Maitresse Madeline and Lorelei Lee are business partners, professional dominatrices, and Kink.com porn directors who are now in the same payroll category as Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey. They told me about their most fascinating clients, how they make so much money, and why sex work is feminist. A quick glossary: "Femdom" is any time a woman is dominant over a man, "cam shows" are private sex shows via webcam, and "findom" means "financial domination."
So what do you two actually do?
Lorelei Lee: We perform in movies, and then as a very special product, Maitresse Madeline and I — who don't usually do cam shows — we each auctioned off a one-hour cam show. So it's a rare, exclusive product. In our first auction, in December, we made $42,000.
Maitresse Madeline: We've also just started auctioning off fantasy packages. [The winner] gets a 10-minute, one-of-a-kind POV exclusive video that won't be anywhere else in the world but in their hands. We're talking directly to the camera, saying their name, and addressing the theme of the video, which is their choice. Maybe it's pantyhose worship, or stinky shoes, or ass worship, or masturbation instruction.
Lorelei: Or something that is much more esoteric that we usually don't get to cover because it's so specific. Like, I once had a client who wanted me to smell newspapers. We don't get to make those kinds of fetish videos usually, because they're not broad, it's one person's fantasy.
Madeline: Another guy once wanted to watch a girl eat a rotisserie chicken until there were just bones left. So basically, whatever I use or wear in that video, they get that along with the video. If they want my panties, they can sniff them while they watch the video. It's all handmade just for them.
How did you get into this?
Madeline: I got into porn at first because it was a great way to make money while going to school, but when I was younger — even in my personal life — I was always interested in power-exchange kind of sex. As a teenager, I used to ask my partners to tie me up and fuck me, or get really excited by reading one of my mom's pulp novels where someone was tied up. But in my late teens and early 20s, my interests sort of intimidated the people I was with. The older I got, I started telling more people I was into it. I was very submissive in my personal life for a long time, and when I was doing porn, I gravitated naturally toward fetish and BDSM-type porn.
In my relationship right now, I have normal sex. But we do a lot of power exchange. On camera I am mostly always topping, but I'll be submissive on special occasions. In my personal relationship, we both switch back and forth from being dominant and submissive, and have more of a power-exchange sort of sex life sprinkled with many different fetishes like cross-dressing.
Lorelei: My interest in BDSM also originated when I was young. In my late teens, I got a pair of handcuffs from my friend as a joke. And inside I was like, "Yessss." I tried to get my boyfriend to use them, and he was like, "This is weird."
I didn't really get to experience it fully till I went to Kink.com. I answered an ad online that said, "Be dominated by beautiful women," and I thought, "Wow, and they're gonna pay me!" I'd been doing nude modeling and a little bit of porn already. But this was a whole new world. I will still be submissive on camera [sometimes] and recently did a series in which I was submissive on camera, but it was a special occasion. We did a remake of Barbarella.
You do financial domination (findom). What is that?
Madeline: Financial domination is when somebody gets off on the action of giving money to the dominatrix. They're not paying for anything, necessarily — they get off on the actual transaction.
Lorelei: Personally, this may sound weird, but I'm very turned on by money. Not like, having a lot of money, but actual physical cash.
Madeline: Generally, findom happens with men. They're men who seek the dominatrix out to be able to just give them this money, and they keep doing it over and over again — and I'm not trying to be crude, but they're jacking off at that moment when they hit that button to transfer the money, or however they do it. That's how they get off.
Lorelei: A lot of people have probably experienced this on a smaller level at the strip club. Giving them one dollar bills, over and over again, and each time it's exciting.
Madeline: I used to have a customer when I was webcamming. He would log on; I wouldn't even see him. He said, "I want you to call me, wait 30 seconds until I pick up, and hang up on me." For $1,000. I'm like, "Fine!" He put it right in my Paypal account. He wanted the call to threaten him that his wife might find out. He'd write back to me in the webcam box, "Thank you," and that was it. Once a month. Easiest $1,000 I've ever made. And that's financial domination right there. He got off on the risk of being caught, and the actual transaction.
But I will say this — I've spoken to men in the industry, and I know for a fact that they have women sugar mamas who will come and buy their whole shift. That woman wants to just claim them.
Do you set any boundaries with clients?
Lorelei: I don't do bestiality, blood play, vomit — but I could go either way with vomit myself [laughs]. And certain amounts of age play make me uncomfortable. Like if they want me to pretend to be very, very young. There's a negotiation period before we begin, where I say all the things I don't do. In a pro-dom setting, those things are advertised, so we don't typically get that kind of [pushy] client. And that's why we have safe words, too, if we think we're OK with something but then change our mind.
Madeline: I started off as a webcam model, and generally if someone came in and it was something I didn't want to do, of course I still wanted money, so I still had different ways of compromising with them. Like, "We can't do that, but we can do this."
Lorelei: As a sex worker, you really learn all of those tricks.
Have you ever developed relationships with clients beyond the transaction? Like become friends or romantic partners with them?
Lorelei: There are clients that I've had whom I definitely developed affection for, with whom there was perhaps a greater intimacy during sessions. I wasn't single during pro-domming, so there was no way for a romantic situation to happen.
Madeline: When I was webcamming, I grew fond of a handful of customers, and what was funny was they came to me at the beginning for sexual gratification, but then it was weird during our webcamming relationship. They'd buy hours and hours of time just to talk to me. I've kept in touch with a few, and genuinely care what happens in their lives. I felt like their therapist. I was guiding them through divorce and death and job hunts and all different sort of things.
Lorelei: I also had that experience of learning a lot about a client's personal life, and in many of these situations, I just felt like they were coming to me to learn intimacy. I've felt that at bachelor parties. You're surrounded by their friends and you're giving them a lap dance, yet they will tell you really intimate things. And I have so much compassion for those men.
There's the stereotype of guys who go to sex workers, especially dominatrices, as being antisocial, introverted weirdos. How much of that is real?
Lorelei: Of course, there is your handful of introverted guys. On the other hand, there are also successful, good-looking, outgoing men who just don't want any of the emotional baggage, and there's just one specific thing that they want. In the world of BDSM, unfortunately, we get a lot of clients who just have this one kink that stops them from being fulfilled in their personal life. And it can be such an innocent thing, like the newspaper guy I mentioned. Once a month, he'd come into the dungeon, see someone different every time, leave a stack of newspapers behind him, and say, "I don't need them anymore. I'm not coming back." It was so painful to see.
God, that's so sad.
Lorelei: Also, men who dress in lingerie. They're perfectly fine, intelligent men. And I'm happy to be there for them.
There's a school of feminism — really it's second-wave feminism — that thinks all sex workers are women being exploited. How would you respond to that?
Madeline: If it weren't for my time in porn or any of the sex work that I've done, I would not be the balanced, even-keeled individual that I am now. Being in porn, I've been able to express myself sexually without feeling shameful about it. And because of that, I'm able to have better relationships and a better sex life, which in turn makes my whole life healthier. It feels really good and very liberating that I don't have to hide it, and I know how to seek individuals out who are also interested. I know how to ask for what I want, say what I don't want, and I know how to enjoy it.
Lorelei: In terms of learning, communicating, getting rid of shame — I've also learned a lot of that at work. I do also think that women in the adult industry have an incredible variety of experiences and sometimes they conflict with each other. When I first started, I wasn't seeking empowerment or sexual exploration, I just wanted to pay my bills. It was really just a good avenue available to me, and because of that, I did jobs I would not take on now by any stretch, and I've have had all kinds of good and bad experiences.
But when feminist women and other groups talk about exploitation in the adult industry, oftentimes the response to the idea that women are being exploited is, "We need to end porn! Make the sex work industry illegal!" In actuality, when those jobs become illegal, the sex workers end up with fewer resources and worse labor conditions. The approach to it is really the opposite of that. If there's a problem with workers in bad conditions in the adult industry, the answer is to make the conditions better and create a situation where women have the power and are respected. I could talk about this for way too long, but the one other thing is sometimes that attitude comes out of an idea that women are unable to make sexual choices, and that is very frustrating. It's that attitude about how women don't like sex or don't know what they want, and men are the ones who say, "Give it to me," and women say yes or no, and don't ask for anything themselves. That's the kind of attitude that makes women not want to admit what they like. And one of the reasons we make porn is to dispel that myth.
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Photo Credit: Mineko Brand
