Sex Workers Are Very, Very Angry At Netflix Over Its New Show About Dominatrixes, ‘Bonding’

“A New York City grad student moonlighting as a dominatrix enlists her gay BFF from high school to be her assistant.” That’s the description Netflix gives for one of its new original series Bonding.

According to series creator Rightor Doyle, the show is “loosely based” on his real-life experience of becoming the “assistant” to a dominatrix when he first moved to New York City.

Regardless of how much of the show is supposedly based on real-life experience, Bonding, which was released on April 24th, has made sex workers very upset with the way they are being portrayed on the show.

So, because this is the 21st century, they are doing what everyone does when they have a complaint about something, they’ve taken to Twitter to vent. (Although Netflix did kind of ask for it, getting their fictional dominatrix, Mistress May, verified on Twitter, while real-life dominatrixes are routinely rejected.)

Rolling Stone reports…

“…on a website that many have argued partakes in discriminatory behavior against those who do sex work, many sex workers are outraged that Twitter would provide a platform for a fictional sex worker from a show that they have argued promotes an inaccurate and outright harmful view of their profession.”

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1121376269411729408

Criticism of the show is fairly wide-ranging: many have taken aim at the fact that the show basically glosses over how doms and subs negotiate boundaries and consent, which is crucial to any BDSM dynamic, while others have critiqued specific elements of the production design. (“She’s supposed to be one of NYC’s best dominatrixes but she’s working in a dungeon space with carpeting on the floor, which is not cleanly,” Mistress Couple, head mistress of La Domaine Esemar, tells Rolling Stone. “You’d be hard-pressed to find any dungeon with a carpet.”)

https://twitter.com/korbellacroix/status/1121633380502630401

By far the most common critique of the show, however, is that for a series that claims to be sex-positive and interested in removing the stigma surrounding alternative sexualities and sex work, Bonding actually seems a hell of a lot more interested in propagating harmful stereotypes about fetishes and sex workers. Tiff, for instance, is a highly cynical, emotionally unavailable grad student who, it is implied, has a history of sexual trauma — a cliché about sex workers that is, in itself, “pretty sex-negative. It’s such a tired trope and encourages people to see us as trauma victims,” says Kitty Stryker, a writer, consent educator and sex worker.

For what it’s worth, show creator Doyle told the New York Post, “The important thing about the show for me is we are exploring this world, but not exploiting it.”

Judging by the reactions on Twitter, his statement’s not worth very much.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1121579199020584960 https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1121872569441738752 https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1121449155468066819 https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1121269805175267328