Dominance and submission
erotic roleplay involving the submission of one person to another
Dominance and submission (D/s) is a set of behaviors, customs, and rituals involving the submission of one person to another in an erotic episode or lifestyle. It is a subset of BDSM. This form of sexual contact and pleasure has been shown to please a minority of people.
Physical contact is not necessary, and D/s can be conducted anonymously over the telephone, email, or other messaging systems. In other cases, it can be intensely physical, sometimes crossing into sadomasochism. In D/s, both parties take pleasure or erotic enjoyment from either dominating or being dominated. Those who take the superior position are called dominants—Doms (regardless of gender) or Dommes (female)—while those who take the subordinate position are called submissive, or subs. A switch is an individual who plays either role. Two switches together may negotiate and exchange roles several times in a session. The term dominatrix usually refers to a female sex worker who dominates others for pay while the term maledom is used for a sexually dominant male in BDSM practices.
History
The dominant–submissive relationship fits within the overarching term BDSM and its lifestyle.
The public source identifies “Dominance and submission” as erotic roleplay involving the submission of one person to another. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dominance, submission and erotic.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1277656. The Library of Congress control number is sh96002075. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dominance and submission” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.