Do Some Men Need a Dominatrix Instead of Therapy?

I recently left Islam after a decade and, after a brief sojourn exploring Vedic wisdom, I’ve since found a more fruitful and interesting sphere of consciousness to explore: the “dark goddess” traditions of ancient Europe. The “dark” goddess archetypes of pagan Europe represent the repressed feminine archetypes that don’t fit into the narrow, patriarchy-serving definitions of femininity enforced by modern-day religions. This search led me (via TikTok algorithm) to the world of financial domination and female dominance as a sex fetish. As I’m always down to explore the taboo and forbidden, I was immediately intrigued and dove right in.

I bought a course from Findombratblair (Twitter) and eagerly consumed the content of Theelizamonique, an Australian MILF findom on Tiktok, and Alla Mephistopheles, an embodiment of the Great Goddess in the realm of BDSM. I soon realized I had stumbled on a whole new world, a hidden reality where the dark goddess still reigned. She hadn’t been stamped out, but rather had been demonized and relegated to the forbidden and taboo margins of society.

Before I go on, I would just like to clarify what I mean by “goddess” and “divine.” After being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually abused by a high-demand religion “god” and letting go of such a concept of the divine, I have no desire for or intention to replace one god or goddess with another, per se. In fact, I most closely identify with atheism right now (which could easily change in the future as I continue my journey to explore new realities), because if there is such a thing as the “divine” beyond physics and raw consciousness, then I don’t believe it’s knowable or conceivable by anyone, ever, and to believe that it is is a form of delusion. A human can’t comprehend a “divine” reality any more than a dog can comprehend the internet.

But that doesn’t mean that “religion” and divine archetypes aren’t a fundamental need for the human egoself to create itself and adapt to the experience of self-consciousness in a chaotic, incomprehensible reality. In fact, I love to use god or goddess archetypes as a mirror to reflect on my own identity and create myself as I move through spacetime. In other words, we create god and goddess archetypes as a mirror and we use them to create our identity, both individually and collectively.

Anyway, that’s all just to say that when I speak about a goddess or god, I’m not speaking of some separate personified, supernatural being but rather a reflection of the human being, both the hidden and taboo (“dark” or “shadow”) and the aspirational and exalted (“light”). Which is why I’m fascinated by the dark goddesses of pre-Abrahamic societies. These goddesses represent aspects of the feminine that have been repressed and relegated to the shadows, the darkness.

So what does this have to do with sex work and redeeming men and the patriarchy? Glad you asked! (And thank you for sticking through that lengthy, but necessary, introduction — in fact, since you’ve made it this far, then DM me on Instagram and I’ll send you a free gift! Haha) There is extensive documentation and evidence of female Creator goddesses in antiquity (in fact, patriarchy didn’t begin until about 6,000 years ago at the end of the Copper Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age), and women were the direct link between the Divine and humanity. The original sex work was sacred, in which the priestesses of the Mother God allowed men to connect with the Mother God through the act of sexual intercourse. It was a conversation between the Mother God and her devotee, the man, with woman as the intermediary. Woman, wife, lover was the original priestess, or intermediary and mouthpiece, of the Divine, which was the Mother Creator Goddess.

And that ritual act still exists to this day in the form of the dominatrix profession. That’s not to say that all dommes provide this kind of experience, but in my very brief sojourn in the industry (a few weeks at most), I’ve come across three already. Dommes like Findombratblair and Alla are using their power over men to alchemize these men into greater versions of themselves, and some, like Alla, are doing so explicitly as representatives of the Great Goddess.

And all of this got me thinking. I follow the feminism and redpill conversation closely. After Covid, I started following Jordan Peterson and other conservatives, and being Muslim, I identified with a lot of the redpill content when it comes to the role of men and women and the definitions of masculinity and femininity in the context of “traditional” gender roles. It really did seem like a great ideal to strive for, and I loved family values and the concept of cooperation between a man and a woman to create a family together.

I also started listening deeply to what men were trying to communicate, even if the delivery was harsh and hard to relate to with their inability to empathize with or comprehend experiences of women or experiences outside of their own. Men are clearly drowning and desperate in the modern day world, and they yearn for a simpler time in which they believe they were ennobled, life was secure and clear, and everything was wonderful because society reflected the “natural order” of male supremacy. I’m not going to get into a discussion about that here right now, but in recent days, I’ve been hearing men who are struggling say that they want women to teach them empathy. They even go so far as to demand women teach them, as if it’s our job to fix them and that they are entitled to our labor (for free).

And this is where the dark goddesses, sex work, and dominatrices come in. Men are not like women, at least modern men. Our patriarchal culture has them deeply programmed with the idea of status and hierarchy. Masculinity is literally defined as the opposite of and superior to femininity, but this concept of masculinity is failing men at every level. Women aren’t buying into that game anymore and we are developing our egoselves vis-a-vis new archetypes that have nothing to do with the old patriarchal paradigm of domination by the “divine” masculine and submission of the “profane” feminine, and masculinity, as it has been defined for the past 6,000–7,000 years can’t exist without a submissive feminine. Therefore, masculinity is in crisis.

At a time when every aspect of human life is being revolutionized by technology and human existence is threatened by climate change, global war, and declining populations, and at a time when femininity is being redefined by pioneering women all around the world, masculinity also needs a makeover to adapt to the new reality. No longer is power and survival defined by the brute strength behind swords and plows. If we are to survive, it will be achieved by cooperative problem-solving and resource conservation. These are deeply “feminine” characteristics, as femininity is currently defined (although, keep in mind, we can define it as anything we want).

Anyway, back to the point. Men’s egoselves, unlike women’s, are strictly bound by the concept of hierarchy, and so if they are going to “heal” or redefine and adapt to the new reality in a healthy way, they will need solutions that are different from women. That’s why therapy might work for women but men resist because it just isn’t suited for them. Their psyches are, generally speaking, structured by conflict, competition, status, and hierarchy, so in order to reach them and start constructing a new psychological structure and identity, they need to be approached through, what is basically a war and hierarchy paradigm. That’s why “alpha male” and “warrior training” types of bootcamps are becoming very successful. They break down a man’s ego, and package therapy as war and competition, then build men’s personalities back up. The most successful ones, apparently, also deprogram their male participants of the most debilitating and maladaptive aspects of “traditional masculinity.”

[A] study of male psychology as something unique is surprisingly new. In 2018, the American Psychological Association (APA) released its first guidelines for conducting psychological practice with men and boys. On the whole, the APA operated from the perspective that traditional masculinity — which the organization defined as traits like “stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression” — was psychologically harmful and generally unattainable for men. “Though men benefit from patriarchy, they are also impinged upon by patriarchy,” said former APA president Ronald F. Levant.1, 2, 3

Sex for men is also mostly an experience of domination, and that’s a big reason they crave it (beyond being a physiological urge). It reinforces their identity and masculinity. For women, sex is a relational act engaged in with the hope of connection and intimacy, whereas for men, it’s largely an act of ego-affirmation and gender-affirmation that props up a masculinity made brittle by not only its inherent falsehood but also by the crumbling of the masculine god archetype and thus the masculine identity in the contemporary world.

So sexual or intimate domination (few dominatrices actually engage in sex acts, as far as I can tell) as a hierarchical act is a way to reach men in their confusion and frustration in a way that traditional therapy cannot in order to begin deconstructing a failing patriarchal identity and begin building a new adaptation.

And that’s where the dark goddess archetypes fit in. The patriarchal concept of the feminine is, quite frankly, by definition ignoble and pathetic according to most men. Femininity is demonized. It’s degraded. It’s the weak to the masculine “strong.” It’s the powerless (soft) to the masculine “power.” It’s the animalistic (instinctual and unconscious) to the masculine “divine.” It’s the irrational (emotional) to the masculine “rational.” It’s the incompetent to the masculine “competent.” The patriarchal definition of masculinity is created by the feminine as the weak, bad, stupid, submissive, inferior Other. Masculinity doesn’t exist outside this definition, so when women are clearly displaying competency, reason, strength, capacity, etc. masculinity is threatened and men necessarily undergo a crisis of identity. They can no longer identify as superior to women because it’s clearly a false construct. So they can either try to beat women back into submission or recreate their concept of masculinity and self.

When offered only two choices, a powerful masculine and a pathetic feminine, of course the male psyche will revile and reject the feminine, limiting his capacity to construct a more balanced and adaptable construct of self. The dark goddesses, on the other hand, are where the powerful feminine still live (but hidden) in the collective human psyche. The creator, destroyer, the source of power, the source of wisdom, hunter, director of fate, etc. These are all concepts of the feminine that the modern masculine mind could identify with to develop a concept of self that doesn’t utterly exclude the feminine, which is what renders him incapable of conceiving of women as human and thus makes him incapable of empathy for women.

And this is where the sacred prostitute, as the dominatrix, comes in to introduce a man to the powerful, divine feminine. Through domination, a relationship that modern men can relate to and find themselves within, can break down his psychological structures and help him build a new, stronger, more resilient and powerful self. And this is also a way for women to help men without the usual parasitic relationship that men have with women, because the domme can set the price for her services, making the relationship fair and reciprocal.

So that’s why I think that sex work could be an avenue for men’s liberation and the redemption of the patriarchy, while also empowering and fairly compensating women for their emotional, physical, and sexual labor in the rebuilding of an ennobled and adaptive masculine identity suitable for the modern age. Being at the taboo margins of society and a place where an ancient medicine still exists, while also being characterized by a structure and way of relating that men find natural and accessible, sex work done for the purpose of rehabilitation could be an untapped source of healing for society.

I’m going to continue exploring this world to see if my hypothesis is correct, and I’ll keep you posted.