Tag: Pro-domme

Chained Hogtie

I typically group chains with handcuffs when it comes to bondage. They’ve got striking visual appeal, they sound great when you ratchet them tight or clink them against each other, but they’re not all that practical. If they’re tight then they’re uncomfortable and if they’re loose then they’re irrelevant.

However, I might have to make an exception for this hogtie set-up by Daddy An Li. The combination of leather and metal is smart, as you get the tight comfortable grip of the leather with the visual and psychological appeal of the chains. Plus, using chains with a hogtie creates the striking juxtaposition of his bent soft body against the tight unyielding metal. It’s a tough bondage position at the best of times and this really up the perceived intensity.

You can see more like this from Daddy An Li on her twitter feed and her Stars AVN site.

Medical Myths

The story of how the vibrator was invented by Victorian doctors to cure women of hysteria is a well known one. There are plenty of online articles that refer to it. I’ve even referenced it in past posts. It has an obvious appeal. Who doesn’t like the idea of a Victorian lady telling her staid husband that she feels a burst of hysteria coming on and she needs to schedule a trip to Dr. NimbleFingers to relieve the tension?

Unfortunately – and you can probably guess where this was going – it turns out not to be true. As this NYTimes article by Hallie Lieberman makes clear, it was invented as a general device for health. Doctors did know there was a risk of sexual excitement, but were very keen to steer away from that usage. It was only thanks to women recognizing its potential that the vibrator gained its sexual usage and benefits.

I particularly enjoyed Hallie Lieberman’s gender swapped example of how unbelievable the hysteria story is.

Imagine arguing that at the turn of the 20th century, female nurses were giving hand jobs to male patients to treat them for psychological problems; that men didn’t realize anything sexual was going on; that because female nurses’ wrists got tired from all the hand jobs, they invented a device called a penis pump to help speed up the process. Then imagine claiming nobody thought any of this was sexual, because it was a century ago.

While that doesn’t sound likely, it does sound like a great scenario for a femdom roleplay. I would happily be a hysterical Victorian man who needs to be restrained  by nurses  and cured via mechanically assisted means. Obviously it’d all be done for my own good.

This is Lady Annisa and Mistress Miranda, two pro-dommes from the UK who are both brilliant at medical scenes. I’m sure that they’d be up for adding a historical twist to them.

Strange Logic

A new documentary by Louis Theroux entitled ‘Selling Sex‘ has been creating a stir in my social media feed. As you might guess from the title, it tackles the subject of sex work, following three women involved in the industry. Most of the sex workers I follow were not impressed. This thread by Lola Ruin and this tweet by Mistress Evilyne are pretty indicative of the feedback I saw.  Even the people involved in it were not happy.

I’ve not seen the show so I can’t review it. Instead I want to review a review of it. Specifically, this review in the Guardian by Lucy Mangan. I’m sure if you asked Lucy she’d claim her article, like the show, was a balanced and nuanced take on a tricky subject. Yet I think her final paragraph, containing the sentences below, show just how illogical and confused people can be when it comes to sex work.

The true question is how we define coercion or exploitation. The aim of the law’s definition is surely to ensure that anyone selling his or her body is doing so willingly, as a matter of absolutely free choice. Whether this can be said of any of the women here, I am not sure.

The idea of selling your body is not only a tired cliche but also makes no sense. A sex worker no more sells their body that does an athlete, a fashion model or a nurse. Like all those professions, a sex worker uses their body and their brain to provide a service. At no point before, during or after the transaction does a client own any part of their body. Possibly used underwear or sweaty athletic wear might be purchasable, should both parties tastes run in that direction, but that’s a whole different dynamic.

Logically, if having sex implies some transfer of ownership, then the same must be true regardless of the involvement (or not) of a fee. So does Lucy think that a wife having sex with her husband results in him owning her body? Is she a fan of bringing back the idea of Coverture more widely? It would seem an unusual position for a Guardian journalist to adopt.

The other strange part of that final paragraph is the bar she sets for doing sex work – ‘a matter of absolutely free choice.’ How many of us do our jobs out of absolutely free choice? I love my job, but I’d drop it tomorrow if I had the financial independence to make an absolutely free choice. That’s why it’s my job and not my hobby.

Coal mining is a dangerous, dirty and physically challenging job. As a result miners are often lauded as blue collar hero’s, taking on tough work to put food on the table for their families. Are they doing that as an absolutely free choice? Maybe we should we shut down the mines until we’re 100% sure of that. The idea that miners don’t understand the choices they make would be rightly criticized as patronizing and insulting. Yet people like Lucy are happy to infantilize sex workers and imply that they other people’s judgements (the law) should replace the workers own choices. Instead, shouldn’t we be celebrating sex workers for the difficult job they choose to do?

This is a long post spun from just a few sentences in a review of a show I’ve not even seen. Yet those few sentences seem illustrative of how even intelligent people can have internalized damaging and illogical views on sex work. From the online feedback that seems to be a problem the show’s creators shared.

I’ve no idea what’s an appropriate image to accompany this kind of post. Given I mentioned Lola Ruin at the top of it, I’m going to use that as an excuse to feature a lovely shot of her (from her twitter feed).

Delicious!

At first glance this seems like a perfectly ordinary photograph. Just an attractive masked lady drinking a can of La Croix in a kitchen while a naked man with strange headgear cooks in the background. I’m sure that counts as any Tuesday in Domina Yuki’s world. However, if you look closely, very closely, at the can in the original fullsized image, there is an subtle hidden message. For anyone whose device doesn’t let them zoom effectively, I’ve done the work for you here. There’s absolutely no danger of ever having a shortage of that particular product.

From this tweet in Domina Yuki’s twitter feed.

Unexpected Juxtaposition

I had one of those odd moments today where my kinky world and my regular world briefly crossed streams. I was waiting for my afternoon coffee while flipping through mainstream sites on my phone and totally not prepared for Mistress An Li to pop up in an opinion piece on a videogame site. 

The article in question is this one, and it’s a well written piece on the sexiness of the 2019 game Control. Sexiness in videogames is obviously nothing new, but in this case it’s less about the appearance of the protagonist and more about her confidence, power and mastery of her environment. That leads the writer into a BDSM connection and in turn to interviewing and quoting Mistress An Li (someone I sessioned with last year). I think the article does a great job of connecting all the dots together in a meaningful way, and not simply using a pro-domme or BDSM as clickbait. I was left surprised, impressed and with a desire to go play the game.

This image is from Mistress An Li’s instagram. You can also find her here on twitter and visit her professional site here. 

Mistress Adrienne

I was very sad to hear of the recent passing of Mistress Adrienne of NYC. While our paths never cross in real life, I always admired her obvious creativity and talent. She had an amazing reputation as a domme and fetishist, as shown by the numerous tributes being paid on social media – Mistress Blunt, Daddy An Li,  Mistress Morgan, Lady Sophia Larou, Mistress Iris, Michelle Lacy and too many more to list.

This site has featured her images in past posts (for example here, here and here). While dommes in fetishistic outfits aren’t exactly an unusual thing, for Mistress Adrienne fetish and fashion was clearly a hugely important part of her identity, creativity and aesthetic. She had an amazing sense of style and the dedication to make it work, as described in this anecdote by Amikoland.

I’ll finish with an image and tweet she shared back in November. It makes me tear up a little reading it now. Rest in Peace Mistress Adrienne.

Although I’m a woman of #blackleather & dark fantasy, I’m a soul of LIGHT 🕯 Days get darker in winter months, but The light never goes out for inspired & content people. How will you make the most of your current reality? #leathergoddess #inspiration

Heading Towards the Light

For anyone fed up with dark winter nights and holiday festivities, there is good news. In the Northern Hemisphere we just passed the Winter Solstice. That means we’ve turned the corner and are heading back towards lighter times. In just a few days all the holiday nonsense will be over and the days will slowly start getting longer.

Mistress Fox and her submissive marked the Solstice with this beautiful bondage scene. As you might guess, the petals were then beaten off him.

Mistress Fox is a NYC based pro-domme. I can’t find a website for her, but her twitter bio contains contact details for anyone interested in arranging a session.

Use Your Words (revisited)

My safeword post from last week generated a number of thoughtful comments. The general consensus seemed to be that simple open communication was a good way to go and that safewords didn’t need to be particularly original.

poe2600 raised the interesting point that most submissives are very resistant to using safewords, even when they probably should. I think there’s a good deal of truth in that, although there always exceptions. I remember one pro-domme telling me about a client who she call the traffic light guy. He thought he should accompany their entire session with a constant stream of  ‘green… green… yellow… green… yellow… red! red!… yellow.’ Needless to say that wasn’t exactly conducive to a good D/s dynamic. Exceptions aside, I think it is true that there’s a natural inclination to try and avoid breaking the flow of play with a safeword. Which makes for another good reason to use your words and communicate in a more graduated and subtle way than a simple go/stop approach.

The trickiest situations for me are those where I see a possible problem arising later in the session and have to make a judgement call on when or if to call it out earlier. Typically this is when complex bondage and layered sensations are involved. For example, playing in NYC earlier this year I had a situation involving some particularly painful nipple clamps, a straitjacket and a lot of leather straps. Nipple clamps are usually painful going on and off, but become numb when on. These were not reacting like that. The pain was high and not diminishing, but it wasn’t yet at my stop point. However, the domme was about to tighten the straitjacket over them and I could see a lot of leather straps ready to go around it. Adjusting the clamps when they were hidden under all those layers would be a significant undertaking.

My solution in these situations is always the same – given the domme the information and leave the decision to her. I might be misreading her plan and adjusting later will be easier than I expect. Or she might prefer to push on and deal with any adjustments if it becomes necessary. In this case I told her that they were intense and bearable for a short period, but possibly not something I could handle over an extended period. She then elected to swap them for a different pair before pulling all the bondage into place. The remainder of the session then unfolded flawlessly.

These situations are always tricky because they’re not a simple binary choice. I also don’t want to be another traffic light guy and overload the domme with feedback. It’s ultimately a judgement call based on the the likelihood of needing to adjust something and how difficult it looks like that adjustment will become.

I’m fairly certain this shot of bondage and nipple torture is of Domina Yuki. That’s not me in the photo, but I’ve done a very similar scene in that space.

Problem Solver

A few posts back I wrote that “…watching dommes creatively problem solve and experiment on me in realtime is hot AF.” Thanks to a recent blog post by Bastienne Cross, I’d also now add that reading about them doing kinky problem solving to craft compelling sessions is also pretty damn hot.

Before I go further and actually provide the post link, I should add that the kinky session in question is a full toilet one. There’s no explicit detail or pictures, but if the very thought of that squicks you out, then it’s probably best avoided. For everyone else, the post in question is here. It provides the backstory to the unusual toilet design that I featured in this previous post. I’m guessing the ‘Panda’ of the original scene is also who commented on that post.

I never thought I’d find myself impressed by someone coming up with creative and thoughtful ways to literally crap on people, but here we are. Life can lead you in odd directions at times.

This is the creative domme in question – Toronto based Bastienne Cross. Should scat play not be your thing, she has a pretty wide variety of other interests.

On the Steps at Night

Right now I should be somewhere warm and sunny relaxing with friends. I’d planned a non-kinky but fun getaway for a few days post Thanksgiving. Unfortunately I’ve been hit by one of the seasonal viruses that love to show up this time of year. So I figured I’d rather be miserable at home than miserable travelling. Bleah!

While I head off to crawl under a duvet, I’ll leave you with a totally random image to enjoy. This is pretty much the opposite of warm and sunny and has zero to do with seasonal bugs. I just spotted it via this tweet and loved the atmosphere of the shot. I believe that’s Mistress Niko Flux and Mistress Sybil Fury, both pro-dommes based out of NYC.

The image was posted by Kareem Montes, who I assume is the photographer.  You can see more great work from her via her instagram.