Ban Bossy

Sheryl Sandberg (the Facebook COO) has launched a campaign to ban the use of the word ‘bossy’. There’s a website and a video that features famous women such as Beyoncé and Condoleezza Rice. The reaction from the press has been varied, with a few positive articles (like this one), but a much larger number of negative ones. Some of those have been reasonable, and instead wanted to reclaim the word, others have been so stupid I think I killed braincells just reading them.

Personally I like the campaign. Although I don’t think it matters if the word gets shunned or reclaimed. History has shown plenty of successful examples of both cases. I just like the fact that it’s being discussed and people may become more thoughtful of how language can shape expectations or behavior. In my part of the business world, even ‘boss’ doesn’t really get used these days, except perhaps occasionally in an ironic context. People are described as managers or leaders, all words with positive associations. The word ‘boss’ has a negative edge, and the word ‘bossy’ is both negative and highly gendered.

Of course, wearing my kinky hat (handkerchief? handcuffs?), I’m a big fan of the type of woman that might occasionally get labeled today as bossy. Anytime I hear someone describe a female friend as bossy my ears perk up and I start making subtle inquiries into her dating and relationship status. It’s up there with feisty, aggressive and intelligent as great trigger words to pitch to me on any attempted blind date set-up.

Giving him a stern talking to

This forceful and articulate woman, shown here demonstrating a strong leadership role in her relationship, is from the Subby Hubby site. I originally found the image on the CFNM classics tumblr.

Neon dreams

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a neon tube used in a scene before. It doesn’t strike me as particularly practical tool, but it is very dramatic. Just controlling and directing the light onto him acts to emphasize her status, not to mention the threatening sword-like shape of it. With the stage lights behind it almost looks like a scene from a play. Is she cast as the hero or the villain?

This is of course the very beautiful Natsukiss, with a couple of images taken from her galleries. She has featured in several previous posts here, here and here.

Natsukiss with neon tube
Natsukiss with neon tube

Losing her cherry

I’m slightly ashamed of what I’m about to do. I swore I’d never do it. Yet here, I am, about to link to a BuzzFeed article. The site whose sole purpose seems to be to show up in annoying unfunny facebook posts from people I can barely remember friending, is about to get click traffic from me, damn it.

The article in question – 34 GIFs that sum up your first sexual experience – isn’t even femdom, but it did make me laugh a lot (particularly #5 & #18). BuzzFeed stole it all from a reddit thread of course.

As a teenager I always thought sex would be this amazing and intensely pleasurable experience. In time I found out that while that can be true, getting there involves a fair amount of awkwardness, mistakes, messiness, embarrassing moments and humorous situations (those mostly in hindsight). That really doesn’t get mentioned as much as it should.

I leave you with a shot of a lady about to lose her cherry. I hope he’s gentle (for his sake).

Cherry

This image is from the photographer H Morgen.

Normal service will be resumed shortly

I believe the last week or so has been my slowest posting rate since I started this blog. A double header of vacation and sickness will do that for you. Fortunately I’m back in Seattle now, and so if I can just shake off this damn bug, I can get back to posting more normally.

Despite my germ cursed state, I did manage to indulge in some kinky play in San Francisco. I’ll be blogging about that in coming posts. I’ve also some photographs and a short video to share, assuming I can figure out how to edit and convert it appropriately. In the meantime, while I go hunt down some NyQuil, I’ll leave you with something that made me smile. I think it’s by the artist Bathgate21 who also did this drawing. Pepé Le Pew is notorious for not taking ‘No’ as an answer. Perhaps some time as bottom to Bugs will cure him of that.

A kinky Bugs Bunny and Pepe le Pew

 

Just a quickee

Apologies for the lack of posts in the last few days. I’m on vacation (again) down in San Francisco (again). Unfortunately, I’ve caught some random bug that’s given me a sore throat, congested sinuses and a fuzzy head. If there’s one thing more annoying that getting sick, it’s getting sick on vacation. Possibly this is the universe’s way of restoring karmic balance. I was just having too many fun vacations, so it was time to spoil one.

Anyway, vacations and sickness are two things that tend to interrupt blogging. This is just a quick post to keep the blog ticking over. So while I go hunt down my last Ricola throat lozenge, I’ll leave you with an image I spotted on the Girl Rule, Subs Drool tumblr. No real connection to anything. Just something I liked and thought I’d share.

Holding his posture

Pink elephant syndrome

My mini-rant in the previous post triggered some interesting comments and some further thoughts of my own. So this post is a continuation on the topic of flirting with limits when playing with new (or newish) partners.

I should start by stating that none of the dommes that get regularly name checked here (Lydia, Yuki, Ai-Li, etc.) have ever been guilty of this problem. People I play with fairly often know my limits, so the situation doesn’t tend to arise, but even in my first few sessions with them they did the right thing and completely avoided problem areas.

I should also draw clear distinctions between the different circumstances where limits can get violated. The three obvious cases that spring to my mind are when a top deliberately cross a line, when a top simply doesn’t listen and is unaware of a limit, and when a top chooses to play somewhere close to a limit and crosses it accidentally. All of them are bad, but it was the final situations I was really trying to dig into, as it’s something I’ve not seen addressed elsewhere.

One of the comments (from ‘Informed guesswork’) likened it to the Pink Elephant problem. Being told not to picture a pink elephant instantly makes you picture one. In the same way I sometimes think limit discussions trigger the visualization and problem solving parts of a top’s brain…

Bottom: For me piercing / hoods / having bananas shoved up my bottom are limits.
Top: Oh really? (Thinking: That’s a shame I like needles / sensory deprivation / pretending to be a kinky gorilla)
Bottom: Yes. I am terrified of needles / am claustrophobic / witnessed a traumatic event at the local zoo as a child.
Top: OK. Good to know (Thinking: So is it all medical scenes / enclosed spaces / anal fruit situations that are a problem? What if I used a carrot? I remember a great scene I did last year with an aubergine. That’d be fun to try again…)

At this point the top now has pink elephants on the brain and is making connections to similar past situations, while forgetting the million and one other things she enjoys doing that don’t relate to elephants of any color at all.

Obviously the onus should be on the top to avoid this type of behavior, but one excellent suggestion in the comments was to finish a scene negotiation with the stuff you enjoy rather than personal limits. I suspect a lot of people are like me, and the last thing they talk about before a scene with a new person is their limits. After all, it’s human nature to open up with all the positive things you enjoy before adding the qualifiers and conditionals. Perhaps that switching that around would help avoid the pink elephants.

Woman with elephant

When looking for an image for this post I actually did an image search for elephants and femdom. I didn’t have much hope, but I should have realized that rule 34 can never be violated. Unfortunately the relevant images – of big breasted women waving whips near men being crushed by elephants – was a little too extreme for me to feature. So instead here’s a rather beautiful shot of a naked woman next to a naked elephant. It was taken by Vlad Gansovsky.

Perversity (of the wrong kind)

Most of my posts tend to the positive and upbeat. This one might be a bit more of a rant. Let’s put a nicer spin on it, and call it constructive feedback. It’s aimed squarely at dominants and centers on something that has happened to me too many times to be a coincidence.

Here’s my rant feedback: When you’re playing with someone fairly new, and that person has outlined a few limits (hard or soft) to stay away from, then stay the hell away from those limits. Don’t try and figure out exactly where the line is drawn. Don’t try and determine exactly what about the activity makes it a limit. Don’t toy with anything vaguely related. Just avoid, avoid, avoid.

I’m not a submissive with a lot of limits. When I look at a typical list of play activities, it’s quicker for me to list what I will not do rather than what I will. I’ve a soft limit with hoods and claustrophobia, I’ve a hard limit on humiliation, and I’ve a slightly screwed up lower back that makes extreme bondage positions tricky. That’s about it. Not a lot to remember. Yet multiple times in the last couple of years I’ve played with new dommes who, having been given this list, proceeded to flirt with activities that ran awfully close to these problem areas.

The last time it happened was a couple of months ago. It was my first time I’d played with this particular dominant. Not fifteen minutes into the session, and after my standard limits discussion, she pulled out a hood and asked if it’d be OK because it had both mouth and eye holes. Suddenly I’m thrown out of my happy subby mindset and into evaluation mode. How scary does it look? Can I handle it? Is it an integral part of the scene she wants to try? It would have been fine to show the hood pre-scene to get my opinion, but why bother suggesting it after we started to play? I ended up refusing and it made absolutely no difference to how the scene unfolded.

A similar thing happened towards the end of last year. It was again someone fairly new to me and, after mentioning my screwy back, she proceeded to try for a really awkward bondage position. She had me on my back on the floor, knees pulled up towards my shoulders and my arms pulled down towards where my feet would normally be. After pointing out that this wasn’t a great position for me she gave up on the plan, but it seemed so unnecessary to attempt it at all. Maybe we could have got it to work given time, but I estimate there are around three million and seven safe positions to tie me into, so why try for the tricky number three million and eight?

None of the examples (and I have multiple others) felt like deliberate attempts to break a boundary. It just seemed the limits discussion planted ideas, and that saying “Heavy X is a limit” somehow translated into “… but let’s do light X!”. This seems perverse to me, and not in the good way. Assessing intensity or risk is very hard with someone you don’t know. Much better to stay as far away as possible from potential minefields. Just because someone has handed you a map, doesn’t mean you need to go up to the minefield boundary and start jumping up and down. There’s no shortage of other interesting places to explore.

Artwork by Shohei Yamashiro

This artwork by Shohei Yamashiro manages to capture both hoods and an awkward position to bend a slave into. Now if you can just imagine she’s calling him a worthless fool, it’ll have nailed 3 of my personal limits.

Marks

I love marks. I love admiring them in the mirror after playing. I love running a finger along them and awakening them, reliving the moment. I love slipping on a top to cover them, yet knowing they’re still there as I got about my day. I love the colors as they fade through red, blacks, purples and yellows.

What I don’t enjoy is discovering I have a dermatology appointment a day after a session. I’ve been here before, so you’d think I’d learn. Last time it was generic bruising and marks I felt I could get away with. This week I had some really obvious needle marks in distinctive patterns all down my arms and legs. It’s really hard to explain that away, so I had to postpone my appointment. I could imagine them saying “He’s clearly injecting something. And what’s more he’s doing it really badly, given how many needle marks I can see. We better put a note on file: Drug User (Incompetent).” Nobody needs that on their medical records.

Marks

I found this on the Domination on My terms tumblr. I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution.

Two plums for teacher

Tradition dictates that teachers should be given an apple. I’m not sure if this student forget or if she just decided to grab something extra. He looks kind of old to be in the classroom, but I think it’s clear he still has a lot to learn.

Teacher

I found this on the Superior Women tumblr. I’m afraid I’ve failed to track down an original attribution. All the reverse images searches come back with links to MILF porn, which I find kind of amusing, given that there’s probably not a big difference in their respective ages.