2024
Mollena
A transplant from New York City via Los Angeles, Mollena found a welcome home in the Bay Area and quickly became an active part of the Leather and BDSM scene.
An active member of alt.sex.bondage and the old FRENZI mailing list, in the mid-90s, she rapidly absorbed the culture of kink. The first kink class she ever attended was sponsored by SOJ (taught by Wolf, featuring B.C. Cliver and Margret).
Upon observing the scarcity of instruction from fellow submissives and the lack of racial diversity within the scene in general, she was motivated to strive towards shifting this paradigm. Within two years of active participation in the scene, she began lecturing and conducting classes, and quickly became nationally sought-after as a result of her unflinching look at rarely discussed and deeply divisive topics such as race-play, submissive rights, and the value of taboo / edgeplay.
Her outreach is not limited to her work within the community. Her first solo show, “69Stories: One Pervert’s Tale” was produced by San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theatre Company, of which she’s a founding member. This show has been revived across the USA and Europe over two decades and was a major channel for BDSM outreach via performing arts. She continues this outreach through her professional storytelling, where she shares her journey in BDSM with international audiences on shows including “RISK!” and “Bawdy Storytelling.”She lectures college and university students on BDSM through the lens of consent and negotiation, and shares how non-kink-identified humans can greatly benefit from using the model of scene-negotiations in their daily lives.Mo is the first to have brought BDSM presentations to all of the “Ivy League” schools in the USA. Her artistic expression also extended to producing and starring in the award-winning short-film “IMPACT” an exploration of spanking and connection, voted “Best Short Film” at Cinekink film festival’s 10th Anniversary. Since then is has screened in North and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia.
In 2009, motivated by skeptical curiosity, Mollena ran for, and won, the newly resurrected Ms. SF Leather title. As she was therefore contractually obliged to run for International Ms Leather, did so. And won, in 2010.
Her mission to bring a diversity of race and body types to images of sexuality has lead her to pose for such talented photographic artists as Aeric Meredith-Goujon, Melvin Moten, Don Sir, Howard Schatz, Michele Serchuk and the late Charles Gatewood.
Mollena is the winner of Black Rose’s 2012 Jack McGeorge Award for Excellence in Education. She’s the two-time winner of the National Leather Association’s Sylvia Slater Award for Non-Fiction Writing. In in 2018, she was bestowed a “Pioneer” Award by the UK’s Sexual Freedom Awards organization.
Her award-winning writings appear in many anthologies, her interviews in many scholarly pieces. She’s the author of “The Toybag Guide: Taboo Play” as well as co-author of “Playing Well With Others,” an influential self-help book geared towards those looking to explore kink, Leather and BDSM.
Currently the property and wife of world-renowned Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas, her activism continues on unabated as they shared their lives in a Power-Exchange dynamic with the New York Times and are the featured subject of the 2018 documentary “The Artist & The Pervert.”