“I feel the most empowered when I say no,” says Venus Cuffs, a former dominatrix and alternative lifestyle expert based in New York City. Cuffs is part of a lineage of Black femmes who have used their positions in adult entertainment to reclaim power — a strategy we’ll unspool post haste. Mistress Velvet , the late Black femme domme who famously made her white clients read bell hooks, understood the same thing: the queer art of sabotage isn’t about tearing things down. It’s about survival in