Female Domination

by Elise Sutton

Sex, Relationships, Sexuality

Genres: BDSM, Sexuality, Erotica, Gender and Sexuality, Nonfiction

298 pages, Paperback

First published November 16, 2003

Reviews

[Nebuchadnezzar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sutton is an unapologetic female supremacist, literally. Maybe something of value can be mined from her accounts of BDSM sessions, but I don't see the point. Large chunks of the book are dedicated to pushing her pet theories about BDSM and femdom. They also happen to be chockablock with pseudoscience and bunk in general, no surprise. Sutton touts her psychology degree, but she probably slept through most of her courses. In fact, I hope she did because she seems not to have even a basic grasp on psychology or neuroscience. Most of her claims are either completely undocumented or taken from newspaper clippings and press releases. It really unnerves me that this may be taken as representative of female domination. Avoid it at all costs -- if you're looking for an intro to BDSM, pick up Jay Wiseman's SM 101: A Realistic Introduction or Mistress Lorelei's The Mistress Manual: The Good Girl's Guide to Female Dominance for something from a dominant woman's perspective.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I borrowed a copy of this book since the topic of femdom and female domination intrigued me after reading "Permanent Obscurity" by Richard Perez. In that novel, one of the two main characters, Serena, has a sub by the name of "Baby" and it involves femdom and that whole secret world. In "Female Domination" by Elise Sutton we have an earnest (as far as I can tell) non-fiction examination of that subculture. I wasn't sure if this author was pulling my leg or what. But I enjoyed the book. It was fun. And of course I visited the website, which really made me laugh.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was just okay. But I was turned on to the idea of reading this book because another reviewer mentioned it in context to another book I read and enjoyed, Permanent Obscurity by Richard Perez. While Perez's novel is mostly a black comedy about two addicted women trying to make a femdom movie and depicts female domination in a blunt, crude, and real way, Sutton's book takes itself way too seriously so it comes off like dubious femdom propaganda. There are titillating moments, I'll admit but mostly it reads like a stiff homework assignment and seems, at times, more like socio-porn than objective analytical non-fiction. I guess if I were a stereotypical quivering male slave, I might find it arousing. The cover makes me smile, I'll admit.

[Lily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought that nothing can surprise me anymore with regards to D/s, but this book has totally shocked me. I feel revolted, disgusted and very disturbed. I am not sure why this book provoked such a strong reaction. I mean, really, I am not a newbie to the world of D/s, not at all. I have seen and read some really fucked up, seriously disturbing shit and found it sexy. I mean, really disturbing shit. But this?!?!?!

There was something in that book that really, I mean REALLY, rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe its the author’s general awful attitude toward men – she defines herself as a Female Supremacist after all. I find that attitude infuriating. Maybe its the 24/7 and general lifestyle dynamic there, not the “just in the bedroom” variety (and I was never attracted to lifestyle D/s of any kind). Its the prevalent “women are always superior and know better and must discipline the stupid man for his own good” attitude that I found disturbing.

I mean, sure, I want a man to love and respect me, heck, even worship me, sure, gladly so. You want to do my chores? Sure, please do my chores. You want to treat me like a Queen? Sure, please, I would love that. But I really don’t want to see a man humiliated, emasculated and treated like he is a little worthless shit. And this book takes it a really new level.

On a side note here, I know that one can find a book out there to support any, I mean, really ANY crazy belief (I once read a book that explained why children need to be spanked badly, I’d say even abused, as a method of discipline. I don’t understand why this book is still legally sold on Amazon). So yeah, I know things need to be taken in proportion with a clear mind and judgement. In that particular book, I completely disagree with the author. I think her point was way too simplistic. It didn’t account for any shades. But in a purely hypothetical case that what the author claims is indeed true, that “ALL men want and need to be treated that way”, and that “thats the ONLY way to keep a man happy, loving you, and a relationship strong”, then really, honestly, with a hand to the heart – I don’t fucking need a man in my life.

In any case, this book is so disturbing that at the moment at least, I feel that sex is disgusting and a life of celibacy sounds like a wonderful option.

And yeah, this book is on the way to the garbage bin...

[Jennifer John · Rating 4 out of 5]

While forays into crazy fantasy are perhaps inevitable with Femdom, this book is has a fairly realistic attitude towards bringing it into your life. The basic thesis that Femdom relationships (like any other)s should be founded on commitment, communication, understanding, tolerance etc are not I would have thought controversial, but there is a lot good material on how both sexes respond to trying to live the fantasy.

I didn't mind Elise grounding it in her Christian faith, though I find some of her arguments about the coming age of female superiority tenuous and repetitive. Crucially she is very good on the more nurturing, spiritual side of Femdom and how it can provide intense intimacy.

[Swapnil Basher · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's not a book about BDSM. It's about "manipulation".
There's a thing in BDSM called "CNC" consensual non-consent. But the dom & sub before playing, make a list of do's and dont's.
This evil writer will encourage readers in her book to bypass "consent".

Sexual consent is always needed regardless of the type of relationship (a hook-up, significant others, marriage, or other sexual relationship). All partners are responsible to ask for consent and respecting the answer of their partner.

What the writer encourages to do is "rape".
This book is better published on the Literotica website as that's a site for fiction nsfw stories.

This wicked writer never mentions "relationship boundaries". Look, I ain't against any form of BDSM play but one has to set up rules & boundaries, and safe words (red, yellow, green) to play safely in BDSM.
I think the writer has 00 experience in real-life scenarios and wrote up some erotic fiction to earn money.
If you're a newbie in BDSM visit r/bdsmcommunity or go through FetLife's safety tips. Don't follow this book. You'll land in jail.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

HAHA This borders on Erotica. I know she is trying to explain why men want to be dominated, but it tends to stray from that. A friend loaned this to me, it helped me decide i'm really not a Dominatrix. I like the sensual aspects, but that can be played either way. Interesting stuff. ;)

[Leighanne Sissy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book for my wife and enjoyed reading it and living the Femdom lifestyle with my wife. I am her at home sissy husband now. She has trained me to be very obedient and to be an excellent homemaker for her.

[Amanda Bush · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it was a pretty good book. I don't think their is enough on this subject, so I like any decent contribution to the topic.

[Anders And · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tl;dr: Deeply erotic and sexually subversive, but not an accurate depiction of Female Domination relationships. Don't try this at home!

Imagine for a moment that you’re reading a guide to Male Domination. Male Domination is a type of adult role-play, specifically the Dominance/Submission part of BDSM, which involves the exchange of power between a dominant man and a submissive woman as part of a shared and consensual erotic fantasy. Now imagine coming across the following idea:

In order to dominate your wife, you must first recognise that women are the inferior sex.

What?

This kind of sweeping generalisation about women would not only be needlessly cruel and polemic, its inclusion in a book about adult role-play would also seem downright baffling. In some bizarre twist of logic by the author, holding deeply regressive views in real-life is an enhancement of, nay, a prerequisite for partaking in adult role-play.

Of course, the opposite is in fact true and is even regarded as a truism in the BDSM community: If you wished to start dominating your significant other, nothing would disqualify you more from the job than honestly believing her (and the entirety of her sex, no less!) to be inferior to yourself. Such abusive and regressive attitudes belong on the fringes of anonymous chat boards, not placed front and centre in a book about sexual domination.

You don't have to take my word for it. Here's Lady Green, experienced Dominant and author of The Sexually Dominant Woman: A Workbook for Nervous Beginners (1998), on the topic:

[S]exual domination is not an appropriate venue in which to act out genuine dislike. If you don't like men, or women, or redheads, or whatever, the best thing for you and them is to work out your problems in therapy and leave them alone. Play sexual domination games only with people you like and care about. (p. 49)

Also, As the careful reader will have already noticed, I have switched the genders in the example above compared to those in the book for extra effect. I apologise for this brief misdirection, but hope to have convinced you of how unappetising and superfluous to D/S play the book’s lynchpin thesis of “Female Supremacy” is.

Granted, the aim of Female Domination (2003) by Elise Sutton is not only to promote her own subversive take on the Battle of the Sexes, but also ostensibly to give aspiring mistresses the knowledge and inspiration they need to introduce “Femdom” into their own relationships. Regrettably, one must first wade through several chapters of the author's tedious and self-aggrandising "Women are Superior to Men" creed before getting to the parts that actually outline mainstay Femdom practices such as discipline, feminisation, and keeping men in chastity.

It is a shame, because these latter chapters are actually the highlight of the book and a pleasure to read. Not because of their instructional value, as the Femdom relationships depicted are extreme and borderline abusive, but because they're deeply erotic.

The second half of the book thus consists of fiercely arousing, sometimes insightful, and often shocking anecdotes from Sutton’s own marriage, as well as from other couples who practice Female Domination in their daily lives, intermixed with commentary by Sutton herself. It is very exciting material and without its preceding four or five chapters it could easily stand alone as an anthology of titillating Femdom creative non-fiction.

So, why do I think that the book's depiction of Femdom is extreme and borderline abusive? It's because Sutton and her mistress interviewees practice an advanced type of Femdom known as "24/7", "lifestyle" or "Female-led" relationships, and how they go about wielding power in those relationships does not inspire confidence. Let me explain.

The overwhelming majority of couples, who engage in D/S, limit their role-play in scope and duration. A D/S dynamic might be active once in a blue moon, or every Saturday afternoon, but rarely all the time. Even for couples who are engaging in D/S on a regular or even daily basis, it is common practice to temporarily pause their dynamic when getting into heated arguments that fall outside the purview of the pre-established boundaries of their shared role-play.

Moreover, the ability to revoke consent and remove oneself from a D/S dynamic at any time, either temporarily or permanently, and often via a previously agreed-upon safeword, is fundamental to any healthy D/S relationship, because it provides both the dominant as well as the submissive partner with a figurative escape hatch for when tensions run particularly high. It especially protects the submissive partner from getting seriously hurt when the dominant is acting out of line.

24/7 or lifestyle D/S relationships, on the other hand, are the extremely uncommon and controversial practice of extending the dynamic to literally every aspect of the relationship at all hours of the day, often with the submissive having limited ability to revoke consent to the dynamic once it has begun. Such an arrangement blurs the line between fantasy and reality, and is warned against by even experienced BDSM practitioners.

Not surprisingly, it is exactly this extreme variant of Femdom that Sutton and her interviewees enjoy and promote, because of the considerable leeway that it affords them with their male partners.

One interviewed woman reveals how she "wins" domestic arguments with her husband by tying him up and gagging him for hours until he "calms down" and willingly (and under the spell of submissive horniness) concedes the argument to her.

Sutton herself gives another example of how she exploits her partner’s sexual fetishes to win fights: She leaves the room, dresses up in a leather outfit with stockings and high heels, comes back to her husband, and orders him to "lick her boots." Sutton revels in revealing how her partner, initially visibly upset and angry at this obvious manipulation, always gives in to his sexual urges, falls to his knees, and figuratively (and literally) hands her the high ground in the argument, no matter the severity of the discussed topic.

Make no mistake, “solving” domestic arguments by shutting down your partner’s viewpoint via your 24/7 Femdom dynamic—and thus absolving the female dominant of ever having to concede an argument about anything ever again—is peak Femdom fantasy.

As a decision-making process for grown adults in a committed relationship, however, it is also an exceedingly irresponsible and borderline abusive idea: It limits greatly the male submissive's ability to raise and argue for any concerns he might have relating to domestic life or his dynamic with his mistress. It also exploits and preys on the male’s sexual desire in situations where cooler heads (namely, his!) really should prevail. Finally, it assumes that the female dominant will always have all the necessary facts and will always make the right call when overruling her life partner through sexual domination, even when it comes to major decisions of consequence for them both.

I cannot understate how extreme Sutton's brand of 24/7 Femdom is, even by "ordinary" BDSM standards. And frankly, I got the impression that Sutton, and the female dominants being interviewed, purposely pretended to be oblivious to the risks cited above, because their "inferior men" obviously deserved it.

As should be clear by now, if you’re a submissive male seeking to gift the woman in your life a primer on Femdom, in order to hopefully begin your shared journey into D/S, then this book is not for you. The reader must be able to stomach both its key tenet of real-life female supremacy/male inferiority, as well as the extreme and borderline abusive relationships depicted therein. This is already a deeply unpalatable idea to most people, to say nothing of your loving girlfriend or spouse, who might additionally have been completely blind-sided by your intense desire to submit to her will.

If you yourself are the loving girlfriend or spouse to a man, who has confided to you his rather strange desires, and you're looking for a book to bring you up to speed on what Femdom means, then this book isn't for you, either. Read it as hard-core Femdom erotica if you must, but know that Sutton deliberatively blurs the line between fantasy and reality, and please do not take it as an instruction manual.

Instead, I advise you to look to newer works like Lucy Fairbourne’s Femdom for Nice Girls: A Self-Guided Manual for the Caring Mistress (2015) for your (or your partner's) first introduction to Femdom. Her book is much more modest in scope and much less racy, yes, but makes up for it in genuine compassion for the male submissive and for the (un)lucky women, who are reluctantly thrust into the role of dominating their boyfriends and spouses as part of a consensual, wildly erotic, and relationship-enhancing type of adult role-play.

Fairbourne also deftly refrains from making distracting grand claims about the moral imperative of female dominance on every level of society (ugh) or the inherent inferiority of the entire male gender (shudder). To her, anything outside the private shared fantasy between two loving partners is irrelevant. I think so, too.

In short: Femdom for Nice Girls: A Self-Guided Manual for the Caring Mistress is a relationship guide to Femdom. Female Domination, on the other hand, is a sexually subversive manifesto, which doubles as a heavily embellished and titillating depiction of Femdom. Know what you’re getting yourself into.

[Mooncalf · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a fun book and well written book. The parts of the book where she talks about superior female intelligence or god and the bible are write offs, though. It's odd that she claims that cuckoldry is more risky than some of the other situations that are described in the book.

[Zakfar Magni · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is written by the false assumption that all the men in the world are masochists/submissives & all females are dominants. Elise Sutton should have done lot more study on the subject before writing something like this.

[Rg · Rating 4 out of 5]

no comment

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Following her definitive link: The Femdom Experience, Elise Sutton provides us with a journey through the many places and ways female domination of males is working as a relationship model offering something traditional family structure may not be able to offer both women and the men who love and serve them.

In Female Domination Sutton focuses more on who women and men who are practicing the lifestyle in their own relationship were able to find each other and build a life together. She is able to use interviews with couples practicing a female-led relationship to show the many combinations and iterations Female Domination can be found working, and for both the woman leading and her male who follows closely behind

[Emily Tisshaw · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tw r*pe


Why isn’t anyone commenting on the blatant multiple documented accounts of raping men? Im not talking about CNC or any sort of consensual rape play here, she describes actual rape:
Page 139 describes a scenario in which a women puts on a strap on and penetrates a man without asking first and on page 180 there is another scenario in which it is talked about first but the man quotes “she practically raped me”

Bit disturbing.

That and her generalising sweeping statements throughout about every man needing and wanting a female aggressor to tame him is just not realistic. It’s also incredibly heteronormative but this book is 20 years old so that explains a lot…

[Tap Chat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book, but not great.....
But I go to Kindle/KDP and look for Hannah Kern and Riley Feller in the Female Domination and Mixed Wrestling area for ebooks on the same topic, this have amazing pics and profiles. And for Everand/Scribd, B&N, Kobo/Rakuten, SmashWords, etc I look for Isabella Cira or Ken Phillips or Wanda Lea. Those authors are also really amazing and profiles AMAZING women with stunning pics. Just my advice!

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read for anyone curious about femdom relationships. It offers a detailed exploration of various aspects of femdom, with psychological insights coming from the author’s qualified background. It’s also a realistic view from a female perspective, rather than fantasy content created by men for men.

[Vale Urrego · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trata muy bien el tema de la dominación femenina, la manera de narra es atrapante y con cada capítulo que pasa te quedas con más ganas de seguir leyendo. Lo recomiendo mucho.