A Chicago-based dominatrix is helping to shape the way men view and interact with Black women by making her clients read Black feminist theory. 

Mistress Velvet, who has Master’s degree who lives in Chicago, began working as a dominatrix about two years ago to help offset some of her money troubles.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Velvet revealed many of her clients are wealthy white men. In her work as a “Domme,” Velvet takes the dominant role in a sadomasochistic relationship with men who are her “Submissives.”

In addition to the more expected ways of physically dominating her clients, Mistress Velvet empowers them to engage with Black feminism and she says her clients feel their relationships with Black women changed after their sessions with the dominatrix.

Not only are her methods helping her clients, but they provide relied to Velvet as well.

'”I would say, first and foremost, that I describe it as a form of reparations ― not in a systemic way like we're getting land back, but definitely on an individual level, it provides me with an emotional sense of reparations,” she told the Huffington Post.

“I started to think more about my relationship with them. A lot of them were asking questions. Some people were saying, ‘this is really impacting me in terms of how I think outside of our sessions,’” she added.

Velvet’s clients are not only thinking differently about Black women, but they are working towards making positive changes for Black women in Chicago.

“A client said he started to notice he would only hold the door open for black women. One client started an organization for black single mothers in the South Side of Chicago,” Velvet told the Huffington Post.

Velvet’s assignments come from books such as “Sister Outsiders” by Audre Lorde, “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, “The Black Body In Ecstasy” by Jennifer Nash, “The Color of Kink: by Adriene Cruz, and other selections.

Velvet explained how these works allow for white men to look beyond their own stereotypes of Black bodies.

“It’s moving from them simply fetishizing black women, to realizing: this is a systemic issue I'm contributing to by the virtue of being a white man and being rich,” she said.   

“I ask them, ‘Why do you want to be in my presence, why do you find me attractive?’ And sometimes they might say things that then remind me of stereotypes of black women ― like a jezebel or something ― so I’ll have them read a piece about how what they said is related to this historic phenomenon about thinking about black women.

“I say, ‘Here are its roots. Here’s why it’s problematic.’ That way, I can say, you can idolize me, but we need to have it be done in a way that isn’t also problematic,” she told Huffington Post.

Mistress Velvet is finding a new liberation to her work as a dominatrix, for both herself and her clients.