Maybe you’re not into all the toys, gadgets, and orgizmos that BDSM seems to require—or you just don’t have any around. What if you could dominate someone using nothing but your body, brain, and voice?
Kink toys can be expensive. They can get between you and the up-close, primal experience you want to have, with all that skin and scent and struggle. Here’s some methods for toyless topping.
Just getting started with BDSM? Read our articles The Beginner’s Guide to Bondage and The Beginner’s Guide to Domination.
Your hands: The ultimate dominance toys
We may be tool-using mammals, but our hands are still the most versatile and intricate tools available! Hands can slap, pinch, tickle or caress, and make your sub experience pain, arousal, helplessness, or ecstasy.
Run an appraising finger along a submissive’s cheek and watch them blush. Pinch their nipples until they whimper. Slide a finger – or more – into their mouth, ass, or vagina, until your submissive feels full of you. Explore their mouth and teeth with your thumb. Run a fingernail down the sole of their foot, or up the insides of their forearms or thighs. Experiment. You can play them like an instrument—drawing shivers, sighs, moans, and shrieks.
Use your open hand to slap—on the bum, breasts, back, bottoms of feet, or face. (Negotiate that last one carefully!) Hold and move their face around by their jaw, grab a fistful of hair, or wrap your hand around the back of their neck to control their movement.
Punch their back, thighs, chest, or butt. Dig a knuckle or thumb into the muscle between their shoulder and their body, their thigh muscle, or other pressure points.
Massage them until they turn into jelly, then surprise them with pain. Or, the reverse: torture them for a while, then reward them with massage.
Feets of dominance
Feet are also versatile tools. If your partner has a foot fetish, the possibilities are nearly endless. But even without a specific foot interest, you can get spectacular results.
Try a sensual service scene, where your submissive rubs, kisses, or even “worships” your feet with their mouth and tongue. If they’re really into it, you can progress by putting your feet on their face and body.
You can also try trampling, which is stepping, standing, or walking on their body. Do it in bare feet first, avoid their belly, neck, and lower back, and make sure you have something to hold onto.
Pinch their skin between your toes, rub your feet over their genitals with lube, or get into heavier stuff like kicking—though you should start very soft and slow.
Remember you have other body parts. Have you considered knees, elbows, forearms, legs, or your whole body? In a pinch (see what I did there?), your body can replace both bondage and impact toys.
Using your weight and leverage to control your sub’s body can be fun. Even if you’re smaller than them, nothing gets their attention quite like planting a knee in the center of their back or chest. You can also sit on your partner, put them in a headlock, flatten them with your whole body weight, or wrap them with your legs and squeeze.
Role play and protocol training
There are lots of ways to use positioning, commands, and rules to establish dominance and play with power.
, for example, can work without any equipment at all. It doesn’t matter whether your sub is wearing “submissive” clothing, or whether you’re actually holding a riding crop. Have them sit on your lap and see how the power dynamic becomes instantly clear.
For teacher/student, make them sit still while you slowly pace around them, quizzing them at every turn. Doctor/patient? Seat them on a table or bed while you poke and prod their body, asking embarrassing questions. You don’t need plaid skirts, medical tables, or cop uniforms to make a role play scene work.
Protocol is another way to dominate using behavior. First, make up some rules you wish your submissive to follow. Some people use certain positions and actions, keyed to commands. For instance, you might have your submissive kneel, then tell them that they are to assume the position whenever you say “Kneel.” Establishing rules and rituals can deepen the submissive’s experience – and your feeling of control. After that, the options are limited only by your imagination!
Fuck with their head
There are all kinds of fun things you can do with your mind and theirs. So much of domination is mental. Remember: the brain is the biggest erogenous zone.
Hypnosis is a popular kink right now. It’s sexy and mysterious, requires no gadgets, and gives submissives an excuse to do things they might not usually do. Have them visualize a candle flame, or tell them to count backwards from 100. Whatever you use to get them in a relaxed state, you can follow it by giving them quiet commands, “making” them do what you want.
Tease and denial also offers control without equipment. Tell them they’re not allowed to touch you, then do a striptease, or put their favorite part of you in their face. Touch yourself and make them watch. Or slap or otherwise hurt them from a distance, then press your body to theirs and whisper hot praise in their ear. Control their orgasm: let them touch themselves, but make them ask before they come. (Even more fun: say no a few times before you say yes.)
Domination is about power, not stuff
There’s so much you can do to dominate your partner without a single toy, outfit, or special piece of furniture. Ingenuity, daring, and attitude go a long way. Even though you won’t have toys for domination, remember to have whatever safer sex supplies you need, if you’re going to include genital contact in your play. And remember: condoms can fit over feet!
Have a good time, and if you have a particularly good story of a scene you did with no equipment, we’d love to hear about it!
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We believe in love, sexuality, and the power of inclusion. People of all shapes and sizes, colors and ethnicities, genders and sexualities are valuable and deserve to feel included. Everyone should have a safe place they can go to connect, discover and express themselves without fear of being judged, censored or discriminated against.
I totally agrre that domination is about power, not stuff