How did You become a Dominatrix?

* A note on the use of the word “men:” By “men,” I mean primarily cis-gendered, male-identified persons who have had neither cause, nor reason, nor compunction to question their [gender] identity and place in the world.

** In this essay, I extend the word “Women” to a much broader group of humans, to include not only cis-Women, but also all gender-non-conforming persons, especially those who have experienced hardship or disenfranchisement on the basis of their gender.

It is a convention used in this essay only for the sake of simplifying communication about a focused topic. It may be problematic in its own right, but that topic is beyond the scope of this treatise.

How did I become a Dominatrix, you ask?

Unlike many Pro-Dommes, I had not yet entered the world of adult work. And I was not a man-hater. I was a ‘radical Feminist,’ and working at a university just outside of Boston. And I met Princess Kali.

In life, I was taught to treat men and Women equally. For much of My kife, I followed this mantra religiously. But it turns out that I secretly – and only mildly consciously – harbored a desire to do much more.

It turned out that what I wanted, what felt right, was to right the injustices  historically leveled against Women and gender-non conforming persons, by subjugating the most gender-conforming group with the most power – men – and letting them get a taste of their own medicine.

Of course, this was not a socially acceptable view, and having been committed to fairness in life in general, I did not even let Myself think it.

But that all changed when I met Princess Kali.

In college, I had experienced a similar volte-face to this, with respect to race and class relations. I was painfully aware, for example, of the historical injustices leveled against queers, non-whites, and the poor in the U.S. and worldwide, but the only socially acceptable response to those historical injustices was, essentially, to politely insist on equal treatment.

In those college years, I came to know some people who proposed more radical measures for restoring racial, ethnic, sexual, class, and social justice. These friends were gung-ho about rubbing historical and present-day injustices in the faces of the rich, white, and straight. They insisted that the privileged classes be confronted with the severity of the injustices of their actions.

When you live in a privileged class, it’s all too easy to live ignorantly, in a way that allows you to believe that things are peachy now, that ‘things have changed.’ Things are far from peachy to this day.

It was a relief to meet these friends. I was awakened. I wasn’t even *aware* that I’d had such strong views on these things. Of course, I knew that I had *always* felt these injustices deeply – as a child, they used to make Me cry, sometimes for hours.

But I was too entrenched in the rhetoric of “collaboration” – a tactic, I now realize, the system uses to perpetuate the control of disenfranchised people. And I dared not think of more hostile tactics as even an option. But when I met these friends, for the first time in My life, something rang true. Something felt deeply JUST.

So it was no surprise that, when I met Princess Kali shortly after college, the rhetoric of Female Superiority (the radicalness of which was analogous to My friends’ radicalness on race/ethnicity/class/sex/gender relations) struck a chord with Me.

I no longer had to cow-tow to a bullsh*t rhetoric of equality when Women and other historically disenfranchised people continued to be treated like they were inferior.

I suddenly had a vision of a world where the power-hungriness that begets wars and oppression could be kept in check – a world that might actually be based on justice and fairness – not acquisition, competition, and violence – all motivators, mind you, that evolutionary scientists consider to be driven by the need to procreate.

That, and Kali’s life of being served and pampered constantly without the need for socially required gratitude (and without further subjugating either women or working-class people) sounded pretty damn good.

For example, I never felt comfortable having a housekeeper, because it felt weird to create a class division within My own house, positing Me as superior to another human being whom I viewed as actually equal – particularly because it would frequently be another immigrant Woman, like Me (never mind the “it’s a good, paying job” argument).

In addition, I have two family members who came to the US as refugees (as I did), whose primary profession in the US has been as housekeepers. So to think of having My aunts in My house, cleaning for Me, was a supremely awkward proposition.

But to think of a rich, white, older lawyer in My house, scrubbing My floors on his knees, and in addition, paying for the privilege….well, that seemed to solve all of the issues I had with both dirty houses, and replicating problematic power structures in My own home. And, it seemed like a form of economic justice.

I am not a gender essentialist. Gender essentialism is the same thing that has kept Women down – “Women are inherently X, Y, or Z, therefore they are incapable of A, B, or C.” I do not think that men are *inherently* (that is, biologically, and thus irrevocably) inferior.

We live in a society where men’s problematic behavior is socially rewarded. And, social traits become encoded in DNA over generations (sometimes within only a generation or two).

So we have a situation where problematic behavior has been rewarded by both nature and nurture. And I believe men can do better. I believe that, with the right work and guidance, men are capable of superseding their predilection. This is where I come in.

That lands us here, squarely in the Empire of Fem/me Supremacy. I recognize the limitations that have been thrust upon both men and Women by patriarchal society. Non-binary folks are challenging those limitations every day. It is My greatest hope that humankind will someday stop conspiring to undermine all of us with gendered behavioral norms. Welcome to My world.