Heading to the Old Country

I’m flying back to the UK tomorrow for a fairly lengthy vacation. Blogging may therefore be a bit erratic over the coming weeks, depending of factors such as jetlag, partying, proximity of family members to my laptop, etc.

I do have some kinky play lined up, although not as much as I would have liked. If I’m in LA or NYC for a few days on my own, it’s pretty easy to schedule sessions with different dommes. In the UK I have to coordinate with multiple sets of friends and family, none of whom expect me to be disappearing for a few hours to get beaten, pierced or peed on.

On the plus side, it’ll be good to see the country again before Boris has a chance to wreck it. I’ll be spending a decent portion of my time relaxing in the beautiful countryside of both England and Scotland. I’ve no kinky plans for that section, which is a shame, as British ladies and outdoor pursuits can have some interesting kinky possibilities.

I found this in an old tumblr archive. A bit of research got me to this photoset featuring a model named Natalie, shot by the photographer Cannizzaro aka The Booted Cat.

Happiness

This Swaddle article makes the case that BDSM can make you more successful at work. As one dominant woman in the article says…

I began to notice that especially on days after we had engaged in a play scene, I would feel more focussed, composed and clear-headed. It was almost as if the satisfied feeling I felt in bed, in that position of power, flowed over the next day. I feel like I know more about myself — my mind and my body.

I’ve blogged on the concept of flow in the past (for example here), but reading the Swaddle article made me wonder if something more basic could be at play. Is it simply that being happy makes people more effective?

I know when I’m feeling happy at work (from kinky play or any other reason) I’m more likely to engage effectively in discussions and do a better job of selling my ideas. On the flipside, if I’m feeling unfulfilled or down, I’m more likely to get hung up on pointless arguments and trying to win the debate at all costs. Being effective in my work is often as much about knowing when to let something I disagree with slide as it is about doing the right thing. If I’m buzzed and flying on endorphins from a great play session, then I think I’m smarter about picking my battles. Not looking to work for emotional fulfillment actually leads to smart decision making and hence a more productive work life.

In summary: I should be able to claim on expenses for my kinky play with pro-dommes. It’d be a net gain for my company. I look forward to trying that argument out with my boss. I’m guessing it’ll have to go under the “Miscellaneous” section on the expense form.

Talking of happiness – here’s a very cheerful looking lady. Hopefully the man destined to wear that interesting funnel gag she’s holding is equally happy with the idea.

Oh, Snap!

Normally a domme staring into the camera rather than engaging with her submissive spoils an image. In this case the slightly disinterested look away really makes it work. The timing and impact of the pain is a minor and secondary issue compared to making sure the camera gets a good shot of her.

I found this in an old tumblr archive, but I’m fairly certain it’s from the CBT and Ballbusting site.

Governess Inka

I’m continuing the corporal theme for just one more post. I love this image for the contrast it presents with most online erotica. Mistress Inka is sitting in a comfortable chair, in a regular room, in a dress that not only covers every inch of her body but obscures even her shape. Yet it’s still wonderfully sexy.

I also think it’s also another example of how loose the link between kink, culture and personal experience can be. This has a real Victorian governess feel to it. I’m guessing nobody reading this had a governess, and certainly nobody had a Victorian one. Yet the image and dynamic still works. Certain archetypes persist, drawing on underlying desires that we may not even be aware of. The image uses an idea from the past, but that’s really just camouflage to sneak in its kinky themes of punishment, control and desire.

Image is from this tweet. For the watermark, I assume it’s associated with Sissy Manor (main site here). Mistress Inka’s professional site is available here.

The English Vice

Speaking of kinky cause and effect – as I just was – corporal punishment and impact play is another interesting example of an arguably misattributed cause. It used to be said that the English love of spanking and flagellation was derived from the use of corporal punishment in school. As a theory, it seems to make sense. Boys just coming into adolescence and packed with sexual energy were being beaten, and then transmuting that trauma into a kink. Hence, we ended up with the English Vice.

The flaw in this claim is that corporal punishment has been banned from British schools for a long time now, yet it still seems to be as popular as ever in kink. It’s also popular across a wide range of countries, even those that didn’t think beating children was a good idea. Personally, I was never beaten as a child, but corporal punishment scenes featured heavily in my fantasies in my 20’s and 30’s.

Obviously to prove the case one way or another one would need to do a proper survey and analyze kinky preferences over time and culture. It’s possible that corporal scenes are a lot more popular with a certain type of older British male than in the rest of the kinky community. But my suspicion would be that while corporal punishment in school might have colored peoples kinks, anyone who ended up indulging in it later in life would have been kinky anyway. Those submissives who were spanked or caned as children draw a correlation, where those who weren’t simply shrug and don’t worry about why they like it.

I’m afraid I’ve no idea who shot this picture of this happy lady caner.

Taboo

It’s often said that taboo subjects are a great source of kinks. Making something forbidden or secret gives it power, which in turn makes it alluring to our sexual subconsciousness. It’s a view that I’m skeptical of. There’s probably some truth in it, but it seems overstated.

The fact that kinks often involve taboo subjects doesn’t necessarily mean that the taboo is the cause of them. Correlation is not causation. For example, using mommy/daddy terms in quasi-incest roleplay is clearly a socially taboo area, but maybe people are simply kinking on the power differential between adult authority figures and youngsters. Or on the contrast between expected relationship and the distorted kinky version of it.

To show that the allure of the forbidden is the underlying cause of a kink, you’d need to show how changing the social perception of a subject also changed how people kink on it. I really struggle to come up with an example of that. A few weeks ago I wrote about the lure of the ankle in Victorian Britain. It’s clear that over the last 100 or so years, women’s fashion has changed enormously. What was taboo to reveal is now commonplace. Yet I haven’t seen any sign that kinks around clothes and bodies has diminished at all. Women in very visible boots or high heels no longer scandalize society, but the footwear fetish isn’t going away.

Toilet play is another area where the taboo is often cited as causative. If that were the case, you’d expect kinky interest in it to vary in inverse proportion to the social stigma. Yet Japan has a mainstream museum of poo, complete with poo themed video games and souvenir poo on a stick. At the same time their pornography has no shortage of scatological content. It certainly seems a lot more common than in US porn, a country far more uptight about the who/how/when of its toilets. Rather than repression creating kinks, it almost seems the other way around.

This image is from Team Rinryu, creators of the Yapoo series. Their content is fairly extreme and often scatological in nature. This scene is obviously just a simple face sitting one – and absolutely nothing more than that.

Cue the Worlds Smallest Violin

I’ve already written about my upcoming UK trip and my ability to pick dates that don’t quite align with people I’d like to see. The flip side to that is also managing to pick dates so I miss kinky visitors to Seattle. Apparently the Pacific Northwest is at its most appealing when I’m not in it.

Two in particular caught my eye. Mistress Iris will be here Aug. 19th to the 21st. Lady Grace will be here from Aug. 14th to 17th. Mistress Iris I’ve played with multiple times in the past (e.g. here and here). Lady Grace is someone I’ve wanted to connect with for a while now. If you’re a submissive in Seattle then I’d urge you to set up time with them. Partly because I think you’ll have a lot of fun. Mostly because I want their Seattle trips to be a success so they come back again when I’m actually in town. So schedule a session and it’ll be a win-win-win situation.

This is from Lady Grace’s twitter feed. When she’s not visiting Seattle, she’s based in SF. Her professional site is here.  Mistress Iris is based out of LA and her professional site is here.

The Warrior Princess

I’ve always had a bit of a thing for Katherine Hepburn ever since seeing her in the African Queen as a young boy. Much as I enjoyed watching Bogart as the cranky captain, it was the spunky and bossy Hepburn character that really caught my eye. Much like the late great Lauren Bacall in her movies opposite Bogart.

This image is Katharine Hepburn as Amazon warrior princess Antiope in a stage production of The Warrior’s Husband (1932). The set might look a little shoddy, and their shin guards fake, but her pose and body language is all kinds of hotness. The lucky man whose hair she’s grabbing is Colin Keith-Johnston.

Ooh! Shiny.

This post-session image comes courtesy of Domina Vivien Claire. I find it strangely arousing. It’s all so bright and clean and shiny. I picture the contrast between warm, soft, yielding flesh and how it’d be pinched and distorted by the hard cold metal. It’s an image that suggests the snap of rubber gloves and a voice murmuring “Try and relax. This next part might hurt…”

Vivien Claire is a pro-domme based in London Ontario. Her main site is here.

Nobody Cares (extended edition)

I had some great comments on my last post about approaching a professional playspace. Thanks to Simon, Hank and Chris for those. The encounter Simon described made me laugh…

I once visited a Mistress in her premises in London and as they were on the 3rd floor I got in the lift. With me in the lift was an older lady probably in her eighties. When I pressed for the 3rd floor she smiled at me and said “here to get your bottom smacked are we?” to which I could only reply with a wry grin.

I’m pretty certain all I’d be able to manage in those circumstances would be a wry grin as well. Little old ladies with a sense of humor and unencumbered by the need to stick to social conventions are scarier than any leather clad domme.

I still maintain my claim from my previous post that 99.9% of passersby neither know nor care about people entering a playspace. However, that does leave 0.1%, who are probably local to the area and might realize what’s going on. However, it’s unlikely you’ll bump into them and even if you do, the most you’ll probably get is a knowing smile.

Although I’ve never had a problem getting into a space, taxi drivers can be annoyingly curious. Particularly when they’re picking up a solo guy from a downtown hotel and taking him to some random suburban or industrial location. My standard cover story is that I’ve a friend whose an artist and I’m visiting her at her new studio space. After all, talented dommes are artists in their own domain, and their spaces are often located in the kind of buildings artists use. Maybe when I’m old and have ceased to care, I’ll just tell them I’m visiting someone to get my bottom smacked.

This is one of the more unique looking industrial style playspaces I’ve seen, as featured in this tweet from Mistress Adreena. Lot’s of exposed brickwork, some ironwork on the right and a big a bondage frame on the left. Not to mention of course the beautiful Mistress Adreena in the center! I believe this is located in Amsterdam.