I am not a soft domme. But I am a caring one.
The whip feels as good in my hand as holding a lover. Sometimes better. And sometimes the whip is how I hold a lover. Every client, every submissive, is my teacher and my student. I learn from them just as they learn from me. So, I love them. All of them. How can you not love who teaches you? How can you not love those to whom you impart knowledge?
When I began as a dominatrix, I threw aside my Persian-American identity. How can it be possible to know master, slave, and mosque all at once? To be in a line of work where I expose my skin, knowing my sisters who fight for their freedom in Iran can be arrested for far less? For laughing in the street. For being joyous. Yet I offer you my joyous expression of sexuality. How could I reconcile these things? I’ve been to college—to university—and I’ve dated, and I no longer want to be called “hot like the desert”—to be fetishized without my consent and to take my loved ones, my sisters, my family, with me. I couldn’t.
So I hid my identity; my deep love of all things rose, the Farsi words that sometimes creep into my vocabulary. When I chose a name for my rebirth into the role of domina, I wanted to choose Shirin, meaning “sweet” in Farsi. Instead I chose a classic American name, “Dolly.” I wanted to separate myself from my Persian identity, and I thought it wouldn’t follow me.
Every client, every submissive, is my teacher and my student. I learn from them just as they learn from me.
Then came the war. My family always told stories about Tehran, Shiraz, Rasht, and Isfahan. I knew those places from the tales of my great grandma, from whom I get my name, who drank only Diet Coke, and knew how to drive a car. I heard all the intricate, sad, hilarious, and heartbreaking tales of the people my family knew in Tehran—the capital, and the city bombed on the first day of war. When I think of those who have died, the innocent people lost, I think of them as the figures from the stories I’ve heard. But they are not. They are all the beautiful, complicated things those people were.
I have this idea that many people think Iran is a desert with nobody in it. The people who are there are, of course, backwards in their thinking and living, and to eliminate them is no real loss. They seem to forget that these are real people with ideas, lives, children, pets, personal philosophies, political views, so much love, and so much romance. That romance is a driving force in my work, and denying my Persian-American identity means denying that driving force.
When people talk about romance, they often mean romantic love. This is not what I mean. To me, romance is a way of life, and in Iranian culture, it is deeply ingrained. It is in the rosewater we put in our ice cream and the way we love our friends. It is the poetry that underscores our entire culture.
I have this idea that many people think Iran is a desert with nobody in it.
Being a dominatrix isn’t a walk in the park. It is dangerous, and difficult, and taxing, and frustrating at times. There are precautions to take at every step, to shield from threats and prying eyes. But there is also a deep expression of care, and the ability to hold space for a stranger as you might a lover, and to learn from them as they do from you. To me, there is nothing more romantic than that. To cast aside that notion, along with my Persian identity, is something I simply cannot do anymore.
Every day, I heal through holding space, as I am wounded again and again by the stories I hear. Another bombing—schoolchildren hit this time. The president talking about us like we are cattle—like we are disposable. But the people who come to me are not. Not to me, and I won’t treat them like they are. Although the administration will not hold space for the Iranian people, I can hold space for others, and that is what keeps me going in this time of war. In this moment, my activism is the caring hand that holds the whip to guide the stranger until they feel seen, and it is quite a thing to create the spaces I never had as a young, kinky, queer Persian girl. It is quite a thing to create a space for consensual power-dynamic play in a world filled with power dynamics that are not consensual, not good-natured, and not meant to hold and teach.
Although the administration will not hold space for the Iranian people, I can hold space for others, and that is what keeps me going in this time of war.
I will do my part to hold and teach. I will do my part to respect and do right by the power I hold in each dynamic, and in each room I step into as a domina. Having that power in a time I feel so powerless to help, as my people suffocate under the weight of ignorance, vanity, and greed; using that power for good in a time where U.S. leaders use theirs to crush and diminish; it continues to heal me and is my way of fighting back. I am both society’s underground disciplinarian, and its hidden teacher, lover, helper, and fighter. The whip is my sword. This pen is my sword.
I have begun reclaiming my identity as a Persian dominatrix. It is no longer something I try to hide. It is no longer something I feel I cannot reconcile. It is healing me, and in a different lifetime, I know that such a deeply romantic culture will embrace the concept of BDSM—at its core, a ritual of power exchange, beauty, divinity, and learning. Persian culture and BDSM are not at odds with each other, and I was born to know pleasure, punishment, pomegranates, and pistachios all at once. I wear rose-scented perfume in session. I carry an evil eye. It is part of who I am.
One of my favorite figures from the tales my family told me of home was a philosophy teacher they had in school. He was an eccentric man, like many men of philosophy, always saying something to get himself in trouble. We often quote him saying, “God is like a bench in a zoo, something to lean on if you get scared.” I am not God, and I do not know if there is one, but I am a goddess, and I hope my clients rest on me as they get scared, as I rest on this work when I do. Leading, teaching, and holding space are divine: of this I’m certain, and my bench is there to lean on for those who need to feel seen.
Khodafez
For more articles on identity and healing, see Navigating Identity and Finding a Home in Domination and A Bonafide Lovergirl on Sex Work and Heartbreak.
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