Opt In or Opt Out

A couple of comments to my previous post got me thinking about the dynamics of session negotiation. Specifically, what gets treated as opt in and what as opt out. In theory, if you listen to most kinksters, all play has to be consensual and explicitly negotiated ahead of time, so everything should be opt in. The reality can be murkier.

The comments in question – from Servitor and Al about my pet peeve of ‘gotcha questions’ –  were slightly different but both raised the same basic point. I might not like questions designed to trip a submissive up, but that’s a valid thing to do for some scenes. Your kink is not my kink and all that. I absolutely agree with that. It can be a fine style of play if you’re into that dynamic or the roleplay requires it. But it’s also not quite the point I was trying (and probably failing) to make. Gotcha questions are a specific activity or style, and yet often get used without discussion. Which brings me to this posts title. My pet peeve isn’t so much with the approach itself, but that it is something I have to actively opt out of. Shouldn’t the default be opt in? Not so much YKINMKBYKIOK, but that YKINMK – and it’s in my session damn it! – BYKIOK.

I can think of other examples where the default is the reverse of what you might expect. Bondage for example. That’s part of almost every scene I do, yet I don’t think it ever gets negotiated. It’s treated as an intrinsic part of kink that you’d have to explicitly request not to do. Impact play is another. I’ve lost track of the number of times I didn’t mention impact play in session negotiation, yet 10 minutes later somebody was whaling on my ass. I suspect that’s probably because almost all domme’s like it so much! Neither of those activities count as a pet peeve for me, because I also enjoy them, but it might be an issue for someone else.

What exactly gets treated as opt in versus opt out clearly varies from domme to domme. At one extreme, every domme I know treats edge play activities like piercing, cutting or breathplay as opt in. They always get discusssed first. On the other side, along with bondage and impact play, I’ve typically found blindfolds and hoods are opt out. If I don’t call them out as an issue then there’s a good chance they’ll be pulled out at some point and I’ll have to start negotiating mid-scene, which is never my favorite time to do it. In between those two groups there’s a lot of fuzziness. For example, face slapping for some people is a very specific activity to be discussed ahead of time, for others its just an intrinsic part of kink that it’s up to the submissive to opt out of.

I’ve more to add here, but I’ll save that for the next post. In the meantime, I’ll continue my photographic theme of impact play. If this gentleman has a desire to opt out of caning, he probably needs to speak up asap.

This is from the High heels & Fetish tumblr.

Pet Peeve – Gotcha Questions

I think I’m due another PPPP – a Paltego Pet Peeve Post. Excuse me while I unburden myself on this one.

Today’s pet peeve is domme’s who ask questions with the deliberate goal of tripping the submissive up or drawing out a ‘wrong’ answer. There are a lot of ways to do this, but perhaps the canonical example would be posing a question and then, however the submissive responds, following up with “No. The right answer is whatever Mistress wants.” That really bugs me.

Let me first qualify that there is a specific style of play that this kind of gotcha questioning is appropriate for. If you’re doing a punishment or humiliation dynamic, where the whole point is that the submissive should always be wrong and kept mentally off balance, then its a valid technique. It’s certainly a mindfuck to be forced to answer knowing that there is no good response. But those kind of scenes are a specific and narrow style of play. I actually never do them, yet still encounter the gotcha question approach from time to time.

The reason I dislike it so much is that it runs directly counter to the goal of being open and honest in communication. I always want to be transparent and truthful with my thoughts and emotions in a scene. That’s the only way I know to build two way trust and a sense of connection. If I start having to second guess my answers, or spot the gotcha questions from the real ones, then it runs counter to that goal. Being told an honest answer is a wrong answer sets up bad incentives for my future answers, and forces my brain into social-interaction and negotiation mode, which is not at all conducive to subspace.

I’ve seen plenty of dommes complain over the years about submissives expecting them to be mind readers. They get told that the submissive will do anything to make them happy, and then get upset when it turns out that they were operating with different definitions of ‘anything’.  I think that’s a very reasonable response but, on the flip side, asking submissives ‘no win’ questions conditions them to give exactly these kind of responses. You can’t have it both ways.

Of course, just because a domme doesn’t deliberately trip up a submissive, doesn’t mean she can’t beat him. It’s always fair to say – “It’s interesting that you think that. Now bend over so I can cane that ass.”

I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for this image. Please leave a comment if you can help me with that.

Updated: Thanks to a helpful comment I can attribute this to Princess Toni. Based on similar images, I think this might be a Cruella shot.

Yogi

These shots by Mistress An Li made me happy. Not because it’s a great bondage set-up, although it is that. Not because it looks like something I’d want to try, although it’s also that. Not even because Mistress An Li looks so pleased with her creation, although a smiling domme is one of my favorite scenes. No. It’s because I saw the first shot and went “Oooh, that looks like reclined bound angle pose.” And then I felt all unjustifiably smug and pleased with myself that – after 18 months of regular yoga – I’d finally been able to remember and recognize one pose. Admittedly, that might be because it’s got a kinky sounding name, but I don’t care. I’m officially upgrading myself from yoga idiot to yoga novice.

Mistress An Li is a LA based pro-domme. You can find her professional site here and here twitter feed here. She also has a short video shot from this scene tweeted here, with the full video available at her onlyfans site.

Cute Boys

This isn’t actually femdom, but it made me laugh, so it gets a pass. Plus, I figure there must be at least some overlap between readers of this blog and people who like muscular men doing cross-dressing Magical Girl cosplay. The background to the shot, along with more photos, is in this crunchyroll article. Feel free to imagine a stern domme waving a whip at them from behind the camera if it’ll help.

This planet is having a pretty bloody time of it

The news these days is generally not good. One might even go as far as saying it’s seriously fucked up. Even this blog, designed as a kinky oasis, has featured a fair number of depressing posts about laws and politics. I’m therefore very happy to report a minor but cheering feelgood story. New Zealand’s Catherine Healy, who helped decriminalize prostitution, has been recognized  in the Queen’s honors list.  Specifically, she has been made a a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the rights of sex workers.

When I first spotted the headline, I assumed it’d be a situation where she’d done several good things, and she just happened to be someone who’d also worked for decriminalization. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. She’s being recognized primarily for her work towards decriminalization. In a world where regressive and punitive legislation seems the new norm, have a sex worker recognized by the ultimate establishment figure of the Queen is a happy twist. Congratulations to Catherine and whoever nominated her.

A lot of pro-dommes own thrones and cherry pick some of the trappings of royalty. However, it’s tough to beat a thousand years of inbreeding and faith in a divine right. The shot below shows Mistress Ezada Sinn on her throne. It’s a pretty impressive one, but not quite up to Sovereign’s Throne in the House of Lords. Now that’d be a great location to play out a worship scene.

Five bonus points for anyone who knows where the post title came from.

Letting Go

I typically don’t like to link to articles that are surfacing via my blogroll. It seems lazy on my part, since they’re already available to anyone who is interested. However, a new post by Ms. Renee Trevi, entitled ‘A Session With No Map‘ is too good not to feature. It describes the kind of intensity I strive for but only occasionally touch.

He is quietly breathing and I read in his eyes that he gave it up entirely. I feel him fully dissolved, like there is nothing left of him, completely disintegrated. There is a sense of deep surrender in his eyes, he is neither scared of pain nor desiring of pleasure. And that’s when we slow down.

There’s sometimes a moment for me, deep in a session, where everything inverts. The pain has been driving me inward, focusing me on my sensations, my emotions. Then I reach a point, not of giving up, but of letting go. The energy turns outwards and it becomes about Her. It’s a sense of acceptance. The pain is still there, but it’s just information, something that I can release to her. I might be experiencing it, but she owns it. We’re in a bubble and everything else is noise.

As I said, I don’t often get there, but when I do, it’s way better than anything as straightforward as an orgasm. I think Ms Renee Trevi’s post captures the intensity of that kind of moment beautifully, and I love how she tackled the open ended nature of the session she describes.

Ms Renee Trevi is a NYC based pro-domme. If you’re interested in experiencing her skills for yourself, her session page is here.

Stomp

Continuing on the theme of cock torture, here’s a nice vintage shot that’s old school in every sense of the word. You don’t need needles and fancy electrical devices. Just a high heel applied with sufficient force at the critical point.

While her shoes are clearly a necessary part of the scene, I’m not so sure about his. Did he take his trousers and pants off over his shoes? Or did he put his shoes back on after removing his trousers? That puzzle aside, it’s a fun image that comes courtesy of mrunderheel.

False Advertising

Bacchus, over at ErosBlog, has been quite rightly mocking a porn shoot that promises a cock being disciplined with the following lines…

I am going to be disciplining Rob Piper’s humongous black cock. You know where I’m gonna start? With that big black cock up my ass! I can’t wait to take that cock in all my holes.

I’m sure Mr Piper’s cock is just going to hate that. It’ll probably get all big, angry and throbbing after being disciplined in such a terrible way.

Of course, while this is a particularly egregious example, a lot of BDSM play exhibits a touch of this. It’s briar patch syndrome – Oh please don’t dress up in that sexy outfit and gently whip me (not too hard!) with that soft leather flogger. It’d be terribly cruel if you were to use that strap-on and – down a bit, no not there, careful, oh yes, oh yes! – brutally penetrate my helpless body with it.

In reality, a close-up of a disciplined cock isn’t all that sexy. For example, Mistress Tess tortured mine a few weeks back. Needles and electricity were involved. We shot a picture, but only look here if you’re OK with genital piercing pictures. I had a lot of fun, but I’ll be the first to admit it’s not the kind of close-up image that’ll sell a lot of porn subscriptions. The shot below is a bit more visually appealing while at least having a slightly more believable cock discipline theme. I bet it’s loving it really though.

I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for this image.

Pooh’s Hole

I stumbled across a post today that made me laugh and feel bad all at the same time. Obviously, in those circumstances, the only logical thing to do is share it with thousands of people – so here you go.

The bad part comes from linking anal sex to beloved childhood classic. As a child I never watched the Disney version of Winnie-the-Pooh, but I loved and read repeatedly the original books that featured illustrations by E. H. Shephard. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to remember this particular chapter in quite the same way again.

On the funny side, I think it does capture some of the varying emotions of anal sex. I’ve had a few dicks in my time, and a lot of more strap-ons, and it can definitely be a roller-coaster of sensations. There are moments of “OMG! This is awesome!” The occasional “Ouch! Jeez. Not like that.” And of course the dreaded “Uh-oh..what just happened down there? I hope that’s lube…”

I’ll leave you with what seems like an appropriate image in the context of the original link. Although I guess this is more appropriate for a Piglet than a Pooh.

There’s no watermark, but I believe this is Mistress Silver, a UK based pro-domme. She has a professional site here and a twitter feed here.

A Modern Triptych

Anyone who has spent anytime looking at Femdom Artwork will have come across the brilliant Sardax. His drawings and paintings are always exceptional, but I think he really excelled himself with the piece shown below and described in this post.

Commissioned by Lady M as a gift for her submissive, it’s based on a medieval triptych. Housed in a transportable box, it folds out to show the Lady M in the central panel and two alternative personae of her submissive in the smaller flanking panels. As Sardax describes in his post, it can function as a portable personal shrine for the submissive to carry with him.

I think it’s a lovely modern twist on an old concept, and a clever way to make a personalized piece of artwork even more individual and meaningful. It’s also nice to a see a commission from a domme for a submissive rather than the other way around.

If you’d like your own personal work from Sardax, this his commission page is here, although it looks like he’s pretty booked up for the rest of 2018.