Censorship as a Mirror of Power Dynamics: Writing, Silence, and the Gatekeepers

As I worked on my memoir, a project meant to pull back the curtain on the hidden power dynamics in relationships and society at large, I found myself caught in the very systems I was critiquing. Attempting to write about my experiences as a sex worker—specifically with men whose wealth and privilege enabled their unchecked entitlement—I encountered something unexpected: censorship.

This wasn’t overt rejection or critique. Instead, it was a quiet, systemic refusal. Words and phrases central to my narrative were flagged or removed. Scenes showing the raw violence, manipulation, and emotional labor demanded of me—the very elements that define the heart of my story—were deemed too sensitive for inclusion. The platform where I sought to shape my narrative didn’t outright tell me I couldn’t tell my truth. It simply rendered certain truths unfit for its space. I had set out to write about power, control, and invisibility. Yet, in this act of censorship, I found these themes playing out in real time. My story, too, became subject to the erasures that keep the status quo intact.

The Cost of Silence

What I am writing about is not obscene. It is not gratuitous. It is necessary. My experiences—with men like Simon, the wealthy shipping magnate who brought me to Mykonos under the guise of romance, only to reveal his violent entitlement, or with Henry, who hid behind wealth to justify his disdain for transactional honesty—reflect larger societal patterns. These stories show how power operates in the shadows, depending on invisibility and silence to sustain itself. Yet the systems I critique seem determined to erase the details that reveal how power truly functions. Violence becomes too explicit to describe. Emotional labor becomes too messy to unpack. The transactional nature of relationships between the wealthy and the vulnerable becomes something to avoid naming altogether. But to erase these details is to erase the mechanisms of control. To strip these narratives of specificity is to strip them of their meaning.

Kink & Yoga

My understanding of the relationship between kink and yoga is deeply embedded in discipline, bodily control, transcendence, and the politics of power—all framed through my lived experience in both realms.

I view both practices as structured systems of bodily engagement that exist at the intersection of pain, pleasure, self-mastery, and submission. Both demand an intense relationship to the body—one through acts of control and constraint (BDSM), the other through controlled breath, stillness, and flexibility (yoga). They both offer a form of transcendence through discipline, yet each has been absorbed by different ideological forces:

• Kink as a reenactment of power dynamics—playing with domination, submission, pain, and control as a way to either subvert or ritualize authority. It reflects systems of power in society but also creates private, coded spaces where individuals negotiate these forces on their own terms.

• Yoga as a spiritualized self-discipline—often framed as liberation but in practice requiring submission to a system of physical mastery. In its Western iteration, it has been co-opted into a neoliberal wellness framework, where discipline over the body is often linked to purity, morality, and self-optimization.

I recognize that both spaces—dungeons and yoga studios—are arenas where power is enacted, commodified, and, at times, exploited. While one embraces its artifice (BDSM acknowledges its role-playing of authority), the other often masks control under the guise of self-improvement and enlightenment.

From my perspective, these are not opposites, but rather two parallel structures that engage the body as a site of meaning, transformation, and control. The question that lingers throughout my work is:

• When is discipline liberating, and when is it just another form of subjugation?

• How much agency does one actually have in these systems?

• How do these practices reflect broader authoritarian structures embedded in society?