Terri-Jean Bedford was one of Canada's most notorious citizens--but few know her under that name. As Madame deSade, however, she was Canada's most famous leather-clad dominatrix, a well-known public figure appearing on the evening news as she took on the Canadian legal establishment to ultimately change sex worker law throughout the country. Born into abject poverty, this bi-racial girl was placed into a foster home at six, where she was abused. She was later moved into various children’s homes and lived there until she was 16, when she left to make it on her own. She survived by working numerous unskilled jobs, until she entered the world of prostitution. Her talents and interests helped her move into the elite world of the professional dominatrix, after which life was never the same. Located just outside of Toronto, her elaborate Bondage Bungalow became the target of a spectacular raid. Six highly publicized years of trials and appeals later, she was convicted under bawdy-house laws and paid a small fine. In 1999, she opened a similar facility in downtown Toronto, one that closed without police interference in 2002. A few years later she was at the center of Bedford vs. Canada, a five-year constitutional challenge to Canada’s sex trade laws. The Supreme Court vindicated her struggles. A mother and grandmother, she still advocates and writes for sex worker rights. Despite her at times heart-breaking story and declining health, she says she is going out a winner. She remains a vocal advocate for civil rights and the disenfranchised. She has been a plaintiff in a major constitutional challenge, and, as a result, Canada's prostitution laws were struck down in 2010. A play based on her life story is currently in production in Windsor, Canada in 2022.

Terri-Jean Bedford is one of Canada's most notorious citizens but few know her under that name. As Madame deSade, however, she was Canada's most famous dominatrix, a well-known public figure. These are her long-awaited memoirs. Terri-Jean was born into abject poverty and put into a foster home at age six, where she suffered abuse. She was later moved into facilities for children and lived there until she was sixteen, when she left to make it on her own. She survived by working numerous unskilled jobs, until she entered the world of prostitution. Her talents and interests helped her move into the elite world of the professional dominatrix, and her life would never be the same. Located just outside of Toronto, her elaborate Bondage Bungalow became the target of a spectacular raid. Six highly publicized years of trials and appeals later, she was convicted under bawdy-house laws and paid a small fine. In 1999, she opened a similar facility in downtown Toronto, one that closed without police interference in 2002.She remains a vocal advocate for civil rights and the disenfranchised. She has been a plaintiff in a major constitutional challenge, and, as a result, Canada's prostitution laws were struck down in 2010. Because of Terri-Jean's failing health, Madame deSade hung up her whips and is now happily retired. Today, Terri-Jean leads a quieter life, enjoying the company of her daughter and grandson. Hers is a story of survival, trial, and triumph.

In Bedford, the Supreme Court struck down prohibitions against communicating in public for the purpose of sex work, living on its avails, and working from a bawdy house. Its narrow constitutional reasoning nevertheless allowed Parliament to respond by adopting the “end demand” or “Nordic Model” of sex work regulation, an approach widely criticized for failing to ensure sex worker safety. Judging Sex Work takes stock of the Bedford decision, arguing that the constitutional issue was improperly framed. Because the most vulnerable sex workers have no realistic choice but to commit the impugned offences, they already possess a legal defence. The constitutionality of the sex work laws should therefore have been assessed by their application to those who choose sex work, an approach that militates in favour of upholding these laws based on current jurisprudence. While this approach leads to the former restrictions on sex work being constitutional, it also has the salutary effect of forcing litigants to consider a more pressing question: Can sex work be rationalized as a criminal matter at all?

Mother by day, Dominatrix by night. When a cash-strapped single mother of two in suburban Melbourne has a fun idea to start a side hustle running workshops for hens' parties, she has no idea it will lead her on a surreal adventure (or twenty) through the debaucherous underground world of kink clubs and swingers' parties. Nor does she know that it will bring her out on the other end as one of Australia's most recognised Dominatrixes. Complete with celebrity encounters and lessons in kink, love, and parenthood, she shows us how having multiple identities is not only possible, but incredible, and that some mums really are superheroes - they might just use their rope and masks in a different way than you'd expect.

Our lives are full of small tensions, our closest relationships full of struggle: between woman and man, artist and customer, purist and commercialist, professional and client—and between the dominant and the submissive. In Dominatrix, Danielle Lindemann draws on extensive fieldwork and interviews with professional dominatrices in New York City and San Francisco to offer a sophisticated portrait of these unusual professionals, their work, and their clients. Prior research on sex work has focused primarily on prostitutes and most studies of BDSM absorb pro-domme/client relationships without exploring what makes them unique. Lindemann satisfies our curiosity about these paid encounters, shining a light on one of the most secretive and least understood of personal relationships and unthreading a heretofore unexamined patch of our social tapestry. Upending the idea that these erotic laborers engage in simple exchanges and revealing the therapeutic and analytic nature of their work, Lindemann makes a major contribution to cultural studies, anthropology, and queer studies with her analysis of how gender, power, sexuality, and hierarchy shape all of our social experiences.

The academic book on the history of the Dominatrix through the ages, with meticulous research from libraries and museums. From the ancient Dominatrix Goddess Inanna - Ishtar, the 17th - 19th Century Governess Dominatrix, the 20th Century 'Bizarre' ladies. Lastly Nomis theory on the Dominatrix's practices as the 'Seven Realm Arts'.

The Subject of Prostitution offers a distinctive analysis of the links between prostitution and social theory in order to advance a critical analysis of the relationship of law to sex work. Using the lens of social theory to disrupt fixed meanings the book provides an advanced analytical framework through which to understand the complexity and contingencies of sex work in late modernity. The book analyses contemporary citizenship discourse and the law's ability to meet the competing demands of empowerment by sex workers and protection by radical feminists who view prostitution as the epitome of patriarchal sexual and economic relations. Its central focus is the role of law in both structuring and responding to the 'problem of prostitution'. By developing a distinctive constitutive approach to law, the author offers a more advanced analytical framework from which to understand how law matters in contemporary debates and also suggests how law could matter in more imaginative justice reforms. This is particularly pertinent in a period of unprecedented legal reform, both internationally and nationally, as legal norms simultaneously attempt to protect, empower and criminalise parties involved in the purchase of sexual services. The Subject of Prostitution aims to overcome the current aporia in these debates and suggest new ways to engage with the subject and law. As such, The Subject of Prostitution provides an advanced theoretical resource for policymakers, researchers and activists involved in contemporary struggles over the meanings and place of sex work in late modernity.