Join Golden Flogger Award Nominee,
Key Barrett for an interview on
BDSM and writing from the heart

 

Why did you begin writing BDSM novels?
I saw that there was a lot of stuff out there of varying quality. I noticed a couple of unpleasant threads that shared commonality with them all, be they male Dom, FemDom, Queer Dom, what have you. One, submissives were treated as doormats. and two, the mental aspect of submission and domination was being given short shrift. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for treating your submissive like a doormat as a reward, but in a real D/S relationship a submissive is worthy of respect, not just for taking on a lot of work, but for making a very daring choice in their lives and trusting the leadership of another, and supporting with their own efforts.

As to the second point, I write my own male Dom and FemDom erotica and there is a lot of naughtiness. I’m not afraid to describe it in graphic detail, but there has to be a mental component to it. These examples are interchangeable between genders, but If you don’t understand why a man feels compelled to surrender, you will never understand the joy he feels underneath his mistress. Likewise, if you don’t build up that defense for example a woman has built up over years of being sold short, misunderstood, called a harpy or bitch, then you’ll never understand why she would feel such release being spanked for the first time.

Do you participate in D/s activities or merely write about them?
During my life and during my pursuit of a masters in Anthropology I visited clubs across a broad spectrum of types. I visited underground BDSM clubs in NYC and Transgender burlesque clubs in New Orleans and Texas, for example. I am not an active participant in the scene, however.

Where did you get your information on this lifestyle?
Apart from visiting clubs, I studied historical non-fiction as a part of my master’s. It was this that piqued my interest beyond the sexual. Victorian era and post-Victorian prudishness aside, history is littered with powerful dominant women who aren’t viewed as corrupting and evil. The Viking sagas are filled with both Fem-positive and sex-positive tales of dominant women who are not only leaders of a household, but leaders on the battlefield. It’s through the study of these examples and what they share in common that I ventured into reading more contemporary works. Contemporary-wise I am abig fan of Dan Savage for two reasons: One, he is a voice for positive acceptance and two, when he feels unable to answer, he invites a more qualified person to do it for him. That seems such a rare trait these days.

What does being nominated for the Golden Flogger Award mean to you?
It’s a very nice feeling. I wrote ‘Surrender, Submit, Serve Her’ for people interested in a Female-Led household to read and enjoy. I hoped like all writers that first people would read it, then appreciate it. To be nominated lets me know that people do and I’ve done something that adds to the conversation, rather than marginalize or diminish it.

Where would you like to see the BDSM genre head? How will it get there?
I would love to see it become more mainstream. I don’t want to take the fetishistic aspect away from it. Humans need taboo, they need safe ways to transgress against norms. Safe transgression is a key factor in not only a healthy relationship, but a healthy sense of self. I particularly like femdom for this. Research has shown that men who have never viewed femdom have a more positive and egalitarian view of women after just watching 30 minutes of it. But I would like to see it more mainstreamed so that it becomes a viable choice, one not filled with social stigmas. I thing that BDSM books are a terrific way to open a man’s mind to submissiveness in a way he may have always wanted but never known. The more people writing in the genre, the better the writing. The better the writing, the more it becomes something about relationships and people (with a healthy dose of earth-shattering sexual fun).

 

A little about the author:
Key Barrett is the pseudonym of a published author. What is not a pseudonym is the M.Sc. He has a Masters of Science in Anthropology. Key has studied sexual subcultures across to Europe and North America. He has legally investigated a diverse set of subcultures spanning from female sexual dynamism and aggression in medieval European texts to the bondage and submission clubs of New York to the transgender burlesque cultures of the Deep South. He writes both non fiction and fiction with a female-superior bent.