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Posted: 2019-06-05T04:01:20Z | Updated: 2019-06-05T16:53:37Z

Photos by Laurel Golio

Yin Q is a former dominatrix and an educator and practitioner of bondage, discipline, dominance, submission and sadomasochism. For Q, BDSM has long been a part of their understanding of and experience with their sexuality.

Q, who uses they/them pronouns, discovered something compelling about the push-and-pull dynamics of BDSM during their sexual awakening. Their curiosity about it, and their identification with the practice and the community, only evolved and intensified as they got older.

Q initially explored kink as a cabaret performer in college. They wrote their college thesis on BDSM and eventually moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to apprentice and learn more about the leather community.

Today, Q now based in Brooklyn, New York uses their expertise and platform as an active, visible, queer Asian American person in the BDSM community to elevate the experiences of marginalized people, perform BDSM rituals with clients as a form of therapy and host workshops for members of the LGBTQ community. They are also the creator of the web series Mercy Mistress , which is co-produced by Margaret Cho and is based on Qs time as a dominatrix.

Q, 44, chatted with HuffPost about how they use their work to highlight underserved communities, how they understand BDSMs role in exploring and furthering queer pride and how they envision the future of the LGBTQ movement.

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Now that youre no longer working as a dominatrix, how does BDSM function in the ritual sessions that you offer?

The ritual work uses BDSM activities as well as sadomasochism whether its flogging, spanking, caning, fetish worship to be a cathartic release, or I use it as a sort of arena to work on something one might be going through. [The individual Im working with] is not looking to get turned on by me, and Im not looking to dominate someone in the way where theyre handing power over to me and manifesting like a fantasy play.

Tell me more about how one of your sessions actually works.

What Im doing is actually just offering my skills and services to be the hand that puts someone into bondage, to hold safe space for them not to prod or poke them. Its more that they would take a flogging for themselves, so if theyre going to take a really hard whipping, its so we can manifest something, or go with the intention that theyre trying to get through some kind of struggle whether it be work-related or any other part of their lives where they feel they need that physical push, much in the way someone might, say, run a marathon.

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