A question by Alex Bragi about some doms wanting their subs to have sex with another dom and asked whether these subs are coerced in some way, set off an unrelated but parallel chain of thoughts in me. Recently I read an extract of a psychology research paper in a psychology magazine. It asked the question ‘Why do men lie to women?’ The paper was erudite and rather convoluted but the conclusion was that basically women never believe men when they are telling the truth. Further into the paper it asked the alternative question ‘Why do women lie to men?’ The conclusion this time was that women lie to men so men don’t know the truth. This is not impugning every individual woman’s integrity, the paper does speculate on the biological imperatives for this behaviour. The paper goes on to infer that this behaviour shows men are submissive to females even when he believes he is dominant. The male will do anything to please his queen so to speak, while she, keeping her male compliant is happily living a completely different existence to the one the male thinks he knows about.

Pondering about this I asked myself the question, how dominant are male doms and how submissive are female submissives? Many women appear to say that they can only be submissive when they are adored by their respective male doms. This suggests to me the sub is not being submissive at all but will only rewards her dom when his behaviour is complying to her expectations. Let’s be honest fellas, when we men are confronted by a woman who is offering everything one desires, the male brain does have a tendency to become one tracked and one becomes blind to the world about us. I have never actually called myself a dom because while I have the urge to be dominant and find it a very satisfying experience, I have often been unable to put the question out of my head, why is this woman being so submissive to me? I have often felt I am the one being manipulated. I forgot to ask myself this question once and went into the pattern of lying to my partner in order to agree with anything she said as long as I was getting rewarded. I apologized for things I felt I wasn’t guilty of and felt were more to do with her hang-ups. Of course such behaviour is self-defeating.

In a BDSM situation of consensual sex, how dominant is a male dom and how submissive is a female submissive and is this an extreme reflection of the wider relationship between men and women? I.e. Male dominant thinks he is dominant while the female sub really knows she is?