I love a certain type of horror film.
Ready or Not with its goofy humor, feminist power, and intense trapped terror. The Invisible Man with its deep, scary resonance to women’s real, lived experiences (despite being also speculative fiction).
I eat them up. I re-watch them. I let my heart rate spike and spike again for them.
And then there’s horror I simply cannot handle. Cannibalism and body dissections. Hospitals and torture sequences.
My brain and body revolt. I cannot watch them. They are too much.
On the other side of the coin, I have friends who cannot watch anything that teeters too close to reality (which all of my favorites do). They would rather watch an alien burst from someone’s chest than spend two hours suffering alongside a woman being stalked.
Intellectually, I get it—even though I’m the opposite.
So, why am I talking about this in a kink essay? Because I’ve been thinking about how words like cruel, harsh, or mean in D/s spaces are a bit like the word scary in horror films.
What scares me, doesn’t scare you. And vice versa.
And I want subs to understand that when you start exploring a dynamic with a new domme, this is the reality you’re going to have to explore.
Someone can call themselves a mean domme; subs can refer to them as mean; they can say they love being mean. And you can still end up not finding it mean enough.
On the flip side, there times when I don’t think I’m being mean—and men IRL use words like aggressive, mean, scary, or they simply spin out.
When I explore with a new person who wants humiliation, cruelty, mean teasing, etc., I start out playing with a lot of different ideas to see what really hits. Sometimes, things don’t, and I get “you can be meaner.” Sometimes, things hit too hard, and I get a safe word in the first few minutes.
Because cruel is in the eye of the beholder. As is kind.
One of my subs told me I was nice to him—when I frequently make him humiliate himself for me. Another hit his safe word when I tried to do something the first wouldn’t blink at.
Most of y’all seem to love a “good boy,” but for a certain type of person, that’s mean and degrading in a bad way.
Some of y’all want to be treated as machines. Others still want human connection even as we ask you to oink like a piggy or kiss the floor.
Some think they have no limits—when really what they didn’t have was imagination.
There’s often an expectation in this space that the moment you enter into a dynamic, the domme will be exactly perfectly attuned to you and your needs—the exact type of mean you are looking for! But the truth is there are a thousand types of horror films and a thousand types of mean. And it’s ok to need time for you and your domme to sync up. It’s also okay to explore with someone a bit and realize their version of mean isn’t the version you were looking for.
Much like dating, this space requires some trial and error—and an understanding that terms like “mean,” “scary,” or even “soft” don’t mean the same things to everyone.
Now, take a deep breath and recognize that this is a journey. If you are lucky enough to find your dream domme on your first attempt and all the first things she tests on you work perfectly, congrats! But if you were looking for Ready or Not and you got Alien instead? It’s alright to step away and keep looking. It doesn’t mean she is or isn’t mean or cruel or harsh or soft. It simply means you didn’t sync or that your versions of those words weren’t aligned.
And that’s ok.