The beauty of dominant women
Here’s a man making himself useful. He’s holding her beer, cleaning her feet and providing a comfortable seat. If he could just hold that remote for her with his other hand and flip channels on request, he’d be perfect. As it is, she seems to be happy enough with the services on offer.
I found this on Freya’s Fancy tumblr. It’s originally from the Men are Slaves site.
This image caught my eye for the positioning of the hands. Him trying to protect himself and her trying to pull his hands away for a clear shot. It captures nicely that moment of balance where he wants to do what he’s told, but the instinctual need to protect a hurt area interferes.
This is originally from the Young Dommes site. I found it on the equally deep in your eyes tumblr.
Japan has a rich tradition of erotic artwork. Shunga prints have recently become well known and admired in the West. This piece is of a more recent vintage and is by the artist Ryoko Kimura. It’s entitled ‘Beauty of My Dish – My man’s body dish for L’opera gateau au chocolat’ and if you’re interested in purchasing it or similar works it sold for around $32,000 US dollars back in 2005.
I’m having too much fun in NYC to blog properly. I’ll therefore stick to simply posting images I like. This one has a nice trio of facial expressions. It features Lexi Sindel and Lea Lexis and is from Femdom Empire. Personally while I like the C part of CBT, I’m not big on the B. That long drawn out ache is tough to deal with. I’d guess this guy is going to be living with the results of that squeeze for a while.
I found this on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.
I’m going to be taking a few days vacation in New York. Blogging may therefore become a bit hit and miss until early next week. Apologies in advance for that.
My timing was very fortunate, as I’ve managed to arrange some time with Troy Orleans before she begins her sabbatical / extended break. This wasn’t entirely down to happenstance. I had some friends dithering about taking a NYC trip around this time, and then when I saw MTO’s post, I decided a firm nudge was needed and got them to commit. So I’m now looking forward to doing some great restaurants and bars with them, and indulging in some kinky fun with Miss Orleans. Other than the horribly early flight I have to catch, I’m looking forward to every minute of it.
This great bondage shot is of Miss Orleans as taken by the talented Natasha Gornik. I found it in this post on her blog.
The relative proportions of dominants to submissives, and the splits along the gender lines, are a well debated topic. Not only are the ratios for active kinksters up for question, but there’s also the issue of how many potential kinky people there are, or even what the percentages would look like if society was less screwed up. It’s a topic I’ve commented on in the past.
It’s also a topic that’s horribly lacking in hard data, and I’m afraid I’m not about to fix that problem. However, I did do a small experiment recently that’s related and I thought kind of interesting. The methodology was pretty simple. I went to the CollarMe site, randomly looked at profiles (with the widest possible selection criteria), and counted the proportions I saw. It actually started as some random browing over a coffee, but after a few minutes I got curious about what I was seeing, and started a tally chart. To keep it simple I just counted straight singles who didn’t switch.
The end results, before I got bored counting, were: Male Dominants = 40. Female Submissives = 22. Male Submissives = 23. Female Dominants = 7. Of those 7 female dominants, the number who were pro-dommes = 6. Leaving me with a grand total of 1 non-professional female dominant.
Now that doesn’t tell us anything about the ratios in the real world. It’s just a small sample of the people who choose to advertise on a particular site. But I was interested in how accurately it matched my intuition of what the numbers would be. I expected male dominants to be the largest group, submissives to be fairly evenly split along gender lines, and female dominants to be rare. I just wasn’t expecting them to be that rare. The contrast of 40:1 across the gender divide is striking.
I have to admit it wasn’t always easy to differentiate the professionals from the lifestyle ads. A couple of what I classified as professional ads didn’t mention payment. However, when I see numerous well lit/composed photographs of an attractive lady modelling several different exciting leather outfits, the cynic in me tends to assume she’s a pro. The non-professional dominants are normally dealing with enough dick pic shots as it is, they don’t need to encourage the hairy knuckle brigade.
While I’m on the subject of exciting leather outfits modeled by professionals – and as an aside let’s just admit I’m a genius at subtle segues to my post images – here’s Dominatrix Ella Kros in a rather striking black ensemble.
If you’re in either Tel-Aviv or London and would like to session with Ella Kros then her contact page is here.
I have to admit that I’m not always the best organized blogger. Some people have multiple posts and drafts lined up in their queue ready to go at the push of a button. I typically have a bunch of thoughts, a few random images, and a glass of wine to work with. Sometimes they come together. Often they don’t. When I’m stuck and it’s late at night, I turn to some of my favorite tumblrs for inspiration. I figure if I can find a good image I’m 80% done already.
One of those ‘go to’ tumblrs is the Happy BDSM one. A feel-good photograph of a grin and some kink is always an easy one to blog about. I was therefore perturbed to browse it tonight and discover a whole bunch of my old posts popping up on it (all with the correct attribution). Did nobody tell these people that they’re where I go for images? It doesn’t work if it’s the other way around. It’ll end up as an infinite loop of reposting with zero added value, much like the Huffington Post. Somebody has to do some actual work here, and I’ll be damned if it’s going to be me.
Anyway, while the Happy BDSM folks sort themselves, out, I’ll leave you with the kind of image I was hoping to find and steal from them. This was actually from the Kaisub blog.
I feel that I should be able to track an original source for this image. It looks like something from a professional shoot, but nothing pops up on a Google reverse image search. The Japanese style genital blurring is also kind of odd for what looks like a Western image. Anyway, if anyone can help me attribute it, then please leave a comment.
Continuing the theme of artwork and fictional characters, here’s Bellatrix Lestrange (from the Harry Potter series) as illustrated by Chris Ables. I’ve never actually read the books, but I do appreciate the sentiment. The crazy evil characters are always the most interesting ones in any story. Doesn’t matter if it’s Hannibal Lecter, Malificent, Blofeld or the Joker. Conventional evil is simply unpleasant and quickly dispatched by the hero. Crazy evil is fascinating and always gets to return in the sequels.
You can find more of Christopher Ables’ work on his site.
Catwoman has not been treated kindly by the movies. Anne Hathaway played the character beautifully, but got stuck with an incoherent sprawling mess of a movie. Michelle Pfeiffer looked fabulous in her latex outfit, but got stuck with another incoherent mess of a movie. In both cases the the respective directors (Christopher Nolan and Tim Burton) turned in their weakest movies when they incorporated the catwoman character. Clearly attractive women with whips have a detrimental effect on screenwriters and directors.
On the plus side the movie characters have resulted in a lot of great fan art. This particular take on the Michelle Pfeiffer version is by hotcake on deviant art.
The growing mainstream visibility of BDSM has led to a burst of kinky novels, guides and memoirs. A particularly active niche within this growing category has been the pro-domme autobiography and how-to guide. In theory this should have led to a lot of exciting reading. Anyone who has chatted to an experienced pro-domme will know they have many great stories to go along with their technical skills and insight into the complexities of human sexuality. In reality the results have been pretty mixed, with most books being, shall we say, less-than-great.
The latest contender is The Posh Girls Guide to Play by Alexis Lass aka Domme Dietrich, as featured in this NY Post article and this MF thread. It’s a kind of guide and memoir combo deal. The good news is that it’s not in that less-than-great category. The bad news is that it’s much worse than that. Admittedly I haven’t read the whole thing, but the look inside feature on the Amazon site told me all I needed to know.
I could probably deal with the juvenile writing style that reads like a cross between a teenager’s diary and a Cosmo article. The frequent mentions of her posh upbringing is weird, but I don’t think that would ruin it for me. I could even cope with her crass attempts to tie the whole things into the awful 50 shades trilogy. But some other things are just too annoying to ignore.
You might think that a book by a pro-domme would feature some positive thoughts on female domination. Even if the book covered a variety of gender and D/s combinations, surely the F/m one should be there somewhere, right? Yet no. As far as I can tell (both from the book and her interviews) it automatically defaults to the conventional submissive female role. The only submissive males are laughable clients in the commercial dungeon. Write about female submission by all means, but don’t act like it’s the goddam natural order of the world.
Next on the list of the “You’ve got to be kidding me…” was this gem.
S&M is archaic and rusty term that does not represent all or most popular dominant and submissive roleplay …. [We’ll have] nothing plucked from the psycho torture toy chest. This guide is intended for adventurous, whole and healthy women…
Well fuck you very much lady. A lot of us like a little S and a touch of M. And we don’t appreciate the implication that we’re not whole or healthy because of it. You’re drawing a bunch of arbitrary lines between what’s kinky and cool and what’s weird and deviant. I think I must have missed your nomination as ultimate ruler of acceptable kink. Is it to late for me to vote?
The final gem that almost made me laugh out loud was the guide to who the book is for. Apparently if you answer yes to just one of these questions, then BDSM is for you…
6. My lover and I are fighting too much, and it’s taxing our relationship.
7. I would love to tone down the stress in my life.
8. I am a dominant female and I’m wondering how it would feel to be relieved of control and play a submissive role in a ‘tryout’ play experience.
Yes, that’s right – if your relationship isn’t working out, and you’re fighting a lot, then clearly the best thing to do is to get ropes, gags and whips involved. That applies even if neither of you have any interest in BDSM. Just go ahead and get your kinky freak on. There’s absolutely nothing that could possibly go wrong in that situation. As for (8), I refer you to my earlier comments. Obviously if you’re a dominant female who brought a book by an ex pro-domme expecting some suggestions on female dominance, well more fool you. You probably deserve a good spanking.
The image is the author in question – Domme Dietrich. I might not appreciate her writing, but I have to admit she does look fabulous in a black corset.