Tag: Artwork

The Session Mixtape

My previous post on music in sessions was written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. However, all humor aside, there is an underlying truth behind it. Background music is universally used in sessions and it has a significant affect on their atmosphere and energy. Yet it’s never a part of the pre-scene negotiation. At best it’s music the domme likes to listen to and at worst it’s an afterthought to cover the screams. From the professional domme perspective, isn’t there an opportunity for differentiation or even monetization here?

I’m not going to go as far as suggesting that submissives simply be allowed to bring along their own playlists. That’d most likely end up with the wrong person in the room being tortured. Instead maybe a domme could offer a selection of session playlists of her choosing. Or offer regular clients a chance to curate a playlist within her defined parameters. Or, for an extra $100, allow the submissive to choose a Pandora station that’s acceptable to her.

One could of course argue that the domme is supposed to be the one in charge, so why is the submissive getting any say? I understand that perspective when talking about the energy and direction of how a scene unfolds, but the broader context for a scene is something that is very much a shared discussion. Roleplays, activities, limits, interests and even outfits are all fair game for pre-scene negotiation.  So why not music? Whether it’s an upsell to make money or an opportunity to reward regular clients, it seems like an opportunity going begging.

This artwork is by the American artist Robert E. McGinnis.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

My Bad

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. This might have been the longest I’ve ever gone without a post. I was staying with friends in a fancy Scottish manor house. It had relaxing couches and people who’d supply snacks and a bottle of scotch at any hour of the day. That is great for happy, drunken social time, but bad for my liver and writing blog posts.

Being back in London hasn’t been much better so far, but hopefully normal service should be resumed soon. Until then I’ll leave you with this image from a tweet by maid marta. The artist is identified as Caregan. As someone who has spent a fair amount of time recently dealing with travel security, this has a particular appeal. Sadly, none of my interactions have been quite this exciting.

Ending a Relationship

Autostraddle has an article on a topic that is very rarely covered in kink – The Unique Grief of Ending a BDSM Relationship. There are plenty of articles on starting BDSM relationships, and a far great number on actual kinky play within them, but very few cover the complexity and emotions in an ending. It’s written by a female dominant, but is less about the specifics of femdom and more about the dynamics that might affect the end of any kinky relationship. Not exactly sexy fun stuff, but interesting and well written.

This image is by Dirk Hooper and was created for Mistress Adreena. According to the original tweet it represents a happy memory from a session. I thought it was touching and sweet, but the emotion it captures also make it work in the context of this post. You can see more from Dirk Hooper at his site here.

Giving Tumblr a Good Screwing

Yahoo brought Tumblr for $1.1B in 2013. A few days ago it was sold for (allegedly) $3M. In between those times they managed to destroy a huge number of communities and alienate a major chunk of their users by banning adult content. Now I’m sure that enormous loss wasn’t purely due to the adult content ban – Yahoo were already writing the acquisition value down long before that – but you have to admit that it’s an impressive sequence of decision making. Less talented people might have settled for just losing money, or just pissing off their users, but it takes major skills to do both. For anyone worried about the impact on the executives involved in all this, fear not, they’re all still immensely wealthy multi-millionaires with well paid jobs. I’m sure that’ll be comforting for anyone whose site was trashed by the Tumblr rules changes.

I’ve no idea what image would best accompany this mini-rant, so I’ll pick something very hot and sexy from a Twitter user who is still advertising his Tumblr link. This is from a tweet by The Smutty Rogue. Apparently Nina is doing to Issac what Yahoo did to Tumblr.

 

Speaking Up (Continued)

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post on the challenge for submissives to speak up while playing. I’m certainly no expert, but I thought I’d share a couple of pieces of advice I’ve found useful.

Firstly, don’t assume that just because you’re doing a familiar activity, with someone you’ve played with before, you won’t need to speak up. Mental and physical states are always changing. I was caught out in this way one time while being single tailed by Mistress Mara Mayhem in Chicago. We’d played together several before and this certainly wasn’t a new activity for me. Unfortunately on the way to her space, my uber driver’s radio had been describing the gruesome details of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi government. It was a disturbing story and for some reason, as we were playing, I couldn’t get it out of my head. My thoughts were racing and I began to feel faint. It seemed stupid. The physical sensations weren’t that intense and my position wasn’t uncomfortable. Yet somehow the combination of the session stress and my messed up thoughts almost pushed me into passing out. Luckily Mistress Mara is an expert and picked up something was going on, giving me a cue to communicate and temporarily stop the scene. I was relying on my history of play to guide me, rather than listening to what my body was telling me at that moment.

The other piece of advice I’d give to submissives is to try and be transparent and informational with your communication, rather than directive. The submissive’s role isn’t to control scene, but to give the domme the information she needs to make the scene work. For example, consider the situation of being put into an uncomfortable bondage position that you’re not sure about. Can you tolerate it? You might not want to immediately say you can’t handle it, but you also don’t want to wait until all the ropes in place and then have to stop everything. Giving informative but neutral feedback like “I can handle this, but probably not for a long period” can help the domme adjust if necessary. Maybe a short period is all she was aiming for. Maybe she’ll dig for more details so she can tweak the position.

Being transparent in feedback doesn’t have to involve words. I always try and make the volume of my cries and moans reflect the intensity of the sensation I feel. If you grit your teeth right up until you’re forced to yell ‘Red!’ then you’ve given the domme nothing to work with and then a command to stop. Giving honest feedback via my yelps helps her fine tune the scene while keeping a natural D/s flow.

Here’s an example of clear communication in the other direction from Yumine Guo. I don’t think the domme has left much doubt about her opinions.