No, they need to have either an interest in Dominance or a topic that has Dominance and a tag they need and interest in to make their Dominance score to go in the negative. The developer has already confirmed this
Are you shitting me? When you think this game can't get any grindier, it does. So I have to get Diane's dominance from 42 down to 10 to advance to the next AT, and I spend a while grinding out dominance. Now I find that I can't use those dominance topics to lower her dominance. Instead, the only dominance topic with another topic she shares that I have access to is Yes Sir, the only problem with that being that Yes Sir only drops for me one every 10-15 times view bondage porn.
So I now have to view bondage porn 320 - 480 times, to generate the needed 32 Yes Sir topics that I can then use in 32 conversations with Diane (but only 2 in an in-game day) to finally be able to advance to the next AT. Sounds like a good use of 2 hours of my life. It would certainly be nice if there were some events that could reduce it, seeing as there are events that increase it. NOTE: I am aware of the one sexual conquest event that is somewhat complicated to trigger, but I don't have access to a sexual conquest topic, but if there are any other please let me know since I have been looking for them and haven't been able to find them.
I really wish the developer were a lot more open to the fact that most people find this kind of stuff really fucking grindy rather than considering it actual real gameplay. There is a lot to like in this game, but every time I hit a grind wall on something like this it is soul sucking and frequently makes me drop the game for a while.
I am aware of some other possible solutions, like advancing Gina's ATs so I can get that other dominance topic from her (which I am probably going to wind up doing) or giving Diane a secondary interest that has dominance (which would also entail having to regrind to add the the secondary interests you need to advance ATs back afterwards even something involving aggressive (which is another one of those more difficult to get topics), but it just feels like an artifical wall that isn't really adding anything besides frustration to the game and I am pretty sure those other solutions will require just as much time as the Yes Sir grind.
I feel like dominance topics always lowering dominance, especially if you have dominance embraced, ought to be how it should work. That seems like an appropriate reward for having taken the time to grind out the dominance skill. Or that there should at least be some kind of easily repeatable event you can do on this AT to lower dominance.
Just had to vent due to my extreme frustration on encountering this issue.