Learning About 24/7 D/s as a Gay Woman
Luckily, I’m gay in one of the best times in history in my opinion. I fully acknowledge that I have so much privilege. I’m white, cisgender, and gay in a time when I can legally marry my partner. All that being said I’m a lesbian in a 24/7 Dominant/submissive relationship and that comes with some struggles that heteronormative D/s couples may not face and might not even know about. It also means my partner and I get to experience D/s through a unique lens that comes with many benefits.
As I share my experience you will see me refer to myself as lesbian, gay, and queer. This is because I identify as all of those things, and I switch between them when I feel necessary.
Accepted but Forgotten
A huge blessing of being a lesbian 24/7 D/s couple is that there is a whole community of people that does consciously accept and validate our relationship. It feels extremely nice to be able to speak about our relationship in an open and honest way. No one really blinks an eye about the fact that we are two women in a relationship. It’s generally like “Okay cool” or it’s a non topic. Ever since I came out and began dating women, I craved this type of validation, and in the kink community it exists. I don’t know if I can do a justified job of explaining what it feels like to have the most basic aspect of your relationship validated when you’ve experienced so much push back for it in other areas of your life, but it feels beyond liberating.
Although I do feel very accepted as a gay person in the BDSM community I often find myself feeling forgotten in certain ways. A lot of that feeling doesn’t come from what’s on the surface. It’s in the content published that comes from a place of unacknowledged privilege and the societal expectation that being heterosexual is the default setting of humans.
I like many people who first discover BDSM/kink/D/s, went scouring the internet for information, stories, and anything that might help create a path to use for this journey. When Jae and I first decided that we wanted a D/s relationship we both spent a lot of time searching for helpful websites and blogs to help us navigate this lifestyle. It grew somewhat discouraging as we had an extremely hard time finding content that we felt applied to our dynamic as two women.
A Lack of Relatable Content
The overwhelming majority of content that we found was very specific to a Cis Male Dom/Cis Female Submissive dynamic. This also meant there’s often a huge focus on the penis. Which is great, and go penis! But for us it wasn’t exactly helpful. So many protocols, rituals, and rules focus on different aspects of the penis. And again that is great. We have nothing against penis’s, but it doesn’t apply to us in a meaningful way. It also furthered this widespread stereotype that all Dominants have a penis which we all know is completely untrue. We are aware dildos exist, but we both really enjoy the parts we have to work with so we don’t often find they serve a huge purpose for us.
Discovering the severe lack in content geared towards us didn’t make Jae and I angry or upset. We didn’t feel like picking up pitchforks and hunting down the straight people for, god forbid, sharing their own personal experiences. But it did cause us to feel sad. I felt so excited about engaging in a 24/7 D/s relationship, but the lack of applicable content rained on my parade. Of course I didn’t allow that feeling to linger for too long because I started doing what Jae and I often do, we adjusted.
We took the content we found and tweaked it to fit our needs as two cis women together in a D/s relationship. We found ways around feeling left out. We became so much more thankful to the gender inclusive bloggers and bloggers aware of their straight privilege.
This constant adjusting did end up leading to more feelings of frustration for us. Mostly because we didn’t really want to have to make those adjustments. There were moments where it felt like we were the only lesbian couple trying to create a 24/7 D/s dynamic. Obviously we know for fact we aren’t alone, but it matters that we felt that way. A lot of it came down to is exposure. It was clear there just isn’t enough exposure of 24/7 lesbian D/s couples.
We’re Here
We know that the majority of couples are heterosexual couples, and I’m okay with that. I simply want the hetero world to know and acknowledge that society is already conditioned to accommodate them. Not all but a lot of the same issues Jae and I face in the vanilla world we also face in the kinky world. An example some people never think about is you know how you can buy all those fun things that say “Mr. and Mrs” or ”His and hers.” Well it’s a lot harder to buy that stuff when you’re two Mrs. It’s a small thing, but it circles back to wanting societal validation in our relationship.
We want to feel valued as a couple just the same as a straight couple and celebrated for the fact that we are two women. I don’t want to feel like the exception to the norm, and I value every effort I see people make to be inclusive and treat us as a norm.
The way that I found actual applicable content that also matched our pronouns was getting really creative with Google. I would Google every possible mish-mash of words relating to BDSM that I could. And then I would click every link on the first page of google (maybe the second but then stuff gets weird).
Finding Resources
The best way to find sources, in my opinion, is to find one good source who has suggested several other good sources. You kind of have to fall down a rabbit whole and then you’ll hopefully find three or four that your really vibe with. I have also spent endless hours on tumblr to find blogs that made me feel included.
Early on in our dynamic it felt vital to find online resources, but eventually we reached a point where we realized we didn’t need to rely on outside sources so much. Yes we craved being included and having representation as queer/gay/lesbian people, but in order to create our own dynamic we needed to look inward.
One of the biggest takeaways I’ve gained on my journey through D/s is once you understand consent and negotiation you can start to carve your own path. And it will be better than trying to replicate exactly what someone else is doing. No matter who you are or what different categories you fall in there is a place for you in the BDSM community. It’s all of our responsibility to make everyone feel included and excepted.
About Elissa
My name is Elissa. I enjoy blogging about my life as a gay women in a 24/7 relationship. I share mostly about the everyday aspect of our relationship. I’m a busy stay at home mom with several children. I love people, the outdoors, and grocery shopping. Check out Elissa’s blog or follow her on Tumblr or Twitter.
