One young woman has a new way to teach men how to value the greatness of black women with domination.
The Chicago-based master's graduate goes by the alias Mistress Velvet when she is working at night. Mostly white cisgendered men hire her to be their "dom" or dominant partner in BDSM. Unlike other interactions between a dom and a submissive, Mistress Velvet teaches these men how to respect the black woman.
It started as a way to make some extra cash and to pay her rent, but the work turned into a real passion.
Mistress Velvet told HuffPost that her first time out was not great because she kept apologizing to the man she dominated. After he told her that she would never be able to do it, she challenged herself and raised the bar.
Her striking presence mixed with her commitment to giving men "a safe space to explore the parts of them that may not be seen as masculine, or they might have a lot of shame around" has changed her clients for the better.
One client opened a nonprofit to support black mothers on Chicago’s South Side after being dominated by her. Mistress Velvet admits that some of her clients have some of the worst ideas about black women.
"They might say things that then remind me of stereotypes of black women ― like a jezebel or something ― so I’ll have them read a piece about how what they said is related to this historic phenomenon about thinking about black women, she told HuffPost. "I say, 'Here are its roots. Here’s why it’s problematic.' That way, I can say, you can idolize me, but we need to have it be done in a way that isn’t also problematic."
These well-off men are rich enough to have a long relationship with a dom. And the fact that many of them are white and straight only made her realize that she could really impact their thinking in profound ways.
To do that, she used the works of Audre Lorde and Patricia Hill Collins' Black Feminist Thought and "make these men actually read about black feminism." They are also forced to read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, The Black Body In Ecstasy by Jennifer Nash, The Color of Kink by Adriene Cruz and selections from the anthology This Bridge Called My Back.
She said that there is a transition from fetishizing black women to acknowledging that there is a system of oppression "I’m contributing to by the virtue of being a white man and being rich."
But with all of that power in her hands, Mistress Velvet leaves "the dungeon" reminded of the ugliness of society.
"So after an hour of beating someone and having this kind of dialogue, I leave that and I’m back in my regular clothes walking and minding my own business and someone street harasses me," she explained. "I’m like, 'really?' It’s so polarizing. It’s so jarring. I’m not saying that I need to beat every man that I see, but I also don’t understand why I can’t walk two blocks without being harassed."
Although BDSM has been portrayed poorly in the media in terms of major films and TV shows, Velvet believes that it is a lot of good that goes unnoticed. For her, she has found liberation.
"I’m not arguing that it really has systemic benefits necessarily, but I’m arguing that, in the sense that there is so much black femme trauma, to be able to be in a space for an hour, then you leave that space and go back to being one of the most oppressed groups ― in that hour, it can be really liberating."
