In a world cloaked in some dark mystery, one Black woman is using BDSM to bring some knowledge to light. A Black dominatrix, known as Mistress Velvet, is using Black feminist theory to teach White men about women’s rights. She requires the White and cisgender men who hire her to read those works and address supremacy.
“I am now given this platform to make white, cis men think about things in certain ways,” Mistress Velvet, a Chicago-based master’s graduate, said. “Just allowing them to be submissive doesn’t always allow for the more drastic shift in the framework and thinking that I want. So I have to bring in my girls, like Audre Lorde and Patricia Hill Collins, and make these men actually read about black feminism.”
It’s an eye-opening experience for the men that learn to think more about systems of inequality, she said.”Then, it’s moving from them simply fetishizing black women, to realizing: This is a systemic issue I’m contributing to by the virtue of being a white man and being rich,” Velvet explained.
Her hope is that the things that she teaches in her private space will impact men’s behaviors in the outside world. It is important for men to realize that Black women are powerful, a lesson that had led one man to hold doors open for African-American women, she said.
One client even started an organization for black single mothers in the South Side of Chicago, she added. She is happy about the impact that her lessons have had on men.
“I started to think more about my relationship with them,” Velvet said. “A lot of them were asking questions. Some people were saying, “This is really impacting me in terms of how I think outside of our sessions.”
She also says that what she does means something to her.
“I would say, first and foremost, that I describe it as a form of reparations ― not in a systemic way like we’re getting land back, but definitely on an individual level,” Velvet said, “it provides me with an emotional sense of reparations.”
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Black BDSM Woman Says She Challenges Men To Read Feminist Theory was originally published on newsone.com
