Strange Logic

A new documentary by Louis Theroux entitled ‘Selling Sex‘ has been creating a stir in my social media feed. As you might guess from the title, it tackles the subject of sex work, following three women involved in the industry. Most of the sex workers I follow were not impressed. This thread by Lola Ruin and this tweet by Mistress Evilyne are pretty indicative of the feedback I saw.  Even the people involved in it were not happy.

I’ve not seen the show so I can’t review it. Instead I want to review a review of it. Specifically, this review in the Guardian by Lucy Mangan. I’m sure if you asked Lucy she’d claim her article, like the show, was a balanced and nuanced take on a tricky subject. Yet I think her final paragraph, containing the sentences below, show just how illogical and confused people can be when it comes to sex work.

The true question is how we define coercion or exploitation. The aim of the law’s definition is surely to ensure that anyone selling his or her body is doing so willingly, as a matter of absolutely free choice. Whether this can be said of any of the women here, I am not sure.

The idea of selling your body is not only a tired cliche but also makes no sense. A sex worker no more sells their body that does an athlete, a fashion model or a nurse. Like all those professions, a sex worker uses their body and their brain to provide a service. At no point before, during or after the transaction does a client own any part of their body. Possibly used underwear or sweaty athletic wear might be purchasable, should both parties tastes run in that direction, but that’s a whole different dynamic.

Logically, if having sex implies some transfer of ownership, then the same must be true regardless of the involvement (or not) of a fee. So does Lucy think that a wife having sex with her husband results in him owning her body? Is she a fan of bringing back the idea of Coverture more widely? It would seem an unusual position for a Guardian journalist to adopt.

The other strange part of that final paragraph is the bar she sets for doing sex work – ‘a matter of absolutely free choice.’ How many of us do our jobs out of absolutely free choice? I love my job, but I’d drop it tomorrow if I had the financial independence to make an absolutely free choice. That’s why it’s my job and not my hobby.

Coal mining is a dangerous, dirty and physically challenging job. As a result miners are often lauded as blue collar hero’s, taking on tough work to put food on the table for their families. Are they doing that as an absolutely free choice? Maybe we should we shut down the mines until we’re 100% sure of that. The idea that miners don’t understand the choices they make would be rightly criticized as patronizing and insulting. Yet people like Lucy are happy to infantilize sex workers and imply that they other people’s judgements (the law) should replace the workers own choices. Instead, shouldn’t we be celebrating sex workers for the difficult job they choose to do?

This is a long post spun from just a few sentences in a review of a show I’ve not even seen. Yet those few sentences seem illustrative of how even intelligent people can have internalized damaging and illogical views on sex work. From the online feedback that seems to be a problem the show’s creators shared.

I’ve no idea what’s an appropriate image to accompany this kind of post. Given I mentioned Lola Ruin at the top of it, I’m going to use that as an excuse to feature a lovely shot of her (from her twitter feed).

Ambiguous Moment

My favorite femdom images are often those with a degree of ambiguity to them. The kind that let you project your own stories and fantasies into them. For example, what’s happening in the image below? Is this a candid shot captured between filming a scene? Aftercare at the end of a whipping? Or just a pause and a chance to inspect her handiwork before wielding the whip again? I like to imagine it as a caring sensual moment, a contrast of touch and sensations to the intensity of the whip. But that probably says more about my kinks than it does about the image itself.

I believe the domme here is Lady Diosa. I’m not aware of a professional site for her, but she does have films posted here.

Strange Comfort

I’ve been in a bondage frame of mind recently. I think it’s the cold weather. There’s something comforting and relaxing about certain types of bondage. Almost like being gently hugged. That sense of relaxing into an embrace, with no further thought being necessary. Some people like to avoid the chill by cuddling in front of a roaring fire. Others tilt towards layers of rope, tight leather straps and isolation hoods. I think my dream scenario would be to combine the two, with heavy bondage and cuddling in front of a roaring fire. I really need to make that happen someday.

This image is by the artist Harry B, sourced via this tweet.

Warning Signs

Apologies for the lack of an update yesterday. This was due to me being collapsed on my couch in a post session haze of endorphins. I had my first session of 2020 yesterday, and Savannah Sly made it a highly memorable one. 

There are two key warning signs that something particularly painful is about to happen when playing. The first is if the domme briefly disappears to find a specific toy and reemerges with a particularly gleeful expression. Whatever she has found will not go well for you. The second sign is if she starts to do something, then pauses, and decides she needs to muffle your moans before proceeding. She might be concerned about the neighbors, but you should be more concerned with what’s about to happen to your delicate parts.

In the case of our session yesterday, the toy in question was Savannah’s medical stapler and (equally important) the staple removal tool. The muffling was required when she decided to apply it to the tip of the cock. Right over the urethral opening. Ouchy.

Here’s a different medical scene showing one of the more fun ways to muffle a patient’s screams. This is of course by the artist Rubex.

Delicious!

At first glance this seems like a perfectly ordinary photograph. Just an attractive masked lady drinking a can of La Croix in a kitchen while a naked man with strange headgear cooks in the background. I’m sure that counts as any Tuesday in Domina Yuki’s world. However, if you look closely, very closely, at the can in the original fullsized image, there is an subtle hidden message. For anyone whose device doesn’t let them zoom effectively, I’ve done the work for you here. There’s absolutely no danger of ever having a shortage of that particular product.

From this tweet in Domina Yuki’s twitter feed.

Jennifer Brooks

A final image in this vintage themed series of posts. Miss Brooks below is Jennifer Brooks who started out as a spanking model and gradually shifted into playing primarily dominant roles over time. I knew her from her work in the Leda videos from Ed Lee. I hadn’t realized until I start researching this post that she actually went on to start her own company for spanking films called Brooks Applications and also published the Femdom magazine Behind the Scene. You can see an example cover from Issue 4 (1993) of that here. 

I’m pretty certain I’ve browsed examples of her latter work, without actually realizing it wasn’t associated with Leda. My bad. She shut down her company just over 10 years ago in 2009. Whatever you’re doing now Miss Brooks, thanks for all the great magazines and videos you created over the years.

I feel I can’t complete this post without a callout to the text alongside the cane image above. It’s not often that kinky porn will include a phrase like “Guaranteed to break the will of the most wretched curmudgeon…” Kudos to whoever wrote that caption. As a man who sees curmudgeon in his future, I’d agree the cane is an excellent implement to break that particular affliction. 

Name that Toy

Today’s vintage shot features a rather strange toy. It looks like a feather duster that got attacked by moths or a device for scrubbing out boiler pipes. I’m not sure if it’s a tickly thing, a slappy thing or a hitty thing. A softer way to cane someone maybe?

I’ve seen similar toys in other old kinky shots, so it was clearly a thing you could buy back then. I’ve never encountered it in a modern playspace or seen one for sale online, so presumably it wasn’t a lot of fun to use. Any ideas from readers on what exactly this strange thing is and how it’s used?

Doggishness

Continuing the vintage theme, here is what looks like an early example of public humiliation and/or puppy play. I say ‘looks like’, because it turns out that this isn’t a D/s or porn shot, but is in fact Art. I originally guessed it was a domme in 60’s London, but it was actually shot in Vienna in 1968 as a piece called “From the Portfolio of Doggishness.” Clearly I don’t have to explain to my highly educated readers what makes this art rather than a couple of kinksters screwing with the locals for giggles, as I’m sure it’s self-evident.

The woman holding the leash is Valie Export and I have to say I do like her slightly disinterested pose and expression here. I would say it’s hot, but that obviously wouldn’t be appropriate for a serious artistic piece of this nature. 

As a slightly random observation, I do think it’s funny that the image of Lucy SweetKill I featured recently appears to capture the idea of Doggishness far more accurately than this image does. Almost all dogs are way more enthusiastic about going for a walk than the man (Peter Weibel) is here.

Vintage Tech. Timeless Kink.

I feel a series of old vintage femdom photographs coming on. We’ll start with a slightly unusual example. Normally it’s the fashion choices or badly performed kink activities that identify an image as vintage. In this case the fashion choice and the kink is fairly timeless. It’s the technology in the background that really gives it away.

For any of my readers under 30, that’s a TV with an aerial on top of it. You’d have to go and wiggle the aerial to get a decent signal on the channel you’d chosen. Fortunately, you’d have already walked across the room to change the channel anyway, so you were perfectly placed to mess with the aerial at the same time.  That’s efficiency for you. 

Submissive Gaming

Yesterday’s post got me thinking more generally about the intersection between videogames and kink. Obviously using sex and fetish to sell videogames is nothing new and, like every genre of art, there have been sexually explicit examples from its earliest days. What I’m more interested in are the mainstream games that plug into a BDSM or D/s vibe. The kind that push our kinky buttons without us necessarily being immediately aware of it.

There’s a clear link between topping and playing videogames, in that both are about control, flow and mastery of the local environment. That’s obviously what Gita Jackson in yesterday’s article picked up on. From the submissive perspective it’s a little trickier. For example, I can’t imagine a videogame about being tied up would work all that well. What would the controls be like? Mash Y to moan. Hit X to safeword if pain meter fills up. Wiggle the thumbstick to move your fingers and prevent ‘Game Over’ due to pins and needles. It probably wouldn’t be a bestseller. 

There are plenty of games that involve rescuing a princess or some equivalent trophy female character, but they’re clearly not femdom. The female character is passive and helpless. There are an increasing number of games with powerful female leads, but they don’t tie to a D/s dynamic. For a game to push my kinky buttons it’d need an active and powerful female character that drives the story, but also the ability for me to have a fun gaming experience acting in support of her. That’s a tricky combination to find.

I’d guess the best place to look for examples would be RPGs. They typically have different characters working together and interesting mixes of genders and power dynamics. For example, both Final Fantasy VIII and IX had feisty female leads (Rinoa and Garnet respectively) with the male lead character working on their behalf. Hunting around online I also came across this video from the game Ni No Kuni 2, which clearly has a femdom slant to it. Does anyone have any other game suggestions? Anything that pushes both their controller and their kinky buttons? I’ve been pondering it all day and haven’t come up with much.

Medieval concepts of chivalry are an obvious dynamic for games with a femdom slant. Just as long as the Queen is the type to charge into battle and not spend all day moping around in her castle.