Today we are taking a side quest from Fetishes to look at some revolutionary women of power who have made change in the world of kink.
Last week’s blog focused on documented female fetishists. After publishing, I thought, “How about the prodoms who shaped the contemporary BDSM world?” After all, they were the femdoms that thousands of fetishists and submissives visited and relied on for a kink fix!
Why This History Matters
So I cobbled together a list of some of the people I remembered or had read about and dug into whatever I could find online. I’m sad to report that contemporary femdom history is not well-documented. In part, it’s because some women wanted their history to vanish so they could pursue new careers, raise their kids, and lead normal lives. In part, it’s because it was an underground movement that depended on anonymity and pseudonyms to feel safe. Mostly, it reflects how history never values women as much as men.
Women of Power Who Shaped the Scene: 1960s – 1990s
This is a partial record of professional dominance in America from the 1960s through the 1990s, built from court documents, memoirs, photography archives, the accounts of people who were there, and my personal knowledge of most of the women who appear here.
All the women in this piece built something out of almost nothing, unknowingly creating the backbone of the BDSM Community. They ran private dungeons, BDSM clubs and events, mail-order magazines, print magazines, fetish shops, fetish parties, and entire subcultures, often dodging arrest. Most importantly, they welcomed in newcomers, fully accepted their fetishes and kinks, and gave lonely kinksters their first contact with people like them.
Monique Von Cleef (1935–2005)
Dutch-born, Monique trained as a nurse before becoming a professional dominatrix. She was first introduced to BDSM in Amsterdam by a Mistress named Gonda. After relocating to New York, she began building a client base out of her apartment, treating men from nearly every state and several other countries. A publisher of SM magazines offered to run her ads for free, asking only that respondents include a dollar with their reply.
Demand for her services quickly outgrew the apartment space. She purchased a three-story, sixteen-room house in Newark, NJ, outfitted with a full array of SM equipment, which became known as “House of Pain.” Only two years later, she was arrested after an undercover police raid resulted in her being charged with lewdness. She fled the U.S. before her trial and was convicted in 1967. Her case, Von Cleef v. New Jersey, reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court vacated her conviction in 1969, ruling the warrantless search of her home unconstitutional. She resettled in the Netherlands and published a memoir, The House of Pain: The Strange World of Monique Von Cleef, The Queen of Humiliation.
Mistress Belle de Jour (Manhattan, active c. 1973–1980s)
She was the leading NYC domina of the 1970s into the 1980s, according to client accounts. She openly advertised herself as running a “Palace of Dominance & Submission,” open seven days a week, with a weekly live S&M show on Wednesday nights, per a period advertisement.
Belle was best known for her on-stage fetish and BDSM performances for private audiences, including shows at the infamous Chateau 19. A submissive partner of mine recounted his visit to the club with his wife, and how he volunteered to get whipped on stage by Belle. It was one of the highlights of his life.
Documentation about Belle is thin. Community anecdotes exist, as do the memories of all the kinksters who knew her and the clients who once adored her.
Cynthia Slater (1945–1989)*
Cynthia Slater co-founded the Society of Janus with Larry Olsen in San Francisco in August 1974, after an earlier solo attempt to organize the community. Her Janus newsletter, Growing Pains, was widely read. She was the first woman profiled in Drummer magazine, interviewed in 1979 for Jack Fritscher’s feature on the Society. Jack’s write-up became the first national press coverage she and the organization received. In 2017, the San Francisco Leather History Alley set her bootprint in cement.
Slater used Janus to bridge communities, drawing bisexual and gay men into a scene that had been largely separate from gay male leather culture, and helped open the Catacombs to lesbians. She was photographed extensively by her lover Honey Lee Cottrell, and in 1978 by Robert Mapplethorpe. She described herself, in her own words, as “a gay man with a cunt.”
Following her own HIV diagnosis, Slater did phone hotline work providing sex information and AIDS support through the mid-1980s. Cynthia died in 1989 at age 44. In 2004, the Society of Janus marked its 30th anniversary with a tribute dinner honoring her legacy.
*Biographical details drawn from Jack Fritscher’s “Cynthia Slater: Kink Queen of Folsom Street,” Profiles in Gay Courage, jackfritscher.org.
Mistress Antoinette
Jeanette Zinkan, known professionally as Mistress Antoinette, was a fashion designer, publisher, filmmaker, event producer, and writer. She founded Versatile Fashions, known for handmade corsets and PVC garments, and produced the Dressed to Thrill Ball, which featured performers including Dita Von Teese.
Happily married for 24 years to Dr. Dick Zinkan, known as “Master Zorro,” they cofounded Reflections, a fetish magazine specializing in rubber and latex. She also produced fetish and B&D videos including “Lisa’s Rubber Seduction,” “Shiny Rubberists,” and “Doctor Drag” (1990).
Antoinette was also a fine designer of corsetry. Her corsets crossed into the mainstream, reportedly becoming the first to be sold by Victoria’s Secret, while her bullet bras and costumes influenced performers such as Madonna.
Her memoir, Tied Up With Love: The Making of Mistress Antoinette, was published in 1988. Her husband died in 2006; Antoinette developed Alzheimer’s in 2014, and is remembered fondly by many other greats in the kink and kink-adjacent worlds, most notably her mentee Veronica Vera
Constance Slater (“Lady Marie Constance”)
Constance was a fixture of the fetish scene for decades. After visiting the London fetish scene in the 1980s, she returned home inspired to create her own business in Upper Montclair, NJ. The result was the Dressing for Pleasure boutique and mail-order catalog.
Once dubbed the “Neiman-Marcus of the Fetish World,” her boutique specialized in leather, latex, and lace creations and catered to high-end buyers of fine fetish wear. It also became a go-to spot for East Coast kinksters seeking connection and conversation.
Under Constance Enterprises, she expanded the business with an annual Fetish Ball held at large hotels in New York and New Jersey. Constance also published a Dressing for Pleasure Magazine and companion videos that documented the runway shows that were a highlight of her fetish balls. Among her many innovative ideas, she also recruited a dazzling array of presenters and participants in her balls, including European fetish designers, prodoms from around the world, and Betty Dodson, the pioneer of masturbation positivity. She ultimately sold the boutique and retired.
Constance was featured in both Different Loving and Different Loving Too. In 2022, I nominated her for the Leather Hall of Fame. In 2024, she was inducted for her many contributions to our world. Constance now lives in upstate New York.
Cleo DuBois
Legendary sadist, dominatrix, and Scene icon, Cleo came out into SM play in the early 1980s, right in the heart of San Francisco’s emerging leather community. Her kinky education started by attending the first Dominant Woman class taught by Kat Sunlove. She became a bridge into the men’s leather community too, welcomed by groups like Outcasts, Society of Janus, the National Leather Association, and the Exiles. She was inspired by Cynthia Slater, Joseph Bean, Mark Thompson, and her life partner Fakir Musafar (born Roland Loomis, d. 2018), a pioneer and “father” of the modern body modification movement.
Her history in BDSM/Leather is substantial and well documented. She founded the Academy of SM Arts in 1995, offering classes and private consultations. In 2000, she produced a documentary, The Pain Game, examining erotic energy exchange in the dungeon, which received an award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality’s Western region in 2002.
In 2002, she began leading Erotic Dominance Intensives for women with close friend Sybil Holiday, adding a men’s track two years later, and later running seminars with fellow femdom Eve Minax. She served as San Francisco Pride’s Leather Contingent Marshal in 2008. Also in 2008 Cleo and Fakir were named Living Leather Legends by the Southwest Leather Conference. In 2014, Cleo was inducted into the Society of Janus Hall of Fame. In 2015, she received the Key to Folsom Street Fair for her community service.
Cleo was featured in Different Loving, Different Loving Too, and Sacred Kink, among other BDSM titles. She continues to practice today, offering guided BDSM coaching, mentoring, and shamanic kink ritual work.
Mistress Mir
A prominent figure in the BDSM and leather communities for over 45 years, Mistress Mir was trained in the Old Guard tradition. She balanced her professional domination with a commitment to the BDSM/Leather community. It earned her the moniker “The First Lady of Dominance in the Leather Community.” Of the seven internationally known professional super-dommes active in the 1990s, Mir was the only Black woman among them. She has been inspirational to the BIPOC Community, then and now.
Mir was a visible member of the Dressing for Pleasure ball circuit in the early 1990s and is fondly remembered for her extensive rubber wardrobe. She is also known as Princess Royale Makeda in the Imperial Court of New York, where she has served as a Board Member. She is an Elder of the Lesbian Sex Mafia and is an active presence at Folsom Street. She has contributed to shaping our world as a presenter at Black Beat, Beyond Vanilla, TES, NCSF, and the Woodhull Foundation.
Mir continues going strong. She continues her fabled charity work through the LGBT community, raising funds for social services and health support organizations, and giving health care facility presentations for the last 12 years.
Mistress Raven
Raven was the founder and co-owner of Pandora’s Box, a 4,000-square-foot professional domination studio. She ran the club for over a decade. She went from private work to supervising and managing a staff of fourteen femdoms.
She was the subject of Susan Meiselas’s 1995 photo series and Nick Broomfield’s 1996 HBO documentary Fetishes. She also co-authored a book pairing Meiselas’s photography with her own writing.
Raven left Pandora’s sometime in the 2000’s. Since she never revealed her true identity publicly, there is no information about her beyond her history at Pandora’s.
Stephanie Locke
Stephanie started as Head Mistress of the Padded Cell, an early Los Angeles BDSM club, at age 19. She went on to own her own clubs in the 1980s, including Club “O” and Private Quarters. She has worked as a professional dominant for over four decades, and is still active today.
Her adult film career began in the early 1990s under her own name, including “Mistress Stephanie Locke” (1993) and over 50 films for companies including Harmony, Shadow Lane, Nu-West, and Chelsea Pfeiffer Entertainment.
She has appeared as cover model, centerfold, or featured subject in numerous fetish magazines, including Leg Show, Domina, and Domination Directory International, inter alia. She lectures internationally on bondage, fetish, mummification, and domination.
Stephanie was profiled on the Authentically Kinky podcast, billed as “the original OG Mistress.” She is featured in Different Loving Too. You can follow her on X (@Mistress_Locke) and Instagram.
Powerful Women Who Rocked Our World
These are just some of the magnificent and courageous women who dared to create our world.
These women built something out of almost nothing. Many risked arrest, public exposure, or the loss of everything else in their lives just to do this work. Their personal sacrifices embodied the spirit of all the early BDSM pioneers. And they are just the ones who are well-documented enough to pull together these biographies. (By the way, if I got any bios wrong, please let me know!).
Their names deserve to be celebrated. They made the modern Scene not only possible but exciting, entertaining and magical. Their spirit and commitment paved the way for all of us who came after.
