Making an Entrance

This image, featuring the beautiful Mistress Alice, has a great evil doctor or sexy mad scientist vibe going on. Words like splayed, clamps, insertion and orifice all spring to mind. The submissive should ideally be brought in by a pair of helpful assistants using one of those Hannibal Lecter vertical wheeled trolleys. Unable to either escape or avoid seeing what’s about to happen to him.

I’ve often thought that entrances to scenes are an underdeveloped part of kinky play. There might be some leashing, or pulling by a body part or CFNM dynamic, but that’s about it for most scenes. The problem with doing something dramatic – like being delivered in a dog crate or bound on a hospital trolley – is you need a big space and multiple dommes. To really make it work you’d need a packing scene to happen with one domme – turning the submissive from  a person to an experimental object – and then a delivery to another domme in a different location for the pain and torment. Ideally with a period of waiting and watching in between to heighten the tension and emphasis the sense of objectification.

It’s hard to see how to make that kind of opening act work in most playspaces I’ve seen in the US. Maybe if I get chance to ever play somewhere like Studio Avalon, with its extensive facilities and large team of dommes, it’d be an idea to try.

Give him the finger

Writing about consent apps in yesterday’s post reminded me of a tweet that made me laugh. Unfortunately, age or possibly alcohol is muddying by brain tonight, so I can’t actually remember who wrote it or the exact words. I’ll have to go with just the gist of it here.

It was from an escort rather than a domme and was targeted at those vanilla  guys who think it’s OK to operate in the ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish” paradigm.  She suggested sticking a finger in their asshole without prior warning and then seeing how long it took them to grasp the concept of continually negotiated consent and the option to stop and discuss boundaries at any time. Obviously I don’t encourage random anal exploration without discussion, but I do think it’s an amusing picture to paint to help some guys to understand consent a little better.  Pretty certain most of the ‘Oh no, I can’t stop now’ vanilla crowd would quickly turn into the ‘What the hell! Get away from me and lets discuss this’ crowd.

Of course in the kinky world a finger sometimes isn’t enough. With the appropriate prior discussion, some people can even be persuaded to lose a whole hand in there.

I believe this is by the French artist Kevin Herault aka Kiwine.

Dumb and Dumber

I’ve blogged about the stupidity of consent apps previously. The idea that you can swipe right to rubber stamp consent on a sexual encounter is a dangerous one. Firstly, it undermines the idea that consent is ongoing and always open to renegotiation or withdrawal. An agreement at minute one tells you nothing about what happened at minutes two through sixty. Secondly, an incapacitated or unwilling person could always be coerced to use the app, setting up a possible defense for an attacker.  On the flip-side, no jury is going to take the lack of a digitally signed consent as useful piece of evidence. After all, not using an app in the heat of the moment is standard behavior for 99.99% of people. So they clarify nothing, while working against potential victims and for potential attackers.

Of course there is no stupid technical solution that can’t somehow be made more stupid. Software people are inventive like that. In this case some Dutch tech-bro’s have managed to take the broken consent app concept and marry it with the latest tech craze – blockchain. For those that haven’t heard of this before, blockchain is the technical basis for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Personally, I’m a cynic on the current cryptocurrency craze, whilst still admiring the design of some of the underlying technology. However, in this particular case, it makes no sense. A decentralized design is logical when you want to avoid a single point of attack that governments and thieves can target to take control. Not so much when you’re tracking two people ticking a consent box. I can’t see the Russian hackers taking a break from social media and our elections to go after consent apps.

When it comes to negotiating consent, it’s always important to do it before the gag goes in. You can always renegotiate at anytime, but sometimes are definitely easier than others.

I’m afraid I’ve no source for this image.

Updated: Thanks to an eagle eyed reader I can attribute this to the artist xxxx52 who has a patreon site.

High Heels & Fetish

The vast majority of tumblr sites are simply content re-blogged from elsewhere. For sexually explicit tumblrs I suspect that 99.9% of them fall into that category. It’s therefore nice to find (or be pointed at) a site with original content, particularly one featuring photographs. In the femdom realm, that’s even rarer than sites featuring original drawings and illustrations.

The site in question is 5-inch-and-more aka High Heels & Fetish. Stylistically and thematically it has pretty narrow focus – high heels, boots, legs, stockings and kneeling men, all shot from the waist down. It’ll probably only appeal to a subset of readers, but I suspect those that do like it, will like it a lot. It certainly captures a very specific fetishistic view.

This image is from this tumble post. I’m afraid the site doesn’t give any background details on its creator. The imagery might not be entirely my personal kinks, but I have to applaud whoever it is for the time and effort taken to create and share such quality content.

Wedding Bells

Did you hear about the two dommes getting married? It’s sounds like a setup, but there’s no punchline. It’s just a happy positive story to put a smile on your face. As posted on twitter here, Mistress Evilyne (who I’ve posted about in the past) is getting hitched to Goddess Anastaxia. The arrangement was sealed with the presentation of the pearl ring that belonged to Anastaxia’s grandmother. Many congratulations to the happy couple!

There’s so much stupid bullshit in the world these days, one can forget how many other things have changed for the good. Here I am cheering for two dommes getting married after discovering the fact via my kink  centric twitter feed. Twenty years ago that sentence would have blown my tiny brain.

Goddess Anastaxia and Mistress Evilyne are both based in London. The actually offer double dommes sessions together. I’d imagine being topped by a married couple would be a fairly unusual experience.

The Cully Flaug’d

Stumbling across this picture on twitter sent me off hunting for some background details, which led me to this British Museum page. The curator’s lengthy comment on it (click to ‘More’ to expand) are fascinating and also very British. The caption reads….

What Drudgery’s here, what Bridewell-like Correction!
To bring an Old Man, to an Insurrection.
Firk on Fair Lady, Flaug the Fumblers Thighs,
Without such Conjuring th’ Devil will not rise

I think the description of a man having difficulty getting it up as a ‘fumbler’ is a poetic but cutting one. I’m also going to be temped to describe my future erections as the ‘Devil Rising’.

According to the curator, the setting indicates a brothel or ‘flogging school’ and the coins behind indicate a service being paid for. Which I think means that this image, created sometime between 1674 and 1702, is one of the earliest of a pro-domme at work in her playspace. I guess we can be grateful that the fashion for portraying the domme as haughtily staring down at the viewer hadn’t yet caught on in 17th century femdom porn.

FOSTA-SESTA

The post title isn’t a result of me falling asleep on top of my keyboard. It’s actually the name of terrible bill that’s going before the US Senate in a few days. I first wrote about Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) back in November of last year.  Since then the bill has jammed together with another bad bill (FOSTA) and was passed by the House. Now if it clears the hurdle of the Senate, it’ll certainly go into law.

As I wrote last time, it’s a troubling bill for anyone supporting free speech online, and a dangerous bill for sex workers. It conflates sex work with sex trafficking and then makes websites liable if they’re seen to facilitate it. This will push media platforms and sites to banish sex workers (or anyone vaguely connected to them), in turn making it harder for them to find and screen clients, or share information about dangerous ones. Given the imprecision of the law and the skittishness of tech companies on the subject of sex, it’s liable to have a huge chilling effect on discussing sex and kink online.

If you want to know more there are some good articles here and here. The bill’s so bad it has brought together such disparate groups as the Wall Street Journal, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pretty much every sex worker online and even the Department of Justice. If you follow any sex workers on twitter, you’ll have doubtless observed their concern. For example, Conner Habib put up a good thread on it.

If you’re an American citizen, the absolutely best thing you can do is call your Senators and register your disapproval of the bill. If you’re unsure what to say then there’s a handy guide here and contact information here. You can do it from the comfort of your own armchair. While calling is the best way, if you absolutely can’t do that, then there’s an online form you can fill in here.

If you’re in any doubt about speaking out, then Mistress Blunt below, would like to make it clear that it’s an order. She doesn’t look like someone you really want to disobey.

Clamps in Cosmos

After the HuffPost’s 7 sex tips from dommes, Cosmo now brings us the 9 nipple clamps you should look into. Of course sex tips from Cosmos is nothing new – I’ve done my fair share of mocking them in the past. However, I think it’s indicative of how far BDSM has penetrated the mainstream that their nipple clamp article is a pretty straightforward and sane list of recommendations. A few years ago it would have been written in a giggly “Oh isn’t this so silly!’ style and given instructions for making your own with some sticky tape and an elastic band. I’m not holding my breath for a Cosmos article on urethral sounds or play piercing, but it’s still progress.

The article’s main fault is hiding something at the end that would be better called out right at the top.

Queen explains that when you remove the clamps and the blood starts rushing back to the nerves, it can be an even stronger sensation than when you first put them on. Damn!

Damn is about right. Taking them off can hurt a hell of a lot more than their initial application. In fact I find it’s often an inverse relationship. Spiky ones hurt a lot when applied, but they don’t cut the blood supply, so I don’t get that rush of pain at the end. The flatter, wider clamps numb nipples up quickly and lull me into a false sense of security. Then, when they come off, the rush of blood back to the nerves can be excruciating.

For his sake, let’s hope this gentleman doesn’t get distracted by his clamps and let the book drop. I suspect that would lead to more problems than sore nipples.

The watermark on the image has been cut off by someone, but I’m fairly certain this is from the CBT and Ballbusting site.

Araki

If you’re in the New York region and interested in photograph and bondage, then you might want to check out a new exhibit on Nobuyoshi Araki. The NY Times gave it a solid review here.

As I wrote in a post a few years ago, Nobuyoshi Araki was my introduction to bondage as art. Or even just the idea of bondage taken seriously. I stumbled across a documentary on British television on him and couldn’t get over how much effort he put into capturing these beautiful shots of bound women. Something that had always been portrayed as silly and slightly sleazy suddenly looked like fine art. Of course the fact he’s a tremendously talented photographer as well as being kinky as fuck helped with that.

I haven’t featured images of any of his work here because, as far as I know, all the bondage images of a bound women. Instead I’ll share something from Lady Chiaki and Lady Hinako from their LA trip.


I believe, based on the twitter post, the lucky submissive piggy is Stephen Elliot.