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If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for sexual harmony,

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I follow a lot of femme pro doms on Twitter.

I mean a lot, a suspicious number.

Mistress Matisse, Domine Yuki, Savannah's Live, Justin Cross, Lady V.

I'm not a client. I don't book sessions. I don't follow

them for the hot photos or the video clips or the foot worship content. I follow them mostly

for their politics. The real pros out there, the working pro domes as a group, they're really

fucking smart. I don't mean that to sound patronizing, but, you know, a lot of people look down their

noses at sex workers and think they're not smart enough to do anything else.

And I'm pushing back against that at the risk of sounding patronizing because I know it's not true.

And the proof, if you want to find it, is all over Twitter.

The prodoms I follow, they post a lot of really fucking interesting stuff about politics, about feminism, about the climate, their own takes, articles they've read, sometimes articles they've written along with the kinkpicks and the fetish content. And I'm here for that, or I'm there for that, whichever that would be. Anyway, when I was an adolescent, when I was an at-risk myself, way before the internet came along, there were these things called magazines. Some of them were porn magazines, and a lot of men who subscribe to one in particular, Playboy magazine. They like to say they read it for the articles. They didn't subscribe for the playmates or the centerfolds. No, they read it for the articles. They got Playboy for the articles. That's what men said. They said it so often it became a cliche, but it was plausible. A lot of people read Playboy for the articles. I know I did when I was 15, my older brothers. They had stacks of Playboy magazines and Pennhouse magazines. And I read them each month, cover to cover, Little Gay Me, I was reading them for the articles.

I was very careful not to accidentally open the center poles.

The advice column actually in Pennhouse magazine, Ask the Madam, was written by a woman who had done pro-DOM work and other kinds of sex work, Xaviera Hollander, and she was a big

inspiration for me when I started Savage Love. My column, my whole attitude towards sex, really,

it was shaped by Hollander, a pro-Dom. Both Mags, Playboy and Pennhouse, had advice columns,

but Playboy in particular, they had lots of stories that weren't about sex. They published stories by big name authors and getting asked to do the Playboy interview.

That was a big deal.

Civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. did the Playboy interview.

Malcolm X.

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