0. An unusual workshop in Leipzig

I was quite surprised when I happened upon a large poster on the bulletin board at the Leipzig Academy of Fine Arts, where two women were advertising a workshop titled "Female Authority & Consensual Kink." The English term "kink" has also become established in German to describe unusual sexual preferences, particularly those within the fetish and BDSM scene (which stands for: Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission and Sadism & Masochism). My curiosity piqued, I followed the QR code on the poster. I quickly realized that MissT and Anja could be interesting interview partners for our magazine, as there are, as will become clear, more connections between the topics of "Nietzsche" and "Femdom" (another term from the BDSM scene, which simply stands for "female domination") than might appear at first glance. One thing led to another, and MissT not only agreed to the following interview, but the two also allowed me to attend the workshop, which was actually intended only for women; men were only admitted as companions.

It took place on a mild summer evening in a backyard apartment in the center of Leipzig. You can imagine that, despite the friendly preliminary talk with Anja, I was very nervous. In fact, there were only four men present and about 15 participants, most of them in their early to mid-30s. As I entered the bright room, the scent of incense sticks, which I otherwise only knew from Buddhist meditation centers, immediately hit my nose—and fittingly, there were several Buddha statues standing around the room. Yoga silks dangled from the ceiling.² The only hint that this might be about BDSM was the outfits of the hosts: MissT wore a tight leather bodysuit with nylon stockings underneath, and Anja wore a purple, low-cut dress. The participants wore comfortable everyday clothing. It could just as easily have been a completely "ordinary" self-discovery workshop.

And indeed, the workshop began with some physical warm-up and breathing exercises, which were primarily about arriving in the space and getting a feel for one's own body. This was followed by the actual core of the workshop: a 45-minute BDSM session with MissT in the dominant role and Anja in the submissive role. Just to avoid any misunderstandings: nudity and touching of the genitals were excluded from the outset. Basically, very little happened. After a short preliminary discussion about her boundaries and the agreement of a "safe word" and a traffic light system, as is common in the BDSM scene, Anja was tied up by MissT, blindfolded, and then "worked on" in various ways, very measuredly—sometimes tenderly, sometimes painfully, using various impact implements. Nevertheless, an incredible erotic tension emerged that was hard for the audience to escape. With small gestures, MissT managed to put Anja into an ecstatic state of intoxication that also captivated the audience. While Anja surrendered to her sensory stimuli, MissT visibly enjoyed observing and controlling Anja's sensations, guiding her into an increasingly relaxed state, which manifested in physical twitches and deep, audible breathing. She never appeared brutal, but rather very loving and tender. MissT reminded me of Nietzsche's "playing child," and Anja of a Dionysian bacchante, an enraptured servant in the retinue of the god so highly esteemed by Nietzsche—whom the Greeks called Dionysus and the Romans Bacchus—whereby Nietzsche highlights the innocent pleasure in cruelty in both the case of the child and the bacchante, in one case active, in the other passive.³ But mind you, a cruelty that has nothing to do with brutality or "sadism" in the ordinary sense, but rather has something maternal and, indeed, childlike about it.

After the performance ended, both sat with us, visibly deeply relaxed and with glowing eyes, describing their feelings during the performance and answering questions about its sequence and generally about MissT's work as a "somatrix." Here, MissT herself emphasized that her sessions are not about her own sexual arousal, but about the pleasure of the power she has over the other; a pleasure in herself reflected in the relaxed, happy, sometimes tear-filled gaze of the "sub." Sexual dominance, then, as pedagogy and initiation in a peculiar collapse of altruism and egoism on the part of the Domina? "To be with oneself in the other" is how Hegel defines love—though he certainly could not have had such practices in mind. Nietzsche, who wrote repeatedly about the connection between pleasure, power, and cruelty during the times when Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was a celebrated author,⁴ perhaps more so. Is Femdom, then, a kind of lived Nietzscheanism, and is a woman like MissT a "mistress" after Nietzsche's own heart? But does that not contradict everything Nietzsche (seemingly) writes about the relationship between man and "woman" and how it ought to be?

Enough food for thought for the conversation documented below, which I was able to have with her on the morning of the following day in Anja's apartment in the west of the city. The nervousness had now clearly given way to anticipation, because I now knew that what Anja, who was present at the meeting, had told me in our preliminary talk was true: "We only bite when we are paid to do so." I was ready to learn something new: about a fascinating form of eroticism, about Nietzsche, about the complexity of the phenomenon of "power," about modern feminism—and perhaps even about myself and my own prejudices...

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I. Who is MissT? What is a "Somatrix"?

Paul Stephan: MissT, let's start from the very beginning: Who are you, and what is your connection to the topic of erotic female dominance?

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MissT: Well, professionally, I go by "MissT." I describe myself as a "Somatrix," a term I coined by combining "dominatrix" with⁵ somatic work. As perhaps became clear in yesterday's workshop, the somatic aspect—the bodywork I perform when I dominate someone—is crucial to me: breathing, the nervous system, sensory perceptions. These are usually far more important for achieving a result with pain. It’s not about pain for pain’s sake, but about the somatic work with the body.

For me, female dominance didn't start as BDSM or kink in a sexual sense. From a very early age, people always said about me: "She always has the last word," "She's always the ringleader..." And in the socialization we’ve experienced as men and women, that’s generally something that wasn't encouraged in girls and young women, or later on. My whole life, I was told that what I was doing was wrong: I was too loud, too much, too bossy. It wasn't until my professional life that I realized this female leadership quality, paired with empathy and self-embodiment, is actually a great asset. It helped me a lot in the political education work I do, and later in local government work in New Zealand, especially when dealing with men. I now know how to use what I have. I don't want to be manipulative, but I can guide people so that they ultimately do what I want them to do. However, for me, this is always about governance for the common good—don't get me wrong, Paul—so that I can, for example, secure funding to make a difference for the community.  

In my professional life, I learned that: leadership,change management – those are the corporate wordsthat people use – and what you learn there is something I can combine very well with my sexuality and my sexual preferences. I first figured that out for myself personally and then eventually started performing it at private parties. People eventually said, "You've been doing this forever, haven't you? You're really good at it. You could actually charge money for this." So, I thought, why not give it a try? It was received quite well, and quite quickly, so I thought: Okay, now you have your two or three regular clients, now you need to find a dungeon⁶ ... And so one thing led to another.

So, this feminine dominance or authority didn't come from me waking up one morning and deciding I wanted to be a dominatrix. There is a long process of socialization behind it, and above all, a rebellion against the socialization that keeps us all, as women, small. And this whole narrative—male, female; women are like this, men are like that: What do we do with that now?—is a huge problem and a massive topic today.

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PS: So, is your work as a Somatrix a side job?

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MissT: Yes, you could say that. A lot has changed for me in the last year and a half. Last May, I left my job in New Zealand, where I had worked for the local government for eight years, and returned to Europe. I actually wanted to travel a bit and have a good time, and during that time, I started charging more for my dom work. When I got stuck in Lisbon, Portugal, I delved deeper into it, made more contacts, found a dungeon that I share with other dominatrixes, and did this work full-time for a while. Of course, it was just enough to keep me afloat, and now that I'm in Europe, I'm working in educational policy for NGOs, drawing on the experience from my old jobs in Germany.

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PS: Interesting. One would think—though this is obviously a stereotype—that you would make an incredible amount of money as a dominatrix...

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MissT: You can make anything an incredible amount of money.

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P.S.: Fair point, I’m sure there are philosophers who are millionaires too…

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MissT: I recently took part in a kind of "matriarchal" business course. It was hosted by a friend of mine who has been offering these kinds of courses for years and makes a lot of money doing it. She’s really great at it, and her modules focus a lot on that feminine presence, which she also radiates as a person. And that’s when it hit me: If you have a good idea and stay firm in your values and vision, you can make an incredible amount of money. You just have to be an authentic person. You have to sell yourself as the person you actually are. The only question is: Do you do it? Do you put in the time, the energy, and the work it takes—and we’re not just talking about Instagram, marketing, newsletters, and all that; there is so much behind it to really build it up, and I’m still in the early stages. I’ve been doing it a bit more intensively for about six to nine months now. But it takes time. I’d rather play it safe for now and do my political education work; I know the money comes in there, and I can slowly build up the rest in parallel.

And sure, there are dominas—you can easily find them on Instagram—who make thousands of euros a month because they’ve positioned themselves so well that they offer real added value, serve a specific niche, and offer something unique. They don’t sell themselves short, either. It’s not about a foot fetish session for €80 anymore; nobody does that. You really have to position yourself so that you only get the people you want, who are also willing to pay the appropriate price for it.

In that regard, I’m unfortunately poorly positioned in Portugal because the purchasing power here is so low. You have the wealthy expats—Russians, Ukrainians, Americans, Brits, a few Germans—who have money, but the Portuguese, not so much. The minimum wage is currently around €8 an hour, so you can imagine what they earn a month… And at €150 an hour, how are they supposed to afford that? So that’s my biggest problem. And in Berlin… It’s so oversaturated in my view, so I’m not even interested in that. Sure, I can find spaces there that I can book as a domina, but then I need clients who specifically request me on that day—and that’s just way too exhausting for me again… So you have to position yourself, but you do that in every profession if you’re freelance and "self-employed and constantly working."

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PS: Yes, I know what you’re talking about… But would your dream be to be able to live off it exclusively?

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MissT: Well, social justice has always been extremely important to me. Everything should always be as ethical and morally defensible as possible, and that brings a lot of pressure regarding what you expect from yourself and what you want to put out into the world… In the political education work I did for over ten years, I always felt: Okay, you’re doing something here, you see the result, how people develop, how they shed their racism… I held so many workshops on stereotypes, privilege, racism, and so on, where I always realized: Awesome, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And then I slipped into this other track, and I’m realizing: Hmm, that doesn’t actually contradict it at all; it overlaps quite well. I can have one leadership role here and the other there, and both work so well for me because they each serve things I need, and I wouldn’t want to choose between them now. I want to keep doing both and make money with both. That’s what matters to me.

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II. Male vs. Female Power // In Search of Intensity

PS: Yes, the topic of "power"—we’re slowly heading toward Nietzsche here. I once heard a professional psychological lecture where a model of different personality types was presented: achievement-oriented, relationship-oriented, power-oriented. And the subject of the research was really the "power person." That’s a very negatively charged term at first, but the psychologist argued quite convincingly back then that people often have a wrong idea about it. A "power person" could also be Mother Teresa or the Pope, because in this understanding, "power" initially just means that you influence other people—which can mean you harm them, but it can just as easily manifest in the opposite way.

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MissT: "Power" is a very interesting term because you can look at it from so many different angles. Let’s look at political power, like Donald Trump. Is that power? Is that powerful? Yes, of course, he is one of the most powerful men in the world, but does he do anything good with it? Probably not, at least from my perspective. Then you just mentioned Mother Teresa, although she is highly controversial now, too. She really exploited the women who followed her; they had to give up their whole lives to follow this one person. A structure like that very quickly takes on cult-like traits—and religion always has that negative aftertaste of: "We are all following this one guru, this one leader, because they are doing something so great, something so good for the world." But the followers are actually the ones who suffer greatly under this pressure and under the way they are groomed; there are endless examples of that.

When I look for a counterexample, for an example of a positive exercise of power, I always like to take Jacinda Ardern, who was Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023, when I lived there. For me, she is the epitome of how power can be used in a positive, responsible way. She held a powerful office, but led the country with so much empathy, with so much outward vulnerability… She was always transparent about how she was doing, why she was finding something difficult, why things had to happen a certain way. She went through three huge catastrophes. We had a volcanic eruption, we had the 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, we had Covid—and all that while she was pregnant and holding a baby! So this woman really achieved something! And in the end, she still said: "Okay guys, I’ve been doing this for five years now, it’s been an exhausting time, I have to stop now because I don’t have the necessary support from my own parliament after Covid, and I notice there’s too big a rift in society. I just don’t think I can do it anymore." – Which male politician would say: "I’ve been in power for 30, 40 years"—I’m thinking of Putin—"I don’t think I’ve got it anymore, I’m going to step down now." Who does that? Nobody! Women do that. Because women reflect, because women know the emotional side of themselves, because women value things other than power-hunger and that dynamic—and if you combine all that into one big whole, then you’re also a good domina.

So this connection of empathy, of my own body awareness, paired with an understanding of the other person’s body, of moral and ethical sensitivity—What am I doing here? How do I want to do this right?—and reflexivity: constantly going back and forth in the learning process. For me, it’s not like: I’ll do it this way, and that’s a routine I follow that always works. For me, it’s always also: What is happening with this body right now? What is it bringing with it? Where was it today? Where am I today? Where do I stand? Yes, and then also this cyclical nature, seeing it as women: Oh God, yes, when I’m ovulating, and then it’s a full moon too… My energy is so wild then; that’s a day where I sit down, I write for three hours, and I think I’m putting the coolest things in the world on paper. Then I definitely want to do a dungeon session that day because I think: Today they’ll get the most out of me. Then I usually want to go party afterward, and I’m completely wiped out afterward because I’m drawing from such an energetic wave: Everything is on, everything is turned on. And this turned that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose: If you’re turned on by yourself and by life itself, that's the powerful thing to harvestright? If you’re turned on by yourself and by life itself—that’s the powerful thing you can draw strength from.

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PS: That sentence could almost have come from Nietzsche. The idea that you should affirm life and yourself is a very Nietzschean concept; it might even be his core philosophy, I’d say.

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MissT: Didn't he always have this intense craving for intensity? Everything had to be intense: taking risks, trying new things, everything had to be extreme so that you could transcend yourself. Which is something we still do today. Nobody says: "I'm learning new things while sitting here on the sofa." That’s my comfort zone—you push yourself out of that a little bit, and then you realize: "Hey, that was great, I learned something." I think philosophers recognized that very early on, but bringing that into the mainstream—well, good luck with that.

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To be continued.

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Article imageMissT; photo by Anja

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"MissT" studied cultural work in Potsdam and is currently employed (alongside her work as a somatrix) as an educational policy advisor for a German NGO in Lisbon. She lived in New Zealand for a long time, where she worked in community management (community management) and the events sector at the local government level. She has been involved with dance and singing since childhood, which is also where her somatic bodywork has its origins.

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Footnotes

1:Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Old and Young Women. Thomas Common's translation. Ed. note: It's important to note that in the German original, there's a slight lingual nuance in this famous text which is hardly translatable. In the title, Nietzsche uses the term "Weiblein" to refer to women, in most parts of the speech "Weib". In this famous sentence, the vocabulary switches, however, to "Frauen". "Weib" is the traditional word for woman and is etymologically linked to the term "wife". In Nietzsche's days, it used to be a neutral term, in modern German, it's considered pejorative. "Weiblein" is the diminutive form of "Weib", thus meaning something like "little women". "Frau", however, used to be a more polite word, referring specifically to women of social status, i. e. women worthy of respect. One could translate it as "lady". This often overlooked nuance is a key element of Paul Stephan's interpretation of this sentence. It's an indicator that the whip could be considered a tool of the "lady", not of the man who fears her power. This interpretation will be discussed in more detail in the Interview's third part.

2: A perhaps amusing side note: I mistook these suspension devices for bondage equipment. Anja kindly pointed out my error.

3: In The Birth of Tragedy , Nietzsche speaks of a "Dionysian phenomenon" that "reveals to us again and again the playful construction and destruction of the world of the individual as the outflow of a primordial joy, in a similar way to how Heraclitus the Obscure compares the world-building force to a child who playfully sets stones here and there and builds sandcastles only to knock them down again" (sec. 24) and considers the "mixture of lust and cruelty," "that phenomenon where pain awakens pleasure, where the jubilation of the breast tears agonizing tones from it," to be the defining characteristic of the pleasure of "Dionysian revelers" (sec. 2).

4: Cf. my previous remarks on this in the interview I conducted with Andreas Urs Sommer for our magazine (link).

5: Ed. note: The term "Domina," from the Latin for "mistress" (often "Dominatrix" in English, from the feminine form of dominator, "ruler"), refers to an erotic service provider in the femdom sector—though most dominas do not offer "sex" in the conventional sense; on the contrary, they value their "untouchability" and focus entirely on various BDSM practices ranging from role-playing (mistress/slave, doctor/patient, teacher/student...) to physical discipline and bondage.

6: Ed. note: In the BDSM scene, a "dungeon" refers to a specially equipped facility, usually consisting of several rooms, that can be rented for "sessions."