Clothespin – Femdom Resource

Most Underrated Implement

Yesterday’s post featured floggers, an implement with a high utility in play but comparatively limited representation in BDSM imagery. As soon as I published the post it occurred to me that there was another implement that had a much stronger claim to the most skewed misrepresentation. That would be the humble clothespin. Relatively rare in BDSM porn. A staple of kinky play.

The beauty of clothespins is their versatility. You can attach them to any part of the body. Grab a thin slice of tight skin and they can be very intense. Pick a generous fleshy part and they’re a mild buzz. You can twist them, rub against them and yank them off. Tie them together and you’ve got a zipper. Shave their ends down and you’ve got a much tighter and more focused pinch. Small ones feel different to the big ones, and plastic ones different to the wooden ones. Most fun of all – once you pull them off then rubbing the pinched spot is a whole different sensation. In terms of cost versus benefit, there’s no question that the simple clothespin is the kinky bargain to beat all others.

This image – featuring a simple clothespin zipper – is from the Kink VR site.

More fun for less dollars

This is the last in my trio of equipment related posts. Two days ago it was a bed costing thousands of dollars. Yesterday it was whips costing hundreds of dollars. Today it’s clothespins, costing less than ten dollars. That’s one of the great things about kinky play. If you want to spend thousands of dollars outfitting a dedicated play space (image from here), then it’s easy to do so. Alternatively, you can have a great time just spending a few bucks down your local hardware store. Or slapping, scratching, biting and kissing for exactly zero dollars.

The image is from the Cruelty Party site.

Ripping and zipping

I got to do some zippering tonight with Lydia. There was also some bondage, electrical play and scratching, but as I sit here admiring my marks, it’s the zippering that has left the biggest impression. Either I’m getting wimpier or the clips are getting tighter, because ouch. I think I made some interesting noises during the scene, but absolutely nothing that’s going to win me the stoic masochist of the year award.

In honor of our play, here’s a great action shot of some flying cord and clothespins. This is one of the very few images I’ve seen that capture a zipper coming off. I love that you can still see the skin reacting to it. This is Deviant Kade with Lorelei Lee for Men In Pain. You can see a wide angle shot of Lorelei about to pull the cord right here.

Bondage mouth puppet

I’m continuing the Japanese femdom theme, but coming forward a few decades. I’d guess this is from the 80’s or 90’s, although I don’t have an original attribution.

The mouth and nose are often neglected in BDSM play. Gags get stuffed in, hoods pulled over or faces fucked, but it’s rare to see people actively playing in a narrow focused way like this. Which is odd, because it’s such a sensitive and important area. It’s how we taste, smell and breath. It’s how we communicate. It’s packed with both nerve endings and symbology. It’s an opening into the body. A vulnerability.

Of course there are some practical considerations. It’s hard to hide marks on the face. I did some face rope bondage with Troy Orleans earlier this year, and didn’t pay too much attention to her warning about the marks that were left. I stopped at a tiny Italian cafe on my way home and wondered why the guy kept glancing up to stare at me as he fiddled with his espresso machine. It wasn’t until I looked in the mirror back at my hotel that I saw the unmistakable deep rope impressions that ran from the sides of my mouth up across my cheeks. I don’t think the barista could have been in any doubt what they were.

As I mentioned I’m afraid I have no attribution for this. It looks like an image scanned from an old BDSM magazine. I do have a shot from another angle showing a close-up of the face.

The least visible group in porn?

As regular readers might guess, I spend a fair amount of time hanging around tumblrs. I only feature femdom material here, but I can find material that pushes my buttons across a wide range of kinky activities and gender combinations. Hence my tumblr browsing is broad. One thing I found fascinating is looking at how different kinky groups typically skew their selection of material. Obviously my observations are entirely anecdotal and completely unscientific but what the hell. This is a blog, not a peer reviewed paper for Nature (although somebody should write one of those).

As you’d expect, lots of straight male submissives feature dominant women in exotic undergarment, with the occasional naked man as just a prop in the scene. They also have a smattering of what I’d call action shots. i.e. Images that catch a more complex D/s interaction. Essentially they post what they desire (the dominant woman) and, to a lesser extent, the interaction they wish to experience.

Straight female dominants also tend to post what they desire, buff naked submissive men, together with action shots. But the ratio is different to what submissive guys post. As a SWAG (Stupid Wild Ass Guess) I’d say it’s more like 50/50 compared to 80/20. There’s a clear preference towards more complex interactions and connections over eye candy.

Straight male dominants are heavily focused on their object of desire – naked bound women. The vast majority of shots are either of sole females or of disembodied males interacting with females. There might be an appendage in the shot, or a hand, or a whip, but almost all of the material is designed to let the viewer imagine himself as the dominant. It’s rare to see intense emotional connection in the images.

The most interesting one I find is the straight female submissive. Following the pattern above you’d expect them to post a mixture of Mf action shots and images of hot male dominants. And yet from my observation there’s a very heavy skew to posting shots of female submission. They might post more action shots than male dominants, but they rarely seem to post images of buff male dominants. Uniquely amongst these four groups they seem to post what they’d like to experience or who they’d like to be, rather than what the type of person they desire.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that male dominants are the least visible group in BDSM pornography. That’s a conclusion that should raise a few hackles given the ubiquity of the Mf dynamic in culture and porn.

The image is of Claire Adams from Men In Pain. I found it on the ‘my Wife, my Goddess‘ tumblr. It represents the kind of shot I personally enjoy the most.

Starting the week with a bang (and a whimper)

I got well beaten by Lydia late on Sunday night so I’m feeling particularly happy about life right now. Monday mornings are never the best time of any week, but bruises to admire and residual endorphins really help take the edge off. Certainly better than a cup of coffee to start the day, although Starbucks could probably be considered a form of masochism in itself.

The scene was mainly a corporal one, with a lot of whipping to my back and buttocks. Towards the end Lydia switched to a short cane and, after working it across my nipples and cock, added some clothespins to those delicate body parts. Normally I find clothespins pretty mild, wherever they’re attached, and flying high on adrenalin and endorphins I expected to barely notice them. To my surprise the use of the cane to stimulate the skin beforehand really made a big difference, and the clips felt far more intense than usual. It was one of those interesting transitions where the cane seemed to both increase my pain tolerance by pushing me further into subspace and yet also increased my sensitivity to pain.

I’m not sure if the gentleman below was beaten before the clips were applied, but he certainly looks like he’s feeling them. I particularly like her look of amused concentration, with her tongue cheekily poking out as she tortures his.

There’s no watermark, but I believe this is a Men in Pain shot. I found it on the Thoughts of a toy named roy (aka royb8771) tumblr.

Zippering with Lady Lydia

Last week I was lucky enough to spend a couple of hours doing some zippering with Lady Lydia. As I mentioned in this post from the night itself, I had a wonderful time and it has jumped high on my list of interesting activities to do. For the uninitiated zippering uses clothespins (or somethings similar) in combination with some thin cord. As the clips are attached the cord is passed through them, connecting them as a single continuous line. Then a swift pull of the end of the cord rips them painfully away from the skin.

I have to admit to going into the session with a little bit of blasé attitude. I’ve had clothespins attached in the past and haven’t found them all that painful. I normally need something with a sharper narrower jaw to get my attention. However, it turns out that having lots of them attached very close together does hurt. And having them quickly ripped away really hurts. It almost reminded me a little of a caning. There’s the moment of shock, where you feel the sensation but not the pain. Just the briefest of pauses. Then the pain strikes like a sharp hot line across the body. A line that in my case was then made worse by Lydia squeezing and pinching the vivid red marks left behind.

Another surprisingly enjoyable aspect was the rhythm of the session. There’s a slow-build up as each clip is put into place. It’s like being decorated, with an associated sense of objectification. Then comes the moment of tension. The little tugs on the cord. The smile as she teases, watching me shift nervously as the anticipation builds. Finally, the sudden jerk and the snapping jaws as they pop free of flesh. The pain hits and there’s that moment where everything in the world is about that sensation. The brain can’t process anything other than the nerves that are screaming at it. The whole sequence is a wonderful combination of slowly building tension and sharp punctuating pain.

The first shot on the left (click to enlarge) was taken at the end of the first half of the session. We were using Lydia’s St. Georges chair and she’d already done a number of zipper lines across different parts of the body. The one shown was probably the biggest and the most painful, running all the way from under the arm to the outer hip. Although there are a number of clips on the cock Lydia (thankfully) didn’t zipper those. Too much danger of ripping the skin there.

The other two shots show a little bit of zippering bondage we did towards the end of the session. I was on a tilted padded leather table, and Lydia arranged the clips and cord across both my arms, chest and belly. The end result was that any movement of my arms tugged painfully against my torso, leaving Lydia free to tickle, tease and generally torment me.

A couple of hours after the session I shot some pictures of the resulting bruises. In these you can see my chest area, my left side and my right side.

For anyone tempted to try this stye of play, I’d offer the following tips.

If the submissive is skinny like me then adopt a position that’ll give some slack in the skin. Seated worked well for us. Being stretched taut, either horizontally or vertically, can make it too easy for the clips to pop free ahead of time.
The placement of the clips really makes a difference to the pain level. Down the sides of the torso isn’t too bad. Across chest where the skin is thinner hurts a little more. Across the belly is surprisingly painful, and almost a little nausea inducing (although that soon passed for me). Down the inside of the thigh is the most painful spot of all (at least of what we tried).
Once the clips are in place don’t be in too much of a hurry to pull them off. The top can create some really interesting sensations by pushing and stretching the skin with their hands. That also has a very strong psychological effect, as the close contact is both simultaneously comforting and painful.
Tickling when the clips are in place is a particularly sadistic thing to do. It creates a bunch of involuntary movement that stretches the skin and makes the clips wriggle in place.
Ripping only part of the clips away is another very sadistic trick. This happened with the diagonal zipper shown on the left. The submissive gets a big blast of pain, and then just as they recover from that, there’s the rapidly dawning realization that isn’t over yet and more is about to come.

Puppet on a string

I’ve seen (and experienced) zippers before. It’s a style of play where multiple clips are attached and then ripped off in quick succession using a cord. It can be really creative (in terms of how the zipper is arranged) and really intensive for the submissive. However, I’ve never seen it done in quite this way before. It looks like she can create some finely tuned pain by carefully moving her fingers. Not to mention the wartenberg wheel she’s deploying with her other hand. That’s a really nice combination to create overloaded sensations.

The puppet mistress in this case is Mistress Victoria Rage. Her blog is here and this image was taken from one of her posts on the subject of BDSM and pain. She’s a pro-domme who’s based out of Seattle. Despite our co-locality I’ve not had the opportunity to play with her.

On a related but slightly orthogonal note, I’ve just noticed that the wikipedia page on zippers suggests they can also be done with temporary piercing needles. Does anyone have any idea how that would work? It sounds pretty insane. I can’t imagine how anyone could safely rip out a row of piercing needles, and so have to assume it’s the usual wacky randomness that comes with wikipedia.

Suckling Pig

Unfortunately with the apple in his mouth, any suckling on his part is temporarily out of the question.

This looks like a pretty intense situation to be in. Painful hogtie bondage, pulling the head up and feet back. The zipper line of clothes pegs ready to be ripped off. The drip of hot wax. What looks to be some kind of butt plug sticking out. And of course that tantalizing vision and enticing scent just beyond the end of his nose. At least if he gets hungry he can eat the apple they’ve kindly supplied him with. So that’s something.

The image is obviously from the Divine Bitches site, although I’m afraid I don’t know the specific shoot. If anyone can help me out with that, then leave a comment and I’ll update the post accordingly.

Clothespin Torment

Of all the ways to remove clothespins from sensitive parts of the body, having them gently tugged off by a mistresses mouth has got to rank among the sexiest. There are definitely nastier alternatives. I can personally attest that having them kicked off is an attention grabber. Particularly when that last stubborn one really doesn’t want to come free…

I think I found this via tumblr, but it’s obviously originally from the always excellent men in pain.