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

Some foot on foot action

The sole of the foot is a wonderful body part to torture. It’s very sensitive, which is surprising given how much daily wear and tear it undergoes. Everything from tickling through to caning works well. Even the threat of punishment to it can be a powerful head-trip. I remember a scene where Lydia was scrubbing parts of my body down with antiseptic prior to doing some piercing. I was relaxing in the bondage she’d already put in place, thinking as she cleaned each spot – “Nipples, kind of expected that. Cock, OK. Upper leg, that’s unusual. Bottom of my feet! Oh shit….” Fortunately she never did get around to sticking needles into the soles, and she later confessed she was just doing it to scare me a little!

This photograph strikes me a quite a clever one. It works both from the fetishistic point of view and from the masochistic one. It also creates a nice contrast between the vulnerability of their respective feet. His are upturned, naked, defenseless. Hers are spiky, hard, wrapped in leather, forcing down. The more normally she stands the more it hurts him.

Boots pressing down on upturned soles of feetI found in on the 24-7-Sub tumblr. I believe it’s originally by the French photographer Jean Fabien. You can see it in this gallery on his site.

Dressed for the occasion

I’m typically not a fan of outdoor femdom shots. Partly this is because I have some hard limits around public humiliation and creepy crawlies. So anything that risks combining the two is difficult for me to fantasize about. But it’s mostly because the domme’s clothing is so frequently hilariously inappropriate. Take the shot at the end of this link for example. Huge stripper heels and a skimpy leopard skin dress are really not ideal for a stroll through a field. It looks like she’d end up more uncomfortable than he would.

In contrast the shot below caught my eye as an example of how it should be done. It’s a nice autumnal parkland setting, and she dressed elegantly but appropriately. The boots are perhaps a little shiny and impractical, but keeping them polished and clean will give him something to do when they get back from their morning constitutional.

Mistress leading slave on a leash for a walk in the parkYou can see a second image from the scene in this post on the public humiliation tumblr.

In repose

Yesterday’s post promised hot babes in skin tight leather, and while that was originally intended sarcastically, I thought this photograph would fulfill my promise while still being an interesting image. I’ve no idea if it’s posed or a candid shot taken between poses. There’s no watermark and I couldn’t track down an attribution. I find it kind of sweet. A sleeping person naturally draws out a sentimental and protective reaction. I’d guess it’s an evolutionary programmed response. She’ll be up to beat your ass and slap you with those gloves, just as soon as she’s grabbed a quick 40 winks.

Sleeping DommeI found this on the Fetish World tumblr site.

Squaring the circle

I was sorry to see that Ms K has decided to retire from professional domination. I’ve never met her – it has been many years since I returned to the UK – but from her blog posts it was clear she was a thoughtful and conscientious pro-domme, and it’s always a shame to lose someone like that from the profession.  I found her follow-up post listing some of her reasons for stopping a thought provoking one.

I was finding it hard to reconcile being the Dominant woman I am with feeling a sense of having to oblige those subs who were paying for my time, with things they enjoyed even if I was beginning to find those things less interesting  …[snip]… I gave up as I only wanted to play with subs prepared to do it my way.
Ms K

All jobs require compromise at some level. It doesn’t matter if you’re the founder of a start-up or a cog in a big corporate machine, there are always trade-offs to make and boring tasks to complete. Yet most jobs don’t have the idea of dominance and control at the heart of them. As a software developer, I might not like every feature I deliver, but there’s no conflict with my inherent software developeriness. The same can’t be said for a dominant doing something she doesn’t enjoy. What does a domme do when the demands of the business contradict her reasons for doing it?

Professional domination is frequently described in a derogatory fashion as service topping, and that’s something that annoys me twice over. Firstly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with service topping. Making someone happy and delivering a great experience is a wonderful thing. I don’t think anything less of a chef just because she decides to cook professionally. Secondly, I think both service topping and ‘true domination’ (whatever that means) can occur in both professional and non-professional relationships. Money is only one aspect of many in a relationship, professional or otherwise. But I have to agree that it can be a particularly gnarly aspect to deal with.

It’s also a problem that cuts both ways. As a submissive I don’t want someone simply running through a list of activities with me. I want a dominant who is enjoying what she’s doing and expressing her natural creativity as we play. Specifying a ‘to do’ list runs counter to the D/s dynamic, but several dommes I’ve played with in the past wanted exactly that. I’d guess that was partly to make their lives easier, and mostly because too many clients in the past started with “Oh you can do anything you want to me Mistress!” and finished up with “Well I don’t like that, and we didn’t do this, and why this? That wasn’t what I wanted.”

It’s my personal suspicion that the most financially successful pro-dommes are those who can get personal satisfaction both from one-off service top type sessions and from building longer-term relationships involving more D/s elements. I’ve also anecdotally observed that a lot of pro-dommes start with a lot of the former and evolve towards the latter as their careers and interests progress. It strikes me as a pity that both dommes and clients aren’t more open about the distinction between the two approaches. Everything gets lumped under domination, when in fact that’s simply a catch-all for anything under the BDSM and fetish umbrella.

I’m afraid I don’t have any images of Ms K to use (her website has been taken down), so I’ll instead go with another retired pro-domme, the legendary Isabella Sinclaire. It was originally shot for bootlovers.com.

Isabella Sinclaire

Any excuse for kink

I often enjoy getting annoyed at things I read. Which makes the internet pretty much the greatest invention ever. I’m never more than a few clicks away from something enjoyable.

50 Shades of Grey has been quite a blessing in that respect. It seems that no news or opinion site is complete without a regular article on the book and what it tells us about society (hint – nothing. The existence of Dan Brown had already proven that millions of people will buy badly written books). My ‘favorite’ article on the book so far is this one, which is so stupid you might actually getter dumber just by reading it. Apologies if you follow that link and then discover you can no longer complete a coherent thingy. You know. Lots of words all lined up.

The other common spin-off article, other than a review or social comment, is the “My hour/day/week as a dominatrix” confession. This typically gives the author a chance to titillate readers with some kinky fun, prove that she’s edgy and interesting, all while maintaining an air of superiority over the freaks. Here’s a pretty good canonical example of the genre.

These articles all follow a similar pattern. They start with “This’ll be fun! I get to boss men around. And I love dress-up!” Then they move into “Oh, there’s like all this equipment and stuff. This seems hard. Can’t I just look pretty and sneer at the clients?” After this comes the realization that not all men paying for a sexual experience look like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. Finally, it ends with a “Wow, it’s not like I’m judging or anything, but people who see pro-dommes are weird.” That may or may not be true, but coming from a person who appears to have made a career choice on the basis of wearing a sexy costume, it’s a little hard to take seriously.

I’ll leave you with a picture of someone who can definitely pull off a sexy costume, but also knows it takes a hell of a lot more to be a great domme. This is Domina Nyx, a NYC based pro-domme. This shot was featured on her blog.

Domina Nyx

Blogpocalypse

I’m beginning to wonder if my blogroll is going to need some major revisions come July 20th this year. That’s the release date for the new Batman movie – The Dark Knight Rises. This film features a powerful double whammy, in the form of catwoman as played by Anne Hathaway. I know from past posts that there a lot of catwoman fans out there (HMP and lovetosubmit, I’m looking at you) and Anne Hathaway fans aren’t exactly thin on the ground (calling Servitor). I therefore fear that this deadly combination will just be too much for some of my submissive fellow travelers, a peak of perfection that will leave them drained, apathetic and with no reason to keep blogging. We’ll just be left with a lot of puzzled female bloggers wondering what the hell happened and where everyone went.

In an effort to lessen the shock and acclimatize everyone ahead of time, here’s an intriguing new poster from the movie (full resolution version here). I kind of like it. And by ‘kind of like’ I mean ‘Dear God, would you look at that.’ I only hope the movie itself is a little tauter than the previous one. I enjoyed it, but I think it would have benefited from more aggressive editing and a shorter running time.

Dark Knight Rises - Catwoman Poster

imagine a boot stamping on a human face

I’m a bit of a hypocritic. I often rail against conventional femdom porn, complain about the stereotypical dommes, and then go ahead and feature exactly that material. It’s sad to say, but stereotypes become stereotypes for a reason. I’m certainly not immune to the lure of leather or latex coupled with a crop brandishing domme.

However, I like to think that when I do feature that kind of material, there’s at least an element or two of interest. In this particular case it’s the relaxed attitude of the submissive. The domme has all the classic elements, with her thigh high boots, riding crop and white jodpurs. Yet he seems to be in a very accepting pose, relaxing into the pressure of the boot. I like that. It’s unusual for this kind of shot, but it corresponds to the way I play. I don’t want to be forcible subjugated. I want to give myself up to the domme, in the same way this gentleman seems to be doing.

Mistress pressing her boot into slaves faceI found this on the StellaNova’s Realm tumblr.

The first step

I have a blogging problem. I have to come clean and admit it. I’m sure a lot of you are now nodding your heads and thinking to yourself – “We already know that. We see it every single time you hit that ‘publish post’ button.” While that may be true, it’s not the immediate problem I’m prepared to talk about here. My main issue right now is the sheer number of interesting blogs out there I’d like to link to. There are just too many of them.

As you’ve probably observed, my blogroll on the right is a dynamic one, which updates and sorts itself based on the publication of new posts. That works great for 20 or 30 blogs, but not very well for 50+. I don’t want to get rid of the dynamic blogroll, but I don’t want to stop adding interesting links for readers. Either I need the world to become less interesting, or I need a better approach for linking to lots of blogs.

My solution is a new page, entitled (imaginatively enough) Femdom Blogs. This is modeled along similar lines to my Images and Equipment pages, with some approximate link categorization for a few distinct lists. This new page will always contain 100% of all the links I publish. My dynamic blogroll on the right will be a subset of that, hosting newly discovered links and links to blogs that both regularly update and are personal favorites (i.e. I read every update).  This way I can keep updating the blogroll with new and interesting stuff while having a much larger static collection on a separate page.

Right now the page basically lists what is already in my blogroll, albeit with a few additions to the Sex section (Savage Love, Tiny Nibbles and Viviane’s Sex Carnival). For step two, in my post tomorrow, I’ll do some shuffling and introduce some new femdom and kink links.

In the meantime here’s a pleasant image for your viewing pleasure. It has no correlation with this post. But anyone making it this far through my random site admin thoughts deserves a little eye candy.

Mistress gesturing to kneeling slaveI came to this via the Undiscovered Limits (aka Untamed Dark Mane) tumblr. It’s originally from the Strap-on Hell site.

Spooky internet moment

Earlier this evening I poured myself a glass of wine and began browsing the archive pages of the Gorean Kajirus tumblr. It’s one of my favorite tumblrs to look at when I’m simply hunting for eye candy. The curator obviously puts a lot of effort into it, as there’s a huge amount of aesthetically and erotically interesting material. There’s beautiful women or all types, ripped guys in restraints, interesting bondage shots and fun BDSM play in many different flavors. There’s even the odd bit of auto porn.

And then, in the middle of all the visual loveliness, dear God, I spotted myself. Twice. That was a spooky internet moment. It’s one thing to appear on my own blog, or on a domme’s site. After all these shots started life on Domina Yuki’s tumblr, and I even spotted my torso on Lydia’s testimonial page the other day. However, it’s quite another sensation to stumble across them on a random tumblr. Particularly one which tends to the more aesthetic than the functional side of kink.

In the meantime, while I get over the weirdness, let me leave you with a couple of shots of genuine eye candy from that tumblr. The first I think is Goddess Miki, a pro-domme from LA who has been on my ‘to visit’ list for a while. I’ve no idea about a source for the second one.

Domme using hooded slave as ashtrayMistress receiving oral worship from bound slave