Famous people doing stuff

Taylor Swift has a new music video out featuring lots of her famous friends. That means someone I’ve never listened to has created a video with a bunch of people I’ve never heard of. I feel like I’m one step away from yelling at kids to get off my lawn.

While I might not have my finger on the pulse of modern music, I can appreciate a video featuring lots of aggressive women in fetish gear beating people up and shooting things. That never gets old. The video is also a grab bag of film references, so it’s fun to play spot the homage. From a quick look there’s Sin City (referenced by the poster below), The Fifth Element, Tron, Kill Bill, Matrix, Watchmen and every Bond movie. It also puts me in mind of the girl gang from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, but that’s probably because they’re both a pastiche of the same thing rather than being a direct reference.

Bad Blood poster from Taylor Swift video

Cunning plan

If you hang around on internet forums long enough you’ll eventually come across someone posting a picture labelled with the phrase “Somehow, I don’t think you thought your cunning plan all the way through.” For example this, or this or this. I couldn’t help smiling and think of that expression when I came across this image. A lady should have a knight in shining armor, but possibly not when small boats are involved.

Photograph by Frieke JanssensThe image was created by the photographer Frieke Janssens.

Boxy but good

Attractive models being used to sell cars is pretty standard. However, with the exception of this memorable Fiat 500 ad, they rarely have a femdom vibe. This one is I think the exception. It’s for a new version of Volvo XC90, designed specifically for those who get chauffeured around. You can see a larger version of the image and an article on the car here.

The car nerd in me likes the clever design of the seats and the idea of being able to stretch out from the backseat. The submissive in me likes the idea of being a smartly dressed chauffeur ferrying around a rich and powerful icy blonde executive.

Volvo

Idiocy on idiocy

After writing yesterday’s post on the stupid British porn laws, I spotted this page by Megara Furie on the issue of minors accessing content. Apparently the issue is that the widely used Clips 4 Sale site accepts debit cards. Credit cards require proof of age, but anyone can get a prepaid debit card. That effectively means that no UK producer can use the number one clips site in the world. There are alternatives (for example Clips Fatale), but I suspect the other sites don’t see anywhere near the same volume of traffic.

I can see this is clearly a major problem. I’m sure that many minors are saving up their pocket money in order to sneakily acquire debit cards and then pay for pornography. There’s absolutely no way they’d be going off to the completely free and anonymous sites like redtube or xvideos or pornhub. Minors are also notoriously bad and nervous about using modern technology, so there’s no chance there’d be getting porn from one of the zillions of illegal but free torrent sites out there.

Quite frankly if anyone did find a minor paying for porn he (or she) should get an award for their honesty (after taking the porn away). I can only hope the idiots at ATVOD organization never stumble across any of the more potent Japanese femdom material. It might melt their tiny little brains. There’s all sorts of extreme whipping, breathplay and toilet scenes. None of which is now allowed in Britain. The image below is from the Rinryu site which (fair warning) containing heavy material featuring all three of those activities.

Japanese Femdom

The law is an ass

I’ve covered the stupidity of the UK’s new anti-sex laws in past posts here, here and here. When you give unelected bodies censorious powers it’s only going to be matter of time before they use them. As this article makes clear, that time has now come. Two UK pro-dommes – Megara Furie and Mistress R’eal – have been found at fault and forced to withdraw content. When the laws were passed there were multiple articles highlighting how horribly biased they would be in penalizing independent female producers (for example this and this). No surprise then that the first people to be affected are two independent pro-dommes. The UK government is all in favor of successful small businesses, just as long as they’re not run by women producing consensual erotica for others to enjoy.

What I found particularly laughably in the article was that the goverment board also threw out the old chestnut about minors being able to access the material. Have these people never encountered tumblr? Obviously I don’t support kids seeing explicit material, but when it comes to censoring online sources, that horse has long since bolted. In fact not only bolted, but had a happy life frolicking in meadows, died of old age, been turned into glue and is now helping old ladies scrapbook photos of the grandchildren.

Sadly, based on the latest UK election results, it looks like the people who passed this law will be returning to power. Thus proving that while the good may die young, the evil get elected to power and fuck with the rest of us.

MegaraFurieThe above image is of Megara Furie, the Glasgow based pro-domme penalized under the new laws. If you’d like to session with her then her contact information can be found here.

Hollywood Couple

This is a fun vintage shot from the golden age of Hollywood. The man is John Huston, famous director of such films as The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen and The Man Who Would Be King. The woman is Olivia de Havilland, a Hollywood star who appeared in such films as Gone With The Wind, The Adventures of Robin Hood and They Died with Their Boots On. They apparently met and fell in love in the 1940’s. I’ve no idea what the context for the shot is, but it made me smile.

HollywoodCoupleI found this via the Alternative Femdom tumblr.

Slacking

I’m in Las Vegas for a few days of R & R. In an unusual turn of events I’ve actually got no kinky fun lined up for this trip. Just hanging out with friends, eating out and relaxing. I’ll try and keep the blog updated but updates may be a bit erratic.

One thing I always enjoy in Vegas is dressing smartly. It’s not exactly Monte Carlo (despite the namesake casino) when it comes to fashion, so a suit really stands out, while still looking good.

Smart
This is a photograph shot by Tibi Clenci for Elle magazine in October 2010. The models are Silviu Tolu and Andreea Diaconu.

Black Widow

The new Avengers movie is out in a few weeks. While I enjoyed the last one, I thought it was a great comic book movie, rather than a great movie in its own right. As a big Joss Whedon fan I’m hoping this new one takes it up a notch.  I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Scarlett Johansson continue in her role as Black Widow. Joss has always done a great job with strong female characters, so this should really play to his strength.

The image below is from the cover of Black Widow #14. I’ve not read this particular comic, but it’s a fun image, despite the incredibly ineffectual gags on display. Somebody with BDSM experience should tell the artist that a professional like Black Widow would never use the cliched handkerchief gag. They’re hopeless at silencing people.

BlackWidow

Pick a number

It’s not femdom related, but I found this article on estimating the percentages of LGB people an interesting one. In most important ways the actual number is irrelevant. It’s clearly millions of people, so I’m not sure why different groups get so riled up over the exact count. It’s the historical and scientific perspective that I find interesting. One thing that comes through clearly from the article is the difficulty in giving a binary answer to what’s not a binary situation. There’s also clearly shifts in the numbers that reflect both changes in public identification and changes in actual behavior.

The precision of the wording in these kind of surveys always makes me smile. In this case I particularly liked the phrase – “someone with whom you have had any genital contact intended to achieve orgasm”. That’s a smooth line to use in a bar – “Fancy coming back to my place? I’ve got a box of Franzia in the fridge and a smooth jazz CD in the stereo. Maybe we could have some genital contact with the intention of achieving orgasm?”

I wonder if there was a line in the survey that would fit these two ladies? I’m not sure about genital contact or the intention to achieve orgasm, but there’s definitely something pretty kinky going on.

TwoOnHorseI believe the artist is Chéri Hérouard aka herric.

Judge and jury

I was sad to see that Ellen Pao lost her case of gender discrimination against the Venture Capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The very existence of the lawsuit will have had some effect on Silicon Valley, but a win would have done much more to shake up a male dominated tech industry.

I wasn’t on the jury, so can’t speak to the details of the case, but I do know the deck is stacked against women in these situations. The jury is being asked to decide if someone was fired for incompetence or fired because of the firm’s culture and biases. Unfortunately there’s little chance that a randomly selected jury can come to an independent informed decision on the issue of competence in a VC firm. I suspect even a carefully chosen panel of technology experts would struggle on that. Instead they’re forced to use the reviews, notes and opinions from the firm itself, and that’s where the deck is stacked.

I’ve covered the double standards for women working in tech in the past, along with the more general issue of attitudes to forceful women. Characteristics that get a man promoted – aggressive, pushy, argumentative – will count against a woman. Women who are laid back lack initiative, where women who forceful are difficult to work with. Those biases end up in emails and performance reviews. The data that the jury is forced to use to decide competence is coming from a tainted source – the very firm that’s in the dock. So unless it’s a horribly egregious example of discrimination, then the biases of male bosses and co-workers continue to function as part of the trial evidence. I think this Jezebel article does a pretty good job of covering the issue.

I sadly don’t have any answer to this problem, other than raising awareness of it. I’ll leave you with a picture of a very successful independent businesses woman. She’s created her own media empire based on the latest technical innovations. Plus, she has an excellent T-shirt on. This is of course the one and only Mistress T.

Mistress T