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Mistress Marley, Founder and Leader of the Black Dommes Sorority
By Damica Feliciano
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When Mistress Marley first became a professional Dominatrix, a role dedicated to leading and controlling sessions with clients involving erotic acts, in 2017, the field was filled with predominantly white dominatrixes who refused to support or build networks with others, especially towards people of color. It was then that Mistress Marley realized that there were very few spaces for Black and Brown dominatrixes in the Bondage, Dominance, Submission/Sadism, and Masochism (BDSM) community.
“When I first started out, I had no one to help me,” she said in Google Meets interview with The Intersectionalist. “I would reach out to other Doms who were mostly white or non-POC. They would be very rude to me, wouldn’t want to help me, would ignore me even when I was tipping them.”
Mistress Marley learned everything on her own without the guidance or help from others. And now that she’s approaching four years as a Dominatrix from New York City, skilled in sex work education and mentorship, she’s sharing her experiences with others. Her knowledge is creating spaces for Black and Brown Doms and sex workers in an effort to advocate for their rights and protection.
“Starting out, it was really hard. There were times where I logged off my computer and felt like shit for the rest of the day,” she said. “That’s why now I’m so big on mentoring now and trying to let people know or at least try to warn them that ‘Hey, this is something you’ll possibly face.’”
In July 2019, Mistress Marley created the Black Domme Sorority, a space on Facebook for Black and Brown Dom newbies and veterans alike, a community that can feel empowered by their dominance. The small group quickly grew from a couple of her close friends to 1,000 members and 70 inductees as of December 2020. The rapid growth moved the group from Facebook to Patreon as a way to introduce genuine membership. Part of what Mistress Marley emphasizes in her mentorships is taking up space unapologetically. “It means putting my foot down, protecting those that can’t protect themselves, and having a voice for those that don’t have their own. Dominance doesn’t always mean being mean or angry or controlling—it could be positive and showing up for people in ways you want them to show up for you,” she said. “My thing was always I never want another Black or AfroLatinx Dom to have to go through being alone.”
For Mistress Marley, Black Domme Sorority is a sibling-hood because they also have trans-identifying and non-binary identifying members. They also offer an emergency fund for members in need and a close knit community.
“You can come to any hour of the day and ask a question—someone will be there for you,” Mistress Marley said. “A lot of people come into this work with no confidence or things in their past that may have made them feel a way about themselves—just hearing them say they now have confidence is the most rewarding thing to me.”
On top of being a professional findom and founder of the Black Domme Sorority, Mistress Marley also leads a series of sex education courses on Patreon called
Sexcademy, aimed at educating students on BDSM, sex work, vanilla sex, or being a sugar baby.
She is also a kink educator, mentor, a sex worker activist, and a “play party” host for Black and AfroLatinx communities interested in engaging in sexual activities in group settings. Needless to say, Mistress Marley has a lot on her plate, but to her, it’s all worth it if she can normalize sex positivity in Black, Indigenous, and communities of color.
she said. “I’m always thinking, ‘How can I bring different experiences to people that they may never had before,’ or ‘How can I open up someone’s mind to something?’”
The New York City-based dominatrix’s biggest aspirations is not only to instill more sex positivity in Black spaces, but to also provide mutual aid and facilitate support for sex workers. Last summer, Mistress Marley raised money for people who had been criminalized through sex work by participating in the Black Sex Worker Liberation March—one of the biggest sex worker marches in New York City. She also led a toy drive with the Black Domme Sorority for their families alongside this effort. help us.”
Her passion for providing spaces for Black and Brown Doms is fueled from her own experience with microagression and racism in sex work. She’s experienced many Subs, clients who indulge in erotic acts by submitting to a Dom, trying to lower wages.
“[Subs] will try to say that your rates are too high to be a Black woman, or try to compare you to this white Sub charging this much so you should charge this much,” she said. “I also notice that a lot of them try to push their insecurities off on Black women so it’s really just a thing of having to deal with a lot of microaggressions.”
“I notice a lot Mistress Marley is of people use a visionary in the sex work as an BDSM community aesthetic and for her continuous aren’t there, efforts to open up full on for us,” more spaces for she said. “We, Black and Brown sex workers, Doms and empower are really vulnerable so it’s just trying a sense of dominance in everyone. to make sure that people don’t use us for their own gain. People are looking to us to take our aesthetic but they’re not looking to
These experiences informed her sense of activism and inclusivity in the sex work community. Mistress Marley, upon recognizing that Black sex workers are less likely to
Graphic by Ricki Kalayci.
be protected and more likely to be scrutinized, said she realized that her mentorship needed to be rooted in community efforts and education.
This realization is a major reason why Mistress Marley is constantly coming up with new, innovative ways to foster more spaces for Black and Brown sex workers by listening to their needs and what she thinks the community could benefit from. She jokes that her assistant often has to keep up with her constant flow of ideas and projects, but behind each initiative Mistress Marley starts, she keeps one thing in mind.
“There are so many people that look up to me and that I can help day-in and day-out” she said. “The Black Domme Sorority is more than a community to me but a big part of my life. I’m just so glad I got to create a community like I had and to know that there’s not really another community out there.”
“It’s so exciting to be able to start something meaningful:” State Representative Nika Elugardo shares her approach to life and legislation
By Adelaide Taylor
It’s no surprise that public schools in low-income areas have limited amounts of resources. But when Massachusetts State Representative Nika Elugardo switched from public school to private school in the seventh grade, she was angered by how much the public school system wasn’t investing in their students, especially those who are Black and Brown.
“These girls had already written term papers and had a year of Latin,” Rep. Elugardo said in a Zoom interview with The Intersectionalist. “In my family, we were worried about our lights getting turned off, and whether I have to go to my grandmother's to eat because we don't have any food and getting evicted all the time, which is why I moved to different schools and why housing is a big deal to me and part of my platform.”
Rep. Elugardo, a self-described “systematic thinker,” was elected in 2019 after winning a highlypublicized race against a highranking incumbent Democrat Jeffery Sanchez. She represents areas of Boston including Brookline, Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain and Roslindale.
In January 2021, Rep. Elugardo passed her first bill titled “Flag and Seal,” which established a committee to redesign the Massachusetts flag. The flag depicts a sword held over the head of an Indigenous person, a racist image that celebrates genocide.
The Intersectionalist spoke with Rep. Elugardo over Zoom discussing legislative tactics, the importance of collaboration and her commitment to progressive policies.
The interview has been edited for style and clarity.
The Intersectionalist: Do you consider yourself an idealistic or realistic person? How do you approach work in the State House against centuries-old systems? Rep. Elugardo: I try to be systemic, which means that I try to work with groups and leaders who have influence that is bigger than themselves personally. I also try to stay connected and grounded with people that share my leftist political values. I am a part of three caucuses, including the Black and Latino Caucus, where we tend to have very similar and often identical values around anti-racism and ending structural racism in all kinds of policy areas from housing to healthcare to criminal justice. I am also in the Women’s Caucus and the Progressive Caucus, whose members I work often with on strategizing.
This year, I'm going to be trying to build a stronger relationship with the rural caucus. I want to try and have more of a shared understanding of where we have common ground around antipoverty.
The Intersectionalist: What are you currently working on?
this session — starting February — really educating myself, advocates, supporters and constituents about the nuts and bolts of how you really move things in the building, helping people understand how to strategically target your legislation so that over the years, it has the best opportunity to get passed. Obviously, being a second-term representative, I am a learner in that, I'm not an expert. I'm learning as I go. And I want to make sure anyone connected to me is also learning as I go. That's what it means to bring the power and the voice to the people to the State House. I am representing you, and therefore you should understand what I'm doing and how I'm doing it — the nerdy nuts and bolts of how I'm doing it.
The Intersectionalist: What is your favorite part of your job?
Rep. Elugardo: What I like most is the ability to build meaningful, both professional and personal relationships with people that think very differently from me, and people that think really similarly to me. One of my bills that I’m the most proud of — my public housing expansion bill — kind of reflects that. It gives municipalities and public housing authorities the opportunity to get free land from the state for the purposes of either developing or funding affordable housing. And that housing can serve middle-class communities as well as impoverished communities. And it treats that whole range of people as investors versus a charity. So, it's a shift in mindset. something meaningful that has a chance [of] passing — that can change so many lives, but to do it in a way where it's not just my product. So many voices in and outside of the State House really made it a very strong piece of legislation.
The Intersectionalist: Do you ever feel like you have to compromise your politics to get things done?
Rep. Elugardo: I’ve never had to compromise my values, on the contrary, working with other people as a way of living aligns my political and personal values. Sometimes my political values are opposite of the constituents of another politician, but they’re willing to work with me on the merits of something else that's of deeper value to them. I do have to compromise all the time on legislative language. No one presents a bill, and then everyone agrees on it. We debate, and then make changes and debate some more. is a local activist and the person I've known in Boston the longest, besides my husband. He was the first person to tell me to run for office when I was not even 25. At that point, I was completely disgusted by the idea of running for office. I was a boycotter, not a joiner when it came to politics. But he kept meeting with me and became like family. And he was the first person to come out and support me when I decided to finally run.
I have a lot of conversations with God, a lot of conversations with Jesus in particular, so he feels like a mentor to me. Being able to find godly moments in each person is really critical to me, not only as a woman and as a Black woman, but as somebody that fights for justice, to be able to see both the humanity and the divinity in each person.
The Intersectionalist: When did you decide to run for office? Did you have any mentors?
Rep. Elugardo: I've been really lucky to have mentors. From my aunts and uncles growing up, and my grandparents, a few teachers, who bribed me into applying to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example. In college, I was just really adamant about Photo Courtesy of Rep. Nika Elugardo asking people to be Nika Elugardo speaks about her role in state my mentor. Mel King government and her goals for progressive policy.
By Alexa Maddi
In 2004, Sheena Collier moved to the Boston area to attend the Harvard Graduate School of Education. However, as a Black woman at a predominately white institution, she struggled to feel a sense of belonging and finding her community. She lacked a guide on how to navigate Boston and build connections with other Black people.
As a result, she created Boston While Black, the first membership network for Black professionals, entrepreneurs, and students who are seeking connection and community in the Boston area. The program officially launched in July 2020 with 100 founding members. As of January 2021, Boston While Black has curated 275 members.
Through virtual events and programs, Boston While Black guides members in finding mentors whom they can relate to, resources on how to navigate the city, and ways to expand their network. “We have a co-working event every Friday, where we hop on Zoom, play music, and folks do their work together and connect in the chat,” Collier said in a phone interview with The Intersectionalist from Boston, Massachusetts. “[On Jan. 17] we [had] a cooking event where everyone [went] grocery shopping, and we [had] a chef who [came] in virtually to show us how to make a meal.”
Erica, who requested to exclude her last name, became a Boston While Black member in December 2020. She said she loves the variety of events she can find on the Boston While Black platform and learning new things about the Boston community.
“I’ve been in the process of building a life here in Boston but was missing connection with the broader black community here,” Erica said in an interview with The Intersectionalist. “Now, as a member of Boston While Black, I have an easy way to connect with those in my area.”
A Boston While Black membership costs $39 a month or $399 a year. Memberships can be acquired independently or through participating workplaces, where companies can offer membership packages.
Collier said one reason she was inspired to develop Boston While Black was because she noticed that Black students often leave Boston after receiving their degree since they failed to build a connection to the city.
“I think, like at many predominantly white institutions, the Black students [at Harvard] kinda gravitated together,” she said. “But as soon as we graduated, if there were 35 Black master’s students, then like 32 of them left. This is what I’m trying to solve now through Boston While Black.”
Wayfair Inc., one of the largest employers in Massachusetts, officially became a founding partner for Boston While Black Jan. 26. Through this partnership, Wayfair will sponsor future programs and events and include memberships in their recruitment package.
"Building a thriving network that connects Black changemakers across industries in Boston is just the first step,” Collier said in a statement with Wayfair. “We are tapping Boston's broader business community to join our
dynamic founding partners to take public action, invest in both Black businesses and Black talent, and serve as catalysts for the long-overdue shift toward a more inclusive society.”
Collier said the next step with Boston While Black is to begin working with universities.
“In the next month or so, we’re gonna start to focus on universities and how to support not just the students, but Black faculty and staff as well,” she said. “Like how do we not have people have the experience that I had as a grad student where I didn’t feel like anyone really made an effort to try to engage me.”
Collier learned the importance of creating authentic relationships within groups because of The Collier Connection, an agency she created in 2016 that focuses on producing inclusive physical spaces, events, and programming for people of color by talking to other companies.
Collier said. “I speak, host events, and consult with companies to design strategic events and programming.”
Before coming to Boston, Collier attended Spelman College, a historically black college in Atlanta, Georgia, and received her Bachelors of Arts in psychology/
child development. She said that even while growing up in Albany, New York, there was never a time when she was not surrounded by predominantly Black communities.
“It was definitely a huge adjustment for me, particularly coming from an HBCU,” she said. “Obviously in Spelman, there was no Black student union and none of those kinds of groups.
So, [moving to Boston] was the first time I had to really seek out other Black people.”
“It’s important to seek out folks that are a part of your tribe and join things that already exist and really creating them if they don’t,” Collier said. “I’m big on people creating the city they wanna live in, and I think in Boston in particular, you do better if you’re willing to create.”
Living in Boston for the long term was not something Collier said she originally had planned due to her internal struggles as a Black woman at a PWI. But, she said it's important to find other individuals who share similar identities, whether that is racerelated or otherwise. She also said Black students need to continuously remind themselves that they are worthy of attending their universities.
Photo Courtesy of Nikki Monet. Sheena Collier, the Founder and CEO of Boston While Black, created a membership network for Black professionals to find a community, both professionally and socially.
