Say it with knives

I’ve always disliked Valentine’s Day. It seems designed to make singles feels lonely and couples feel like they aren’t romantic enough. Fortunately, I have friends who feel the same way, so I had dinner at their place this year,  playing many games of ‘tag you’re it’ with their children. Six year olds may be horribly cheaters when it comes to tag, but it was still better than being crammed into a restaurant and dealing with harried servers.

That said, being single at Valentines can sometimes work out. I remember visiting LA in February a few years back and being very puzzled how hard it was to get a dinner reservation. It wasn’t until I snagged one and arrived at the restaurant that I realized what day it was. I was the single solo male in sea of couples. The menu was 9 courses of shared plates, which the kitchen obviously couldn’t be bothered to re-portion for their one confused single. So they sent me what was literally dinner for two for half the price.  Then the next day I went and got my ass kicked by a fabulous domme. That turned out to be a pretty good Valentines.

This is from How to Kill Your Husband by Kathy Lette.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

For those who have been following the Kristen Hyman saga I have bad news – she lost her fight to become a cop.

For those of you who have no idea who I’m talking about, let me provide some context. Kristen Hyman briefly worked as a pro-domme and produced some femdom movies under the title Domina Nyx. I even featured an image of hers back in 2012. After quitting that career, she went on to train as a police officer. She was just days away from graduating when somebody blabbed about her past life and she was suspended. There was the standard sensationalist coverage in the press, with their usual hypocrisy of stigmatizing sex workers while using their stories to make money. Now, after spending significant time and money to qualify as a policewoman, she is out of a job.

I hadn’t covered the story up to this point because I was hoping she get re-instated and I didn’t want to add to the publicity on her past life. Now, with her name plastered across hundreds of tabloid articles and immortalized online, that seems kind of moot.

The reason I mention it at all, is to highlight the challenges sex workers face and the sacrifices they make. Society disparages their profession, criticizes their decisions and forces them to operate without the proper protection the law should provide. Then, even when they move onto jobs deemed more ‘worthy’ by society, the sex work they did can still be used as a cudgel against them. And why? Because they gave sexual pleasure to others while earning money for themselves and their families? How fucked up is that? They should be handing out medals, not blocking them from worthwhile careers.

The artwork is of course by the incomparable Eric Stanton.

Intense Pegging

I’ve no idea how to embed a tumblr video into a blog post, so I’ll just have to provide this lame link to a hot pegging video and rely on you, my treasured reader, to follow it. There are all sorts of ‘intense’ pegging videos online – with dommes sporting enormous dildos and dominating the hell out of their hapless submissives. This isn’t one of those. For me intensity in pegging comes from the sensuality and the connection formed. Two people deep in an intimate moment. This video might be from a porn shot, but it has a lot more of that sensuality and intimacy than I normally see.

Given my lack of embedding mojo, I needed some other eye candy for this post, so here’s a sexy pegging artwork. It’s not the same vibe as the video, but I like it all the same.

I’m afraid I’ve no idea who the artist for this is.

Update: Thanks to a helpful comment I can now attribute this to the artist Tang. You can find more of their work at this tumblr and their personal site.

Parental Figures

My random thought of the day – originally over a coffee and delicious filled doughnut at my favorite local haunt – was how differently we treat the emotionally loaded words ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’ in kink.

In M/f relationships there are obviously some people who like to roleplay actual father/daughter relationships. That squeaks some people out, but it’s clearly a thing for others. However, a lot of the use of the term ‘Daddy’ seems to be about a more abstract concept of a loving authoritarian figure rather than an actual relative. Typically when someone talks about wanting a Daddy-Dom or a Daddy/Baby relationship they’re using it as a shorthand for a style of relationship rather than claiming an incest kink. Based on my limited and entirely anecdotal observations, I’d say this second more abstract usage is a lot more prevalent than the first.

In F/m interactions I never see this dual use. The more abstract idea doesn’t exist. Any reference to ‘Mommy’ is always about incest roleplay of the naughty son who needs disciplining, educating or restraining. I don’t see dominant women describe themselves as ‘Mommies’ and pro-dommes always list ‘Mommy’ under their roleplay sections rather than their style of play. Mommy Dom never gets used as a label in the same abstract way Daddy Dom does.

In fact I’ve even seen some dommes on twitter describe themselves as Daddies via expressions like “Who’s your Daddy now?” and “Daddy’s Home!” I get why they’d do this, but it seems somewhat odd for a female dominant to draw on a male archetype to emphasize dominance.

I’m afraid I’ve no conclusion to finish with. Nor do I have a value judgement about the current state of affairs. I just thought it was an interesting observation to share. Why the difference between the two? Or am I wrong in my anecdotal observations?

Artwork is by Barbara O’Toole who often seemed to specialize in the older women – young man genre.

Happy 2018!

There’s still a few hours to go in Seattle, but given I plan to spend most of them with a glass of champagne in my hand, I thought I’d put a post up ahead of schedule. Wherever you are, and however you plan to celebrate, I wish you a happy and kinky 2018.

The image is of course from the incomparable Sardax. If you’re in the doghouse after screwing up a special someone’s Christmas gift, maybe consider gifting them an illustrated copy of the classic Venus in Furs by way of apology?

The Big Boot

This is one for fans of boots and bondage – two things that aren’t normally combined in this way. I’ve heard of thigh highs, but never armpit highs. Now I come to think of it, I’m surprised no enterprising fetish manufacturer has produced a leather bondage sack that’s shaped like a boot. I can’t think it’d be to hard to modify a standard sleep sack to look like one. The intersection between bondage lover and boot lover is probably a decent size market.

I found this via Pitt Prickel’s twitter feed, where it’s attributed to Rudolf Schlichter.

The Pleasure of Play

I was surprised to see a very well known domme state (on twitter) how much she hated the term ‘play’ when it related to kink and femdom. It’s a term I never used in my early days of kinky exploration – because that was such super serious stuff – but it’s one I’ve come to use and like a lot.

I should say out of the gate that of course femdom can be more than just play. It can be a major part of a relationship, a 24×7 dynamic, a way to modify behavior, an ethos, etc. But let’s face reality. The majority of lifestyle femdom activity and almost all of professional femdom activity is a form of play (from the client perspective). And that’s absolutely not a bad thing.

The Oxford English dictionary defines play as – “Engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.” I think most people’s lives are full of serious and practical activities. Going to work, maintaining a house, caring for a family, paying bills – these are all serious and practical activities. Don’t we deserve a break to enjoy some recreation? And what could be more recreational than pulling on fun outfits, tying people up, teasing their erogenous zones or blowing their minds with intense sensations? There’s a reason pro-dommes use sensual, sadistic and playful to describe possible session dynamics and not words like serious, practical and sensible.

I don’t have a problem with someone wanting to get more out of a femdom dynamic than kinky fun times. I love reading about couples that have taken it beyond that level. But given a world serious lacking in fun, and a culture that has some seriously messed up views on sex and kink, why be against the idea of kink as play? Admittedly, sometimes it can be intense, crazy and freaky, but that doesn’t mean it’s not play.

Here’s a somewhat literal representation of play and femdom. This is from Underling.