Whip Smart in The Devil Beneath My Feet

The book we're reading in our book club is Whip Smart by Melissa Febos. Essentially the memoirs of a Dominatrix. I'm not a huge fan of her, to be honest. We decided to make it to a halfway point, have a brief discussion, and then finish it and start a new one.

By the halfway point, i hated this woman. Obnoxious and stupid and naive, and painfully so. Also BORING, oh my god so unbelievably boring. She details her life as a dominatrix and a junkie. ZZZzzz....

She spends the first half of this book justifying being a Dominatrix as meaning she's some kind of Xena the Warrrior Princess, like because she's able to piss on people and spank them with paddles and shove dildos up their butts this makes her a powerful woman. BULLSHIT, and this is the point that i called at our halfway meeting.

Power means strength, and strength is not strength if someone is just giving it to you freely for their OWN gratification. And even then, if she held a corporate job that paid several hundred thousand dollars a year and she could afford her own $1000/hr slave to whip, you're not a powerful fucking woman you've just got a fetish, get over it, you're not special.

Not to mention the whole junkie perspective, oh my fucking lord you could not be more boring to me. I've known many junkies in my life and all of them have the same exact story, it's predictable.

But much to my surprise, the moment we get past the halfway mark, she seems to jump right into my line of thinking and changes her perspective. Stops doing drugs, who cares, but then stops being a Dominatrix because she kind of comes to the realization that, at the end of the day, it's just sex work. There's nothing special about it that makes it a commendable service, it's just a service. And it's fine to be into domming/subbing, if you like it then great for you, but past the intial "Oh wow you do WHAT for a living?!" you get at parties don't expect anybody to be throwing you a fuckin parade.

So while i still find her intolerable i'm now less likely to use the word "Hate" when describing my feelings on this book. She's still a pompous ass, but at least she's not a total idiot.