"The dominatrix is the id of American femininity. She says the words that we all wish we could say when we find ourselves frozen in the presence of men. 'No' is principal among them."

How do I convey everything this powerhouse of a woman, a lesbian dominatrix PhD who teaches gender studies at USC, taught me about my own womanhood?

"To use the word 'no' is to disrupt femininity itself. Women are supposed to be nice, pleasing, compliant, available. No is the utterance that disrupts all of that. It is the failure of femininity to do what it's told."

I knew I would enjoy listening to Belcher tell me about how she was paid to abuse and insult twisted men. And I did. Immensely.

"Years later he called me, a self-identified lesbian dominatrix, and paid me to kick him in the balls. Was I the safety valve our culture required, protecting other women from homophobic attacks?"

But maybe domination isn't as liberating as I assumed? Because the grapple between sex, power, and desire is wildly complex and ultimately quite dangerous. And Belcher is absolutely the person to dissect it.

"That thing that I had taken that didn't belong to me, it was myself."

Belcher starts with her childhood in Appalachia--the porn and punk rock that shaped her formative years, the queer shaming she experienced in school that hardened her sexual perceptions, her struggle to find meaningful relationships in adulthood. The time she spends as a dominatrix in Los Angeles is juicy and riveting and educational and liberating and raw and honest in alternating waves.

"Domination is one of the only professions in which femininity is worth more than masculinity."

But, after all she taught me, I have to ask, is it really?