Femdom Resource – Page 221 – The beauty of dominant women

Bondage as art

A Guardian article on Nobuyoshi Araki caught my eye recently and sent me on a trip down memory lane. If you haven’t heard the name before, he’s a prolific and famous Japanese photographer. He’s probably best known for his images of Kinbaku, aka women in bondage (for example this, this and this). The article itself is a fairly silly one on on the nonsensical topic of art versus pornography, but the man himself has a special place in my heart.

I originally came across his work in the 1990’s when I was still in college. One of the major British television networks showed a documentary about him, which was surprising given the explicit nature of his artwork. The program featured a lot of bondage and showed him working with riggers and models to create complex and beautiful shots. I found it amazing. At the time my exposure to BDSM imagery, and particularly bondage imagery, was very limited. The UK had strict rules on BDSM porn and most of it was either sloppy cheap vintage bondage or cheesy commercial rubbish. Yet here was a real artist taking the subject seriously, working with a skilled team, and showing how beautiful proper rope bondage could be. It opened my eyes to the potential of BDSM for being more than just a bit of kinky fun in the bedroom.

Unfortunately, for the purposes of this blog, I’m not aware of any femdom slanted pieces that he has done. So instead I’ll feature some alternative Japanese bondage, in this case it’s a vintage piece from 1954.

You can see more from the same publication in this gallery. I believe (based on Google Translation) it’s from a magazine called Kitan Club.

I now pronounce you…

One of the things I’ve really come to appreciate about the West Coast of the US is the attitude to weddings here. They’re so much more relaxing and enjoyable than the formal English equivalent. There’s no interminable church service, followed by hours of formal photographs in the church grounds, followed by endless speeches over dinner. I’ve been to weddings here where I strolled from the bar to the ceremony, and the whole thing was done before I’d finished my drink. Hell, my ice didn’t even have time to melt.

In the unlikely event I ever did get hitched, a West Coast style wedding would definitely be my preference, and I’d hope for a few wedding photographs like this one. It’s the third and final one of my little wedding mini-series, and my personal favourite. I love their smiles. Plus, a few shots like this would definitely discourage parents from dragging out the wedding album every time they visited.

I found this on the She wears the trousers tumblr. Annoyingly I’ve been unable (for the second post in a row) to track down the original source for it.

With this leash…

I’m treating this as a continuation of the wedding theme from my previous post, although her dress isn’t exactly a traditional one. But then again, a leash isn’t exactly part of the standard ceremony either, so let’s just roll with the fantasy.

In contrast to yesterday’s shot this groom looks very attentive and eager to go. He has a bit of the ‘Squirrel!‘ about him. I wonder what the equivalent for submissive guys is? From what I’ve seen from most of them it’s probably ‘Boots!‘

I found this image on the subboy and mature ladies tumblr. I’m afraid I couldn’t trace an original attribution.

If anyone knows any reason why this couple…

Wedding themed shots crop up fairly frequently in femdom imagery. I guess that’s not too surprising, given there’s traditionally a power dynamic associated with a wedding day. Although I’m not really sure if they’re reinforcing or subverting a theme. On the one hand there’s the cliche of the blushing virgin bride on her wedding day being deflowered by her virile new husband. Clearly they twist that idea on it’s head. On the other hand there’s the cliche about the husband losing his freedom and being simultaneously emasculated and domesticated by his new wife. In that case they play into the idea. As an aside, I think it’s also interesting that they follow the traditional femdom porn clothing conventions. The woman is in a special outfit denoting her role (white dress/black leather) while the man is dressed conventionally (smart suit/naked).

Typically wedding themed shots don’t do much for me. However, I like this one for the barely suppressed smile on the man passing the couple by. That’s exactly the kind of half-smile I’d be sporting if I passed this pair in the street. There’s always an ongoing and never resolved debate about PDS (in fact Orlando was writing about it just this weekend), but in this case I think they’re spreading a little mirth wherever they go. Particularly if there’s a beaming bride to go with that grumpy groom.

I found this image on Red Head with a Riding Crop tumblr. My internet sleuthing leads me to believe the photographer is on flickr as m.o.n.o.c.h.r.o.m.e. Based on his portfolio it looks like a candid shot snapped in the street, rather than something posed. I also believe it was taken in Edinburgh in August, which almost certainly means it was something to do with the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Given the leaflets the ‘groom’ is holding, I’m guessing they were drumming up support for a show they were staging. So it’s street theater rather than PDS. Does that make a difference to the debate?

Mostly effective parenting

Something short and simply today. This is from the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal strip. It sounds like a clever parenting plan, but she better hope her daughter isn’t dating a budding CBT fan.

Better living through chemistry

I’m always curious about the physical processes associated with subspace. I’ve written about it in the past (for example here), despite the fact I know very little about the subject. Fortunately this is the internet, and they let any idiot with a keyboard post his random thoughts.

I do know that Oxytocin is thought to be a part of the subspace brain chemistry. I was therefore intrigued to encounter this article describing how it can be purchased and administered as a nasal spray. The sales pitch is based on improving love and relationships, but it made me wonder what affect it would have on BDSM play. I love the strong wave of emotions I get deep in a scene, so would this make it easier to get to that point? Or would combining the intensity of a scene with a heavy dose of this hormone just end up screwing you up? And if it did work, would that be actually be a good thing? Or would it feel like shortchanging your BDSM relationship?

For someone who tends towards a hedonistic lifestyle, I’m surprisingly straight when it comes to drugs. Big fan of food, drink, and sex, but never smoked a cigarette or done a line in my life. So I’m unlikely to be the guinea pig for this particular experiment. But I would be fascinated to read the results if someone ever repeated the article writer’s experiment in a kinky context.

I’ll leave you with a shot from Men in Pain that represents one of the best ways to get me into subspace – nipple torture. No nasally administered hormones required. Just squeeze and twist.

Reality and physicality

I had a slightly unusual session yesterday. Not so much in the ‘how’ and the ‘what’, but in the ‘who’ and the ‘where’ (the ‘why’ is left as an exercise for my therapist). It featured Mistress Yuki playing in Lady Lydia’s space. I’ve played with Mistress Yuki in the past down in San Francisco (see here and here), and was happy to hear she’d be in Seattle for a few days this month. It was a lot of fun to get together, if a little disconcerting to play with someone new and different in a space I know so well.

It was a fairly intense session, with lots of corporal play, and we finished with some piercing. I was pretty zoned by that point. Time and space were askew, and my brain really didn’t care. As Mistress Yuki moved around the table I was suddenly struck by a tremendous sense of her physicality. Attractive women in exciting undergarments always have a pretty powerful presence, but this was more than that. Her body had a three dimensional solidity that felt more real than anything else in the room, including myself.

I’ve experienced this kind of reality distortion before in subspace and, as I pondered it afterwards, it reminded me of passage from one of my favorite books – Neuromancer. The quote features a mysterious man named Armitage telling the protagonist (Case) that his lost hacking abilities could be miraculously restored to him.

“What would you say if I told you we could correct your neural damage, Case?” Armitage suddenly looked to Case as if he were carved from a block of metal; inert, enormously heavy. A statue. He knew now that this was a dream, and that soon he’d wake. Armitage wouldn’t speak again. Case’s dreams always ended in these freeze frames, and now this one was over.

That description of a character and a moment in time has always stuck with me. I read it long before I did a BDSM scene, but that sense of sudden physicality coupled with unreality, fits beautifully with what I experienced last night in subspace. That’s perhaps appropriate for the book that popularized the term cyberspace.

The above images were taken from Mistress Yuki’s tumblr. If you’re in the San Francisco area and would like to session with her, check out her main site.

As for Neuromancer, if you’ve never read it and aren’t violently opposed to the cyberpunk genre, I definitely recommend giving it a shot. It’s an incredibly influential novel, and an archetype in its genre. It’s amazing to read it now and realize it was written in the early 80’s on a 1927 Hermes model portable manual typewriter.

Incoming!

A humbler is a pretty evil device in its own right. Getting kicked in the balls while wearing one adds a whole new level of devilishness. Although it looks like at least one person there is really enjoying the set-up.

I found this on the Femdom Archive tumblr. Annoyingly I can’t locate an original source. The smiling blonde does look familiar, but I just can’t place her face.

Updated: Lady Annisa left a comment suggesting this is Mistress Alexandra of London. I can’t find the image on her site, but I believe that’s the correct attribution. She certainly has a number of CBT films featuring a humbler in her clips store.

Cute young couple

After the verbiage of yesterday’s post, here’s something short and sweet – a cute young couple and a chastity device.

It’s my impression that chastity play is something people grow into over time. When you’re enjoying the surging hormones of youth, then the idea of delayed gratification is not a familiar one. Certainly when I was young the idea of locking up my new found source of entertainment would have sounded like crazy talk. Although I’m guessing a girl as cute as this could probably have talked me into it. And by probably, I mean with 100% certainty, if she’d smiled sweetly and whispered in my ear.

I found this on the I Crave Domination tumblr. I think it’s originally from the Submissive Cuckolds site.

Once more into the hornet’s nest

My previous post on male lingerie got me thinking about the topic of forced feminization. Specifically the always controversial variant that targets humiliation and embarrassment. It’s not my kink. I actually like the idea of transformation, but humiliation is never an interest of mine in any kind of play. However, I am confused by some of the opinions I see on it. As often happens, I find myself approaching it from a slightly different perspective.

A widely held view is that it’s misogynist. Why should someone be humiliated by wearing clothes than women commonly wear? If the clothes demean the wearer in the submissives eyes, and he expects women to wear them as a matter of course, therefore women must be always be demeaned in his eyes. There are lots of blog posts along these lines floating around. For example, two minutes archive hunting took me to this one by Stabbity and this one by Peroxide.

I think it’s certainly true that this type of play can be misogynistic, but is it always? That seems to make a very crude assumption about the transitive properties of clothing and context. Circumstances and social norms would seem to matter. For example, make me do a presentation at work tomorrow in Lederhosen and I’m going to be pretty embarrassed. Not so much if I was at Oktoberfest. Or stick me in a sparkly skintight leotard in the middle of some ice, and I will undoubtedly be humiliated. That doesn’t mean I look down on female figure skaters. Their abilities amaze me.

Being ashamed of very conventional everyday clothing would be a red flag. But typically it seems the people adopting that look are not into the humiliation kink at all. They’re trying to be as convincing and as feminine as possible (for example). The typical forced feminization outfit is the kind of over the top provocative clothing that’s hard for anyone to pull off with flair, let alone a hairy, overweight middle aged guy. Are they getting off on the humiliation of women’s clothes? Or are they getting off on wearing a highly sexualized outfit that makes them look silly (and happens to be women’s clothes)? If I think a french maid outfit on some guys looks ridiculous, does that make me a misandrist?

I’m not trying to argue this kind of play is always non-problematic. It definitely raises some complex questions. But I do think the logic of the view that ‘positive crossdressing=good’ and ‘forced feminization=bad’ is a bit simplistic.

The original source for this image appears to have vanished. I’m assuming it’s an Fm shot, but thanks to the hood it’s actually hard to tell. I think the anonymity of it makes it kind of hot. Is this the good or the bad sort of forced feminization?