PDP

I’ve written fairly often on what I term PDS – Public Displays of D/S. Generally I come down on the side of letting shared public spaces be truly shared, rather than giving the majority veto power on their use. Kinky people are tax paying members of the public after all (or as Louis C.K. might put it).

However, this New Zealand man seems to have drifted into PDP – Public Display of Perversity. He was in his home standing at a window, when…

Burley placed a balaclava over his head before committing an indecent act using a sex toy, clothes pegs and a leather whip.

“The victim and her two friends look out the kitchen window several times as they could not believe what they were seeing,” it said.

I don’t want to make light of it, as clearly this was an asshole thing to do. But that bit about having to look several times (along with her friends) did make me smile. Apparently he was excited at the idea of getting caught. Given he’s now looking at jail time, I imagine that excitement might have diminished slightly.

His choice of implements no doubt added some extra weirdness to the story for most people, but I’ve had a lot of (consensual) fun over the years with those toys. Clothe pegs as zippers can be particularly interesting, as Aiden Starr shows below. I particularly like the red marks running down his legs from where they have just been ripped away.

Aiden Starr pulling a zipperThis image is from this shoot for Divine Bitches. You can see another image of her putting the zipper in place here.

Missed opportunity

Advice columns have become far more entertaining thanks to the spread of the internet and the more open sexual culture that has gone along with it. Instead of questions on gift etiquette or workplace squabbles, we now get questions about what to do when your friend’s new girlfriend turns out to be your dominatrix.

I don’t think the basic advice given – ‘stop seeing her’ – is necessarily wrong, but the logic and framing of the response is horrible. It would seem like a good opportunity to reduce the stigma of sex work and focus on the work aspect of it. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant or a pro-domme. If you’re overlapping a professional relationship with a social one then there are a few obvious questions to answer. For example: What happens if I need to end just the professional relationship? What information am I comfortable sharing with someone in both circles? Is this likely to lead to a conflict of interest? What are the odds of problems in one form of the relationship spilling over into the other?

It might be that the answers to these questions indicate that there’s not a problem to resolve. I can conceive of some relationships and social groups where mixing in pay for play wouldn’t be an issue, although this particular case doesn’t sound like one. But there’s no reason to make this specifically about sex and and sex work. It’s really about making smart decisions that minimize risk for everyone involved.

Having missed one opportunity the columnist then really screws the pooch by making the blanket statement that ‘sex workers are not notorious for their long, stable relationships.’ So rather than reduce stigma she manages to increase it with a gratuitously offensive stereotype. She might have got the basic answer right, but the rest of the column is a huge fail.

Artwork by Camille MM

The artwork is by the artist Camille MM. Given the original letter writers description of his sessions, it seems like an appropriate one.

Decadence

I’m safely back in Seattle after my trip to Las Vegas. Having enjoyed a few days of sunshine, fine dining and alcohol I now feel I should adopt the role of the martyr and be both scourged and purged. Unfortunately I know that scourging in my case is yet another form of decadent enjoyment. If I really wanted to do penance for my visit to the city of sin, I should probably sit alone in a small beige room. Being beaten only warms my libidinous instincts.

This image, by Édouard-Henri Avril, is a good reflection of my conflicted state. He’s being both beaten and stimulated. I suspect that this is a win/win scenario for him.

Artwork by Edouard Henri Avril

Next!

This looks to be a very impatient looking lady. I’m not quite sure what she’s done to those poor fellows in the background, but clearly she has left them in a somewhat discombobulated state. Either that or she dissolved their spinal cords. No time for foreplay or cuddling afterwards. Just wham, bam, thank you man.

Next

My searching suggests this is fan art of an anime character called Annie Leonhart. I’m afraid I don’t know who the artist is.

Enjoying the sights

My solution to easy blogging while on vacation is to shamelessly steal promote other great blogs. In this case it’s the work of photographer Natasha Gornik.

This setting should be recognizable to anyone who has visited Central Park in NYC. The horse drawn carriages are the more famous means of viewing the park (and have drawn the ire of the new mayor), but this looks like one of the pedicabs. Typically they carry tourists, but in this case it’s Mistress Alex and Keith who are enjoying the sights.

I love the contrast between the formal and the fetish in the shot. You can read Natasha’s take on shooting it, along with other images from the scene, in her original post.

Mistress Alex and Keith in Central Park

Cocktail hour

It’s time for one of my standard pre-vacation warnings: I’m heading to Vegas for a few days, so updates may be a little more erratic than usual. Unfortunately I’ve got nothing kinky lined up, but I am looking forward to sitting in the sunshine and sipping a cocktail. The quality and quantity of posting may well vary in inverse proportion to the number of cocktails involved.

While I go and pack my suitcase, I’ll leave you with a lady enjoying a quiet moment with a drink of her own. She seems to have taken the necessary steps to ensure that the gentleman behind her will not be rudely interrupting her cocktail hour.

TaraMoss
The image features Tara Moss, an Canadian-Australian author, presenter and model.

Petting the puppy

Firstly, a blogging aside. I’ve been behind on my comment responses in the last few days. Too much work stuff going on. I always appreciate comments, and if someone takes the time and effort to leave one I think it’s the least I can do to respond. I can’t guarantee the usefulness or intelligence of said response, but there typically will be one! Anyway, I’ve caught up now and apologies for my tardiness.

Now changing the subject entirely, here’s your cute animal picture of the day. Lots of sites bring you cat memes or heartwarming dog shots. But only this site brings you a human puppy getting his belly rubbed by a cute red head. Well this site, and the puppies personal tumblr, and the tumblr I found it on, and the 500 other tumblrs that reblogged it. But other than all those, only this site brings it to you.

Maso[Mutt]This image is of Maso[Mutt] and was taken at Floating World 2013 by SiRoberto. I’m afraid the lady is unattributed.

Just another day at the office

This rather playful image is from Mistress Jadis. It’s not the typical pro-domme shot (despite the latex) and I like it particularly for that reason.

Mistress Jadis actually has a couple of different galleries. Her archive images are far more traditional domme shots – lots of her looking wonderful in latex and corsets. Her more recent gallery is themed in this very 40’s and 50’s style. Purely on a simple button pushing capacity, the traditional shots do more for me. I like the aesthetics of the retro-shots, but it’s not a look that features in many fantasies. However, if I was in the Sydney region and looking for a pro-domme, it’d be the retro-shots that would catch my eye. The reason being that every pro-domme has a gallery of her looking great in fetishwear. Featuring something different, something lighthearted and playful, that’s intriguing. It makes me wonder what kind of fun and interesting sessions we could do together.

Mistress JadisThe photographer for this was Bexterity. If you’re in the Sydney region and intrigued by Mistress Jadis then her list of interests is available here.

Whipping a ‘slave’

Apparently my posts on femdom and race are like buses. Nothing for ages, then you get two at once. My previous post was intended to be a one off, but then I spotted this article by British comedian Ava Vidal on a visit she made to London’s Club Pedestal. It’s an odd article, written by someone who clearly isn’t kinky. Unsurprisingly she therefore finds the whole thing strange. She finishes it by talking about race, and her discomfort with the idea of whipping someone and calling them slaves. Whatever your reaction to her comments (and I’m intentionally omitting mine from this post), it is interesting to see how somehow outside the kinky bubble might react to play that kinksters wouldn’t give a second thought to.

I’ve never attended Club Pedestal but it’s a fairly well known event. I was therefore surprised to read this in the article…

A white lady hands me a whip and tells me to beat the black man standing next to me…. later have a conversation with the black man and it turns out that this is his first time too.

It sounds incredibly dangerous to give a novice a whip and expect her to use it on another novice. Particularly in a space with other people around. She could severely hurt the submissive or take out the eye of a passerby. As the back of the man below shows, it’s possible to inflict some serious damage with a real single-tail. I can only hope that she was really given a flogger or a crop and is using whip to mean anything she could swing and hit with.

WhipMarks

Unfortunately I’ve no idea who created this image. If you can help me attribute it correctly then please leave a comment. If found it on the Dominalova tumblr.

People tell me I’m white…

I really liked this image when I first stumbled across it. She has a beautiful smile, and their contrasting skin tone is aesthetically pleasing. I was less enamored of it when I dug into its source and discovered it came from a site called Black Girls White Slaves. Even though the photograph was unchanged, the fetishization of the racial elements spoiled it somewhat.

I don’t write about racial kinks here. I’m probably the least qualified person in the world to do so. I’m a white guy who grew up in a small English village, went to a very traditional homogeneous English university and now works in tech on the US West coast. That makes me both privileged and ignorant in this area. I have an instinctive discomfort when confronted with race based kinks, but I’ve never analyzed that deeply enough to figure out if it’s rooted in genuine intellectual problems with them or simple liberal squeamishness with the idea of making an issue of race.

That said, I will make one observation that’s very indirectly related to this area: When watching US television, you can always instantly tell the relationship pairings. It doesn’t matter if it’s an advertisement or a sitcom. There will always be a mix of races, and almost zero interracial couples. I didn’t set out to observe this, it was simply something that was obvious to me when I moved here and was surrounded by US culture. I don’t think it’s true for the actual people living here, but it’s certainly true for what they get to watch on television. I wouldn’t claim that as a causal factor in racial fetishes, but I suspect it’s symptomatic of the kind of cultural influences that create them.

Slave on a choke chain

For those that don’t recognize it, the post title is from a long running joke on the Colbert Report. Stephen will start with “I don’t see race. People tell me I’m white…” and then finish with some punchline featuring a white stereotype. For example – Now, I don’t see color. People tell me I’m white and I believe them because police officers call me “sir”. Or, check out this clip for another example.