A great example (of how not to do it)

I’ve often considered writing a submissive’s guide to organizing a first pro-domme session. Not that I’m any sort of expert, but I picture it as a letter to my younger self. The sort of article I wish I’d read when I was 21. Fortunately, I’m not sure I need to write it anymore. An article entitled ‘No, a dominatrix won’t have sex with you‘ pretty much provides the definitive guide. Just do exactly the opposite of whatever this guy does, and you should be OK.

Admittedly he didn’t initially realize she was a professional (in purely a taking the money sense of the word), but I don’t think it changes the basic message. For example, if she’s happy to meet you at 2am on the street and then mistakes you for her drug dealer, don’t do what this guy did and return to her apartment. Similarly, if the pre-scene discussion consists of her mentioning her boyfriend and then saying she’ll do it for free because you’re cute, that is not your cue to take your shirt off.

My favorite part of the whole thing was his last line – “The biggest lesson I took from this is one that I will carry to my grave: A dominatrix doesn’t have sex with you.” Really? That was your big learning point? A few others did spring to my mind. Add while that statement is generally true for pro-dommes in the US, for any random OKCupid date you meet collecting garbage on the street at 2am, I’d say all bets are off.

I’ll leave you with a picture of a real pro-domme having fun with her ‘boy toy’. This is Ms Mona Rogers, a genuine professional (in all senses of that word) from NYC.

Mona Rogers doing sensation play

Lessons learnt

During my web wanderings over the weekend I came across this insightful post from Mitsu entitled “Lessons I learned as a dominatrix: 10 things that don’t exist.” It’s a thoughtful list and any one of her points could have formed the basis for a follow-up post. However, I’m going to pick the first item on it: There’s no such thing as intimacy without vulnerability.

Sometimes, a client would come to session with me with his heart set on having the amazing kinky experience he’d always dreamed of, but it would end up disappointing because of something I had no control over: the walls wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t be able to communicate specifically what he really wanted. He wouldn’t be able to let go, of his ego perhaps, and let the scene happen.
Mitsu

As Mitsu goes onto say, this need for vulnerability and lowering your guard is a key part of any intimate relationship, not just a BDSM one. It’s something that rarely gets addressed directly. People come at obliquely, talking about sharing, trust or communication. But the heart of it, something necessary for all those things, is taking a risk and making yourself vulnerable.

The interesting thing I’ve found about doing BDSM scenes is that they can be a two way street when it comes to vulnerability. It’s necessary to let go to make them work, but the scenes themselves can also help you to do that. Pain and psychological stress can put a lot of pressure on any cracks the submissive wants to expose in their personal walls. It’s hard for the ego and super-ego to do their stuff when basic fight-or-flight impulses are ruling the roost.

One of the most powerful moments in any of my scenes came at a moment when I was feeling supremely vulnerable. I’d been in a bondage chair for a couple of hours, watching Lydia at close range, face to face, as she tortured me. I was bound but exposed, pushed deep into sub-space as she caned my inner thighs, applied clamps and zapped me with electricity. Towards the end she applied a number of viciously sharp clips across my body and then stepped back to watch as I struggled to breath through the pain. My thought process was long gone, there was really no me there, just a lot of pain and Lydia. As I stared up at her she came to me and gave me a gentle hug. It was a beautiful moment, comforting and reassuring, and I emotionally dissolved in her arms. Then, still holding me, she slid her body along mine, dragging the clips back and forth. I just about died. That little moment of vulnerability and intimacy combined with the sudden savage pain of the moving clips still gives me a shiver when I think of it today.

IntimacyImage of intimacy was found on the Girls Rule, Subs Drool tumblr.

Aggression is sexy

Seeing this image made me realize how few femdom images show expressions of simple aggression. There are a lot of smiling sadists, haughty stares and dismissive sneers, but not a lot like this shot. Personally, while I’m not a fan of angry domination, I do enjoy seeing controlled aggression. It suggest an emotional engagement with the scene and activity, not simply someone going through the motions. In this case her expression, coupled with the black glove, rope leash and bowed submissive, create a nice sense of focused energy.

AggressionI found this image on the She Rules Me tumblr. The dominant looks really familiar – a West coast pro-domme I think – but I just can’t place her name. If you can help with an identity feel free to leave a comment.

Update: Thanks to my knowledgeable readers I can identify the lady in question as Mika Tan. Her name was on the tip of my tongue I swear!

It’s not a competitive sport

There’s sometimes an unfortunate undercurrent to BDSM discussions that equates ‘better’ with more extreme and more edgy. A subtle suggestion that a bottom who can take a lot of pain or do more spectacular activities is somehow a superior type of bottom.

I think I can understand the mechanism by which this happens. Most kinky people like to push their own personal limits. They want to take six more hits, achieve that more strenuous position, wear the device one more week, get deeper into subspace. Part of the skill of being a top is figuring out just how far to push – up to the line but not too far beyond it. This creates personal goals, which can get all too easily fitted into a social hierarchical. My goals will always be someone else’s achievements. And if I’m aspiring to achieve something, then it becomes easy to think of the person who has already achieved it as being somehow more successful.

Of course understanding how it happens, doesn’t mean it’s not bullshit. The goal is to achieve personal satisfaction and happiness. Not win a ‘Who can slam their dick in the drawer the hardest’ competition. Everybody processes information and sensations differently. Being born with a higher pain threshold, or greater tolerance to extreme situations, doesn’t make you a better bottom. Good communication, empathy, understanding of personal boundaries, self-knowledge and a willingness to experiment are all characteristics of good bottoms. The ability to shove large things in small orifices, or survive sharp things applied at high speed, doesn’t feature in there at all.

BitingThe image features one of my favorite activities – biting. I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution for it. I found it on the Dishevelled Domina tumblr.

A push and a pinch

Something nice and simple tonight. Just a couple of smiles, a push with one hand and a pinch with the other. They look like they’re having fun.

A Push And A PinchI found this on the tumblr of Ms Savannah Sly, a local (from my perspective) Seattle pro-domme. I’d love to have an original attribution for it, so if you know the photographer or the models then please leave me a comment.

Labeling the world

I received an interesting comment recently on my Femdom Images page. It was from the curator of the Work Is Never Over tumblr and related to my tumblr categorization. Until today the two options were ‘Femdom’ (i.e. All those featuring pictures with a dominant woman somewhere in there) or ‘BDSM and fetish’ (i.e. Anything else I liked that didn’t fit in the first category). Since her tumblr focused heavily on male submissives it ended up in the second group. You can read her entire comment here, but the essence of it was her ambivalence to the categorization.

I’m not sure how to feel about not being categorized as a “femdom” blog— on the one hand, waaa, visibility! (Not to mention: I *am* a female dominant. Hmf. 😉 )
But on the other hand… I despise standard femdom imagery (“Femdom™”)— hence my blog— and I’m distinctly proud that my blog is recognizably different enough from that to have not made it into that list! 😀
(Of course, on the third hand, I always kind of hope that people looking for Femdom™ would come across my blog and see that it doesn’t have to look like that. I guess I’m back to that first hand! XD )

My first thought was how great a three handed domme would actually be. She could tease, tickle and torture you all at once! But stretched metaphors aside, she raised a good point. I’m personally not against a bit of stereotypical femdom imagery now and again. It’s popular for a reason. At the same time I recognize the huge imbalance in the type of material that’s floating around out there. And I’m very much in favor of people who are venturing into femdom being able to find material that will attract them and represent how they might want to play. You don’t need to pull on a thousand dollars of fetish gear, convert the spare room into a dungeon and plaster a sneer onto your face to experiment with female dominance. My goal on this site has always been to provide an interesting mix of material that will have broad appeal (to no doubt mixed success).

In an effort to categorize better I’ve therefore split the tumblr section into 4 rather than 2 sections: General femdom, dominant focused, submissive focused, and BDSM/fetish. These are obviously very imprecise labels, and tumblrs are typically not single themes, but hopefully they’ll provide at least a little guidance when searching for particular types of material. It’ll also give me a chance to expand the submissive focused section which, as a male submissive, I suspect I’ve neglected in the past.

I’ll leave you with an image I liked from the tumblr in question (originally from Men in Pain). It captures a nice moment of connection.

Moment of Connection

City view. Two bedrooms. Whipping on request.

I’m sort-of looking for a new place to live. I say ‘sort-of’ because there’s a high inertia factor involved. I’d love a fabulous penthouse condo with a great view, but lacking the several million dollars required for that, I tend to default to not moving at all. Of course if zillow actually listed the places I was likely to get a whipping from my neighbors, then maybe I’d be a little more incentivized. My current neighbor certainly glares a lot, but that really doesn’t do much for me masochistically speaking. Offer me a coffee, scrambled eggs and a whipping from the lady across the street and I’ll be onboad any fixer upper that’s going.

Whipping across the balconiesThis image is from the very talented Camille MM. Her site has a number of free images available, as well as a much larger collection available via the membership section.

First date

I hate first dates. Not dating itself. Just the starting part.  I dislike the carefully choreographed dance of over-thought emails needed to set-up a suitable meeting. I worry about how and if I should slide the topic of kink into the conversation. The cynical mathematician living in my brain computes the worldwide ratio of first dates to successful relationships and whispers that I’m probably wasting my time. Most of all, I hate the uncertainty of the end. Do we hug, kiss or fuck? Seeing as I’m British I sometimes settle for shaking hands, which might help explain why I’m still single.

I need to meet up with a few more ladies like the one in the drawing by Rodzo below. The man might not be all that comfortable. The whip might be painful. Oxygen could start to be an issue. But at least he doesn’t have to worry about that awkward moment on her doorstep at the end of the evening.

Femdom by Rodzo

Wanted: Mänskliga Fotpall

Yesterday I received one of the more unusual comments I’ve ever had. It was from a Sandra Lindqvist, a researcher for a Swedish TV company, looking to find people to help them with a documentary.

We are currently working on a documentary series called “Fråga Olle-dokumentären” (“Ask Olle about sex – documentary”) about sex, love and relationships for Swedish Channel 5

One topic we would like to cover in our documentary is ”Human Furniture” – Forniphilia

I was wondering if you know any Mistresses or just some people that are practicing this? We are going to UK next Wednesday for a couple of days and we really want to meet and do a segment with someone about this when we are there.

Given I haven’t visited Sweden in years, and don’t speak the language, I’ve unsurprisingly never heard of the series. I’m guessing that this is the homepage for it. And while I have featured forniphilia a few times in the past, I wouldn’t describe it as a major kink of mine. The fantasy is kind of fun, but I suspect I’d quickly get bored of the reality.

Anyway, if you’re in the UK (or I assume Sweden), into forniphilia at all and feel you could help out, then I suggest giving Sandra an email. The only forniphilia experts I know of offhand are House of Gord, and they’re US based and maledom.

While I can’t help out directly, the comment does at least give me an excuse to feature a couple of interesting images on the theme. The first features Mistress Alex combining public humiliation, objectification and the morning paper. The second is by David Blázquezz, one of a series of similar images he shot for an exhibition. The shelving construction in the series is particularly impressive.

Mistress Alex of NYC

Human lamp by David Blázquez