How to Win Friends and Dominate People

I am fascinated by dominatrixes.

Wait, what’s the plural term for more than one dominatrix? Is there one?? I don’t think it’s dominatrixes and spellcheck doesn’t think so either.

*Edit!* Thank you to Vivienne who taught us that the plural term is “dominatrices”, which comes from the way of pluralizing words ending in X: appendix, appendices; matrix, matrices, etc. This website is so freaking educational. I love it.

Anyway.

I was a weird looking kid growing up. I was skinny and had huge glasses and messy hair. When my hair grew just a little too long it was very clear that it was very curly and it didn’t suit me. I had horrible acne. I was also very awkward and timid and very much a dork. I tried too hard to fit in and to be liked. I had zero self-esteem.

All of my efforts to fit in made sense in retrospect as I got older with the help of counseling. I don’t think THIS side of me contributed to my…. weirdness. I wasn’t known as the boy who liked to wear skirts or anything. This side of me was always private. No, I was just a socially awkward, gawky child. I didn’t need to wear a dress to make others think I was odd.

I was never popular but everyone in grade school knew who I was because I was just a little strange. Since no one would have thought of me as attractive or athletic or funny or smart I had to rely on my personality. And that was a big nope.

As I left my teen years I more or less grew into my looks (for better or for worse). My acne cleared up and I started to wear contacts, leaving the thick brown eyeglasses behind. Still not handsome but at least I wasn’t weird looking. I was just incredibly boring to look at it so I guess that was an improvement? Still socially inept, though.

Our adolescent years are hard on most of us. We want to be liked, we’re trying to figure out who we are, we find people in our lives, whether friends or celebrities, that we want to emulate. We can be jealous and insecure. I had friends that girls thought were very cute and would tell me this. In my early twenties I would go out to bars or whatever and my male friends would attract girls just by, well, existing. Any hope I had of meeting a girl was completely dependent on my personality.

Again, the odds were stacked against me.

This is not to say that girls are shallow. For almost all of us we are almost always first drawn to how someone looks.

But I am not complaining. Somehow I caught the eye of my wife and we fell in love.

The point I am trying to make is that I don’t know what it’s like to, well, use my physical appearance as a form of power or as a way to… hm, influence someone? Does that make sense?

When we were dating my wife would wear a certain outfit or do her makeup in a certain way that would drive me wild. It still happens. The most I could do was wear a shirt she liked. She is cute and sexy and can capture my attention (and imagination) whenever she wants.

When a photo of Hannah gets posted sometimes I’ll get comments or emails telling me I am beautiful. I am always skeptical of these compliments for three reasons:

1. This person just wants to rail me (and this is not the ego boost some of you suspect)
2. I don’t think I am beautiful to others. The filter, the makeup, and the dress are doing all of the heavy lifting
3. I am not accustomed to flattering words about my (his or her) physical appearance and have a hard time thinking that the commentor is sincere

Hannah is told she is beautiful. HE is not told he is handsome. And that’s just fine. He doesn’t care how he looks. I do care about about Hannah’s appearance.

Now, to be clear this is not me feeling sorry for myself. I look at my male physical appearance as just kinda… it is what it is. Hannah will agonize over SOMETHING but HE just sort of rolls with it.

And my wife thinks I am handsome and really, what else does HE need?

I think Hannah is pretty. And if that sounds stuck up then… okay. I like how she looks. It’s okay to like how you look. But I am not vain enough to think that other people think she is attractive. I mean, I get emails that tell me she is but the three reasons I listed above trigger my skepticism.

I don’t think people react to Hannah based on how whether or not they think she is attractive. I think it’s common for a dude to be nicer to a pretty girl but I think the main influencer of how people interact with Hannah is overwhelmingly based on her trans-ness.

If a dude is nice to her I don’t think it’s necessarily the same niceness that he would offer to a pretty cis-girl. That’s not to say he’s not being sincere, mind you. I think if a dude is nice to Hannah it’s because he is being nice to a transgirl and wants her to know that he is an ally (or at least he doesn’t hate girls like us).

My trans-ness supersedes everything else.

And that’s okay! I know I’m trans and I expect others to know this as well. My thought is that I would rather have someone be kind to me knowing that I am trans as opposed to them being kind to me because they think I am cis.

We need that kind of niceness.

I suppose what I am saying is that even in my femme identity I still don’t know what it’s like to be an attractive person.

What I mean is attractive to the point where others are… mesmerized by how someone looks.

For example, I had a co-worker who was lazy and rude. BUT if he was interacting with an attractive girl, all of a sudden he was incredibly polite and kind.

That’s what I mean by someone’s physical beauty having an effect on others. Of course, this doesn’t make him any less of a jerk. In fact, it probably makes him more of one as he is deciding how he treats someone based on whether or not he thinks they are attractive.

Wait, what is this all about…? Oh, yes, dominatrixes.

I don’t remember when I learned that a dominatrix was a career path choice. I was stunned at someone paying someone else to humiliate them or hurt them. I was never into being shamed or having pain inflicted on me as a turn-on but like most kinks, you do you. Unless it hurts someone. Well, unless it hurts someone without their consent.

I’ve never visited a dominatrix so I can’t talk with much authority when it comes to what a typical domme is like. If some of my Twitter followers are any indication, dominatrixes are incredibly stunning and beautiful women. A dominatrix on a television show or a movie also fits this description.

This context led me to misunderstanding where the power and influence a dominatrix comes from. My naïve thinking was along the lines of Men Do Things For Beautiful Women In Leather.

I mean, I think that’s true to an extent but after I think about that I realize that’s quite an over simplification. I think it’s fair to say that a lot of men are willing to do things for a pretty girl and I think it’s fair to say that a pretty girl in leather can be… persuasive to many men.

This oversimplification is more or less thinking that a dominatrix is using her physical appearance, her beauty to her advantage. But the true power, the true influence of a dominatrix is not how she looks or from her five inch stilettos or latex corset or her holding a studded leash. Her ability to get a man to obey her is deeply rooted in her ability to intimidate him, and in her confidence.

Her words.

It was short-sighted of me to ever think that the power of a dominatrix came from her beauty alone. All women, whether you are a dominatrix or bank teller or a soccer mom are beautiful. While it’s true a dominatrix is usually portrayed as a tall, slim, white girl, a dominatrix, like all women, can be any size and shape and race and gender.

I have no idea where the idea for this post came from, if I am being honest. I suppose it is stemmed from realizing that beauty and influence are more than just a prevailing physical stereotype.

For what it’s worth my wife can persuade me with almost anything with a smile or a simple phrase. She doesn’t even need a riding crop.

Love, Hannah