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.

7 Sex Tips

Kinky sex tips from pro-dommes is a regular ‘go to’ for mainstream sites looking to attract clicks. They’re typically slapped together with little thought and I normally skip straight past them whenever they show up in my news feed. However, this one from the HuffPost, is actually pretty good. It features some of LA’s top pro-dommes, and the advice is both well written and well thought out.

I particularly like the suggestions by Mistress Iris to take orgasms off the table and not to be afraid to experiment and play around with roles. There’s no right way to explore kink and very little in life works out perfectly the first time you try it. Trial and error is part of life. Yet, with sex, we often get hung up on always achieving a specific sticky end result.

It might seem basic to some of my more jaded readers. But I find it’s often worth revisiting the basics. They’re important and easily forgotten.

This artwork, by the inimitable Sardax, is Mistress Georgia Payne, one of the dommes interviewed for the article.

It was different in my brain

The image below  – courtesy of Mistress Evilyne’s twitter feed – made me laugh. I’ve seen many variations of the image on the left scattered across tumblr, but never stopped to think exactly how effective it might be. There is a reason why fingers and opposable thumbs conquered the world.

Of course fantasy and reality often don’t line up. I never fantasized about having plastic wrap draped over my face while someone squeezed my balls and shoved a metal rod down my urethra, but when it happened it was awesome. On the flipside, I did often fantasize about being trampled by two beautiful women in leather boots, and when it happened it was…fine…I guess. I mean, I’d do it again, but the reality didn’t match the fantasy. The floor was uncomfortable and hitting the sweet spot between good pain and the ‘I think you cracked my rib’ pain was tricky.

The life lesson is probably that you should explore your fantasies, but don’t get too attached to them. There’s a lot of stuff that’s way more awesome in reality than you’d ever guess. And a lot of stuff that’s best left in the mental spank bank.

Beware Hijackers

This is, for the moment at least, my last mainstream and political themed post. I promise that normal service of more explicit femdom topics will be resumed shortly. We thank you for your patience.

Writing yesterday’s post, featuring Ross Douthat subverting #MeToo for his own political agenda, reminded me of this New Yorker article from last year on sex and consent. I didn’t link to it when it was published because I thought it was problematic in some areas, but its underlying point is a sound one. It argues that while consent is a fundamental issue, the definition is often fought over. By way of example, it highlights the two sides in the feminist sex debate of the 70’s and 80’s…

One side argued that no consensual act should be punishable by either law or social sanction. The other side focussed on the limits of consent, arguing that consent was sometimes—or even most often—not entirely freely given, and that some things, like injury sustained during S & M sex, could not be the object of consent.

#MeToo has put the subject of consent front and center in the mainstream debate on sex. As kinksters we should be glad about that. It’s a topic we’re well versed in. Unfortunately, operating in the spirit of never letting a crisis go to waste, political movements will inevitably try to subvert that discussion to their own ends. Mr Douthat is only the start of that.

One approach is to narrow the qualifications for consent so as to make it meaningless. Assert that any power imbalance renders consent meaningless. Given the endless variations of power through society – gender, race, wealth, culture, class – that quickly puts 99% of relationships outside the consensual boundary.

The other approach is to claim that consent can only be given by people of a sound mind, and that certain activities by definition indicate an unsound mind. This is the perfect catch-22. You’re free to do whatever you want, but if you agree to consent to BDSM, then you must be crazy, and therefore can’t consent.

If you want an active example of this kind of mentality in action, just look to the laws on sex work in Sweden. Sex work there is treated as a pathology that’s impossible to consent to. For example, Eva-Marree, an outspoken sex worker, lost her children because the system claimed she lacked insight and didn’t realize what she was doing was a form of self-harm. Consensual sex work was ruled to invalidate her ability to consent. Her children were placed with her ex, who then stabbed her to death when she went to visit them.

Consent is clearly a critical issue, but we need to be wary of people trying to redefine it or hijack it for their own political purposes. When a concept becomes powerful, it’s inevitable fuckheads will appear to try and exploit it.

This is Claire Adams and Eurosex shooting for kink.com. They’re clearly both crazy and need to be stopped for their own sake.