Intensity (or not)

My random thought of the day: Intensity of play is entirely situational. It depends on the chemistry you feel in the moment, your emotional state beforehand, the stress in your daily life and countless other factors. It’s fine to ask for a lighter scene or to bail out of an intense scene. It’s fine to play hard with one person but lightly with another. It’s fine to change limits from scene to scene.

I used to think of kink as a one way street. If I achieved a certain level of intensity with a domme, I couldn’t pull back from there. And if I did some activity with one domme, then obviously I should be able to do that with all dommes. It was a bit like a videogame where I was unlocking achievements. Once you’ve got the heavy whipping badge, then obviously heavy whipping should always be a possibility in all future scenes.

These days I’m older and wiser. There is no grand council of dommes collecting scene reports and making sure nobody ever backslides on their level of play. I’d much rather evolve my play slowly and organically with a new domme than immediately race towards my limits as fast as possible. And if I’m feeling stressed or not in a good masochistic headspace, I’m also now fine asking for a lighter scene that I can relax into. It turns out that you don’t get into trouble for not always playing on the edge of what’s possible.

Talking of intensity – here’s a pretty heavy caning scene. Not sure where this originates from sadly.

Shut Up

Here’s a young man who clearly didn’t pay attention when he was told to hush up. Hopefully he’s getting the message now.

It strikes me there’s actually a product marketing niche here. Writing on bodies is a kinky thing. Bondage tape is a kinky thing. Why hasn’t anybody combined the two? Tape with phrases on might be quite fun. Just simple things like ‘My Property’ or ‘Pain Toy’ or the ever popular ‘Slut’ might work pretty well. Customization options would be even more entertaining. What domme wouldn’t want personalized bondage tape with ‘Property of Mistress …..’ on it for wrapping up submissives?

This photograph is by Fuck-Me-Mon-Amour from deviant art. It’s titled ‘shut up baby 3’.

Sunday Fantasy

Readers in the London area might want to consider checking out the exhibition entitled Sunday Fantasy by Zoe Williams. It’s not really femdom, but it is about women taking control of and exploring their sexual fantasies. I particularly liked this description of one part of the exhibit…

two women exert themselves energetically to remove the fantasist’s clothes while she does all she can to keep them on. The result is often more pillowfight than catfight, with the women wrestling hard only to collapse periodically in exhausted giggles.

That seems a particularly fun fantasy. I like the contrast in types of desire – clothed and in control versus naked and sexual powerful. Apparently the exhibit also features pee as a linking element and references to 70’s Gothic lesbian horror movies, both of which are very fine things. The exhibition is at Mimosa House and you can read an interview with the artist here.

This image isn’t connected in any way with the exhibit in question. But it does at least feature a woman happy about taking someone’s clothes off. In this case, he doesn’t appear to be resisting all that much.

A Classic 1950’s Look

Here’s a final post in my fashion themed sequence. This is from a 1952 edition of French Vogue.

I find that many of the European fashion shots from that era (for example) seem to have a more authentic fetishistic and femdom vibe than the far more explicit fashion shots from the 90’s and beyond. Possibly that’s just my particular kinky preferences, but I think the tight severe cuts, long dresses and dark colors tend to suggest restraint, control and authority. They also tend to shoot models alone and staring down into the camera, which is obviously a style a lot of femdom photographers use.

Combining Talents

By an odd coincidence, just after my previous post on the failures of fashion and kink, I spotted this tweet from Mistress Iris. Apparently she is in Paris shooting with Ellen Von Unwerth. That should make for a fabulous combination of talents.

I’ve featured Ellen Von Unwerth in previous posts (for example here, here and here). She seems to be one of the few fashion photographers with at least an inkling as to how kink actually works. Similarly Mistress Iris has been featured in the past (for example here, here and here). She’s not only a great domme, but I think she produces some of the most interesting kinky femdom imagery. I can’t wait to see what they’ll end up creating together.

This is Sophia, Ellen Von Unwerth and Mistress Iris. If you’d like to see more of Mistress Iris and her work, she has a patreon here.

Fashionable Kink

I’m always amused by how many fashion shots reference kinky dynamics, but totally fail to understand them.The photographers grasp the aesthetics and taboos of specific elements, but don’t understand how they fit together in a way that makes kinky sense. It’s like they’re trying to write a story in a foreign language with just a translation dictionary. The individual words are correct, but the whole thing is incoherent.  This linked image is a good example of what I mean. There’s obviously a spanking theme in there somewhere, but I’ve no idea what the overall concept is.

The shots that tend to work best are the simplest. When the photographers just have a single concept and a single subject, then it’s much harder to end up with a confused mess of clashing kinks and weird dynamics. This shot of the model Tatjana Patitz by photographer Nathaniel Goldberg is a good example of that. It’s simple but very effective as a fetish image.

This was shot for Allure Magazine in 2007. You can see more photographs from the shoot here.

Thought Experiment

After yesterday’s post on the catfishing kink a thought struck me – I could be a consensual fake fin-domme. I know kink. I know what buttons to push for submissive guys. I know how to write and steal hot photos from real dommes. That’s pretty much the job description for running this blog. I already get idiotic comments asking me to hook people up with some of the models I feature. I’d just need to fake the responses for that.

I should add at this point that my thought definitely wasn’t of the ‘OMG! What a brilliant idea’ variety. It was very much in the abstract. A realization of a possibility that I’d previously never known existed, but still had zero probability of being taken. However, I will say that this thought experiment did give me a whole new appreciation for women, and particularly women sex workers, on the internet. Because the idea of those interactions and the type of emails I’d receive filled me with horror. Imagine the energy I’d need to put into making it work. Imagine what opening my inbox would reveal. Imagine being on the receiving end of random bursts of male sexual energy from anyone connected to the internet. Jesus.

I’ve written often enough in the past about my respect for dommes online, but it was always a respect born from an intellectual understanding of what they have to put up with. It wasn’t until I imagined myself as a fake fin-domme that I had a visceral and gut reaction to what those interactions might entail. I’d never have the strength or skills to be a sex worker. Thank God there are people who can do it.

June 2nd was International Sex Worker Rights Day. The symbol for that is the red umbrella, and the dress in this image reminded me of that. Sex workers – possibly along with chefs and vintners – have brought more joy to my life than anyone else. So my eternal thanks to all of them.

Catfish Kink

First came the dommes and then the pro-dommes, and that was good. Next came the fin-dommes and the cam-dommes, and that was like sure, whatever. Not my thing, but your thing is OK. Then came the fake dommes and the catfishing dommes, and that seemed obviously bad until I read this Gizmodo article. Apparently there are now men who fetishize being catfished and scammed online by men pretending to be women.

On one hand, if everyone knows what’s going on and everyone consents, then who am I to throw stones? A bunch of guys jerking off to each other while fake-pretending to be beautiful women scammers seems less objectionable than a lot of things men do online. Unfortunately, I suspect the scammers aren’t exactly careful about how they identify themselves as fakes. It would seem like there’s a significant danger of mixing in non-consensual scamming with the consensual sort. What’s the right ethical code for ensuring consensual and safe catfishing? The average BDSM guide doesn’t really cover that. And would there be a market for genuine fin-dommes to pretend to be fake-dommes in order to attract these clients? And would a catfish fetishist be upset if the hot blonde fin-domme he thought was a fat old man actually turned out to be a hot blonde? That’d be a confusing boner.

It is at least further proof (if such a thing were needed) that there is absolutely nothing that people will not fetishize in some way.

Tricky to pick an image to go with the topic. I figured this idealized figure worshiped by anonymous men seemed appropriate. The title also seems to fit. The artwork is of course by the great Eric Stanton.

Threesome

This is a lovely shot from the Dreams of Spanking site. There’s a lot of humor and fun in those sly smiles. The use of the mirror to capture both his and her expression while keeping a natural feel to the composition is cleverly done. From the look of that red bottom I’d guess this was taken in the middle of a scene.

You can see the larger version of the image, together with other shots from the same scene here. It’s actually a foursome in the full scene shots.