Quote Originally Posted by Hime View Post
A well-known dom blogger has a theory that I think makes a lot of sense. She thinks that more women would enjoy being dominant if they didn't have such a strong cultural association between "dominant woman" and "a tall, thin, Barbie-type woman in uncomfortable PVC clothes and six-inch heels, waving a bullwhip in the air." The pop-culture idea of the "dominatrix" is a male fantasy, not a female one, so most naturally dominant women aren't really turned on by the idea of becoming that fantasy. Just like the gay person who spends years thinking "but I can't be gay! I don't act gay!", the dominant woman might take a long time to realize that the urge to dominate a partner is not one and the same with the urge to wear thigh-high stiletto boots.
I think the cultural theory is likely to be correct. By the normal rules, the distribution of traits in the 'dominance/submissive' axis *should* be following a normal distribution - like most other biological and psychological factors. This is assuming that it is left alone, without social factors to influence it. There is no true, 1/0 dominant/submissive binary set up but degrees of each trait. What we call 'truly dominant' and 'truly submissive' are probably the 95th percentiles at each end of the scale. By the mathematics of normal/bell curve distributions this means there are very few people who have that level.

Now, with women and men seperately, you may see a slight skew in one direction or another due to societal factors - cultural pressures to be more dominant (if a man) or more submissive (if a woman). Even though the feminist movement happened over 30 years ago now, the traces of these old prejudices are still out there influencing this. The tide, however, is turning and I hope to see a restoration of situation where there is no gender based skew.

There has also been a perception that Dommes are 'the playthings of rich men' who are paid for thier services. This is a completely false image (which is not helped by the title 'Mistress' hence why some lifestylers prefer alternate titles) but it is an image which is out there and influencing younger women who may be interested in the lifestyle. The 'glorified prostitute' image will be another that is hard to shake and one which I know annoys some lifestyler Dommes.

Finally: training. There are a lot of skills needed to be any form of dominant so to increase the number of Dommes you need to have more education for aspiring Dommes. Maybe we should institute a 'City and Guilds' course... Seriously, mentoring and training are important in the lifestyle lest important skills be lost.