Purple pineapples in Oklahoma

Whiplr has done a survey of the most popular safe words used in America. The results are not particularly surprising, with colors and fruit featuring heavily. What did make me smile was the title of the article on the survey – ‘15 Safe Word Ideas For When You Want To Get Kinky‘. Personally I think that if you need ideas to help pick a safe word, and that was the thing holding you back from getting kinky, you probably have bigger problems. I’m all for more people exploring their sexuality, but if you’re not smart enough to come up with a safe word on your own, you shouldn’t be anywhere near whips, rope, nipple clamps or indeed anything more complex than a coloring book.

I initially assumed that the ‘Fire!’ in the image below was either a reference to putting out a fire or firing away. But maybe that’s actually his safe word? After all, I’d be tempted to safe word in his position. Peeing on me is one thing, but doing it on the bed sheets is quite another. That would add a whole new terror to sleeping in the wet spot.

Fire

Flying High

At a quick first glance I thought this was a photograph. My initial reaction was – ‘Wow! What kind of set-up do they have in their bedroom to get him into that position?’ Closer inspection revealed a rendered image that relies on imagination and computer software, not a bedroom with an electrical winch.

In reality I think the submissive would need a lot more body support to be able to handle this position. With that in place, in would be a fun one for some tease and denial. She could leave him high to watch her sleep or pleasure herself, or lower him to touching (and pinching and squeezing and slapping) distance. I assume the device the artist has placed in her hands is the remote control for the winch mechanism.

FlyingHighI’m afraid I don’t know the artist who created this. If you can help me attribute it correctly then please leave a comment.

Snapping the strap

I had a busy weekend, so no time for posting or writing much. This drawing seemed like something quick and fun to start the week. The pose of a kneeling naked man and a domme brandishing a strap is straight from the big book of femdom cliches, but there’s a great sense of humor and playfulness to this. They both look like they’re enjoying the moment.

NKIt’s a very well executed drawing, but I can’t find out much about it. I believe it’s by an artist who goes under the handle NK, but that’s all I have on it.

What a lovely canoe

I’ve written about some of America’s crazy cultural issues in the last couple of posts, but it’s not alone in having some strange attitudes. All countries have odd cultural baggage when it comes to sexuality and gender. The latest example from Japan would be this story of an artist and her vagina canoe.

As any porn aficionado will tell you, Japan has odd laws around pornography and obscenity. Japanese producers create some fairly extreme (to Western eyes) material, but the genitals must be obscured. Artist Megumi Igarashi pushed this law to the point of absurdity by distributing the data that would allow someone to ‘print’ a 3D model of her vagina. She did so to help fund a canoe also modeled on her body.  Amazingly, for distributing what’s basically a mathematical description of part of her own body, she was found guilty of obscenity and fined 400,000 Yen (about $3,680). The problem with pointing out the absurdity of a law is that after you’re done with the absurdity the law bit is still there. One can only hope that the sheer ridiculousness of the ruling may provoke a change.

Past artists have worked around the censorship laws with strategically placed objects. Mike Myers had fun with that approach in this Austin Powers clip. Namio Harukawa was a little subtler in the image below.

Namio Harukawa artwork

The silver lining

If there’s one upside to the recent clusterfuck of the battle for bathrooms (see my previous post) it’s the response it has provoked in mainstream America. Ten years ago it would have been a fringe issue. Not anymore.

When artists like Pearl Jam, Boston and Bruce Springsteen cancel concerts then it’s easy for conservatives to dismiss them as part of the liberal elite. When Deutsche Bank and PayPal start cancelling investments then it’s harder to make that claim. And when major employers in the area like Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Target start speaking out in favor of transgender rights, then it’s pretty clear where the mood of the mainstream is. Of course that doesn’t help individuals caught in the current crossfire of discrimination, but it at least suggests that the world is trending in the right direction. One can only hope the trend is an accelerating one.

In the meantime let’s support people using the bathroom in whatever manner is most appropriate. If that means peeing on a naked consenting man, then so much the better.

PeeI’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for this image.

Taking a tinkle

I like the United States. I’ve enjoyed living here and I can’t see myself leaving. Yet, despite the fact I’ve been here over 15 years, it can sometimes still feel like a very foreign place. The so called culture wars rage here with an intensity and strangeness that doesn’t seem to exist in Western Europe. There are some toxic topics here – abortion, guns, goverment regulation, religion in public life –  that are unique to the history of the place. You can live here for years and not understand why they create such passionate debate.

Occasionally these culture wars wage a battle by strange proxies. The latest example of this is the public bathroom. Having failed to stop gay people have sex and get married, some conservatives have decided to draw the line at transgender people using the bathroom. Fighting for such a ridiculous cause is perhaps indicative of the desperation of their position, but that doesn’t stop it being any less harmful to transgender people.

Vox has a good article on the history of this and how it’s being used as way to generally attack LGBT rights. John Oliver also did his usual excellent job of demolishing some of the bullshit arguments involved here. Although perhaps my favorite piece of political activism comes from Shakina Nayfack who is touring North Carolina (current epicenter of the battle) and peeing in a lot of urinals.

Of course other countries have their issues with bathrooms as well. For example, based on this image, it looks like Japan has an issue with men getting trapped in ladies toilets. I just hope she spots him before it’s too late. Otherwise the poor chap might get awfully wet.

BathroomThis is from the Team Rinryu site.

A Genoux Esclave

A final post (for the moment) with a vintage femdom artwork theme. This is from a 1935 book – ‘Jim Galding. A Genoux Esclave. Les Editions du Couvre-Feu.‘ The title means ‘Kneeling Slave’, although in this particular illustration it’s more of a lying slave and a hop, skip and a jumping domme.

The artist went by the handle Wighead and there’s more excellent artwork and some discussion on his or her identity here.

a-genoux-esclave-les-editions-du-couvre-feu-wighead_0018

A simple sketch

Continuing my theme of artwork from the early part of the 20th century, here’s something 20 years on from my last post, but very different in style. The best reference I have for it credits it as “Bruno Schulz IV: Frau mit Peitsche vor kniendem Mann (Woman with whip in front of a kneeling man), around 1937”

The artist was a writer, literary critic and art teacher. He was also, based on this and other drawings, clearly a submissive and masochist. Sadly he was shot and killed by a Nazi in 1942.

BrunoSchulzThanks to my reader Marga for pointing me at this image. She described it as raw, visceral and honest, and I have to agree with that. There’s also a sense of spontaneity to it. It’s a drawing, but almost feels like a candid photograph.

Vintage femdom

After all this talk of the perils of modern technology I thought a change of pace was called for. This is from the era when all a gentleman had to worry about his housekeeper finding his erotic etchings hidden at the bottom of his study desk drawer. This is entitled ‘Mistress and Slave’ and dates from between 1910 and 1920. The telephone had been invented by that time, but we were still about 60 years away from the internet and 80 years from the smartphone.

MistressAndSlaveI found this via the History of BDSM tumblr.

Suggestion stupidity

I couldn’t write a series of posts on technology and femdom without touching on the stupidity of auto-suggest. If there’s a single thing that bugs me about web search and browsers, it would be this.

On the one hand, my phone’s web browser is incredibly keen to suggest this site. I just have to type ‘f’ into the address bar and it pops this site up as an option. That can make it a touch nerve wracking when I’m out in a bar and someone borrows my phone to look at something. Pretty much any adult site I’ve visited can pop up based on just a single letter entered into the address bar.

On the other hand, Google’s search suggestions are incredible prudish. I can type ‘femdom’ into the search box and it still will not give me any query suggestions. At that point, what does it think I’m looking for? Who is going to accidentally type ‘femdom’ in and get upset at the suggestions that might pop up? There’s not a lot of ambiguity there. Similarly, its image search really resists showing porn. Searching for ‘domme‘ returns medieval architecture and ‘spanking‘ returns a lot of images of children being hit.

All this means that in some cases a single letter is enough to trigger a porn site prompt, and in others a very precise and unambiguous query fails to trigger it. Good job tech companies. That’s a spectacularly bad job of understanding user intent.

SmilingSelfieThe image is another example of a sexy cellphone selfie. I’m afraid I don’t know who created it.