The post 'Fake Vanilla Dommes' on femdomblog is simply a quote with a a broken link for attribution and no commentary whatsoever. I've reproduced it here, in full, because it's not all that long.
[Mistress Marlene’s] pet peeve about what she calls the ‘Instant Domme Syndrome’ that, according to her, she has been watching develop all over the world and in essence is the downfall of Femdomhood. According to Mistress Marlene, this Vanilla Domme beliefs that too much book learning and fantasy and not enough hands on reality before claiming a title that should be bestowed by one’s peers has largely contribute to this phenomena.Well, shit. Obviously I would like NOT to embody that this sort of playacting suggested by the term 'Vanilla Domme' used in such a derogatory fashion. I would like to pick apart this sentiment, though, and muse a bit on the assumptions behind the rejection of this sort of domineering behavior and why 'vanilla' is tacked onto the term.
Mistress Marlene claims the the Vanilla Domme is bored one day and decides to recreate herself into one of the most powerful personas on earth. This vanilla imposter adds the title of Mistress in front of her name and begins the lie. This vanilla popsicle’s ego fools her into believing in herself and the vanilla Domme jumps into displaying what she thinks a Domme is. In her quest for importance she does not even recognize the difference between dominating and domineering. Of course, neither does the submissive until his heart and soul are caught in her web of deception.
According to Mistress Marlene, using a title is misrepresenting domination via title and content and is not a wise entrance into a new dream."
The first assumption that I can see is that Domme and Vanilla are expected to be mutually exclusive. Their deliberate juxtaposition is meant to illuminate that the Domme isn't really a Domme, but is only pretending to be. The author (Mistress A, I believe.) uses vanilla as a negative modifier, reinforcing the lines between kinky and not-kinky with vanilla being the only thing that separates the term from a proper, responsible Domme and an irresponsible, naive, Domme putting on airs her peers do not believe she deserves.
The second assumption I can see is that a Vanilla Domme will never be a domme, ever. This works off of the underlying assumption that all those who attempt to conform to a stereotype are poseurs without a sincere bone in their body (thus ignoring the observable phenomena of 'extreme behavior' following discovery of a suitable new identity.) and are irredeemable, that their presence is a constant taint upon Femdomhood (entertaining term, imho) and will remain so as long as they cleave to the images without doing any of the research. There is a hint of an old-guard bias with an attitude toward 'fluffy bunny' insincerity (to borrow a term from the pagan community) and what appears to be a desire to distance herself from these obnoxious newcomers.
Interesting.
The second assumption is most easily tackled, in my opinion. I've seen this sort of, well, lament over the lack of gatekeepers in other communities. When anyone can join, there is no way to 'keep out' the fluff and nonsense at the very bottom level and there will be a lot of materiel generated to keep people at the fluff and nonsense level. The pagan community (in all its decentralized glory) has this issue with people who don't take the religions of practitioners seriously and are only at the edges for what paganism can provide them. They play up the rituals, sex, and magic and don't engage with the community on what is considered the proper level. They take up space and give pagans a bad name.
This sounds like almost exactly the same thing. A newly self-christened domme waltzes on the scene and, using only what images were available to her prior to her entrance, proceeds to ignore what the community considers the proper level of engagement, plays up the rituals, sex, and magic, and does damage to the image of the more responsible and reasonable dommes. They take up space and more long-standing dommes have to actively fight the nonsense these others portray. Maybe it's not a direct parallel, but it fits in a lot of ways.
There are two things to draw from this parallel, however. First is that as the greater-world, mainstream imagery changes, the femdom PR so to speak, so do the portrayals of the so-named Vanilla Dommes. Second is that some individuals need to fit themselves into an identity before they can wiggle around and learn something, so that some of these Vanilla Dommes are not irredeemable. These two ideas tie in to the concept that when an individual discovers a new identity that fits, they often seize upon it, do all the preliminary research they possible can, and then... try it on. Like a shoe. Or a hat. If all of the imagery points to a domineering PVC clad female, then obviously newcomers with enthusiasm are going to claim that and try it on. Not everyone is capable of picking and choosing identity as sticker-descriptors prefer to claim identities as whole constructs, at least to start with. It may be a seriously ugly hat until they realize that, damn, I am wearing the ugliest hat and I should upgrade to a much nicer hat. It is, at that point, still a hat and can be counted among hats, but it's a tailored hat instead.
Anecdotally, I've been around several individuals and have observed their behavior both when they encounter BDSM or LGBT and when they figured out that they were wearing a damn ugly hat. They leap in, feet first, and are all SORTS of stereotypically ridiculous. It's simply awful. The worst was one of my slightly-effeminate guy friends. He discovered being Gay(tm) and, goodness gracious great balls of fire, was he a fairy for a couple of years. Not natural fairy, oh no, but a completely over-the-top-do-you-want-some-glitter-in-your-latte-I-love-heart-heart-pink sort of fairy.
I'm pretty sure his favorite color is green or something far less stereotypical. We - as his supportive friends - mostly just winced and took it in stride, but I vividly remember his comments to the effect of, once the glamor of his ugly hat wore off, "I don't want to be the pretty-pretty-princess gay man anymore. Isn't there an identity that suits me better?"
That's just how some people are with respect to identity. All in. They want to embody the stereotype they connect with without having any of the foundation or fundamentals in place. Without any sort of gatekeeping education and with ONLY ridiculous imagery and stereotypes out there for newcomers to base their ugly hats on, it is zero-percent surprising to me that Instant Domme Syndrome and Vanilla Dommes would be an issue.
Solution: Change imagery that newcomers have available to express and reflect the actual members of the community. (Easier said than done, eh?) That should cut down on the number of Instant/Vanilla Dommes invading domly spaces.
The first assumption made by this snippet, however, is something that I have a little bit more trouble with, especially since I have claimed the title Vanilla Domme all by myself. Does being more toward the vanilla end of things in my kinks really negate my dominance? That was rhetorical, actually, the answer is no. More on that in a bit.
As for vanilla being negative: I do understand that using the term vanilla is, in some respects, very accurate. Vanilla sex and sexuality is based around - as far as I can tell - non-communicative sexual expression. Sarcasm. What is there to talk about, after all? Tab-a, slot-b, turn the boobs a quarter turn counterclockwise, don't forget a condom, bam! Done. End Sarcasm. As if that was all it ever was. Heh. Vanilla sex, in all its complexities, is assumed to be so simple that it doesn't need communication. Just terrible. So using vanilla in the context of this description of a vanilla domme to mean irresponsible and non-communicative is unfortunately appropriate.
Okay, then, so the term is accurate, but I don't like that it implies that I must be kinky to be a domme. I am made up of both vanilla and kinky elements, but I don't closely tie either with being dominant. It just is. So when I say I'm a vanilla domme, what I mean is that I'm pretty mainstream in my kinks. I like the whole corset thing, and shoving men in dresses, etc, but I don't identify strongly enough with kink beyond the general to really consider myself all that kinky. I often feel that if I were more extreme in my likes that I would feel better using the label, but if all I have is 'dominant'? That's barely a kink at all unless you consider me deviant for simply not being submissive.
I don't want to say that the whole thing doesn't apply to me, but I guess that the snippet is mostly referring to Dommes as the women who participate in situations where they would be called Mistress by strangers, where clueless newbies could do some damage by being domineering. I'm not exactly a clueless newbie, for all that I'm a vanilla domme. I simply know what I like and am trying to hack and slash my way to vocabulary that describes it.
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