If someone had asked me a few years ago about my life today, I’m not sure I would have believed them. When we look back at our lives, the thread is always there, but sometimes there is no way that it was foreseeable. But isn’t that just question of perspective?
The First Threads of My Journey
How on earth did I become a Sex Worker? Or a dominatrix (well, that one is easier to understand). Or more radically, an escort. I didn’t grow up seeing Sex Workers, knowing Sex Workers, though I did nearly marry one. The night she told me was the same night I had shared something profound and “secret” about me. The fear that she had in telling me, that I would reject her, or judge her, has stayed with me ever since.
I didn’t care about anything other than whether she was nice to her clients. Honest. Isn’t that funny. But it informs my practise.
Falling in Love with Sex Workers
You might guess that I have done some rather kinky things. You would be right. And I still do. But my journey into this world has also been one of finding myself and doing more and more of the things I love to do, and less and less of those I do not.
I cherish the intimacy with my clients. That we can go places stripped of ego and all the dance of getting-to-know each other, because we are working with an inside track. And as a dominatrix, the typical narrative is to be mean, to say degrading things. I get asked for this all the time. But what I love most is the gentle, care-giving part. Taking a genuine interest in my client’s well-being, their personal journeys, and watching them blossom.
To be a muse is a wonderful thing. The particular combination of skills I bring to a session, time together, is a reflection of and eclectic life of diverse interests, but also a reflection that I am a shaman, a shamanatrix, one who uses the erotic as a gateway to spirituality.
The journey has been unexpected. My first forays into sex work were as a client. And in truth, I continue to be a client. The mix of depth and intimacy with ease and lack of complications is magical. And so too are the distances and memories which can be created with someone who on some level shall forever be a stranger. In a way, that is profoundly beautiful. And I wish that we were all capable of taking the best of that and training our private lives…learning to serve without strings attached, to love without quid pro quo.
And the truth is that I fell in love with Sex Workers. Not just the ones I have seen, and not literally them as individuals (although this is not strictly true), but rather what they represented. There is a mystical beauty I find in the work, in the people who do it, in the shadow-world from which they/we operate. It is seductive beyond compare. But it is also profound work. The Sex Workers I spent time with quite literally helped me to change the course and direction of my life.
It became a simple decision, that when I grew up, I wanted to be like them. To express myself in this way. It was, therefore, inevitable even though I couldn’t see it coming.
Claiming Womanhood and Agency
This path is inextricably bound together with how define my womanhood. Feminine power. There is no role in society which is more intimately bound with female agency than sex work. And as I have grown into my own womanhood, my own feminity, this claiming of my agency is the antidote to the toxicity of a male-dominated society.
I can’t help but think of a better way to describe what it is like to live in a male-dominated world as akin to watching someone who doesn’t speak English trying to make sense of Shakespeare. It is worse than pearls to swine.
Finding community with women is the antidote to this kind of life, and to be in community with other women who have chosen this path, is of rare beauty.
There is beauty in how taboo it is. There is beauty in the choice when the choice can put us in danger, or subject us to forms of social opprobrium—that we make this choice conscious of this anyway…that is not to justify or excuse or romanticise, but simply to say that it takes courage to pursue a career in Sex Work.
Can I say this? That to be a whore, that politically and emotionally pregnant word, is aspirational. I aspire to be the kind of woman that people pay to be with, not just around, but in an intimate way. What could possibly be more validating? And yes, the toxic part of that is the needing to be validated. But hey, that’s not your problem, that’s between me and my therapist. Because the woman who shows up at our tryst is self-posessed, unflappable, and utterly in-charge. And do not be fooled, being vulnerable, raw, is powerful, strong. No man will ever get that (in a felt way), no woman will ever not know it.
To be a whore is aspirational
I’ve been on the periphery of the sex trade for much of my working life. Never a real consumer of porn, I have written prolifically over decades. Erotica. Smut. Whatever turned me on at the time. I figured, if I am going to get off, I might as well get paid for it. Why? I was married for most of that time. It was a habit which began fresh out of my Ivy League Education, and living in New York. Writing my fantasies was hyper-charged for me, and the best foreplay I could think of. Ditto for self-play.
I was in my first adult film at the tender age of 19. I was modelling in Italy, and the casting call was for a gangly, American-looking, American-accented, Italian speaking person. I fit the bill perfectly and had a speaking part! The joyful irony of a speaking part in a porn film is not lost on me. Innocence is the cloak I wear no matter where I go.
Is that sex work? I had my first real contact with Sex Workers when I was going through an enormous phase of turmoil in my personal and professional life, and therapy just wasn’t going to do it. I approached a dominatrix and asked if she would work with me. She was very understanding and accommodating but insisted on therapy at the same time.
Together we explored things that lie at the core of my practice today, and I cannot help but think that I saw something in her which reminded me of me, whether that was aspirational or real.
Of course, it is impossible to remove the “sex” from Sex Work. And I would never say that the erotic wasn’t central to our play. But I was not a traditional client. I didn’t want the fashion that comes with the dungeon, or even the dungeon experience, I wanted to experience life for brief moments by her side. I wanted to be pushed to grow, to be made just uncomfortable enough, and for the erotic energy which floated between us, to be a powerful motivating force. My time with her gave me the strength to change my life in profound ways.
And that transformational impulse is what informs my practice today. And it also informs all of the strands that I have brought together from my past, my vanilla life today, and into my practice. I have become that which I aspired to be, and I will be in the process of becoming for the rest of my life. There is no greater joy.
And although I am a dominatrix, I could not bear to see a client and not want to touch them or to be touched back. And it was this realisation that led me to escorting. I have very important boundaries, strict and unmovable, but I didn’t want this to be one of them. Intimacy is the most important tool in the kit.
Intimacy is our most important tool.
Shame, Patriarchy, and Power
So many people in this world are consumed by shame, raised in shame, carrying it and its child, self-hate. It disfigures us. We were meant to play. Not to be rigid and judgemental. Being spiritually and sexually stiff is a silent killer. And the forces which feed it are hard-wired into our system. Patriarchy requires the shaming of women to exist, their degradation, the ownership of women’s virtue and bodies. Capitalism at its root requires free labour, slavery. It is no surprise that the combination of the two has been particularly toxic for women, the degradation of our labour is never-ending and constant.
But women have enormous power. The power to choose. The power to select. The power to show mercy. The power to forgive. The power to see and hear and feel. When we exercise those powers, we are truly free. Demanding payment for access to our bodies, to our intimacy, to our care is a recognition of our agency. The use of virtue as a tool to police us, to moralise, is counter to women’s fundamental right to exist as free beings. Men’s rage and entitlement is a direct function of a woman showing her strength. A bit like a little bratty boy who had his toy taken away, only in the adult it is inexcusable and just ugly. Witness the incel, pond scum of modern life.
Holy Work and the Age of the Goddess
When I ask myself what kind of woman do I want to be when I grow up, it is a woman who is not a doormat. A woman who is in full possession of her agency. And so I am unflinching in this regard.
I could only ever be a dominatrix. To set the terms. And access to my body is granted to those who show the appropriate respect. And you know what? Being with someone who genuinely wants to honour me and my body is far more pleasurable than what so many personal relationships have been. Sex work is work and is it ever. But it also has this aspect to it, which I cannot extricate from the political and social context, or from a spiritual one.
My life purpose is to usher in the age of women.
It is holy work. Many of us are priestesses. Some are witches. Others are Sex Witches. I am all of these things.
And while we play, and it is fun, there is method to my madness. My life purpose is to usher in the age of women. Nothing else serves me.
Aetas Deae – The Age of the Goddess
An Invitation
If you are here, something in you has already responded.
This is not casual booking, and it is not for everyone. I work with people who are curious, intelligent, and willing to take responsibility for what they want.
Those who wish to work with me do not request. They present themselves.
Begin here.
About Me
Mx Valentina is a feminist dominatrix, a trans and intersex woman, whose practice centres on ethical power exchange and the conditions under which lives reorganise themselves around purpose rather than shame. Her work is selective and relational, grounded in the belief that submission is not a role to be played but an orientation that must already be present. She works only with those who understand that access is conditional and authority is not negotiated. You can find my scholarly feminist writing on Substack and lighter pieces on Medium.
