50 Shades of Lavender

Literally seconds after I read this Vice article on a new trend for cute BDSM toys and pastel colored fetish gear, the image below showed up in my twitter feed (via this tweet). I think that’s enough evidence to make it official. 2019 is the year of lavender whips, pink cuffs and beige harnesses. Anyone still going old school with black and red is like totally out of date. Until next month anyway.

In all seriousness, fashion designers often seem do a terrible job of adapting BDSM attire into their clothes. This outfit by Dion Lee, and the others featured in Lady Grace’s tweet, are a rather excellent exception. Elegant, with beautiful clean lines, but still retaining the BDSM aesthetic. They were created in collaboration with Fleet Ilya.

The Wrong Kind of Frustration

It’s hard to find good cuckolding imagery. Which is a shame, as I think its mix of tease, denial and humiliation can be a hot dynamic. I’ve written before about unintentionally funny cuckold expressions in porn. The other issue is of course the frequent combination of race play with cuckolding. That always kills a scene for me.

The discussion around cuckolding is often very strange. The frequent racial elements are problematic for people, yet the fundamental dynamic itself is clearly not a racial one. It’s a basic kink that’s been infused (or perverted) by American cultural issues with race. You’d therefore think that there’d be discussion around how best to untangle it from that mess. Or at least an effort to critique it in a selective way. Yet more often people will insist the two are irrevocably tied together, muddying the conversation and creating more problems.

This silly Daily Dot article is a good case in point. It was triggered by a now infamous Oh Joy Sex Toy cartoon on cuckolding that took a lot of online flack when it was released. The cartoon definitely has problems, but I think its fundamental premise is sound. Three people can enjoy a cuckolding dynamic. Full stop. If the cartoon was addressing the history of cuckolding, or the cuckolding genre in porn, or the genesis of the political ‘cuck’ insult, then yes, exploring the racial element would be important. But that’s clearly not its purpose.

Given cuckolding as a kink clearly isn’t going to go away, shouldn’t we promote a point of view that tries to distinguish between the problematic and non-problematic parts? How does tangling it altogether, as the Daily Dot article does, help the discussion?

Be a Good Boy

I’m going to resist the urge to get into the politics of Brexit here. Firstly, because I’m sure nobody comes here for British politics. Secondly, because it’d take me a dozen posts just to start to unpack it, and frankly I don’t have the time.

However, I did have to laugh at John Bercow repeatedly admonishing an MP to ‘Be a good boy’. It’s such a classic femdom expression. I’m sure a non-trivial number of Members of Parliament have received that instruction from a leather clad domme while they grovelled at her feet. I’m not sure who the Speaker was yelling at, but I hope the target of his ire resisted the urge to bend down and kiss the Speaker’s shoes. Although, on the other hand, maybe Boris would have thanked him for the welcome distraction from everything else that was going on.

I believe this is from a Managa by Hiroaki Samura.

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.