Why wasn’t I told?

I’ve just discovered that Sardax has both a twitter account and a blog. As you’d expect, both contain many interesting images and thoughts. I’m stunned I’ve only just discovered them. Clearly I’ve been failing in my duty as a resource for all fine things femdom.

A refresh of my links and resources pages is obviously in order. I’ve been debating putting together a set of twitter links, and this suggests such a list is overdue. While I ponder the right way to handle that, I’ll leave you with an image from Sardax’s blog of Mistress Lucy Khan. I played with Mistress Lucy only a few weeks ago, so this seems a fitting piece of artwork to feature here.

Mistress Lucy Khan by Sardax

Getting a good buzz going

Masochists come in all shapes and sizes. For example, I give you Dr Schmidt, inventor of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index which rates certain insects (hymenoptera) by the degree of pain their sting produces. Admittedly he’s an entomologist who studies these insects in the field, so getting stung is part of the job description. I also wouldn’t say that inventing a pain scale automatically makes you a masochist. If you’re a thoughtful scientist who gets stung that seems like a logical thing to do. I think the giveaway is the descriptions he gives the stings.

A Yellowjacket sting is apparently – “Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.” In contrast the Sweet Bee is – “Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. As if a tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.” Nobody can wrote those kind of descriptions without some appreciation for the pleasures of pain.

'Eaten Alive' by XRendererThe above image is by the artist XRenderer. From the pot she’s holding I’m guessing these are supposed to be honey bees. According to Dr Schmidt they feel “like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.” I can’t imagine that can be too pleasant on a scrotum. Unless you like that kind of thing of course.

The good new days

After all these vintage art posts, let’s do something a bit more modern. I’m not sure where the image below is from originally, but I’d guess it’s a kink.com scene.

There’s a lot of valid criticism that can be directed towards today’s kinky pornography. However, no matter what its problems, I think it’s safe to say that it’s significantly better than what came before. Most vintage photographs look like they’re shot in someone’s front room with a model who has no idea what kink is. For example, I give you this or this. In contrast the shot below has an interesting setting, nice lighting, competent bondage and a sense that the lady concerned might actually know what to do with her new accessory. One can almost believe that the people arranging the shot might have a kinky bone or two in their body.

Modern Kink

Nights of Horror

While I’m on the subject of 50’s erotic art (as I was), I recently stumbled across this fascinating article on Joe Shuster. If that name’s not familiar to you then you’re probably not a comic books fan. Along with Jerry Siegel he was the co-creator of Superman. The story of how DC comics paid them $130 for the character and made millions of dollars while leaving the creators destitute is a well known one. What I hadn’t realized was the Joe Shuster went on to do fetish illustrations for a series called Nights of Horror.

The article is a lengthy one but well worth reading if you’re interested in modern American pop culture. It touches on comics, censorship, pornography, murder and the moral culture panics that seem to regularly spasm across the US. There’s also a book which covers the topic in more depth. The illustration below is both Shuster’s work and the cover from this book.

Shuster

Crossover

I believe the two images below are from a regular porn film, without a specific femdom slant. I found them via The New Superior Sex tumblr, and reverse image searching led me to this movie (warning youporn link that plays video with annoying music). I can’t say I’m a fan of the other tropes displayed on the youporn page (teen, thin, cutie, etc.) but I do like that it’s normalizing kinky play across regular porn. Blindfolds and bondage can be fun. It doesn’t have to be crazy cattleprods and whips on one side and random orifice stuffing on the other. Sex and sensuality works well with kink, and kink adds a nice edge to them in return.

Tied and gagged man being teased
Tied and gagged man being teased

A theory revisited

I had a lot of interesting comments to my post from a few days ago entitled ‘The Alpha Submissive‘. Sadly nobody had any hard data on the dubious theory that male submissives tends to be successful alpha types in daily life so, as usual, I’m going to be forced to make stuff up as I go along. With that proviso in mind, I thought I’d revisit the topic over the next few posts.

One point I should have made clear is that I’m not suggesting the contrary theory of submissives being particularly unsuccessful. I just suspect that the two factors are uncorrelated with career success, in much the same way that other sexual preferences appear to be.

Most comments agreed with me that the clients of pro-dommes are a skewed and unrepresentative sample set. However, I think it’s a mistake to assume that they’re an entirely uniform crowd of overpaid middle aged guys. When writing the original post I was put in mind of this article on two NYC pro-dommes. One of the dommes comes across as a scammer, and a great advertisement for doing your research before meeting anyone. The other is a real professional with a variety of clients.

Jesse, a 58-year-old transit worker, is probably her favorite; they often meet and chat about school and work before sessions. He even gets a discount from Georgia, who knows he’s strapped financially. “Every paycheck, I take a little bit of money out and put it in an envelope,” he says.

From the article Jesse sounds like a nice guy, but I doubt he’s the kind of person most people think of when they think of a pro-domme client.

Man in TensionI’m once again slightly stumped on what image I should feature for this post, so I’ll just go with something visually appealing from Men in Pain. I found this via the Classy Femdom tumblr.

Teen Wolf Fan Art

The artwork below is fan art for the MTV show Teen Wolf. The two characters are Derek Hale and Braeden. I remember seeing the original Michael J Fox movie when I was a kid, but until I started researching this image I’d no idea they’d turned it into a TV show. According to Wikipedia the creators of it were influenced by Joss Whedon’s Buffy, which can never be a bad thing. Sadly I doubt that explicit kinky bondage sex features in the show, but luckily we have creative fans to put that right.

Teen Wolf Fan Art
Despite a lot of hunting around I’ve failed to track down the original artist. It’s unsigned and Google reverse image search just gives me a lot of tumblr reposts. As far as I can tell it first surfaced on this tumblr. If anyone can help me with attribution then please leave a comment.

The dividends of distraction

Scientists have found that being distracted helps people deal with pain. The only surprising thing to me is that they’re only just discovering this fact. Masochists could have told them this long ago.

The fact that pain is only experienced in the brain is the kind of thing movie super villains like to purr while they’re heating up the red hot coals for the hero. Yet it happens to be true. I’m frequently astonished how non-absolute pain can be. What seems horrible early in a play session can be easily tolerated later. Similarly a steady strong stimulus (say from an electro-stim device) can quickly become unnoticeable when overwhelmed by a suddenly intense sensation (like nipple clamps being ripped off). Lots of things can act as a distraction. In the original article they tried stress balls. I’ve also found that my screaming, ladies in tight outfits and sticking needles in delicate body parts (by aforementioned ladies) works equally well.

The image below shows a great set-up for the converse situation. It’s really hard to tolerate pain when you’re very focused on it, and this bondage set-up will enforce that. He can’t relax, zone out or shift focus. He has to try and maintain his balance will anticipating the blows. That creates an interesting but really intense head space.

Intense SceneThis is from the Divine Bitches site.

Yumine Guo added to Femdom Artwork

It has been a while since I updated my Femdom Artwork pages. I’m very happy to break that lengthy hiatus with one of my favorite working artists – Yumine Guo. A lot of femdom artwork is very fetishistic and based on the male gaze. A lot like most femdom porn in fact. In contrast, I find Yumine’s work really captures the spirit of happy D/s play from both sides of the slash. There’s a sense of warmth and fun to it that’s often lacking in other femdom art.

The piece below was labeled ‘My boyfriend is so fucking cute…I just want to fuck him until he screams.’ You can see the original post here, and more at Yumine’s tumblr or blog.

Yumine Guo