Julia Fox Found Life As a Dominatrix Desensitising, But Not All Doms Feel the Same 

Julia Fox recently sat down with Emily Ratajkowski on her new podcast High Low with Em Rata, and talked about her work as a dominatrix.

“See the problem is, I like sex,” Ratajkowski said, referring to how much she hates men.

“See, I don’t,” replied Fox, “I can go without. I’m like, so good.”

The two went on to talk about how being sexualised from a young age can create this narrative that you’re a super sexual person, which might just not be the case. Ratajkowski alikened Fox to Marilyn Monroe; pointing out that “she didn’t like sex either” but was super over sexualised from the moment she entered Hollywood.

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Many have speculated Monroe to be asexual, having been quoted saying things like “my fidelity was due to my lack of interest in sex” and in notes, found after her death, she’d written:

“Sex is a baffling thing when it doesn’t happen. I used to wake up in the morning when I was married, and wonder if the whole world was crazy, whooping about sex all the time… Then it dawned on me that people — other women — were different than me.

“They could feel things I couldn’t. And when I started reading books I ran into the words ‘frigid,’ ‘rejected,’ and ‘lesbian.’ I wondered if I was all three of those things.”

The same could be said for Julia Fox, that her commentary around a lack of interest in sex points more towards the asexuality spectrum. However, there’s something to be said for the narrative that perpetuates a disassociated relationship towards sex.

“I’m super desensitised to it,” Fox explained, “It’s just not thrilling to me, you know?”

“I probably won’t even cum because they (men) don’t know how. Sex for me has always been one-sided — I know it’s like that for a lot of women. Like, I don’t get dressed for men in mind at all. There was a time in my life where, maybe I didn’t have the exact thought, but I was subconsciously catering to the male gaze. I was in survival mode, I was presenting them with what I wanted, so I could get the resources I needed.”

Fox describes being “really good at disassociating” from sex. “We do it to live, to survive,” she says. “Which is crazy.”

“There’s been a lot of damage done. In my teens I learned that I was a commodity and that I could get resources from men. It became this game where I was like, how do I become more desirable and get more money and power. But it wasn’t my own power, it was through them, like they were giving me that power. It’s a humiliating — and now looking back on it — humbling position to be in.”

This made me think — if we’re utilising sex and our bodies as a way of making money, is there any other option but to disassociate with it?

Surely, there’s always a choice: to simply perform a job because you can, or to do something because you love it.

Sex is an undeniably vulnerable exchange, all wrapped up in emotion, pleasure, nakedness and both physical and emotional intimacy… but what if it’s your job? While many sex workers do compartmentalise their work from their personal life, as a way of personal self-preservation, others, like a woman I know — who goes under the name MOTHER — working as a full-time dominatrix here in Melbourne, embodies it.

“It is a job for me, but it’s one that I sincerely enjoy,” she tells me. “I never do the same thing twice, I’m always learning, I’m always on my feet and so much of it is in the mind that I’m just constantly stimulated.”

“I come across very unique individuals who have such interesting stories to tell you, with such devious secrets and I just think that’s wonderful, you know?”

MOTHER feels like she was born to be a dominatrix. People would always tell her that she looked like one before she’d even discovered kink. She’d suffer in the 40 degree heat in black vinyl outfits, knee high boots and full make up and hair, because she’s always wanted to outwardly express how she feels on the inside, but she wasn’t aware of the parts of herself that were yet to be unlocked.

“I remember a friend asking me if I was free to model for some pictures one night, because the model they’d booked was sick. I ended up being suspended by a dominatrix in a rusty old shed, out in a dodgy suburban area that looked questionable from the outside.”

She asks me if I’ve ever been tied up and I say no, somewhat disappointed in myself. I’ve definitely had moments in my life where there has been opportunity to get into a kinky situation, but I’ve always felt too afraid.

“I hadn’t been,” she assured me, “but it changed my life.”

“The feeling you get being tied up; being twirled and tugged-your limbs being restricted and bound and yet hanging free. I had never in my life felt anything like it. The release it gave me when I was brought down was amazing.”

She describes being held by complete strangers, shaking and clammy and completely zen. She’d never felt such peace an quiet,

“To be completely at peace to your body. Awake and relieved. It was heaven.”

She never looked back. She started working as a strip club, which led her towards kink. She was always sought out because of her personal aesthetic — very curvy with white Irish skin and a dark aesthetic — which drew in a specific clientele, that gravitated towards kink requests.

Eventually she ended up in the full service industry.

“I learned my trade originally through fetish meet ups, work-shopping, meeting other people in the trade to work under them and reading avidly. There is a surprising amount of education involved. Anatomy, psychology, and in my case, business. You need a certain knack for it. Some people do it but lack the compassion needed.

“To be a good Dom, you need to have the ability to lead, to hear and to facilitate. It’s not about what I want, or can extract, it’s about my client and a collaboration between us. I like creating a space for them to be themselves. Their true selves.”

MOTHER finds her job as a dominatrix just as satisfying as her clients. While there are undoubtedly people that work in the sex industry — whether it’s in the world of kink and fetish or not — that don’t necessarily feel connected to the work they do, that’s not true for everyone. It’s definitely not MOTHER’s experience.

“It’s unfortunate when you feel like you want to wash your job off,” she says. “I personally don’t feel as though I don’t have any other kind of personality, I’m fairly authentic in my work and I think that’s helpful, because I don’t have to spend my time pretending to be someone else.

“Regardless of our who we are, pretending is always exhausting.”

Running a business, she knows that the industry isn’t always a “safe” place, so she’s smart about her authenticity. For example, she doesn’t give out her real real name, email, telephone number etc, because having a professional degree of separation with a job that requires such vulnerability is simply a smart way to be.

But as for the actual work itself, she gets pure joy and empowerment from giving people “a weightlessness and a freedom to come into themselves”.

“The feelings of pleasure and surrender are really gratifying for my clients, and they’re gratifying for me.”