The reality of the fantasy

I used to worry that getting involved in real BDSM – the physical, sweaty, dear God don’t put that in my….oooohhh! – kind, would spoil the fantasy. I enjoyed my rich and somewhat warped fantasy life, and didn’t want to discover that everything my fevered imagination created was really about as much fun as getting hit by a flying brick, and then discovering there’s a courts summons wrapped around it.

Fortunately the reality turned out to be a lot better than the fantasy and actually gave my internal porn producer a whole new set of scripts to work with. However, just now and again I find myself over analyzing an image that catches my eye. For example, I like this shot from the TopGrl site a lot. It’s got elements of bondage, objectification and worship all rolled in together. But now I’ve done suspension scenes I can’t help thinking about how comfortable (or not) the rope harness might be. How long it took to set-up the shot and get all the knots right. How much the submissives neck might ache. It doesn’t spoil the shots for me, but occasionally it does make me second guess them.

All that said, my imagination still keeps itself pretty busy. In this case it’s picturing a second domme at the other end with a cane. Cunnilingus mixed with screams of pain sounds like a wonderful combination.

Suspension I found this on the blouxsterville tumblr.

Bringing the fantasy to life

I came this shot on the deviant art site while writing yesterdays post on the artwork entry for Shiniez. It’s by the artist John Walker who goes under the handle HazyCosmicJoe on the deviant site (free account login required). The caption he’d supplied on the picture was…

Marina and Jo best of friends. I’d like to dedicate this one to this guy shiniez who can illustrate what I wanted to achieve in pictures only better.

I think he’s being a little modest, as this is a beautiful picture.

Browsing his gallery was a little weird, as it looked like he’d reposted some ‘famous’ bondage shots from the 90’s. And by famous I mean circulated endlessly on usenet and early web sites. It took me a few minutes to cotton on to the fact he was actually the original photographer. He went under the handle PJW on the sites BDMAX and FDMAX. I always enjoyed his images (for example this one) and it was a nice but odd moment to come across his work again over a decade later via the Shiniez connection.

"Your my wife now" by HazyCosmicJoe aka PJW

Added Shiniez to Femdom Artwork

I first mentioned Shiniez in a post a little over a month ago. Since that time I’ve thoroughly enjoyed browsing all his artwork and catching up on the BDSM themed love story (or stories) that he is in the process of spinning. He’s not a femdom artist in the style of a Sardax or a Stanton, instead he’s more of a BDSM artist who features a dominant female character. However, his blend of artistic talent, BDSM understanding and playful storytelling makes him well worth perusing. Plus the F/f couple he primarily features (Allison and Lisa) get involved in some ridiculously hot bondage shenanigans. That alone makes him a great new entry for my femdom artwork pages.

The image below is taken from the start of Allison and Lisa’s relationship. It’s nothing explicit, but it does capture a nice moment of tension and anticipation.

Artwork by Shiniez

Savoir-faire

Today’s post brings you news of an article from 2004. Don’t say that Femdom Resource doesn’t deliver the latest in BDSM culture!

I was reminded of it after reading some of the comments on my earlier post about approaching a dominant woman. Ferns linked to an excellent post she’d written on the subject, which emphasized that the person comes before the submissive. It’s a package deal, and nobody is going to spend time with someone who can scream delightfully when whipped but is an annoying jerk the rest of the time. Playing with gags can be fun, but they shouldn’t be a requirement for a relationship.

This philosophy put me in mind of an old article from Mistress Matisse on how she started dating her primary partner Max. He’s actually a male dominant, but I don’t think that fact alters the underlying point. She wasn’t attracted to some aspect of his sexuality, that actually counted against him initially. It was the fact he was capable, quietly confident and self-possessed that was a significant part of the initial attraction. I also can’t resist posting a link to an article that opens with the following line.

As Max and I approach the fifth anniversary of our first date, I’ve been thinking about the fact that if my submissive, Jae, didn’t have such a big clitoris, Max and I might never have gone on that date at all.
Mistress Matisse in ‘Me, Max and Jae’

That must be a great way to start a response to the old cliched question – ‘So how did you two meet?’

For images I can bring you shots of two out of the three people in question. The first shot below is Mistress Matisse giving Bobbi Starr a spanking in a scene for Everything Butt. The second image is Jae giving some lucky guy a good paddling, taken from this blog post.

Mistress Matisse and Bobbi Starr
Jae swinging a paddle

50 shades of bleauh

BDSM has been popping up in the mainstream media recently thanks to the erotic novel ‘50 Shades of Grey‘. This book has been at the top of the digital best seller list, featured in mainstream magazines and newspapers, and just enjoyed a bidding war over the movie rights. It even got Dr. Drew in trouble for making dumb comments on the Today show.

When I first heard about it I was pleased that a BDSM novel was getting some widespread coverage. I liked the idea that people with a hidden kinky streak might feel they can explore it without embarrassing themselves. Then I took a look inside it via the free pages on Amazon. It’s pretty underwhelming. In fact I was about as far from whelmed as it’s possible to be. I can enjoy all sorts of gender and D/s combinations if they’re done well, but this has horrible prose, characters, structure, plot, you name it. I think this reviewer nailed it when she said “…this is a pretty dreadful book. Put simply, author E L James … is not a very good writer”.

I’ll quote a small section to give you a taste of what I mean. Here’s a scene where the male dominant is presenting his rules and limits to the lead female character. They’ve done nothing together at this point, and the female proto-submissive is not only completely inexperienced in BDSM, but is also a virgin who doesn’t even masturbate. There’s no reason given for this. She’s not crazy religious or anything, she’s just your typically 21 year old female college student whose sexual experience consists of being kissed twice.

I stare down at his rules. Waxing! Waxing what?
Everything? Ugh.

“So, limits. These are mine.” He hands me another piece of paper.

Hard Limits
No acts involving fire play.
No acts involving urination or defecation and the products thereof
No acts involving needles, knives, piercing, or blood.
No acts involving gynecological medical instruments
No acts involving children or animals
No acts that will leave any permanent marks on the skin
No acts involving breath control

Ugh. He has to write these down! Of course – they all look very sensible, and frankly, necessary… any sane person wouldn’t want to be involved in this sort of thing surely? Though I now feel a little queasy.
“Is there anything you’d like to add?” he asks kindly.
Crap. I’ve no idea. I am completely stumped. He gazes at me and furrows his brow.
From ’50 Shades of Grey’

From a writing point of view the ‘Ugh’ and the ‘Crap’ are jarring to read. The book seems to be full of these kind of interjections, including an endless stream of  ‘Holy ****’ (just in a few pages I spotted a heck, a shit, a crap, a fuck and a cow).  From a character development point of view I instantly hate the guy for putting ‘no children or animals’ into his list. Anyone who feels the need to do that is highly suspect. And from a plot perspective it makes zero sense to have a conversation about limits with someone who has no clue what is going on or what the possibilities are. It’s like the author knew about the idea of listing and negotiating limits, but had absolutely zero idea how to build it into the plot in a realistic and believable way.

I realize that my own attempts at fiction don’t exactly mark me out as the second coming of Shakespeare (although I did grow up near his home town), but there are a lot of genuinely good BDSM authors out there. Lily over at theblackleatherbelt just wrote a post on an anthology featuring some of them. Alternatively, from the femdom perspective, Her Majesty’s Plaything just featured a series of posts on Titian Beresford. Sascha Illyvich has even put together a handy list of 50 books she thinks are better options.

In my opinion the best literary thing to have come out of the book is this brilliant short parody written by the genuinely talented author Laura Antoniou (responsible for the Marketplace series). It’s far more entertaining than the original, while capturing the style perfectly.

It’s entirely possible that my original hopes for this book will still be realized. If it makes more people open to BDSM and exploring their own sexual desires then it probably doesn’t matter that it reads like the worst kind of internet fan fiction. And it’s nice to see an author making a bunch of money via one of the new publishing routes. I just wish this breakout book had been one I could recommend to people, rather than one I’d hate to be associated with.

Picking an image for this post was a little tricky, as Mf material isn’t the goal of the blog. I decided to go with a shot that featured both a female submissive and dominant reading a book that’s a touch better written than 50 shades of grey.

Female dominant reading her book with kneeling submissiveI found this shot on the Beauty of Submission tumblr.

Added John Willie to Femdom Artwork

John Willie is normally considered more of a general BDSM and fetish artist than a femdom one. However, he’s really a pioneering figure, setting the standard for a lot of the great BDSM artists that came after him. Given that fact, and that a lot of his work is F/f, I think he’s a very appropriate artist to add my femdom artwork pages.

John Willie Artwork

The joy of sucks

I got to play with a latex vacuum bed a few nights ago. For those of you who have never seen one of these interesting toys, it’s essentially a big sealed latex bag hooked up to a vacuum cleaner. The submissive lies in the bag and as the air is sucked out it seals around him or her, holding them tightly in place. If you’ve never seen one before then I’d suggest browsing this kink engineering page, which gives a pretty good overview.

This was actually my first time in a latex bed, but not my first time in a vacuum bed. Lady Lydia also owns a neoprene model, which is the same material they make wetsuits out of. We tried that late last year and it was a very different experience. The neoprene version is heavy and opaque, very claustrophobic, and the thick material grips tightly around the body. It’s an extremely intense sensation, high on adrenalin and low on relaxation.

In contrast I found the latex model a far more floaty and trippy experience. The latex was thinner and lighter, feeling more like a tight second skin than a sack of imprisonment. It also let some light through, making the world an abstract pale blur, rather than an inky pit. It very quickly put me into subspace, where time seems wonky and my conscious thought processes go on vacation somewhere outside my head. Of course being sealed away in a latex bag wasn’t going to stop Lydia having some fun, and she layered on sensations, using electrical shocks to the genitals and clips on various delicate bits of flesh. I quickly discovered that anything that hurts a little when first applied to my body inside the bag, will soon hurt a hell of a lot once the latex is squeezing tightly down against my skin. Electrical contacts are particularly ‘fun’ in this respect.

I had a hunt around for some good latex vacbed images to illustrate this post, but sadly couldn’t find anything. Everyone just ends up looking like a fetishistic version of Han Solo encased in carbonite. So instead I just decided to riff on the latex theme, and use these two latex heavy images from Jim Weathers bondage cafe (found on the Lipstick & Latex tumblr). The first shot has a little bit of a flirty teasing air to it, which creates a nice contrast to the second. That has much more of a sense of “What the hell!” and “You thought I was joking?” about it.

Latex, femdom and bondage by Jim Weathers

Latex, femdom and bondage by Jim Weathers

The bad old days

Bondage blog pointed me at a long but fascinating interview with John Blakemore. He was one of the very early producers of bondage movies back in the 70’s, shooting stuff for HOM and Cal-Star. The original material was before my time, but various stills and fuzzy video clips have been floating around on usenet for years.

All his movies are M/f and a world away from any kind of female dominant aesthetic. However, for anyone interested in the history of porn and BDSM, it’s an informative glimpse behind the scenes and back in time. As he makes clear, he was operating in isolation, in very murky legal territory and with old fashioned technology.

At the time, the laws in the United States prohibited any form of penetration, or sex with bondage, or actual torture and so I made these films expressly for the European market, to be taken out of the country. They were not even edited here. I had to hand deliver the raw footage. It was never out of my possession. I put it in Barbara’s hands; she in turn put it in the hands of someone from Europe. And even then, it was probably risky, although the film had not yet even been developed. It was raw footage that had not yet been developed. And it went out of the country and it did not come back. I was rather shocked to find out a couple years ago that some of this stuff is available.

While I do find it fascinating, it’s not an interview that makes me warm to the man. His approach and attitude comes across as pretty disturbing. He’s not big on concepts like SSC (Safe, Sane and Consensual) and some of his views are fairly ludicrous.

The simple fact of the matter is that in the Western world for the last 2000 years, if you take a young man that’s full of testosterone…and you put him in a situation where he has the place, the equipment and the ability to do anything to a gorgeous young woman that he wants to, with absolutely no repercussions of any kind, he will torture her and rape her.

Clearly technical issues areas like picture quality and the production values aren’t the only things that have improved since the bad old days of BDSM porn.

Given his work is all male dominant, I’m not going to feature any shots from it here. Fortunately he mentions the artist Bishop in the interview, who also used to do work for HOM. That therefore gives me an excuse to feature some of his wonderful artwork.

Femdom by BishopFemdom by Bishop

BDSM equipment page now live

The eagle eyed reader may have spotted a new option in the top menu bar – Equipment. This is a new page listing all the interesting sites selling equipment, furniture or clothes that I’ve come across. A few of the links are ones I’ve discovered via my usual random web browsing, a small number are from where I’ve shopped in the past, but the vast majority come from the comments and wish lists of pro-dommes. I figure that they’re probably the best people to listen to when it comes to BDSM hardware and outfits. After all, they buy a lot of it and give it a tougher workout than the average lifestyle player ever will.

If anyone has suggestions for other sites to add to the list then please leave a comment. I’d particularly like to know of smaller sites that offer very specialist craftsmanship. They’re typically the harder ones to track down whilst simultaneously creating the most interesting items.

For illustration I’ve picked two images. The first is from Walsh Metalworks and features Mistress Alex, shot by Natasha Gornik, wearing a metal corset fabricated by Sullivan Walsh. The second is a padded bondage chair from MetalBound. I’m afraid I don’t know the names of the models involved in the second shot.

Update: Both Jim and Lily kindly pointed out via comments that the submissive in the chair in the second shot is Madison Young.

Mistress Alex wearing a metal corset from Walsh MetalworksPadded bondage chair from MetalBound

A delightfully wrapped package

After yesterday’s rather tetchy post and extreme image, here’s something a little lighter. The rope bondage looks pretty but also seems effective. I like to imagine the dominant is about to lean in and bite some tender and enticing patch of exposed flesh.

This is from the beauty of submission tumblr. If you’re a fan of F/f images then it’s a tumblr well worth taking a look through.

Female submissive bound into a neat package