Gwyn Easterbrook-Smith reviews Bonding , the story of a grad student dominatrix and her gay best friend whom she employs as her assistant. As an academic who researches the media representation of sex work, and who paid my way through post-grad by doing sex work, including pro-domme professional dominatrix work, it could have been designed in a lab to be irresistible to me.
What was interesting and annoying to me was how, for a show trying to make a lot of dramatic claims about power plays, it failed to deliver on so many opportunities to say something interesting about the actual dynamics swimming just under the surface. Clients get the fully immersive fantasy that their specific desires are something which I want, expedited by the submissive role.
(mh=55Arzcowo8vbHVMO)0.jpg "SEX AGENCY Oklahoma City")
In truth, sex work still accommodates the desires of men, it just finally compensates workers for the physical, mental and emotional labour involved in that. Tiff foreshadows her eventual big reveal in a presentation to her psychology class by asking questions about the healing power of role play β furthering the idea that domme work is a therapy for her, as well as her clients.
The idea Bonding perpetuates that dungeon work is somehow fundamentally different from full service sex work escorting or prostitution , has also been justifiably criticised. There are expert skills in all kinds of sex work β hustling in a lounge is different to managing the time in an overnight appointment is different to drawing out exactly what a man means when he says he wants to feel humiliated Verbally?
It gets so close when he nearly walks out of a date at a go-go bar, but once again the show blithely bypasses an opportunity to explore a more interesting question: what sort of expectations get placed on sex workers in their personal lives? The conflation of a work persona with personal desires is what lands Pete and other sex workers in this predicament. She treats him like a prop, and manipulates his financial need in a way that is deeply uncomfortable to watch.
