u/that_villainess

Greedy. Selfish. Bitch.

Three words used so often to shame women for having needs, having boundaries, wanting more.

Three words that mean: shut up. That mean: take it. That mean: be grateful for the crumbs that society thinks you deserve.

A sub asked me this week why I used the word greedy to describe myself in a session. Why choose an ugly word? Why choose a word that seems so at odds with the type of person I am? Why would I—feminist, anarchist, generous, fiercely caring—use that word?

I answered his question and it inspired me to answer your unasked one:

There are words that I am here to unapologetically reclaim. Language our society uses to chastize women, to force us back into “our place.”

I own that word precisely because it makes you stop and think and question. I own that word because owning it forces us to lay bare what people are really saying when they use it.

Greedy, in simplest terms, means wanting more than your share. But what is my share? Too often, the word is used to try and force me to ask for less when what most women (myself included) need to do is ask for more.

So I refuse. I refuse to ask for less. I embrace the accusation. I take your barb and put it in my bio.

Because yes, I want more. More than the world has tried to offer me in so many ways. More money, more respect, more voice, more power.

When I say greedy, I don’t mean that I’m hoarding wealth. I mean that I will take and I will take unapologetically. Not because I need more than my share, but because I refuse to believe that my share is less than men’s.

I refuse to accept that my share is less money per hour than male counterparts. I refuse to accept that my share is spending more money on the same products (look up: pink tax). I refuse to accept that my share is footing the bill on beauty products, birth control, and safe sex—or being the one to be crushed under the weight of the consequences of not footing those bills.

I refuse to accept that my share is carrying more mental load, more emotional labor, more housework, more, more, more.

You see, I’m greedy like that.

In our society, money is power. Having money means maintaining power. I don’t even mean over others: I mean over my self.

I mean that because I did well in my vanilla career, I was able to quit when my industry’s ethics stopped matching my own. My fuck-you money was actually save-my-soul money.

I mean that my money has let me create art that changed people’s lives. My fuck-you money was I-see-you money.

I mean that because I expect more from the men around me, I have better men around me. The shit ones leave. My fuck-that attitude is actually save-me attitude.

Power can be used to fuck someone over and that’s the vision society has handed us because we’ve watched the men in charge suck everyone else dry—but it’s not the whole story of power or money.

Power can also be used to save yourself. Power can save others.

And that’s part of the point in flipping these scripts, in femdom and findom—when the traditionally disempowered in society are given power, the first power we gain is this:

The power to say no. To being exploited. And to participating in exploitation.

No, I will not do something that feels demeaning to me. No, I will not keep working with companies that are actively exploiting others.

That power means I get to be the person I want to be.

That money means I get to be the person I want to be.

There’s a certain type of man—a certain type of person—who uses the word greedy to demand that women (and other marginalized groups) ask for less.

Fuck. That.

I embrace the word because I will always ask for more.

Not just more money and more empowerment for me and those I love. But also more from men. Higher standards. Better behavior. Real, challenging personal growth. I refuse to baby men the way society loves to. That’s not respect; it’s infantilization.

I expect more.

Like a greedy, selfish bitch, it seems.

Greedy.

Selfish.

Bitch.

Why yes, thank you, I am.

Now go do those pushups and send for that bitch’s lunch.

It’s easy to think that BDSM is—by it’s very nature—subversive.

We’re the weirdos. The freaks. The ones taking societal norms and turning them on their heads, pushing them past their boundaries, exploring the landscapes marked on the normal societal maps as “here there be dragons.”

There’s loneliness in that.

There’s horniness in that.

And sometimes there’s some pride in that.

In being subversive. Being edgy. Being kinky. 

So it took me some time to parse out the truth of BDSM spaces. That yes, there is subversion here. Yes, there is a landscape here that’s off the beaten track.

But also, yes, you will find a lot of play, kinks, relationships, and norms within our space that do the very opposite of subverting societal scripts:

They reinforce them.

Making fun of you for being femme? Not subversive. Centering the peen? Not subversive. Prioritizing a fantasy woman over your wife? Not even close to subversive. Your age gap fantasy where your old ass is desired by women half your age? Not subversive.

You’re on the same scripts as the rest of the vanilla men. You just want to have that vanilla cake and call yourself edgy too. 

And goddamn I find you boring when you do that shit. 

*

When a man comes to me wanting me to shame him for femininity, to dress him up in high heels and glitter and call him sissy or queer, that’s not subversive or exciting.

That’s just entrenching the status quo. That women are less than men. That men are lowering themselves by exploring femininity. That feminity makes you queer. That femininity itself is defined by glitter or lipstick or pink sparkling wine. 

It is, in a word, boring. Predictable. The opposite of edgy.

Now, if you want to put on a dress and feel your feelings. If you want encouragement to step deeper into a world of things your assigned gender has denied you—be that lipstick, sisterhood, or platform heels—fuck yeah. That’s subversive. That’s not playing by society’s rules. 

That’s where I want to meet you. 

That’s what turns me on. 

*

When a man wants to play a homewrecking fantasy where a hot dominant woman way out of his league swoops in to steal him away from his wife (as if he were a prize), that’s not subversive. It just reinforces the idea that any man—regardless of any real effort or character traits that women value—is a prize by default, that women are in competition for y’all, and that men determine which woman has value and which one is expendable. Not to mention that it is rape culture—that your wife’s consent and value have been taken off the table.

That’s not subversive. It’s not edgy. It’s the most boring, on-script fantasy of them all.

The subversive, sexy version of this is handing over your power to your wife. Be cucked. Be hers. Let her pass you around to her friends if she wants. 

That’s sexy. That’s interesting. That’s subverting a status quo. 

The other subversive version of this is consensual threesomes, group sex, non-monogamy, sex parties—desire outside the bounds of the box society drew.

Or being free use for women. (But again, you have to become the kind of person women want to use. No skipping steps.)

*

This is the kind of world I want to live in and it’s the kind of kink I want to play with. 

One where disempowered people find power. 

One where the beautiful parts of yourself society shames are rendered beautiful again. 

One where submissive men find the fucking gorgeousness of their submission. 

Where femininity is sexy and powerful and worth exploring. 

Where you are not empowered because of your gender but because of the work you’ve done in yourself to be safe, powerful, and emotionally stable. 

*

Am I kink-shaming you? 

If your kink is built on unexamined misogyny, racism, or other bigotries—damn straight I am. 

But you know what I’m not shaming and will never shame? You doing the work to find the fucking sexy kink underneath that other societal bullshit, doing the work to dig out the bullshit part and find the sexy, powerful, authentic part.

The part that wants to explore femininity for real.

The part that admires women.

The part that wants to rest.

The part that wants to connect and repair.

The part that wants to feel hard feelings and exist with them. 

The part that wants to center someone else’s pleasure.

The part that wants to give up power for real, not cosplay it.

The part that realizes that the way into fantasies about being wanted by multiple women is about becoming a person multiple women would want—and that the boring script about having to harm one woman to be wanted by another is just that, a boring script.

I take it back. I’m not kink-shaming most of y’all. I’m kink-reframing. 

Because at the heart of the most boring “kinks” (are they even kinks when they are sooooo status quo, though) are real desires that probably are subversive according to society: 

Being wanted by multiple people

Embracing your whole self instead of just the parts the Council of DudeBros who Decide What Masculinity Is have decided.

Putting down your power and responsibilities

Stepping outside hierarchies or reversing your role in them

Feeling empowered in a way vanilla life never quite delivers on no matter how privileged you are

That’s the part I’m here for. That’s the part that’s sexy. That’s the part that’s empowering—not just when you’re horny but when you cement it in your soul. 

So feel free to miss me if you want to stay on the script. And if you want off it? Let’s fucking go. 

I was born with the expectation that I would be small.

Whatever you’re thinking, think smaller than that.

Think: tiny. Think: invisible.

Think: the woman in the background of the scene serving the tea to our main characters. No, the woman you don’t even see who already placed the tea on the table for them to drink. Extra #35 in the movie. No name. No lines. No role in the plot, not really.

We movie-goers don’t remember a thing about her. We never saw her. She barely saw herself. She was just a vessel to deliver the tea.

** 

Part of the problem was the usual: all the ways women are taught to be small in a society made for and run by men. All the ways young women especially are meant to be seen and not heard—and really not even seen.

My boobs were too big. My body too sexual. My voice too loud. My needs too present. I was too bossy. Too giggly. Too argumentative.

Cover yourself. Don’t talk so much. Stop being so bossy.

But even more than patriarchy, the problem was that I was raised evangelical. And the message was always more of Jesus, less of me.

The goal: to replace yourself entirely with the church-sanctioned version of Jesus (patriarchy Jesus, capitalism Jesus). To be, as it were, body-snatched by the holy spirit.

Hallelujah, hosanna, shout to the lord. More of you, lord. Less of me.

Less.

Less.

Less of me.

And here’s the real tragedy: I was good at it. Marvelous. Proficient. At subjecting myself to what I believed was the will of god.

(Which just so happened to match up neatly with the will of capitalism –funny how that works—and the will of patriarchy and the will of pretty much any other system of power.)

I was good at making myself smaller. I was good at taking up my cross. A phrase straight out of the Bible which meant: suffer. Take up the heaviest burden ever handed to a human. Give up everything, including your life.

And so I did. I made myself small and invisible and sick. If someone was ill, I volunteered to sit with them all night. I did free labor for the church. For the youth groups. For any person who had a need.

I learned the world was full of needs. But never mine. 

**

I still remember a phone call with my father where I agonized over what to do because my roommate was moving out and the woman who wanted to move in made me deeply uncomfortable. She had stories of men she’d dated showing up and throwing bricks through her windows. She had a very young grandchild who’d stay over multiple nights per week—and likely cry and wake us both.

I was afraid of the men she’d bring home. I was afraid of the lack of sleep a child in the house represented during a time when I had the most demanding job of my life and I was (very secretly) having some of my earliest suicidal thoughts. But I also knew that what I wanted or needed wasn’t supposed to matter.

Because What Would Jesus Do? He’d take her in even if it put him in danger. Even if it killed him.

Take up your cross.

More of Jesus. Less of me.

My father—ever disappointed—told me I didn’t even sound like his daughter. His daughter knew better than to want anything for herself. Even a good night’s sleep. Even if her bedroom window was on the ground floor, perfect brick-breaking height.

**

It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I did the revolutionary thing.

I had already left the church by then. I’d already untangled (some of) the purity culture. I had my first kiss at twenty or twenty-one (I no longer recall). I moved to New York, then Colorado. I used words like goddamn and fuck and every time they were a relief.

But I had not untangled the compulsion to serve—hadn’t found where my natural impulse to help people had gotten tangled up with the toxic idea that I was nothing and others were everything and I should help until I had nothing left.

I was so incapable of saying no that I simply froze up when a man pushed a make-out session into sex without asking. Once, then twice. I was so incapable of no that I kept finding myself in danger, letting people into my life who took and took and took some more and left me thinking that it would be nice to be dead because I wouldn’t be so exhausted anymore.  

And then, in my mid-twenties, depressed and suicidal and desperate, I did a revolutionary thing that probably didn’t look revolutionary from the outside.

I let my lease expire, and I packed a bag, and I left.

I left the people who needed me. I left the demands. I left all the ways I’d gotten tangled up in other people’s needs while stomping on my own. I boarded a plane on a one-way ticket to Europe.

I did it to save myself.

And save myself, I did.

**

The reasons it saved me are complicated. The first is this: I let the distance do the thing I couldn’t do for myself—say no.

No, I can’t come to every single event everyone ever asks me to attend. No, I cannot work those extra long hours. No, I don’t want to kiss you. No, I can’t be your entire emotional support universe.

My distance made it impossible to ask as much from me. And in the space where other people’s needs had been, I found answers to the questions of what I wanted, who I was. 

**

What I discovered on the road was this: me.

Pandora without anyone else’s demands on her time, her emotions, her life.

I discovered she was luminous.

I discovered she was powerful.

I discovered that I loved her.

It was something I’d been working on in therapy for years. Self-love. It never made sense. It never clicked. I could bend my will so easily to love others, but I never could find my way to it for myself.

Until a bright, hot day on a beachfront vacation when I walked into the bathroom and glimpsed myself in the mirror—and I didn’t realize it was me. I just saw a girl that I loved, and my heart leapt with it. As if I’d seen my best friend walk through the door. My crush. My lover. My life.

That’s the truth beneath the truth: I had.

Somewhere in all that space no longer occupied by everyone else’s needs, I had become my own best friend, my lover, the human I’d fight for tooth and nail and heart and soul.

**

Another decade passed, with so many steps toward self-love, self-actualization. In my late thirties, I started joking that I was my own wife. And indeed, I had become that too. I cared for myself so fully, so tenderly. I protected my sleep and my peace and my joy and my rage. I made art. I gave myself space and time to expand into. I sang myself love songs and took myself on romantic getaways and danced with myself when I reached a milestone.

I learned to say no—and learned that I loved saying it. I learned to take up space—and learned that I loved demanding it.

I stopped hiding my power, my body, my mind, my boundaries, my needs, my demands.

**

And then, a few years ago, I met a kinky human.

Our relationship started platonic and built oh-so-slowly—a sweet and safe and languid journey toward new forms of closeness. He made art for me and painted art on me. He read books I recommended and took notes. He told me he loved me, but more than that: he showed me. He loved me in the ways I’d learned to love myself—with admiration and wonder at this powerful, sexy, luminous person I had become. With gratitude for the fighter she is. With active, intentional, consistent care.

Powerful women were his kink. And I had finally embraced my power.

We transitioned slowly from platonic to sexual—but not in the ways of the vanilla world. Elements of tease, denial, and orgasm control came long before what most people would call sex. My feet were pampered, worshipped. Pet play built from nearly day one.

And worship—the underpinning of it all was worship. The centering of my pleasure and power and self.

Once he told me that he felt like he’d never had sex before this. He’d never explored. He’d never gone so far off the expected script of romantic and sexual relationships. His world had been smaller.

I didn’t say it, but my heart’s response was this:

I felt I’d never been loved before.

I didn’t know someone could love me in the fierce and sacred way I loved myself.

Everything else had been a shadow. An imposter.

**

Nearly two years into that long, slow romance, I shared another truth:

In this journey I’d been taking with myself—of taking up space and finding my voice and being big, not small, never again small—I wanted him to come with me. Not just to equality, a place where we would neatly meet each other’s needs. But to swing the pendulum in a direction I’d never swung it: to be loved more than I loved. To be given more than I gave.

To be worshipped.

I wanted him to do the thing he’d already been naturally doing. But I wanted more.

I had been born to worship, and all I wanted now was to be worshipped. I was not Extra #35. I was the goddess at the center of the universe.

The light in his eyes told me that this was his truth too.

**

Now I am the goddess at the center of more than one universe. Every day, I step deeper into my power, I welcome others deeper into their submission, their rest, their truth.

I started this journey thinking kink was interesting. Kink was fun. Kink was centering. But I did not realize until I was in the middle of it just how healing it can be. How it can take you into the most vulnerable parts of yourself, the deepest truths, the place where you can embrace your self.

Whatever that self looks like.

Be she a goddess. A tease. A domme.

Or a submissive, worshipper, or something else altogether.

Whoever yours is, I hope your journey takes you ever-closer to them.

There are some conversations in findom that really stick with you. Some moments that leave a particular mark or shift the way you understand the space.

One of mine was this:

Months and months ago, when I was getting to know a sub I particularly enjoy for the first time, he asked me if I dated submission men.

I thought he was one of those guys who got off on the idea of dommes dating dominant men, so I assumed my answer would end our conversation:

I only date submissive men.

My primary partner—the love of my life, the person who I explored kink with in the first place—is also the first person who collared himself for me. My worshipper. 

To my surprise, that sub received my answer as relief. As validation. As being seen.

He is the one who wrote that particularly long review I have posted on most of my platforms. There’s a section in it that touches on just how relieved he felt by my answer:

“In her life both online and offline, she’s a dominant woman who likes and wants submissive men. That means...she will see you as a person and appreciate your submission.”

It’s clear: he longed for that. To be seen and wanted and valued. Not for the performance of dominance that society constantly accepts—which he was quite good at and successful in, actually. But for the truth of himself.

I think about it often. I think about how this is part of what can be healing about my dynamics. The fact that those societal expectations for men don’t and have never resonated for me. The fact that your submission delights me. The fact that even in dynamics where I play with harshness or humiliation, there is a foundation of fondness. 

I also think about how that’s what real aftercare is. It’s between-care. It’s the foundation of the connection. It’s “I am still here after you show your vulnerable parts.” And it is, “I want your submission.” And it is “submission is good actually. Authenticity is good actually.”

I know other dommes play in other ways. I’m not interested in critiquing or kink-shaming. But I am interested in the ways that my experiences and my love for a submissive man have shaped me and my dynamics.

I am interested in the way that love heals—not just him but all of them. Sometimes even some of you I’ve never played. The ones who write to me about an essay that reached inside them and laid them bare and accepted them there. 

And I am interested in the ways that this is truly transgressive. The single-dimensional shaming of men for being submissive feels boring to me. It’s what society already does to y’all already. 

But this: saying, let me see you, you glorious little weirdo. And then still being there the next day and the next. 

There’s something in that.

Something truly transgressive.

That excites me. 

The only men who resonate for me are submissive ones. The only space that interests me is one where I’m excited to connect with them. 

Give me submission or give me solitude. 

Give me this or give me nothing. 

There are some conversations in findom that really stick with you. Some moments that leave a particular mark or shift the way you understand the space.

One of mine was this:

Months and months ago, when I was getting to know a sub I particularly enjoy for the first time, he asked me if I dated submission men.

I thought he was one of those guys who got off on the idea of dommes dating dominant men, so I assumed my answer would end our conversation:

I only date submissive men.

My primary partner—the love of my life, the person who I explored kink with in the first place—is also the first person who collared himself for me. My worshipper. 

To my surprise, that sub received my answer as relief. As validation. As being seen.

He is the one who wrote that particularly long review I have posted on most of my platforms. There’s a section in it that touches on just how relieved he felt by my answer:

“In her life both online and offline, she’s a dominant woman who likes and wants submissive men. That means...she will see you as a person and appreciate your submission.”

It’s clear: he longed for that. To be seen and wanted and valued. Not for the performance of dominance that society constantly accepts—which he was quite good at and successful in, actually. But for the truth of himself.

I think about it often. I think about how this is part of what can be healing about my dynamics. The fact that those societal expectations for men don’t and have never resonated for me. The fact that your submission delights me. The fact that even in dynamics where I play with harshness or humiliation, there is a foundation of fondness. 

I also think about how that’s what real aftercare is. It’s between-care. It’s the foundation of the connection. It’s “I am still here after you show your vulnerable parts.” And it is, “I want your submission.” And it is “submission is good actually. Authenticity is good actually.”

I know other dommes play in other ways. I’m not interested in critiquing or kink-shaming. But I am interested in the ways that my experiences and my love for a submissive man have shaped me and my dynamics.

I am interested in the way that love heals—not just him but all of them. Sometimes even some of you I’ve never played. The ones who write to me about an essay that reached inside them and laid them bare and accepted them there. 

And I am interested in the ways that this is truly transgressive. The single-dimensional shaming of men for being submissive feels boring to me. It’s what society already does to y’all already. 

But this: saying, let me see you, you glorious little weirdo. And then still being there the next day and the next. 

There’s something in that.

Something truly transgressive.

That excites me. 

The only men who resonate for me are submissive ones. The only space that interests me is one where I’m excited to connect with them. 

Give me submission or give me solitude. 

Give me this or give me nothing. 

There are some conversations in findom that really stick with you. Some moments that leave a particular mark or shift the way you understand the space.

One of mine was this:

Months and months ago, when I was getting to know a sub I particularly enjoy for the first time, he asked me if I dated submission men.

I thought he was one of those guys who got off on the idea of dommes dating dominant men, so I assumed my answer would end our conversation:

I only date submissive men.

My primary partner—the love of my life, the person who I explored kink with in the first place—is also the first person who collared himself for me. My worshipper. 

To my surprise, that sub received my answer as relief. As validation. As being seen.

He is the one who wrote that particularly long review I have posted on most of my platforms. There’s a section in it that touches on just how relieved he felt by my answer:

“In her life both online and offline, she’s a dominant woman who likes and wants submissive men. That means...she will see you as a person and appreciate your submission.”

It’s clear: he longed for that. To be seen and wanted and valued. Not for the performance of dominance that society constantly accepts—which he was quite good at and successful in, actually. But for the truth of himself.

I think about it often. I think about how this is part of what can be healing about my dynamics. The fact that those societal expectations for men don’t and have never resonated for me. The fact that your submission delights me. The fact that even in dynamics where I play with harshness or humiliation, there is a foundation of fondness. 

I also think about how that’s what real aftercare is. It’s between-care. It’s the foundation of the connection. It’s “I am still here after you show your vulnerable parts.” And it is, “I want your submission.” And it is “submission is good actually. Authenticity is good actually.”

I know other dommes play in other ways. I’m not interested in critiquing or kink-shaming. But I am interested in the ways that my experiences and my love for a submissive man have shaped me and my dynamics.

I am interested in the way that love heals—not just him but all of them. Sometimes even some of you I’ve never played. The ones who write to me about an essay that reached inside them and laid them bare and accepted them there. 

And I am interested in the ways that this is truly transgressive. The single-dimensional shaming of men for being submissive feels boring to me. It’s what society already does to y’all already. 

But this: saying, let me see you, you glorious little weirdo. And then still being there the next day and the next. 

There’s something in that.

Something truly transgressive.

That excites me. 

The only men who resonate for me are submissive ones. The only space that interests me is one where I’m excited to connect with them. 

Give me submission or give me solitude. 

Give me this or give me nothing. 

I discovered this morning that the Exclu platform enabled an AI chatbot to pretend to be me without asking for opt in or even notifying me. It has been failing to notify me of messages I get on the platform and secretly impersonating me instead.

The platform informed me that they enabled this automatically for *all* creators (if you are a creator - run don't walk to your inbox). Subs: if you contact someone on there, you are probably not talking to that domme.

Things this disgusting AI did:

:: Impersonate me to subs without my consent (obviously gross)

:: Promise fans content that I do not have and never will have because it's content I don't do

:: Have sexual conversations while pretending to be me and without AVing

:: Say irresponsible things about kink while pretending to be me

:: Promise content that literally violates my hard limits

:: Use language and say things I would NEVER EVER SAY and that literally turned my stomach when I read them