Q&A Forum - April 2009 (Best of Elise)
Q. Ms. Sutton, I introduced my wife to the concept of a female-led marriage almost a year ago now, and our relationship has definitely improved because of it. We don't have things perfect yet, as at times I still try to 'top from below', but we're moving in a good direction. Thanks.
One side effect I seem to notice with myself, about female dominated marriages, is that I become so smitten by my wife and just want to spend every available minute with her and serving her. When she playfully teases and denies me I go crazy. All I can think about is her and when I get to be with her again, and see her, and spend time with her. I become so entranced that I hate any interference or competition that might get in the way of my spending time with her.
She is very involved with our children, family, work, church, community, etc. With her involvement in so many different and worthy causes, I really have to fight for her time and attention. Problems have arose because I've become jealous of time I was supposed to get with her, but that she had to devote to something else. I know it adds guilt to her because she wants to please everybody and do 'everything for everyone'.
Have you come across this issue before? When a wife has such spell and power over her husband that she is all he can think about and he gets jealous of any lost time with her? I don't like adding stress or guilt to her life because I'm not always as sharing of any time I might get to spend with her. What suggestions do you have for husbands who become so smitten by their wife that it's borderline possessive? What advice do you have for wives who may have to deal with a husband who is so taken by her 'female power', that he wants to be with her every minute of the day? How do couples deal with this apparent 'side effect' of female dominated marriages?
A. What a contrast to most of the relationship complaints you hear in the vanilla world. Usually you hear women complaining about how their husbands ignore them and take them for granted or how their husbands are more interested in sports or their golf game than they are in their marriage. Yet here you are totally dedicated to your wife and so consumed by her that you are desirous for her time and her attention. That is the result of the power and the intimacy of a female dominated marriage.
What you are experiencing is a natural byproduct of the FemDom relationship. You should desire your wife above all else. Your thoughts should be consumed by her. What you now have to learn is how to channel your passion for her into a lifestyle of serving her.
It is neither healthy nor practical to expect a relationship where the two of you shut out the rest of the world. You both have life responsibilities, family and other commitments that need and deserve your time and attention. But the beauty of this lifestyle is that you can use the love you feel for your wife and channel it into those other areas. In other words, your obsession and passion for your wife can be the motivating force that causes you to be productive in all areas of your life.
When your wife is not there, you can still serve her by doing things to please her. That is how you channel your passion for her into the other areas of your life. You can be doing housework for her, running errands for her, excelling in your career for her, thinking of pleasant and romantic things to do for her, like writing her poetry or buying her (or better yet, making her) a special gift. Channel your passion for her into productive endeavors. This will in turn motivate her to do those things to you (D&S in the bedroom) that will keep your passion for her at the forefront of your thoughts.
There are a lot of married women who would love to have a husband like you. And that is the power of FemDom and that is why men need to sell women on the benefits of this lifestyle. Your devotion to your wife is a living testimony to the power and the intimacy of the female domination relationship.
My advice to your wife is simple. “Keep doing what you have been doing.” You and she obviously have the kind of FemDom chemistry that places you under her spell (i.e. her female power and authority). Now she just needs to make sure that she gives you enough out of the bedroom assignments (household duties, etc) which will afford you an avenue in which you can channel your passion into your service of her. Take care.
Q. Dear Ms Sutton; I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your site. I have followed it for the past few years. I bought your first book and hoped that my wife would read and adopt an interest in the FemDom theme.
After reading your site I have tried to seduce her submissive nature, there are certain aspects that my wife enjoys, however, years of topping from below has made her truly suspect when I approach the submissive subject. To her credit, in the past my wife tried aspects of BD/SM, however, I have ruined it by asking for more. To the point now she is really turned off by the whole process. I have not given up hope because there is nothing more I would rather do than surrender myself to her. I had printed off several of your recent articles, real life situations and asked my wife to read them. My wife agreed to read them.
I recently went on line to visit your site and get the latest updates. Lisa’s letter from Buffalo really hit home and I wanted my wife to read it. I printed it off and asked my wife to read it. My wife is very busy, however the other day we had time together and she agreed. After reading the letter, we had a really good conversation and many issues came up. Such as my desire to completely submit to my beautiful wife and to have her feel free to punish me for any and all shortcomings. This is nothing new to my wife, however:
1) my wife thinks that many women in the Fem Dom scene don’t have a life, aren’t busy and sit at home making things up for their husbands. She is too busy with the housework, kids activities … and dominating me is one more thing on her plate she has to do.
2) how do you enforce the female led relationship with kids in the house?
3) she says she would consider denying me more, but I would not leave her alone as then I would be all over her at all hours of the night and no one would get sleep. She gives me orgasms because she know I go to sleep and won’t bother her
I would love my wife to take the initiative and believe me she does have a dominant side that would flourish if she let it. I know my wife will read other letters and I hope that you consider my letter in the hopes she understands how serious I am to be her devoted and loving submissive. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
A. Life comes down to priorities and what each of us values the most. There are only so many hours in the day. No disrespect meant to your wife but there are a lot of very busy women who practice this lifestyle. In fact, if you talk to some of these women they will tell you that the FemDom lifestyle is the perfect lifestyle for the busy woman because the submissive man in her life is a helpmate and her servant. I would argue that the submissive male makes the best helpmate because his purpose is to assist the woman with her goals and her priorities. It is the marriage where the two partners do their own thing that the woman will feel more burdened. And it is the marriage where the man makes demands on the woman that the woman will have a greater chance of being overwhelmed with stress.
Your challenge is to show your wife how your submission to her will be an asset to her and not an additional burden. She is obviously a busy woman with kids, a house, etc. The FemDom lifestyle can be so advantageous to her if she were to have that personal revelation of the many possibilities and the many benefits to the woman.
That is your challenge. If you want her to embrace this lifestyle with enthusiasm you will need to show her, not by words and not be printing articles and stories off the internet for her to read, but rather by demonstrating to her how your submissive nature motivates you to serve her. The female domination lifestyle is the perfect lifestyle for the busy woman.
As far as kids are concerned, you must be willing to steal away to play. I don’t have children but I know FemDom couples that do and I’ve talked with many FemDom couples over the years that have children. The key is to set aside at least one night per week for just the two of you. That is important for any marriage, be it vanilla, traditional or FemDom. A wife and husband need to have a date night where they can work on their intimacy and friendship.
Within a female domination marriage that date night could include D&S play. Either send the children elsewhere that night or the two of you go elsewhere. A night of sex and D&S play will help that bond between the two of you to remain strong. Plus it will feed your submissive energy and that should provide you with the motivation you need to serve her and assist her through out the rest of the week. It comes back to priorities and what you value in life. A successful marriage takes work and it must be given a priority in your life.
It sounds as if your wife has been opened minded to exploring this lifestyle with you but you are expecting too much, too fast. My advice to you is to stop topping from below. Show her the benefits of your submission by being her helpmate. Keep the lines of communication open and share with her what you desire in the bedroom but then you must respect her authority and accept whatever she decides. And for goodness sake, if she agrees to deny you, don’t make it a burden on her by forcing yourself on her when she is not in the mood. The denial process will produce passion within you but channel that passion outside the bedroom. It sounds like she could use some help around the house. Remove some of the stress from her life and perhaps she will be free to devote more time to this lifestyle. Best wishes.
Q. Dear Ms Sutton, I find meditation really difficult. I feel uncomfortable, I’m constantly distracted by thoughts, sounds etc so that I stay at the conscious level most of the time, sometimes getting quite annoyed with myself. Occasionally, if I can relax enough, there is a sort of muscular letting go that occurs and I start to just experience being rather than trying. It causes a sort of opening up, of allowing things to happen rather than trying to make them happen.
However, I have found recently that I have achieved this state of being much more frequently when licking my wife's pussy ('yoni', we call it, in the tantric tradition). If I place one hand on her pelvic bone, the other hand on her heart while my lips kiss, blow and make love, it seems easy to devote myself to love. I lose that self-consciousness that so often gets in the way of our pleasure. We all spend so much time trying to 'do' something that we forget just to be there. Making love has nothing to do with achievement. It is a spiritual experience of giving to each other, without expectations.
Men tend by nature to grit their teeth and hope for the best when they have sex but, as we are all starting to learn as a species, it is ultimately desperately unfulfilling and it is only by becoming less goal-oriented that you can achieve this space that your readers call sub-space. I don’t actually like the term at all as I think it fails to recognize the spiritual element of loving through the purity of giving. I am reading a lot about Taoist Chinese sexuality now and I am sure that what we now call Femdom or BDSM is moving in the direction of a spiritualization of sexuality and love relationships.
So now, I don’t bother with a lot of this candle gazing. Finding nirvana between my wife's legs is quite enough!!! Best regards and thanks for your pioneering work.
A. I receive letters from men who ask me how they can experience subspace. Some men try too hard. I explain that you can’t “will” yourself to subspace because that means you are focused on yourself. In order to achieve subspace a man must lose himself in the woman. He must lose himself in her very essence and he must surrender himself to her, he must sacrifice himself to her. Once a man surrenders to her and once his entire focus is on her, then subspace can be achieved.
Subspace is a tranquil and somewhat hypnotic state that comes from the absolute surrender of the human will. Your description of your experience with your wife fits perfectly with what I classify as “subspace”.
I analyze subspace from a psychological perspective, not from a biological perspective. I have had people in the BDSM community disagree with my description of subspace. They like to classify it as a masochist that enters a state known as subspace via endorphins that are released in the brain to block the pain and this causes the submissive to obtain a “high” from the endorphins. Endorphins are hormones that bind to opiate receptors and they reduce the sensation of pain and can affect the emotions. I do not doubt the validity of the high that endorphins provide to a masochist. However, I feel that this is different from subspace.
The reason I do not believe in the correlation between pain and subspace is because different D&S activities will transport a man to the “submissive zone”, and most of these activities do not involve physical pain. A man need not be a masochist to enter subspace. Your situation proves my point. You enter into a peaceful, tranquil, hypnotic state of being when you are orally servicing your wife. You become lost in her.
Some men have the same sensation when they are worshipping a woman’s boots, other men enter subspace when they are being Queened, other men experience this when they are being humiliated by a woman within a sexual setting. Strap-on play, discipline sessions, and worshipping the female body will transport certain men to subspace. So what do these activities have in common? The mental stimulation of a man surrendering his will over to the woman. The D&S activity is what triggers the mental stimulation and it is the mental stimulation that transports the man to subspace.
Subspace is a spiritual experience. Without going into this too deeply, we are triune beings. We are a spirit, we have a soul (the mind, will and the emotions) and we live in a body. The mind is the gate to the spirit. The conscience mind guards against thoughts and experiences that it does not want. It is like a guard that is programmed that will only allow pre-programmed and pre-conceived ideas and experiences to enter the mind. Anything that does not fit the programming of the conscience mind is rejected and blocked with skepticism and a defense mechanism. This guard is programmed primarily in childhood and through early adolescence. But our true natures come from the inside out.
Subspace is a tranquil and near hypnotic state that is a balance between the psyche and the spiritual. It is obtained within males when they surrender their will and their power over to a female. When a woman dominates a man (be it physical domination or mental domination) there is an energy and a power that she releases. This power is sexual and spiritual. This energy demands and desires submission. When a man surrenders to this power coming from the female he enters into a magical submissive zone or subspace. As he lets go and yields himself to the woman, he disarms his conscience guard and he allows his submissive nature to be released. This causes him to enter into that tranquil and near hypnotic state. That is what is known as subspace. It is hard to explain and describe but men who go there will testify that it is wonderful.
Women love what subspace does to men. It makes them meek, obedient, loving, and worshipful. A man in subspace has touched the spiritual and he can then worship a woman on a spiritual plane. This feeds a woman's dominant nature and she feeds off of the submissive energy coming from the man. Not every scene is of equal intensity or power but when that chemistry is there, it transcends ordinary sex. That is why I have said that D&S, and particularly Female Domination touches more than the sexual. It also touches the mental and the spiritual.
Subspace is different for each male. Every man is unique with a unique nature, a unique personality and with unique life experiences. Depending on his nature and his experiences, a man's sexuality is developed and is stored within his mind. It often takes experimentation to explore and discover exactly what will trigger a man's submissive nature. It is initially explored through the sexual but once touched and released via sexual and mental stimulation, it will cause a man to lay down his guard (his human will) and if he lets go and surrenders himself to the female, he will enter into subspace. The D&S is a merely a tool that a woman uses to explore the hidden areas of the man's mind, looking for that trigger that will cause the man to surrender his will to her. Once he does, it opens them both up to embrace their true natures.
You are able to achieve this state of being when you are between your wife’s legs, orally pleasuring her. Her taste and her smell add to your experience but what makes it so powerful is that you are surrendering yourself to her. It is all about her pleasure and when you are between her legs you are not focused on your pleasure, you lose yourself in her very essence, and this experience transfers your mind to a mental and spiritual state that some in this lifestyle refer to as subspace. Perhaps that is not the most prefect word used to describe this experience and I believe that your association with a spiritual state of being is more accurate.
Thanks for sharing your beautiful experience. Take care.
Q. Dear Ms Sutton, last night I rented the movie “The Notorious Betty Page”. I recommend this movie and I think Ms Kathleen should review it for Predominant.
What I found to be most interesting is that I had just finished your book (“The FemDom Experience”) prior to renting this movie and I was surprised that Irving Klaw was one of the main characters in the Betty Page movie. You mentioned Irving Klaw in your chapter on The Red Queen Society.
He seemed like a very interesting man and it is really sad that the government persecuted him and forced him to destroy most of his work. You only mentioned him briefly in your book but I think he made an important contribution to the female domination movement.
A. I talked about Irving Klaw in both of my books. As a matter of fact, I mentioned both Irving Klaw and Bettie Page in my first book “Female Domination” in the chapter on ‘Leather Sex’;
“After World War II, the Female Domination lifestyle reemerged, particularly in England. Fetish and Female Domination publications became popular in Europe and by the late 1940’s, Fetish publications began to surface in the United States. From the late 1940s through the 1960s, Irving Klaw did a brisk business selling photos and films of attractive women being both dominant and submissive, wearing bizarre leather, rubber and satin outfits. Klaw was a New York City cheesecake photographer and publisher who began his business (Movie Star News) in 1947. One of his chief models was the popular pinup girl Bettie Page. She often played the Dominatrix, wearing leather and high heels. In 1955 she won the title "Miss Pin-up Girl of the World." In January 1955, she was the centerfold in Playboy’s January issue. She was nicknamed the "Girl with the Perfect Figure." It is estimated that Irving Klaw burned over 80% of his photos when the government went after him as a pornographer in the early 60's.”
As you properly point out, I mention Klaw again in “The FemDom Experience” in the chapter on ‘The Red Queen Society Experience’. He was an important person because many men were able to explore their submissive natures through Klaw’s photography. The same goes for men like Leonard Burtman (also mentioned in both of my books), Eric Stanton and Gene Bilbrew. These men were able to bring the Dominant Female to the male public through their photos, art and publications. The persecution they endured paved the way to the freedom we enjoy today. It is hard to believe how tame those pictures of Bettie Page were when compared to what we see on the Internet today. The government was shocked that Klaw would take pictures of women in corsets and boots who had whips in their hands. And they were appalled that Klaw took photos that depicted women dominating women.
It was Ok for women to be objects of sexuality. It was Ok for women to pose nude in magazines like “Playboy” but pictures of women in “bizarre attire” and acting “dominant” sent the Patriarchy into a tizzy. Men like Klaw and Burtman were the subjects of numerous police raids and Klaw was hauled before the United States Senate in a McCarthy type witch hunt known as the ‘juvenile delinquency hearings’ conducted by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. They achieved their objective by intimidating Klaw enough that he burned most of his pictures and closed down his business.
I am sure those Senators patted each other on the back and used the media exposure of the juvenile delinquency hearings for personal political gain. However, as we now know from the history of the past forty years, their efforts had zero effect in stopping Adult-oriented material nor did it stop the real pornographers. In fact, Klaw’s soft porn would soon be replaced by the hardcore pornographic industry.
And the Fetish industry could not be stopped either because the male desire for female domination could not be censored. Lenny Burtman continued to produce magazines such as “Exotique” and “Bizarre Life” and his publications were the first that featured FemDom personal ads, where professional Mistresses could advertise their services.
People who frequent Fetish and FemDom websites today definitely owe that freedom to men like Klaw and Burtman. They paid a great personal price in order to attempt to meet the growing male demand for fetish and FemDom erotica. They were no doubt motivated by the quest for financial gain but it was a lucrative business only because of the male desire to view such erotica.
Thanks for the comments and Kathleen did in fact review “The Notorious Bettie Page” in the May/June 2007 issue of Predominant.
Q. Dear Elise thank you for getting all this information out there where it can be of use. My wife and I have been in a Female Led marriage since we married about five years ago and I am in and out of a CB3000 chastity device at her command. She knows I masturbate and cannot help myself and need her to control it. She says masturbation is the same as having an affair with another woman because I am stealing my desire for her and draining it away.
When I am locked up it gives me an energy boost to perform better for her and we both like our life better when she keeps me locked up. I could just be one of those husbands that is happiest when kept locked up all the time. This year I have been locked up about four months out of the year.
My wife found out that her son is having an affair with a married woman (her husband knows and accepts it) and she seems upset by it as if she has failed raising him. I try to console her, by talking about the woman being an Alpha female.
We recently were introduced to her and her husband at an X-mass party by her son and I can see why he likes her. She is very beautiful and has a presence about her.
I started to research on the web about cuckolding as it excites me and I can understand why husbands allow their wife to cuckold them. The fantasy excites me, but I would never admit it or push my wife into it. On the other hand I know my wife deserves to experience sex with other men who are better endowed than I am. If she were to keep me locked up, I am so docile and servile to her that I would of course accept her having another man for sex. In fact I think it would make me strive to try and please her even more to keep her and stay in her good graces.
In my search I found the word “POLYAMORY” and I immediately liked the word better than cuckolding. It sounds more scientific or religious, where as cuckolding sounds like a put down. After all, we men with smaller equipment just have to learn to accept our role.
Now that women are financially and sexually free to do as they please, I think it would help get this sort of lifestyle out there more if the term “Polyamory” was used more. What are your thoughts?
A. While I can see how the two words can be used interchangeably, the actuality is that polyamory and cuckolding are two different lifestyles.
Polyamory is where someone has multiple, and usually equal, long term relationships. The term “poly” (Greek) means “many” and “amor” (Latin) means “love”, thus polyamory means “many loves”. In today’s culture, those that practice polyamory refer to the term as “loving more than one”. This is different from cuckolding because cuckolding is primarily about a married woman having other sexual partners.
Usually with cuckolding, the woman has one life partner (her husband) but she has the freedom to enjoy multiple sexual partners. With polyamory, the woman would have multiple life partners. Taken out to the extreme where a culture would allow for it, polyamory could include a woman having multiple husbands. Since this is illegal in the United States, as well as in most cultures, those that practice polyamory usually will only “legally” marry one person but they live a lifestyle as if they are married to multiple partners.
Could polyamory work within the FemDom lifestyle? Of course, if the polyamory were a one-way street. If the men were totally monogamous to the woman whereas she were polygamous to them, that would provide a more advanced form of the cuckolding dynamic and would be an advanced expression of the female domination lifestyle. In fact, I know women in the FemDom lifestyle who say they practice the cuckolding lifestyle when if fact what they practice is closer in reality to the polyamory lifestyle. I say this because they are equally intimate with and equally committed to multiple men. These women may be married to one man but they spend equal time with all the men in their lives, and the men all have unique and clearly defined roles. The men are all monogamous to the woman.
Having said that, we shouldn’t confuse polyamory with cuckolding, or should we confuse open marriages or the swinging lifestyle with either polyamory or cuckolding. Each of these are distinctive lifestyles.
In Female Domination, the cuckolding lifestyle has come to mean a liberated wife who has other lovers for the sole purpose of humiliating her husband and using that humiliation to drive the husband into deeper submission to her. The dominant wife claims that she is free to do whatever she pleases, including having sex with whomever she desires. The husband must be monogamous to her and must suffer the shame of being cuckolded. And as you point out in your question, often within FemDom, orgasm denial and control of the husband accompanies cuckolding. The wife loves to have sex with another man while denying her own husband the right of having sex with her. It is a mind game and a power exchange.
You mentioned that you feel the word “cuckolding” has a negative connotation. The term cuckolding originally referred to an “unfaithful” wife. However, cuckolding among female dominant couples differs from the original definition of cuckolding because the husband is voluntarily cuckolded by his wife, sometimes as part of the husband's sexual fantasy and sometimes because he gains genuine sexual arousal through being humiliated by his wife’s sexual lliberation. This is different than polyamory because while a husband may consent to his wife having other sexual partners, he may not consent to her having another man (or men) in her life outside of the bedroom.
While I can see the definite power dynamic of the cuckolding lifestyle within what is otherwise a monagaomous relationship, I am not so sure about the polyamory relationship. Would you really be content being only one of your wife’s significant others? It sounds to me that what you really desire is to be her cuckold. Label it what you will, but you want to be in chastity and denied while your wife has sexual relations with another man. That is classic cuckolding within the world of female domination. Thanks for the interesting question and best wishes!
Q. I have over the course of the past two years realized that females are superior to men. I put this into the search engine and couldn’t believe the amount of websites on this subject. It’s so nice to know that I am not alone in this.
I read your book and tried to bring out my girlfriend’s dominant side but failed miserably at first because I am lazy and she’s so quiet. I took heed to your warning and didn’t tell her what I had been doing but she figured it out on her own. I explained it to her and although she always came across as being happy with our relationship, she admitted to me that she has been unhappy for some time. Therefore, she agreed to give female domination a try.
She began by spanking me with the hair brush and I was surprised at how quickly she took to it. Now she is different. She is not as quiet anymore. Now I have little free time when I am not at work. I do whatever she asks and she inspects what I do.
I can definitely see more discipline coming my way. She has already asked me about regular punishment sessions and she hasn’t read your book yet! We are only into our third week but she now enjoys having me orally serving her, including her bottom as well.
When all this came about, I realized something was missing from our relationship and she was unhappy. But now we are both very happy and in the long run, I believe you saved our relationship. So thank you. I am in your debt.
A. Thanks for the kind words but never forget that you are in your girlfriend’s debt, not mine. Had she not been willing to explore this lifestyle with you, your relationship would not have changed.
It has only been three weeks and you are still in the excitement of the moment. The challenge for you is to keep up with your enthusiasm and to stay devoted to her. Make sure that you don’t allow that old, lazy male to creep back in your life. If you want her to stay as excited as you are, you need to continue to server her with as much zeal as you have now. I do wish you both continued growth and success.
Q. Hello Ms. Sutton, First I wanted to suggest that you might benefit having some FemDom advertisements on your site to help support your site.
Also, I wanted to ask, why don't more females and/or couples that practice Femdom utilize sites like dailymotion.com or youtube.com to showcase their Femdom viewpoints, techniques, etc? I think that it would be a great way to bring Femdom activities further into the mainstream. What do you think?
A. I do accept limited advertisements on my site but I don’t want my site to be like the many sites out there that have so many banners that it becomes overkill. If you run a FemDom site or FemDom business that is compatible with my philosophy of loving female authority, feel free to contact me about adverstising on my site. If a reputable fetish store or FemDom organization is interested in advertising on my site for a monthly fee in order to support my site while gaining exposure for their business or organization, that is very doable. But I limit it to only a select few ads at a time.
As far as your second question goes, I can’t speak for the multitudes of FemDom couples out there. Most couples choose to practice this lifestyle in the secrecy and privacy of their home. I doubt it they would want to film video clips of their FemDom lifestyle and post them on the internet.
Out of curiosity, I went to YouTube and did a search on FemDom. There are an assortment of video clips, some are short scenes taken out of mainstream movies whereas other are from Professional Dominant women that posted video clips and slideshows in order to advertise their own paid websites. I found a variety of free clips on YouTube that showed such FemDom acts like foot worship, spankings, verbal humiliation, and even one that showed a woman using a Queening box on her man.
Thanks for the questions and take care!
Q. My wife and I are rather timid about reaching out to other people regarding our lifestyle. A previous Q&A letter from a Female reader prompted me to respond. We have reached out to a few friends with lukewarm to somewhat negative responses. We have also considered going to munches and other parties but so far we have yet to find a space that offers a gradual enough introduction to newcomers. I hope this doesn't sound snobbish but we have observed some rather off-putting people -- mostly male -- in the BDSM world that make my wife very uncomfortable and I don't blame her.
So, organized groups are not exactly the easiest choice and reaching out to friends is fraught with risks. I would hope that someone in the community might find a way to help bridge that gap so that average, fairly mainstream couples can find one another. If you have any suggestions along that line, I'm sure we are not alone in wanting to hear them.
Second, and this is related to the item above. The people behind the Slave Register site have created a set of Ownership Icons at http://www.ownershipflag.com/icons. I find these icons very appealing as they are discrete enough to be worn in public (e.g. on a key chain, briefcase, purse, etc.) but simple enough to easily recognizable by others in the know. It is my suspicion that we pass by like-minded people all the time but we never know it. I'm hoping that these symbols might help us recognize one another in our common social circles.
I'm passing the word on to you as a leader in the Femdom community. Your opinion on this would certainly be valuable as would any support you could offer. Having a symbol is only as good as the ability for the right people to identify it.
A. I had a service there for a time on my site where I invited people to contact me who were looking for other FemDom couples in their area. I received many e-mails from couples all over the world and I tried to forward those e-mails to others in their state or region. Some couples did hook up with each other but based on the bulk of the feedback I received, the majority of couples who inquired about finding like-minded people never bothered to follow-up. Therefore, I stopped providing this service because it was time consuming.
I might be willing to give this another try if people would be willing to allow their e-mail message and e-mail address to be posted on my site so others can contact them directly without me having to be the mediator. I think the majority of the couples who are regular visitors to my site would fit your description of “mainstream FemDom couples”.
As far as groups go, I would recommend FemDom groups and not BDSM groups, especially if your wife is turned off by dominant men. Most BDSM groups are pansexual. If there is one in your area, I would recommend a group such a ClubFEM where all the women are dominant and all the men submissive.
We’ve discussed symbols in the past on my site (remember the rubber band idea?) All I can do is post your question. If someone out there who has the time and the resources to dedicate to helping like-minded people to connect with one another, I am more than willing to post the information on my site. I can even post it under the “What’s New!” section on my main page. I just ask that any such service be practical and ran by either a woman or a FemDom couple. I will require verification that the person or persons who are orchestrating this service are indeed sincere and as advertised. Thanks for sharing your idea and I always invite other ideas.
Q. Dear Ms Sutton, I have read your site (and Predominant) for several years now and I imagine there is considerable work to collect and process the email, update the site, etc. Do you do this yourself, have help from other dominant women or is this something your husband (or other submissives) does for you?
A. I am the only one who has access to my e-mail account (neither my husband nor anyone else has access) so everything that is sent to elisesutton@yahoo.com will gain my attention (as long as the subject area and the content conforms to the standards I have set forth).
Having said that, I do have help. I have a submissive that does the updates on my site. I give him the material and I give him direction but he does the actual web updates and any computer related work. I also had a submissive that archived and categorized the Q&A and Real Story entries for me. I need to do that again so I may need to find someone who would be willing to assist me with this most tedious task.
Predominant is a team effort, all female, although we have featured some original artwork, FemDom fiction and FemDom articles from males. My female associates do the bulk of the work on Predominant, although I know that two of the women do use their husbands extensively to help them with research and other such tasks. For example, the research that goes into our “FemDom Heritage” feature is quite extensive and time consuming. One woman is in charge of this feature but she utilizes her male helpmate to assist her.
Those who are familiar with Ms Kathleen (who once did phone counseling for me) know that she does a movie review in every issue. That may sound simple but I can tell you that it takes a lot of thought and time to select an appropriate movie with a FemDom theme, watch it, take notes, and write a review.
Predominant is quite an undertaking and we had to go from monthly to semi-monthly because of the time it takes to put it together. We took a bit of a setback when Pay-Pal no longer allowed us to use their service but we found that those that really enjoy the e-zine were willing to go the extra mile for us in order to subscribe. Now we are able to use LuLu Publishing to market access to back issues.
All of the women who assist me are career women who have many other interests and responsibilities. Predominant is mostly a labor of love but the subscription does help to support my free site. My associates are in this because they want to promote Loving Female Authority.
I contribute to Predominant in the form of my responses to the Real Life Stories and I have done most, but not all, of the Interviews that appear in each issue. My associates are spread out and some of them have done the interviews, especially if the woman being interviewed is a personal friend or is in their proximity.
In 2007, we featured some new female authors in our “FemDom Fiction” section. It was exciting to introduce the works of talented female writers who are also believers in female domination and female supremacy. And I am also excited about the FemDom artists (both men and women) who have contacted us requesting if their art can be featured in future issues. We are always on the look out for new talent.
I am always looking to add to the “Mainstream Articles” section on my free site. Some of you have been wonderful in forwarding to me articles, links and websites. My site would not be possible if not for all the assistance of so many of you out there; women, men and couples. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!
