Willing to be Entrapped

What is it with Russia and the sexy red headed female spys? First there was Anna Chapman and now we’ve got Maria Butina. Has the FIS been watching too many James Bond movies? I guess if you’re going to corrupt American democracy, you might as well look good while doing it.

With this in mind, if there are similar Russian operatives still in the US, I’d like to announce that I know … lots of super important classified stuff. I might not be involved in politics, or defense, or election monitoring, or indeed anything apparently relevant, but trust me on this, I’ve got like dozens of top secret things in my head. I’m totally worth entrapping in a cunning erotic plot by a sexy female spy. She may even have to interrogate me. Tell her to pack nipple clamps and lingerie, but leave the thumb screws at home. Mild kink with a dose of sensuality is absolutely the best way to get inside my pants head.

The first image here is Anna Chapman and the second is Maria Butina.

The Pits

The story of a company selling advertising space on people’s armpits popped up onto my radar over the weekend. The idea is that the advertisement becomes visible when people grab hold of overhead straps on public transport.

I like this story for two reasons. Firstly, armpits are sexy. Definitely an underrated bit of the body. Secondly, its strikes me as a brilliant bit of guerrilla marketing. Not the general concept I hasten to add – pretty sure that’s bullshit. But the ad agency in question – Wakino –  has managed to get itself and its first and so far only armpit ad customer a lot of free PR. That first customer just happens to be an underarm hair removal product. So rather using a regular advertising campaign with models to get customers, they claimed to have created a whole new (silly) advertising vehicle, got a lot of free press coverage from that, and as result their company and their customer got a lot of eyeballs. It’s very meta.

This is Mistress T advertising nothing except the beauty of her own armpits and feet. I believe this is from her twitter feed.

Theresa Berkley

I thought I’d finish my short sequence of posts on femdom in history with one on Theresa Berkley. She was one of the earliest and most famous pro-dommes operating as we’d recognize the profession today. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m sure that kink and femdom has been around for thousands of years, but the desire alone doesn’t necessarily translate into a viable domination business. For that you need a wealthy urbanized society and a culture with at least some degree of sexual openness.  The existence of that combination in 18th century London allowed Theresa to open a dedicated house of flagellation, which she stocked with furniture and toys of her own design.

Probably the most famous device she created was the Berkley horse, as shown in the illustration below. It allowed the client to tied to it for a beating on their rear, while still giving access to the face and genitals. Judging the following quote, some of her clients were pretty hardcore masochists…

A pound sterling for the first blood drawn, two pounds sterling if the blood runs down to my heels, three pounds sterling if my heels are bathed in blood, four pounds sterling if the blood reaches the floor, and five pounds sterling if you succeed in making me lose consciousness.

Five pounds sterling in 1800 translates to around five hundred and fifty pounds (720 US dollars) when adjusted for inflation, so not all that far off the current price for professional domination in London today. Although I doubt any pro-dommes these days will accept a bonus for making a client lose consciousness.

Phyllis and Aristotle

While the word dominatrix may have relatively recent coinage – as covered in yesterday’s post – the concept of femdom and male submission has been around a lot longer. It’s obviously impossible to know its true history, but given that sex, power and control have fascinated humans for thousands of years, I’m guessing kink has been around since we climbed out of the trees and decided to take an extended camping holiday on the plains of Africa.

Sadly those early humans haven’t left us a lot of information about their sex lives, but if you look to more recent recorded history, there’s no shortage of femdom. For example, the 12th century brings us the story of Phyllis and Aristotle. Although it features a famous Greek philosopher, the story is medieval in origin.

Aristotle advised his pupil Alexander to avoid the king’s seductive mistress, Phyllis, but was himself captivated by her. She agreed to ride him, on condition that she could play the role of dominatrix. Phyllis had secretly told Alexander what to expect, and he witnessed Phyllis proving that a woman’s charms could overcome even the greatest philosopher’s male intellect.

That’s a lot of kinks to pack into a short story. You’ve not only got femdom but also pony play, cuckolding, voyeurism and public humiliation.

This artwork of Phyllis and Aristotle, with Alexander looking on, is circa 1485 and is attributed to the German artist known as Master of the Housebook.

If you’re interested in to read more of the background to this story, and see more of the associated artwork, check out this blog post. The author attributes the historical popularity of the story to male anxiety of powerful women. That’s possible, but couldn’t it also be attributed to kinking on powerful women and an excuse to create femdom artwork in a socially acceptable context?

Dominatrix

I don’t use the word dominatrix on this blog very often. In fact, WordPress tells me that this is the first post I’ve ever written with that particular title. Given that this is post number 2,334 on a blog exclusively about female domination, I find that kind of amazing.

While I generally prefer the word ‘domme’, which carries less cultural baggage, it’s undoubtedly true that ‘dominatrix’ is the word the mainstream world most strongly associates with femdom.  But do you know where the modern usage derives from?

The word itself can be traced back to the 16th century. However, the original usage wasn’t sexual or related to kink at all. It simply referred to domination in the broadest possible sense. For example, a book from 1852 referred to France’s Napoleon as having been the dominatrix of Europe. Voltaire described destiny as the dominatrix of the gods, as the gods are of the world. Cassell’s Latin dictionary from 1892 defines a dominatrix as a woman who governs or rules (e.g. a town). 

The first usage in the modern sense is a very surprising and obscure one. According to ‘The History & Arts of the Dominatrix‘ it was in a pulp paperback by Bruce Rogers called ‘The Bizarre Lovermakers’ published in 1967.  Until I came to research this post I’d never heard of either that book or its author. A year later it was used as the title of a Myron Kosloff and Eric Stanton book, and then more broadly popularized in  the 1976 porn film ‘Dominatrix Without Mercy‘. If you look at the usage of the word on Google books, it was very obscure until the late 1970’s, and then suddenly bursts into popularity through the 80’s and 90’s.

I think I’d always subconsciously assumed that dominatrix had a similar etymology as sadism and masochism. i.e. Coined by a well known author in a classic book from the 18th or 19th century.  In actuality it was given its modern twist by an obscure pulp novelist from the 1960’s.

1930’s Domme

This is a companion shot to a well known image that has been floating around on the web for years. I featured the more common shot in a post way back in 2011. I always liked that image, so was very pleasantly surprised to discover this other, less well known one, of the same domme by photographer Charles Guyette.

I think they’re both wonderfully erotic shots, and that’s from someone who has spent a couple of decades experiencing all the kinky imagery an uncensored internet has to offer. I can’t even begin to imagine the effect they’d have had on a submissive male 80 or more years ago. I’m guessing that for anyone lucky enough to have a hard copy of this back in the day, it was a well hidden and highly treasured possession.

I discovered via the mrunderheel’s twitter.

Two Pets

Here’s an image for anyone who prefers their femdom with a dose of sci-fi, fetish and dehumanization. As is often the case, clothing designers of the future will clearly favor hotness and style over practicality and warmth. That’s a trade-off I’m personally OK with, assuming everyone looks as good as this.

This is by the artist HamletMachine, creator of the comic Starfighter. A lot of her work seems to skew towards more yaoi style man on man action than femdom. If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can read about the comic here, buy prints here and there’s an interview with her here.

Curious Cat and Mistress Madeline

I stumbled across the Curious Cat page of Madeline Marlowe (aka Mistress Madeline) today.  It’s one of the better kink related ones I’ve that I’ve found. A couple of interesting snippets stood out.

Back in 2014 an Australian man paid $42,000 in an auction for a 1 hour webcam session with her. I wrote about it at the time. It turns out that he never did the actual webcam session. He got off on the financial transaction, not the personal interaction. That’s definitely a case of YKINMKATGBYKISRE – Your Kink Is Not My Kink And Thank God, Because Your Kink Is Really Expensive.

The other part the stood out was her comments about the dark haired submissive she filmed a lot of her scenes with prior to moving to kink.com (for example this image). If you saw any of her early femdom work, it’s likely you’ve seen the two of them together. I always liked their dynamic in the few images and clips that I saw. Not sure I could say why that was. Maybe because they did a lot of scenes together over time, which implied an ongoing dynamic, and he seemed like a regular dorky guy, which I could relate to. Mistress Madeline has a slightly different theory on that…

I think what made those videos so relatable maybe is because he was one of the most terrible submissives I’ve ever had long term training with. He had many weaknesses and I gladly exploited them, but he was incredibly selfish and as a young domme in training I soon realized that the relationship was not serving me anymore

Apparently she ended the relationship by filming a scene with him bound in a warehouse and walked away, leaving him there, without a backward glance. As dramatic ways to end a relationship go, that’s a pretty good one.

This is obviously a shot of Mistress Madeline taken from her days with kink.com and the Whipped Ass site.

Tea for Two

This is one of those strange fashion shots where I can think of only two explanations. Either the photographer isn’t kinky at all, but wanted to shoot something that was, and so just threw a bunch of random kinky stuff into a scene. Or the photographer is extremely kinky, with a very specialized niche taste, and is therefore shooting on a frequency I just can’t pick up on. Whichever of those it is, I do like the china and her beautiful red corset.

This was shot by Aleksandar Alek Živković for Vice Serbia. I found it on labstrakt’s tumblr.

Table for Two

I’ve eaten at many amazing restaurants, but I’ve sadly never enjoyed a table with this kind of backdrop. I think it’s worth a Michelin star all on its own.

Google translates the text as “I take my male in patience” while Bing translates it as “I’m taking my male patient”. Neither one really sounds right, so if I’ve any French speakers out there who can help with a better translation, please let me know via a comment.

Update: Thanks for the many helpful comments on this. I’ll quote Mlle Sadie who gave this description…

This is a play on words. “Prendre son MAL (instead of MÂLE) en patience” is a French expression meaning to endure, with resignation, some pain (physical or psychological), some uncomfortable circumstance (think “pain in the ass”!).

So, mal (pain) and mâle (gender) are homonyms the artist has interchanged. The Woman thus endures Her male as/with a “pain in the ass”.

I believe the artist is known as Ladamen Rouge and this was created in Saint Etienne.  Thanks to a helpful comment, this may also be be a collaborative piece with an street artist known as Miss Tic or Miss Trick.