A National Treasure

I’m always fascinated by stories that capture a unique aspect of a particular culture. For example, in the US articles arising from the gun control debate are both common and unique to its culture. Nowhere else is that kind of discussion happening. This story from Japan last year was another example of a story that could seemingly only be written in that country. Nowhere else allows hardcore pornography while simultaneously prosecuting someone distributing an abstract mathematical model of the female genitalia.

The latest example I have is from France – who just declared the Marquis de Sade’s manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom a National Treasure. I can’t think of many countries whose politicians would he happy to declare a snuff pornography book – featuring teenage girls being tortured to death and children raped – as a national treasure. I don’t state it in that way to necessarily say there were wrong to do it, just to emphasize the cultural dissonance. Even by modern standards, Sade’s work remains shocking and unpleasant. While I can imagine a lot of politicians owning and jerking off to a copy, I can’t imaging many outside of France speaking up to defend its cultural value.

Sade of course gave us the word sadism, which gives me an excuse to feature a nice sadistic image. I’m not exactly sure what’s just happened in the scene below to make him dance like that – I’m guessing that riding crop she’s holding was involved somehow – but it certainly looks like it hurts.

I believe this is originally from the Sado Ladies site.

The Big Boot

This is one for fans of boots and bondage – two things that aren’t normally combined in this way. I’ve heard of thigh highs, but never armpit highs. Now I come to think of it, I’m surprised no enterprising fetish manufacturer has produced a leather bondage sack that’s shaped like a boot. I can’t think it’d be to hard to modify a standard sleep sack to look like one. The intersection between bondage lover and boot lover is probably a decent size market.

I found this via Pitt Prickel’s twitter feed, where it’s attributed to Rudolf Schlichter.

Just a little off the sides

I’m endlessly fascinating by why unexpected things can  elicit strong emotional reactions in people – both in the good and bad sense. I very much include myself in the target category, as even in my 40’s I’m still discovering stuff that can push my buttons in ways I didn’t expect. Normally that’s a good thing – it means there’s a fun new experience to explore – but not always.

One thing I only just discovered I had a strong negative reaction to was head shaving as part of a kinky dynamic. Isabella Sinclaire recently did a sequence of posts with the female submissive Greyh0und who’d been shaved just a few days before. From the comments a lot of people liked the look, but I personally found it very disquieting. I think because it puts me in  mind of concentration camp prisoners, and once that thought enters my head there’s no getting rid of it. I don’t make that connection with shaved heads in daily life, but there’s something about the combination with a power dynamic that pushes my internal ‘nuh huh’ button.

For those that do enjoy it, the image below is from a fun video for Charly Calderon photography. Check it out if a woman on a mission with a razor is your kind of thing.

Sniffder

I’m used to flipping past some fairly crazy kinky outfits on my tumblr and twitter feeds. This one gave me a moment of pause however. Lots of kinky equipment focuses on controlling movement, breathing, eating, sight, etc. There’s not much that targets the sense of smell. If it’s considered at all, smell is usually a second order effect from materials like leather and latex. This cuts all those out and goes straight for the natural pheromones.

Amazingly, it’s not actually from a kinky source. It’s an art/science project by James Auger focused on blind dating and predicting compatibility. It was part of an exhibit at Moma and was featured in the NY Times.

It may not have started off with a kinky slant, but I can imagine a lot of people wanting to use it that way. Particularly if modified from a two  way to one way flow.

Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can

This image isn’t femdom, but I liked it too much to not feature it in a post. It’s normally hard enough to get a suspension scene with a single person right, let alone get a small crowd suspended successfully and simultaneously.

It puts me in mind of a scene from a Spiderman comic, where he’s just zipped past a bunch of dimwitted henchmen, sticking them to the walls and ceiling with webbing. In the best traditions of supervillain henchmen, they’ve even all got color coordinated outfits on.

I found this image via this tweet. Based on the translation, I’m guessing it’s from a bondage workshop in Paris.

Face Torture

One of the fun things about social media is the random insights it gives you into other cultures. It’s hardly a scientific analysis, but it is entertaining from an anecdotal (and possibly highly inaccurate) perspective. For example, domme twitter accounts from Japan seem to feature way more food shots than similar Western ones. I’ve no idea if that’s typical for twitter in Japan in general or something more specific to Japanese dommes.

My other entirely random and anecdotal observation is that facial bondage and torture is bigger over there than it is here. I almost never see Western dommes offer it as an activity or post pictures of it. Yet it seems not uncommon in Japan, with awesome twitter posts like this one or the image below (from here). Typically Western dommes are very functional when it comes to the face. It’s all about covering the eyes, plugging the ears, opening/closing the mouth or locking the whole thing away. I see plenty of that in Japanese BDSM as well, but they also seem to enjoy screwing around with the face a lot more. Distorting it, hurting it and exposing it in unusual ways. It doesn’t particularly appeal to my kinky side, but it does make me curious as to the reasons behind it (assuming my anecdotal observation isn’t complete bullshit).

Mail Boy

These leather mail (male?) sacks have been popping up all over the place on my twitter feed. Mostly accompanied by comments from pro-dommes say how amazing and awesome they are, and how they can’t wait to get hold of one. The original tweet from the Fetters store runs as follows…

Out of sight, out of mind. When not needed anymore, store your slave safely until the next time he’s required to serve you. No better option than the Mailsack – an elegant storage solution.

I wonder what it suggests when a device that stashes your slave away  out of sight and out of mind, with no option for interaction, is so immediately popular? Maybe it’s just that they want to give their slaves an exciting new sensory experience? That must be it. Definitely couldn’t be any other reason.

Should anyone wish to offer their slave this exciting new experience, this is the page to shop from.

The Pleasure of Play

I was surprised to see a very well known domme state (on twitter) how much she hated the term ‘play’ when it related to kink and femdom. It’s a term I never used in my early days of kinky exploration – because that was such super serious stuff – but it’s one I’ve come to use and like a lot.

I should say out of the gate that of course femdom can be more than just play. It can be a major part of a relationship, a 24×7 dynamic, a way to modify behavior, an ethos, etc. But let’s face reality. The majority of lifestyle femdom activity and almost all of professional femdom activity is a form of play (from the client perspective). And that’s absolutely not a bad thing.

The Oxford English dictionary defines play as – “Engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.” I think most people’s lives are full of serious and practical activities. Going to work, maintaining a house, caring for a family, paying bills – these are all serious and practical activities. Don’t we deserve a break to enjoy some recreation? And what could be more recreational than pulling on fun outfits, tying people up, teasing their erogenous zones or blowing their minds with intense sensations? There’s a reason pro-dommes use sensual, sadistic and playful to describe possible session dynamics and not words like serious, practical and sensible.

I don’t have a problem with someone wanting to get more out of a femdom dynamic than kinky fun times. I love reading about couples that have taken it beyond that level. But given a world serious lacking in fun, and a culture that has some seriously messed up views on sex and kink, why be against the idea of kink as play? Admittedly, sometimes it can be intense, crazy and freaky, but that doesn’t mean it’s not play.

Here’s a somewhat literal representation of play and femdom. This is from Underling.