Femdom Review: Dancing Backward- An Adventure in Male Submission

Dancing backwardDancing Backward: An Adventure in Male Submission by Thomas Lavalle

Nope, didn’t like it. Dancing Backward was a pretty good example of how not to make me happy, and really a good percent of what is wrong with femdom porn if you are trying to appeal to female readers. Or male ones who don’t get something out of self hate.

Some of this was simply it not being my way of expressing my F/m kink, but it had a lot of oopsies and pitfalls typical of the genre- as much as I hate to pillory the creative output of other people, this is precisely the sort of book that makes it hard for women think they would enjoy being a dom, and indeed represents male submission as something pathetic. On the other hand it’s one of Amazon’s more popular femdom novels, so if my review is scathing, I’m sure the author will dry his tears with a handful of the royalties he’s earned.

To briefly summarize the plot: This is a story about a control freak who marries a passive sponge, and then when he proves to be a passive sponge, turns him into a punching bag.

The most glaring problem was that I never got any sense of why the couple liked each other. An interesting premise, essentially of a gender inversion 1950s marriage, turned into odd abusive weirdness sans any sort of context- our hero Christopher is essentially an ambulatory submissive erection, while his wife, Kelly, didn’t really have any characteristics other than hawt n’ dominant- her G cup breasts had as much personality as she did, while she groped about the femdom cliches with inexplicable motive, coming across as less kinky and more that the universe had dictated this was how things worked because the author said so. Really, you know you’re going to have a bad time when the description blurb calls the femdom “spoiled” and “bossy”. About the only moment she seemed human is the vague mention she had decorative ballerina figurines- otherwise I got the impression that literally any idiot who met her minimum threshold of attractive and she could push around would do as she was just a culmination of everything the audience is supposed to find attractive crammed into one barbie doll shaped carapace. She had no beginning and no end, just ambition and a sense of self importance that came from no place other than narrative dictate. Hell, when the novel opens she doesn’t actually appear to have any close friends.

The writing honestly, is good at least as sketching out the male protagonist as a believable person (albeit a realistic waste of space or a victim, depending on your reading), but as a female dominant I found Kelly repulsive- angry and condescending, with a side order of female superiority wankery and nothing to back it up other than that she makes gobs of money. The side character, Carmen the Cuban, was actively offensive, a fetishists idea of what a Hispanic is, making sure you knew Ai AM EL SPANISH! every other sentence, in a way that made her feel like Dora the Explorer’s sociopathic cousin. None of the female doms made me want to be them or even in the same room as them. If a guy handed me this book and asked “can we do this please?” I’d probably run away.

And then there’s the whole subject of the weird abusive stuff, which was encoded into the universe such that the audience was supposed to see the aggressive mistreatment of males as not grounds to call the police, but just vaguely titillating. I’ll take the time to say this now: Mr. Lavalle, nobody this side of the ’90s says “you go girl!” unironically, and certainly not regarding CBT or how the only true way to deal with life is to dom the lesser menz. The only people who are still using that tired little phrase is the sort of persecution complex MRA who never actually interact with actual women and write eight page screeds on why women are out to get them.

As a writer of non-con who gets off on rape as a concept, you think I’d be all on board with the setting’s darker side- after all, I am quite the sadist. However, the rapey nonsense is all over the fucking place, and not even particularly empowering or just a sadistic fantasy for women- for example just incidentally in the background, Kelly worries about the impact on her career of turning down some random wealthy dude. This was forshadowed as her cuckolding partner in the next book, without examination of how creepy it is that now the guy is aggressively sending her mash notes bout how their hookup is inevitable. Of course, like any porn dom, rather than, you know, getting off on male submission, she’s written to actually want a Real Man TM, like Stalky Pants McSouthAfrican and this forceful attitude is not time to speak to HR, but a rare moment she seemed to respect a male.  Do. Not. Want.

Meanwhile Kelly, herself, also comes across as way less domly and more abusive. She isolates her husband, banning him from friends and hobbies. Even before they bring in the whips and chains side of things and she’s waffling about with a pure power exchange relationship, she mentions offhand that she rarely had to slap her husband as a sign of his goodness. This is supposed to be a normal relationship up until that point. Heterosexual dudes in relationships reading this, if your female partner slaps you and it is not part of a consenting dynamic or to get your attention while you sleep walk off off a cliff, that shit is not okay.

And then when she decides that they are going F/m full bore femdom, of course she doesn’t ask because in this universe male subs are just defective men who will go along with any nonesense as long as the woman forces them too. Half the time she’s mumbling about female superiority, the other half the time she’s debating who will actually fuck her now since a sub guy won’t do. Our hero devotes a extensive amount of whining and carrying on about how he’s sooooo emasculated, and yet as much as they started out exploring an inverted 1950s dynamic, much is said about how useless he is as a housekeeper, etc, etc…

Which is back to my point, Kelly talks about how her Christopher is ‘sweet’, but all he does is either fail to keep house (so she can punish him) or whine about how terrrrrrrible this new thing is, never showing an ounce of romantic initiative, agency or creativity. We learn that when he met Kelly in college, he dropped out of his graphic designer program a few credits shy of graduation to be her full time house husband, and never expressed himself creatively again. He does not turn around and flourish in the home. Instead, he becomes this useless lump who actually hates housework and does it for fear of punishment. He does not act remotely emotionally fulfilled by a life of service, but neither is he good enough at it to make me feel like Kelly’s getting a good deal- instead she spends much of the book pissed off that her partner is dull and clingy as wallpaper paste. Her solution, to transition from domestic D/s, to full sadomasochistic BDSM, feels like more effort than just hiring a damn maid and throwing him out on his ear.

If you are a sub guy into being treated badly (at least in fantasy) with stabs at SPH, domestic service, feeling emasculated by obedience, and the idea that nursing at big boobs are hot, you will have yourself at least one fantastic wank reading this. If, I suppose your SO lets you. Although if you have an SO, you’ll know this is pure fantasy, and one hopes your relationship is a lot more nuanced and healthy than the nonesense written in here.

If you are a dominant woman, you will come away feeling vaguely insulted and disappointed that once again, your kinks are simply not considered to matter when you can be used as a fantasy object.

Category: Erotic romance
Rating: o (1/5)
How I got it: Bought it!
TL;DR: Rising star executive Kelly turns househusband Christopher into her slave. An unsatisfying turn off, with unpleasant main characters.

Friday Femdom Fiction: A Submissive Husband Consumates

They woke up around 11 AM, muscles aching from dancing, mouths dry from drinking toasts in their honour. He came to a little before her, his new wife nestled up against his side, as she tended to roll in her sleep. Their bedroom was strewn with the by products of the previous night, including a four thousand dollar white dress currently being worn by the rickety little chair he’d had since college. Sliding out of her sleepy grip, he started their daily routine: a cup of coffee for him with extra sugar, green tea made neat for her

As he set their old drip-brew to work, he remembered amusedly there was a brand new coffee machine on the living room table. There were a lot of gifts because they both had large, giving families, but they’d only gotten as far as getting half of them out of the car, before, laughing and as drunk on exhaustion as she caught him under the arms and gave him a little hoist over the threshold, still in her snowball explosion of taffeta. He’d kissed her and they’d peeled out of their finery and she had done her best to melt the mask of paint on her face in the shower, before they fell into the blankets and into unconsciousness.

When he came back to the bed with a tray holding her tea and a slice of cashew butter toast, she was sitting up with all the pillows wedged behind her and a satisfied look on her face, as serene and regal as a queen on a throne. He took a moment to admire the way the curtain filtered light cast over her bare breasts, full, firm and high, nipples the tint of coffee and cream, her skin olive-gold.

“We did it.”

He nodded, knowing what she meant. The gallop up until the wedding, with two enormous families coming together in joyful if chaotic union, all the little bits and pieces managed and assembled into one great blowout a year in the making.

“But we have one more thing.” Her mouth pursed, serious. “We never properly consummated our marriage.”

For as long as they had been seeing each other, even from the first date, she had controlled his orgasms, and their sex life, deciding how things would be carried out and what she wanted. It worked for both of them- to the outside world they were any normal couple, but at home, in the private intimacy of each other’s exclusive company, he was Hers.

She didn’t need to order him what to do next. He knew to set the tray down on the bedside table and stand with his arms behind his back, posed in reach as she began to cup and massage his groin through his boxers. This sort of teasing was normal, just as much as the fact that she’d taken charge of his orgasms from even the first date. Sometimes she locked him into a cage, sometimes she let him free and counted on her power over him to keep his hands away. He’d spent many long hours on his back, spread eagled, her teasing, or bent over with the thick girth of a strap on fully hilted in his ass.

He wondered what she had planned.  She was inventive, imaginative and more than that, completely in control of him and his desire. This time, the first thing she did was make him spread out the covers flat on the bed and blindfold him, leaving him in a vulnerable slave’s pose: kneeling on the bed with his face pressed into the blanket and his ass tilted up, leaving all his most tender and delicate bits where she could reach.

Sometimes that was a precursor to a beating, or a milking session. Instead, she left him like that, waiting with a strong awareness that any minute now he might feel the slap of her hand, or a paddle; or the teasing flutter of her fingers and the cold wet slide of lube as she prepped him to be fucked. He could feel himself relaxing into that submissive place, just being in the moment awaiting her will. Already his cock was starting to stir.

When she came back to him it was a good twenty minutes later, by his reckoning, maybe longer. She took off his blindfold and made him look at her.

To say he was surprised would be an understatement. There she was in the lovely sheer white lace and satin bands of a bridal set, something that hid, and revealed with equal measure. He didn’t know where she’d bought it, but it as perfectly chosen for her, from the white silk stockings clipped with garters at her thighs, delicate bralette that loving held but did not bind her breasts, satin ribbons instead of clasps, and the same at her hips holding the ruffled wisp of her panties together.

It was not the clothes she’d worn under the wedding dress- that confection was made possible by an under armour of steel bones and spandex- but bridal wear like in magazine shoots, where everything looked soft and touchable. This was the first time he’d seen her in white like this. Most of the time she wore black: leather boots, shiny, tight, every bit the Mistress. There was something almost extra perverse about seeing someone he knew as his cruel goddess in such innocent fare.

“Touch me.” Her voice was a whisper, but no less a command. “It’s time for me to claim you completely. So please me, make me ready to take you.”

Reverently, he reached, feeling her soft warmth. No sooner had his hands brushed her curves, but she was on him, aggressive and almost feral, biting, nipping, forcing her into the bed. He fought back, not against her, but to please her, finding all the places he’d learned on her body. She never let him be inside her, instead, he was well trained with mouth and fingers and tongue. Sometimes she let him use a dildo on her, putting his shoulders into pleasing his Mistress while her fingers reached and scratch bloody lines into his shoulder and arms with the force of her orgasm.

He found her cunt was hot and wet, her scent, the scent of sex soaked into the diaphonously little slip of fabric that covered her crotch. She made him press his face against her, nuzzling, enraptured, and nibble until in a frenzy she just about growled and shoved him away, mounting his body. The bed was always ready, cuffs permanently installed on the foot and headboard, so it was easy for her to restrain him. Then she straddled him, making him watch as her fingers pulled at the ends of the bows at her hips. The panties came loose, but rather than letting them drop, she gathered them up into a wet fistful and crammed them into his mouth. Now gagged, and tasting her, she settled with her legs spread, sitting on him so his almost painfully hard cock was trapped under the swell and ripeness of her ass, and her watched her spread herself, saw how her arousal had turned the slash and curl of her cunt a deeper pink, left it shiney and hungry as first two, then three fingers slid inside her.

“Oh my god,” he moaned, so in tune with the moment and her whim that each plunge inside her up to his knuckles made an overwhelming sypathetic impact on him.

She gave a little noise, half giggle, half growl of desire, and then grasped his cock firmly by the base, smearing her wetness on him. He was alread beading with a start of precum, but her grip warned him that coming was not an option. Calling upon all the months of discipline she’d taught him, he held back the impulse for release and then…

Smooth and sure, she lined him up and he felt the grip of her tightness grab and claim him, taking him inside for the first time. Every bit was in her control, engulfed and held with the same confidence she’d shown when she’d grabbed him moments before. Now she was raising and lowering herself, using him, making herself sigh and catch her breath in her throat, splashes of pink rising in her face until the rhythms of her hips crushing into his and her muscles, inside, swallowing his cock again and again brought her to a satisfying climax. He was entranced, lap drenched with her arousal, body straining against the restraints. It was only his desperate desire to please her that held back exploding, until, resuming her focus after the spasms of her orgasm, she leaned forward and whispered in his ear “And now my cunt is going to take your come.”

On command, that was all it took like a flood gate breaking. It had been a month’s denial, first intentional, then pushing the low priority of his sexual release aside to deal with the demands of the wedding, but now he gave himself to her completely, letting go into simply, being Hers. Her submissive husband, taken, used and drained dry of every drop of cum.


This story was made possible by the generous participation of Perth escorts. They wanted a story like “Pleasing Her Cunt” but wanted to share with everyone. I’ve been playing with the theme of a submissive husband lately (and reading a lot of erotica on the subject) and this is my spin on it.

If you liked this, there’s a full archive of my free femdom stories here. Here cums the Bride! 😉

Femdom Life: Moving House, Moving On

Wildcard and I just signed a lease on an apartment together. Up until this point, as our relationship got serious, I had simply moved in on top of him (heh), taking my scant possessions, merging them with his: a computer, some clothes, a few personal effects and objects of sentimental value. Escaping my ex and the uncomfortable weight of my family has meant a certain paring down of the self, stripping away the non-essentials, both for the practicality of flight and the psychological comfort of not owning things.

Moving together, this way, is a big step. It means, among many things, adjusting to a life that is ‘us’ not a life that is designed to be independent. It means, for him, leaving behind a lot of physical symbols of his past, old injuries, but the complicated kind. We live with different legacies, his, all about the things unknown by others, mine, a rawness obvious to everyone but no less unavoidable at the time. So boxes of things get piled up, including one pile now much bigger than me, of things to give way to charity, and bags and bags of trash shuttled out. I like packing, and I like ruthlessly paring down our material possessions, to leave only the ones that are wanted. He watches me work away, wrapping plates, taking charge, leading. He calls me “a dynamo”, and tolerates me rousting him from relaxing after a long day, to decide on if something is to be kept or stored because dealing with it right now is important to ME. He likes me bossing about.

Meanwhile he’s pretty much been on point in the bedroom. The last play party, where I strutted and preened, lead to a very load, public screaming orgasm with him pinned beneath me.

Of course these things never happen in a simple situation. A move has to be paired with a promotion into a cluster fuck at my work place (more money, but more problems); and a little end of year contretemps when a local creeper finally exploded into public dramatics, leaving (thus far) nobody harmed, but myself having to actually shut up and not meddle, for once. The social storm is actually Wildcard’s to steer and I’m not so happily clawing the draperies in a support role. But that’s a tempest in a teapot (which, by the way, did you know we own no less than SEVEN teapots, although we drink bagged brewed in a mug most days? Extravagance!)

The new apartment has a big kitchen set up well with everything we need, light and air, a nice façade on the building- and a double living room with Grecian columns and a skylight. It begs to host parties where submissive guests wear diaphanous togas. We already plan the installation of discreet restraints, how not to damage the rental fixtures in making our home into a house of debauchery. Meanwhile my mind is less on kink, and more on making curtains and the tremendous project of turning filled cardboard boxes into a comfortable home, while trying to cram in Christmas on top. It’s chaos, but chaos I’m enjoying.

BDSM Etiquette: Helpful Hints

Mighty Dingdong, please guide me!As readers may well know, I am a stickler for proper conduct. The following questions come up as common BDSM etiquette problems and I’ve provided some guidelines to ensure excruciatingly correct behaviour at all times. The key to BDSM is of course arbitrary rules provided by fictional persons, traditions practiced purely by inertia and wishful thinking.

Q

I am a submissive trying to meet people, and a person who I am speaking to has demanded that I call them “Master” or “Mistress”. To be specific, they are neither my Master nor my Mistress, but I want to be sure I am doing this properly.

A

BDSM is built on tradition, and a submissive must know how to properly comport themselves. If you want people to understand you are a true submissive when corrected, to show your gratitude, the only response is to henceforth refer to them as “Mighty Dingdong“. This title indicates their high status and rank as a person who has no friends, never actually has interacted with other kinky people in groups and cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Q

I’ve met a femdom online or at an event who says she is interested in in dominating me. However she believes to show my true intentions I must give her a giftcard or a sum of money. Only then she will consider dominating me.

A

It’s splendid that she makes her professional status clear. Be sure to indicate that you would love to hire her services, but you need some references from her and a price list. If she protests that this is simply the norm for the lifestyle, apologize politely and say you are not into age play, or otherwise pretending you were born yesterday.

Q

Someone says that there’s no such thing as a female dominant or that M/f is the only natural order and that femdom is an aberration.

A

It is fortunate that such an expert is there to set you straight. If you are a female dominant, you must show your appropriate place in the natural order by smiling and saying that honestly, you need a man who’s masculine enough to still get it up after torture and the dom identified ones just aren’t tough enough. If it is simply implied, for example automatically addressing women as if they were subs, have sympathy and tell them how it must suck to make a fool of themselves in front of people with their reductionist world view. Be very loud and very syrupy.

Q

At the last party, I said hello to someone in a collar. Their dominant was furious and told me that it is proper BDSM etiquette to assume collared people are not to be addressed without permission of their owners be default, and in fact that everyone knows this is the rule for all subs. How can I make amends?

The next time you see them, you must say: “[Master/Mistress], please tell your submissive that you wish to tell them that their most respected and powerful owner is a horse’s ass.” Carry on all communication, no matter how banal you think it might be, from the latest sports scores and weather, to home remedies for yeast infections through the collared one’s owner. They will be sure to understand

I hope this advice helps you in all your future social interactions, going forward.

Reader Letter: How Should My Femdom Act?

letter2This question comes the way of an unlucky fellow, who wrote to me to get some insight on how exactly he was supposed to expect a dominant woman he was dating to treat him. His first relationship made him feel like crap because of how inconsiderate dom #1 was, but dom #2 just doesn’t unilaterally take control all the time. And, he’s not sure what he even wants, so he’s not sure how to help her help him, or even if that’s backleading?

It’s a common question, so I’ll let him share it in his own words.

Dear Miss Pearl:

I have a few questions if you wouldn’t mind sharing some insight. In the past four years I have slowly come to realize i fall on the submissive side but I don’t really know what it is i desire most of the time. Be that sexually or just in general. My first real relationship was with a girl who decided i needed to be her “slave” and its left me vary confused and unsure of myself.

She said things like, “i’m going to break you for all other women”. I really didn’t understand what she meant at the time… Still kinda don’t 😐 … She often put me last on her list and didn’t listen to any of my input so now its difficult to speak freely even with that relationship being over. I’m not the average jerk without dedication so i truly put everything i had into the relationship but in the end i was just sucked dry for ever ounce of goodness in my heart. I get the feeling i was being used from the start but as a dedicated “submissive?” i just kept trying to give until i had nothing left for myself.

So my first question is, if you are overly submissive how do you protect yourself?

My second is in regards to teaching and learning: I’m dating a woman who seems to enjoy being in control, but she doesn’t know what to do and me being all kinds of confused, i don’t know how to explain what it is i wan’t or need in our dynamic. I may also be mistaken and she could just be a submissive as well trying to fit a mold. Which makes me wonder if its even possible for two submissive to function properly in a relationship? We both constantly give way to each other so something as simple as picking a movie or what to eat for dinner can turn into a “after you” match.

-Lost And Confused

Dear LaC:

It sounds like your first relationship was really toxic. Her dominance is not blanket permission for her to treat you poorly. A healthy D/s negotiates the particulars of the ‘mean’ things that happen in the relationship, for example name calling, hitting, demanding things, etc… Power exchange relationships are about two people agreeing to a dynamic that makes them both feel emotional and/or sexual warm and fuzzies.

Really, if you have lingering self doubts and damage, I suggest you talk it out with a therapist. You are in the exact same position as a vanilla person with a terrible, self esteem destroying partner. You deserve to feel good, and a healthy femdom relationship in real life looks a lot like what’s documented here than anything in porn.

Now about girl #2… It seems like your problem is that you are waiting around for a dom-in-a-box dynamic, where in your first relationship the woman just handed you what her vision of dominance was, so you expect/want the next girl to do the same. I’ve said this before, that the end goal of a submissive is to feel submissive and the end goal of a dominant is to feel dominant. Where the relationship thrives is where these two desires feed each other and how your behaviors compliment the other.

Passivity is NOT submission. It doesn’t mean you have to like passivity, but if she’s largely indifferent to the movie you watch tonight, that’s neither here nor there to if she feels dominant. It might not make you feel submissive (which is important to you, I will grant), but that is not by how dominance is measured.

The fact that you don’t know what you want seems like the bigger problem, because the issue you have is not whether she feels dominant. it’s getting your needs met. All is not lost, the answer to that is lots and lots of experimentation. Start small. Pretty much nobody launches into a 24/7 TPE (total power exchange) relationship from day one, and the ones that exist evolved slowly, from dating and play, and so on.

Being a submissive trying to communicate the desire to feel submissive adds an extra level of complexity, at least in so far as that most subs are now terrified of the dreaded ‘topping from the bottom’ lable, but also if you have to call the shots it can detract from the subby feeling. My best advice is that you need to take two things into account:

  1. What she wants might not actually involve stereotypical dominatrix type behaviors. For example in the nightly movie picking debate she might want you to pick it so she doesn’t have to think about little things. “I don’t want to think about this” is a luxury for many people, regardless of kinks.
  2. You should control in negotiated parameters (eg “for Tuesday for 3 hours I will obey any order within my limits, safewords notwithstanding”), and in fact expecting someone to unilaterally be all dom all the time without those negotiations is extremely unsafe. Nobody should just walk in and start bossing you around. Further more keep in mind “I want you to be dominant” is very vague instructions and not enough for any partner to go on by itself.

One last tip- the best thing you can do to completely undermine your dom is to tell her you don’t think she is *really* dominant, particularly because you aren’t feeling submissive. So when you work on getting your needs met, don’t sit around waiting for a real dom to make you do what you secretly want but don’t know yet. Work with your girlfriend and discover that magical place you both want.

That’s my advice- you guys want to weigh in, in the comments?