This article contains sexually explicit material.
If you aren’t already “feeling the Bern,” you will be by the time these New York BDSM professionals are done spanking it into you.
The new group Dommes for Bernie placed an ad on Manhattan’s Backpage.com classifieds on Friday, calling for Wall Street workers to step up for punishment worthy of the Bernie Sanders presidential platform.
Do you work on Wall Street? Are you a capitalist swine who exploits people for profit? Should you or your boss be in prison for wrecking the economy? Then you deserve a thorough beating!
According to the ad, the professional dominatrices have a platform of their own—they “believe in workers’ rights, destroying white supremacy, and smashing the patriarchy to bits, one submissive at a time.”
For just $27—the average contribution the Sanders campaign received in the last quarter of 2015, from approximately 2.5 million donors—submissives can ask for the “Bernie special,” which is 15 minutes of spanking paired with a safe word: “I feel the Bern.”
Speaking to the Daily Dot, 25-year-old member Mistress Simone said that the group is made up of professional dominatrices who went independent after quitting the dungeon scene.
“Back when we worked in dungeons, we’d mostly dominate prominent businessmen who found the proximity to their jobs convenient, and trusted the establishments with their identities,” Simone said. “Now our clientele’s a mixed bag. Some big shots, Hasidic men, and a lot of blue collar guys who can only afford to see us once a month.”
The group includes Mistress Brooke, 23; Mistress Rose, 24; and “vanilla” activist Yeni Sleidi. The Dommes for Bernie say they are unaffiliated with the Sanders campaign but do attend protests and other political events on occasion.
A big part of their platform, besides whipping Wall Street into submission, is dismantling sexism.
“We believe that even though Bernie Sanders is an old white dude, he’s as sincere as politicians get in his quest to dismantle the corrupt oligarchy that this country has become,” Simone said. “He seems to understand intersectional feminism, and the changes that he’s proposing will, by and large, benefit women of color.”
The idea for the dominatrix PAC, as it were, was initially a response to Nevada’s legal brothel worker contingent Hookers4Hillary. That group, mostly based at PR genius Dennis Hof‘s Moonlight Bunny Ranch brothel, announced its Clinton endorsement last April based largely on the candidate’s commitment to healthcare reform, public health initiatives, and a “thriving economy built from the bottom up” with tax breaks for the middle class—which makes up the majority of the Bunny Ranch’s clientele.
But Dommes for Bernie isn’t just stumping—it’s also donating all of the proceeds from the “Bernie special” to the Sanders campaign. And not just anyone qualifies for the democratic socialist beatdown.
“We’re only offering the special to clients with six-figure salaries, or more,” Simone said. “We think it’s poetic justice to dominate men who benefit from capitalism, and then donate their tributes to a candidate who stands up for those that are most harmed by it.”
The crew of Dommes said they respected the Nevada brothel workers who back Hillary Clinton, but they feel that she’s the wrong choice for the sex worker vote.
“Hillary Clinton doesn’t support legalized prostitution, which goes to show that her support for women is conditional and rooted in respectability politics” said Simone. The dominatrix admitted that while Clinton has been quoted on her anti-prostitution stance, Sanders hasn’t addressed the issue publicly at all.
In 2007, Hillary Clinton told the Reno Gazette-Journal that she did “not approve of legalized prostitution or any kind of prostitution,” adding, “it is something that I personally believe is demeaning to women.”
Simone said she would be “shocked and disappointed” were Sanders to make a similar statement. Professional dominatrices typically steer clear of directly sexual acts with clients, focusing instead on submission and pain, but either candidate’s stance on sex workers could affect multiple sectors within the industry.
For now, only a couple of submissive capitalist types have responded to the ad. Sleidi told the Daily Dot that the dommes are adding to the marketing by “promising to twist their subs nipples until they agree to donate.”
So will Dommes for Bernie grow into a full-fledged super PAC? Maybe not, but don’t expect them to sit on the sidelines, either.
“Maybe we’ll show up in South Carolina with Bernie-stamped ball gags,” said Simone, “To throw at Trump and Cruz supporters.”
Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman