Questions of emotional and sexual intimacy with robots are often framed around images of the feminine submissive. However, the history of technology as replacement for labor, including sexual labor, and sexual practices in computer-mediated environments, suggests that BDSM, involving psycho-sexual submission mediated by software, is both more likely and less ethically fraught. BDSM relies on the consensual and negotiated transfer of agency from the submissive: such transfer to an object is possible in theoretical, ethical and engineering terms. Dominant robots implicate broad ethical and practical challenges in the development of autonomous robotic systems, but in a more narrow and approachable manner than, for example, those associated with lethal autonomous weapons. Such “Dombots” also offer a range of social and sexual therapeutic advantages, and development of such systems should be pursued.