\u201cI feel the most empowered when I say no,\u201d says Venus Cuffs, an alternative lifestyle expert based in New York City. Cuffs, who once worked as a dominatrix, is part of a lineage of Black femmes who have used their positions to reclaim power \u2014 a strategy we\u2019ll unspool post haste. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mistress Velvet<\/a>, the late Black femme domme who famously made her white clients read bell hooks, understood the same thing: the queer art of sabotage isn\u2019t about tearing things down. It\u2019s about survival in the form of refusal, boundary and redirection.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMe saying \u2018no\u2019 has been met with like, \u2018How dare you?\u2019 My refusal to participate is offensive to people,\u201d Cuffs says, recalling the backlash she faced for refusing race play in predominantly white kink communities. Her words point to a familiar script: the demand that Black femmes be endlessly available, compliant or grateful. Her refusal interrupts that script.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n For Cuffs, refusal is the point. Rejecting race play meant rejecting the broader cultural script insisting Black women perform whatever role is demanded of them. \u201cRace is nothing to play about,\u201d she says. That refusal was sabotage. But walking away from the scene allowed Cuffs to stay aligned with her integrity.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cuffs\u2019 \u201cno\u201d became the foundation for something new. Leaving the scene didn\u2019t just protect her; it opened the door to a <\/span>creative and personal realignment<\/span><\/a> that became political resistance. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI broke off from the main scene and started my own dungeon,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI decided I don\u2019t need to deal with this, and neither does my community.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n She founded <\/span>Spread<\/span>, a 4,000-square-foot Brooklyn dungeon where queer BDSM practitioners could host sessions and hold power dynamics safely. <\/span>Spread<\/span> quickly <\/span>gained traction<\/span><\/a>. The choice to open it was a declaration as much as a business move: fuck you to exclusionary spaces, fuck yes to something better.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cRefusal means refusing to follow the path we have been told to walk when our instincts tell us otherwise,\u201d Madison Young, a filmmaker and sex educator in the Bay Area, tells me. Queer refusal, they say, looks like \u201crefusing to be someone more palatable in an effort to not cause a disruption. Refusing to be risk-averse.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Where Cuffs and Velvet confront the racialised demands placed on Black femmes, Young\u2019s dissent takes another form. As a white queer filmmaker, their refusals reject industry scripts demanding palatability and compliance. For Young, refusal has meant <\/span>creating films<\/span><\/a> and performances that defy neat labels \u2014 queer family-making, kink, submission \u2014 all centred on authenticity. \u201cI think this is the inherent nature of queerness,\u201d they say. \u201cTo exist outside of the lines and boxes drawn for us and to instead follow the path our heart, gut, soul are guiding us toward.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n If refusal is saying \u201cno,\u201d sabotage is building \u201cyes.\u201d Queer sabotage refuses harmful systems not simply for resistance, but to open space for something authentically queer and joyful to emerge. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Young does this through filmmaking. On their sets, they hire predominantly women, nonbinary, and trans crew. \u201cIt shifts the dynamic on set when it is a room full of women and queers,\u201d they say. \u201cI can choose whose stories I\u2019m elevating, who I\u2019m collaborating with.\u201d These choices build queer community and disrupt industry norms.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n For Tracy Quan, a former escort and author of <\/span>Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl<\/span><\/a>, sabotage operates more subtly. \u201cI viewed my novels more as a kind of entryism,\u201d she says. Quan smuggles radical ideas into mainstream publishing by <\/span>infiltrating oppressive spaces<\/span><\/a> from within.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n She points to Nancy Mitford, the British novelist who wove antifascist politics into frothy social comedies. \u201cShe was a serious antifascist who made the British government pay attention to her fascist sister<\/a>,\u201d Quan says. \u201cShe wrote witty novels that looked fluffy but carried sharp politics.\u201d For Quan, writing sexy books that secrete away radical ideas felt like inserting feminist critique into commercial publishing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If refusal protects integrity, sabotage extends it. Refusal shuts the door on the status quo. Sabotage opens a new one and creates conditions for a new yes, a yes rooted in creativity rather than compliance.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n While Cuffs and Velvet resist the racialized demands placed on Black femmes, Young\u2019s yes shows up in the work itself. \u201cMy heart tells me to make a feature film or a TV series or start a queer art gallery, and I just can\u2019t do anything else,\u201d they say. \u201cThe calling is strong and defies all logic.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Early in Young\u2019s career, the call sounded like chaos. \u201cAny time I would even attempt to plug into the matrix, I would sabotage the situation. I just couldn\u2019t do it,\u201d Young explains. What looked like self-destruction was queer self-preservation: an inability to do \u201cnormal\u201d \u2014 not for money, not for fame.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n For Quan, sabotage also meant restraint. For decades, she withheld certain details of her personal life as a deliberate constraint. Instead of confession, she leaned into omission. That discipline, she explains, sharpened her craft. \u201cWhen you have limits, when you have this denial kind of situation, it can really force you to be more creative,\u201d she told me. What others see as a restriction, she frames as power.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Creating our own boundaries is one of the ways we carve out space for queer joy in a world determined to tell us which boundaries we are allowed to have. \u201cWhen we state a boundary and work with refusal, we are making room for <\/span>what we want more of<\/span><\/a>,\u201d Young says. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A no to the wrong collaborator opens a yes to the right one. Setting limits is a prophylactic. \u201cWe can protect our collective joy, our queer joy, our relationships, and our connections by being clear about our expectations and needs,\u201d Young says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Quan echoes that sentiment, describing constraints as creative pleasure rather than deprivation. \u201cTo me, creativity is a kind of power, like that\u2019s the kind of power that I enjoy,\u201d she says. For her, withholding shapes a more authentic vision. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cuffs locates joy in boundaries even more explicitly \u2014 in reclaiming time, body, and power. Saying no, walking away from money, setting terms that feel good \u2014 each is a reclamation. \u201cI don\u2019t have to show up for anyone when I can\u2019t show up for myself,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a political moment defined by <\/span>rampant transphobia<\/span><\/a>, book bans <\/span>targeting queer literature<\/span><\/a>, legislative attacks on bodily autonomy, and the ongoing criminalization of sex work, boundaries and refusals are not just private choices. They are collective, political strategies. Our <\/span>joy is political<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mistress Velvet knew this when she turned her domme sessions into lesson plans, insisting white submissives grapple with Black feminist thought to earn her attention. Cuffs, Young and Quan know it when they walk away from exploitation, infiltrate hostile industries, or reshape the spaces they inhabit. Sabotage isn\u2019t nihilism. It\u2019s survival. It\u2019s creativity. It\u2019s care.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cuffs leaves us with a reminder: \u201cDo what feels right for you. Don\u2019t be influenced by the amount of money, the amount of power, what other people tell you it should look like. Slavery is over.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"For](\"https:\/\/img.huffingtonpost.com\/asset\/6920da63170000392ea90f2d.jpg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale&format=webp)
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