My take on the dreaded F/m ratio...
How the ration between active dommes and malesubs is less important than the small difference in numbers (sorry!).
You have to be the kind of masochist who enjoys a roasting to go to a Femdom online space and ask about the Ratio: “What Ratio? There is no Ratio. Besides, most of the malesubs in my dating pool are fake anyway…”
Even so, here’s my take.
The potential ratio is 1:1 but…
I suspect Femdom is a minority interest, but that the potential ratio is about 1:1.
There’s also an old sex survey of 1,517 Quebec adults that had 46.7% of women fantasizing about dominating somebody sexually, and 53.3% of men with submissive fantasies. That yields a potential F/m ratio of 0.87:1.
Given our culture still assumes M/f, or else depicts F/m as a service, it seems not unrealistic to guess that about half of all women would like Femdom in the right circumstances.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of factors that do nudge that 50% down to a much smaller percentage of active dommes, and an even smaller percentage of proactive ones.
I’ve already talked about M/f as cultural default, F/m as service. It's still common to hear of a domme who entered the scene as a sub because that was what was expected, then hatched much later. It’s probably also true that same probably hardwired sexual over-optimism that turns men nuisances, also makes us more sexually adventurous… so there’s probably more malesubs actively entering Femdom dating pools.
Then there’s the paradox of Femdom is that women with a strong dominant streak in daily life — possibly low on Agreeability, high on Extroversion slanted towards dominance — often have little or no patience for fuss and bother, especially around sex. You'll find them cheerfully dominating in the bedroom, and maybe domestically, but in vanilla ways… unless a lucky or wise actual malesub has offered them a vision of femdom that pushes their particular buttons.
Finally, related to all that, there’s the mismatch between the kink dominant women like and the kink men want them to like, some of those men being crapsubs — do-me bottom, submission fetishists, thrill seekers, one-handed typists sending ass pics then ghosting, and the particular kind of man who equates submission with positioning himself as a loser: “This unworthy worm…”
So we can reasonably expect that in any given Femdom dating pool, the ratio will be “in favour” of the dommes.
This creates an unfortunate dynamic.
The cold, hard, equations…
Imagine a new dating pool with a potential constituency of 50 dommes and 60 malesubs. There are only 10 extra subs!
It could be a new BDSM club, or a new app or website, or just a new munch. Whatever it is, the starting ratio looks like it’s going to be miraculously close to 1:1. Hurrah!
Ah, but some of these people never make the pool. They pair off during vanilla dating, the way Xena and I did. Let’s imagine 10 couples do that.
Let’s also guess that in each season, half the dommes pair off and leave the pool with a sub, but the pool refreshes also with 10% of starting numbers:
It just takes four seasons for the ratio to drop to 2:1 “in favour” of dommes. You can plug in different numbers, specify different periods. You still get the same phenomenon because each time a domme pairs off with a sub, she leaves behind more subs than dommes.
But wait! It gets worse.
But wait! It gets worse.
Realistically, something like 10% of malesubs are crapsubs, each of whom never gets chosen, but manages to drive off one domme each year:
Basically, the pool… dies after just four seasons.
Again, you can punch in different numbers, but you still get the same phenomena, it just takes longer to happen.
Oh, and when a new pool forms, those crapsubs will be first in the queue to sign up.
Take-homes…
First and foremost, if only for pragmatic reasons, it makes sense for malesubs to self police — and maybe mentor — each other. The crapsubs spoil things for everybody, including themselves. Some need to be gatekept, but maybe most just need a hand to find more realistic ways to express their orientation.
Second, even in the modern era of munches and online dating, there’s a lot to be said for finding a dominant woman during college dating when everybody is adventurous and taking risks.
Third, love, morality and duty aside, it’s probably better to repair and expand the intimate relationship you’re in than going hunting for kink in the wild.
12 Rules for Malesub Life - Introduction: "What is a Malesub?"
As any dominant woman will tell you, not everybody who claims to be a malesub is a submissive, and not every man who does submit is a malesub.
I suspect the crapsub : sub ratio is much higher unfortunately.
I sorta skipped the numbers part. But I think the gist holds anyway. The biggest issue with the "police the ecosystem" idea is that (1) people like different things, and Alice's crap sub is Barbara's fun playmate is Cecily's dream boyfriend is Delilah's absolute nightmare. (2) the ecosystem, or at least its parts, especially online, ESPECIALLY in kink specific places like FL is dominated by very loud and very online femdom voices who don't necessarily reflect the population -- and I mean neither of wider "in the wild" femdoms nor "kink scene" femdoms.