Squaring the circle

I was sorry to see that Ms K has decided to retire from professional domination. I’ve never met her – it has been many years since I returned to the UK – but from her blog posts it was clear she was a thoughtful and conscientious pro-domme, and it’s always a shame to lose someone like that from the profession.  I found her follow-up post listing some of her reasons for stopping a thought provoking one.

I was finding it hard to reconcile being the Dominant woman I am with feeling a sense of having to oblige those subs who were paying for my time, with things they enjoyed even if I was beginning to find those things less interesting  …[snip]… I gave up as I only wanted to play with subs prepared to do it my way.
Ms K

All jobs require compromise at some level. It doesn’t matter if you’re the founder of a start-up or a cog in a big corporate machine, there are always trade-offs to make and boring tasks to complete. Yet most jobs don’t have the idea of dominance and control at the heart of them. As a software developer, I might not like every feature I deliver, but there’s no conflict with my inherent software developeriness. The same can’t be said for a dominant doing something she doesn’t enjoy. What does a domme do when the demands of the business contradict her reasons for doing it?

Professional domination is frequently described in a derogatory fashion as service topping, and that’s something that annoys me twice over. Firstly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with service topping. Making someone happy and delivering a great experience is a wonderful thing. I don’t think anything less of a chef just because she decides to cook professionally. Secondly, I think both service topping and ‘true domination’ (whatever that means) can occur in both professional and non-professional relationships. Money is only one aspect of many in a relationship, professional or otherwise. But I have to agree that it can be a particularly gnarly aspect to deal with.

It’s also a problem that cuts both ways. As a submissive I don’t want someone simply running through a list of activities with me. I want a dominant who is enjoying what she’s doing and expressing her natural creativity as we play. Specifying a ‘to do’ list runs counter to the D/s dynamic, but several dommes I’ve played with in the past wanted exactly that. I’d guess that was partly to make their lives easier, and mostly because too many clients in the past started with “Oh you can do anything you want to me Mistress!” and finished up with “Well I don’t like that, and we didn’t do this, and why this? That wasn’t what I wanted.”

It’s my personal suspicion that the most financially successful pro-dommes are those who can get personal satisfaction both from one-off service top type sessions and from building longer-term relationships involving more D/s elements. I’ve also anecdotally observed that a lot of pro-dommes start with a lot of the former and evolve towards the latter as their careers and interests progress. It strikes me as a pity that both dommes and clients aren’t more open about the distinction between the two approaches. Everything gets lumped under domination, when in fact that’s simply a catch-all for anything under the BDSM and fetish umbrella.

I’m afraid I don’t have any images of Ms K to use (her website has been taken down), so I’ll instead go with another retired pro-domme, the legendary Isabella Sinclaire. It was originally shot for bootlovers.com.

Isabella Sinclaire

Any excuse for kink

I often enjoy getting annoyed at things I read. Which makes the internet pretty much the greatest invention ever. I’m never more than a few clicks away from something enjoyable.

50 Shades of Grey has been quite a blessing in that respect. It seems that no news or opinion site is complete without a regular article on the book and what it tells us about society (hint – nothing. The existence of Dan Brown had already proven that millions of people will buy badly written books). My ‘favorite’ article on the book so far is this one, which is so stupid you might actually getter dumber just by reading it. Apologies if you follow that link and then discover you can no longer complete a coherent thingy. You know. Lots of words all lined up.

The other common spin-off article, other than a review or social comment, is the “My hour/day/week as a dominatrix” confession. This typically gives the author a chance to titillate readers with some kinky fun, prove that she’s edgy and interesting, all while maintaining an air of superiority over the freaks. Here’s a pretty good canonical example of the genre.

These articles all follow a similar pattern. They start with “This’ll be fun! I get to boss men around. And I love dress-up!” Then they move into “Oh, there’s like all this equipment and stuff. This seems hard. Can’t I just look pretty and sneer at the clients?” After this comes the realization that not all men paying for a sexual experience look like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. Finally, it ends with a “Wow, it’s not like I’m judging or anything, but people who see pro-dommes are weird.” That may or may not be true, but coming from a person who appears to have made a career choice on the basis of wearing a sexy costume, it’s a little hard to take seriously.

I’ll leave you with a picture of someone who can definitely pull off a sexy costume, but also knows it takes a hell of a lot more to be a great domme. This is Domina Nyx, a NYC based pro-domme. This shot was featured on her blog.

Domina Nyx

Blogpocalypse

I’m beginning to wonder if my blogroll is going to need some major revisions come July 20th this year. That’s the release date for the new Batman movie – The Dark Knight Rises. This film features a powerful double whammy, in the form of catwoman as played by Anne Hathaway. I know from past posts that there a lot of catwoman fans out there (HMP and lovetosubmit, I’m looking at you) and Anne Hathaway fans aren’t exactly thin on the ground (calling Servitor). I therefore fear that this deadly combination will just be too much for some of my submissive fellow travelers, a peak of perfection that will leave them drained, apathetic and with no reason to keep blogging. We’ll just be left with a lot of puzzled female bloggers wondering what the hell happened and where everyone went.

In an effort to lessen the shock and acclimatize everyone ahead of time, here’s an intriguing new poster from the movie (full resolution version here). I kind of like it. And by ‘kind of like’ I mean ‘Dear God, would you look at that.’ I only hope the movie itself is a little tauter than the previous one. I enjoyed it, but I think it would have benefited from more aggressive editing and a shorter running time.

Dark Knight Rises - Catwoman Poster

imagine a boot stamping on a human face

I’m a bit of a hypocritic. I often rail against conventional femdom porn, complain about the stereotypical dommes, and then go ahead and feature exactly that material. It’s sad to say, but stereotypes become stereotypes for a reason. I’m certainly not immune to the lure of leather or latex coupled with a crop brandishing domme.

However, I like to think that when I do feature that kind of material, there’s at least an element or two of interest. In this particular case it’s the relaxed attitude of the submissive. The domme has all the classic elements, with her thigh high boots, riding crop and white jodpurs. Yet he seems to be in a very accepting pose, relaxing into the pressure of the boot. I like that. It’s unusual for this kind of shot, but it corresponds to the way I play. I don’t want to be forcible subjugated. I want to give myself up to the domme, in the same way this gentleman seems to be doing.

Mistress pressing her boot into slaves faceI found this on the StellaNova’s Realm tumblr.

The first step

I have a blogging problem. I have to come clean and admit it. I’m sure a lot of you are now nodding your heads and thinking to yourself – “We already know that. We see it every single time you hit that ‘publish post’ button.” While that may be true, it’s not the immediate problem I’m prepared to talk about here. My main issue right now is the sheer number of interesting blogs out there I’d like to link to. There are just too many of them.

As you’ve probably observed, my blogroll on the right is a dynamic one, which updates and sorts itself based on the publication of new posts. That works great for 20 or 30 blogs, but not very well for 50+. I don’t want to get rid of the dynamic blogroll, but I don’t want to stop adding interesting links for readers. Either I need the world to become less interesting, or I need a better approach for linking to lots of blogs.

My solution is a new page, entitled (imaginatively enough) Femdom Blogs. This is modeled along similar lines to my Images and Equipment pages, with some approximate link categorization for a few distinct lists. This new page will always contain 100% of all the links I publish. My dynamic blogroll on the right will be a subset of that, hosting newly discovered links and links to blogs that both regularly update and are personal favorites (i.e. I read every update).  This way I can keep updating the blogroll with new and interesting stuff while having a much larger static collection on a separate page.

Right now the page basically lists what is already in my blogroll, albeit with a few additions to the Sex section (Savage Love, Tiny Nibbles and Viviane’s Sex Carnival). For step two, in my post tomorrow, I’ll do some shuffling and introduce some new femdom and kink links.

In the meantime here’s a pleasant image for your viewing pleasure. It has no correlation with this post. But anyone making it this far through my random site admin thoughts deserves a little eye candy.

Mistress gesturing to kneeling slaveI came to this via the Undiscovered Limits (aka Untamed Dark Mane) tumblr. It’s originally from the Strap-on Hell site.

Spooky internet moment

Earlier this evening I poured myself a glass of wine and began browsing the archive pages of the Gorean Kajirus tumblr. It’s one of my favorite tumblrs to look at when I’m simply hunting for eye candy. The curator obviously puts a lot of effort into it, as there’s a huge amount of aesthetically and erotically interesting material. There’s beautiful women or all types, ripped guys in restraints, interesting bondage shots and fun BDSM play in many different flavors. There’s even the odd bit of auto porn.

And then, in the middle of all the visual loveliness, dear God, I spotted myself. Twice. That was a spooky internet moment. It’s one thing to appear on my own blog, or on a domme’s site. After all these shots started life on Domina Yuki’s tumblr, and I even spotted my torso on Lydia’s testimonial page the other day. However, it’s quite another sensation to stumble across them on a random tumblr. Particularly one which tends to the more aesthetic than the functional side of kink.

In the meantime, while I get over the weirdness, let me leave you with a couple of shots of genuine eye candy from that tumblr. The first I think is Goddess Miki, a pro-domme from LA who has been on my ‘to visit’ list for a while. I’ve no idea about a source for the second one.

Domme using hooded slave as ashtrayMistress receiving oral worship from bound slave

 

More horsing around

Yesterday’s post stimulated some long dormant neurons in my brain. As I was writing about the rarity of real horses in femdom porn, something was niggling me about where I had seen it before.

The answer, after spending some time flipping through my internal femdom filing system, was the old cruella publication Riding Cult. This was a short lived magazine from the early 90’s, featuring lots of boots, jodhpurs and tight tops. Most of their images featured men as horses, as shown in the first shot below. He doesn’t look to be a beast in prime physical condition, but they seem to be enjoying themselves anyway.

Occasionally the magazine also featured real horses, as show in the second shot below. Typically they stuck to fairly traditional riding gear, but in this particular case I think they strayed a little. I’m no riding expert, but those boots don’t look all that practical. High heels and stirrups does not seem like a great combination. On the other hand a haughty stare from horseback does tickle me in hard to reach places, so I’m prepared to overlook the impracticality of the whole thing.

Man as horse

Woman on horseback

Horseplay

Riding gear is a fairly common theme in femdom porn. It’s a natural fit. Leather boots. Tight jodhpurs. Riding crops. There’s also the idea of a woman controlling a big powerful dumb beast with a snapped command or a flick of her wrist. That has a certain resonance.

However, it’s pretty rare to see an actual horse involved in a shot. Normally the man plays that role. In this case the male in question has been forced one step lower in the hierarchy, from beast to inanimate footstool. The horse itself looks fairly bored by the proceedings. I just hope for the footstool’s sake that it doesn’t decide to take a pee at this point. I’m a fan of water sports, but horse piss lapping around the knees is definitely a deal breaker. And there’s a good entry to add to the list of sentences I never imagined myself typing.

Slave acting as foot stool while mistress mounts horseThis is taken from a set of images created by the femdom town site. I found it originally on the Whip Mistress blog.

A helping hand

I like this picture for a kind of odd reason. It’s not the beautiful mistress, although that’s certainly a bonus. It’s not the latex outfit or boots, although I am partial to an authoritarian uniform. No, what appeals to me is the fact that he’s holding the rope for her. I’m not sure if he’s trying to untangle it or just make it easily available, but I do like that he’s helping out.

When I used to just fantasize about BDSM, I was always attracted to the idea of forceful control. Not non-consensual play, but not quite fully consensual either. I never really enjoyed corporal punishment movies if it looked like the guy could simply stand up and walk-away. It didn’t make sense to me. Why would a more powerful man put up with being beaten unless he was held in place? How would he be able to stop himself resisting?

Now that I’ve got a little experience under my belt, I finally get it. In fact these days I love being a partial architect in my own demise. It’s fun to give up control a little piece at a time. To position myself as I’m asked. To hold the instruments of torture. To accept the gag or the hood. To push my back out towards the swinging whip. Each little helpful action is a pleasurable reaffirmation of the D/s dynamic between the mistress and myself.

Mistress Dada SreniThis is Domina Sreni, a pro-domme based in Milan. If you are lucky enough to live in the that part of the world and wish to pay her a visit, her contact page is here.

Evil Twin

This image made me laugh. I don’t think it’s at all hot, but it does make me smile. I’m not sure if that’s because of his glare at the camera, his package peaking out like a swollen sausage or his evil twin (from an alternate universe) beard. She’s also contributing a jaunty sailor salute to the humorous ensemble. On the plus side, she does at least have the figure to pull off that tight latex number (although silly boots in my opinion).

Mistress and slave in latexI found this on the In a Humbler tumblr site.