Risk Aware Consensual Confession

A letter in a recent Dan Savage column got me thinking about the risks of confessing kinks to partners. The letter’s author is writing about her previous boyfriends admission that he liked to be peed on.

I’m GGG, so I mulled it over and decided that I am not comfortable with that. I was able to explain that regardless of how sanitary it may be (one of his selling points!), I am not down and he deserves to be with someone who is. Couple weeks later, I started talking to my future husband, who has the same kinks as me. Thanks for teaching me that being GGG does not mean doing whatever your partner wants but to always be respectful, even if it eeks you out.

I’m not really sure why the author felt the need to write the letter to Dan. I don’t think she comes out of it well. Having a limit on what you’re prepared to do is right and proper. But dumping the guy and making it sound like she did so for his benefit seems to be pretty poor form. As Dan points out in his reply, she can’t be certain her new love doesn’t have similar or worse kinks. After all, he’s going to be very reluctant to confess anything now he knows what happened to the last guy she dated.

While I was pondering this I came across this recent post by Miss Troy Orleans, where she commented on the sharing of kinks in a relationship.

I don’t think the men give their spouses enough credit as far as what their wives desire or what they might be open to as far as kink. I believe every marriage has room for some kink — perhaps it’s not the kind of heavy bondage, degradation, or skill-driven play typical of professional sessions — but with patience, communication, cooperation/accommodation, and an open heart, any couple can incorporate some kind of kink into their sex life.

I’ve never been married, so this is not a problem I’ve ever faced. However, I’ve read enough personal accounts of kinky confessors to realize there are many possible outcomes. Everything from kinky heaven in a newly rejuvenated relationship to divorce, despair and the fighting of wild dogs for a pork rind in a seedy back alley while the local hobos bets on the outcome. You should aim to steer clear of that last option if possible.

The one thing that always seems true is that predicting how a partner will respond is incredibly hard. I’ve yet to hear anyone say “I always thought my wife would like me to wear a fireman’s outfit and pee on her while making siren sounds, and it turns out I was right!” Complex internal sexual wiring doesn’t often manifest itself in obvious ways via someone’s personality or behavior. People will talk about indicators that seem obvious in hindsight, but they are never describing predictors they were aware of beforehand. It seems that the only answer for existing partners is to try and start with the kind of relationship Miss Orleans describes, and then hope they can find common ground.

Given I started with a letter on watersports, it seems only fitting to finish with some photographs featuring some liquid loveliness. Both of these are from the Felm Cyber Tumblr.

Mistress pissing into slaves cupped hands
Bride pissing into groom's mouth

Like the Smithsonian, but with more lube

If you’ve ever wanted to tour the Kink studios in San Francisco then now might be a good time to do it. Groupon has an offer running where you can do the armory tour at a reduced rate. In the offer preview they draw a comparison with the Smithsonian, which seems to be pushing it a bit, but it certainly sounds an interesting thing to try.

For a little added comedy value you can also take pleasure in the fact that you’re annoying the people over at Morality in Media, who are calling for a Groupon boycott because of this offer. This is the same group that equates 19th century slavery with consensual adults filming porn, so they don’t exactly enter the discussion with a huge amount of credibility. That bastion of quality reporting, the World Net Daily, has an article and a video clip with the morality police in question.

“Groupon should be thinking of their wider commercial audience, most of which, unlike Groupon, would not support torture and humiliation of women and girls for the sexual enjoyment of disturbed men,” said Hawkins. “But since Groupon not only seems to support Kink, but is happy to profit from the torture of women, we have called for a national boycott.”
Dawn Hawkins

Quite honestly I’m a little offended. In all the quotes and the lengthy video clip she doesn’t once mention men getting tortured for the sexual enjoyment of disturbed women. I know there has been a lot of discussion about the devaluation of male submission in the femdom community. Now I’m apparently getting devalued by the anti-porn crowd as well. What am I, chopped liver? I want to be a victim to. All those filthy and depraved women out there who want to watch my poor body be tightly bound and viciously tortured by viciously sadistic leather clad *cough* sorry.

Anyway, here’s a shot from Kink’s Men in Pain featuring the aforementioned torture and humiliation of women. Although in this case the lady in question does seem to have a fair sized penis. They might want to re-check their casting guidelines.

CBT shot from Kink's Men in Pain

For Science!

The io9 site recently published an article discussing four fascinating papers on the subject of measuring pain. The studies in question were all done back in the 1940’s with the goal of coming up with a reliable and reproducible method for quantifying levels of pain. The scanned versions of papers can be read online: Paper 1 (1940), Paper 2 (1947), Paper 3 (1947) and Paper 4 (1948). They’re fairly readable and easy to understand, assuming you having a grounding in basic maths and science.

Pain in itself is a curious topic, as it’s such a uniquely subjective experience. We normally build understanding by shared references. Yet, if I tell someone my back hurts, how do we establish a common reference point? With external stimulus, like color or sound, we can measure the spectrum or the loudness irrespective of a person. Something like taste or smell is a little more complex, but there’s at least an external object (the food itself) to breakdown and analyze. It’s also possible in those cases to construct a common language from more primitive elements (sweet, bitter, salt, etc.) Just look at wine tasting notes for an example of that approach in action. But with pain? How do you measure something that’s completely internal, and can manifest at any point in the body, to a huge range of stimulus, or sometimes to no apparent stimulus at all?

The scientists behind these papers tackled the problem by proposing a scale for measuring pain, with a unit called the dol. They created it using controlled doses of heat on volunteers, and measuring when they could detect a difference between the heat intensity levels. They discovered that on average people could distinguish 21 levels of different intensity between nothing and maximum pain. This maximum wasn’t some safety limit set by the scientists. It turns out that there’s an upper limit on pain, a maximum beyond which increased intensity isn’t detected as greater pain. Working with this 0 to 21 detectable level changes, they assigned 1 dol =equals 2 levels, and created a 0 to 10.5 pain scale.

There’s all sorts of interesting bits of data in the papers. For example, mood and fatigue made no difference to the perception of pain, but gripping an iron bar tightly or hearing a very loud sound did. That fits the common intuition that being distracted from pain lessens it. They also showed that pain did not sum over an area. In other words, the intensity of the pain was purely related to the intensity of the heat energy applied, not the size of the area it was applied to. Initially that seems a little count-intuitive, but it does fit to the idea that being distracted can help reduce pain. One thing that can distract you is a different pain. That wouldn’t be true if pain was additive.

The most interesting finding is one that I think the io9 article misunderstands, or at least misrepresents. It says…

The study’s authors concluded that 8 dols of pain equaled four successive two dol experiences. This arithmetic aspect of the dol contrasted existing beliefs of the subjective nature of pain.

That seems to suggest some sort of progression in time, where you can reach very high pain levels by repeatedly applying a low pain stimulus. That’s not what the study found. What they discovered was that the scale is linear. So the increase in intensity between 1 and 2 dols, is perceived as the same increase in intensity when moving from 8 to 9 dols. I think most people would think of a pain scale like the Richter scale for measuring earthquakes. That’s a log scale, and so going from a magnitude 4 to 5 earthquake is basically nothing, where going from a magnitude 7 to 8 is huge. Similarly, you might expect that a 1 to 2 change in pain isn’t much, where going from 8 to 9 is very scary, but it’s actually perceived as the same change in intensity. This also means that the standard 0 to 10 scale doctors often use, where 0 is no pain and 10 is worst pain you can imagine, actually makes sense. There is an upper bound to pain and the scale between zero and that maximum value is a simple linear one.

The io9 article has a sense of ‘Wow, look what these crazy scientists used to be able to get away with.’ To me it didn’t seem that bad. As a masochist I may have a distorted view on this, but it’s only temporary pain. I suspect if they’d hired an attractive female doctor with an authoritative attitude to perform the tests, as in this artwork by Waldo, then they’d have been inundated with volunteers. Although that might have thrown their experimental results off. They claimed mood didn’t make a difference, but I doubt they also considered or induced sexual arousal.

Waldo ArtworkWaldo Artwork

Function

Yesterday’s post had me talking about gloves, and how I prefer a more functional style. Purely by chance today I came across the shot below, which features simple short black leather gloves. Happily, they’re also combined with breath play and nipple torture, two of my favorite things. I suspect a fetishist would prefer the gloves from the previous post, but as a masochist, this shot is far more pleasing.

Mistress with short black leather glovesI found this on the Thou Shall Love Via Mistress tumblr.

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

Heightening the senses

A short post tonight. I’ve several lengthy ones lined up, but none of them have been beaten into publishable state.

They often say that removing one sense heightens the others. I’m sure he’d like to be able to see what is right in front of him. It looks like it’d be a very special view. However, if losing his sight heightens his sense of touch, taste and smell, then maybe it won’t be such a bad trade-off.

Blindfolded slaveI found this on the Real Dominant Women tumblr. It’s an excellent tumblr, although in this particular case I think the name is a bit of a misnomer. I believe that’s Jennifer Love in a modified shot from a fairly standard porn shoot, albeit with some kinky touches.

Man with crazy hair does sensible thing

A couple of weeks ago I commented on the story of Jenna Talackova, who had been disqualified from the Miss Universe Canada for being a transgender woman. Fortunately ‘the Donald’ stepped in to allow her to compete and they’ve now changed the competition rules to allow transgender entrants in future contests.

I still can’t say I’m a fan of beauty contests or Donald Trump for that matter (although I do admire his genius for self-promotion), but it’s good to hear that they have fixed the rules. It also gives me an excuse to post this shot of the beautiful Yasmin Lee that has been lurking on my hard drive for ages, along with this second shot from the same scene. It’s from a TS seduction sequence and a couple of other images from it can be see here.

Yasmin Lee face fucking bound slave

Hot or not

I enjoy deconstructing. Doesn’t matter if it’s a relationship, a conversation, a social event or a BDSM scene. I like to figure out subtext, expose hidden motives and deconstruct complex interactions into underlying ideas.

The images below got me thinking about porn, and deconstructing why certain shots work so well. Figuring out exactly why being beaten or forced to drink piss turns me on is a level of analysis beyond my primitive tools. I suspect even a tag team of Freud and Jung working around the clock might be defeated by that particular conundrum. But I can look at porn and see some of underling ideas that are important. Plus, it gives me an excuse to do a kind of ‘best of Femdom Resource’ post and re-run a few images.

One important idea is that of connection. There needs to be some, either within the scene or between me and the scene, but typically not both. For example, this shot and this shot are nice examples of connection between the actors in the scene. They’re posed for the camera, but there’s also a spark between the people. It’s easy for me to suspend my disbelief and image the scene unfolding without the camera. Alternatively, there’s the classic femdom POV shot, where I can put myself into the scene. For example, this shot or this shot. Here the connection is an imaginary one between myself and the mistress. Where porn often goes wrong is sending mixed messages on the connection. For example this shot or this shot. In both cases it feels like I’m interrupting something. They’re not connecting with their partners, and yet the style of scene doesn’t invite a connection to me.

Another idea is that of my role as viewer in the scene. Am I a fly on the wall? Imagining myself as one of the participants? Or is my role unclear? For example this shot is a definitely a fly on the wall case, where this one makes me want to be the man. Both work well. A good role can even play with the connection aspect of the scene. For example, this shot seems to suffer from the mixed connection message problem, but I like it because it has a ‘You’re Next!’ feel to it. Alternatively, in a shot like this I’ve no idea what my role is supposed to be. It’s a weird studio setting. She’s presumably supposed to be shopping but is wearing an unsuitable outfit and shoes for it. She’s in the domme role, but is wearing cuffs around her arms and a spiky slave collar type thing. I cannot create a role for myself and make sense of the scene, so it doesn’t work for me.

Clothes are often a good way to screw a shot up. For example, everything about this shot works for me, apart from her outfit. It looks uncomfortable and takes away from her dominant role. A more elegant and normal dress would actually be a lot more erotic. In contrast, this shot and this shot both have great outfits working very successfully but in totally different ways.

In the case of the Divine Bitches shots below, the clothes aren’t really a factor, but there’s clearly a good connection between the participants and I absolutely want to be the guy Mistress Dragon Lily is slapping around.

Mistress Dragon Lily slapping slave
Mistress Dragon Lily pulling slave's tongue

Depressingly good advice

Strange over at the Treats for the Strange blog has a “good” post on the topic of how to approach a dominant woman. I have quotes around “good” in that sentence not because I think her advice is bad or unnecessary, but because I find it depressing that these kind of posts have to keep being written.

Do not start by saying ‘I am not worth your time’.

Do not start by saying ‘I know I am not what you’re looking for’.

Do not say ‘I am a dominant, but I’d submit to you’.

When I see these statements my first thought is “Really? Do some submissive guys actually do this? How stupid are they?” Unfortunately, my follow-up thought is then about the number of times I’ve seen the same kind of advice from so many different dominant women. Which tells me that yes, if lots of dominant women feel compelled to independently repeat this, then there clearly must be a lot of submissive guys out there who need to be told. That makes me depressed. I then realize that these guys are my competition in the D/s dating pool, and yet I’m still single. That’s normally about the time I decide I need a stiff drink. And how having written this, I foresee a blend of gin, campari and sweet vermouth in my very near future.

Mistress On StaircaseI like this shot, but those heels look pretty dangerous for navigating stairs. I hope he’s ready to break her fall if necessary. I found the image on the GeekDomme tumblr. Which, I have to say, sounds like a truly excellent combination of characteristics.

To pee or not to pee

As I was driving into work this morning I was mulling over the erotic potential for piss play. I’m sure we’ve all been there. Traffic’s a little heavy. Idiots are randomly changing lanes while talking on their phones. I’m trying to pick my gaps, catch the lights and figure out exactly what makes urination exciting. You know, the usual commuter stuff.

To be more specific, I was actually trying to figure out a scenario where simply being peed on was hot. I know that some people find that an automatic button pusher, but not for me. I don’t find it particularly humiliating or degrading. It’s just good messy fun, a little like sploshy play. Possibly sexy, but not particularly D/s. In contrast I find forced consumption, where it’s a very careful and measured approach, with not a drop to be spilled, incredibly hot. That has a real objectification and controlling vibe to it that really works for me.

Somewhere between I-5 and my parking garage, I decided that simply being peed on could work, if there was a heavy bondage and abandonment situation built around it. That takes it into a masochistic area, with a little side helping of degradation. I was therefore very surprised and amused to get home and discover that Lady Anna’s latest post described exactly the kind of scene I had decided might work.

I took D, who was wearing a cotton overall, down into my cellar along with a small selection of steel bondage hardware. I cuffed his ankles and then I chained and padlocked his cuffs chain to a ring that is screwed into my cellar floor. I then cuffed his wrists. I pulled a small hessian sack onto his head and secured it with his leather collar. I then told him to get down on to the floor where he lay as I pissed on him. Without saying goodbye I walked out, locked and padlocked the cellar door, and then at the top of the steps I locked the top cellar door.
Lady Anna List

As a style of play it’s probably not one you’d want to share with someone just feeling their way into kink. Or one to tell your curious vanilla friends. But kind of hot in my view.

Mistress pissing on slave outdoors

The images is from the 21sextury site and I found it on the Felm Cyber tumblr.