Artwork – Page 51 – Femdom Resource

Estrogen and subspace

While I was writing yesterday’s post on the brain’s response to pain I stumbled across another related article. It addresses the hoary old argument of pain tolerance in men versus women. It’s commonly said that women have a higher tolerance and this article claimed to have found a reason for that – estrogen.

One way estrogen helps women to cope with pain, he says, is by increasing the availability of endorphins — brain chemicals that help dampen the pain response.
When estrogen levels are high, there’s an increased number of areas in the brain where endorphins can “park.” The more “parking places” available, Zubieta says, the more endorphins there are on call, waiting to flood the body with “feel good” chemicals capable of overriding pain signals.

According to the article in yesterday’s post, brains all react to pain in a similar way. How individuals respond is down to social conditioning and secondary factors like the production of endorphins. And based on this article, women have a natural advantage on the endorphin front. When it comes to bragging rights, I’m not sure this really helps. It implies that it’s not down to simple mental toughness or fortitude. Women (in general) just have more natural opiates floating around their brain.

More pertinently, for the purposes of this blog, it makes more wonder if women tend to experience a more intense subspace. The rush associated with endorphins is a big part of subspace, and having more on tap would suggest a potential for a deeper experience. The fight or flight reaction is also part of getting into subspace, and that’s another thing men and women experience differently. Both sexes produce cortisol from the adrenal gland under stress, but women produce more oxytocin which counters the effect of cortisol and creates more relaxing and nurturing feelings. I know from personal experience that my subspace contains elements of all these things, from the rush of endorphins through the edginess of adrenaline to the calmness of oxytocin. But if men and women typically produce different proportions of these it would suggest the subspace they experience might typically be different as well.

Whatever the science of all it – and I’m most definitely not an expert – it does give me an excuse to feature some hot F/f artwork.

This artwork is by Shiniez and you can find a lot more on his Deviant Art pages.

Little Gay Girls

I always enjoy the odd fetish artwork often found on old pulp erotic novels. From what I’ve read on the history of these things, there was often little connection between the title, the contents and the cover. The publisher would slap together whatever he thought would sell. In this particularly case the title and the artwork seem particularly badly matched. The four predatory female figures are clearly neither little nor young girls. I guess they could be gay but, if so, I’m not sure why they’d be dressed like that or focused on the hapless male. I’m guessing readers of these books probably weren’t looking for too much logic in their erotica.

I’m pretty certain the art is the work of Eric Stanton. I found it on the Fetish Sleaze Art blog.

Tidying up the art gallery

After adding Jay Em to my Femdom Art pages I took the opportunity to browse through the other artists and do some clean-up. I was astonished how many dead links there were. It’s kind of depressing to see how ephemeral the internet can be. The anal retentive geek in me expects everyone to keep everything exactly as I found it.

On the plus side, as part of the updating process, I did discover a few interesting new links. In particular I found new sites for Gene Bilbrew, Bernard Montorguiel, Rubex and Eric Stanton. I also stumbled across the interesting Retroyguy site and a fine obituary for Eric Stanton. Hopefully every link on the three artist pages should now be live and useful. Feel free to leave me a comment should that prove not to be true.

I’ll leave you with a couple of images from Bernard Montorguiel. I particularly enjoyed the first one. There’s quite a lot going on in it. There’s a picture of a mistress with some strange floppy gloves, a bunch of animal faced slaves, a forceful maid and an excited slave. I can’t say it does much for me erotically, but I am intrigued by what buttons it was pushing for the artist. The second image is a little more conventional, apart from the odd burglar mask being worn. That looks about as useful a disguise as Clark Kent’s glasses.

Added Jay Em to Femdom Artwork

As the title says, Jay Em is my latest addition to the Femdom Artwork pages. Fans of domestic discipline and corporal punishment should check out his work.

The mystery of the disappearing dildo

I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books, but a reverse image search tells me this is fan art featuring two of the characters – Harry and Ginny. Presumably she’s showing him her latest magic trick. Using just an ordinary school tie and a completely conventional strap-on harness, she can make her magic wand disappear completely from view. It’s a neat trick, but I’m going to bet that Harry has a fair idea where she has hidden it.

I’m afraid I don’t know the original artist. I found it on the Felm Cyber tumblr (originally larger version available here).

Guilt+Force=?

This is continuation of yesterday’s post on ‘force’ based scenes, originally triggered by this post by Stabbity. Reading those first will probably help this make more sense.

Force in a BDSM scene can undoubtedly be very hot. For one thing it suggests passion and emotion. As a submissive being on the receiving end of that is energizing. It’s hard to be forceful towards something you’re indifferent about. Force in a scene also brings in ideas of objectification and control. A lot of BDSM toys are about removing some element of control, whether that’s over motion, speech, sight or sphincter muscles. Force can be a further extension of that, removing the ability to control consent, albeit in a consensual non-consent kind of way.

I get all those aspects of force in a scene. The one associated aspect that does puzzle me is the idea of removing or shifting guilt. This came up in the comments to Stabbity’s post.

I also feel that the use of force enables a sub who is ashamed of a certain desire to experience it without guilt. I see it most frequently in regard to forced bi scenarios. The sub wants it but doesn’t want to admit (either to others or to himself) that he wants it. So by passing off the responsibility to the dom, he’s essentially free to indulge without worry. – roo-roo

This is a view I’ve seen expressed many times in the past, and I have to say I don’t get it. And I mean that in the ‘I personally don’t understand’ way, not in the ‘it’s wrong’ way. Can guilt be really shifted so easily? Mixing the complex emotions of a forced BDSM scene to a genuine sense of guilt sounds like a combustible emotional mix. If a traumatic childhood experience with a Salvation Army lady had left me with fetish for stealing from charity collection boxes, I’d (hopefully) feel very guilty about that. Would dragging a domme into my coin pilfering schemes make me feel any better? Can guilt be shared or even shifted like that? It seems such a reductive view of an emotion. Perhaps it depends on someone’s ability to compartmentalize and buy into their own stories and fantasies. Maybe if I roleplayed in scenes I’d understand this better.

As I said, it’s not an unusual or uncommon view on force in scenes, but it does leave me scratching my head. Perhaps the fact I’m not an emotional masochist may have something to do with that. While I ponder that, I’ll leave you with another fun piece of artwork, this by Kami Tora. Not quite as overtly physical as the Stanton drawings from yesterday, but it does have some nice hair pulling and forceful pegging.

Use the force

Stabbity has started an interesting discussion on ‘forced’ scenes over on her blog Not Just Bitchy. There are a lot of ideas worth digging into, both in the post and the comments. For the moment I’ll start with her basic idea, which is that the fantasy of being forced to submit (imagine quotes around that if you prefer) is partly a fantasy about submission and domination being easy. It removes the risk of screwing up on both sides of the D/s equation. I kind of get this from the dominant point of view, but I’m not so sure about the submissive side.

For a dominant there are always a lot of choices in a scene. Just picking up a bundle of rope raises issues of where to tie it, how tightly, what to attach it to, when to loosen it, etc. And that’s before anyone has even been hit, shocked, pierced or penetrated. Adding force into the mix adds a safety margin to decisions. It suggests that the scene isn’t primarily for the benefit of the submissive and therefore there’s less to get wrong. If that wasn’t enough warm-up for you or that penetration was a little rougher than you like, well that’s just tough. I’m forcing you to do it.

On the submissive side I’m more skeptical, because personally I don’t worry all that much about screwing up in a scene. That’s not to say I’m some perfect submissive. I worry about communication. I worry about the intensity I can take. I worry about getting a cramp after we’ve spent 30 minutes getting me bound in just the right position. I worry about a spider scuttling across my naked body when I can’t move. But all these things are just as much an issue in a forced scene. I’ll safeword out if a major limit is exceeded whatever the nature of the scene (particularly if arachnids have decided to crash the party). Similarly the quality of my communication isn’t affected by being forced. I worry about being a good or a bad submissive, but not typically about screwing up.

That’s not to say force doesn’t offer some interesting possibilities for the submissive, but I’ll save further thoughts for another post. In the meantime I’ll leave you with some artwork by Eric Stanton. He was always a great illustrator of powerful forceful women who could physically bully and dominate weaker men.

Silence is golden

I am by no means a stoic and quiet masochist. I make noise. Lots of noise. Screams. Moans. Grunts. Growls. I like to claim it’s a sign of good communication from the bottom. I’m letting the top know where I’m at. That’s true, but realistically it’s also about me dealing with pain and letting myself simply go with the sensation. It’s energizing to not think and simply react.

I’ve never had a domme try to make me stay quiet, although a few have shoved a gag in when necessary. I therefore think the young lady in the drawing below is being particularly cruel. She’s positioned him teasingly across her legs, spanked him and shoved a vibrator into him. And now he has to stay quiet while she reads her book? That’s harsh. Particularly if she’s adding the odd spank or two between pages.

I found this on the Geek Domme tumblr. I think it’s fan art of two characters from a web comic called homestuck, but I’m not entirely sure.

Astride her captive

I’m not sure where I found this image. A reverse image search tells me it’s a character called Fujiko Mine from the manga series Lupin III. I’ve never seen the series, but wikipedia says she’s a professional burglar who uses her attractiveness to fool her prospective targets. In this case it seems to have worked out well for her, although her captive appears to be having second thoughts.

PDS

I was going to follow-up my previous post with some comments on my personal feelings about PDS (Public Displays of Dominance and Submission). However, as I started to write it, I realized I really wasn’t adding much to the debate. The rules on how a shared public space should be used are endlessly debatable and mutable.

So instead let me make a meta-point: Everyone stands on a slope. By which I mean there is no fixed point and stable surface from which to cast other opinions down. If you read the comments on the two articles I previously linked to (here and here) you’ll see a lot of de facto assumptions about what is appropriate behavior in public and what should be reserved for private spaces. The comment writers don’t seem aware that their universal truths are not universal at all. Unfortunately, if you hang out on BDSM forums and blogs, you’ll often see much the same attitude coming from the opposite direction.

This isn’t to say that there’s no right or wrong. Just that whatever position you adopt on any subject, be aware that you’re on a continuum. It’s still possible to draw lines and acceptable limits. Just don’t try and pretend that what you’ve chosen is somehow God given or universally accepted. Anyone arguing from that perspective instantly loses credibility.

After all that pontificating, let me make amends to my readers with some more leash shots. In this case they’re from The Properly Leashed Male tumblr and feature gentlemen being pulled by something a little more sensitive than a neck.