Hello again, Beloved Kinksters!

Why a Divine Theratrix interview? Did you know that I wrote a guest article for OrgasmicWays, titled – MY FAVORITE UK DOMINATRIXES/PRO DOMMES – BY PODOPHELEUS. Undoubtedly, Divine Theratrix was on the list. Click here to read the full article.

Wait a minute, Divine Theratrix is not a Domme, though she does enjoy BDSM play! Hmm… Are you curious to learn more about Divine Theratrix?

So, without further ado, let’s dive in to the Divine Theratrix interview

1. You are a sex worker who engages in BDSM, but you are not a Domme. So what is your title?

I don’t really have one! I don’t feel that I need one. People always seem to want me to have one though. I even feel like a fraud continuing to use the label sex worker these days, but I do symbolically as a statement of solidarity. I prefer to be more descriptive and say I’m a BDSM practitioner, rather than adopt a label that allows people to project their fantasies onto me, because I’m not in the business of fantasy fulfilment. In the BDSM community, especially as a professional, I perceive a real pressure to adopt labels, but I really don’t like labels. I don’t want to be put in any boxes, I wouldn’t fit! There is no label that would cover the broad scope of the work that I do, so I’d rather not try and squeeze myself into one. As a person, I am constantly evolving. I grow and outgrow myself incredibly quickly and that is another reason why labels often don’t work for me. Also, I want the flexibility to be fluid in my practice, as I am in life, and a label would restrict me from that. I think that ‘BDSM practitioner’ is more likely to attract the kind of people that I want to attract as clients – people that aren’t looking for fetish-delivery but are drawn to develop themselves in a novel way, such as through the BDSM Ritual sessions that I provide. When I’m referring to the totality of the types of session I offer – i.e. not just BDSM Ritual – I say I’m a multi-modality practitioner. I don’t even like the labels ‘therapist’ or ‘counsellor’ because I think they are loaded with potential projections too that could create a tendency for clients to want me to take all of the responsibility for their wellbeing – I don’t want people to expect me to heal them, that is for them do.

2. Why do you offer consultations before sessions and why is this important?

Several reasons. Firstly, as a matter of client care. It is important to me that I am a good fit for a client, so I need to find out what their objectives are and if I reasonably consider that a session with me is aligned with those. I also find out about their health and if there are any relevant physical or mental conditions so that I can assess risks and decline a session if I do not think it is suitable for them. Second, the consultation is a means of gaining informed consent to the content of the session, which is agreed in outline in advance. Third, the consultation also weeds out potential timewasters, which are not so common for me these days but unfortunately still a reality for most BDSM practitioners since people find us alluring and enjoy our attention.

3. What makes what you offer so very different to what else is out there?

Seani Love frames conscious kink as a healing tool – he runs the School of Erotic Mysteries where I did some training a few years ago when I was about the change my career. I gained a lot of my inspiration from a pamphlet he wrote called ‘Conscious Kink can save the World’, because it was the first time I had heard someone talk about how BDSM could provide a vehicle for mapping out a person’s internal world. I have moved away slightly from mixing the words ‘healing’ and ‘BDSM’, because I made a throw-away comment in an interview once that got published in the Metro and taken out of context, I did not like how it had been used (even though it was complimentary feedback). With hindsight, it made me realise how it was important not to mislead the public by being carefree about mixing those terms. I now always make it clear that what I do might have therapeutic qualities, but it is not a therapy. This is something that I explore in my pre-session consultation too. So how different is what I offer to what else is out there? Well, I’m pretty sure there will be other people offering professional BDSM sessions in a holistic way, but I don’t know who they are. Most professional BDSM practitioners are in the business of either pure power-play (i.e. Domination), and/or of fetish-delivery. I tried out being a Dominatrix and it was exhausting for me. I discovered that power really is not my bag. I also did quite a bit of fetish-delivery when I was an escort Domme and that had a time limit on it for me too, because doing activities that had been prescribed to me by thrill-seekers or kink-seekers wore thin after a while. The money was good, but it was hard work too and sometimes I would come out of a session feeling deflated like it just wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want to feel uninspired by my work, so I made the tough decision of reviewing my boundaries and rebuilding my business. 

4. How do you think mental health regarding BDSM and other fetishes could be better handled?

Wow, that’s a big question with so many answers. I think it always has to come back to education. People are scared of what they don’t understand. So most doctors or therapists would not feel comfortable discussing a kinkster’s or fetishist’s mental health with them, or wouldn’t even know where to begin to be able to help. Education around psychology for everyone is needed too, at school, along with more and better education about wellbeing and self-care so that people can understand and care for themselves better. Ultimately, the world needs to be more compassionate and more loving about our differences. In the UK I think the moral majority is suffering from a massive religious hangover and creating problems for many people who are doing no harm. They are so caught up in judging what they don’t understand, assuming that because they have no desire to do a particular activity that it must be wrong or bad. A quote from a 2018 movie by Adina Pintilie called ‘Touch me not’ that I think sums up what I want to say is “there is nothing weird in sexuality, only what is dangerous”. If people could re-learn how to think, so that they could evaluate actions based on whether they are harmful, rather than assessing them by reference to an arbitrary morality imposed externally – we would all be better for it because we would be living in a more tolerant society with fewer stereotypes. The search for self-knowledge was in ancient times, the highest of all quests; we were philosophers and made it our business to know and understand things; we wanted to be able to critically assess ideas and reach the truth. When the major religions swept across the world, people stopped thinking for themselves – they had rule books and morality given to them by priests (the first Masters?). As a result of that, they bought themselves a future of labouring beneath the weight of toxic shame. More people should learn about the psyche and about philosophy. That’s how I think mental health regarding BDSM and fetishes could be better handled. It’s not a short-term solution but it is a sustainable means of helping everyone in the long-term.

5. How do you marry the concept of being a sex worker with helping people with their mental health?

I don’t think there is any need for me to marry those concepts. If what I do has an incidental benefit to someone’s mental health, great, but I am not pitching sessions as designed to help with mental health – save for talk sessions. I think sex workers of all kinds incidentally help with their clients’ mental health but that’s not what they provide their services for. People need safe spaces to be themselves and often, that is what sex workers represent to them. Even someone who goes to see a nutritional therapist, or a massage therapist, or a reiki therapist might say that their sessions with those practitioners benefit their mental health. So long as I am satisfied that: a person is taking responsibility for their own wellbeing; our goals align; and a session can be conducted safely, I don’t see an issue. It is quite simple for me in that way. I am sharing skills and co-creating experiences with clients whom I assess to be competent to engage with my services. One aspect of my services that changed when I adjusted from fetish-delivery to personal-development focussed sessions, was that I stopped providing strap-on anal play as a service. I do not do anything with my genitals, nor with my client’s genitals, and that includes their anus. My sessions can be erotic, but I separate that from sexual, because that is not a way that I want to help anymore.

6. I recently wrote a piece on why BDSM should be taught in schools. Are we too up-tight with labels and would a more open mind to sex make the world better?

Totally. BDSM exists in the world. It is silly to brush it under the carpet, which is just another way of making it shameful. Kids will find out anyway! If education about it was open, then perhaps BDSM will eventually not be regarded as ‘kinky’ at all! I would love for kink to be reframed as ‘adult play’, so that people could learn to appreciate that there are many ways that humans seek out play activities for recreation and leisure, with BDSM and kink being facets or ‘colours’ of that whole varied spectrum of adult play. That way, things could just be seen as having different qualities, rather than moralising them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. There is so much shame heaped into pleasure in general; we often are shamed for doing something just because it is pleasurable. I’m pretty sure that’s why anal sex is so demonised, because it can’t possibly serve the biological purpose of procreation, so there must be something impure about it. I’m so bored of purity culture and its many limitations. Again, people need to learn how to evaluate things, rather than arbitrarily judging them. Most of the time, all that is needed is one question: does it harm anyone? If the answer is “no”, what’s the problem? Witches have got this nailed with the maxim “harm none, do as ye will”. It’s really not complicated, yet people tie themselves up in knots with morality that they have been conditioned into and they don’t even know they’re conditioned.

7. Do you think there is too much labelling in general and should it be better approached?

What makes something “too much”? If something has a benevolent effect, I don’t think it’s an issue. If something has a harmful effect overall, then it’s too much. Personally, labels annoy me in that I don’t tend to want them for myself, but I’m cool with other people having labels. I believe that there is a massive evolution in consciousness happening right now, like we’re beginning to find a way out of the dark ages – learning to think for ourselves and finding a desire to understand things again – and that perhaps the abundance of labels is a product of that desire to understand. People are afraid of what they don’t understand, and if they become familiar with something and label it, they know what it is. A person struggling with personal identity for example might feel an understandable sense of relief and validation by adopting a new gender label: labels can be empowering like that. I don’t feel I need labels. I like to inhabit liminal spaces so I can be whatever I want whenever I want, without conforming to expectations that don’t fit how I feel or want to be. People can call me what they want, I don’t care, and that goes for derogatory comments too. I’m pretty content with my conduct on this planet and that I am careful not to harm any other beings – that’s what I think really counts. Can we approach labelling better? There is always room for improvement but so long as people do what works for them, it’s cool. Sometimes labelling can be divisive but you know, we aren’t perfect. People are trying. One thing I am looking forward to being completely scrapped though, is binary everything! Insisting that things are binary is ridiculous. Most things are rarely one thing or the other. Everything exists with its opposite i.e. opposites are not mutually exclusive. I think that an obsession with labelling sometimes lends itself towards binary thinking but like I said, we aren’t perfect. Rome wasn’t built in a day!

8. How do you help couples and why would you recommend a couple crossing the taboo of visiting a sex worker?

I offer intimacy coaching for couples. Things like guided play and BDSM training. Usually, it will be couples who have been together for a long time and they either want to learn more about sex, try new things or deepen/re-establish their bond, but they aren’t feeling confident to tackle it by themselves. I am hands-off but provide a supported learning space where they can be hands-on with each other. A couples’ therapist could not provide the level of support that I do and for this reason, the feedback that I have received from couples has been overwhelmingly good, usually along the lines of an enthusiastic “we wouldn’t be able to get this from a couple’s counsellor!”. They might have already had talking therapy together and their communication has improved but they’re still stuck in the bedroom department. With me, we can get into the nitty gritty of pussy and cock touching, oral sex, and how to use sex toys etc with guidance in real-time, so that each time they see me, they have added a few new things to their menu and go home excited to explore more together. Therefore I would say that there is a benefit to be derived from visiting a sex worker – but in my case I think it is more realistic to frame it as visiting a sex coach – because couples might become frustrated with the limitations of traditional therapy.

There we have it, Kinksters! I hope you enjoyed reading this interview blog. Once again, a big shout-out to the wonderful and inspirational – Divine Theratrix. Thank you for answering my questions so thoughtfully.

Furthermore, follow Divine Theratrix on social media so you don’t miss the latest. Additionally, check out Divine Theratrix incredible website.

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And that concludes my Divine Theratrix interview.

Much Kink Love

Podopheleus