I love giving blow jobs. Love love love it. The feeling of sinking my mouth down onto a dick that’s already hard, or taking a flaccid cock in my mouth and teasing and licking it to full erection… I live for that shit.

What I don’t particularly love? The feeling/taste/texture of jizz in my mouth. I don’t know if it’s a sensory thing or what, but most of the time my preference is to get the person close to orgasm with my mouth and then finish them off with my hand/a toy/penetrative sex.

There are exceptions, of course. I can sometimes enjoy the sensation of someone coming in my mouth if it’s specifically part of a D/s context where I’m feeling very submissive. With that framing, it can be hot to me on occasion. But what I’ve never been able to bring myself to do is swallow it.

I’ve been on Fetlife since I was 18, and sometime in my first few years on there I encountered a popular piece of writing that was titled something like “Good Girls Always Swallow.” Obviously this is one person’s (ill-informed and kinda gender-essentialist) opinion, but younger me took it to heart and was quite upset by it.

Because I wanted to be a good girl! I wanted to be the kind of submissive that Dominants would enjoy playing with, that they would come back to again and again, and maybe that one would choose for a lifelong relationship someday.

So, I wondered, am I a bad submissive if I don’t—can’t—swallow jizz?

A more pertinent question might be, a bad submissive for whom? Yes, I’m probably a bad submissive for someone whose number one kink is having someone suck them off and swallow. I’m probably also a bad submissive for someone who just wants to dish out as much pain as possible, because my masochistic happy place is somewhere between mild and moderate.

Here’s what I eventually learned, though: there’s no such thing as a universally “good” or “bad” submissive. People are all different and no-one will be perfect for everyone. The idea that there is one universally-accepted standard of The Perfect Submissive is bullshit.

Fetlife and normative kinky porn would have us believe that to be a good submissive, you need to be an 18-21 year old skinny white cis woman with contortionist-level flexibility, an unlimited pain threshold, the ability to orgasm immediately from penetration, and a cum-swallowing fetish a mile wide.

This is—I truly cannot stress this enough—absolute bullshit.

Everyone, no matter their sexual orientation or kink role if they have one, has their preferences and their limits and the things they can and cannot do. Some people can hang out in strenuous bondage for hours. Others can kneel for as long as their partners want, while some of us get creaky knees if we’re on the floor for too long. Some people can take a lot of pain, others hardly any at all.

The great thing about all this is that there’s no right way to be a submissive (or a Dominant, or a switch, or a vanilla player!) There are no standard acts. Everything is negotiable, customisable, an infinite array of mix-and-match combos where you can create the thing that works for you. Sex and kink aren’t about ticking boxes. They’re about the connection, the dynamic, the interplay and the dance and the exchange of energy between two (or more) people.

So am I a bad submissive if I don’t want to swallow cum?

No.

I’m the submissive that I am. The value I bring to my Dominants is through being myself, not through being the living embodiment of a Tumblr porn fantasy.

I wrote this post for Quote Quest, a fun blogging meme by Little Switch Bitch. Each week there’s a new quote for inspiration. Click the logo to see what everyone else has to say about blow jobs this week! Oh, and if you enjoy my work, please consider buying me a coffee.