By David Futrelle
Time for some Saturday Schadenfreude. Today, the story of a polyamorous dom who tried to humiliate his subs by making them take an IQ test, only to end up humiliating himself in the end.
A couple of years ago – hey, I didn’t say this was a brand new story — a lovely fellow turned to the Relationships subreddit in hopes someone there might be able to help him out of a little pickle he’d gotten himself into. The 26-year-old “dom” was worried that a little stunt he’d pulled with an online IQ test was ruining his relationships with his two subs.
“A little background,” he began.
I am a Dom in a polyamorous relationship with two lovely young submissive women, whom we’ll call “Sarah” [22F] and “Jane” [19F]. Jane and I have been living together for three years, and Sarah moved in with us in January of this year.
Only a couple of sentences in and already our dear Dom has revealed himself to be an incredible skeezball. He’s been living with a “sub” since she was 16 and he was 23? He’s a predator, and very likely an abuser.
And we haven’t even gotten to the poor fella’s problem yet. Let’s let him continue:
Everything has been going quite well, but an issue has just arisen in our relationship that is making me very concerned.
Do tell.
Whilst perusing the web on Tuesday night, I discovered an online IQ test. I am aware that most online IQ tests are inaccurate, but, having studied psychology, I knew that this test used the exact same types of questions as a professional IQ test.
“Whilst.” Why are these doofuses always so fucking pretentious? This is clearly someone who isn’t quite as smart as he thinks he is. Er, SPOILER ALERT.
I decided to play a little game with my subs. They are very into psychological domination and humiliation, and I thought it would be erotic to dominate them intellectually by outscoring them on the IQ test.
You might have already guessed the punchline here.
While they are bright girls, I had no doubt that my IQ would be higher than theirs. I had them take the test, and Sarah scored 128; Jane, 134. I took the test after them. However, to my chagrin, I scored 112.
DIRECTED BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN.
This was, understandably, humiliating. Sarah and Jane didn’t say anything. We continued on as usual afterwards, but these results aroused many doubts in the back of my mind.
Way ahead of you, bud, on the whole doubts thing. I have nothing but doubts about you.
As a Dom, I demand total submission from my girls, and it is my responsibility to control them; I cannot do this if they are able to outsmart me.
How can I continue to manipulate them if they can see right through my bullshit?
I am sure Sarah and Jane know this too. Although they have not disobeyed or disrespected me outright, I am picking up on small aspects of their behaviour that show a loss of respect for me. I am afraid that this could kill their attraction to me.
Oh, let’s hope so!
I am asking for advice from /r/relationships because BDSMcommunity has been disrespectful to me in the past … .
Oh, they’ve been “disrespectful,” huh? Perhaps that’s because you’re a skeezy, manipulative predator who justifies his terrible behavior by calling himself a “dom?” Just a wild guess.
[I]nput from both BDSM and vanilla perspectives is welcome. I would like to know a way to mend the damage this has caused to our relationship.
Happily, most of those who responded in the Reddit thread weren’t having any of his bullshit, and several called him out for his obviously predatory behavior.
I wish only the worst to him. If he’s even real. The story is so perfect in its irony I think there’s a very good chance it’s fake; I certainly hope it is, for the sake of the women involved.
Maybe the OP was just honing a pitch for a new sitcom — Dom and Dommer.
H/T — I ran across this on Twitter, posted by the reliably hilarious and/or awful relationships.txt account.
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
Thats been my mother all day complete with popcorn.
@Jenora Feuer: I totally second the recommendation of Elizabeth Sandifer’s book (disclosure: I backed the Kickstarter). If you want an insight into the beating heart of this “Dark Enlightenment” nonsense, I urge everyone to grab a copy.
“Apex privilege”: awesome phrase! It’s a great way of describing the attitude of so many of the “thought leaders” (read: old, straight, white guys) in the rational/ skeptic movement, which is where I first came across this blog. You can see it the offhand way they erase the issues that the less privileged have to deal with in their everyday lives; e.g., “no-one’s ever catcalled me in the street; therefore, catcalling is nothing anyone needs to waste time addressing”. How nice for you.
@Cat Mara:
Missed the kickstarter myself, unfortunately. I tend to be a bit off and on over there as things get busy. Should still send some money that way by getting the book.
Thanks on the other part; I wasn’t actually thinking in that much detail, ‘apex privilege’ just seemed about right for a lot of the tech-bro culture. (You missed ‘well off’ on your list; at least some of the attitude probably comes from never having been on the ‘poor’ end of things either.) It’s downhill in all directions from there.
Thing is, I’m pretty bloody close to that in various forms of privilege myself; however, I was brought up to treat people as people, listen to others, have some humility, and understand that many of the things that went right in my life were just good luck and nothing to do with me being somehow deserving.
I understand intellectually how people can get stuck in other modes of thinking like the guy in the OP. (I have multiple teachers in my family, took some psychology myself, and am an avid people-watcher as well as a writer.) But I just have trouble emotionally grasping how people can get so wrapped up in themselves.
As for the OP, my only real experience as a ‘dom’ was in online role-play, which has some different dynamics to it. But it seems obvious to me that being a good dom requires enough empathy to not only know what your partner is after, but also to get some idea where the lines are that you don’t want to cross. The idea of negging is just wrong to me, and negging using IQ is such an obvious pratfall waiting to happen…