Femdom Resource – Page 284 – The beauty of dominant women

What to think…

The first image below is floating around on a number of femdom tumblr’s, having started life (AFAIK) on maymay’s Submissive Secrets. I can’t argue with the surface level sentiment *. The left image is far more aesthetically and erotically pleasing, and I’d definitely prefer it as a representation of femdom than the one on the right. However, contrarian that I am, I can’t help feeling the urge to dig a little below the surface and maybe quibble with some of the subtext.

In picking that particular right hand image I feel the creator ‘cheated’ somewhat. I’m sure Lady Joanne is a wonderful woman (you can see her site here) but that photograph certainly doesn’t do her any favors. That costume is a horrible cliche, her makeup extreme and the activity depicted lacks any chemistry. However, I’m sure the creators goal wasn’t simply to highlight a single bad photograph. After all, there is an endless supply of bad porn photographs of all types. The contrast being made here is something more that qualitative. The left shot very obviously lacks any traditional fetishwear or kinky props. There’s no clearly defined activity, just a sexy shot of woman pushing the man back in a forceful way. So surely you could change the right shot for a ‘better’ kink heavy photograph, without changing the basic message?

Lets say, for example, we changed the right photograph for one of those I’ve included below (click to enlarge). I picked these fairly randomly from a large collection of similar ‘men in pain‘ shots. They all show various fetish outfits, traditional BDSM props and more extreme activities. They’re certainly not my favorite femdom shots, but there’s at least a few elements in all of them I find appealing. I like the intensity, the drama and the physical manifestation of the control.

So if one of these images had been used on the right, what difference would it make? It really shouldn’t change the basic message, right? Yet somehow, I think it does. With one of these on the right I don’t think I’d care which of the images came to mind of our generic Miss X. On one hand it’s sexy fun D/s and on the other it’s intense sensation D/s. I’d definitely prefer she didn’t freak out and treat me like a weirdo, but anyone who did that probably was never going to end up on my Christmas card list anyway. I’m proud of some of the crazy stuff I’ve done. It’s not always necessary, but it is enjoyable.

All the commonly depicted BDSM accoutrements – ropes, whips, cuffs, pegs, needles, boots, corsets, buckets of soapy frogs – are just tools. Ways to mediate and amplify power exchange. They often incorrectly get put to center stage in porn. Yet this misuse doesn’t mean they’re not still useful (and fun) tools. They weren’t specially selected by a secret committee in an effort to make kinky people look silly. So lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I’d like people to think of femdom and think of a women taking control and having hot forceful sex exactly the way she wants it. I’d also like people to think of it and picture a woman skillfully suspending a guy with many feet of rope and then whipping him (and her) happy with a single tail.

* Although I’m not sure what is with the ‘being young sucks’ part of it. I think I was 13 or 14 years old the last time I thought that, and at that age outing myself as submissive to women was way down my list of priorities. Back then I’d have said I was a dominant Gorean rope master with an interest in furries if it would have landed me a date.

A delightfully devious device

This looks like a particularly exciting device for nipple torture. I think it’s called a nipple tree. There’s a name which conjures up a fairly weird mental image. I’ve seen them used before, but this is by far the prettiest, with its chrome and perspex design. I imagine it must ideal for very carefully inflicting just the perfect amount of pain via the clover clamps.

As for the mistress in these shots, I could swear I know who it is, but I just can’t connect the face to a name. It’s driving me slightly nuts, and reverse image searching hasn’t helped. So if you can help me attribute correctly then please leave me a comment with the lady’s name.

Updated: Thanks to a comment by Downlow I’ve finally identified the mistress as the talented Dante Posh. She’s a NYC/NJ based pro-domme, although she also travels extensively. I believe this is from a scene she shot for the English Mansion.

I found these two images on the appropriately named Tortured Nipples Tumblr.

Discovered Femdom

My post from a few days ago, featuring an image that wasn’t actually femdom in the original context, got me thinking about similar images. I mentally categorize this type of material as ‘discovered’ femdom, in the sense that it’s discovered by the viewer rather than (necessarily) intended by the original artist. I’ve posted these kind of images in the past, for example here, here and here. They’re images that will appeal in different ways to different people. Not all submissives may get the same dominant vibe from them that I do. And non-submissives may like them for entirely different reasons.

While it’s hard to put into words exactly what makes one image work and another not, I have noticed two common components. One is very direct eye contact. Another is a composition that places the camera at a slightly lower vantage point than normal. That these two components work so well shouldn’t be surprising to me. I also find it very appealing when a mistress leans over and makes eye contact while torturing me. That pushes me very quickly into a submissive space. Clearly there’s something pretty fundamental about those components, so fundamental in fact that they even work when present in non-obvious femdom contexts.

I wonder if it’s something to do with childhood. That was a time when I literally looked up to every female authority figure. And adults always tends to engage very directly and stare straight at children when talking to them, something that doesn’t typically happen between two adults. I had a very normal and relatively liberal childhood. It seems pretty disgusting and discomforting to think back to the relationship between my mother (or my aunt or my nursery teacher or whoever) and the infant paltego and connect that to my kinky sexuality now. I’ve certainly no desire to do age related role-play. But the deep seated appeal of the stare from above has to come from somewhere and that seems to be as good a place as any.

Just as a random aside, I wonder if the growth in gay marriage and same sex households with adopted kids will make research in this area easier? Looking at the differences in the percentages of men attracted to female dominance from m+m, f+m and f+f parents would be interesting. Of course controlling for others factors is highly non-trivial.

This image is a particularly clever example of one making effective use of both components. Using the mirror it manages to create eye contact, a upwards POV type shot and a great view of her beautiful behind. Not sure what it does for anyone else out there, but it sure works for me.

Vintage Beating

I’ve no idea when this was actually shot or what was the original publication context. I just like the semi-authentic nature of it. Clearly it’s posed for a photographer, but there’s a smack of verisimilitude that you don’t find in a lot of old shots. Or in a lot of modern shots for that matter.

I found it on the Slaves of the Goddess tumblr site.

Dreaming of a white christmas…

I’m typically not a fan of the holiday season blog posts that feature well known festive figures in out of character fetish gear (e.g. Sissy Santa’s). I normally get enough off the holiday spirit without also needing to encounter it via my favorite sex blogs. However, I’ll give myself a pass on this image. Disney only has a loose association with Christmas in my mind, and Snow White really does work well as a domme. I can just imagine her whipping the dwarfs into line.

I encountered this via the Loves Bright Women tumblr. It’s originally from Cartoon Girls on DeviantArt.

D/s dynamics in a pro-domme session (revisited)

A few weeks ago I published a couple of posts on the subject of D/s dynamics in a pro-domme session (here and here). The second of those heavily referenced an earlier post by the Dishevelled Domina entitled ‘Power Exchange‘.

It stimulated a lengthy discussion, firstly in the comments and then secondly between the Dishevelled Domina and myself via email. That email discussion grew into a sprawling mini-epic that had a lot of interesting points but was far too enormous to easily share. We (mostly DD if I’m honest) then did some ruthless editing and produced a more digestible snack sized version of our conversation.

Even at snack size it’s still a pretty substantive discussion, and so I’ve published it on a separate page . If you were interested in my original posts, or the general topic of D/s and pro-dommes, I’d suggest taking a look. DD has also published the same discussion in a new post on her blog.

A picture never lies

I’m annoyingly still sick, but decided to put a hold on the medical theme for the moment. As an alternative here’s an interesting shot.

When I first saw it (on the New Bootblack’s Oubliette) I assumed it was a ruined orgasm shot. It looks like she’s capping his penis just at the critical moment. I liked the fact he was unrestrained and relaxed, accepting what she did to him. I also liked the lack of fetish gear. I imagined a slow tease and denial session, with a ruined orgasm to finish. That was a pleasant little mental movie.

However, when I did a reverse image search, I found it was from hegre-art.com. That is by no means a femdom site. There’s actually a short free video clip from the scene, and it’s pretty clear it’s just a massage and handjob, no ruined orgasm at all. Perfectly fine porn from within that genre, but not exactly how I’d pictured it when seeing the image in the original femdom tumblr context. Essentially a lot of the aspects that I liked about it were projections of my own imagination given the context the image was presented to me in.

Medical Artwork

In the last few days, as I’ve hunted around for interesting medical style femdom images, I’ve been surprised by the numerical differences between photographs and artwork. There’s a relatively limited amount of interesting medical photographs. The English Mansion has a pretty extensive clinic section and there are some dommes that specialize in medical shots (like Lady Anna’s clips), but it’s generally not a common theme. In contrast it seems to be a very popular subject for artists. Just looking through my Femdom Artwork section, artists such as Augustine, Dmitrys, Namio Harukawa, Rubex, Sardax, Kami Tora, Vernice61 and Waldo have all done non-trivial amounts of medical themed work.

I suspect that’s partly because suitable equipped spaces are hard to find, where dungeon and domestic interiors are a dime a dozen. I also suspect it’s something to do with balancing the harder reality a photograph presents to the viewer. A domme in a Halloween style nurses uniform and a toy stethoscope just looks kind of silly. But a fully equipped and realistic medical space (like this German one) is probably too much for all but the most hardcore medical fetishist. Balancing between those two seems difficult. I’d guess a lot of submissives want to take some of the themes of control, invasion of personal space and helplessness from medical procedures but recast them slightly. This kind of fantasy projection seems easier in artwork, where more is left to the viewers imagination.

Obviously to illustrate this I needed a medically themed image that illustrates this flexibility of fantasy. So here’s something from the obscure artist known as German. There’s a lot going on, with a feminized young man, some oral worship and a nurse with an enema in progress.

I found this image on a new site dedicated to this artists work that someone was kind enough to email me. If you like this image then I’d suggest taking a look at the site, as there’s a huge number of similar drawings there. Here’s another one from there that I particularly liked.

Inspecting the goods

I’m still suffering from some random flu bug, so I’m going to use that as an excuse to continue the nurse/medical theme.

This shot is a little more serious than the dominatrixy over-the-top latex uniforms often seen for medical play. She looks like a woman with a plan. If he’s lucky a sperm sample is somewhere in his future. Although if she follows that by reaching for a felt pen and marking dotted cut lines then his luck will have taken a decided turn for the worse.

I found this on the Felm Cyber tumblr.

Sick

It never fails. I take a nice long vacation from work for the holiday season. I get a bunch of dinners and parties lined up. And then I get sick with some stupid bug.

Updates and comment replies might therefore be a little erratic over the next few days as I try and shake off whatever the hell is attacking my throat and sinuses right now. In the meantime I’m predicting a medical theme for the next set of posts. I sadly don’t have a nurse in a crisp white uniform to sooth my feverish brow with a cooling cloth but it doesn’t hurt to dream.

This image does feature a nurse, but there doesn’t appear to be a lot of soothing going on. I’m not sure of the exact medial procedure she’s planning to use, but I’d predicting he’s going to feel particularly well cleansed when she’s done. It was of course created by the great Namio Harukawa.