Why Don't Doms Get Punished?
easy answers to an age-old question
This piece originally appeared on the Ask A Sub Patreon in 2022. To gain access to the whole archive of over 250 posts and advice columns, join my Patreon here.
Hi Lina!
First, thank you so much for this amazing community and platform.
I’m currently doing the Conscious Kink Course with my long time partner and now Dom. And I have a question.
I see so much about D/s punishment that is only one directional. Of course, I’m not looking to punish my Dom, but at the same time I like having a sense of equality in my relationships.
Essentially what I’m asking is how do you handle your Don’s mishaps or have you heard of subs doing such? I feel like having a conversation is the only solution, but have you heard any funishments that could be imposed on the Dom (like watching sub play with themselves without touching etc)? Or is that domming from the bottom?
Thanks!
-A sub with obvious switchy tendencies
Let’s start here - if there’s one thing I really hammer home in the Conscious Kink Course and really anywhere else I get a chance, it’s that your dynamic is yours. It is custom. As such, you can do anything you want in it that both parties agree to. Doms can punish subs, subs can punish Doms, a third party can punish both of you, you can switch based on the day of the week or who won arm wrestling — you name it. There are no rules! Except the ones you create for yourselves.
All that said, I do get this question a lot and I think it illustrates an important tension in the way we think of Dom/sub dynamics. I think a lot of people hear the term “punishment” and think of it as the dictionary defines it, which is:
the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense.
ex: ”crime demands just punishment"
But this sort of misses how punishment functions in D/s dynamics. Say for example the sub and the Dom have decided that the sub must take their shoes off before entering the Dom’s home. Then one day the sub has some really good news to share with the Dom and gets overexcited and runs across the threshold tracking dirt across the floor. The Dom takes a moment to share in the joy, but then informs the sub they have broken the rule and will now receive the agreed-upon punishment of 20 spanks. In this case, being spanked isn’t something this particular sub hates. It’s not really being felt as a penalty. Instead it demonstrates to the Dom and sub that the promises they make to each other matter. That even in this benign moment, they are finding a special way to connect as Dom and sub. So what “punishment” actually is in this case is more of a way of saying “I see you,” and “I’m choosing to uphold our dynamic right now.”
D/s dynamics are a special kind of relationship, because without participation and buy-in from both partners, the power exchange could dissipate entirely. So having rules in place, and punishments to enforce when those rules are broken, tends to be more of a reciprocal love language than a penal code.
But what about the Doms?! I hear you crying out. Who will keep them on the straight and narrow?
Well, here’s another point. If you’re considering rule breaking and administration of punishment as a true hierarchy, that’s missing another key element of the nature of Dom/sub dynamics. The Dom is not the boss and the sub an employee. The Dom and sub have equal power in the creation of this community of two, they’ve just chosen different languages to keep it up. Just as in the imaginary farm I dream of having when I’m sitting in LA traffic, the labor is shared. The partner doing the gardening simply cannot milk the goat on the same day and bake enough sourdough bread for dinner! So with Doms and subs, we have each consented to our roles because we want to use the language of that role to keep up our end of the relationship.
So in this kind of community, the burden of equal responsibility changes the types of rules you can make. Effective rules are not about changing someone or controlling their behavior. Instead they serve as guideposts to stumble across your dynamic through the normal course of events in your life.
If you are measuring exclusively by who is given “rules” and who is “punished” when they aren’t followed, it would seem that the sub is doing all the work. But if we can put on our Dom goggles for a second and see the world through their eyes, they are doing equal and opposite work from the other side. They are noticing, they are responding.
This comfort with equal and opposite work is something that makes D/s dynamics very special, and makes them stand apart from vanilla relationships. Vanilla relationships in our modern day are still in conversation with the way partnership and even marriage functioned prior to our generation. As such, present day vanilla relationships tend to be heavily invested in equality as a way of counterbalancing the rampant inequality that has defined partnership in many cultures for centuries. We both get the same stuff. It’s one of those popsicles you can break in half. We both get our equal piece of the pie.
In practice though, insisting on perfect equality misses equity. Not everyone wants half a popsicle. Maybe they would prefer a handful of m&ms. And some situations, like housework, cannot be perfectly broken in half. And monitoring whether things are being divided perfectly in half is much more a recipe for frustration and score-keeping than feelings of satisfied equality.
So how does D/s invert this? We start from a foundation of respect and communication. We say to each other, openly, “hey I actually don’t want half a popsicle. You can have the popsicle as long as you tell me I’m good and order for me at restaurants and ‘punish’ me when I’m bad.” We give up the implied scorekeeping and opt to put everything out in the open. And that’s the trade off we make to live this bespoke lifestyle. We agree to curate it together.
But there’s another accountability check on Doms besides punishment. And that accountability is your submission. Your submission is a gift given willingly, and without it none of this exists.
Since we’re all living through a global pandemic on the shriveling husk of capitalist empires gripping to the last dying embers of a poisoned planet, some of us are feeling A LITTLE STRESSED. I’ve heard from a lot of subs whose Doms simply aren’t in a place to play due to depression, anxiety, or the way our modern lives are in a constant state of flux.
These subs may be yearning for the checks and balances of two-way punishment. And while that may end up being a viable solution, the first stop is to talk about what’s going awry and how you both can collaboratively retrofit your dynamic to weather whatever’s going on right now. Your Dom is not the Wizard of Oz, you can look behind the curtain (is this 90 year old reference landing?? I’m sorry, Gen Z’s). In fact you must. Because Doms are not here to orchestrate dynamics all by themselves. You are co-creators in this.
So why don’t Doms get punished? Because their subs don’t want to punish them. Or because it’s a limit of either party. “Domming from the bottom” is what you make it, so if this is something you want, you can absolutely incorporate it and of course I’ve heard of it happening.
Oh, and just a quick footnote to this, there are people who feel that a Dom who wouldn’t want to receive punishment shouldn’t give it out because that isn’t fair. The argument is something like, well if you want to give it you have to be able to take it. I for one take a whole host of things I wouldn’t want to give. As a sub, I have negotiated my role so that I don’t have to punish anyone, or top anyone because I simply do not want to do those things. That is ok! And it’s ok for anyone reading. Again, all this stuff is customizable. The question is where you want to place those guideposts so you and your Dom can trip over them and remember the commitment you’ve made to each other, to make your relationship your own special sustainable farm of filth and debauchery. And sourdough bread as needed.