 1992.
• Dominant (bdsm). Wikipedia (Dutch). The entry the search term Meesteres redirects to. Cited only for present-day usage, not for anything historical. Provides that a female dominant is also called Dominatrix, Meesteres or Domme.

Related terms

The Mistress title is the Dutch word in a row where the other names come from Latin, German and English.

• Female slave. The counter-role, with exactly the same feminine ending in Dutch.
• Master. The male form, with the same Latin root.
• Domina. The Latin title, in Germany nearly always professional.
• Herrin. The German word, built on heer, lord, where Dutch chose meester.
• Domme. The loose English spelling, without the commercial charge.
• Dominatrix. The word that in English mostly names the profession.
• Femdom. The arrangement in which the woman is the leading party.
• Dominant. The role that sits under all these titles.