On Queerness and Kink, with Mistrix Sunmi
It’s always a pleasure getting to chat with another dominatrix, especially ones that share many of the specific identity markers as me. I had the pleasure of getting to chat with the talented Mistrix Sunmi about how our queerness and our kinkiness have affected each other over time. Here are choice selections from our conversation. Please note that this is only part 1; part two can be read on Mistrix Sunmi’s blog.
Empress Wu: You came into your queerness way before you came into your kinkiness. What was that like?
Mistrix Sunmi: Mmhmm. The first time I laid eyes on a dyke. I knew I was queer. I knew I was like, attracted to whatever they were. And we fell in love and dated for about three years. So I mean, it worked out. I found old text messages between us where I said, “I'm gonna eat your ass”. And they're like, “Nooo”, and I said, “I'm gonna convince you to and you're gonna like it”... I think it’s safe to say I was kinky back then, we just didn't have the language for it because I was so young, like 12 or 13 years old.
EW: Was there a time when you were like, my sexuality is leather? Or maybe not leather, but like, kink? And when was the first time that you remember knowing?
MS: Yes… I was dating this girl, and she was like, “I am both dominant and submissive at the same time. Always.” And I was like, “Oh?I don't know what that means”. And then when we fucked it basically meant that she was vanilla.
EW: A positive and a negative equals zero
MS: Yea she didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about. But I remember I went to a play party. I was really interested in BDSM. I went to a play party and got topped by four friends of mine. It was a sensory deprivation and sensation play scene. I was blindfolded, gagged, tied to a bench and had four of my hot femme friends tickling me and pouring wax on me and biting me and flogging me. It was sensory overload. I didn’t know who was touching me and it was super erotic.
EW: Did you like it?
Empress Wu and Mistrix Sunmi, shot by Alex Kacha
MS: Oh my god I loved it! I was in subspace. I was dazed the whole rest of the time. And then later, I did a pick up play scene with this couple there and—this is me—I was like “I want to do this scene where we’re being held hostage.” And their partner was taking us hostage. I thought it was going to be super hot and we were going to be roped together. And then the person who was topping the scene—I was having such an active imagination about it and the person didn’t know what to do, and the other person wasn’t really into it. It was a weird scene.We didn’t know how to negotiate it or anything—I just met these people. I wanted to do this crazy fucking scene, but didn’t have the skills or knowledge or anything. That’s when I realized the person who’s topping the scene is doing a really bad job and I could do a much better job. And so that was kind of an idea, a seed. [laughs]
EW: That’s amazing. That sounds like a really really incredible scene to have four very hot femme friends topping.
MS: Oh my god it was immaculate. It was so fun. It felt so safe. And it was executed very well. There was a list of things I could pre-consent to. I got to pick who topped me, obviously.
How about you?
EW: I think I came into my kinkiness way before my queerness. Or my queerness didn’t fit right, it wasn’t as molded or clear for me as it was that I was insane, sexually. I just knew that I was like…psychotic, and from a very young age. Probably, I’m guessing anywhere from 12 to 14, I knew that I was into fucked up shit. I knew I was into gore. Just a 13-year-old of the early 2000s, reading terrible fanfiction online of these two gay boys and one of them is fucking the head hole of the other one who’s been decapitated. Wondering why it made me feel so funny
MS: So were you identifying as kinky back then too?
EW: I think I knew back then I was then I was kinky. I was a menace. I was asking people back then—and this is how I met you—I was asking people “what are you into?” I was asking people that question from a very young age. And being like “I really like choking.” And I knew that violence was something that had to be integrated into sex for me. And I knew that I wanted to be really good at sex. I knew that I really wanted to have insane crazy kinky sex before I ever had sex.
History will say they were best friends. Photo by Alex Kacha
The first boyfriend I ever had, we did a little bit of it together, but I think that he could probably tell that my hunger and desires far outpaced his. He was the one that encouraged me to become a domme, and I think that cemented…set me on a crazy path.
It was a combination of sex work and doing professional BDSM that made it clear to me that kinky, queer, poly triad is inextricable for me. And I think moving to New York and finding leather community in New York was super helpful for that. I felt, “this is just correct.” Meeting people who are older than us, who have been in the lifestyle for a really long time, who are queer, who understand the depths of that queerness the depths of that queerness and all those different configurations, and how all those different configurations can be an exploratory avenue for eroticism and sex. I was like, “That’s what I want.” I feel like my whole life has just been about the curious exploring of what sex can be and what eroticism can be and what intimacy can be. I think that’s something that you and I explore in our relationship pretty often; what can intimacy be instead of “this is what intimacy is.”
MS: I think for me, being queer—I have a lot of friends who influenced my thoughts and opinions about this—so often, I think being queer is not just about the sex that you have or your sexual desires. I think often it’s tied to where are you investing your time? What community are you investing in? So much of queering is the root of the word “queer”, like non-conforming. Distorting. I think being queer is very lawless. At the same time I think it’s a political statement. It can be a fashion statement. It can be a sexual identity. It can also be community. It can be just what happens in the bedroom. It could be your gender. It can really be so many things. For me personally, it’s in everything that I do. So it informs my politics, it informs my fashion, it informs the sex that I have, it informs my gender. It informs all of these things. So it really feels like a bloodline.
EW: It definitely feels like a bloodline. This is something I was talking to Cleo about, that queerness and meeting other Asian sex workers, and BDSM, queerness and leather really informed how I related to my mother culture, you know what I mean? That queerness informed my understanding of heritage and inheritance as something that I actively choose and am really proud of. And then that way I can return to my Asianness, my yellowness in a way that I feel really proud of too, and can see the power of that; it feels really crucial.
There was an argument that I was having for a really long time with someone was that I make the distinction that I’m gay but also queer. I think that there are people who are gay but not queer. The value system there is very distinct. There are a lot of people that the end all be all of gay rights is marriage. And I’m like, it’s not about that. For the me the fundamental definition of queerness is that it evades a defining. This is something I have discovered with my leather family too—look a those two weiner dogs! They’re just out and about.
MS: They’re all cousins
EW: And speaking of incest, I feel like something that I’ve discovered with my leather family is that so much of my queerness has been about reinventing intimacy, and reinventing what it means to be a family. No longer investing in what the nuclear family means. Or nuclear family no longer meaning partner, partner, kid, kid in a white house and a picket fence. Transcending that and transcending region, space, temporality, boundaries between platonic love, romantic love, and sexual love. All of those feeling quite strong. And usually when I think about my poly-ness, I usually think that I have three big loves, enough love for three units. One of them is you. One of them is my leather family as a collective. The third one is my community. I guess the fourth would be my clients. I love my clients—they all inform the ways in which I’m able to throw love back into community.
MS: The clients exist in the ecosystem of your love.
EW: Exactly. It feels very romantic. I talked to another member of my leather family about this, and she and I feel about the same way. She has a partner, a partner that she feels very close to and very in love with. And I said that I feel a romantic and sexual love towards our leather family as a collective unit. And she said she feels the same way. We’re dedicating time towards each other in the same way we would a romantic partner.
MS: You really are. It’s really beautiful to watch, to see, to be a part of.
EW: And I’m really glad that you get to be a part of it too. It’s very special to me. And I feel like the first time I met you I felt oh, you are one of us. And every single iteration of that, both that leather family, people in my community that I really trust. People have always said, “oh Sunmi is one of us.”
MS: It feels like a coming home in a lot of ways.
Mistrix Sunmi is a Baltimore based dominatrix and fetishist skilled at finding joy and intimacy in structure. You can find out more about Mistrix Sunmi on her website, and you can read part two of this discussion on their blog.