Implicit associations

Today’s link to ‘thing that’s not really femdom, but I liked it and wanted to share’ is to something called an implicit association test. This is a test which can supposedly uncover associations that you make unconsciously and may not be aware of. It takes about five minutes to do and you don’t need to register if you don’t want to, simply proceed as a guest. There are tests for (allegedly) revealing your instinctive biases on things like skin-tone, weight, religion, etc.

I found the idea fascinating and headed immediately for the sexuality and gender tests. On the sexuality test it reported I had “little to no automatic preference between Straight People and Gay People.” That put me in a neutral group of about 17% of people. Apparently 68% of people taking the test expressed a preference (from slight to strong) for straight people compared to gay people, and 16% for gay people over straight people. Normally being in the middle of any issue is boring, but I was kind of happy to be in that middle bucket.

The gender test result was slightly more surprising. It tested the association between men/women and career/family. For that the standard curve has 76% of people associating men->career and women->family, 17% neutral and only 6.3% associating women->career and men->family. I was in that latter group with a “moderate association of Female with Career and Male with Family”. Apparently (according to the site) our implicit assumptions come from our everyday experiences. Yet I’ve always worked in an environment of >90% men and as a child I was brought up by a stay at home mom and a working dad. That suggests I’m definitely an outlier here. Or that the test is broken.

I’ve no idea how solid the science is behind it, but I thought it was fun to try. Plus, all that talk of gender and careers gives me a chance to feature an everyday office scene. Perhaps she implicitly associates men with doormats?

OfficeScene

This is from the Under Feet site.

Perfectly poised, posed and pert

I stumbled across this image while looking for a trampling shot for yesterday’s ‘Worthless worms revisited‘ post. It didn’t fit that post’s theme, but I thought it too beautiful not to share at some point.

It’s from a trampling sequence, yet their lithe bodies and the elegant surroundings put me in mind of two dancers working and rehearsing together. I like to think that’s her victory pose having defeated him in a mythical balletic battle. I’ve never been to the ballet (despite live close to the Seattle company), but I’d be a season ticket holder if it ever looked anything like this.

A trample victory pose

Fans of more conventional trampling shots, featuring heels and pantyhose, may appreciate this image and this image from the same sequence.

Worthless worms revisited

My post ‘Worthless worms : Hot or not?‘ attracted a lot of thoughtful commentary. It’s clearly a topic that provokes strong opinions from both sides of D/s slash. This post is intended to address a few follow-up points that struck me after writing it and reading the responses.

In the original post I used degradation, humiliation and objectification interchangeably. That was careless as they’re related but different concepts. If I had a virtual whiteboard I’d be standing at it now drawing partially overlapping circles. The worthless worm trope is primarily about the sense of self and personal identity. It’s very directed degradation (you pathetic sniveling coward, you’re not fit to lick my boots, etc.). Humiliation is more situational. Anyone can be humiliated in the right circumstances, no matter how self-assured and confident they might generally be. Objectification is about removing humanity and personality. It’s not about being worthless, but identifying worth through function and utility. A lot of people get off on a mixture of these kinks, but when writing about a possible F/m mismatch, I was primarily thinking of the first. I rarely observe female dominants write or blog about degradation, but objectification and, to a lesser extent, humiliation, does crop up in positive contexts.

Ferns astutely observed that this is a style of play that often conflates the person with the kink. Presenting themselves primarily through their fetish is a common problem for guys who’ve spent too long surfing femdom porn. I think it’s particularly likely to happen with this kink, because it’s primarily about the perception of the person and their value. i.e. Exactly the things that are emphasized, normally in a positive fashion, when building a new relationship. I guess the (badly broken) thought process is ‘Why bother to put myself forward as a valuable person to know, when I ultimately want to be treated as if I’m not?’

It’s also true that cliches of commercial femdom don’t help anyone into this style of play. For men it gets them lumped into the same bucket as the jerk offs writing emails about how they’re not fit to lick the dirt from the boots of any female dominant blogger they encounter. For many dominant women it’s a stereotype they’re trying to push against, and writing about it is only likely to lead to more emails from the aforementioned jerks offs.

All that said, I do standby my entirely anecdotal observation that there’s a mismatch here in F/m that doesn’t exist in M/f. As someone who doesn’t have this kink, I’m selfishly kind of glad about that. Many of the F/m tumblrs that focus on degradation and humiliation tend to veer all to easily into misogyny. I’m happy that it’s incredibly rare to encounter misandry in femdom blogs or forums. If you are a submissive guy who occasionally enjoys a bit of pathetic sniveling, then the best advice would be to make sure you compartmentalize it and treat it strictly as a kink like any other. While there might be male dominants who’ll respond to a new submissive describing themselves as a worthless slut in need of training, your odds of success with that opening line and a female dominant will be very close to zero.

Her feet in his face

Trampling beneath a dominant woman’s feet often seems to be a theme of the ‘worthless submissive’ style of play. This is from the appropriately named Woman Worship site. I particularly liked her choice of reading matter.

Inadvisable advice

Today’s post features an advice column and an inquiry about becoming a dominatrix. It’s kind of an odd letter, with what sounds like a sudden jump from BDSM newbie to professional domination, but I’m going to give the writer the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s been heavily edited. I’m feeling less forgiving about the advice which has two particularly bad statements in it.

…you won’t be good at dominating another person unless you know what it feels like to be on the receiving end. Have you ever been a partner’s true submissive, consenting to bondage, gagging, whipping and verbal abuse? …. You will understand why they do it if you’ve experienced the scope of it.

I would have thought it obvious that BDSM isn’t symmetric. Unless a person is wired to be submissive or masochistic they’re not going to get anything from being on the receiving end. If you’re not into pain and corporal play, then getting whipped isn’t going to be instructive, it’s just going to hurt. That’s not to say a top can’t experiment with sensations and try out some toys, but that’s about understanding the physics and biology of the situation. Not being someone’s ‘true submissive’ (whatever the hell that means). Oddly nobody ever tells submissives that they need to try dominating someone before they can really understand how to play.

You’re effectively creating a complete power exchange. You are stripping a human being of their autonomy, dignity and free will — and physically abusing them on top of it.

This comment annoyed me even more than the first. I certainly do not lose my autonomy or free will when I play. I might temporarily cede control and give up some power, but I always the retain the ability to make my own informed decisions. Submitting does not make someone less than human. And while some types of play deliberately mess with dignity, a lot do not. Personally I’m pretty proud of my scenes and how they’re conducted.

What I think the columnist should have said is – go learn from pro-dommes already out there. Read their blogs. Scan their forums. Go to their conferences. See if you can apprentice with one in your area. By all accounts it’s a tricky job with many pitfalls. Better to learn those from someone else than repeat them all yourself.

Mistress Absolute

The image is of Mistress Absolute, a London based pro-domme. According to this article she shares my thoughts on starting out as a submissive.

There’s a school of thought that says you should start out submissive before you become dominant,” the dominatrix says as students begin to arrive. “That if you don’t know what it feels like, how can you do it to someone else? I don’t follow that thought. I don’t have a set of balls, but I torture balls.”

60 needles = a happy man

I’m not sure about the precise maths on this. It’s possible that 59 needles make for an equally happy man. The science isn’t entirely clear. However, thanks to my session tonight with Lydia, I can confirm that 60 needles through various bits of his body makes this man happy. And floaty. Possibly even slightly giddy.

I shall endeavor to gather more datapoints on the needle/happiness curve in future investigations. In the meantime I’ll leave you with this shot of another happy man. No needles involved, but there is a judicially placed foot. I’m sure the owner of it appreciates the smile.

Happy Man

I found the image on the Freya’s Fancy tumblr. Annoyingly it’s another one that I can’t track down the source of. Feel free to leave a comment if you can help me attribute it properly.

A helicopter ride

Anytime I go to San Francisco I try and schedule time with Domina Yuki. We’ve played together several times in the past (for example – here or here) and it has always been a great experience. This time was no exception.

I actually ended up having back to back sessions, with Domina Ai-Li on the first day (as mentioned here) and Domina Yuki on the second. Giving my body almost no time to recover was possibly an unwise move, but I’m nothing if not masochistic. They’d apparently collaborated before I arrived on who got what body part to attack, but I’m not sure they strictly stuck to their agreed zones. I certainly wasn’t about to start pointing out to the nice lady with the whip where she should or shouldn’t hit me.

We managed to grab a few fun photographs. This image shows me with a collection of attached clothespins. Having Mistress Yuki slide her body against mine with these in place was a particularly painful but sensuous torture. The more I pushed back the more it hurt, and yet the better it felt. This image shows a close-up of the CBT bondage. It’s not particularly painful, unless some sadist decides to repeatedly flick the delicate exposed bits of flesh.

I got to experience a cattle-prod for the first time, as shown here. It was an unusual sensation – sharp and intense but brief. It convulsed the muscle, kicking me forward, but didn’t create a deep lasting pain. We also did some bastinado, as shown in this image. That really does create a deep pain. Each part of the foot reacts differently, with sharper immediate pain on the boney parts and deep aches on the more muscled sections.

When it came time to remove the genital bondage Mistress Yuki decided to give me a helicopter ride. If you’ve never heard of this before, then imagine someone trying to start an old fashioned gas (petrol) lawnmower, but with the pull cord wrapped around a pair of balls. We actually did this twice. Not because it didn’t work the first time, but having done it once Mistress Yuki decided it would be a great thing to take a video of. So while I was still moaning in pain from the first time I heard an enthusiastic voice say – “Oh! I should have got a video. Let’s do that again!”

You can see the resulting video here. I believe it’s the first one from a session I’ve ever featured. Weirdly there seems to have been a problem with the sound. Originally I let out a small manly growl when she pulled the cord. But something in the recording process seem to have turned it into a loud high pitched scream. Given that odd technical problem I’ve decided to omit the audio, lest I give my readers the wrong impression of my fortitude.

Trampling

The above image shows some trampling I got to enjoy. Although it doesn’t look like much, it was actually one of the more painful moments. That was mostly because Mistress Yuki was trying to balance on one high heeled foot while digging the other into my chest and simultaneously framing the photograph correctly.  I suspect her prioritization had not falling over and getting the photograph right way higher than odd moaning noises coming from the submissive.

A better use for a stripper pole

I’ve seen cock trample boards in numerous movies and images. They’re particular popular for showing via animated gifs, for example this. However, until last week, I’d never personally had chance to try one. It turned out to be quite an experience.

The version I was under didn’t have the stripper pole accessory, as shown in the images below, but was essentially the same design. The submissive lies on the floor, supported by a cushion or two, and his cock goes through the hole in the board. The mistress is then free to trample, stomp and rub with her boots or heels. Or dance the charleston should she prefer.

For such a simple idea it’s amazingly effective. It gives a stable platform for the mistress to stand on, so she has very fine control over how and where she applies pressure. The hard surface provides her with something to press against, allowing her to easily trap tender flesh under her heels. She can also play mind games, alternating stroking with torture, or pretending to stamp down hard while intentionally just missing. From my perspective it was a real rush to be able to look up from that position, gazing up at the heels and long legs of the mistress, and having her stare directly down at me. At first glance it looks like it’d be similar to being trampled, but in reality I found it a lot more intense and enjoyable.

Cock Trample Board
Cock Trample Board
Cock Trample Board
These images are taken from this gallery on the cbtrampling site. They have several galleries and a clips store with numerous videos.

Completing the pair

While I’m on a foot theme, here’s another post to pair with yesterdays. It makes a nice contrast, as I don’t think there can be much question as to its particular kinky slant. This is masochism all the way. It’s not quite the same as being stomped with a boot or a high heel, but I suspect the additional tactile feel of a bare feet allows for a fine degree of sadistic control.

However, I do have to admit that my first thought on seeing this image was not about her or the ball squishing. It was about those white socks. You should always removes your socks before your pants (or trousers for my UK readers). There’s nothing more ridiculous than a naked man wearing only socks.

Ball SquishingI found this via The New Bootblack’s Oubliette (always a go to site for feet related fun). It’s originally from the Extreme Ball Busters site.

It’s a classic….but why?

This is one of those occasional posts where I ponder about why something is attractive, but without coming to any worthwhile or useful conclusions. I therefore apologize in advance for all the overworked electrons necessary to communicate this complete absence of information.

The something in question is the classic slim black skirt and white blouse, as modeled below by the very fetching Mistress Absolute. It’s a look I’ve always appreciated. In fact it’s the only outfit I’ve ever requested a domme to wear in a session. Normally I’m happy to let the mistress choose whatever she thinks is appropriate. But just for one specific activity last year I requested this and ended having a truly memorable session.

For all my enjoyment of this outfit, I’m at a loss to explain why. It’s commonly associated (in my mind at least) with secretaries and school teachers. Secretaries, while being the staple of many sexy fantasies, aren’t naturally a dominant role. And while the school teacher is an authority figure, I can’t remember any teacher I ever encountered dressed this way. All my teachers looked liked escapees from the 1970’s, with baggy shapeless dresses and unpleasantly colored cardigans.

It’s obviously not genetically programmed in, unless they’re about to discover the femdom fashion gene. And I can’t believe I simply picked it up from watching movies and television shows featuring school teachers dressed this way. As a child I watched programs about spaceships, cowboys and how to make things out of sticky-backed plastic. Authoritarian women in minimal but severe outfits were not a common viewing theme.

The only thing I can think is that there is something innately dominant about this look, given the jumping off point of modern fashions. The absence of color and simplicity of the cut suggests a serious and businesslike purpose. There’s no frivolity or emotional expression. It’s a very controlled look. Forceful. Restrained. And yet while it projects function over form, it’s not functional in the sense overalls or a boiler-suit are. It’s still clearly feminine and highlights the shape of the body. Sexual and yet controlling – a strong femdom combination.

Mistress in white blouse and dark skirt

Mistress in white blouse and dark skirt
I found these images in this gallery on Mistress Absolute’s site. From the watermark she obviously originally shot them for the Women Worship site.