Bondage – Page 40 – Femdom Resource

And that’s magic!

Can you trace the origin of your kinks or fetishes? Assuming that you have any. Although if you don’t, you’ve chosen a really odd site to browse.

The NY Magazine article discussed in yesterday’s post on the origins of people’s kinks, talked a lot about triggers and formative events. Things from childhood that could be directly linked to a later sexual preference. It would seem that some fraction of kinky people have very clear triggers, some can point to a range of influences but no single thing, and others have absolutely nothing in childhood to point at. In the comments to the post Miss Margo mentioned that a lot of her clients can identify triggers, while Vista represented the kinky person without that genesis moment.

Personally I’m in the same camp as Vista. I don’t have anything I can point to that twisted me kinky. However, I can very clearly identify the moment when I first showed interest in a kinky thing. Cue a wibbly wobbly screen and swirly special effects as I take you back thirty (ahem) or so years to a much younger paltego…

I grew up in a tiny village. It was basically two streets, one shop, a village hall and (since this is England we’re talking about) two pubs. This was a time when the internet was still the arpanet and British television consisted of 3 channels. Any kind of organized live entertainment was therefore a big deal. There was the occasional village fête, a Christmas carol concert, an agricultural show, etc. Then one year, when I was around 5 or 6 years old, somebody organized a variety show in the village hall. I can’t remember most of it. It was probably the usual amateur song and dance acts with a bad comedian thrown in for good measure. But there was also a magic act. And that act has stayed with me to this day. It was very traditional. Card tricks. Linking rings. Endless streams of colorful handkerchiefs. And a woman in a sparkly costume getting sawn in half (actually the Zig Zag Girl trick). It was this final trick that particularly transfixed me. I can still remember my excitement as she climbed into the box and the magician tied things around her wrists and ankles. She was constrained, in peril, sacrificial and yet willing. He took away her control, yet she seemed to enjoy it.

From that moment on I always kept an eye out for magic acts and escapologists on television. There was something I found very enticing about the ropes, chains, padlocks and perilous situations that featured in their acts. But it wasn’t till I hit puberty, and discovered the idea of bondage (via my parents copy of The Joy Of Sex), that I had my ‘Aha!’ moment. I certainly don’t think the magic act I saw as a child was formative. The wiring was already in place, because it excited me in a strange way the instant I saw it. The discovery of kink just helped me to understand why I’d found that particular act in an otherwise long forgotten village show so compelling.

It was surprisingly hard to find a magic themed femdom shot. A lot of the equipment for elaborate magic tricks looks awfully similar to the contents of most dungeons, yet there seems to be very little direct cross-over. In the end I turned to the prolific Servitor and this amusingly captioned picture. The ‘magician’ in question here is the lovely Lexi Sindel.

Nature / Nurture / Whatever

The New York Magazine has an article on the well worn subject of nature versus nurture in the context of fetish and kink. It’s a discursive piece, heavy on anecdotes and light on hard data. It comes down firmly on the side of nurture, although it also admits there’s no simple way to divide up such a complex set of influences and interests.

Personally I wonder if, outside of scientific curiosity, the debate is even one worth having. Unless they identify a very clear genetic cause, which seems unlikely given the current research, the discussion isn’t going to result in anything actionable. Nobody is going to be able to come up with a set of guidelines for bringing up a child with “normal” sexual interests. The cause and effect is far too complex and unique for each individual.

It also seems odd that people are so interested in tracking down the basis for kinky sexual preferences, but seem happy to accept all the other preferences people exhibit without question. If somebody says they don’t like carrots, nobody starts wondering if they had a traumatic experience as a child while watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Wine lovers don’t feel the need to tie their interest back to early experiences with a sippy cup and purple grape drink. Even in the sexual and relationship realm we let vanilla preferences slide without comment. A serial dater of blonde women just has a ‘type’. Nobody wonders if it’s because he watched one too many Marilyn Monroe movies while sitting on his mother’s knee. Yet say he likes dominant blonde women, and suddenly there’s an urge to wheel out old Sigmund to try and figure out why the hell he’s so damn weird.

Given this posts focus on the development of sexual preferences, it seems appropriate to finish with this image – ‘School of Bondage’ by zblabla. The classroom can certainly be a powerful influence on sexual development, but it’s not typically this overt.

We have a winner

Last week I posted about a smallest penis competition in Brooklyn. Well we have a winner, and judging by this interview he’s taking his new found fame in his stride. He also seems to have a pretty positive and sensible view on all the whole experience. Of course, if this cartoon is anything to go by, it’s the second place contestant we should be concerned about.

The old cliche is that it’s not the size that counts, but what you do with it. Judging by this picture it looks like someone decided tying it to a metal pole and big toes was the thing to do with it. I’m not sure that’s exactly what the person who coined the expression had in mind.

I found this on the Mistress Alice in Bondage Land tumblr. I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution for it.

There’s always a queue for the ladies bathroom

Playing with several people simultaneously isn’t too unusual in BDSM circles. Most pro-dommes will offer double or even triple-domme sessions and, on the lifestyle side, play parties help facilitate public interaction with multiple casual partners. Some guys are even lucky enough to get beaten down by four fabulous women. Compared to the mechanics of regular vanilla sex, with its orifice and appendage pairing issues, BDSM seems a lot easier to coordinate in groups.

All that said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before. That’s 22 women and 1 guy. I particularly like the fact that some of the women at the back are holding crops. Clearly they’re not just an audience, but plan to be close enough to use them at some point. Hopefully nobody suffers from a shy bladder.

I should warn readers that the site this comes from features fairly strong content, including scat play. If you’re OK with that then check out the rinryu blog. I believe it’s run by the creators of the infamous yapoo film series.

Picking your orientation

After yesterday’s post, which talked about sexual orientation and BDSM, I did what I should have done right from the start and searched for other posts on the topic. That led me to this excellent one by Clarisse Thorn. I think she covered the complexity of the discussion rather well.

To this point I’ve tended to think of sexual orientation as being specifically about what gender someone is attracted to. Not because I believe that BDSM isn’t an intrinsic part of some peoples identity. Just that the common and accepted usage of sexual orientation is around gender, and I don’t like overloading terms unnecessarily. However, I did find one of the comments in Clarisse’s post particularly interesting. It quotes Charles Moser and lists the factors he believes makes up an orientation…

Lifelong – Difficult to Suppress
Prepubertal Recognition
Interest Despite Aging
Immutable, but Fluid
Emotional Price to Do or Not Do “It”
Lust – Specifically and Especially Sexually Arousing
Effect of Testosterone/Anti-Androgens

One does not have to satisfy all 7, but they distinguish a “lesser” sexual interest from an orientation. It also means that not everyone who does a behavior (even repetitively) has an orientation. Also, an orientation can satisfy less than 7, but it is hard for me to imagine someone who satisfies all 7 not having an orientation.

I’m not quite sure what he means by the one on Testosterone, but when it comes to my BDSM interests, I’m batting 100% on all the rest. I think they make for an interesting checklist to consider.

Of course, if the complexity of the human condition is all too much for you, becoming a coffee table is always an option. I’m pretty certain they don’t have a sexual orientation.

I found this on the Undiscovered Limits tumblr.

William Saletan on BDSM (again)

Regular readers may remember this previous post critiquing William Saletan’s BDSM articles at Slate. His latest offering is considerably better that his past efforts, but that’s not exactly a high bar to aim over. There’s actually some real data in this new article, although his thinking remains flabby and his reasoning haphazard.

He doesn’t seem to understand common activities like piercing or electrical play, or when tools like safewords might be needed, and therefore makes foolish sweeping statements. He correctly states that BDSM participants are not a single homogeneous group, but finishes with a set of conclusions that implies they are. I also think his concerns about exploitation based on the gender percentages in the top/bottom roles makes no sense in the framework he presents them. However, I’m going to ignore all that, and instead talk about a single issue he raises: Is BDSM an orientation?

This is a hot button topic for some kinky people, who get quite passionate about it. He implies it’s not because some fraction of people only dabble in kink. Personally I think the whole discussion is a red herring.

The people who argue that it is an orientation often seem to draw from, or adopt similar arguments to, some of the recent debates on gay rights. The religious right would argue that being gay was a choice and therefore gay people were choosing to give up their right to marry. Presumably they thought that people were being gay just to spite them. The obvious counter argument was that homosexuality was an intrinsic part of someone’s identity, and it was therefore unfair to penalize someone for something they had no control over.

I think getting dragged into that kind of discussion misses the point on two counts. Firstly, when you’re dealing with prejudice and bigotry, any apparently logical argument offered is really just a smokescreen. If you knock it down they’ll simply move on to another. The color of someone’s skin is clearly intrinsic to a person, but that didn’t stop society withholding civil rights from minority groups for many years. They simply picked a different reason to do so. Secondly, there are plenty of examples of society protecting the rights of groups that are the result of choice. For example, nobody pops out of the womb with a specific religious affiliation, despite what some religions may claim. Yet religious freedom is something society chooses to legally protect.

Rather than arguing that particular groups are special, we should be arguing for a culture that has a strong bias to protect people’s rights to live their lives as they see fit. And if you’re going to claim that their freedom to do so harms you in some way, then that had better be some clearly provable harm that we’re talking about. Not just that you think it’s icky to have a co-worker who might be into BDSM. Or that you think there’s some risky but undefinable moral hazard to having kinky people bring children up.

I wasn’t really sure what photograph was suitable for accompanying this post, so I thought I’d simply continue the medieval theme from yesterday. Mr Saletan seemed particularly concerned about knife play. I wonder what he’d make of bloody big sword play?

The image is by the photographer Jerrell Edwards (also on deviant art). I found it on Thy Queendom Come, Thy Will Be Done tumblr.

Lose Control

I was happy to notice the Lunar Black tumblr had recently sprung back into life. That is against the typical sequence of events for tumblrs. They typically either grind to an indefinite halt or vanish into thin air without so much as a by-your-leave. There are not a huge number of artwork themed femdom tumblrs, so I’m glad we didn’t lose this one.

The image below is by the artist sadademort (free deviant art login required) and is called ‘Lose Control’. I discovered it via this post on the aforementioned Lunar Black tumblr. I’m not sure that arm bondage is strictly up to code, but I do like the energy and sense of the D/s dynamic that it captures.

How about a kiddie pool and a lama?

I was highly entertained by this short animated film featuring a particularly hapless ‘submissive’. He manages to provide an excellent example of two particularly annoying traits. There’s the excessive use of honorifics and what I like to think of as Meat Loaf syndrome – ‘I’ll do anything for you….but not that‘.

When it comes to honorifics I tend to veer strongly in the other direction, and omit them unless it’s really clear that I shouldn’t. Partly that’s down to playing a lot with Lydia. She’s not big on protocol and formality. I don’t think I’ve ever called her ‘Mistress’ in a scene and that has conditioned me for when I play with other people. It’s also partly because using formal honorifics doesn’t do much for me. I’m happy to address people however they desire, but I don’t get a buzz out of using a formal title. Perhaps in a more structured and personal D/s relationship it’d make more sense, but for casual play I tend to default to first names unless I’m told otherwise.

For online interaction I like the advice in this thread from Mistress Lilyana. Adopt the username that you’d like to be called. And, the logical inverse of that, call people (at least to start with) by whatever username they publish. That makes life simple.

The image is from Mistress Lilyana’s tumblr. My internet sleuthing tells me it’s by the German photographer Robert Recker and is from a sequence simply called Hotel Room.

Oh, and if anyone’s wondering about the post title, you need to listen closely to what the guy in the animated clip is really into.

In the bedroom

Today’s artwork is a very different style to yesterday’s, but it’s no less striking. It’s entitled ‘In the bedroom‘ and is by the artist zblabla.

I like the ambiguity of the scene. Is this the start of a scene or the end of one? Is she going to leave him there while she sleeps? Is he purely ornamental or a fun toy for her to play with? You also get the impression our uncertainty is shared by the man on the X-frame. Now he’s fastened in place, he’s not quite sure what she’s planning.

I found this on the Femdom Gallery tumblr.

Happy

It has been a generally happy day for me. First, the Supreme Court struck down DOMA and dismissed the appeal on prop 8. Plus there was the added bonus of watching Scalia rage impotently. Then I got to enjoy a lot of needles and kite twine with Lydia. Finally, basking in a wave of endorphins, I cracked open some good champagne and sat down to write this. Not a bad 24 hours all told.

I sadly don’t have any images of Scalia getting whipped, bound or anally pleasured. That would have made for a great finish to the post. Instead I’ll run with the theme of happiness. This is originally from the Sacred Kink Academy and came to me via the Happy BDSM tumblr.