I found the following article from Slate.com uncomfortable. It could just be that it’s written by Katie Roiphe – who is somewhat adept at misrepresenting and generalising the kinks, politics and beliefs of others – but the Domme interviewed appears not to enjoy her lifestyle very much. When she herself speaks, she seems fairly positive about her work. However, like Play-Doh through a scowling plastic Fun Factory hole, the majority of her words may have been squashed through the filter of Roiphe’s interpretation before reaching the page. After all, the most damning points are not direct quotes. The article portrays a lifestyle that is far more sinister than the majority of us – perhaps including the Domme herself – experience. Here’s a snippet to serve as an example:

‘..Sessions are exhausting because you are managing someone else’s fantasy. Alexis describes it as “walking on eggshells upon eggshells.” She watches her subs very closely, for a glance averted, a flicker of an eyelid, tension in shoulders, for the slightest alterations in body posture, for signs that she is going too far or not far enough or in the wrong direction. She is intuiting the fantasy from them, almost drawing it out of their bodies, and she has to be fluid, shifting, perfectly responsive. These guys, she says, are about to blow.
What is striking in her description is that it is the slaves who sound dangerous. The way she talks about it, it is like there is an explosion that she is working around, managing, navigating, negotiating. She compares it to being with mental patients on a ward without guards.
Alexis describes the sadomasochistic drama as being organized around the idea of not facing what there is to face; the whole structure of the fetish replaces any kind of rigorous introspection. She says, “It’s like these guys walk in and need surgery, and we are giving them a massage.
“Is it acting? Well, yeah. But to be good at a role, it has to be you. And this one comes very naturally to me.” She says, “It’s a way to get out my anger, and I don’t feel bad for them because I have this 6-foot-tall man standing in front of me, and I am like poor you. Poor fucking you. … I mean they could get up at any moment and punch me in the face. Game over.”
I wonder if with her particular array of skills and talents, she is ever tempted to find a rich sub who would buy her an apartment. But for some reason this fantasy doesn’t work for Alexis. Even the idea of a rich boyfriend who buys her presents somehow ruffles her, and when in a former life she did have rich boyfriends buy her presents, she didn’t want them, thinking “What am I, your doll?” For her being dependent on a man is as repellent and unthinkable as what she does would seem to many of the stay-at-home moms sipping $11 lattes at D’Ambrosios on Madison Avenue…’

Click here for the full article and make up your own mind.