I am a New York City-based dominatrix and cultural activist. I started doing BDSM professionally in 2016 after finding a dungeon on craigslist (those were the days) and then mostly did online work for a year or two while I finished college before transitioning to full-time in-person BDSM.
This kind of work requires so many different skill sets, any sex worker must also be a good judge of character and very discerning when dealing with every single client they interact with.
'Sex work is an eye-opener in the way that it helped elevate my confidence and gave me more reasons to appreciate my body, my beauty, and my sense of self-worth.'
What’s it like starting out now, when ads have shifted from the back pages of the local paper to almost exclusively online? When everyone talks about being ‘on brand’ and a social media presence is essential?
"Finding community helped me to not only work through a lot of shame that I held around being a sex worker, but also to develop the skills and tools needed to engage with kink and in-person sex work in a safer and healthier way."