Tea time: Why doms shouldn't be assholes.

We all know the type: suited to the nines, hoping you'll think "cocky" when he's really just arrogant.

I'm not good at being a "Dom," because I ask rather than demand. Apparently, Doms don't say "please." I'm also not good at being a "sub," because I have limits and I say "no." Apparently, a willingness to communicate excludes me from the majority of interactions in the community of cisgender gay men who fetishize suits & ties.

In the suit & tie fetish community, the Dom/sub dynamic often manifests in two overlapping forms: the boss/employee, or the findom/finsub. The boss/employee roleplay makes sense: in the neoliberal workplace, the CEO assumes an autocratic level of power that he asserts over his underlings, so we act out the trauma of that power imbalance by wearing the corporate uniform and imagining what the office would look like if the company hierarchy were a sexual one. Human resources, indeed. With the whole findom/finsub relationship, we get a fetishized form of the neoliberal gig economy in which the dom monetizes his sex appeal and drains the sub's bank accounts to fund his lavish wardrobe. Puzzlingly, the findom passes this off as "his" work, the fruit of his subs' labor. Capitalism is fascinating.

If you're a suit & tie fetish guy reading this, and you genuinely get off to the idea of a sub being financially drained by a dom, then have a blast. It's not for me. There has been concern about "straight" or "alpha" findoms throwing around the word "fag" to refer to the people bankrolling their miniature porn industries, and how this use of the findom dynamic monetizes homophobia. As my repeated use of "monetize" and "neoliberal" suggests, I'm not a fan of any of these power dynamics at all, financial or otherwise. Consent and communication are sexier than abuse. And as for findom/finsub—really, I have more important things to spend my money on than someone else's ego. Toxic masculinity has cost us more than enough; we don't need to add insult to injury by attaching a price tag to it. If this all makes me vanilla, so be it.

So am I a dom, a sub, a "vers?" Does it matter? As long as both parties understand power dynamics as roleplay, then isn't that what counts? The BDSM community got it right when they made "safe, sane, consensual" their mantra. We all could learn something from that.

Of all the conversations I've had with guys about the suit & tie fetish, my least pleasant ones have been with self-described "Doms." They make demands. They're intransigent, unwilling to listen, and—worst of all—unimaginative. They get particularly upset when I ask them to loosen their ties. Subs, of course, are easier to talk to because they're more willing to please. They, too, get upset when I ask them to loosen their ties. Evidently, that's a rule that nobody in the suit & tie community likes to transgress.

Rules, dress codes, power—that's really at the heart both of the suit & tie fetish and the dom/sub dynamic, the relationships we imagine with rules and constriction. Do we act out these power fantasies as a way of easing the trauma of living in a neoliberal society? Or do we merely replicate those same traumas uncritically? It's all in the mind.