hydrarchist writes "This interview was published in Issue 59 of Organise, a journal of the Anarchist Federation in Britain and Ireland.Please see the article Interview with the International Union of Sex Workers as well.

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 power-based
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 self-government.
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
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
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
‘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 selfgovernment
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!

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