Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CULTURE

How Brexit and a French mother-in-law led a British dominatrix to Paris

'British guys tend to be quite reserved - until you get them behind closed doors and then all hell breaks loose - while French guys are much more open about being into fetish and kink.' The words of a British dominatrix who has set up shop in Paris.

Published: 24 January 2020 16:33 CET
How Brexit and a French mother-in-law led a British dominatrix to Paris
Photo: Rachel May. www.fetishwebmistress.com

Lady Bellatrix has been operating in central Paris for about 18 months since moving from the UK and has become one of the most high profile international dominatrices operating on the French scene.

And France can thank Brexit and her French mother-in-law for her arrival on these shores.

Lady Bellatrix, who was born in Canada but moved to Britain and has British citizenship, is now something of a star of the fetish scene and charges €450 for a 90 minute appointment.

READ ALSO Jealousy and steel balls – my year of dating French men in Paris


Photo: Rachel May – www.fetishwebmistress.com

 

Her clientele is international – she saw people from 11 different countries last year – but Brits and of course French men are heavily represented.

She said: “Being in Paris is great because of course a lot of people travel here, so I have regular clients who come here from the UK a few times a year on business and come and see me too.

“I have people who have travelled from Kuwait and Dubai to see me after finding my videos online, and of course I have a lot of French clients.”

For French men the requirements include – beside paying the hefty fee and being prepared to worship at the feet of Lady Bellatrix – speaking English.

She said: “I'm learning French and I'm getting more confident so now I do the odd session in French but I find it easier to speak English.

“I have private tutor sessions with a French man who is a male dom, so that's handy for me learning the vocabulary I need for my work, a well as the basic French grammar.”

Despite her dual nationality, Lady Bellatrix markets herself very much as British “the stern British mistress is very popular”.

She trained in her craft with a British dominatrix and feels her style is very British.

She said: “I'm much more stern and strict than dommes in the USA or Canada and I do a lot more corporal punishment – that's really popular with British guys, more so than any other nationality and it's a big part of the scene in the UK.

“I find that British guys tend to be more reserved – on the surface at least – but French men are more open about what they're in to.

“One of my British friends had her dungeon next to the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent and she always had a huge spike in business in December, as men told their wives they were off Christmas shopping but went to visit her instead.


Photo: Rachel May – www.fetishwebmistress.com

 

“But December is usually a good month for me as well, people are in a party mood and more likely to treat themselves – we all tend to get a little treat for ourselves as well as buying presents for other people.”

Although she enjoyed her time in Britain, it was Brexit that persuaded her to make the move to France.

She said: “I was married to a French guy so visited my mother-in-law in Paris anyway.

“I used to do tours quite regularly in France – advertising in advance that I was going to be there for a month – and then I would go and visit my mother-in-law afterwards.

“I stayed close with her even after my husband and I split up and she was very accepting.

“I was spending several months of the year in Paris and I knew I wanted to carry on spending time here, so when Brexit happened I decided to make the move permanently.”

And it was a good move, as she is now a star of the fetish scene, with 48,000 followers on Twitter and hundreds of subscribers to her videos.

She divides her time roughly 50/50 between performances on camera – some pre-recorded videos and some live on webcam – and 'real time' visits from devoted slaves.

People who want to visit – and it is strictly by advance booking only with a non-refundable deposit – can indulge in a variety of activities including foot fetishism, bondage, humiliation, latex, corporal punishment or cleaning her apartment.

There are also some more extreme activities on offer. She said: “I think the cane is my favourite – it's so very British.”

And being British seems to offer a distinct advantage in the industry.

“I did a performance on camera about Brexit that was really popular with French guys. And I sometimes incorporate current affairs into my performances – the other day I told a slave 'Do not disrespect your queen – look what happened to Prince Harry!”

So, Brexit paperwork permitting, she's here to stay and has plans to expand into a bigger dungeon.

And – in a sign that she's truly embracing the French way of life – she's even joined a union.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

CULTURE

How many of France’s ’10 most iconic women’ can you name?

Ten monumental golden statues representing French women from the worlds of art, literature, sport and politics are shortly to go on display in Paris - but how many of these famous names do you recognise?

Published: 18 September 2024 15:34 CEST
How many of France's '10 most iconic women' can you name?

They were one of the early highlights of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, emerging from the River Seine near the Alexandre-III bridge as the flotilla of boats carrying international athletes passed.

Now golden status of the 10 famous women have been made and are on display in Cour d’honneur of the French National Assembly until October 5th, while more permanent homes for them are discussed. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo hopes to install them along rue de La Chapelle in the 18th arrondissement.

It will go some way towards closing that statuery gap – there are currently around 260 statues of men in the French capital, and just 40 women.

This temporary free exhibition will enable visitors to admire these polymer resin sculptures, created by 3D printing and designed to withstand the elements, by registering in advance on the Assemblée nationale website.

But, who are the women they celebrate and honour? Some might be familiar to international readers while others are barely known outside France.

Christine de Pizan (1364-1431) 

The oldest of the inspirational women remembered at the Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremony by some distance.

De Pizan was France’s first woman of letters, the first woman to earn a living as a writer. 

She started her career in the court of King Charles VI, following the deaths of her father and husband in rapid succession, leaving the family – she had three children – without a traditional source of income.

Her works were forgotten for several centuries, but resurfaced in the 1980s thanks to the rise of feminist studies – and, today, she is revered as one of history’s earliest feminists. Her most famous work, La cité des dames (The City of Ladies), clinically dismantles patriarchal discrimination and misogyny.

Jeanne Barret (1740-1807)

Explorer and botanist Barret was born into poverty in rural Burgundy – and went on to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, while working as a ‘valet’ to doctor and botanist Philibert Commerson. 

At the time, the French navy banned women from their vessels, so she had to undertake the journey around the world in disguise, and was known as Jean. Her tireless work – she took charge of an expedition in Brazil when Commerson was unfit to work – earned her the respect of the crew and the expedition’s captain Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.

She and Commerson kept her true identity – and their relationship – secret for a year. In fact, such was his respect for her that Bougainville, after whom the botanist had named a plant, later wrote to King Louis XVI and requested that she be honoured with the title femme extraordinaire.

Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793)

Playwright, activist, abolitionist, disheartened revolutionary – feminist icon de Gouges is best known for her  Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen), written in scathing response to the Revolutionary Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen and demanding full legal, political and social assimilation of women.

She also wrote in favour of the abolition of slavery, and was initially in favour of the 1789 Revolution – but grew disenchanted by the lack of progress of women’s rights in its aftermath. 

De Gouges was executed by guillotine in 1793, after writing repeated literary attacks on the regime and leader Maximilien Robespierre.

Louise Michel (1830-1905)

If ever you see anarchists raise a black flag during a protest, remember Louise Michel – the teacher, anarchist and leading light of the Paris Commune, a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris from 18th March to 28th May, 1871.

She was transported to Nouvelle-Caledonie in punishment for her role in the Commune. There, she took up the plight of the indigenous Kanak people, taking their side in a revolt in 1878. 

In 1880, amnesty was granted to those who had participated in the Paris Commune. Michel returned to Paris, her revolutionary passion undiminished. And she proudly waved a black flag at a jobless demonstration in Paris in March 1883 – it is, historians say, the first use of the modern anarchists’ symbol.

Alice Guy (1873-1968)

French cinema remembers the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis. It remembers the visionary Georges Méliès, and early directors Marcel Pagnol and Jean Renoir – the son of the artist. And it honours Godard, Truffaut and Rohmer. The list of male cineastes in France is long.

Alice Guy routinely gets lost in the shuffle. She shouldn’t. She was the first woman to direct a film – La Fée aux choux in 1896; one of the first to make a movie with a distinct narrative; and, for a decade between 1896 to 1906, was probably the only female filmmaker in the world.

Guy was a cinema pioneer in many ways. She experimented with Gaumont’s Chronophone sync-sound system, colour-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects. 

Her Hollywood film A Fool and His Money – made with a wholly African-American cast – is considered to have historical and aesthetic significance and is preserved at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute.

And her 1906 33-minute film La vie du Christ, which tells the story of Jesus Christ in 25 tableaux based on the gospels, is sometimes cited as the first ‘epic’ movie. As was the case with many Guy  films, it was for a long time wrongly attributed to Victorin Jasset – her assistant in charge of directing exterior scenes and managing the extras.

Alice Milliat (1884-1957)

There’s still a vast distance to travel, but women’s sport might not even be where it is today without Milliat. 

While noted misogynist Pierre de Coubertin – he once famously said that a woman’s role at the Olympic Games should be to crown the winners – gets all the Olympic glory, Milliat was responsible for getting the men-only club to, finally, allow women to compete.

She founded the Fédération Française Sportive Féminine in 1917. She helped organise the 1922 Women’s World Games – which were originally called the Jeux Olympiques Féminins and which ran for four editions until 1934, and which prompted the International Olympic Committee to slowly and belatedly allow female competition.

She also managed a French women’s association football team that toured the United Kingdom in 1920. In 2021, a commemorative statue of Milliat was unveiled at the French Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Paris.

Paulette Nardal (1896-1985)

Journalist, activist, woman of letters and pioneer of ‘black intellectualism’, Nardal, who was born in Martinique, was also the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne.

In October 1931, she founded the journal La Revue du Monde Noir (Review of the Black World) with her sisters; French novelist Louis Jean Finot; Haitian scholar Léo Sajous; and Clara W Shepard, an African-American teacher and translator. 

On her return to Martinique in 1944, Nardal founded Le Rassemblement féminin. Le Rassemblement féminin, one of two feminist organisations at the time whose goals were to increase the number of women who voted in the 1945 elections.

Then, from 1946 to 1948 Nardal was a delegate to the United Nations, working with both the UN Department for Non-Autonomous Territories and the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

De Beauvoir’s 1949 work The Second Sex is considered a “trailblazing work in feminist philosophy”, and is a foundation work of modern feminism. 

But she considered herself a writer rather than a philosopher. She won the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1961, 1969 and 1973.

More controversially, she lost a teaching job amid accusations of inappropriate behaviour and she and long-time partner Jean-Paul Sartre campaigned for the release of people convicted of child sex offences.

Simone Veil (1927-2017)

Simone Veil survived Auschwitz and later Bergen-Belsen and went on to become one of France’s most respected politicians, steering through landmark laws to liberalise contraception and abortion.

She is best known for leading the successful campaign to legalise abortion in France – despite vicious abuse and threats – as the country’s first female minister of health in 1975. 

Veil later became the first female president of the European Parliament, where she served for three years, before returning to work for the French government again.

She was given an honorary damehood from the British government, and awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion D’Honneur in France. She died in 2017, and became just the fourth women to be interred in the Parthenon, after scientist Marie Curie, and two resistance fighters Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion.

In 2021, Josephine Baker was also honoured at the Parthenon, nearly half a century after her death.

Gisèle Halimi (1927-2020)

“Politics is too serious a matter to be left to men alone.” Tunisian-born lawyer, feminist activist and co-founder of equality movement Choisir la cause des femmes said that in 1978. 

In early 1972, a year after Choisir was founded, Halimi successfully defended a teenager who was on trial for illegally aborting a pregnancy after she had been raped in the Parisian suburb of Bobigny.

The teenager’s mother and three others were also charged with conspiring to commit the illegal abortion.

It was a landmark case that paved the way for Simone Veil to persuade France’s parliament to legalise abortions in France two years later.

In 1981, Halimi was elected as an MP, where she was a vociferous campaigner for the abolition of the death penalty, and tabled bills promoting women’s rights.

Four years later, she was appointed Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of France to UNESCO, and, in 1989, she was appointed special advisor to the French delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York.

SHOW COMMENTS