The mystery of the disappearing dildo

I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books, but a reverse image search tells me this is fan art featuring two of the characters – Harry and Ginny. Presumably she’s showing him her latest magic trick. Using just an ordinary school tie and a completely conventional strap-on harness, she can make her magic wand disappear completely from view. It’s a neat trick, but I’m going to bet that Harry has a fair idea where she has hidden it.

Ginny Pegging Artwork

I’m afraid I don’t know the original artist. I found it on the Felm Cyber tumblr (originally larger version available here).

The safeword is lawyer

I’m taking a few days vacation in LA. Posting may therefore suffer due to this. I have got some kinky fun lined up, so hopefully there will be some interesting session photographs to share at some point.

In the meantime I’ll leave you with this thought provoking story featuring a financial domme who got jailed for blackmail. Essentially the scene was pushed to a point that the submissive preferred to contact the police rather than pay the 6000 euros necessary to escape it. Given the limited details available it’s hard to know who exactly was at fault. Was this the equivalent of a client negotiating a light spanking and then alleging assault when he received a heavy beating? Or the equivalent of negotiating a heavy beating and then alleging assault when he was given exactly that?

I’m on record as not being a fan of financial domination, and my concerns about a ‘duty of care’ do seem to be born out with this case. If someone was willing to risk the shame and humiliation of exposing their kink to the world, they must have been pushed well beyond their limits, and that suggests the dommes really weren’t paying attention to their clients well-being. But as I said, it’s hard to know what really happened without seeing more details. Given the lack of standing BDSM has within the law, the fact two people were jailed doesn’t necessarily mean they were entirely at fault.

Kyla Cole

The image comes courtesy of Femdom Times and this gallery. The site referenced in the watermark no longer seems to be active.

Guilt+Force=?

This is continuation of yesterday’s post on ‘force’ based scenes, originally triggered by this post by Stabbity. Reading those first will probably help this make more sense.

Force in a BDSM scene can undoubtedly be very hot. For one thing it suggests passion and emotion. As a submissive being on the receiving end of that is energizing. It’s hard to be forceful towards something you’re indifferent about. Force in a scene also brings in ideas of objectification and control. A lot of BDSM toys are about removing some element of control, whether that’s over motion, speech, sight or sphincter muscles. Force can be a further extension of that, removing the ability to control consent, albeit in a consensual non-consent kind of way.

I get all those aspects of force in a scene. The one associated aspect that does puzzle me is the idea of removing or shifting guilt. This came up in the comments to Stabbity’s post.

I also feel that the use of force enables a sub who is ashamed of a certain desire to experience it without guilt. I see it most frequently in regard to forced bi scenarios. The sub wants it but doesn’t want to admit (either to others or to himself) that he wants it. So by passing off the responsibility to the dom, he’s essentially free to indulge without worry.  – roo-roo

This is a view I’ve seen expressed many times in the past, and I have to say I don’t get it. And I mean that in the ‘I personally don’t understand’ way, not in the ‘it’s wrong’ way. Can guilt be really shifted so easily? Mixing the complex emotions of a forced BDSM scene to a genuine sense of guilt sounds like a combustible emotional mix. If a traumatic childhood experience with a Salvation Army lady had left me with fetish for stealing from charity collection boxes, I’d (hopefully) feel very guilty about that. Would dragging a domme into my coin pilfering schemes make me feel any better? Can guilt be shared or even shifted like that? It seems such a reductive view of an emotion. Perhaps it depends on someone’s ability to compartmentalize and buy into their own stories and fantasies. Maybe if I roleplayed in scenes I’d understand this better.

As I said, it’s not an unusual or uncommon view on force in scenes, but it does leave me scratching my head. Perhaps the fact I’m not an emotional masochist may have something to do with that. While I ponder that, I’ll leave you with another fun piece of artwork, this by Kami Tora. Not quite as overtly physical as the Stanton drawings from yesterday, but it does have some nice hair pulling and forceful pegging.

Kami Tora forced pegging scene

Use the force

Stabbity has started an interesting discussion on ‘forced’ scenes over on her blog Not Just Bitchy. There are a lot of ideas worth digging into, both in the post and the comments. For the moment I’ll start with her basic idea, which is that the fantasy of being forced to submit (imagine quotes around that if you prefer) is partly a fantasy about submission and domination being easy. It removes the risk of screwing up on both sides of the D/s equation. I kind of get this from the dominant point of view, but I’m not so sure about the submissive side.

For a dominant there are always a lot of choices in a scene. Just picking up a bundle of rope raises issues of where to tie it, how tightly, what to attach it to, when to loosen it, etc. And that’s before anyone has even been hit, shocked, pierced or penetrated. Adding force into the mix adds a safety margin to decisions. It suggests that the scene isn’t primarily for the benefit of the submissive and therefore there’s less to get wrong. If that wasn’t enough warm-up for you or that penetration was a little rougher than you like, well that’s just tough. I’m forcing you to do it.

On the submissive side I’m more skeptical, because personally I don’t worry all that much about screwing up in a scene. That’s not to say I’m some perfect submissive. I worry about communication. I worry about the intensity I can take. I worry about getting a cramp after we’ve spent 30 minutes getting me bound in just the right position. I worry about a spider scuttling across my naked body when I can’t move. But all these things are just as much an issue in a forced scene. I’ll safeword out if a major limit is exceeded whatever the nature of the scene (particularly if arachnids have decided to crash the party). Similarly the quality of my communication isn’t affected by being forced. I worry about being a good or a bad submissive, but not typically about screwing up.

That’s not to say force doesn’t offer some interesting possibilities for the submissive, but I’ll save further thoughts for another post. In the meantime I’ll leave you with some artwork by Eric Stanton. He was always a great illustrator of powerful forceful women who could physically bully and dominate weaker men.

Eric Stanton artwork from his story entitled 'Bonnie and Clara'
Eric Stanton artwork from his story entitled 'Bonnie and Clara'

At least she has a smile on her face

It’s not completely clear what’s happening in this shot, but an educated guess would say it involves the gentleman’s ass. Presumably either something going in to it or something hitting it. Whatever the scenario, I do enjoy the contrasting expressions. There are a couple of very good grins to go along with his expressive grimace.

Smiling mistress

I found this on the Lash Kisser tumblr. I think it’s originally from the CFNM site.

Oxygen. An overrated luxury.

I’m not a big fan of social media. I’ve got accounts on things like facebook and twitter, but I never really use them. Mostly I don’t see the point. However, recently Lydia has started using the Vine application and for once I kind of get it. Having a friend tweet what they’re doing 160 characters or less seems pointless, but seeing a little video clip suddenly brings the whole thing to life. It’s information rich enough to be interesting while being short enough (6 seconds or less) to not require significant time investment.

I got to enjoy a great breathplay session with Lydia tonight and she tweeted two short Vine clips from it. One showing me in ropes and with a pillow over my head and one showing her and the plastic bag she was suffocating me with. I wouldn’t say they capture the session mood at all. That was a very positive, sensuous, shared experience that had me deep in subspace. In contrast these remind me of something from a horror movie. They’re the kind of clips the crazy serial killer sends the police to taunt them while torturing his latest victim. But for all that I do think they’re kind of fun. They’re easy to create and give a little taste of what’s going on in somebodies life.

For an accompanying image I wanted some sort of breathplay shot, but they’re surprisingly hard to find. In the end I had to raid some old femdom folders on my hard drive for the images below. I don’t have a source for them. I do know the young lady appears to be enjoying give her bound slave a good dunking.

Bondage and breathplay in bath
Bondage and breathplay in bath

That’s just not cricket

This series of images makes me smile for it’s cartoon like progression. The four shot sequence reminds me of an old photo booth filmstrip. However, I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying to reproduce it. Falling backwards like that onto your hands and arms like that would not be good. I think this is also the first time I’ve ever seen a cricket bat used in a BDSM shot. As implements go it’s probably a little heavy to use effectively, but it’s certainly fearsome.

The female model is Lorelei and the photographer is Titus Powell. As you’d expect given the sporting equipment, they’re both UK based.

An article for masochists (in the wrong way)

I try and bring my readers a range of links. Some smart, some funny and some annoying. Sadly, this article on Slate by William Saletan is from that final category. His basic point seems to be that S&M will never go mainstream. That may or may not be true, or even desirable, but his backing reasoning is idiotic. It takes the form of slippery slope arguments, a sure sign of a poorly thought out point of view. For example…

BDSM can be quite dangerous. Responsible practitioners insist it must be “safe, sane, and consensual.” But it attracts people who like to push boundaries. Some submissives are adrenaline junkies: They don’t believe in safety. Recently, several men have admitted to or have been charged with or convicted of crimes including sexual abuse, kidnapping, and murder, all under the cover of BDSM. These men don’t represent BDSM, but they do represent the far end of sadism.

The first part of this is just dumb. Some people like motorsport, rock climbing or parachuting out of planes. They’re adrenaline junkies. Do they also not believe in safety? And if some people go motor racing without a crash helmet does that mean it’s inherently unsafe for all? The second part is offensive. If they don’t represent BDSM then why bring it up? It’s like talking about dating and then bringing up the fact that some men are rapists.

He then goes onto claim that consent cannot be maintained, safewords don’t work and that non-consensual slavery is alive and well. It’s tempting to go through his reasoning line by line and pull it apart, but life’s too short to spend on this kind of drivel. However, I do want to comment on some of the posts and comments I’ve seen around the internet that followed the article. As you’d expect a lot of people were annoyed by it (including Dan Savage) but a few tended to make the argument “Yes, there are crazy people doing X but there’s nothing wrong with Y.” Inevitably X was something they thought weird (piercing, electricity, breathplay, etc.) and Y was something they liked (bondage, pegging, D/s roleplay, etc.). In doing this there making exactly the same mistake Saletan does.

There isn’t a hierarchy of kinky activity or gateway activities to the world of the Cenobites. People doing edge play don’t have more issues with consent or safewords than people doing light bondage. Dangerous activity isn’t limited to BDSM and the capacity to abuse isn’t correlated with your sexual tastes. Sadly assholes who put others at risk and have issues with consent are a worldwide problem in all parts of life.

I’ll finish with an activity that Mr. Saletan considers particularly harrowing – breathplay. I just hope the Sado Girls site didn’t need to pay for psychological counseling for these two after the photoshoot.

Breathplay

Office bully

The first image from yesterday’s post put me in mind of this shot. I like the fact it works whoever you prefer to imagine to be the titular boss. She can either be a controlling subordinate or a bullying manager and it’s still hot.

I first stumbled across it on the Thoughts of a Dork tumblr. It’s originally from a fashion shoot for Harper’s Bazaar in Spain. It was shot by Benjamin Kanarek and features Yulia Kharlapanova.

Office Bully

Celebrity or parent?

Advochasty recently put up in an interesting post describing his enjoyment in being assigned tasks, and it reminded me of an older post by Lily that I’ve been meaning to link to for ages. Lily’s post draws on a book called Real Service that describes a categorization scheme for dominants and submissives. What stuck in my mind was the spectrum of domination styles it defined, ranging from parental to celebrity.

The “celebrity dominant” stays outside on the cell phone while their s-type goes into the restaurant, arranges for a table they know the dominant will like, begins ordering the food, and orders the dominant’s favorite cocktail. The dominant snaps their phone shut, sweeps into the restaurant, sits down, and begins enjoying the meal.

The parental dominant, by contrast, chooses and drives to the restaurant, orders for both of them, and is definitely carrying the wallet.

I’ve never really explored a service D/s dynamic. Mostly that has been an opportunity problem, but for a long time I also wondered if it was something I’d even be interested in. I’d read blogs that featured a service dynamic and find the idea very unappealing. I hate micro-managing and I hate inefficient decision making. So when I read Lily’s post it was a light bulb moment. The idea of simply taking care of things and smoothing the way for the domme was highly appealing. Clearly I’d be reading about parental types where I needed a celebrity dominant! And there’s no shortage of celebrities playing with a domme look. Maybe Miranda Kerr or Katie Holmes would be up for a coffee sometime?

For a post illustration I thought I’d go with a couple of different styles of service. The first makes me think of the celebrity PA style. Although in this case, whatever he’s done, she doesn’t look too pleased about it. The second is obviously a fair more personal and hands on type of service. I found both on the Miss tumblr.

Bullied Personal Assistant

Washing her hair