Femdom Resource – Page 155 – The beauty of dominant women

Hero

The concept of heroism has been much debased in popular culture. Pretty much anyone who has survived a stressful or dangerous situation is described as heroic. The popular media really only has two categories – hero and villain, so hyperbole is inevitable.

To my mind heroism isn’t only about courage and fortitude, it’s also about personal sacrifice. It’s about making a choice, and doing something for others despite the cost. It’s about taking a risk for a worthy cause. With that in mind I give you the heroic lawyer – Myles Jackman.

As this long article makes clear he’s fighting for the idea that “people’s private sexuality should not be held against them in any way, whether it’s criminal, civil, for intelligence purposes, or whatever”. As an obviously highly intelligent and well qualified man he could choose to make a bunch of money in more conventional legal cases and practice his kink in private. As a wealthy white educated male it’s unlikely he’d ever face problems doing that. Yet at significant personal and financial cost he chooses to defend people caught up in Britain’s ridiculous and outdated obscenity laws. That seems pretty heroic to me.

I’ve actually previously posted on a number of the cases mentioned in the article itself. There was the crazy tiger porn story, the Michael Peacock case, the Simon Walsh case, and the impact of the new UK censorship laws (here and here). Since those posts were written the new laws have forced Pandora Blake to close her Dreams of Spanking site, thereby putting a successful female producer out of business while reducing the total amount of porn on the Internet by 0.00%. It’s clear from the article that even those that win their cases often end up with their lives in pieces, and I sadly suspect that Myles Jackman is going to be a busy man for a long while yet.

The image is from the Urban Chick Supremacy Cell – a femdom site with a little more attitude than most. It’s run by by Itzi Urrutia. She’s quoted in the article and has already successfully battled the UK government. You can access her clips store here.

Negotiation in the moment (cont)

A few additional thoughts struck me while I was publishing yesterday’s post. Nothing new or contradictory here. Just extensions of the previous ideas.

Firstly, as a piece of advice, I’d suggest that it’s important to avoid leading questions when negotiating consent in scenes. If the submissive is already awash in endorphins and mentally predisposed to agree with the domme, then leading questions are problematic. Saying something like “Is it OK if we do X?” doesn’t help the submissive make the necessary mental gear shifts. The subtext is the domme would like to do X. Instead say something like “Is it OK if I do X or would you rather we avoid it?” That gives a nice simple binary choice (important when someone might be endorphin clouded) and suggests that yes or no or equally valid answers.

Secondly, I’d like to be clear that the onus isn’t always on the domme to negotiate every single activity every single time. I’ve actually been in the situation Miss Margo described in her post – anal penetration when tied up and we hadn’t discussed it – and it wasn’t an issue at all for me. That was because I was playing with someone I was very familiar with and we’d already done bondage and anal play multiple times in past sessions. In those cases I think it’s down to the submissive to take things off the table that a reasonable person might assume were still on the table. If anal play is usually OK but I have an iffy stomach one day, it’s down to me to mention it either beforehand or when the strap-on comes out. I shouldn’t expect the domme to mind read that something previously fine is now an issue.

One final point I wanted to make was actually touched on by Miss Margo in a comment she left to the post. Namely that it’s easier to achieve a great headspace when you trust the domme to negotiate clearly. If I constantly have to parse her questions and try and determine are we negotiating or playing then it’s hard to relax. Similarly if I know she’s liable to try new things and the onus is on me to stop them, then I’ll always be asking myself if I’m OK with the progression of the scene. Conversely if I know she’ll step out of character as necessary and ask simple questions then it makes it much easier to zone out when she’s in character. I wrote last week about taking a ‘holiday from yourself‘ during intense scenes. I think that’s only possible when you can fully relax and trust the person you’re with.

Given anal play got mentioned several times it seems appropriate to finish with this image. I’m afraid I don’t have a source for it. I found it via the Pegging with a Smile tumblr.

Negotiation in the moment

Miss Margo recently put up a post that got me thinking about scene negotiation. The original post was about a complete absence of negotiation and a bad domme acting non-consensually. I’m not going to talk about that particular angle, as I’ve nothing really to add. If you’re destroying trust and traumatizing your play partners, as seemed to be the case Miss Margo describes, then clearly things are pretty fucked up. Instead I want to look at it from a more positive point of view: How do people negotiate consent effectively within a scene?

Obviously it’s always good to establish limits and boundaries before clothes come off and the whips come out. But it’s not always possible to cover every possible option. A scene is a fluid thing, with an energy of its own. Most people don’t want to script out exactly what will happen. So how do deal with the unknowns and getting consent when rope is flying? I’ve personally experienced 3 general approaches from dommes…

Assume consent, but go slowly with check-ins, and give the submissive plenty of time to stop the action if they’re uncomfortable.
Get consent by asking the question, but do so very much in the context and mood of the scene. I remember one time being asked in a very sultry voice – “Are all these holes mine to fuck?” An affirmative response in that case led to a set of urethral sounds appearing.
Mentally step away from the scene and pose the question in a very straightforward way. This is a big gear change, pulling everyone back into the pre-scene negotiation mood, before switching back into the scene dynamic. In this case the domme might pose the question as “Hey. Quick timeout. It just occurred to me we could incorporate X. Would that be OK, or would you rather not do that?”

I’m sure a lot of people would frown on (1), but I do understand the thinking behind it. In fact it’s the same thinking as (2). It’s trying to maintain the dynamic of the scene. Dommes want to walk the line between negotiation and maintaining the submissive headspace they’ve spent time creating. Sadly, while I understand the desire to do this, I think it’s a big mistake. The right way to go for me is always (3).

In a scene the submissive is typically predisposed to try and obey instructions and help the dominant. That makes it hard to respond to genuine questions that may require a negative response. Whatever happens somebody has to change their mental headspace to deal with the question. It might seem that options (1) and (2) maintain the scene dynamic, but actually they force the submissive to mentally change gears without any help. And that’s hard. At least for me it is.

With approach (3) the domme takes the responsibility to temporarily change the dynamic, as befits her role. It’s easy for her to pull the dynamic back to a discussion of equals before plunging back into the play. I’ve never had a problem getting my headspace back in those situations. I’ve had real problems with negotiations that caught me unawares and left me second guessing my responses.

Since I mentioned using sounds as a situation where I’ve encountered this kind of on the fly negotiation, it seems appropriate to finish with this image. Given he can’t see what’s coming, I’m hope they discussed it ahead of time. I’m afraid I don’t have a source for this image.

Fetish investment

I’m always impressed with the lengths some people will go to in order to satisfy a sexual fetish. Often it seems people are praised for investing time and effort in almost every niche apart from the sexual one. Spend years of your life become an expert on 16th century Italian poetry and your a respect scholar. Spend a few months working out how to realize a great sexual fantasy and your some sort of perverted deviant. That seems somewhat unfair.

I’m not sure of the source of the image below, but clearly somebody has invested heavily in medical equipment and latex uniforms. They eye makeup and the sheer shininess of everything is really the only give away that while this lady may be preparing to finger a prostate or two, she probably shouldn’t be relied upon for an official checkup.

Briar Patch

Whenever I see an image like the one below I’m reminded of an old comment on Max Fisch. It was from a domme and related to her unhappy experiences settings up ‘forced bi’ sessions. I sadly can’t remember who the domme was or the exact comment wording, but I do remember that she’d sworn off setting up a forced bi session ever again. Apparently her clients would say how awfully it would be to suck cock, how it’d humiliate them and be a truly terrible emotional torture to inflict. Of course it wasn’t so terrible that they wouldn’t absolutely say no if the mistress really insisted upon it. When she’d eventually agree to ‘insist on it’ and arrange the session the end result was always an hour of cock gobbling and no attention paid to her at all. She ultimately decided it was less femdom and more pimping for repressed guys.

Thanks to a helpful comment that was left, I believe this is from the Submissive Cuckolds site. For anyone confused by the post title, I refer them to this piece of American folklore.

Shrinkage

This Kinja article on dry humping made me smile. Not so much for the text, which is a pretty reasonable pitch for the thrills of frottage, but for the headline picture. If you don’t want to click through to the article, you can see it here. It seems like the artist (Tina Mailhot-Roberge) took the thrust of the article in a very different direction. Less mutual rubbing together, and more foot fetishism for Macrophiliacs.

The idea of giant women and tiny men crops up repeatedly in femdom artwork. From vintage pieces like this Eric Stanton one to the artwork of Sardax below. As a fetish it doesn’t do much for me, but I can understand the appeal from an artists perspective. There are all sorts of fun elements to adopt, with toys, puppets and fairy tale references all fair game.

This artwork is of course from the inimitable Sardax. I originally located it via Her Majesty’s Plaything.

Afternoon cuppa

Here’s a well beaten gentleman and an elegant lady for your viewing pleasure. I’ve complained about socks before in femdom imagery, but I think this guys gets a pass. Sock suspenders are a classy touch. The artwork is by Fyodor Pavlov.

A holiday from yourself

Yesterday’s post about ‘play acting’ got me thinking more about personas and how we constantly project partial elements of our personalities into the world. It struck me that intense BDSM play represents an almost unique situation in that regard.

I’m someone whose is constantly debating and editing myself. That’s not to say I’m insincere or fake. It’s just that my brain is constantly running and adjusting to the world around me. I like to analyze, pick out subtext and fine tune how I present to the world. I think most people do the same thing, either consciously or subconsciously. Unless someone is a totally self-centered jerk, there’s always a desire to understand how we’re being perceived by others.

The one and only time I think that’s not true is during intense BDSM play. When I’m tied down and being beaten there’s no room in my brain for analysis or reflection. When a needle starts to slip into my skin my only thought is to that sharp slippery sensation of pain. When nipple clamps are ripped away all that matters is the rush of blood and the tingling nerves. The combination of mental submission (which removes choice) and physical pain (which removes thinking) makes for a holiday from the self.

I wouldn’t say that my persona in those intense moments is somehow more true or real than my day to day one. Nobody beating my naked ass is getting to somehow learn the secrets of the inner me. But those are the times when I can forget about my persona and how I’m perceived, and just be in that very physical pure moment.

I’ll finish with an image of someone very much in an intense physical moment. I’d guess the only thing on his mind right now involves those nipple clamps and exactly when she’s going to tug them free.

This is from the Divine Bitches site.

All the world’s a stage

Ferns has an interesting post up on the subject of ‘play acting’. By that she doesn’t mean traditional style role playing of the kind where the haughty Lady McFaddleshaw berates and beats Jack, her hapless but handsome stableboy. Instead she’s talking about the traditional dynamic of dominant and submissive and the activities that often go along with that (collars, bondage, kneeling, etc.)

I have some sympathy for the original comment that provoked her post. As an outsider looking in I used to think kink often looked strange. A hot and sexy strange, but still strange. I wondered if it would seem ridiculous in person, and imagined myself bursting into laughter. Luckily that proved not to be the case. Admittedly I have often laughed, but not because I thought we were play acting and it looked ridiculous.

One mistake I think we often make is to divide the world into real versus fake, when in fact what we really mean is familiar versus unfamiliar. In kinky and non-kinky situations we’re constantly projecting different elements of ourselves and censoring our external representation. Yet some situations are so familiar that we do this instinctively, and so begin to think about that as a real representation, when in fact it’s just one we’re very familiar with. Whether we’re at work or hanging out with friends we’re projecting a persona. That changes depends on circumstances and social dynamics, but it’s always there. The dynamics of kink are very different to the typical workplace or home, but that doesn’t make the kinky persona any less real. In fact one might suggest that most people play act their way through their work life, projecting someone quite different to have they actually feel. Yet that projection is so instinctive that it becomes the benchmark for what is ‘real’ and ‘normal’.

The artwork is by Francois Dubeau and you can see more from him on his site and in his store.

Grab and Squeeze

I’ve absolutely no idea what’s going on here. Well obviously, I know that there’s some ball squeezing going on, but I’ve no knowledge of the wider context. Not sure if this is a shot from a well known series, fan art featuring particular characters or just random femdom hentai. Either way, it’s an interesting piece. Kind of lighthearted, until you see the knife one of them has.