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‘I was waiting for the ghost of Martin Luther King Jr to appear and be like, “We did not march on Washington so you can fantasise about getting beat up by some white Guy”.’
This is how African American BDSM practitioner Mollena Lee Williams-Haas, 57, felt the first time she ever considered participating in race play in 1994.
A controversial preference, race play is the act of making explicit overtures to race, racial differences, or political racial dynamics within the context of a kink or BDSM.
It can include things like acting out slave trade auctions or scenes depicting the Holocaust, and multiple sex workers have told Metro it’s become one of their most-requested services over the past few years.
Mollena’s first race play fantasy consisted of her living as a slave on a plantation during the colonial era and being forced into sexual activity with her master’s relative. It was sparked by a previous relationship she’d had with a white British man who’d suggested they try re-enacting a similar scenario.
‘He rolled out this whole slave girl fantasy and I was simultaneously horrified, angry and really turned on,’ she says.
‘I beat myself up internally for years after first having this fantasy because I said clearly there’s something unexamined [in my head] that I need to look at. I have a problem and I’m betraying my entire race.’
Mollena didn’t debut on the BDSM scene until 1996, though, when she says mentioning race play was ‘a no-go entirely.’ Racial tensions were high, both in the UK and the US, following multiple high-profile racist attacks against black and Asian people.
Today, while still controversial, it’s a niche that’s gaining popularity with countless online forums dedicated to the topic.
What does race play involve?
In practice, it involves a consensual exchange of power between a dom (dominant) and a sub (submissive). It’s common for subs to be racially abused and degraded based on the colour of their skin, or they may want to act out historical oppressor versus oppressed narratives.
Mollena’s first-ever scene didn’t go to plan.
It was with a friend at a BDSM dungeon for hire and they’d pre-agreed the parameters of the roleplay, but her male partner went off-script without consent. It was so traumatic that she describes having a dissociative episode.
‘The initial setup was pretty simple,’ Mollena says. ‘He was going to do verbal humiliation and physical impact stuff, but then he expanded it to include an interrogation aspect.
‘Someone screaming at you over and over again for two hours has a different psychological impact. The reality of me being in the dungeon with my friend fell away and I was completely in the moment of “I have to escape”.’
Why do people desire to be racially abused?
If race play can go this wrong, it begs the question of why someone would want it in the first place.
Jesús Gregorio Smith, associate professor of Ethnic Studies at Lawrence University, researches race play in gay BDSM pornography. He says the current political climate could be catalysing the popularity of race play today.
‘I couldn’t say conclusively, of course, that there’s a link, but I do think it makes sense,’ he tells Metro. Shortly after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Jesús noticed that a gay website that eroticises police brutality started gaining popularity.
‘It feels like at certain times there is an increase of interest in issues when they become politically and culturally taboo,’ he adds.
Psychosexual therapist, Jodie Slee, agrees. ‘We know that people can sometimes find excitement in things that would normally make them anxious or uncomfortable,’ she tells Metro.
‘It’s the same reason some people love horror films, rollercoasters or skydiving. Our nervous system turns fear into excitement as a defence, and for some people that can happen with sexual fantasies too.
‘Humans also find that novelty and taboo can make something feel more exciting and motivating because the brain naturally pays attention to what’s different or forbidden, this causes dopamine to spike and boosts people’s motivation and excitement to engage in sex.’
It explains why white BDSM practitioner Ariel Anderssen, 49, receives race play requests multiple times a year, though she tells Metro she ‘can’t actually bear’ to do it.
‘I don’t have the stomach to say racist words,’ she says. ‘Even if it’s at the behest of someone who has every right to use those words if they want to and eroticise them.’
Ariel believes the influx of requests in recent years is also due to content platforms banning racialised language or slurs in titles, which she thinks has driven more customers to order custom content.
‘Prospective customers have wanted me to use racial slurs towards them, and they’ve often wanted a narrative that’s about white supremacy,’ she explains.
She recalls a recent exchange with an Indian man who wanted her to dress up like a classic British aristocrat. ‘He wanted me to be talking down to him like he was one of my servants,’ she says.
Like Ariel, many other sex workers have revealed to Metro that they fear accepting racist requests in case the custom videos are posted to the internet and taken out of context, leading people to believe they’re actually racist.
Melissa Todd is another white BDSM practitioner who refuses race play requests for this reason, but says she’s noticed an uptick in requests over the last 18 months.
‘I’m asked for it all the time nowadays,’ she tells Metro. ‘Maybe because we live in a more racist world, it’s something that people are trying to deal with more and more, particularly black and brown people.’
Research into race play doesn’t assume white dominant participants are motivated by racism, although a study in the Journal of Sex Research found that people who denied the existence of institutional racism were more likely to provide ‘unequivocal support’ for race play.
The psychological toll
For Mollena, race play isn’t simply about sexual pleasure. She decribes experiencing spiritual betterment through this exploration, saying this practice is her equivalent to an Ordeal Path, a BDSM term, which is ‘the ancient idea of putting yourself through something that is genuinely painful and stressful in order to gain from it.’
‘At this point in my life, I feel [race play] served a vital purpose in my sexual growth, and enabled me to find true freedom and release from shame,’ Mollena explains.
But, there are downsides. Clinical sexologist and therapist, Ness Cooper, says that, just as Mollena experienced in her first scene, race play can trigger adverse mental health, including what she refers to as a ‘moral injury’.
‘This is a psychological injury that can cause great distress,’ Ness tells Metro. ‘For some, race play may lead to a moral injury as it challenges how they see the world.’
She adds that race play contributes to our ‘sexual citizenship’, which refers to sexual identity, pleasure, and relationships not being private matters, but fundamental public and political issues.
‘This acknowledges that our identity plays a role in the power balances between us as individuals and the world around us,’ Ness adds. ‘Race play can push against other people’s identities, and this may cause power imbalances. For some this can be liberating and eye-opening, but for others, it can be dysregulating.’
Rewriting the narrative
As a mixed-race BDSM practitioner, Goddess Luna Law has gone from shunning race play to practicing it. But, unlike Mollena, she’s not a submissive; she’s a dom, turning the narrative on its head.
‘Race play was initially on my list of hard limits,’ Luna tells Metro. ‘I just thought it was very racist and I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. However, as a woman of colour working in this industry, racial dynamics were constantly being introduced by clients whether I actively sought them or not.’
Now, she’s often approached by men who want to be humiliated about the size of their genitalia, while they fetishise her skin tone.
‘From a racial perspective, most of what I do ends up being verbal,’ she explains. ‘A big part of it is about their c**k size in comparison with [black penises]. Others will talk about my ethnicity, so they compliment how the ebony skin glows and how it’s so superior.’
But, for Luna, there’s a very important distinction. ‘Just because you enjoy something in your kinky life, that doesn’t mean that you enjoy that in everyday life,’ she says.
‘There’s a line between fantasy and reality, and it’s a very complex thing. We have to distinguish between consensual role play with consenting adults and actual racist beliefs, especially considering the world right now.’
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