This article title really captures the whole story – ‘Woman disguised as dominatrix ties man to his bed and robs him‘. Apparently a German man managed to get both financial domination and bondage packed into a single session. The bondage was consensual, but the 1800 Euro theft less so.
I can’t say I’ve ever been worried about theft, given I always play with well established professionals. However, I do sometimes wonder what would happen if something went wrong after I’ve been wrapped in rope. Often that thought strikes me as the domme is trying to balance in high heels while clambering around the bondage table several feet off the ground. I doubt I’d be much of a Houdini is there was a fall and I had to try and escape to get help for her. Fortunately, another benefit of playing with experienced dommes is that they’re experts in maneuvering in impractical footwear.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, and predict that the thief in the original article is not an expert rigger. I picture the scene unfolding a little like this vintage bondage shot. She came equipped with rope and it was probably more clothesline than the specialized hemp based stuff.
I’m afraid I don’t know the creator of this image. For anyone who complains about the bondage in porn today, keep in mind that back in 70’s it was hard to find and looked like this when it did show up (so I’m told).
Like you I often wonder what would happen if something happened whilst I am tied up. What if the place catches fire or, heaven forbid, Mistress collapses? Once years ago, and not with my current Mistress, having tied me down the Mistress in question decided to make herself a cup of tea and discovering she had no milk popped out to the shops. Naked and strapped to a whipping bench it seemed she was gone for hours and I started to worry, what if she had been knocked down? Eventually I decided to escape and managed to get one of my hands free losing some skin on both sides in the process. I then undid the rest of the straps and freed myself only for her to arrive at that moment. She was not best pleased especially as she had only been gone for 10 minutes and I received a ferocious caning for my trouble.
No offense to your tea making Mistress, but that seems like a really bad plan on her part. As I’m sure you know, a golden rule of BDSM is never to leave anyone tied up alone. There’s not just risk from external events (like something catching fire) but for the submissive getting cramp, or panic attack or managing to get himself into a mess trying to get free. Don’t blame you for worrying there.
I console myself on the risk of something happening when I’m tied up with the idea that anything could happen to me at any other time. I could get smashed by an idiot in an SUV on the freeway, or caught in a major earthquake or just suffer a hit and run when I’m walking to get coffee. Life is sadly short – so might as well make it sweet :). That doesn’t mean I want to take unnecessary risks of course, for some value of ‘necessary’.
-paltego
It’s amusing to think about how many of us were exposed to 1970s/1980s b0ndage photos, and as a result, have this idea in our heads that this is what f3md0m is supposed to look like. It then becomes a self-perpetuating idea, like a meme.
It’s a bit of a chicken and egg question. Did the dodgy leather gear arise and snarly domme as a result of intrinsic desires? Or does that stereotype derive from imagery created by pornographers from years past?
-paltego
Bondage and fetish (porn) magazines in the mid 70’s were weird indeed, judging from the one issue of Bitch Goddesses I found, folded in a newspaper, under a back bench of the bus I rode from London to Farnborough, when I was 12 or 13. Lots of silly pictures, not unlike the one shown. Bondage attempts with baling wire and cloth lines, as well as simulated domming by leather clad woman, obviously incapable of holding the whips they were given, if not totally oblivious of what whips are made and used for. As for the male ‘models’ … the less said, the better. All well meaning amateurs, though. Bless ‘m.
I fell in love with those leather outfits and I kept that magazine. Titia and I just looked through it and, boy oh boy, aren’t we blessed and spoiled with high quality stuff, just one, two or three mouse clicks away.
Funny you mentioned dommes not knowing what whips are used for. I just stumbled across another old vintage shot where it looked like the 70’s leather clad domme was trying to eat her flogger. Somebody should have told her that lascivious licking might work for dicks and dildos, but looks silly with BDSM toys!
I’m never sure if the bad imagery of the times was due to it being made by pornographers who weren’t kinky, the lack of competition in the market, the legal issues they faced or simply kinky people making it up as they went along with little to guide them.
-paltego
I think the people involved with these early magazines were improvising a lot; often flying blind and groping in the (semi) dark.
Photographers who might have had vague ideas about kink without being kinky, working without a kinky frame of reference, without a database of mental images to fall back on and to work from.
Finding women capable of carrying it off to wear kinky leather outfits and being photogenic (enough) as well and willing to pose for those magazines would have been quite a problem too.
Not to mention finding quality designers and producers of really well fitting and good looking sexy and kinky clothes, footwear and accessories. Finding halfway decent outlets and shops where to buy such stuff was very difficult as well.
I put a considerable amount of energy and time into it; but never managed to find a decent pair of (at the time very unfashionable) overknee boots while we lived in England. Found ‘m quite by accident when visiting Paris with my father. After moving to Hamburg, Germany it became easier for me. My first student digs were near the Rehperbahn; many shops there catering to the ladies working in the red light district. There I bought my first items of leather clothing. But I realise that for many, if not most “respectable” girls and women that represented a psychological hurdle they were unwilling or incapable to scale in the early 80’s.
These “problems” started solving themselves during and after what could be called the “hedonistic explosions” in the party scenes of the late 80’s and the 90’s and with the advent of the interweb.
Thanks for sharing that historical perspective. I tend to agree on the early magazines. They were working with limited resources and making it up as they went along. Even if they were kinky, they didn’t have the incredible research tools and rich context for kink that we have today.
I’m somewhat amazed that something like overknee boots were so hard to find in England. But then I really came of age in the mid 90’s – at least in terms of awareness of kink and clothing and the money to do something about it – so missed out on those earlier periods. Amazing how fast the world has moved in some aspects – while regressing in others.
-paltego
Ah yes, finding those books and magazines in weird places was a teenage delight. Of course, I remember my friends looking at the bondage ones and going “Eeww, what the hell is that?” while I’d be thinking “Wow, i wish that were me.”
Funny. I have similar memories. I remember one random porn magazine that was mostly vanilla but had a couple of very slightly kinky stories in it. My friends couldn’t understand why I was spending so long reading this long boring text when there were naked ladies flaunting themselves in all the photos on the next page!
-paltego
It’s the Reeperbahn; with ‘ee’ instead of ‘eh’ … Even after all these years I keep instictively misspelling that name and my (American) spelling corrector didn’t recognise that, of course.