The secret to a long life

When I first saw the title of this article – ‘Masturbation: the secret to a long life?‘ – I was worried. Not for my own lifespan I hasten to add, but for all the chastity bloggers out there. I like reading people like Thumper and Tom, and I’d hate to miss out on their posts. Dying early would probably put a bit of a crimp in their plans for the weekend as well.

Fortunately for my blogroll, the title turns out to be based on a data point of just one person – Betty Dodson. She’s 85 years old, looks about 30 years younger, and attributes her long life to masturbation, raw garlic and pot. Having written the famous book Sex for One back in 1973, she’s clearly an expert on at least one of these. While the article title may be optimistic, it’s a good article about a great character. She drinks, swears, organizes orgies and has spent 40 years advocating the benefits of self-pleasure. What’s not to love?

As for the image below, I can’t tell if she’s helping extend his life or shortening it. If she ruins an orgasm does that add a day or knock one off? Either way she looks to be enjoying the decision.

SqueezeThis is from the Femdom Empire site.

Quirky and kinky

I was done with posts on public play, temporarily at least. Then a commenter left me a pointer to an intriguing video that I just had to follow-up.

Regular readers may remember the story of the lady in London leading her man by a leash. It generated an unusual amount of media speculation and, as I covered in a follow-up post, turned out to be an art project. In that follow-up post I featured this image and jokingly commented that “I wonder what artistic statement they’re making?” I’d assumed it was a conventional kinky image, or possibly a provocative shot from a photographers portfolio. As it turns out, thanks to my very helpful commenter, I now know it actually was a more extended artistic work.

It’s taken from a 2 minute film entitled The woman and her Man, featuring a lady, her helpful submissive and a street preacher. It’s a quirky piece, kinky but not freaky, gently amusing and kind of cute. No Oscars will be awarded, but it’s unconventional and I liked it. The creator has a couple of different YouTube channels – ImaginePark and GirlFairytales. The movies and acting are a pretty mixed bag, but if you liked that first movie a couple of similar ones include The Women on the Bench and Famine Relief.

For an accompanying image I thought I’d step it up from my previous subtle fare. In some of the earlier comments we were debating where exactly the line on public play should be drawn. Here’s a good example of something that everyone can hopefully agree on. It’s hot, but probably isn’t acceptable outside the Folsom Street Fair.

Public bondageI’ve actually failed to trace the original source of this image. I believe that’s Mistress Madeline and that Folsom is the only place that would allow this kind of public scene. But if anyone has any better information, feel free to let me know.

PDP

I’ve written fairly often on what I term PDS – Public Displays of D/S. Generally I come down on the side of letting shared public spaces be truly shared, rather than giving the majority veto power on their use. Kinky people are tax paying members of the public after all (or as Louis C.K. might put it).

However, this New Zealand man seems to have drifted into PDP – Public Display of Perversity. He was in his home standing at a window, when…

Burley placed a balaclava over his head before committing an indecent act using a sex toy, clothes pegs and a leather whip.

“The victim and her two friends look out the kitchen window several times as they could not believe what they were seeing,” it said.

I don’t want to make light of it, as clearly this was an asshole thing to do. But that bit about having to look several times (along with her friends) did make me smile. Apparently he was excited at the idea of getting caught. Given he’s now looking at jail time, I imagine that excitement might have diminished slightly.

His choice of implements no doubt added some extra weirdness to the story for most people, but I’ve had a lot of (consensual) fun over the years with those toys. Clothe pegs as zippers can be particularly interesting, as Aiden Starr shows below. I particularly like the red marks running down his legs from where they have just been ripped away.

Aiden Starr pulling a zipperThis image is from this shoot for Divine Bitches. You can see another image of her putting the zipper in place here.

Missed opportunity

Advice columns have become far more entertaining thanks to the spread of the internet and the more open sexual culture that has gone along with it. Instead of questions on gift etiquette or workplace squabbles, we now get questions about what to do when your friend’s new girlfriend turns out to be your dominatrix.

I don’t think the basic advice given – ‘stop seeing her’ – is necessarily wrong, but the logic and framing of the response is horrible. It would seem like a good opportunity to reduce the stigma of sex work and focus on the work aspect of it. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant or a pro-domme. If you’re overlapping a professional relationship with a social one then there are a few obvious questions to answer. For example: What happens if I need to end just the professional relationship? What information am I comfortable sharing with someone in both circles? Is this likely to lead to a conflict of interest? What are the odds of problems in one form of the relationship spilling over into the other?

It might be that the answers to these questions indicate that there’s not a problem to resolve. I can conceive of some relationships and social groups where mixing in pay for play wouldn’t be an issue, although this particular case doesn’t sound like one. But there’s no reason to make this specifically about sex and and sex work. It’s really about making smart decisions that minimize risk for everyone involved.

Having missed one opportunity the columnist then really screws the pooch by making the blanket statement that ‘sex workers are not notorious for their long, stable relationships.’ So rather than reduce stigma she manages to increase it with a gratuitously offensive stereotype. She might have got the basic answer right, but the rest of the column is a huge fail.

Artwork by Camille MM

The artwork is by the artist Camille MM. Given the original letter writers description of his sessions, it seems like an appropriate one.

Cocktail hour

It’s time for one of my standard pre-vacation warnings: I’m heading to Vegas for a few days, so updates may be a little more erratic than usual. Unfortunately I’ve got nothing kinky lined up, but I am looking forward to sitting in the sunshine and sipping a cocktail. The quality and quantity of posting may well vary in inverse proportion to the number of cocktails involved.

While I go and pack my suitcase, I’ll leave you with a lady enjoying a quiet moment with a drink of her own. She seems to have taken the necessary steps to ensure that the gentleman behind her will not be rudely interrupting her cocktail hour.

TaraMoss
The image features Tara Moss, an Canadian-Australian author, presenter and model.

Whipping a ‘slave’

Apparently my posts on femdom and race are like buses. Nothing for ages, then you get two at once. My previous post was intended to be a one off, but then I spotted this article by British comedian Ava Vidal on a visit she made to London’s Club Pedestal. It’s an odd article, written by someone who clearly isn’t kinky. Unsurprisingly she therefore finds the whole thing strange. She finishes it by talking about race, and her discomfort with the idea of whipping someone and calling them slaves. Whatever your reaction to her comments (and I’m intentionally omitting mine from this post), it is interesting to see how somehow outside the kinky bubble might react to play that kinksters wouldn’t give a second thought to.

I’ve never attended Club Pedestal but it’s a fairly well known event. I was therefore surprised to read this in the article…

A white lady hands me a whip and tells me to beat the black man standing next to me…. later have a conversation with the black man and it turns out that this is his first time too.

It sounds incredibly dangerous to give a novice a whip and expect her to use it on another novice. Particularly in a space with other people around. She could severely hurt the submissive or take out the eye of a passerby. As the back of the man below shows, it’s possible to inflict some serious damage with a real single-tail. I can only hope that she was really given a flogger or a crop and is using whip to mean anything she could swing and hit with.

WhipMarks

Unfortunately I’ve no idea who created this image. If you can help me attribute it correctly then please leave a comment. If found it on the Dominalova tumblr.

Luisita

This is from the brilliantly named Fetish Sleaze Art blog. That captures three things I always enjoy in one memorable title. It’s by the artist Robert Maguire who specialized in crime noir and femme fatale illustrations. It’s cliched and very much of its time, but I have a real soft spot for these kind of illustrations and pulp novels. I’m not really sure why she’s holding a whip and he’s holding his forehead. A whip isn’t an ideal instrument for whacking someone in the head with, but I guess logic isn’t a priority in these drawings. Drama and attitude is what counts.

Luisita

Kissing the ring

The New York Magazine has published a new article on rimming entitled ‘Warning: A Column on Butt Play’. I’m not quite sure what the ‘warning’ part of the title is for. Given the highly descriptive second part of the title, and the photograph of naked butts that accompanies it, that would seem to be warning enough.

I was a little surprised to see an article on anilingus in a mainstream publication. I was really amazed (and pleased) to discover that it also referenced cock and ball torture. And not only referenced it, but did so in a very casual off-hand fashion…

“It’s like the guy who asks you to hold his balls and then is like, ‘Maybe squeeze a little, maybe? … Harder, maybe? … Harder! Harder! Harder!’ Until suddenly you’re like, ‘Wait, you’re totally into cock-and-ball torture.’ You really want me to stomp on your nuts; you just don’t know how to ask.’ ”

Unfortunately the article finishes with some silly logic about the dominant or submissive characteristic of specific sexual acts. These kind of assumptions always annoy me. Giving a blowjob or rimming someone (or PIV or pegging or whatever) can be submissive, dominant or just sexy fun times. It depends on the context, the people involved and their dynamic. Who and what gets licked, nibbled or sucked is kind of irrelevant.

Angelica from x-art

The image is from x-art and features the model Angelica.

A stroll in the city

This rather silly article popped into my inbox today. It features a smartly dressed man being led around London on a leash. Apparently it provoked a twitter thread with the hashtag #manonleash. I realize it’s not something you might see everyday, but for a cosmopolitanism city of over 8M people, I’m surprised it provoked that much interest. I’m pretty certain if you did it in San Francisco nobody would bat an eyelid.

It’s a good job it wasn’t this couple taking their daily exercise. It might have provoked a twitter meltdown and articles in the national papers.

Taking him for a walkThis photograph is from Serious Bondage.

Grovelling as an art form

I typically shy away from Western articles on the less mainstream parts of Japanese culture. They’re often thinly concealed racism expressed as a veneer of humor around cultural differences. However, this article by Kotaku manages to avoid that trap while presenting some brilliant animated gifs. They’re all about assuming the supplicant or grovelling position, but in increasingly elaborate and acrobat ways. Fortunately, for readers of this blog, the grovelling is all happening before attractive and haughty women. I particularly like the final pyramid apology style, although it does suggest that if they’d spent less time practicing it and more time actually doing the original task, they might not have needed to grovel in the first place.

The image below is from the livedoor page the Kotaku article was derived from. I’m not sure that standing on your head counts as an apology, but it’s certainly eye catching.

Is this an apology?