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Title: Interview with an anarchist dominatrix
Author: Anarchist Federation
Date: 2002
Language: en
Topics: Organise!, sexuality, United Kingdom, interview, sex
Source: Retrieved on December 24, 2009 from http://libcom.org/library/interview-with-an-anarchist-dominatrix][libcom.org]] and [[http://www.afed.org.uk/org/org59.pdf
Notes: This article originally appeared in Organise! #59

Anarchist Federation

Interview with an anarchist dominatrix

For two years Mistress Venus was a professional dominatrix in central

London. She’s also an anarchist communist. So, we at Organise! thought

we’d take the opportunity to ask her a few questions about this.

Organise!: There’s a popularly-held belief, also prevalent among the

left and some anarchists, that anyone (particularly female) who works in

the sex industry, is in some way a victim and has been forced into that

situation. How realistic is this view?

Mistress Venus: I think it’s very important to make distinctions between

workers in different areas of ‘the sex industry’. The role played by a

girl working the streets is very different from the role (as that’s

exactly what it is) played by a professional dominatrix. Speaking from

personal experience, my decision to work as a dominatrix was purely my

own choice and was something I wanted to do. It was an extension of

having spent years going to fetish clubs and performing as a fetish

model. I knew the scene, the roles played and exactly what was involved.

I had no illusions about it and I was in no way coerced into it. I kept

my day job (working in a shop), worked when I wanted to and unlike many,

had no monetary pressures I was forced into supporting.

I must admit that the approach I took was a very practical one: I only

ever worked with at least one other dominatrix, who worked as my ‘maid’.

And sometimes a male colleague stayed within the building and helped set

up the ‘sessions’. Sessions were pre-arranged, with the ‘client’ and

myself both discussing our own limits and expectations, though obviously

not all sex workers are afforded this level of co-ordination and

support!

There’s a very different attitude from the ‘client’ towards a

dominatrix, compared to that towards a girl on the streets, I think. To

my ‘clients’, I was the embodiment of their desires. They worshipped

everything about me, and I had the power to control whether they were

allowed to even look at me. And, if they displeased me, they cleaned my

bathroom out with a toothbrush!

There was never any sex involved in the ‘sessions’. The sexual energy

from the client is derived from the playing and reversal of power roles,

from a form of humiliation and degradation absent from their ‘normal’

daily lives. That’s not to say, however, that I didn’t, at times, feel

used, or stop and question just exactly what I was doing. In fact, at

times, it served to reinforce ideas I’d previously held about the

exploitation of women by men, particularly, in the case of a dominatrix,

sometimes very rich and powerful men!

Ultimately, I stopped though. I chose to give it up. I wasn’t interested

in, or enraptured by, the money it brought in (and these guys would pay

up to £120 an hour, £30 extra to be pissed on!). It was something I

chose to enter, and chose to leave; a choice many ‘sex workers’ don’t

always have!

O: You say your ‘clients’ worshipped you when you were in your

dominatrix role, and you also talk about having power and control over

them. How does that role fit in with you being an anarchist?

MV: During a domination session both parties are consenting adults who

choose to perform their particular role — whether it be the role of the

master, the all-powerful oppressor, or that of the weak, oppressed slave

— and choose their own limits. The session is an escape from reality; a

performance where the clients enter the realm of their imagination, and

briefly live out fetishes that are scorned in this society.

The roles we play mirror the powerbased capitalistic society we live in

today, a society of greed, oppression and subversion, a society of

force, silence and pain. This is in no way representative of the

lifestyle I choose to live in as an anarchist, a society based on

equality, respect and selfgovernment.

Domination is a game, the adult’s version of what children call

‘playing’. It’s not real and, for me personally, it does not reflect

elements of my personality. I enjoy the sessions as a performer, as an

experimenter and as an exhibitionist... It’s the attention I crave. The

thrill of power and control is a novelty in a game, not something that I

desire to be present in my ‘real life’. I think it is very important, in

a society based on freedom, that people should be able to express

themselves and their fetishes and fantasies freely and in a safe

environment (providing all parties are consenting), whether those

fetishes involve being whipped as a naughty school-kid or dressing up as

a nurse!

O: Earlier, you mentioned that your work sometimes reinforced issues

around the exploitation of women by men. Did you feel you were more

exploited than you might have been in other kinds of work?

MV: During a domination session, the traditional, stereotypical gender

roles are usually reversed. During the sessions the female dominatrix

becomes the power holder, taking control over the male. This is a

mirroring of the patriarchal society we inhabit today; where males

traditionally have the ‘best’ jobs, the higher wages, the positions of

power in society and the home; and where the male is seen as the

allauthoritative figure in control. Throughout the world, history is

told through the eyes of the male, and women are repressed through, for

example, religion, violence, exploitation and inequality. The role of

the dominatrix temporarily reclaims some of this power and hands it back

to the woman; one might almost say it is the man who becomes the

exploited. However, I do consider the ‘sex industry’ as being one of the

very vehicles used by men and society to exploit women, an arena where

women use their bodies as an object for sale. And being a dominatrix is

still making a living using the ‘being’ and body as an object,

regardless of who wields the so-called ‘power’ for the duration of the

session (or who holds the whip!).

Often, yes, I was left feeling as though I had been exploited, possibly

more so than if I had a more ‘conventionally acceptable’ or ‘normal’

job. Regardless of the fact that I enjoyed the role play and enjoyed the

escapism, the costume and grandeur of the part, I still felt as though

my body had been used by another person as something they had control

over, simply by the fact that they were paying for the session, paying

for me to dress up in a certain way and behave in a certain way at a

certain time (even though we could say the same about a number of roles

we play in our life!).

I believe the body is the last aspect of our lives we have any control

over. This explains the large and growing amount of interest in fetishes

such as body adornment and modification (tattoos, piercings,

scarification etc). And when it dawns on me that I am making a living by

someone ultimately controlling what I am doing with my body, the element

of how much choice I have over my body and life has to be questioned.

There is a feeling of having been exploited, felt by nearly everyone who

has to work hard in this society, which is based on inequality and

division. I’ve felt it whether I was working in a shop or in an office,

or as a cleaner, which were my previous professions, but the feeling of

having your own body exploited is a much more raw one, a much more

personal one, that does leave you feeling ‘naked’.

There is a big difference when money becomes involved. I spent years

going to fetish clubs, where all the ‘games’ and activities are done by

choice with willing participants, everyone enjoying the role they

played. But when the exchange of money becomes involved, the element of

choice is gone and the realms of ‘body fascism’ open up. If people are

going to pay for services, they expect you to look a certain way!

Hence the feelings of exploitation creep into the normally pleasurable

areas of your life.

O: We’ve seen the positive initiative of the setting up of the

International Union of Sex Workers in this country. But, more recently,

however, at least in London, they’ve affiliated to the GMB. Now,

obviously, the AF would see this move towards mainstream trade unionism

as retrogressive. But as someone who’s worked in a job generally

identified as being part of the sex industry, what do you think is the

potential for better selforganisation among sex workers?

MV: I think there’s huge scope for potential, just as there is between

workers within any industry. What it needs, however, is for various

obstacles to be overcome both by ourselves and by society, and for

barriers to be broken down, for example the barriers created by the

‘separatist’ attitudes so prevalent between workers, both within the

same branch of work or within different branches. Once this is achieved,

and we all begin to realise that our strength and support will stem from

our working together, then we will be stepping closer to self-government

and organisation, as opposed to resorting to being represented by a body

so influenced by, and affiliated to, the Labour Party! By improving

communication between the various workers and branches, and achieving

the de-stigmatisation of the industry by society, we can begin to

co-operate with one another to create a united body offering, for

example, advice and information, and giving emotional and practical

support for people, both already within the industry, and entering it.

We need to abolish all forms of control that are so common within the

sex industry, and abolish the different levels of power; we need to work

as one so that we are all informed, safe, supported and united, as

opposed to working alone through force or need, in sometimes dangerous

conditions. Sex work, in one form or another, will always be around, it

always has been, and it’s certainly not in any danger of disappearing —

whether we live in a capitalist society or even in a moneyless anarchist

society.

Sex work takes a myriad of different forms and is entered, used and left

for a myriad of different reasons. It’s just that in one of these

societies workers within it will continue to be exploited,

misrepresented and scorned by that very society itself, and in the other

one we will have the power, ability and motivation to both be ourselves

and govern ourselves!