Site Updates

I’ve made a variety of additions to a number of pages.

To the blogroll on the right and the blog page I’ve added links to Veronica Volt (an LA based pro-domme) and to The Pervocracy (featured in yesterday’s post). I was also happy to move he stoops to worship out of the dead blogs section, after slave domnei left a comment indicating it had returned to life.

To the equipment page I’ve added links to Jack’s Floggers, Wild Gasmasks and Slaughter House Couture.

To the femdom fiction page I’ve added a link to Miss Irene Clearmont, who has a selection of well written femdom stories freely available.

Finally, on the femdom image page I’ve cleaned up a few dead links and added the following tumblr’s…

I’ll leave you with a shot I found on one of those added tumblrs, specifically Blue Keys.

Hush

10 ways to tell if your sex article is rubbish

Reading Cosmo has always been a guilty pleasure. When I was young, and furtively reading copies my mother brought home, it seemed a fascinating window into a sophisticated adult world. Now I’m older, and find it in waiting rooms, it’s still a fascinating window into a different world. Unfortunately the world is one of absolutely nutty advice written by people who appear to have absolutely no clue what they’re talking about.

I’ve recently seen a few blog posts pointing to a Jezebel article mocking Cosmo’s BDSM advice. However, I have to say they’re a little late to the game. Cliff over at The Pervocracy has been entertainingly pulling apart their sex advice for years now. And while mocking Cosmo sex advice is like shooting fish in a barrel – if it’s a tiny barrel, and a big fish, and it’s dead already, and you’ve got a shotgun – I have to say she’s doing a much better job of it then Jezebel. Here’s a taster from her most recent post

If you ask him out on a second date, he’ll likely feel emasculated… and that’s pretty much the worst thing you can do to a guy.

It’s gotta be inconvenient having your gender role defined by what someone else does. You’re going along, being all masculine, and then your date fucks it up and breaks your masculinity so you have to be feminine! And you don’t even own a decent pair of heels so then you have to go shopping! Talk about a pain in the neck!

And here’s a snippet from her take on their article on that book

Maybe it will discuss how BDSM exists as a community, how it encompasses a broad range of activities and motivations, and above all else, how crucial enthusiastic consent and explicit communication are in BDSM!

Suprise-attack him with a few of these tonight… and that’s an order.

…Maybe not.

Use the back of a brush to swat his thighs when he steps out of the shower–wet skin is more sensitive.

That’s not a sexy surprise, Cosmo. That’s battery.

If you’ve not read any of The Pervocracy articles before, then I think you’re in for an entertaining treat. In the meantime, I’ll use the flimsy above reference to a swat with a hairbrush to feature this image. It’s of Miss Dawn, a professional disciplinary from Cambridge in the UK.

Miss DawnIf you find yourself in the Cambridge region and fancy a swat across the thigh with this hairbrush (wet or otherwise), Miss Dawn’s session information is here. I originally found the image on the Strict Women tumblr.

Top shelf material

I’m on record as not being a big fan of public humiliation. That’s partly because I don’t like dragging other people into scenes without their consent and partly because I don’t particularly kink on humiliation. However, what I treat as humiliating or not probably differs fairly widely from a lot of non-submissive guys. For example, I think the shot below is kind of cute and fun. It’s teamwork in action, and he’s actually being useful. How else was she going to reach that bottle? It’s a bit like carrying a woman’s handbag or fixing her shoes. Humiliation to me means denigration of the submissive, where this is about being practical and helpful. Although I suspect I’d have a hard time explaining that logic to any friends finding me in this position in my local grocery store.

Man acting as footstool in supermarket for mistressI found this shot on the Stealth Domme tumblr.

Incidentally, the post title here is a British expression typically taken to mean pornography. Adult magazines are put on top shelves in newsagents to stop kids looking at them. So it was originally intended as a play on words, describing both the picture and what’s happening in it. But then it struck me the US has another meaning, where top shelf refers to something of quality. I think it comes from liquor bottles in bars, where the best stuff is put on the top shelves. I assume that’s both an efficiency thing (not needed as often as cheaper booze) and a cost thing (less chance of it being knocked over). So it’s actually a triple meaning title, also describing how I feel about the image. This ends your random aside for the day.

Institutional torture

I’m a little ambivalent about the image below. It’s got a militaristic torture vibe to it, which I have to admit I find kind of hot. There’s what looks like an electrical torture device on wheels, and a mostly naked lady in an incredibly impractical but very sexy boots/hat/gloves military torturer get-up. I passionately hate the idea of any kind of officially sanctioned torture, but this image is sufficiently fantastical in nature that it works for me on a purely abstract and sexual level.

However, the blog post I found for this image describes this as a postcard for March 8th, which it lists as a “Traditional day of torture for the male population…” (via google translation). March 8th happens to be International Women’s Day, a day described in wikipedia as “a celebration for women’s economic, political and social achievements.” So now I’m left wondering what the artist was originally getting at. Is it purely a sexual image for people attracted to female sadists? Or is he trying to make some misogynistic point about women generally torturing men? It can’t be a coincidence that he picked March 8th, and that context makes the image a difficult one for me to enjoy. But purely visually, it does push buttons buried deep in my sub-cortex.

Female torturer

More smiles

After yesterday’s post featuring a smiling sadist, I thought this would be a good image to follow it up with. According to the ever infallible Wikipedia, licking a face is a form of greeting for dogs. So I guess this is just her puppy’s way of saying hello. Given the width of those smiles, they’re certainly having fun with it.

Licks and smilesI’m afraid I don’t have any context for the image. I found it on the Submissive Geek tumblr.

That smile

Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that I session a lot with Lady Lydia McLane. She’s an astonishing domme and I’m incredibly happy that I found her. However, she does give me a few disconcerting moments. In the past she’s modeled for a whole range of sites, which means there’s all sorts of video and images out there featuring her. Given how great she looks, this isn’t too surprising, but it is odd to be browsing porn and to keep coming across someone you know fairly well. It’s a weird dichotomy, but while I find her incredibly sexy in person, and I enjoy all sorts of pornography, somehow combining the two is like a missed gear shift. There’s a nasty crunch, a sudden lurch, and everything is slightly unbalanced. It’s not that I dislike the fantasy. Or that I’m disappointed with the reality. It’s just that combining the two creates a weird mental collision.

The latest occurrence of this effect was this tumblr post, which led me in turn to this video. I can’t say I’m a fan of the body stocking (which I suspect was suggested by the porn site). And while I like boots, these are a little too cliched for my taste. So ignore the domme strut, but do check out her smile, both in the image below and in the video. She’s just such a happy sadist. Nothing sends me more than a smile that leads to a scream. It’s just one of those perfect combinations like champagne & oysters, Groucho & Chico or Lennon & McCartney.

A smiling Lady Lydia

Size does matter!

Slogans on t-shirts tend to have only a very loose relationship with reality. I have a soft spot for my George Carlin one – “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups” – but in general they’re not a reliable source of information. In terms of credibility they rank somewhere between bumper stickers and Fox news. Although not necessarily in that order.

However, judging by the pictures below, it appears that Mistress Lana is someone who believes in living up to her clothing’s slogans. That’s a large cigar and an even larger strap-on. The featured gentleman looks a little perturbed. I hope for his sake the slogan on the back of the shirt is something like this.

Mistress Lana smoking cigar
Mistress Lana with strap-onMistress Lana is a Moscow based pro-domme. If you find yourself in that part of the world, her session information is available here.

A touch of blusher

Miss Margo added a comment on yesterday’s post that mentioned a Sissy Maid High Tea that she attended at a BDSM festival. Much to her surprise, she had a blast.

They were so attentive, and trying so hard to impress, and they had put so much effort into their grooming and roles…it was really very touching.

That comment made me think of the image below, which I stumbled across on tumblr a few days ago. I thought it was very sweet, which isn’t an adjective I typically find myself using about cross-dressing D/s shots.

I also got to thinking a little more about the idea of male submissives playing with gender roles. In yesterday’s post I suggested it was a popular theme in femdom, which I still think is true. But that that doesn’t necessarily mean the two things are causally connected. It could just be that men who are open to exploring emotionally and culturally fraught areas like male submission are also more open to exploring other sexually complex areas. After all, if you’ve just spent the weekend role-playing ‘Sir Reginald Thistleswaite meets the Amazonian Queen and is tortured by much Snu Snu’, then raiding your wife’s lingerie draw probably seems like a pretty minor deviation. A guy who spent the same weekend drinking beer and watching football with his buddies might not feel quite as open to it, no matter how secretly curious he might be.

Mistress with Maid

Half drag

This isn’t really a femdom related post. Instead it features an image from a series that I found fascinating, and thought a lot of my readers would also appreciate.

The photograph below is from a sequence entitled ‘Half Drag’ by the photographer Leland Bobbé. It features pictures of drag queens and, in the words of the photographer, is designed to “capture both the male and the alter-ego female side of these subjects in one image.” None of the shots in it are composite images. They’re a single photograph taken after the subject has been very carefully made-up on just one side of their face (in this particular case that of Pusse Couture’s). Both from a craftsmanship and artistic perspective I think they’re amazing shots. You can read more background and donate to the project on the artist’s blog.

As far as I’m aware (and I’m no expert) drag queens occupy a particular unique niche of their own. There may be complex intersections with gender roles, sexual orientation, fetish, performance, etc. but it’s not the same as any of them. However, just to jump back into the kink arena for a moment, the idea of an exaggerated female persona does seem to be a popular theme with male submissives. Some see it as a form of humiliation, which is not something I’m a fan of and therefore don’t typically feature here. For others it seems to be a very positive change, an aspiration to be an object of desire or a chance to explore a hidden side of themselves. It’s a shame that these two alternatives often seem to get conflated together.

Pusse Couture in half drag. Photographed by Leland Bobbé

Sutures in Seattle

I do a lot of sessions that never get blogged about. Either we don’t remember to take photographs or they’re intense but not particularly visually interesting. However, today’s post brings you a scene I did last week with Lady Lydia which was both a little unusual and we remembered the camera for.

As the post title suggests it features suturing. There’s no blood and nothing particularly graphic in the shots. Unless you count a naked me as graphic (I wouldn’t blame you if you did). That said, there is some piercing and skin sutures involved, so I’ve put the details on a separate page. If you’re interested in seeing what a very talented domme can do with a cutting needle, some surgical suture and a willing volunteer, then feel free to follow the jump.