femdom review

While the bulk of my review efforts for this year intend to lean towards correcting the paucity of attention paid to femdom fiction (particularly romances), this week my chosen book is Uniquely Rika by Ms. Rika. It’s been sitting in my to-be-read pile for a while, a couple of years now in fact. Published in 2008, it’s generally on the short list of recommendations in online femdom spaces, alongside The New Topping Book, The New Bottoming Book, and The Mistress Manual. As far as placing it relative to those, it’s almost like The Mistress Manual’s aggressive opposite. It’s attempting to be a dominant pleasing first guide, for people who aren’t interested in replicating the stereotypical dungeon experience. Inversely, based on others’ comments, it’s also got a reputation for advocacy against standard practices to maintain consent. While there are some folks who treat it like their Bible, there’s many others with strong negative feelings in the other direction. That makes it popular, but controversial. 

Going into it, I was therefore curious about what to expect. Was this going to be alarming or were the criticisms overblown? Additionally, I had another piece complexity as a reviewer. I run in the same circles as Ms. Rika, at least on the internet, and in my arms length observation of them, they generally give well reasoned, patient advice. Therefore I also want to stress that my feelings about their guide are not a reflection on their overall capacity to advise people, and should be limited to this text. Inversely, as I will discuss further on the review, as a somewhat seasoned part of the kink community, I have some observations about what happened when this book’s advice was put into practice over the last 17 years. 

Uniquely Rika attempts to solve one issue: Dominants (or would be dominants) in F/m relationships are disproportionately dissatisfied, because they feel that how their role is presented to them prioritizes their partner’s gratification at the expense of their own. While everyone agrees a major cause of this is excessively pushy subs and a lopsided popular understanding of what is possible or how F/m works, this guide is part of the school of thought where the solution is to tell them this isn’t real submission, but also that a true sub is completely selfless. The best way to reflect this selflessness, in Rika’s mind, is constant 24/7 anticipatory service. 

Where the guide is weakest is that strictness of definition, and what I would describe of as having way more good faith on her part in the people trying to put her advice into practice. While it’s never a good idea in BDSM advice to talk about a true *anything*, her other major stumbling block is something she is pretty up front about in her forward. This is written for sub dudes trying to get their wife into this; vanilla women with a sub partner; and  generally kinky couples who are trying to transition intermittent play into a more encompassing dynamic. Nowhere in that list is solo dominant women, or dommes to whom this is their idea. This is an oversight that tilts things wildly, because the foundational premise leans to assuming that the dominant is starting from such a place of alienation that a sub needs to lean with all his weight in the other direction to over-correct past damage. And, if I am being honest, I find her approach to more traditional BDSM activities internally contradictory to how she frames them. 

To her credit, she makes it pretty clear this is just what works for her, in a sample size of 1, an, at the time of writing, 20 year 24/7 dynamic. That is not nothing, but she doesn’t claim a PhD in counseling psychology; a lit review of the 200 most useful books; or even makes anything bigger than claiming this is her perspective after a lifetime of observing other people’s dynamics fail to work. 

To place her ideas in the larger spectrum of what’s out there, she’s a Pyjama Domme (or fuzzy slippers Domme). That’s a byproduct of the late aughts to mid 2010s who collectively awakened to the problem that the conventionally understood idea of femdom was not working for most of us, since we weren’t interested in operating in a commercial context. Our actual problem was sexism (and remains so), and our mission to amplify ourselves and be heard was based on the very real need to assert that we did not need to wear a specific uniform of fetish wear and play a character to be permitted to do this. We particularly centered casual, deliberately unsexy loungewear as our symbols to emphasize this wasn’t about us performing for others. There were some significant upsides from this (omisspearl.com existing being one of them!), but Uniquely Rika also reflects some of the problems we were prone to.

At our worst, we could be very SWERFy, often lashing out more than needed at sex workers over the fact that we were immersed in the lock step advice that if you were a dominant and a woman/even vaguely femme, you needed to be an amateur dominatrix. To this day, we have both positives, but also a hard edge of a sort of heterofatalist tendency to throw a self defensive elbow in the direction of everything we have been historically harassed with, even as you aren’t prepared to give up on it entirely. That and the human tendency to simplify and ignore our own personal grey areas. A lot of dominants with criticisms of femdom culture will over state certain parts as being entirely the idea of silly and demanding men, while eliding over other parts we want to keep. 

For Ms. Rika, that probably shows up most in her effort to grapple with the idea of fetish versus vanilla. Everything femdom, in her cosmology, is either the false version of submission (summarized as that craving for a corseted, whip wielding, high camp goth disciplinarian) or “normal” female sexuality. Some of this is being deliberately hands off with trying to define specifics, in an effort to make this be more universal. But in practice, her efforts to illustrate why her method is more inviting flips into being a lot more specific than she seems to realize.  

Where she has her best strengths is where she breaks down why different models of how this is supposed to work fall short. Her examples of why hanging your whole dynamic on a specific fetish fails are inspired, stressing that a partner hanging their motives entirely on cock cage or similar prioritizes their accessory over their partner. Likewise, when she starts talking about the S&M side of it there’s an approach that’s relatively novel to topping if your goal is supposed to produce certain psychological outcomes in the partner. Were it not for her unfortunate attitudes towards limits and negotiations, I would actually say she tends to demonstrate a pretty good understanding of the theory of why a lot of things work. 

However, despite the emphasis on these being clearly important enough to figure out, her method insists that all fetish activities (the tying, the butt stuff, roleplaying, etc…) are categorized as gifts we should assume the dominant isn’t personally into, but may choose or not to give the submissive. She’s very clear that it’s a gift, not a reward, as nothing is ever owed. She also figures if these were your thing otherwise, as a dominant, you would be doing them already and your partner’s desire for them wouldn’t be potentially vexing.

Unfortunately, this misses that a lot of dominants also struggle with the thing we actually want being forced on us or given to us so awkwardly this undermines our own relationship to it. Making it a “gift” certainly gives you a cooling off period from the usual experience dommes complain of, when this is shoved down our throats. Inversely, all this distance also subtracts your own ability to take ownership of the thing. Nevermind her general tone that if you like this stuff at all without a man wanting it you are kind of weird because these are all “male centric”. 

There’s no curiosity there might be a female centric version of these things, or introspection of why we needed so much emphasis on these if they are so darn distasteful. Men are from Mars and sadomasochists; women are from Venus and like cunnilingus and sex where he doesn’t finish. Because obviously he isn’t getting primary enjoyment from *that* without you forcing him too, but no woman ever saw some tall boots and thought she looked sexy in them. And this gets especially bewildering the way she keeps going back to the same scenarios of her partner kneeling with clamped nipples and clothespins on his scrotum, even as she emphasizes the bizarreness of this.

Ms. Rika is very able to break down things effectively to explain why it usually doesn’t feel dominant to be told you may (or worse, should!) do a lot of traditional fet stuff. But she has a massive blind spot around whether her own wishes should be perceived as kinky, and how 24/7 anticipatory service is over stated as the secret sauce. Sure, lots of people like to get what they want. It assumes all women are secretly wanting the upper hand in every important aspect of their relationship. 

It also assumes all subs can make literally anything work, as long as they remind themselves that doing a favour for the dominant is always a privilege. Maybe this is a little bit of an absurd reach, but based on how Ms. Rika defines this, that would include collaring your partner and being the perfect dominant for her 24/7 as an act of selflessness. With no expectation of it ever stopping or getting what you want, because that other stuff is a gift. 

A hypothetical extension of the Uniquely Rika system is that her version of a fake male sub could find a real sub of the gender they prefer and order them to do anything they want. You can imagine how much the average self identified femsub with a guy trying to pull that stunt would laugh them out of the room. That’s probably another problem with the pyjama domme approach, collectively. A lot of us are so personally repulsed by submission and how much the mainline scene pushes it on us that we kind of stop paying attention to how a whole other population of kinky women are navigating living with demanding partners and sexism, and how they deal with it. 

An even more crotchety read here, on my part, is this abdication that you even think about your partner’s needs and get him to figure it out for himself  is bordering on the dubious idea of stealth submission. And it does go there, with examples like shoe care causing the sub to realize as a foot fetishist they should be grateful to be allowed near that. What is working here is that it’s making the sub a more active participant in making space for the dominant, not just his fantasy. The problem here is that this isn’t really sustainable. 

Guides like “Conquer Me” by Kacie Cunnigham can also be contrasted here. That book is preoccupied with making a sub in a M/f relationship feel submissive while the sub remains safe, and not at all with a dominant feeling dominant. But inversely to Uniquely Rika, Conquer Me emphasizes the theatrical bells and whistles matter. Which, some sort of part of that usually does. There’s a distinct paucity of magic doormats, no matter what they angrily type about how their submission is actually true and real. 

Thus, the problem with Uniquely Rika’s approach is also that 24/7 anticipatory service (as she describes it) is not going to work without a whole bunch of stuff she is assuming will automatically follow. Ms. Rika talks about the hardline posture she occupies, but we don’t really get Mr. Rika’s side of things except through her reassurance men will eventually be grateful even if they seem reluctant at first. Which, I would suppose, now requires me to talk about her constant emphasis on no limits or safewords directly. She does that a lot, and believes it’s the other core part of this working. 

This is what I would call Ms. Rika not realizing what a good, loving and patient person she is, and having the smart and thoughtful person blunder of not understanding just how dumb and terrible other people are. 

Ms. Rika assumes your love and appreciation for your partner makes doing the things she classifies as “gifts” fairly regularly a natural extension of that love. She clearly sees the want for these things as an extension of who your partner is, and something that ultimately needs to be warmly accepted. In a lot of ways the unspoken foundation of her theory functioning for her is she is offering her partner the reassurance that when she does these things it is because she wants to and he doesn’t have to worry this is under duress. 

Since a lot of subs, particularly dudes, think their desires are an icky box of spiders, that can be powerful. Wow, no more begging, it was even her idea! But, because a lot of people think the theatrical stuff actually is icky spiders AND the idea of subs being a limitless well of support is hot enough to forget most people can’t sustain the practice of that, evidence shows that the average person trying to do her method eventually runs into a wall. 

In practice, you can’t hold Ms. Rika entirely responsible here, but it fucks up so many couples to basically decide that the sub is not to be trusted with their wants. It’s like even the folks who agree we need to start with an egalitarian foundation take the sub’s half of it, and rather than emphasize it’s to be weighted equally to the dominant, throw it out the window. 

As a submissive, you do not get to decide what makes a dominant feel dominant. Inversely, as a dominant you do not get to decide what makes a submissive feel submissive. If this gulf is too big to bridge, that doesn’t make either of you invalid, just incompatible.

You can tweak what you are doing to see where compatibility is, but you can’t fix things by deciding that one of you just needs to suck it up and deal. That’s a sexy premise to a fantasy, but so is being kidnapped and forced to marry a fairy prince, or having a permanent residence in a cage in someone’s basement.

Ms. Rika goes one step worse here, because she sort of loses the plot when she transitions from the loving egalitarian relationship she says you need to start with and how you should conduct yourself in the D/s relationship she puts on top of it. Specifically she thinks you get there via a my-way-or-the-highway approach to BDSM, complete with withdrawal of the right to serve at all if they ever balk at anything, with an emphasis on no negotiation other than consciously assuming the dynamic itself. Otherwise, she places a repeated emphasis on dommes having no obligation for the dynamic other than honest feedback and being calm, firm and unyielding. If they refuse to do anything ever, you simply end the dynamic. First, as a warning shot for 24 hours, but you make it clear you will easily make it permanent if they don’t both change their mind about the refusal and apologize.

This is fucking bananas. I can’t stress how bad the advice here is. Ms. Rika says this is just what works for her, and maybe it would work for you, but she has really poor insight into how this will go down for other people and the actual role of limits play in a relationship for the benefit of both parties. 

Ms. Rika is assuming that not only do you not want to cause real harm to your partner (because you love them), but that you will be very good at determining your partner’s level of distress as it approaches lasting harm, and that it is appropriate to incentivize cooperation with only your one version of submission with no input from them. She also assumes that you are so otherwise indifferent to receiving his submission that anything less than the extreme is worthless to you. Therefore if he cannot do that, you would prefer he stop asking at all. 

If you use her method you also need to assume that you are a better judge of what your partner is capable of than they are.  And that your partner is not to be trusted, and without an imminent threat of losing your interest in BDSM all together they will sabotage the submission they supposedly want. 

I try to avoid the whole “are the straights ok???” thing because honestly the whole business of BDSM, even done badly, is as queer as a three dollar bill, but this book does have a giant begged question of why you are tolerating someone who is apparently so shit at basic relationship skills. It’s very “control your husband by withholding sex, because as a woman you could take or leave it.” For a person who spent a lot of time telling you not to act like their mom, Ms. Rika still tends to lean that way, that your underlying vanilla dynamic is adversarial and your partner is at best lazy and at worst out ot get everything they can get too. Tirelessly work on this submission to me, young man, or we throw it away! Men are idiots. That’s just how men are, honey. You gotta break’em in or they will walk all over you. (etc..) Yes, this was written in 2008, and there’s a generational gap in how compulsory relationships were to Ms. Rika’s generation versus my own, but it is already a hostage situation just get a fucking divorce already.

And really, the problem is that as a result there is no room for most dominants in her method, because we are incentivized to also want this. At best her method is playing chicken, counting on your partner having lower self worth or higher desperation. At worst this is dominant fap, as much a fantasy as the Surrendered Wife teaching you how to get your husband to do everything you want by selectively ceasing to do anything you don’t want to do.

I don’t think Ms. Rika wants anyone doing anything unsafe to their partners when she repeatedly emphasizes a no limits approach. I just think that, in the history of people in fetish communities emphasizing the absence of their limits, she does the usual thing of assuming the actual limits someone might have are so radioactive (and so universal) if they were ever transgressed it would immediately end the dynamic… so it doesn’t count. Then she doesn’t need to think about it because it maintains the mutual fiction of greater power.

All this no limits business is also a kind of an emotional security blanket from self reflection about the other elephant in the room. Ms. Rika says she doesn’t feel dominant from doing traditional sadomasochistic stuff, but she takes enjoyment in knowing her partner is inconvenienced. This is where the strictness of her world view gets in her own way. What she’s describing is a flavour of sadism. This is a fetish. Ditto the way she tries to sell sex where he doesn’t come by default.  A lot of people would feel as uncomfortable doing what she is describing as they would scowling in thigh high boots. And by the time you get to the sex manual part where she keeps talking about removing your partner’s choices (push them past them saying no!), over and over again you really get a feeling that the lady is protesting too much. There’s only so much you can say you aren’t all that invested in your partner’s fetishes when you won’t stop talking about the thought you have put into them.

Essentially, the core of Uniquely Rika is her effort to create a space where she feels safe being unreasonable. Just as much as she observes her spouse becoming more open minded about what he can work with to feel submissive over, she’s given herself breathing room to get comfortable with what he wants and figure out how to make it work for her. What’s missing here as point of emphasis is that 20 year marriage with implied years and years of exploring and experimenting and knowing each other’s personal quirks.

And I can, through my own experience, see how she arrived where she did, even if I think the result is bad advice. As a baby dominant, how everything is presented to you is basically two versions. You are either here to master giving your partner the physical and psychological ride of their life or you are a dangerous psychopath to be strictly reigned in. More frustratingly, you get to be treated like the latter, and your partners often get deeply offended if they are asked to do otherwise than pretend you are a villain… but also somehow still entirely here for their benefit.

Also I was often really bad at the skill parts, or wouldn’t always nail what my partner(s) were looking for, and the culture of communication was that I deserved lots of feedback on how well I was doing for them, but my ability to feel dominant was something I was just supposed to figure out how to extract for myself by doing this. I think Ms. Rika was under the same pressure. Seriously, nothing was more discouraging that much of the aftercare I got from people amounted to “I have a few notes about how you can do this better for me next time…”

Now I am becoming an old, and have been doing this almost as long as Ms. Rika did when she wrote her guide, what I realize was there was no room for me to be vulnerable and imperfect.  

The problem is flipping this on its head (no actually, subs are villains who are entirely here for my benefit!) would have been a wild over correction. And the Uniquely Rika school of doing things, now with plenty of people trying to put it in practice, we can see where it goes wrong. For couples trying to get a dynamic off the ground, even with a bit of kinky bedroom play, suddenly jettisoning all your feedback tools and pretending all the sub’s needs are invalid. 

Ms. Rika’s approach to safewords, etc… are that these are things that the sub uses against dominants to correct and control their behaviour. Safewords, properly used, actually benefit the dominant because they require the sub to do the work in self introspection, such that the dominant can relax a bit of the pressure in monitoring everything. The sub skill learning curve is usually about getting away from needing the dominant to be a mind reader, and a mandatory safeword demands subs always keep one foot on the ground and never lose sight of your experience of this.

Uniquely Rika’s hardline approach removes most of the lopsided burden from dominants, to let them find their own joy, but it never really realizes it’s simultaneously just as much a set of training wheels and is foundationally resting on her having the sort of trust with her partner she can push him a little bit or the distinction that she is actually only asking him to approach what she wants with the same open minded way she makes what he wants work for her.

Thus Ms. Rika identifies correctly identifies that cock cages or cross dressing alone cannot sustain a dynamic, but neither can defence mechanisms. For a few folks, coming from a foundation of trust, it will take the pressure off long enough to let things feel most natural. But for most people, this is just going to cause even more resentment and insecurity.

Therefore, I don’t think this is a good beginner book, or even really one I would personally suggest, even as something to follow at all. I think if you take it as a personal snapshot of how someone constructed their dynamic, its value is a lot more that there’s not many other books like it. It’s not trying to be a universal work like The New Topping/Bottoming Books, appealing to every possible permutation of kinky. Neither is it like most other femdom manuals, either concerned with appealing to hubby’s fantasies with the same indulgence you might learning your mother in law’s holiday dishes; but neither is it stealth porn, which a distressing number of other manuals turn out to be.

What she offers is there in the title, that to be a lifestyle dominant and not want to claw your own eyes out in frustration, there has to be space to uniquely be yourself. Where it falters is a lack of trust in your partners to ever be able to follow through without some sort of pressure beyond that being your preference.

I would be interested to see, nearly two decades later, what if anything Ms. Rika would change on a re-write. It’s a 17 year old sex and relationship manual, daringly novel in its approach, but if you are remotely following the discussions people have around lifestyle femdom, it’s also somewhat blatantly of its era. But that’s not a bad thing. No Individual Lifestyle only Domme is going to have it nailed down in every aspect, and we can’t really ignore that Ms. Rika’s commitment to being herself.

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Barnes & Noble Link: Uniquely Rika