What it’s like to be a dominatrix who whips and degrades her ‘sugar daddy’ for a living: ‘The whole point is to make them feel completely worthless.’

• Mistress Ree is a New Orleans-based dominatrix who verbally and physically dominates her clients. 
• She took Insider for a "ride-along" to observe one of her sessions. 
• Ree told Insider most of her clients enjoy the psychological aspect of domination over the physical.
• Because of the pandemic, Ree has had to reduce her clientele and stick to only a handful. 
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

It begins innocently enough, like any other FaceTime call. Mistress Ree waves at me on the screen. She's dressed in black lingerie and her hair is in box braids. 

"Hey dude, I have a surprise for you today," Ree, my friend, a 21-year-old dominatrix from New Orleans, tells me with a smile. Ree and I have known each other for years, so FaceTime check-ins like this aren't anything out of the norm. 

But this time, she steps back to reveal a bed. On it, is a 30-year-old man on his hands and knees, wearing nothing but his boxer briefs and a black latex mask. 

"Do you want to introduce yourself," she asks me, grinning. I knew I was going for a ride-along on one of her sessions, to see how she works, but I didn't expect to get into it this quickly. I regained my composure and said my name, that I'm a sex reporter, and that I go by "they/them" pronouns. 

"Introduce yourself to them, slave," she tells the man. He says his name, but he forgets to mention his pronouns. Ree doesn't take that kindly, hitting him with the belt she has in hand.

"They told you their pronouns, now you have to say yours." Trembling, he whispered: "He/him."

Ree's style of domination involves far less physical aggression and far more emotional degradation than I expected

Crystal Cox/Business Insider

Dominatrices like Ree are usually women and femmes who dominate their partners physically, mentally, and/or financially. They fall into a category of sex work under the BDSM umbrella (or, bondage-discipline, dominance-submission, and sadism-masochism).

Unlike many of the Hollywood depictions of dominatrices clad in leather, equipped with whips and chains, Ree prefers the psychological aspects of domination. 

Ree's "submissive" (the term used to describe a person who likes to be dominated in a BDSM dynamic) defines as a masochistic cuckold, meaning he likes to watch as his partners sleep with other people while demeaning him. He also likes to be watched as he's humiliated – hence the idea to have me watch, putting him on the spot, and giving me insight into how this all works. 

I learn that he has been engaging in BDSM since his early 20s. He's "dommed," or been a dominant person in a BDSM dynamic, before. But now he prefers to sub for most recent sugar baby. A sugar baby-sugar daddy relationship typically means an older person (sugar daddy) who dates a younger person (sugar baby) in exchange for money, gifts, and trips.

During the session, Ree spends most of the time talking to me, keeping the conversation casual. She talks about her day, her undergraduate classes, and her internship, all while her submissive massages her feet and rubs shea butter on her calves. 

"Ugh, you went too far up my leg," she says as he gets it to her knees. "Suck on my toes now. Anyways, like I was saying —," then it's back to catching up as usual.  

Namecalling, degradation, and the occasional smack of a belt are what Ree's clientele generally prefer. "The whole point is to make them feel completely worthless." 

"A lot of men, presumably heterosexual, cisgender men — especially if white and lighter-skinned men – they present themselves as these 'alpha males,'" Ree said. "Because they wear that mask all day, when they get into the bedroom, they like to retreat into submission because they get to take a break from that performance of masculinity." 

Raceplay is high on the agenda for her sex 'slave.' As a Black dominatrix, Ree has mixed feelings about it.

One element I didn't expect to watch was raceplay.

Raceplay falls into a subsection of BDSM in which people use race as a form of dominating or submitting to their partner. 

"Tell them what you said about Black women, listen to this," she laughs. 

"Black women are superior in every way," he says. 

Ree tells me later she also makes him send her daily "book reports" as part of the psychological thrill, asking him to read different works of racial justice like "The Autobiography of Assata Shakur" and "The Combahee River Collective Statement" and message her with a summary of what he's read.  

Ree said her sub made it a point to bring up race when they were negotiating their boundaries and expectations for their sessions. 

"He felt that one of the things I should enjoy out of that dynamic is that he is presumably well-off, corporate, white, white-collar guy and that he's being dominated by me, a Black woman," Ree said. "A lot of that is white guilt. I'm sure the recent protests, outcries, and things that are happening in the news has pushed a lot of white men to be more willing to be submissive to Black dominatrices." 

As a Black dominatrix, Ree told Insider she has very mixed feelings about this aspect of her work. While her sub repeatedly told her — both during the session and prior to them meeting in person — that his admiration of Black women is not a fetish, Ree is doubtful this is true. 

"You claim that you're not fetishizing me because I am Black but all the ways in which you approach my Blackness happen in a really fetishizing way. By talking about my skin, my attitude, all of those things come from stereotypes about Black women."

As a college student, Ree juggles her clients, classes, and an internship all during a pandemic 

Crystal Cox/Business Insider

Ree began domming in Spring 2019 as a way to pay her bills in addition to her 20-hours-a-week internship as a full-time college student. She sees clients in exchange for money and gifts, usually in the form of a sugar baby relationship. 

Since the pandemic led to lockdowns across the country in March, Ree said it has been hard to find clientele. While restrictions are loosening in New Orleans, her university has strict rules about who can enter student housing, meaning Ree is left to request hotel rooms from her sub to do their sessions. 

"I try to stay tested and self-monitor. That's also why I'm not trying to have a bunch of clients," Ree said. "I don't want to be a carrier and pass it on to each client so I only stick to a couple. Especially when I know it's someone who doesn't have any symptoms and can get tested and has the money to pay for me to get tested."

Things escalated, and I tapped out

About 30 minutes (and countless slaps and insults) into our chat, Ree told me we should probably say goodnight, as she needed to get into the more "X-rated" portion of the session. 

"I don't know how PG-13 we have to keep it for your viewers," Ree laughed. 

I thanked them both for their time and we hung up the call almost as abruptly as it had begun, with Mistress Ree standing calmly beside the bed, and the sub a little shaky, his back red from spanking, but his eyes eager go a step further. 

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