The Sliax site recently rolled out a verification scheme for professional BDSM and Tantra providers. I was at first hopefully that this meant that they were hiring submissives be professional BDSM reviewers. Sort of like the Michelin inspectors, but with one to three whips rather than stars. I’m not saying I would have instantly quit my job to tour the world having crazy kinky fun with fabulously skilled women for money, but if I thought it’d be a positive contribution to the community, I could have been talked into it. What can I say? I’m just the kind of guy who wants to help others.
Unfortunately the scheme turned out to be based more on community involvement and history rather than scratching my kinky itches. Once I’d gotten over my disappointment, it struck me that the idea of ‘BDSM verification’ was problematic in itself. After all how do you verify someone’s BDSM skills? It’s not like checking that your accountant has passed their CPA exam. There’s no single set of skills, or common training courses, or guild of professional dominants. Who defines the standards? Would verified mean someone was safe? Or skilled? Or simply that they owned a whip and hadn’t stolen their photographs from Vogue?
Fortunately, while I was puzzling over this, someone with real experience and knowledge got involved in the discussion – Mistress Matisse. You can follow her progress via tweets here, here, here and here. The end result is that they’re going to change it to simply a ‘BDSM professional’ badge rather than one that says ‘Verified’, which sounds a better idea. From my perspective, I doubt it’ll make any difference to who I session with. I’ll still prefer to do my own research. But I can imagine it being useful for people who don’t spend quite as much time on kinky web sites as I do (i.e. the other 99% of pro-domme clients).
The image below is of Mistress Shae, taken during her class entitled “The Hard Fuck- Embracing and mastering the art of the mind fuck.” Perhaps she should issue a scout style merit badge for it – “Verified Mind Fucker.” That’d certainly be an eye catching thing to sew to the side of a domme’s peaked leather cap.
Oh, to be a submissive male “professional reviewer” of domme talent! What a dream gig, right?
I find the Slixa “verification” very problematical. I have over ten years of personal experience doing BDSM and three years (off and on) of professional experience, but I don’t know if I could be verified, because outside of my commercial dungeon, I don’t interact with the bdsm community. I can’t even get my photos verified because I don’t show my face (I do understand the desire of clients to have verified photos, however).
It’s certainly a very thorny area. Verifying skills, safety or general abilities for any significant number of dommes is clearly close to impossible. Verifying community involvement is easier but still problematic.
In one sense I like the idea, as it’s similar to the research I do myself. I like to find out if someone is experienced and takes their work seriously. Seeing long-term involvement in community forums, attending conferences, taking classes, having a history of testimonials, positive interaction with other dommes, etc. are all good indicators of that. But at the same time it could be unfairly penalizing to people in your position. It’s also very unclear what exactly the standard will be. Who sets the bar? At least if I’m doing my own research I’m weighting a number of different factors, and the yes/no choice for me might be very different for someone else.
-paltego
Back in the day, long ago, Mistress Diamond published Passion Magazine. She would interview a professional and one of her subs would do a session. She would write an article about of their experience. Then that professional would be listed in the magazine. Of course there were no negative reviews, those selected we already vetted. But the individuality of each was highlighted.
Long ago I wrote stories for her – She published some of them. I miss her. She intended to build a self aware community.
Peace,
Pat
That sounds like a great concept. Nice way to build a community and share more than the usual collection of gallery images and list of activities that most dommes publish.
I’ve contemplated trying to do interviews with dommes for this site, but it always seems like it’d be potentially problematic. I don’t want to seem like I’m prying, particularly if it’s a domme I also session with. Having it done by another domme works a lot better. Shame there’s nobody with Mistress Diamond’s approach picking it up where she left off.
-paltego
Good afternoon Pat,
Thank you for this write up. I’m glad you enjoy that capture from my mind fuck workshop. That class will always be near and dear to my heart.
As they say, anyone can pick up a stick and beat someone, I care about crawling into a person’s mind and using that as my playground.
As to what you were saying, it’s true that many things have changed over the years. Years ago Dommes came up through a mentorship process and spent many years in training before starting their own dungeon or taking over as Head Mistress.
Beyond that, Mistresses were also the gateway to the entire kink community sticking their necks out and risking being arrested to ensure that the community at large stayed safe.
If a new person wanted to know the location of a party, they first had to come play with a Domme and prove they weren’t vice before any information would be given to them. Only once they were vetted would they be given the location and pass code for the party.
A lot has changed both in how Dommes are trained and in how things work in the community. It’s not a judgement one way or the other, it simply is.
MSF
Thanks for stopping by to comment Mistress Shae. And thanks for sharing your perspective on the changes over the years. The combination of social and technological changes over the years are fascinating.
-paltego