Welcome to a new series of occasional posts featuring femdom or kink related literature. The plan is to review and recommend books I think might be interesting to my readers. The reality will probably consist of me blathering about whatever caught my eye recently in the kindle store.
First up is Terri-Jean Bedford’s Dominatrix on Trial : Bedford v’s Canada. She’s the retired pro-domme who was recently in the news for taking on the Canadian prostitution laws. This is her autobiography and it splices the drama of her legal entanglements into her life story and work as a pro-domme. She had a troubled upbringing, and an early life that featured drugs, prostitution and low paid jobs. She eventually found stability and a profitably career working as a pro-domme in a dungeon space she designed and created. That is until the police raided it in a very public fashion and splashed her name across the front pages. Rather than take the easy plea bargain she fought back, and the book describes how and who helped do so.
I’ll get the negative stuff out of the way first. Bedford is a solid writer, and communicates the who/what/why information clearly. However, she doesn’t bring it vividly to life in the way a professional writer might have done. I believe she wrote the book over a number of years as the cases progressed, and it’s a shame it couldn’t have been as a collaboration with someone with more literary experience. She also writes a fair amount about her dungeon and the interests of the people who visited, which might be shocking to vanilla readers, but will probably be old news to regularly visitors to this blog. Finally, in several spots she makes sweeping statements about BDSM and why people, particularly submissive men, are kinky. She may be accurately describing her experiences, but I don’t think they can be extended universally, given how complex and varied the world of kink is.
All that said, I did enjoy the book. Some righteous anger at the broken legal system and those who enforce it can be cathartic. Her life has been a turbulent one, and it was inspiring to hear how she kept fighting and about the people who rallied around to help, contributing time and money to her cause. A lot of the lawyers worked pro bono, but the court expenses still racked up quickly, and she was in no position to pay them. The lawyer Alan Young comes across as particularly heroic, leading her original defense to the charges, and then leading the constitution challenge that was eventually successful. The book itself stops just before the recent Supreme Court announcement, but watching that final chapter play out on the news made for a particularly satisfying conclusion all of its own.
You can pick the book up at a variety of online locations – Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Google, etc. Given she’s now retired with health issues I’m sure she’d be very grateful for every copy sold.
Hey Paltego:
Interesting review! Like you I have a fondness for reading and reviewing books on BDSM. This one sounds like an inspiring read so thanks for the recommendation. I too occasionally take umbrage with many an author’s tendency to explain the root causes underlying kink. As you say such theories may explain it well for some individuals but one size does not fit all. Still it must be hard to work in the domination business and not walk away with some interesting personal insights on what makes a subbie maso tick.
I look forward to reading more reviews! Cheers!
Thanks hmp. It’s kind of an awkward book to review actually. It’s certainly not great literature. I read a lot of non-fiction and it’s style in most other settings would equal a bad book. But her story is compelling and it is inspiring to read about her fight and all the people who helped out. I’m happy I read it. I just wish an author or journalist on the case would have taken an interest and added some sparkle to it.
It’s tricky to write about this kind of thing for a vanilla audience and not try to explain the underlying cause, so I have some sympathy there. But it’s also very hard to write in such a way that doesn’t make people like you and me go “Hmmm. Not sure that’s strictly true actually.” Her style of BDSM is also different to my interests (lots of cross dressing and role play), so that also an area that makes me pause when I see generalization about submissive guys.
-paltego