Forums » RP Discussion » Desire for Dominant Males

Hello, all!

I've noticed many, many times that a lot of female players (and some only presumably female players) frequently request to pair up their femal characters with highly dominant male characters. Even when they allow for female playmates, the dominance thing always seems to be a requirement.

Why is that? From what little I understand about how women think (and it's very little, actually), it would make more sense that they'd rather be on equal footing with their male counterparts. All you lady roleplayers here, please help me understand this desire for imaginary dominance!

Well, this is coming from someone who is female yet identifies as bigender, but...

I think it's the possibility that they want to play with something they know about and are comfortable with, which is a romance/roleplay with a dominant male (or just a male in general). This may not be the case of course with all females, but I think those who ask for dominant males and take no interest in much else are, well, just used to it. They may want even footing ultimately, but it may just be more of a comfort zone than anything else. Despite our characters being much different than us, our preferences on what we want to see in RP/who we want to RP with can also stem from our real life experiences and personal tastes as well, so that's also a possibility.

EDIT: That, and there is also something about someone else being dominant for a while that feels like you are also in control of how you react to them as well. In BDSM, for example, submissives actually have more control because they can choose whether or not they enjoy what's being done to them and relinquish more control to a dominant. I think the same thing applies in terms of RP: if a submissive character doesn't like what's going on, they have the right to depict it as such, thus giving more sway to the plot. Those are just thoughts of course, and I could always be wrong about anything I've just said above.

I have also noticed the uprise of people who want dominant males, and I will admit that I would like to see more ads wanting dominant women or submissive men for a bit of diversity. But if that's what they feel best with, there's nothing wrong with that; even I'll want a dominant male every once in a while when I feel like one of my characters is in the mood for that. Other than that, I personally don't care who I play with: male, female, dominant, submissive... As long as my characters mesh well with them, then I am fine. (Though I will admit a huge affinity for submissive males in a RP, and switch males and females. Switches feel so much more freeing than one extreme or the other to me.)

I hope any of that was any sort of understandable...

omg yes, I totally agree, especially being one of the said "dominant females" (which is generally my personality anyway) and my characters are usually the strong, confident, take-no-crap-from-people female archetypes. But, I've also noticed that the large population of RPers do not like that type of character and tend to back off in exchange for a "mary sue", or w/e they call the extremely fem characters.

But to the OPs point, I believe it's also because the person requesting it wants to, more or less, take a back seat to the story and allow things to happen as they can react (which I believe I'm echoing what Lucree said), but that seems like a plausible reason anyway.

There's no simple, singular answer: I think a lot of writers strive for thrills and writing 'sensation-seeking' (the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences and the willingness to take risks for the sake of such experiences *). Stories like 50 shades of grey profit greatly off this. Dominant, bad boy archetypes are tailored to meet the requirements.



* https://www.psychologytoday.com

There is the odd possibility that it's a kink of theirs. One they might not be willing or brave enough to explore via real life. Think about it, an imaginary character can take anything (within reason), and if they die from the excessive brute force of said dominance (depending how dominant we are talking here). It's only the imaginary character that is harmed. Well it always sucks to have a character die on you; there's a lot more than can be more safely explored via character plots versus willing to try it in real life.

They can really like the idea of their characters being forced to the ground, grabbed roughly and treated roughly, ridden hard; and so on. It's some weird mess of strength and domineering that sometimes is sexy.

Of course there are different levels of dominance to downright SM or beyond (I'm not going to claim I know everything, so leaving the beyond there as realms outside my knowledge).

Overall, I think its just a fun way to get certain negative emotions out like rage, anger, irritation and so on; that both men and women may overall have no other way of expressing that either with being dominated or playing a dominate character.

I know several RPers who simply have wanted a character that would treat their character like garbage because it was their way of taking out a bad day on something that wasn't themselves.

There are many, many reasons to want anything... and it also depends on the character they are creating, and could even be a temporary thing (like current mood).

We have our own emotions, thoughts, problems... etc we are going through, and than the stuff our characters are going through; and how we believe this character we've created would react to again... certain emotions, thoughts, problems... which may or may not even remotely align with our own.

We could be a overall nice person (persay as that's really based on perception)... but have a character who drinks, smokes, curses, and goes around butting heads with everyone; that's a complete conflict with how we ourselves would explore the world.

Overall... as with anything, RP is a way to try something or do something, or act certain ways that we may or may not desire to in the real world; but may or may not be curious to the outcomes of such actions. Of course we may very well be aware of the consequences and perhaps that is the ultimate goal, to teach the character a lesson, moral... or whatever....

And RP is whatever we want it to be.

As to why.... everyone will have their own personal reasons for wanting dominance or submission; and their characters though they may differ still have the writer at the helm backing them. So there are things that really are outside comfort zones, and there are other things that maybe are easier to do when in bad moods... and what not. Overall; it's a varying thing.

Personally... I don't fully dislike the idea of a dominate partner, but I cringe at the idea of super dominate (real life wise); where as I might allow a weaker submissive character to have to deal with a super dominate person, or even play a rather dominate person myself at times.

Humans are complicated dualities of just too many things... and as the first responders said, it could just be easier to deal with; because they are more used to coming across mainly dominate males or perhaps females in real life.
Personally I feel I'm both dominate and submissive; a switch I guess, with probably more dominate attributes; which sadly does make more men avoid me (in real life). But am awkwardly an equally shy, timid, and meek (probably more so when it comes to relationships).

So... as complicated and as hard to understand as we the writers are... the characters could be equally multilayered.