Out of the Dungeon and into the Street:
Doms of NYC take on the RNC (but only in their fantasy world)
Sarah Kozinn

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a group of dominatrices organized into the Doms for Dems. This collective of New York City dominatrices gathered at their workplace, a dungeon on 32nd street, and decided to invite all the doms in the area to join them at the United for Peace and Justice (UPJ) march on Sunday August 29th, 2004. The big plan was to march in their fetish gear as a united dominatrix front for the Democratic party. They would carry a giant banner exhibiting a picture of President George W. Bush being spanked by a dominatrix. They were preparing to march proudly and let their voices be heard outside of the dungeon walls, but when the day finally arrived, none of the Doms for Dems marched.

This movement of a group of sex workers from their sequestered, private workplace into the streets of New York City to protest not on behalf of sex workers' rights, but rather to represent a disgruntled sector of the citizenry, raises numerous issues. What is unique about this point in time that draws these doms into the street? What are the aspects of S/M that inherently protest dominant power structures? Can a dominatrix have the same power in the streets as she does in the dungeon? Why did this group disband before the day of the march, leaving no one to hold the sign or represent the group at the march?

A "dom" (abbreviation for dominatrix) is a woman who plays the dominant role in the sex genre of sadomasochism (S/M). In the past number of years more and more sex workers are turning to the professional field of dominating. According to PONY (Prostitutes of New York) there has been an increase in women moving from working in prostitution to S/M domination (Eurydice 57). Not only lucrative, S/M play does not require intercourse. Professional dominatrices therefore make more money without having sex. In fact, commercial dungeons prohibit intercourse. This has to do both with legal issues and with the philosophy of S/M which values fantasy play. For many women working as doms, not having intercourse is a bonus. The power dynamic that often occurs during heterosexual intercourse changes when a man comes to a dom. Instead of serving the man through intercourse, the doms serve the man by making him serve her.

Though some of the doms in Doms for Dems are S/M "lifestylers," meaning they take S/M with them into all arenas of their lives, the leader of the group, who goes by the name Kya, says that she is a dominatrix only in the dungeon. Though she does not bring her whips out of the dungeon, she adamantly believes in the potential power of S/M to bring people together and into a blissful balance. Her emphasis on the utopian possibilities of sex, pain, and pleasure is echoed on countless websites. This saturation of S/M websites and books reflects the growing interest in S/M, both in terms of its eroticism and its mainstreaming into popular culture, and also the variety of approaches to S/M.

Kya agreed to meet with me to discuss her motivations for forming Doms for Dems. While the tape recorder was off, Kya spoke of her desire to help create a "collective unconscious" to bring universal peace. This formation of the collective entails work on the self, an interior process she suggests can be attained through meditation. Kya explains that the path to this "collective unconscious" is through taking care of oneself, making oneself happy. If everyone focuses on making themselves happy and attains that happiness, there would be peace. She places an extraordinary amount of emphasis on agency as a means to happiness, an agency that we see exhibited by the porn star/activist Annie Sprinkle.

As photographer John Mapplethorpe and performance artist/activist/porn star Annie Sprinkle both press the boundaries of categorization in their respective work, S/M also tends to blur social structural boundaries during fantasy play. Much of S/M, especially the work of the doms in Doms for Dems, involves role playing where the dom is the dominant role, and together with the slave they enact the slave's fantasy. Role playing and exchanging of power reveals the normative stresses on gender positioning and power in the West. "Normal" hierarchical power structures become mere suggestions in the S/M dungeon. One can choose his or her fantasy, and that fantasy need not abide by the rules outside the dungeon. For instance, Kya was looking forward to dominating the Republican delegates who came to the dungeon during the convention. She planned on making them denounce their party while singing "We shall overcome." It is interesting to think that while these delegates are flexing their muscles to the world, they unwind by paying to be enslaved. The "burden" of power, and perhaps guilt about having this power, draws some to S/M enslavement. In this reduced power position, one can repent, relax, and "get off" while placing responsibility for himself into the hands of the dom. We can draw an interesting parallel here; the RNC convention hall in Madison Square Garden is a safe space for Republicans to enact their own fantasies, just as the dungeon is a safe space where people can enact their S/M fantasies.

Both Geraldine Harris and Rebecca Schneider cite Foucault and Lacan in describing the "symbolic order" which constructs Western gender hierarchy. Harris uses Lacan to explain the inner workings of this mode of gender dynamics. According to Lacan, the phallus is the "fetishized" symbol used to signify gender. In reductive terms, Lacan writes that in the symbolic order man is the possessor of the phallus and woman is the phallus itself. Harris points out that since there is no "real" referral for the phallus, the positions of gender based on this symbol are also not "real" but mere constructions: "The 'joke' is that while it is necessary to assume one or other of these gender roles in order to appear as a proper subject, these positions are purely idealized, linguistic, constructs which refer to nothing 'real,' since no one can 'have' or 'be' the phallus" (Harris 59). To appear normal, one must comply with one of the two gender constructions even though "these positions are purely idealized."

Harris writes that it is "necessary to assume" a gender role which eerily makes it seem like a choice, as if someone could assume either male or female and still be a "proper subject." Judith Butler, on the other hand, writes that one's gender is interpellated, not assumed (Butler 232). Butler highlights the subject's lack of agency using the example of a doctor pronouncing that a baby is a girl, thus interpellating her gender from the moment she is born and affecting the way she will be brought up and what expectations she is supposed to fulfill.

As Ann Pellegrini and others have asked in regards to interpellation, based off of Althusser's "hailing" principle, what happens when subjects do not respond to being hailed by the ideological system? What happens to the individuals that hear the hail and purposefully ignore it? The S/M dungeon provides a safe testing ground for one to investigate the above questions. One can abandon their interpellated gender and their hailed position during their hour session. There are no "real" consequences in the dungeon because this experimental behavior is invited and viewed as a temporary role play. No roles are indelible. Women can be the inherently powerful while men assume the subservient role. The roles of ownership can be reversed and transgressed when the woman, who in the symbolic Lacanian order is the "possessed" becomes the "possessor."

This annunciation of ownership corresponds directly to Lacan's symbolic structure of masculinity's possession of the phallus. According to this order the dom's possession of her slave implicates that she is in the masculine position and her slave is in the feminine position. The dom, who is always a woman, assumes the role of masculinity (the possessor). The slave, who is most often a man, assumes the role of femininity (the possessed). This reassigning of gender onto untraditional bodies (masculinity onto the woman's body and femininity onto the man's body) does not end the symbolic system, but rather emphasizes the assumability of gender roles. These reversals are examples of instances occurring in defined, safe spaces. This does not break down the order, but reveals the cracks in its foundation.

Had the Doms for Dems marched, one can only speculate as to what effect their presence would have had. Would their emergence from an "underground" location at the time of the RNC draw a correlation to the powers of the state emerging from "underground" into NYC? Would their presence serve as reminders of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and imply that Americans are becoming more and more sadistic? Would their appearance have been blown off as just another group masquerading during the carnivalesque march whose power could only reign while in this liminoid space? Would their indiscretion make blatant the threat of arrest and the consequences of fantasizing in the "real world"?

Doms for Dems feared that their presence at the UPJ march would take away from the protest rather than bolster it. They did not want the negative attention from the media, or to be used by the media as evidence of the immorality of the left and the Democratic party. This point has its validity, but it also symbolizes a problem within activist movements and within the larger social system. Author Amber Hollibaugh empathizes with this mentality when she asks, "What happens when we don't fit the profile of the movement?" The Doms for Dems responded by disbanding. This leaves only my own fantasy to imagine what would have happened had they marched up to Madison Square Garden in their fetish gear, carrying a sign showing President Bush being paddled until he moaned in agony to remind the world that the American government should be serving us.

Doms for Dems are like the radical signs of the queer and feminist movements. They are human signs of desire, signs of making visible the traditionally unseen. This desire is not only for freedom to seek unconventional sexual gratification, but also for change. Maybe the doms are like the groundhog who emerges from his hole to see his shadow, the outcome determining the length of the winter. We can use the doms' presence (or absence) in the streets as a barometer for our readiness to attack the symbolic order and change our reality. If we do this, then the Doms for Dems absence at the march signifies that the time is not quite right yet for upheaval, but it is close. Maybe in four more years?

Read Sarah Kozinn's interview with Kya >>

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www.anniesprinkle.org
www.axisofeve.org
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www.empressjina.com/philosophy.htm
www.hookonline.org
www.iswfac.org
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Sarah Kozinn is in the masters program in Performance Studies at NYU. She is also an actress, writer, and experimental theater performer who has found a love for traveling and studying various theatrical forms.