To the people who come through the coffee shop where she works every day, Afrika is simply a barista. But to the BDSM community members who frequent the dungeon where she works every night, she's Envy Adams, a "dom/sub/switchy sado-masochist" and all-around "kinky girl."
In her dungeon life, Afrika is able to play with gender identity and power dynamics. She feels masculine and dominant in her everyday life, but is able to be more feminine and shy or submissive when she's negotiating a BDSM scene with one of her play partners. "In my normal day, I'm wearing joggers and a button up and my backwards hats. And now I'm shopping for latex skirts and nipple tassels," she says. In a new video for Refinery29, we see Afrika make the transition from masculine barista to hyper-feminine BDSM dungeon worker. As she shops for a wig and outfit for her alter ego, she explains how the BDSM community allows her to explore her sexuality and gender identity, and why consent is so essential for BDSM play.
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"There is no sex involved, it's just all play," Afrika explains about the dungeons. The fact that BDSM doesn't always involve sex — which Afrika defines as touching genitals — is only the first stereotype she breaks. She also shatters the idea that the BDSM community doesn't really care about consent, given that the whole point is intentionally inflicting pain. In reality, people who practice BDSM are often way more skilled at asking for consent throughout an intimate experience than are people who don't have kinky sex. "[BDSM is] a very consensual community. It's an understanding, non-judgmental community," Afrika says. "Gender and sexuality is not a big, important issue there. It's all about how you treat the person, and your consenting and negotiating of the scene that you're going to partake in."
Without ongoing consent, Afrika wouldn't be hitting her play partners, or tying them up, or doing anything else with them. It's also very important to her that there's never alcohol involved in any of her BDSM scenes, because alcohol blurs lines of consent. "Being sober during a scene is super critical," she says. "You don't want to negotiate anything under the influence."
So while it may seem to non-kinky folks that BDSM is a free-for-all, do-whatever-you-want kind of sexual experience, that couldn't be further from the truth. As Mistress Yin, a BDSM dominatrix, told Refinery29 previously: "Even if you’re saying 'Yes, I want to be placed into bondage,' it does not mean that you’re saying yes to all the different things that could happen to you while you’re in bondage. There has to be so much really honest communication with your partner."