Hades and Persephone

Apologies if you had trouble reaching the site over the weekend. My site hosting service was screwed up again, much to my frustration.

The artwork below is by Jessica Madorran, and is a twist on the traditional representation of Hades and Persephone. In Greek mythology Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and agriculture. When the god of the underworld, Hades, kidnaps the beautiful Persephone the result is a great famine, as Demeter curses the land while roaming it looking for her daughter. Zeus eventually brokers a compromise, with Persephone spending just one third of the year in the underworld with Hades. During that time Demeter grieves for her daughter, causing us mortals to get stuck with winter. Not quite sure why abducting a helpless maiden should get you a compromise deal of 4 months visitation, rather than say a well deserved thunderbolt up your ass, but that’s Greeks gods for you.

The twist in this artwork is a gender reversal, with a female Hades and a male Persephone. I like that change, but it’s odd that someone would commission such a piece. Is there such a thing as a greek mythology gender-swap fetish? Apparently so.

You can see more of Jessica’s work here.

Finding a Dominant Woman

Probably the commonest question and debate topic for submissive men on forums and blogs is: How do I find a partner who is a dominant woman? I’m afraid I personally don’t have any great advice on that. I just double checked around my condo again, and I’m definitely shy one dominant woman partner. However, I can point you to somebody who might be able to help – Sharyn Ferns and her new book. As anyone has read her blog will know, she is both a dominant woman and a fine writer. Those strike me as two excellent credentials to have when writing a book entitled ‘How to find a Dominant Woman.’ It costs about the same as a cup of coffee, so really, what do you have to lose?

This artwork is by sadistic smilez.

Palette Cleanser

After the heavy scenes and crazy toys of the last couple of posts, I thought it was time for a change of pace. A palette cleanser as it were. Something simple and sexy, showing femdom at its minimal best. Think of this post as a small scoop of raspberry sorbet, in the shape of some hot femdom artwork.

This is by the artist domirine.

More Scenes from Germany

I couldn’t write about German BDSM studios (as I just was) without mentioning Studio Black Fun. They’re based in Leipzig and, based on their website, have some pretty crazy toys. For example, this, this and this. It looks skewed to high-tech fetish rather than the more traditional Avalon space, but no less impressive for all that.

There’s one special they offer – Yellow 3D Vision – that has more kinks packed into a single scene than I think I’ve ever observed before. You can see a video of it here. To start with the guy is in a metal chastity device and wearing a full rubber body suit, complete with a custom hood. Then they add bondage via plastic buckles and mummification with a latex sheet. A video headset is used to feed him an image of the scene, while a special toilet is fitted above him, complete with plumbing to his hood. Finally, there are two dommes, both in elaborate fetish gear, one to pee into the toilet and one to film it and feed him the video picture. Frankly, I’m just surprised they didn’t add nipple clamps, an anal plug and a rubber chicken into the scene. That would have been BDSM bingo all in one shot.

If I’m honest, while I might be joking about the scene, I’d actually love to try it out. That level of objectification, coupled with the out-of-body experience the headset/camera would offer, seems pretty hot. The images below show the toilet set-up, in this case with a latex straitjacket and spreader bar. You can see more from this variation here.

On Trial

I’ve written in the past about the impressive facilities at Avalon Studios in Germany (for example here and here), but I’ve never had a first hand account from anyone who played there. Now, thanks to Mistress Troy and Slave Latigo, I can correct that omission with this article from Mistress Troy’s site. It features an eye opening description of a multi-day scene featuring the imprisonment, trial and punishment of her slave.

I have to say that the scenario described wouldn’t at all appeal to me. Too serious, too formal and too much protocol for my tastes. But I do admire the skill and effort required to realize these kind of scenarios. You certainly don’t need a cell, courtroom and interrogation center to pull off an amazing femdom scene, but it’s great that some people do choose to set-up these kind of facilities for others to enjoy.

This is Mistress Troy at Studio Avalon, along with slave Latigo, Lady Mercedes and Lady Marlon.

All the cool kids are doing it

Teen Vogue is not a publication that I thought would ever intersect with my areas of interest. As an actual teen (many, many years ago) I might have sneaked a look at Cosmopolitan sex articles now and again, but Vogue was always far too high fashion and culture to be interesting.

Fast forward a couple of decades and, weirdly, comments about Teen Vogue articles began popping up on my radar from political twitter feeds I follow. Apparently they were doing a better job than a lot of mainstream sources in covering the disaster zone that is American politics. Now I find myself linking to this recent piece on BDSM and consent. It doesn’t break new ground on the topic, but for a magazine with ‘Teen’ in the title, it’s a pretty solid article. Sex and teenagers is always going to be a combustible combination, particularly when you mix in the crazy complexity that is BDSM. Unfortunately banning behavior with teenagers never works, particularly when material is just a click away on the internet, so I’m happy to see this kind of well thought out mainstream coverage.

This looks like an image cut from Manga, but I don’t have an original attribution unfortunately.

KinkD

There’s a new kinky dating app available – KinkD. Its userbase is pretty small at present – 30K is the number mentioned – but it has got some press coverage (e.g. this and this and this), so maybe it’ll grow quickly. I hope they succeed, as there’s definitely a gap in the market. They really should tweak their imagery however. The lady they’re featuring sporting a black lacy mask doesn’t really seem to know what she’s supposed to be doing with the crop she’s holding.

This artwork is by Apollonia Saintclair and is called La visite galante (Enjoying the visit). KinkD should really hire her to create their promotional material, as it’s much sexier than what they’re currently using. If you’d like to see more she has a book and prints available. 

Over promising

Here’s an article whose title writes a check that the contents can’t cash – 8 stunning dominatrix portraits that’ll change the way you think about BDSM. The Independent used to be a real newspaper, but it seems Buzzfeed is now the role model.

It’s based on a book called Dominas by the photographer Max Eicke. You can see the book in a video at his site. The book may stand up as a piece of art in itself, particularly with additional context from interviews, but you’re not going to overturn BDSM stereotypes with photographs of pro-dommes wearing their fetish gear and staring into camera. That’s a shot that’s in almost every pro-domme’s gallery, and about 50% of femdom tumblr content. Maybe start photographing and talking to non-professional dominant women if you want to overturn some stereotypes?

This is Fräulein Schmidt, one of the dominas featured in the book, and one of the few not in full on fetish gear. You can read more about the project in this article from huck magazine.