F – Page 42 – Femdom Resource

Indulging my fetishes

Posting may be a little erratic for the next few days as I take some time to indulge two of my favorite fetishes. Unfortunately there will not be any interesting photographs or scene descriptions resulting from this, as the fetishes in question are my love for interesting food and luxurious hotels. I’ve escaped the chill of Seattle for a little R&R in Vegas. It’s a fun place (for a brief stay), but not exactly a kinky mecca.

I’ll leave you with a picture featuring a slightly more traditional fetishistic focus. This is Domina Ai-Li, who I’ve played with and written about in the past. She’s based in San Francisco, which might lack the neon and showgirls of Vegas, but certainly puts it to shame when it comes to kink.

En Garde!

Maybe I’ve led too sheltered a kinky life, but I’ve never seen sword fighting crop up as a BDSM activity. Which is kind of odd now I come to think about it. It’s obviously a sexy look, as shown by Mistress Ultra Violet below. It crops up frequently in popular culture, for example the Bride in Kill Bill or Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And plenty of other fighting activities, such as wrestling, boxing and martial arts, have been adopted for kinky play.

Obviously real swords would be a problem. Nobody wants to end up with less limbs than they started with, unless they’re unfortunate enough to suffer from apotemnophilia. But there are plenty of practice swords that could be used, and I’m sure there must be some dommes out there who have done fencing or a relevant martial art. Just allow the submissive to only defend and not attack and you’ve got a fun new way to get beaten. Not to mention all the scope for some swashbuckling roleplay – Maid Marion getting her own back on the evil sheriff perhaps?

I came across this image via a post on the Hogspy site.

Equipment lust

You know you’ve probably got a BDSM equipment fetish when you look at this image and see the wood and leather bench before the hot woman in latex. I’m not saying I wouldn’t enjoy hanging out with the gorgeous Bianca Beauchamp, but that bench does look like a beautiful piece of equipment. I always appreciate a well designed and constructed piece of furniture. Mix in the fact in can be used for sexy-fun-time and I develop a serious hardware lust.

I found this on ‘The Heart’s Dark Desire‘ tumblr.

The human birthday card

As I mentioned briefly at the time, I was lucky enough to get to session with Cynthia Stone down in LA last month. She kindly snapped a few pictures of our play together and, after much slacking on my part, I’ve finally put together a page describing some of the very enjoyable activities that we got up to.

As the post title suggests part of it involved turning me into a human birthday card, an activity that really should have its own special name. It’s not really forniphilia, as a card isn’t furniture. Decoraphilia? Craftyism? I’d-hate-to-pay-the-postage-ophilia? Anyway, for anyone wanting to see some very creative domination at work, click through to ‘A birthday card for Cynthia Stone‘.

The image is of the aforementioned Mistress Stone. If you find yourself in the LA region then her session information is here. For the masochistically inclined she’s very definitely someone worth spending time with.

TV Guide

I’m going to interpret my blog tagline – the beauty of dominant women – fairly liberally for this post. It’s not femdom related in the sexual sense, but it does relate very much to a strong dominant women. I’ve just spent an enjoyable evening re-watching the first few episodes of Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren. It comes from a rich tradition of British crime series, which also includes such gems as Cracker and Wire in the Blood.

I have a love hate relationship with these kind of shows. I enjoy the genre and plot structure, but hate the sexual stereotypes they almost always portray. Sex workers are normally damaged powerless victims. The criminals are often sexually warped sadists whose only outlet is violent attacks. It’s certainly not a genre to look at for positive portrayals of BDSM. Despite that, the Prime Suspect series is redeemed by having the wonderful Helen Mirren in the leading role. She plays a strong no-nonsense female character who puts up with a lot of sexist bullshit from her colleagues while still figuring out the cases. It’s a real pleasure to watch such a talented actress sink her teeth into the role.

US TV has a tendency to remake and horribly screw-up British series. I’ve not seen the US version, but looking at some of the online video’s they seem to have repeated the trick here. What was a reserved and complex older female character, with a flinty inner core, has become a skirt-the-rules cop played by a conventionally attractive blonde with a classic in your face New York attitude. In other words, the same thing we’ve seen a million times before. The good news is that netflix has the original UK series available for streaming. I definitely recommend checking it out.

Photograph is of Helen Mirren from a Prime Suspect publicity shot. If you’re a fan of hers, then I also recommend watching Excalibur. It’s a brilliant version of the Arthurian legend featuring her in the role of Morgana.

The ‘dominatrix’ in fashion

It seems that every week I see some fashion article extolling the ‘dominatrix’ look. It’s a regular part of the current fall fashion collections. The latest was this on the DSquared2 fashion show. Typically I steer away from cliched dominatrix shots. But if you’re going to shoot for that, at least do it properly. Every single ‘dominatrix’ fashion look so far has come across as very weak sauce. A pair of leather boots or a tight leather top does not equal dominatrix. If you’re going to do it, do it properly. The image below (courtesy of Fetish World tumblr) is a good example of the look done right. Boots. Corset. Jodhpurs. Crop. Stare. All check.

Stereotypes of submission

A post by Ms Justine Cross pointed me at this interesting article on Salon by Tracy Clark-Flory. The article was written in response to one by Katie Roiphe in Newsweek suggesting that women are newly interested in submission because of the greater power and equality they’re experiencing in the workplace. The original Newsweek article stuck me as particularly muddleheaded and I’m glad to see someone pointing that out. However, in the process it does recycle an old stereotype that always annoys me. Namely that male submissives and masochists are typically powerful and successful career people who need to submit in order to take a break from all the high pressure decisions they normally have to take. It’s the cliche of the aggressive lawyer who spends all morning shouting at staff and his lunchtime wearing pink panties and getting caned.

It’s a point of view often heard from pro-dommes (as Ms Cross also mentions in her post), typically meant to describe their clients, but often applied generally to describe male submissives. And I get why pro-dommes say this. It’s a pre-emptive strike against the assumption that their clients (and by association themselves) are weird or misfits in society. Their clients aren’t just average they’re saying, they’re better than average, taken from the winners in society. But understanding it doesn’t stop it annoying me on several different levels.

Firstly, pro-domme clients are a self-selecting group, not a random sample. Seeing a pro-domme regularly costs thousands of dollars. Men who can afford this are certainly not a representative cross-section of society. Secondly, it’s not something I see discussed in non-professional circles. I’ve never seen someone write “My husband used to just want regular sex, but since he got that promotion suddenly he’s insisting I chain him up and pee on him. I like the extra income but I’ve had to spend half of it on leather outfits and a snorkel set”. Thirdly, a lot of kinky people can trace their preferences back to childhood or adolescence. Which means it’s completely unrelated to profession or success, unless you happen to have been a 13 year old investment banker.

Finally, and perhaps most annoying of all, is the implication that only powerful successful people (lawyers doctors, brokers, etc.) have stressful and high pressure decisions to take. Everyone has to deal with those kind of issues in their lives. In fact I’d say trying to bring up a family while working an underpaid job is going to involve a whole lot more stress and pressure than a rich, pro-domme visiting executive has to deal with.

The truth is that kinky people come from all walks of life. There’s nothing particularly special about having an interest in BDSM. Or at least no more so than all the interesting and quirky factors that go into making us who we are.

Given my original prompt for this post was Ms Justine Cross, that seems like a perfect excuse to feature a picture of the lovely lady in question.

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.

If 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.

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.

The beauty of the visual

Tumblr is a wonderful resource for writing blogs like this one. I try and create a new post every day, and without the vast number of femdom tumblrs out there to draw on, I don’t think I’d be able to achieve that. Most tumblrs, particularly the sexually explicit ones, focus on a single theme. However, I always enjoy stumbling across a site that casts its net a touch wider.

Blogs in general tend to be one dimensional. This one is a good case in point. If I was writing about the multidimensional paltego there would be a lot more posts on food, wine, cocktails, books, politics, history and science. Unfortunately consuming a written blog post takes time, and so writing broadly limits your audience to those who enjoy all (or at least most) of your topics. As it is you can be a teetotal fruitarian Republican who thinks that Romulus and Remus are Star Trek characters, and still enjoy this blog if you also happen to like femdom. Although if you do perfectly match that description then you have my sympathy. Let’s never be friends.

The beauty of a tumblr is how easily it can be consumed. A viewer can spend 10 minutes or 10 seconds on an image and still have an appreciation for it. This makes it much easier to create a wide ranging blog that had broad appeal. For example, the shot below is originally from the photographer Simon Pais-Thomas, but I found it via the Avalanche tumblr. It’s obviously curated by someone who likes elegant and forceful women. He or she also has a penchant for feet. But along with the femdom related shots, there are bookshops, graveyards, pop culture, architecture and humor. It’s a visually appealing glimpse into someone’s brain.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in the background to tumblr and its design philosophy, the New York Times recently carried an interesting article on it.