Reader Letter: “Femdom Housewife?”

I recently got this rather sweet letter from a long term reader, so I’m glad to get a chance to answer for everyone. It’s a topic I’ve talked about before- the awkward relationship between gender roles and power, but if people are still asking about if you can be a femdom housewife, it deserves another mention.

Inquisitive writes…

O Miss Pearl,

I am a bit-more-than-occasional reader of your blog. Recently, a thought has been egging my curiosity.
I was wondering that whether its possible for a male and female in a Femdom relationship (with said relationship being applicable in the bedroom and to a certain, not-discernible-to-others extent, outside the bedroom too … just to provide context) to still have traditional roles with regards to division of labor in the household. That is, man is breadwinner who is career oriented (or has certain ambitions in life) and engages majority of the week’s time in bread winning, career making and training etc. while the woman is in-charge of the household (and maybe has a small side business too in her spare time). A Goddess-of-the-Hearth, so to speak.
Just to be clear, I’m not at all trying to imply that that is “how things should be”. People should do what they choose to do, whether its career-making or home-making, and people whose choices are mutually compatible should come together. Also, I’m the last person in the world to “look down” on the role of a homemaker. I’ve seen first hand how invaluable the contribution of a homemaker can be that s/he provides in exchange for their upkeep.
My query is that, in your opinion, is such a domestic understanding/arrangement even practically possible in the context of this kind of relationship. And if it is possible, just how likely is it to find a woman genuinely into femdom who’d be willing for such an arrangement in life?
Looking forward to your response.
Thanking you,
Yours faithfully,
Inquisitive
Dear Inquisitive,

Of course homemaking is a fine calling for a femdom! I’m glad you asked and gave me a chance to talk about it. Although gainfully employed, I have already talked about being a domestic dominant. I personally find it fulfilling. It’s a part of my assigned gender I like.

Contemporary feminism reminds us that household domestic work is still work, and although not compensated financially, is no less useful. Indeed, there is a push to have measures like the GDP recognize this unpaid labour as well, to truly reflect the productivity of a nation.  Housework is work, and it is largely misogyny that it is devalued in the first place.
Criticism of “traditional” roles relate not to the labour itself, but to a lack of options that often accompany the pressure to do it, or stereotypes that demand other behaviours along with the universal mundanity of making meals and removing the dirt from the living space. No matter the railings of reactionary ninnies like “Above Rubies” or the emotional self stunting of the “Surrendered Wife”, if everyone in the relationship is freely choosing things to be so, then all is as it should be- and there is nothing about domesticity that implies submission.
Indeed, domestic discipline, with it’s spoon and hairbrush wielding matrons, is, in itself a fetish.  The imagery of a fashionable mid-century woman is just as likely to be put on like a costume by a dominatrix as an evangelical, and both do so because it armors them in a kind of power we are inherently aware of.  You see it even in would be secular reactionaries like Red Pill Women, or the assertions of the #tradwife brigade, that once they take it outside the context of a consensual kink, they can bray all they want about submission, but these women are, functionally, in charge.
Once you aren’t bound into a role, everything else is set dressing and personal choice.
Even excluding the wealth of pornography that blends so called traditional domestic imagery with femdom, to be a dominant is an act of desire that doesn’t stick itself to any gender or social class.  Women and men have always, sometimes, wanted female led relationships, regardless of the particular background noise of their culture, and simple, pat separation of feminine = submissive, domestic = drudge is ahistorical, revisionism, trying to make a narrative that was never as fixed as we seem to try to teach, where woman in her natural state is a slave.
(Ok, ironically for most of human history, human labour for all genders was primarily everyone subsitance farming, but even then, femdom is not new. Even when your biggest concern was spinning enough wool to not have your fingers freeze off while stockpiling turnips, there had to have at least been a few women who took the laundry paddle in from the wash house and filled their smokey wattle and daub hut with squeals and giggles. It ain’t like modern doms of any gender are all high powered CEO rocket scientists)  
And the truth is, even unpacking traditional roles, femininity often includes expectations of power and management, from deciding family spending to directing the entirety of the life choices of the family as a unit. When women protest exhaustion or frustration with their gender, is is not the work itself (although it can be hard), but the sensation of being taken for granted, or when their leadership is undermined. When women control their own finances, bodies and destinies, well, if you have the shared wealth that one of you can concentrate their labour indoors, while the other works outside the home, go nuts.
So in parting, have your femdom housewife life. As long as you are listening to her and affirming her power, you should be fine.
Love,
Miss Pearl
More posts on the subject include a post on the limits of caretaking and another more detailed riff on The Darker Side of Caretaking

Daily Femdom Life and My D/s Neighbour Couple & Cuckolding

I’m house sitting. It’s a welcome vacation, for a person who likes to get a change of scenery from time to time. I tell people I like travel and they think I mean exotic locations and museums, and I have a passport stamped with a dozen far flung places.

I mean I like hotels and mass transit, and airports and bus stations. And staying in the Cuckolds’ house. I talked about them before, I think, Professor Sub and his fiancée. They’re making the most of the waning summer, and seeing as we’re a close commute now, the male and sub half of the couple has given me custody of their apartment and cherished pet while they jetted off for three days holiday.

It’s nice, the normality of this. To care for their pet, and smirk at the subtext in the pictures in their hall. To come over in a bad mood and be plied with a Caesar, and break into an impromptu tutorial on face slapping. Single submissive men, life ain’t fair. My friend has two women slapping that smug look off his face.

I really am close friends a sissy cuckold and his hot wife. Although the cuckold part is being hampered, at least a little bit, by the teeny, weeny little detail that finding a “bull” is easier said than done.

They’re not the only couple with that problem in my life. The Mr Sub and Ballbuster are also looking for a bull and hitting the same wall- how do you find someone you feel safe and comfortable with, that you also feel attracted to, to make into a fuck buddy in a way that both parts of the couple can get off on it?

Strong keeps trying to encourage me to get laid for other reasons, and it again hits the same problem, although he doesn’t want me to cuckold him (or if he does he’s not admitting it) as much as a desire which borders on martyrdom to help me achieve sexual fulfillment.  There is a paucity of nice, respectful no strings men. Add that if you’re a dom woman you often don’t want the classic aggressive Bull anywhere near your bed, and you’re going to end up just like all those M/f couples looking for their unicorn-girl to finish their family.

But I guess this is also living the BDSM “lifestyle” at its best. So there’s that.

Sex And Housekeeping


Images taken from here: The Perfect Housewife

At work, I’m doing two and a half people’s jobs, thanks to the quitting of the person one step above me on the ladder. The green of spring had really gotten going, which meant that copious amounts of tree cum are ending up my nose. There’s been shit tests aplenty, as part of my new job, from playing the game of “should I fire this person”? (No, you bloody well should not, I need them to do reports…) to whip around deadlines and new projects where people have no fucking clue what they’re doing. At a potent deadline around the 14th…

The demands of my high stress job really engender in me the urge to go home and really… take up control and really force someone into that submissive space for my benefit. It’s not a kick the dog thing, it’s a craving that has only gotten stronger with age to get into that comfortable, lofty little cloud that is power over someone else.

The other overwhelming impulse I get is to over buy food. You would not, going by the usual state in my kitchen, think that I was all that domestic by nature. I’ve mentioned in the past that nurturing is a really big part of my kinks, and it really extends to a certain sort of domestic fussiness that permeates my life. I’ve noticed that the one thing I’ll do as far as stress shopping is buying more food than I really need. Not eating it, but acquiring it like I was readying myself for winter.

So it’s been a few weeks of furious horniness and dominance cravings combined with over buying eats. And over buying, and over buying… While my house gets really cluttered because the other thing that happens with stress is not wanting to do basic tidying.

I’m A Domestic Dominant

domestic dominant

If it is really mine, I want to  care for it. If he is my property, he is, like a pet or another thing I like, just as much there to nurture as to please me.

And I really, really like looking after people in a domestic and care taking sense. This can be a bit awkward, since the other traditional group into this is the people into Domestic Servitude.

I’m just as likely to be found browsing the domestic servitude forum on Fetlife as the corners explicitly put aside for doms. Not because I want someone else to force me into cleaning though…

It’s more of a natural inclination to be a fussy husswife, and that’s the place where people go to be husswives and fuss. I already keep a pinterest account with more time on the ‘housekeeping’ boards than I have any business spending. I’m really rather fond of small domestic touches and I’m the sort of person who buys myself fresh flowers. Despite being more personally inclined to chase a career over a husband, and being rather less than talented at organization or being tidy, there’s a part of me that’s a wee bit Hestia worshipping. I’m the sort of person who wastes money on table cloths and doesn’t like it if she has mismatched cutlery. Moving out into my own place after what I generally think of as my Divorce has been an exercise in highly pleasurable budget nest building.

You’d think that I’d simply get myself an exacting domestic submissive and have things the  way I’d like. I actually get offers periodically, and some of them have a good enough head on their shoulders that they’re not time wasting flakes.

And yet, when it comes to the D/s stuff,  I’m way happier being the one doing the feeding and looking after. Don’t get my wrong, being cared for with small acts makes me feel loved. I do not want to be taken for granted and treated like an ambulatory Teasmade But looking after someone feeds into the control aspect that gets my ladybits feeling all buzzy and warm, as well as the loose chest feelings that being romantic inspires.

It is to the extent that for me, a breakfast in bed tray is as much a fetish accessory as a whip or a corset and it is more of an expression of my identity as a dominant than either of the other options. It’s the ability to look after that’s important to me even beyond the whole D/s thing. I like it.

It also opens me up to lop sided relationships. I wish, at this point, that I had a link on fetlife to the thread, but it was discussing something particular about female dominants and a tendency of ending up being someone’s Jesus Girlfriend or at the very least getting a lot of relationships where you were doing all the looking after because it gave you control. This is not surprising, as women are generally trained to get authority through becoming some sort of mother.

The flip side is that “me do it!” can prevent you from opening up more than you should. It’s something I’m working on right now. I want my future relationships to be healthy and I made a rule or myself that I was going to pay attention to the back and forth of how I and partners interacted.

For a lot of people, caretaking is an “act of service”. But for me, the caretaking also goes into the vulnerability aspect and outright into the person being physically sick and enjoying being able to help them. As far as fetishes go, it’s so normal as to not really have anyone notice it unless you point it out. Think about the plot trope in a thousand romances where the handsome hero is nursed back to health. On the other hand perhaps it is not so ideal to spring “damn, you’re hot” one someone after you just finished mopping up their puke and tucked their wan and trembling self into bed. In case you’re wondering he started wondering if I poisoned him. Oops.

Fair warning, I may talk about domestic stuff on here.

Catamite Pt. 5

There was a steaming bath tub, almost large enough to swim in, flanked by decorative marble swans and an enormous urn holding an overflowing bunch of lilies. He slowly eased into the water, his first bath in a month, nervous even to be hesitating at one of Annette’s orders, though she seemed unruffled. She was rolling up the sleeves of her navy blouse, up to her forearms, smiling her small smile. He saw that as she periodically did her hair colour had changed, though this time only a few tendrils of green and chocolate brown escaped the neat confines of a charcoal grey and black scarf.

Hot water soaking in, he didn’t resist as she took his head in her hands, gently sloshing water over his scalp. He felt her palm laden with something cool and viscous, a shampoo that she worked into the short regrowth of his hair. She soaped and rinsed him, using a rough white wash cloth to scrub his shoulders and down his back and belly, massaging and rubbing.

At her instruction he stood up, and she did the same to his buttocks and legs, turning him so she could reach. Splashes of water stained the front of her dress, turning the indigo darker in splotch patterns over her breasts. She left his crotch alone, but the washcloth found its way into the split between his buttocks before Annette told him to sit down again.

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