In a world that often demands compliance, the simple act of saying no can become a revolutionary act. For Venus Cuffs, a former dominatrix and alternative lifestyle expert from New York City, refusal represents the ultimate form of empowerment. She's part of a lineage of Black femmes who have used their positions in adult entertainment to reclaim power through deliberate boundary-setting.
The Revolutionary Power of No
Venus Cuffs recalls facing significant backlash when she refused to participate in race play within predominantly white kink communities. My refusal to participate is offensive to people, she says, highlighting how her boundaries were met with outrage. This reaction points to a familiar cultural script that demands Black femmes remain endlessly available, compliant, and grateful. By interrupting this expectation, Cuffs engaged in what she describes as sabotage for survival.
For Cuffs, rejecting race play meant rejecting the broader cultural insistence that Black women perform whatever roles others demand of them. Race is nothing to play about, she states unequivocally. This refusal wasn't merely personal protection—it became the foundation for creating something new and transformative.
Building New Spaces Through Refusal
Walking away from the mainstream kink scene allowed Cuffs to stay aligned with her integrity while opening doors to creative and personal realignment. She founded Spread, a 4,000-square-foot Brooklyn dungeon specifically designed for queer BDSM practitioners to host sessions and explore power dynamics safely. This establishment quickly gained traction, serving as both a business venture and a declaration: a rejection of exclusionary spaces and an affirmation of something better.
Madison Young, a Bay Area filmmaker and sex educator, echoes this sentiment about the transformative power of refusal. Refusal means refusing to follow the path we have been told to walk when our instincts tell us otherwise, they explain. For Young, queer refusal involves rejecting pressure to become more palatable or risk-averse to avoid causing disruption.
Sabotage as Creative Construction
While Cuffs confronts racialized demands placed on Black femmes, Young's dissent takes different forms. As a white queer filmmaker, their refusals target industry expectations of palatability and compliance. Young creates films and performances that defy neat categorization—exploring queer family-making, kink, and submission—all centered on authenticity. They describe this approach as the inherent nature of queerness: to exist outside of the lines and boxes drawn for us.
If refusal means saying no, then sabotage involves building yes. Young practices this by hiring predominantly women, nonbinary, and trans crew members for their film sets. It shifts the dynamic on set when it is a room full of women and queers, they note. These deliberate choices both build queer community and disrupt industry norms.
Tracy Quan, a former escort and author of Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, demonstrates how sabotage can operate more subtly. She describes her approach as a form of entryism, smuggling radical ideas into mainstream publishing by infiltrating oppressive spaces from within. Quan points to British novelist Nancy Mitford, who wove antifascist politics into seemingly fluffy social comedies, as inspiration for her method of secreting feminist critique into commercial publishing.
Boundaries as Collective Political Strategy
In our current political climate—characterized by transphobia, attacks on bodily autonomy, and criminalization of sex work—boundaries and refusals transcend personal choice. They become collective political strategies for protecting queer joy and community.
Young emphasizes that stating boundaries and working with refusal creates space for what we truly want. A no to the wrong collaborator opens a yes to the right one, they explain. Setting limits becomes a protective measure for preserving collective joy, relationships, and connections.
Quan reframes constraints as creative pleasure rather than deprivation, while Cuffs locates joy in explicitly reclaiming time, body, and power through boundary-setting. I don't have to show up for anyone when I can't show up for myself, Cuffs states, highlighting how each refusal represents a reclamation of autonomy.
The late Mistress Velvet understood this political dimension when she turned dominatrix sessions into educational experiences, requiring white submissives to engage with Black feminist thought to earn her attention. Similarly, Cuffs, Young, and Quan demonstrate through their respective work that sabotage isn't nihilism—it's survival, creativity, and care.
Cuffs leaves us with a powerful reminder: Do what feels right for you. Don't be influenced by the amount of money, the amount of power, what other people tell you it should look like. Slavery is over.
