ESH

One of my guilty time wasting pleasures is reading Am I The Asshole on Reddit. It’s fun to sit in judgement on random strangers and boil complex situations down to one of the forums standard labels: NTA (Not The Asshole), YTA (You’re The Asshole), NAH (No Assholes Here) or ESH (Everyone Sucks Here).

I was reminded of it when reading this LA Time article on a relationship gone wrong thanks to undisclosed kinks. I’d say it’s clearly a case of ESH. The writer for being judgmental, snarky and unwilling to be GGG. Her ex for keeping his kinks quiet until months into the relationship and then dumping them all out. Both of them for bad communication.

I get that it’s pretty tough to share kinks when you’ve just started dating, but pushing the reveal out by months can never be a good plan. If they are potentially kinky then better to start communicating and having fun together sooner. If it’s a deal-breaker then there’s no need to waste everyone’s time. And, if you’re hoping someone’s need to maintain a relationship will persuade them to do things they don’t really want to, then YTA.

From the article it seemed like the sub was a fan of latex and fetishwear. So here’s an image in honor of that.

I found on an old tumblr site. From hunting around I believe that is the German domme Patrizia Von Bergfeld.

Pony Fun

Fans of Pony Play might want to check out the stories of I. Binder, some of which are available on Gagged Utopia. The site seems broken in a bunch of places, but you can see a number of them listed under the PonyPlay tag here. For example, this, this, this and this. Looks like there’s also some on Amazon if you wish to purchase them.

I’m not sure it’d be a kink I’d want to indulge during an actual session. Too old and too many wonky back muscles for pulling people around. However, the fantasy is nice and the I. Binder stories are very well written. They got me interested in a kink that had never really clicked with me before.

I sourced this image from Madam is All tumblr. Reverse image searching didn’t give me any leads, but I believe that’s Mistress Trinity, an NYC based pro-domme.  I previously featured an image that looks to be from the same shoot here.

More Pet Play

Continuing the theme from my last post, here’s a more extreme form of pet play. It’s from a tweet by a Japanese artist – ひややっこ:穀物の雨が降る、土砂降りの雨が

I like a lot of the cute details in this image, like the short arm stilts, the big toe bondage and the remote zapper it looks like she’s carrying. It’s very sexy objectification and dehumanization.

Beauty and the Beast

At a quick glance I thought this image belonged to the genre: “Hot domme in fetish gears hangs out in gritty urban environment to create interesting study in contrasts.” It’s not a major kinky genre, but there are a few examples around. For example, this one from the late great Mistress Adrienne.

However, on looking more closely, there’s a pretty clear sign it’s not your average urban environment. That hooded naked man locked away in the pen for one. There’s something particularly sexy about over the top bondage. Adding extra control when it’s not needed makes it so much hotter. In this case to go along with the bars on the door there’s the thick chain hooked outside, the leather hood and the locked hands in mittens. Lovely.

The hot domme in question here is Mistress Trinity accompanied by Heavy, sourced via this tweet. Unfortunately, the space is at Studio Avalon, which AFAIK closed in 2020.

Updated thanks to a helpful comment: The space is probably Residenz Avalon, rather than the studio. Unfortunately, it’s also no longer around. You can see a video from what used to be here.

Hooded Prisoner

Continuing the theme of masks and hoods in femdom shots, here’s another nice example. I think this works because everything fits with the dynamic of the scene. The cuffs, the hood and the background all suggest a prison setting. It’s an up close and personal interrogation and she’s probably not on familiar terms with the Geneva convention.

After a bit of hunting around I believe this is from the Paraphilia51 clips site.

Roped and Masked

One of the common problems of femdom porn is the use of silly hoods for submissives. When used appropriately hoods can be super hot thanks to their objectifying nature. However, they’re often just simple balaclavas or loose gimp masks being used to hide the identity of the amateur/volunteer submissive. See my past two posts for some thoughts on that topic.

Here’s a good example of how hotness can be preserved while still masking identity. I’ve actually no idea if that was part of the goal here, or if this setup was purely about the look and sensory experience. Either way, it’s a very sexy shot that shows faceless submissive aren’t mutually exclusive with  sensual imagery. The heavy knot where his mouth is makes for a particularly nice touch.

This was created by the professional rigger and domme Mari Cherry, based out of San Francisco. I sourced it from this tweet. You can find her primary site for booking sessions here.

Kinky Models

The hot story in tech over the last few months has been ChatGPT. The latest in large language AI models, trained across vast swathes of internet data, it has been freaking people out with it’s ability to do a pretty good impression of a person.

Inevitably there have been endless attempts to make it do naughty things because, you know, humans. The makers are constantly tweaking its guard rails but with millions of ingenious monkeys tapping away at it, not to mention all kinds of adult material in its training data, there are always going to be scenarios they’ve not covered.

The latest example comes from Vice magazine, where a journalist managed to get it to indulge in some Femdom roleplay. As you might expect if you’ve seen any of the other ChatGPT examples, it manages to be impressive, weird and unsettling all at once. It started pretty well, with mention of consent and safewords, but ultimately veered off into some far more disturbing areas. Which, in fairness, is pretty representative of kinky writing on the internet.

The writers final conclusion seems an odd one to me…

The practice of BDSM is firmly rooted in principles of consent. Will large language models ever be nuanced enough to differentiate between non-consensual acts and taboo—but consensual—situations in BDSM role-play? These models’ overall lack of rigid ethical principles highlights a major risk inherent to their design.

Rigid ethical principles are undoubtedly necessary once you start letting AI affect the physical world. Nobody wants a Femdom android that doesn’t understand consent. But for creative writing purposes? Pretty certain there’s a huge amount of online kinky fiction that violates all sorts of BDSM principles and we didn’t need ChatGPT to come up with it.

This image is by Rabbika. You can find there twitter account here.

Why not both?

One final comment on the recent ‘Fetish or Fashion’ pop-quiz I’ve been running. Servitor posed the very reasonable question: Why not both?

That’s a fair point. As far as the resulting images go, they contain significant elements of both fetish and fashion. I guess I should frame the question around the image creators and their primary industry. Is it a pro-domme / fetish producer or a model being paid for a shoot with a (relatively) mainstream publication. Is it someone who spends more time in dungeons and playspaces than they do strutting a catwalk? What kind of animal do they usually have at the end of a leash? Petite Pomeranian or a perky puppy boy?

There’s clearly a healthy interchange between the fashion and fetish worlds. However, I’m not sure it’s always a equally balanced exchange. A lot of pro-dommes are extremely fashion aware. Unfortunately, on the flipside, fashion editors and photographers often seem confused about kink. A charitable take would be that they’re deliberately re-interpreting and re-contextualizing kink to tell their own stories. After all, their ultimate goal is different to someone creating material for a kink or fetish market. A less charitable interpretation would be they’re raiding kink for easy shock value and then haphazardly mashing its elements together without any really understanding.

I think the distinction between fashion or fetish often doesn’t come down to the clothes, styling, make-up or beauty of the subjects. It’s down to their understanding and intelligent use of the kinky elements. Or not.

This mainstream fashion shot is from Vice Serbia, features rapper Sajsi Mc and was photographed by Alek Živković.