Rejecting God and Daddy Kink
Written in July 2024As a writer, I’m constantly googling synonyms for words. Most recently, while writing this article, I searched for a synonym for the word “submit.” It shouldn’t be surprising that the first suggestions that came up in the search bar were “submit to your husband” and “submit to God” or that I immediately reacted with a visceral, pure, unadulterated rage.
Finding the appropriate language for an experience, a philosophy, or a lifestyle means finding your appropriate space and people. But what do you do when the commonly used language in those arenas doesn’t hit the mark?
In the past few years, I’ve started exploring personal development, philosophy, self-help, and the like. I’ve read books like Atomic Habits and The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. But I feel a deep calling to books that are less productivity-focused and more ideological and philosophical such as Cole Arthur Riley’s This Here Flesh, All About Love by bell hooks, or The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown.
I gravitate toward books like these because I want to explore the idea of living a life of radical self-love and self-acceptance, of finding ourselves through connection with our bodies, of revering the land around us, of gaining strength from the stories of our ancestors, of developing ways of existing in the world that are more just and kind.
These ideas are not inherently religious, and yet, these texts and the others I’ve read like them are unable to extract the discussion of these philosophies from talk of God, divinity, and The Universe. In some cases, they explicitly say that “God” can mean whatever you want it to mean - it can mean nature, yourself, a sense of connection to The Universe™, or some other higher power. But what about when you don’t believe in any “higher power” or some grand, divine plan? Why do we even need to use the term “God” in the first place if its definition is so flexible?
When questions of faith are brought up, the first (and only) thing I can think of that I have faith in is myself. I believe wholeheartedly in myself as someone I can rely on and who can and will pull myself through even life’s greatest challenges. But again, I don’t believe I was divinely created. The idea that I was “made” in some image or in some specific way because God wanted it that way has no impact on how I view myself. I simply don’t believe in God, so why would the idea that he made me and loves me bring me any comfort or any closer to loving myself? Nor do I believe in an afterlife or an eternal soul. I recognize that my consciousness is distinct from others around me and that there is some intangible conglomeration of genetics, experiences, thoughts, and behaviors that is uniquely me. Still, I don’t believe that part of myself is separate from my body or will exist after my body ceases to function.
And sure, I believe nature is awe-inspiring (even that phrase seems loaded with religious implications), powerful, and interconnected. That does not mean, though, that I believe nature was divinely created or has a plan of its own other than survival. Nature can be many things: a place of healing, a place of reflection, something I feel a deep connection to, a neutral force of power. But there is nothing spiritual about it for me because I don’t believe in a spirit. Despite all the wondrous things about nature, there is nothing God-like about it to me.
Nor do I believe The Universe™ is somehow working for or against me or has a plan about how anything, especially my life, will go. The manifestation girlies will hate me here, but I don’t believe that speaking something out loud or policing my thoughts to “manifest” something will make The Universe™ magically bring it to me. I believe managing my thoughts to directly impact my behavior is powerful, as I’m learning to do with Coach Kara Loewntheil, however, that’s not the same as manifestation, which I often see combined with crystals, spells, and other spiritual practices.
So, how do you access these kinds of discussions when any mention of the idea of some higher power, the fates, God, The Universe™, divinity, whatever, makes you physically recoil? Where is the secular language to describe these ideas? Because I do believe the ideas themselves are secular, or at least able to be interpreted in a secular way. Even when I feel exceptionally moved by something, I am likely to say a phrase like “it sets my soul on fire” when I don’t even believe in the concept of a soul. Unfortunately, I don’t have a concise way of discussing that idea without incorporating religiously tainted language.
As I’ve become increasingly frustrated with the religious context that makes much of the literature that could theoretically inspire me inaccessible, I realized I’ve faced this sort of problem before in an entirely different arena of life – BDSM.
I’ll be honest and say that I was exposed to the world of BDSM at what was probably far too young an age - something that I believe is becoming increasingly common with the accessibility of the internet. At 14 years old, I was reading and writing erotica that featured an alarming level of kink I did not understand. At 17, I was engaging in conversations with men on the internet that were simply horrifying looking back on them now. One of the main features of this exposure was the casual use of Daddy kink. I am not here to kink shame in the slightest, but there was something about this kink that never, ever felt right for me.
I put up with it for a long time, still reading and watching erotic media that featured Daddy kink and still engaging in conversations that referenced it, both in an intimate setting and in casual, comedic use online, as it has become normalized. Being exposed to all kinds of kink, but especially Daddy kink at such a young age warped my view of “good sex” drastically. For many years, I thought that a woman had to participate in kinks she didn’t particularly like and maybe wasn’t even comfortable with if she wanted to keep a man around. If she wanted any romantic or sexual attention at all, doing things that didn’t feel right was essentially the barrier to entry. Hell, it even got to the point where I convinced myself I did like things I definitely wasn’t into for a while.
As I matured, I did my own research, and learned more about sex, sexuality, and kink as a whole. I started to acknowledge that despite my genuine curiosity about power dynamics, it didn’t mean I had to like Daddy kink, pain, degradation or any of those things that felt like they just came with the territory. I began finding terms like “soft dom” or “service top” that sounded appealing. I started to understand what kind and level of submission I’m comfortable with and enjoy. But the one thing I haven’t found an alternative for that genuinely works for me is the term Daddy.
Daddy kink seems so common and so deeply embedded in the BDSM community (and now, even non-BDSM communities) that it feels like I can’t escape it, just as I can’t escape the concept of God in personal development and philosophical literature.
Alternatives like “Sir” or “Master” still hold the weight of the term Daddy which makes me uncomfortable while adding an emotional distance that Daddy doesn’t involve. None of them encapsulate the kind of power dynamic I’m drawn to. I want a term of endearment for a dom that acknowledges his role but does not make my insides twist unpleasantly because it just simply isn’t right.
These other terms, just like God, Nature, and The Universe, indicate an idea or relationship that is close to, but not quite what I’m searching for. Whereas the alternatives to God still hold a spiritual connotation that I don’t prescribe to, the alternatives I’ve found for Daddy lack the essence I seek in this power dynamic.
And maybe that’s what it all comes down to—an issue with the prevalent power dynamic. Given the ubiquitousness of believing in a higher power and the widely (if sometimes unintentionally) accepted social rule that women are of lower status than men, many people are comfortable with these ideas. They can default to them without too much trouble. As someone vehemently opposed to both of these ideas but still interested in the philosophical discussions and sexual lifestyle that they frequently arise in, I feel disconnected and isolated.
I want to build my own framework of personal growth and deep understanding of myself and the world without kowtowing in any way to some otherworldly higher power I don’t believe in, especially one whose name has been used to oppress and murder people for thousands of years.
Similarly, I want the option to explore a dominant/submissive relationship without resorting to language that plays to ideas of fathers being the patriarchs and ultimate controllers of women, not to mention the unavoidable age-play connoted by the term, or using the alternatives that carry historically oppressive weight to them as well.
I am not saying others should stop using these terms if they work for them.1 I am just saying that we, as a society, can and should consider our language closely and create linguistic space for those who may fall outside the typical, proscribed lines of any particular community. There should be room in the self-improvement community for those who do not prescribe to religious ideas and in the BDSM community for those whose desire to be submissive lies outside the realm of a desire to be considered subordinate.
I’m sick of the almost, but not quite feeling I get when engaging in these two communities. I’m sick of feeling like I have to squeeze myself into a mold that doesn’t fully work for me in areas of life that are extremely intimate and vulnerable. I don’t want to just deal, ignore, or get over it. I want to find ways to engage with these ideas and this lifestyles that makes them feel like home. Life is too short to settle in any area, but especially ones as fundamental as personal growth and sex. Since I’ve found the acknowledgment of these barriers to entry all but nonexistent, I want to start the conversation now.
Are you an atheist who gets put off by personal growth literature because of the underlying religiousness in many of the texts? Are you a feminist, empowered woman who wants the space to explore submissiveness in the bedroom without feeling a sense of oppression or subordination? Have you found texts or terms allowing you to access these communities without putting your strongly held beliefs aside? Is there a whole sphere of these two communities that I’ve completely missed? I desperately want to know!
I always advocate for deep self-reflection and not blindly yielding to ideas just because they’re popular or familiar. Reflection is vital in the case of young, inexperienced women (and sometimes even girls) participating in BDSM and potentially being taken advantage of by “dominants” who use the title as nothing but an excuse to abuse women. It is equally as important in cases of religion which can be harmful, toxic, and downright murderous despite its apparent messages of love and acceptance.
