Abstract
Danielle Lindeman’s Dominatrix is a revealing look at a world for which our culture has long had a fascination: the professional dominatrix. Dominatrix weaves the narratives of 66 mostly independent, New York and San Francisco pro-dommes that Lindemann interviewed with analysis drawing on sociological theories the likes of Goffman, Simmel, Mead, Becker, and Bourdieu. Reflecting a growing trend in scholarship on sexual commerce, this book joins a number of sociological treatments of BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism) generally, including Andrea Beckmann’s The Social Construction of Sexuality and Perversion: Deconstructing Sadomasochism (2009), Margot Weiss’ Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality (2011), and Staci Newmahr’s Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy (2011). Lindemann’s is the only one to focus specifically on the world of the professional dominatrix, allowing her to explore the intersections of fantasy, intimacy, and commerce. Where gendered longings for the forbidden become simultaneously a window to the soul, an art form, and a commodified service, the world of the dominatrix reveals much about play, professionalism, service work, and art in late capitalist societies.
The book begins by probing the first mantra of BDSM culture: that the submissive, not the dominant, is really in control. “Topping from the bottom” is a common narrative from the professional dominatrices she interviewed. Lindemann returns to this theme of power throughout the book to complicate obvious questions of power and gender, but also to explore power in creating professional erotic domination as a form of art while meeting customer desires.
The lessons about gender begin with the fact that the world of the professional dominatrix is structured on suppressed desires and expressions of masculinity. The service/art rests on an inversion of the normative gendered power relationships: the female dominating the male physically and emotionally, the male dressing as a female, or acting a female role. In this, BDSM is subversive of contemporary ideas on gender. It unbinds gender from the bodies of men and women. Yet Lindemann shows that despite this, the interactions within and outside the scene still reflect the same companionate femininity common in erotic labor and women’s service work. Even in their narratives of domination and control over male bodies, there is a strong gendered narrative of protecting the male client in managing safety and risk.
The lessons about how pro dommes as professionals control the art of BDSM are addressed in chapters on the construction of knowledge, training and skill in BDSM, the discourse of therapy in being a dominatrix, questions of authenticity, purity, make-believe, and the construction of art worlds. Each chapter is organized to answer a question that emerged from the interviews around these themes, and she organizes the answers as a response to many sociological heavy lifters—Bourdieu and Becker on art, Simmel on money, Mead on play.
But in centrally focusing on professional domming as art, she sidesteps the sexual. Lindemann studiously avoids exploring the dominatrix as a sex worker or situating the study in research on the sex industry, or erotic labor, except for a few passing observations. The move is understandable, and even laudable at some level. Most pro-dommes, like many working in and around sexualized industries, do not consider themselves “sex workers,” and they are not selling what our culture sees as sex acts. As she says, “Only when I took my informants’ lead and began to think about professional erotic dominance as a form of artistic expression, did this revealing parallel to Bourdieu’s artists become apparent” (p. 85).
But in avoiding the sexual she missed two important opportunities. The first was to speak more centrally to the social construction of the heterosexual erotic. It is the heteronormative “specialness of sex” that stirs the forbidden allure of BDSM, situates its players as deviant and inspires defense of BDSM as art or therapy. She relies on Bourdieu and Becker to analyze how pro dommes legitimate themselves as artists, for example, in rope tying that “binds the body, releases the soul” (p. 82). But that connection between the erotic and “the soul” is a key component of the Western (hetero) sexual narrative, and Lindemann avoids the chance to directly speak to these questions.
She also misses the chance to challenge simplistic dichotomies driving our understanding of commodification in a consumer-driven economy. The narratives of the dommes focus centrally on the commodification of intimate life, of which the question “does money corrupt?” has been central. Pro dommes, like artists, answer yes to that question. Pro dommes, like erotic dancers (she does nod to sex industry research here) reject payment rituals and like to separate intimacy from monetary exchange in a variety of ways. The BDSM scene, as in art worlds, ascribes cultural legitimacy to artistic experts, not those making the most money. Dommes put up with the fake sub (submission), the client who directs the fantasy, or the less-than-authentic because they have to pay bills. Yet like in other worlds of high art and high fashion, the most “authentic” pro dommes charge the highest fees. Rather than exploring what may be blurry lines between authenticity and commodity, she accepts their mutual exclusivity, at least for the world of the dominatrix, without questioning their essentialism. Is authenticity in the world of pro-domme bounded, contradictory, blended, or challenged at all? This question remains unanswered.
But one book cannot do everything, and the focus on the professional dominatrix as an occupation is important. Those familiar with the world of BDSM will appreciate her focus on art. The strength of the book is its ability to relate aspects of BDSM to non-sexual life in contemporary urban America. It is a smorgasbord of insights into a world that social science has ignored, using a lens that few have used to examine an erotic industry.
The book is best where she flirts with autoethnography. Most chapters begin with an autoethnographic tale. Lindemann situates herself into the scene as a researcher. Here the descriptions are their richest. The prose weaves a clear story, allowing the reader to gaze into the worlds she saw, and allowing Lindemann to be self-reflexive on her own role in the game.
In all, there is much that this book contributes. It provides an important glimpse into the life of the professional dominatrix and dispels some important stereotypes. The book’s strength is that it is unabashedly sociological and can be useful for classes on occupations and professions, the sociology of art, and gender. The prose might be a bit challenging for an uninitiated or undergraduate audience, yet one could say that of many books in sociology.