On the Edge

I saw a tweet from a pro-domme a while back that made me laugh and stuck in my head. I can’t remember who it was from or the exact words, but it was along the lines of – “Important reminder: Edging does not count as edgeplay.”

There was no context to the tweet, but I imagine it being triggered as cry of frustration. She’s ready and raring to go with needles, sutures and knives, and then yet another ‘edgeplay’ client turns up expecting lube, vibrators and some sensual tease and denial. He’s a hardcore edge player, willing to push the limits of having his dick stroked.

The inherent humor of the tweet made me smile, but I think it stuck with me because of the contradiction: Edging can actually be incredibly intense. Particularly when the bottom has no control over it. Clearly it’s not edgeplay, as there’s no risk involved, but when I think about some of my most intense sessions, often edging and denial was involved. Pain comes and goes. It can often feel very binary. I can either take it or I can’t. Yet sensual frustration and pleasurable denial is a wave of sensation that can mess with the brain in strange ways for hours. I’ve even sobbed in those kind of scenes. I’m not saying it’s more intense than needles through the dick but, at its best, it can be of comparable intensity, which seems very counter-intutive.

This artwork is of course by Kami Tora.

Cause and Effect

The effect of pornography on its consumers is an endlessly debated topic. I’m sure the study described in this article will not end it, but it does offer an interesting datapoint.

The study in question interviewed some porn ‘superfans’ at AVN and asked them a few simple questions designed to expose misogynistic attitudes. The result showed the porn fans were actually slightly more progressive than the national average on some questions, and no worse than the average on the remaining questions. Not exactly a slam dunk for porn, and the survey does seem incredibly simplistic, but it’s a result that probably runs against mainstream expectations.

It’d be interesting to see a similar study done with a breakdown across the type of porn people liked. You’d hope that femdom porn fans would be particularly supportive of women and their rights, but sadly I’m not sure that life is always that simple. People have a remarkable ability to retain multiple conflicting viewpoints all that the same time, particularly when each viewpoint benefits them in different situations. A depressing large number of guys seems to get off on the fantasy of dominant women while still being selfish sexist assholes on a day to day basis.

Not exactly sure where this image is from. I suspect it’s one of the cuckold themed femdom sites, but I couldn’t track a specific referenence down.

Bondage Liberation

This is a lovely shot from Bondage Liberation and Elise Graves. What particularly makes it work for me is the contrast between the heavily fetishistic bondage scene and the human touch of Elise’s smile and casual pose. It’s great to be intense while still retaining a sense of playfulness.

Image is from this tweet. You can get a lot more similar content at the Bondage Liberation site.

Better Late than Never

The Huffpost has an article about a woman who discovered BDSM in her 50’s and ended up with a kinky partner twenty four years her junior. It’s a cute tale and I liked the part about their cleverly constructed cover story for how they met.

What I found surprising about it was the idea of being awakened to BDSM late in life by going to a class on it. I absolutely  don’t mean that critically. I’m always keen for more people to discover kink and I totally get her attitude of “OMG! I need to try all the things!” when exploring the physical side of it for the first time. It’d be great if more people could be converted to the joys of BDSM via classes. I just find it odd – as someone who had kinky thoughts from a very early age – to imagine being not kinky for decades and then suddenly getting into it. For me it seems like a very fundamental love/hate kind of thing, but obviously that’s not true for everyone.

I’m afraid I don’t know the artist for this drawing.

Update: Thanks to a helpful comment I can now attribute this to the artist Kirsty Whiten.

Location, Location, Location

For submissives who primarily play with pro-dommes, where is the best place in the world to live? Setting aside existing relationships – assume we’re talking about a newly minted fresh faced submissive with no history or experience – what location offers the greatest possibilities?

Having just returned from the UK, I think my answer would probably be London. Obviously, like other great cities such as New York or Tokyo, it’s home to a large number of talented pro-dommes and plays host to a lot of visiting dommes. If you want to turn a kinky session into a day trip, then dommes in places like Paris, Manchester, Birmingham and most of the South of England are options. Make it into a long weekend, and suddenly cities like Berlin, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, Edinburgh and Glasgow are all possibilities. On top of this, the UK sex work laws are less stupid than the US (while still being very stupid), and social attitudes to kink tend to be relatively liberal. It’s not perfect, but on balance I think it might just be the best place to be a kinky person in the professional scene.

Obviously quality always beats quantity, and you could have a fabulous D/s relationship with someone while living in a tiny hamlet that’s miles from anywhere. But chemistry is important whether a relationship is professional or lifestyle, and the more people you have to meet, the better your odds of finding that elusive fizzy reaction.

This is Lola Ruin, a Manchester based pro-domme. She’s about a two hour train journey from London. Not exactly a quick trip, but still faster than jetting between major cities in the US. The image is from her twitter feed.

Multidimensional Sexuality

I thought this article covering the latest research on the link between sexual orientation and genetics was interesting. The short version is that’s no such thing as a single ‘gay gene’. Instead there are multiple genes that play a role in sexual orientation, and genetics are only part of the story.

Another interesting aspect – as this tweet makes clear – is that sexual attraction needs to be judged on two dimensions rather than one. The classic kinsey scale is one dimensional, running from 100% heterosexual to 100% homosexual. This latest study shows that we need to think in two dimensions – same sex and opposite sex attraction. Feeling more attracted to the same sex doesn’t necessarily mean being less attracted to the opposite sex, and vice-versa. You could be attracted to strongly to both, strongly to one or strongly to neither.

This image is from the Sunstone comic series by Stjepan Šejić. It’s a series that manages to cover a pretty full set of sexual dimensions.

Flying Back

I’m writing this midway between Washington State and the United Kingdom. Below me is 30,000 feet of air, a jet plane and a sore bottom, in that order. The former is courtesy of Boeing, the latter courtesy of Adreena Angela and her cane. There are as many different approaches to femdom as there are dommes, but one thing is always consistent: If you session just before you fly, expect a caning.

Playing with Mistress Adreena proved to be a great way to both start and finish my UK trip. It was ridiculously hot for my final days in London, making everything very sweaty and sticky. Normally that would be a bad thing, but in certain situations and with the right set of kinks, it can actually be a bonus. I love scent play, so having her damp armpit smooshed into my face was a little slice of sweaty heaven. Mistress Adreena was also careful to keep us both thoroughly hydrated, although my liquids came to me via an indirect and secondhand route.

If you’re interested in scheduling a session, Mistress Adreena’s professional site is available here. At the time of writing, twitter has somehow managed to screw-up her account, but her instagram is available here (source for the above picture).

Lies, Damned Lies and Sex Trafficking Crackdowns

When the US government was passing SESTA/FOSTA and shutting down backpage, sex workers were very vocal in claiming it would do nothing to stop sex trafficking and would actually make it harder to track. Now thanks to this article on newly discovered government memos, we can see how right those sex workers were. Backpage was apparently incredibly helpful in tracking dubious advertisements and alerting authorities when they thought children might be being trafficked. They allowed users to report ads, flagged photographs of anyone looking underage, worked with authorities on best practices and suggested filtering based on phone numbers that law enforcement could provide.

None of this stopped prosecutors spinning horror stories in the press about backpage, because of course the attack on backpage and sex workers (by proxy) was never about stopping trafficking. It was all about the look of the thing, scoring cheap political points and imposing control over what women can and cannot do with their bodies. The end result has been exactly what sex workers said would happen. Rather than working with a site with established expertise to solve the problem, the authorities have spent a fortune prosecuting them while losing any visibility they had into genuine exploitation.

I had no idea what an appropriate image for this post would be, so I’ll settle for a drawing showing exactly what I’d like to happen to every prosecutor involved in this fiasco. The artwork is by Annmo Night.