Guild of Dommes

Discussion about a guild or governing board for pro-dommes crops up every year or two. The latest example I’ve spotted was this thread triggered by Charlotte Douleur. If you’re new to professional domination or haven’t thought about it too much, then the idea might have some initial appeal. After all, BDSM scenes have inherent risks, there are significant sums of cash involved and relative strangers are meeting in isolated spaces. Why not have some sort of certification or oversight? However, the idea quickly falls apart when you think about it.

Who would appoint and manage the membership? How would they enforce anything? What would the rules on activities and behavior be? Whose standards are the right ones? How would you stop bad actors (asshole clients) stirring trouble with bogus complaints? How would you even investigate a complaint?

More opportunities for education and classes is obviously good and advocacy groups – like the kind Savannah Sly directs – are awesome. But I personally can’t see how an old school guild would ever work out.

In many ways, from the client perspective, the internet has already improved matters tremendously. As Sardax described in this post, in the old days you really took a chance based on nothing more than a few words in an ad. Now you can follow a domme’s social media feed, see what events she attends, get a sense of her interests, go along to domme led classes (see prior post), etc. etc. In major cities it’s pretty easy to find a pro-domme with a lot of experience and a high reputation. No guild certification needed.

Mentioning Charlotte Douleur does at least give me an excuse for featuring another of her lovely images. This was sourced via her twitter feed.

Previously posts featuring great bondage shots from Mistress Douleur can be found here and here. She’s London based and someone who falls very much into that category of experienced dommes with a strong reputation.