I was so excited for [redacted] and I to have the perfect summer fling. Sunshine and sundresses during the day, kinky play at night. She was exactly my type, said all the right things while we chatted on Tinder, and was so polite the first few times we met. Then she got comfortable enough to show me what she was really like.
I wanted to get to know her, so whenever we saw each other I made sure we had time to sit down and just talk. We talked about everything as light as our favorite colors to as serious as what our best relationships could look like. We talked about kinky boundaries and sexual histories. Somewhere along the line, I shared with her that I considered myself monagam-ish and that when I wasn’t in a committed relationship I usually slept around. “So you’re a thot,” she stated matter of factly.
Thot, an acronym for “that hoe over there,” started to appear in rap songs in the past year or so. It’s rooted in misogyny, racism and classism, and unlike the sometimes reclaimed “slut,” I’ve never heard anyone referring to someone else as a thot in a positive manner.
As I sat and stared, she also told me that while we were sleeping together she felt like she owned my pussy. I couldn’t sleep with anyone else because my pussy was hers. She tried to lighten it up and joke that I wouldn’t need anyone else to sleep with if she was the primary person fucking me. She paid for dinner, she bought the drinks, and she drove us everywhere, so I was hers. Never mind that I told her I didn’t need her to do things like that; she insisted and then used it over me.
Inexplicably I continued to see her, but the namecalling didn’t get any better, and she also started to try to dictate how I dressed. At this point in my journey, I am not a 24/7 submissive, nor do I want to be. And any element of control a dominant and I play with — and how and when and where we play with it — has to be mutually negotiated, regimented and controlled. I love being called dirty names, for instance, but only under specific circumstances. I choose those names, they fulfill a need, and, used correctly, they make me feel good.
But [redacted] called me a thot to shame me, subdue me, and tell me my body was her property. Dressing for activity partners can be fun, but she made me feel like I owed her, so I wore things I didn’t want to wear. It felt like she thought she could buy me with drinks and dinner, and then treat me like shit. Because of the headspace she got me in, I went along with it. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
It took me longer than it should have to confront her. It was summer and I was lonely and she was kinky and the sex was good and I live in a small town. And she was perfect, but she wasn’t. But in retrospect, it took me so long because I really wanted to be a good sub for her. In kinky play, sometimes the line between BDSM and abuse can get blurry, and a lot of potential for abuse revolves around the fact that often being a “good sub” is conflated with giving away all your power to a dominant, while being a “good dom” is conflated with taking all the power from a submissive. If I am grateful to her for anything, it’s learning that this is not the case. BDSM should only feel painful in consensual, negotiated ways. Once my dominant steps outside of the boundaries of what I want my submission to look like, I need to recognize that as disrespect and walk away.
Speaking up and advocating for myself is just as important to submission as the more exciting aspects of kinky play. I don’t ever want to put myself in a space again where I allow someone to insult me the way that [redacted] insulted me. I’m constantly reminding myself that being a sub does not mean people have the right to walk over me or to hurt my feelings. Being submissive does not mean submitting to abuse. Ever. I practice kink because it makes me feel great. When it makes me feel bad about myself, it’s time to re-evaluate the person I’m playing with.
It still sucks that that top and I didn’t work out because she was gorgeous and we would have been summer’s cutest couple. I am happy, however, that I’m learning to value my feelings and myself as a submissive and walk away from dominants who don’t.
