Short Takes: Dominant Woman Romances

Last fall, in a review of Cara McKenna's Unbound, I mentioned in passing how much more common it seems for BDSM romances to feature females, rather than males, in the submissive role. Not that stories about sexually submissive women must necessarily be anti-feminist (as I've argued in reviews of work by Teresa Noelle Roberts and Jacqueline Carey). But I have to admit that I find myself more curious about kinky romances with heroines placed in the dominant role, perhaps because, at least on the surface, they seem more overtly focused on calling conventional gender roles into question. So I was pleased to discover several intriguing examples of femdom romances over the past month, stories that led me to consider not just how femdom challenges traditional masculinity, but also how it addresses an audience that includes both those who might identify with its sexually dominant female heroines as well as those for whom such a role is less a mirror than a window onto a world of which they themselves are most definitely not a part.


Joely Sue Burkhart, The Billionaire Submissive

I chuckled at both the title (The Billionaire Submissive) and at the series title (Billionaires in Bondage) of Joely Sue Burkhart's new series with Carina Press, guessing that a certain irony was at play. The book's cover intentionally riffs on the more "mainstream" erotic romances of E. L. James and Sylvia Day, with its still life tableau of erotically-charged items. A closer look, though, calls the conventional symbolic logic of the gathered symbols into gendered question. Is that sparkling diamond an engagement ring? Or a cufflink? Could a lipstick be any more phallic? And who is that dog collar and whip intended for, anyways? Echoing the titles' placement of the male, rather than the female, in the position of submissive, such elements hint that the gender roles of James' books (and to a far lesser extent, Day's) are going to be called into suggestive question.

The Billionaire Submissive, though, follows the path taken by much femdom romance, creating a hero who is alpha strong in every aspect of life, even the submissively sexual. Donovan Morgan's stomping grounds may not be New York City, but he's just as much the larger-than-life businessman that readers have come to expect in their BDSM heroes: "His corner office was mostly glass, giving him an unimpeded view of the world he'd supposedly just conquered. He'd just closed another million-dollar deal" (Loc 2). But the thrill of conquest readers typically gain via proxy to such powerhouse heroes is notably lacking here: "He'd just closed another multi-million dollar deal, yet he felt nothing. No joy, exhilaration, or the rush of competition he'd thrived on his entire life" (Loc 2). Donovan finds himself frozen in the midst of a steamy Minnesota summer, lacking the one thing that might make him feel: a woman who can force him to submit sexually to her.

But Donovan's life changes irrevocably when he interviews Lilly Harrison, purportedly looking to hire the stained glass artist to design new windows for his St. Paul office building, but truly hoping he can persuade her alter ego, Mistress L, to take him on as a client, too. Donovan sends out clear vibes about his specific type of submission:

Yeah, he led the way. But only because she's letting me. Which was the crux of his issue. He wasn't the kind of submissive who would whine and beg and crawl to his Mistress's feet and kiss her toes. No. Donovan Morgan wasn't going down without a fight. The difficulty was finding a Mistress who'd relish the fight as much as him. Someone who was strong enough mentally to bend him to her will, even when he hated every minute of it.  (Loc 190)

Because Donovan's submissive desires are constructed here as strength ("She had to be strong enough to make him want to bend his pride to her will. He had to want to surrender" [Loc 190]), Lilly's wielding of power over him does not emasculate him, or de-feminize her. Lilly's explanation to herself about why she is drawn to the dominant role contains nothing that takes pleasure in a partner's belittlement, but instead focuses on her own power:

Mistress L had started out at the local BDSM club three years ago as Lilly tried to find what she'd been searching for her whole life. She'd dated. She'd had plenty of sex, some good, some not so good. She'd even been engaged. But there'd been an emptiness inside her the entire time, an aching, gnawing lack, even though she didn't know what it was. She'd found it at the club once she'd taken a crop in hand. "They test me. It's like each time I give them an order, and they do it, then I've proved my strength and will again. If they don't obey, then I have  to prove I'm strong enough to punish them until they do. Regardless, I'm growing every single day and becoming even stronger." (Loc 291)

Donovan gets turned on by pain—"There wasn't much on the discipline scale that didn't appeal to him"—but not by degradation: "the humiliation elements were easy enough to decline" (Loc 915). Because Donovan maintains the strength that serves as the cornerstone of conventional masculinity, and Lilly does not enjoy humiliating such men (and has never been sexually turned on by BDSM before meeting Donovan), Lilly's own dominant tendencies never threaten to become a turn-off for the non-kinky reader.

Delphine Dryden, The Principle of Desire

I've read a lot of "please pretend to be my date so my ex won't accost me/humiliate me" meet-cutes, but I've never come across one that takes place in a kink club. But a quarter of the way into The Principle of Desire (the third title in Dephine Dryden's The Science of Desire series), Dryden gives us just such a scene, and with a far less-than-conventional hero than Burkhart's Donovan Morgan. Geeky, cranky, less-than-cut aerospace engineer Ed follows his friends to what he thought was a music club to retrieve his phone, only to find himself in the middle of  kink club. Little does he realize that his offer to help out a friend of a friend when her ex-who-won't-take-no arrives will lead to more than just watching. But in her dismay, former submissive Beth tells her ex-dom Aaron that she came to the club not to meet her him, as he had commanded, but to try out the whipping post with her new boy—Ed.

Having just witnessed the unexpected sight of a female friend on the receiving end of a flogging, Ed consents to Beth's unexpected scenario ("I just found out all my friends are into this stuff, and you expect me to let you fake this in front of them? If Cami took it, so can I. Bring it on, Mistress" [Loc 580]). And he finds himself pleasantly surprised by how turned-on he becomes during Beth's unusual ministrations.

For her part, Beth imagines how comfortable it might be to lay her head on Ed's squishy stomach, and is struck by a craving to "see more of [his] intensity. To bring it out in him, see how suffering refined him into a clearer version of himself. To see how much he would be willing to take to please her" (Loc 498). Beth is not a straight-out dom, but a woman in the process of experimenting, trying to see whether she enjoys the role of dom as much as she did the role of sub. At twenty-eight, Beth has only recently recognized how lacking in mutuality her relationship with Aaron, who "claimed" her at the age of twenty after meeting her at their local kink club, has been. Aaron has no interesting in letting Beth explore her dominance desires ("He doesn't believe in switches. He was sure it was just a phase I was going through and now I'm supposed to be over it"), but misanthropic Ed accepts them without question: "You swing both ways. Got it." (Loc 487).

As their unconventional first date leads to another, and another, Beth, and through Beth, the reader, learn that Ed's unconventionality extends not only to his acceptance of Beth's sexual desires, but also to his views about his own: "I don't really know about this D/s stuff. I'm not either one, and I love doing this with you but I don't know that I'm really a switch either. I think I'm just generally kinky as fuck. I like it all. Is that a thing?" Beth knows that "Purists would say no," but she proves equally accepting of Ed as he is of her: "But it's like glueing your Lego. You have to do what works for you" (Loc 1343). Being a former sub may relieve some reader anxiety about Beth's less conventional femininity, but both her and Ed's refusal to fit neatly into categories may allow readers to question the rigidity of the boundaries of their own sexual desires.

Best line: "There was just something about a woman with a decent grasp of statistics and research" (Loc 892).

Rebecca Rogers Maher, Tanya

Author Maher confronts potential reader anxiety about dominant women by addressing it head-on, in the dedication to her novella: "This book is dedicated to all women who have more to offer than niceness. Fear us, world. We're coming for you." But her story is as much about convincing her protagonist, former alcoholic Tanya, that she doesn't have to be a nice girl as it is about convincing the reader. Though she's been sober for two years, Tanya has a hard time believing that she can be anything but a screw-up. She engages in one-night stands, sexual encounters in which she keeps tight control of the game. For Tanya, it's not about inflicting pain, but about "forcing [a guy] off balance, keeping [him] under her control" (Loc 152). She initially explains it to herself thus: "It's the filth of it I'm after, the vague sense of self-punishment, of eating something bad for me. I like it when they're mean, or sexist, or stupid. I like taking what I want from these men, and then shoving them out the door" (Loc 210). But there's more to it than just self-punishment:

I like it. I like being a bitch and I like making them want me that way. I like discarding them when I'm all done. It's payback, is what it is. For all those years I spent sitting in grungy apartments listening to the jam sessions and misogynist proselytizing of boys I got drunk with. It was all about them, then. What they wanted.
     Not anymore.
     It's about me now. What I want. (Loc 231)

After an anonymous hook-up with a guy who doesn't seem to feel degraded by her controlling, dominant behavior, but turned on by it, Tanya begins to question her motives even further. And when said anonymous hook-up turns out to be the brother of her sister's fiancé, his acceptance and her own questioning lead her to rethink the story she's been telling about herself: that's she's a drunk, a screw-up, a worthless person, destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Just maybe there isn't another shoe waiting to drop; just maybe she can be something else besides nice and still be valued.

Best line: "What is it that you think I want, exactly? Someone to look pretty and clean my socks? It's the twenty-first century. You don't have to be nice. You can be smart and funny and sexy as hell, and believe me, that will be more than enough." (Loc 1240)

Shelley Ann Clark, Have Mercy

In both The Principle of Desire and The Billionaire Submissive, it is the female half of each pair who undergoes the most character change/growth over the course of her story, which in some ways reassures the non-kinky reader who may find a woman with dominant tendencies a bit anxiety-provoking that these heroines are not all-powerful. Beth has to learn to imagine a life separate from Aaron before she can envision a relationship with Ed; Lilly has to learn to believe that a man can love both Lilly and Mistress L before she can commit to Donovan. But in Shelley Ann Clark's Have Mercy, the bigger learning curve is granted to the hero, musician/bar owner Tom. Tom's always been the responsible one, picking up the pieces after his alcoholic father, making sure his younger sister did her homework and ate her dinner. Touring's never been an option before, but now, with his father gone and his sister seeming to have turned the corner in battling her own addiction to liquor, Tom can't resist the offer to tour with rising songster Emily "Emme" Hayes, a woman whose "voice damn near melted his spine.... He heard desire in her voice, and he longed to give her whatever she wanted" (Loc 38). But when things fall apart back home, Tom has to decide whether to keep on giving when he's getting nothing in return, or to be "who he wanted to be, not who he was forced to be by circumstance" (Loc 2655). A daring move, to create a submissive hero who also has a mess of personal problems with which to come to terms.

For her part, Emme is the most openly dominant of the three heroines, even though she's the least aware of her own desires. Or, at least, readers are given far more access to Emme's thoughts and desires than we are to Lilly's or Beth's, desires that are directly at odds with conventional femininity. Early in the novella, Emme masturbates while fantasizing about using the band's new bassist for her own sexual pleasure:

What a stupid fantasy. He seemed different from all the other guys she'd known, sure, but she had no doubt that he'd be like them in bed—pulling her hair, trying to impress her with moves like tossing her around on the bed or putting their hands around her neck. Okay with the right person, maybe, but not what she'd ever really wanted for herself. Things that had always left her feeling a little dissatisfied. Lacking. (Loc 237)

Tom's sexual desires don't quite meet the standards of typical masculinity, either: When they play a new song she's written, "about asking the Lord for mercy for the man she was about to hurt, all he could think was, Please let that man be me" (Loc 475); "He wanted her to push him down and take hi over an dover and over again, preferably while she sang in that husky wet velvet voice" (Loc 457). He seems just the right fit for Emme, who "wanted him to want her, she wanted to make him hurt and yearn, and then she wanted to reward him for it, relieve him of it, make it all better" (Loc 1060).

Tom and Emme gradually discover each other's proclivities, choosing to have an affair despite the promise Emme's bandmates forced her to make before agreeing to hire Tom: she will not seduce the new bass player. The reason behind the promise points to the sexism of the double standard the press, and the public, hold about the sex lives of famous men compared to famous women. By surfacing such openly feminist concerns, rather than blunting Emme's dominant tendencies, Clark doesn't assuage reader anxiety about Emme's unconventional femininity, but asks readers to confront it head-on, then to recognize the sexism that may underlie it.

Best line: "It took its own kind of strength to retain that kindness, that openness, in the face of all his accumulated hurts. For all his guilelessness, he was the strongest man she'd ever met" (Loc 1928).



Can you recommend any other feminist femdom romances?