A survey of male submissive kinks: #8 Financial domination
The category that deals with sexual fantasies of financial domination and how they intertwine with other kinks.
This is part of a series of essays that collectively survey male submissive kinks. Find the Table of contents here.
Women have an evolved preference for men with resources because these men ensure them the best support to survive and to reproduce, and for their offspring in turn to be reared in the best environment. Men with resources are able to provide for the woman and to attend to her material needs, conferring upon her a certain comfort that appeases her anxiety of having to provide for herself in the cruel struggle of life.
This is of particular importance when the woman is pregnant because that is the time she is most vulnerable. The importance of resources continues after the baby is born as its rearing requires the investment of resources. A woman who mates with a man who lacks resources is likely in for a world of trouble compared to a woman who mates with a man who has them.
In the modern world, a man’s resources are mainly financial. This translates to women’s preference for men with money. Thus, the financial success of a man is one of the most important things he can leverage on the dating market to attract women. A man with a steady stable high stream of income is a hot commodity.
Since financial resources are finite, a man has to make good decisions in where to allocate them. The loss of resources is a great peril in the reproductive game for men. If a man can no longer provide the financial support that initially attracted a woman to him, he runs the risk of losing her. Cases abound of women divorcing husbands who have lost their jobs.
Women do not just have a preference for men with resources: they have a preference for men who are willing to share those resources with them. It is sometimes said that the mating game is transactional at its core: a man invests resources in a woman and she reciprocates by giving him sex. This is a gross oversimplification but it succinctly captures a real aspect of human sexual psychology.
It is natural for men to have the desire to bestow gifts on their female partners, especially during the initial courtship period. This desire, also in all likelihood evolved, is a reflection of the female preference for resources and for men who are generous with them. The act of giving gifts to the woman is a signal to her of the man’s generosity.
The man’s acts of generosity are carried out in the hope of eventual reciprocity on the part of the woman for her end of the evolutionary bargain. Therefore, when making decisions of where to allocate his resources, a man has to make sure he secures whatever favors he hopes to get from the woman, most notably access to sex.
Yet there are men who have sexual fantasies of giving up their resources to a woman and not getting anything in return. Since resources are primarily financial in today’s world, these fantasies are almost always about the financial domination of the man by an attractive woman.1
The woman in financial domination fantasies can be passive or active in her pursuit of the man’s resources. If she is passive, she only receives what the man willingly gives her and she never explicitly asks for anything. If she is active, she initiates demands and formulates explicit requests for money and other material benefits from the man.
The financial domination kink deserves a category of its own because it is singularly pernicious in its consequences when put to practice. Indeed, due to the finite nature of money, some men ruin themselves financially in pursuit of the sexual satisfaction of their kink.
Passive domination
One of the core elements of the financial domination kink is the act of a man who gives his financial resources to a woman without securing sexual favors from her in exchange. This is where the humiliation lies, and as such, the financial domination kink often intertwines with the kinks of rejection.
Some men fantasize about developing an interest in an attractive woman and making efforts to pursue her, taking her out on dates and whatnot, while the woman never sees the man as a potential romantic or sexual partner to begin with. The woman in these fantasies uses her charm to her advantage, leading the man on and benefitting materially from his interest in her. She chooses to entertain this interest to see how much she can get out of it.
For example, the man can take the woman out on dinner dates and buy her gifts hoping that he will ultimately win her over. The woman enjoys what the man offers out of his own volition without any intention of ever reciprocating romantically or sexually.
In some fantasies, the woman puts the man in the friendzone, only seeing him as a friend. As the man is powerless in this situation, he satisfies himself with getting whatever he can out of the woman, even if the access to her be purely platonic. Because the man is interested in the woman, he can start to bestow material benefits on her, which the woman gladly accepts as a sign of friendship. Needless to say, these benefits are never reciprocated by the woman.
The man can pay for various of the woman’s expenses, buy her clothes and gifts, and drive her around. A particularly arousing element in these fantasies is when the woman acknowledges the man’s generosity and thanks him for being such a good friend to her. The important element here is the emphasis on the way the woman perceives the man—only as a friend—and her belief that his generosity stems from his genuine desire to be a good friend to her and not from a romantic or sexual attraction to her.
These fantasies can involve aspects of cuckolding if the woman is actively dating. The friendzoned man can financially support the woman in various aspects of her dating life, a dating life in which he does not participate except as a sponsor. Some fantasies in this vein also emphasize the humiliation suffered by the friendzoned man at the hands of his rival who benefits from the financial support that the woman enjoys.
For example, the man can buy the woman clothes that she wears on her dates with other men. This is especially humiliating—and in consequence, arousing—if the clothes that are bought are intimate, like lingerie that the other man will get to take off the woman while having sex with her.
The friendzoned man can further be humiliated if the woman decides to model the new clothes for him to get his opinion on what the other man will think of them. If the clothes are intimate, the friendzoned man can alternatively be humiliated by not even seeing what they look like on the woman because it would be inappropriate given the nature of their friendship.
Other examples of fantasies include paying for the woman’s drinks or dinner dates with another man, and paying for an entire vacation for the woman where she is sure to enjoy herself sexually with others.
The woman can start to abuse the man’s generosity and willingness to give his money up for her, in which case the domination starts to move closer and closer to the active direction. For example, the woman can ask the man to borrow some money that she never intends on paying back. He never brings it up with her either, afraid that she will get upset. Every day that goes by without her paying back the money owed is humiliating and arousing to the man.
Another fantasy is about sharing an apartment with the attractive woman. She asks the man to pay her part of the rent for the month under the excuse that she is having financial difficulties. The man, unwilling to upset the woman he desires but cannot obtain, is unable to say no to her, especially if she uses her physical attractiveness to persuade him. The woman fails to pay him back and she seeks to free herself from the burden of future rent in a similar fashion.
For example, the woman can demand that the man perpetually pay her part of the rent in exchange for worshipping her or for being her foot slave or for the simple fact that he gets to share an apartment with such a hot woman, a privilege he has to pay for.
Active domination
The financial domination is active if the woman makes it clear to the man that the only reason she continues to give him attention is because she gets material benefits out of him. In this case, the woman starts to financially dominate the man in an active form, initiating demands, requesting money, and extracting other benefits from him.
The more the woman demands from the man, the more perilous the situation becomes for him as he is made to surrender more and more of his finite money. This is another important element in the financial domination kink: the risk of financial ruin. In fantasies of financial domination, the sexual arousal elicited in the man is typically directly proportional to the amount of money involved in the transaction.
Some men fantasize about being made “pay pigs” to an attractive woman. A pay pig is a man who willingly pays for anything the woman asks for. For example, the woman can have dinner at a restaurant or go shopping. She sends the man her receipts and he readily transfers money to the woman to cover her expenses.
In these fantasies, men are particularly aroused when they are made to pay for things that enhance the woman's physical attractiveness, such as paying for intimate clothing like lingerie or paying for the woman’s nails, or for things that further humiliate the man, such as funding the woman’s nights out where she is sure to meet other men and potentially have sex with them.
Some men also fantasize about being asked for money by the woman at random times and without the need for a reason. The woman can order the man to send her a specified amount of money and the man obliges as soon as he can simply because she asked him to do so.
Some men fantasize about giving their credit card to the woman who readily uses it. The thrill in these fantasies is in the uncertainty in how the woman will use the credit card. She might simply buy a couple of things or she might splurge by going on a shopping spree and maxing out the credit card in consequence. The surprise at seeing huge expenses take place in real time is part of the thrill.
Some men fantasize about giving up their whole paycheck to the woman who then decides what portion of it to allocate back for the man to cover his expenses. In these fantasies, the woman only gives the man enough money back to cover his primary necessities of food and rent and other basic needs. The rest of the paycheck, the woman keeps and decides to do with as she pleases.
In these fantasies, the man is sometimes made to reduce his basic expenses so that the woman can keep a larger portion of the paycheck. For example, he can be made to reduce his food intake or change his diet to less expensive foods. This intertwines sometimes with soiling kinks if the woman suggests, for example, that the man eat her foot dust instead of real food to save more money.
The humiliation in these fantasies lies in the fact that the man reduces his comfort to a minimum in order to ensure that the woman gets more of his money. He knows that she will use the money for frivolous pursuits to fund a lavish lifestyle while he is made to live in a minimal condition.
As part of financial domination fantasies, the man believes that the woman is worthy of his money, that he should give it to her because she deserves it more than he does. The woman deserves the money simply for existing and being beautiful and sexy. The man thinks himself unworthy of being with the woman as she is out of his league. If he cannot have her, the best he can do is to live vicariously through her by financially supporting her lifestyle.
Some fantasies are about granting the woman access to the man’s bank account, giving her free rein to execute any transactions she wishes. The thrill lies in the power conferred upon the woman, that of emptying the man's bank account. She can decide to drain it by transferring all the man’s money over to her, effectively financially ruining him in the process.
In some fantasies, the man is encouraged to work harder or longer or to get another job in order to make more money, money that goes of course entirely to the woman. When the man runs out of money, he can be encouraged to sell his possessions and to liquidate his assets.
In the extreme case, when there is nothing left for the woman to milk out of the man, he can be encouraged to go into debt for her. By securing a loan that he gives up entirely to the woman, the man is further humiliated by chaining himself with financial liabilities for her sake.
These forms of active domination can involve aspects of worship and servitude. The man can become so infatuated with the unattainable woman that he worships her like a goddess, readily sacrificing his finances to her as a form of tribute to her divinity. He believes she deserves his money and he experiences pleasure in feeling that he wants to live for her and to fund her lifestyle.
Similarly, the man can be reduced to the position of a slave to the woman, a financial slave in this case who readily gives his money up as an act of servitude to his mistress. He obeys her orders and fears punishment if he fails to follow her commands.
The woman in financial domination fantasies can verbally humiliate the man in a variety of ways that pertain to the easy surrender of his financial resources. The man is often called a human ATM (automated teller machine), a human wallet, a pay pig, a cash slave, etc. The man is told that all he is good for is to pay women. He is thus effectively reduced to the role of provider without any reciprocation on the woman’s part. The woman can talk of rinsing the man out of his money, of draining his wallet, of milking him out of his cash, etc.
Men with the financial domination kink are particularly drawn to women who are spoiled, entitled, self-centered, egotistical, and unscrupulous. These attractive “brats” who always get what they want make the perfect candidates for the women in financial domination fantasies because of their tendencies to be manipulative and their capacity for cruelty, women who think of themselves as princesses who deserve everything simply for existing. Women who are nice and kind do not typically fit the role.
The financial domination kink often intertwines with the kinks of manipulation. In blackmail fantasies in particular, the end goal of the woman is often money. In homewrecking fantasies, the seductress can make the man spend money on her instead of his girlfriend or wife.
Some men fantasize about being ripped off by an attractive woman. As an example, in online pornography that caters to this kink, the female actresses sometimes sell ripoff pornographic videos that are not what they purport to be. The man who buys a ripoff video is aroused by the anticipation of finding out that he was duped and that he did not get what he paid for.
Many men who participate in financial domination activities develop something similar to an addiction of sending money to beautiful imperious women online. Since this hurts these men’s lives by eating into their finances, they often try to quit these activities. Unfortunately for a lot of them, they are often unable to stay away from it for too long. In consequence, they inevitably relapse back into the pernicious practice.
It is peculiar that this addiction and relapse is itself the subject of some sexual fantasies involving financial domination. In these fantasies, the woman leverages her physical attractiveness to nurture the man’s financial addiction to her and to foil his attempts at stopping himself from sending her money. If the man is successful at quitting, the woman can lure him into relapse, inducing him into making questionable decisions with disastrous consequences.
Latent forms
Some men are particularly drawn to the practice of “sugar dating”, where the man (the sugar daddy) enters into a material arrangement with a woman (the sugar baby) on the basis of which she offers sexual favors in exchange for financial benefits from the man, either in the form of direct payment, gifts, or luxurious experiences.
Some men are also drawn to having sex with prostitutes. They find that they are more sexually aroused by paid sex than they are by sex with regular partners in conventional settings where it is not paid for.
I suspect that in these two cases, there is a tinge of the financial domination kink involved that remains unconscious to the men in question. Of course, men can enjoy sugar dating and sex with prostitutes for other reasons, but in some cases it seems plausible that a latent form of the financial domination kink is present.
Real life
The internet and modern technology has greatly facilitated the practical execution of financial domination fantasies. A large number of men with this kink resort to fulfilling their fantasies online with women who are willing to receive free money with little effort. Indeed, some online sex workers exclusively specialize in financial domination.
While this is just a hobby for some men who budget for it responsibly just as they would any other leisure activity, others succumb to it like an addiction and they get carried away in the fulfillment of their fantasies, throwing away substantial amounts of money in the process, and ultimately ruining their lives only to regret their impulsive decisions after the fact.
It is for this reason that the financial domination kink is singularly pernicious among all the other male submissive kinks, especially in today’s world. The consequences on a man’s life can be dire. If the urges that come with this kink are not kept in check, a man can easily fall prey to his impulses and send large amounts of money to women online who readily accept it. When the sexual urges of financial domination overpower common sense with respect to a man’s personal finances, he lives in a vicious circle of guilt and pleasure that is hard to break free from.
The women on the other side of these financial domination practices vary in their scrupulousness. Some have compassion for men who are afflicted to the point of hurting their lives. These women refuse to continue the financial domination dynamic if it gets to that point. Others, however, have no qualms about taking all the man's money from him, down to the last dime, no matter the consequences on his life.
The legal aspects of financial domination are not clear. While most of it is consensual, there are definitely instances where it can be argued that the practice becomes coerced if the man is sufficiently vulnerable and the woman cruel enough. I suspect that one of these days a court case will be filed by a ruined recovering financial domination addict who sues his former financial dominatrix under the legal argument that he was not in a mental state to give informed consent to their activities. When such a day comes, the court proceedings will be nothing short of fascinating.
This concludes a survey of the kinks involved in the category of financial domination. If you think something is missing from this overview, leave a comment and share your thoughts. You can also message me on Substack or on Reddit if you wish to remain anonymous and discuss privately.
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The line art in this essay’s card is by Georgian artist Dorian Chelios.
The title of this kink category should really be the “dispossession of the man’s resources”, which reflects more truly the element at the core of these fantasies of which financial domination is a priori only one manifestation. Nonetheless, I decided to use “financial domination” as it is in common usage, often abbreviated as “findom”. One can only speculate on the fantasies revolving around this kink in a past, before the modern development of the financial system, where resources in society took on forms other than money.