Tag: CBT

A great expression

I’m always keen on interesting CBT shots, but it’s the expression on the ladies face that really makes this image. I like to think he has just moaned loudly and that’s her reaction to it. Half amused at his cries and half quizzical about the level of pain. She’s pondering does it really hurt or is he exaggerating? Should she should give it another twist to see if she can get an even better sound out of him?

GreatExpressionThis is from the Divine Bitches site. I’m afraid I don’t know the name of the lovely lady in the glasses. I found it on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.

Lacking all reason

My previous post featured what I thought was a good article on the positive side of mixing discussion, consent and sex. Today’s post brings you the flipside – a really stupid post on sex and consent. Other bloggers may aim to bring you only good things; I like to go with more of a harmonious yin and yang approach.

The article is (ironically) from Reason magazine and is entitled ‘California’s Sexual Consent Law Will Ruin Good Sex for Women‘. It was prompted by the recent ‘Yes means Yes‘ law passed in California, which aims to shift the emphasis in colleges from an assumption of consent to a need to actively gain consent. There’s an interesting discussion to be had about that law, but the Reason article by Shikha Dalmia certainly isn’t it. The bit that really irked me was this…

…there is usually a difference in tempo between men and women, with women generally requiring more “convincing.” And someone who requires convincing is not yet in a position to offer “affirmative” much less “enthusiastic” consent. That doesn’t mean that the final experience is unsatisfying — but it does mean that initially one has to be coaxed out of one’s comfort zone. Affirmative consent would criminalize that.
The reality is that much of sex is not consensual — but it is also not non-consensual. It resides in a gray area in between, where sexual experimentation and discovery happen.

I’m going to resist the temptation to draw conclusions about Shikha Dalmia’s sex life based on this. I can say it’s pretty piss poor logic with no apparent understanding of what consent means.

One of the great things that exploring kink has done for me is helped me to discuss and negotiate sexual activity. If you grow up watching sex in movies (both mainstream and porn) you get the impression that great sex just happens automatically. One minute the cynical private eye is trading witty barbs and smouldering looks with his femme fatale client, the next minute, just after she’s tried to slap him, they’re having amazing sex without so much as a yes, no or maybe. In reality experimentation, and the discussion that must go along with it, makes everything better. I’ve never yet had a mutual fantasy ruined by talking about it. I’ve had plenty of experiences where misunderstanding and a lack of communication definitely made things worse.

Gagged and Bound

Hopefully the gentleman in this image got all his discussion out of the way up front, as his current options look decidedly limited. The image is of course from Divine Bitches.

There’s an app for that

I’ve been meaning to write a highly critical post about the Good2Go app that Slate reviewed a few days ago. Fortunately, as is often the way, my laziness carefully calculated procrastination has paid off, with the Girl on the net doing the job for me. In a far more coherent way than I would have managed, she accurately points out that consent isn’t a simple contract approved with a one time rubber stamp. It certainly shouldn’t be a rubber stamp skewed towards ‘yes’ that gets recorded to some cloud database.

While this particular app is stupid, I’ve often thought there was a role for an app in managing BDSM activity lists. If you’ve not seen one of these before, take a look at this particular example. That gives 200 different activities, with 10 different interest level designators, checkboxes for what you’ve tried and top/bottom differentiation. What’s more it’s formatted to be printed out, so presumably the idea is you fill it out on paper and take it along to play parties. I’ve got to think that an app would be better than handing out flyers to everyone you meet in the dungeon. The app couldn’t negotiate the scene for you, but it could at least do a quick intersection of two different lists and highlight the overlap. Plus, you could update it on the fly and maintain switchable lists for different situations. We could call it the iHanky.

I’m not sure what the gentleman below put on his activity list, but I hope he put a 5 against ‘Getting injected into the urethra with a solution made from Tabasco sauce’.  Because judging by what the two ladies are holding, that’s what he’s about to enjoy.

InjectionThis image is from Baroness Essex, an English pro-domme based in East Anglia and London. It features the Baroness with her PA Katherine. I found it via the Bei Fuss tumblr.

Taut for twanging

This is a nice predicament bondage set-up. The straps on the table stretch him out and then the cords keep everything nice and taut. She looks like someone plucking at a musical instrument, so I’d guess that one of the cords just got twanged. I do know that if I was in this position Lydia would be unable to resist tickling the soles of my feet, leading to much jerking and tugging of delicate parts.

PredicamentThis is of course from Divine Bitches.

James Franco’s Kink

I’ve been waiting to watch the kink documentary for a while now. It first popped up back in 2013, but it seems Mr Franco is practicing a form of tease and denial, because it has been very hard to track down. There’s a new trailer out, which you can see in this recent article/interview on the film. Yet, despite a release date of August 22, I can’t seem to find a showtime anywhere for it. So while millions might be browsing kink.com‘s erotic material via tumblr everyday, the documentary remains more elusive than a helpful comment on youtube.

Claire Adams and EuroSex

The image is from the kink.com site Men in Pain. It features the brilliant Clarie Adams and the strangely named but equally great EuroSex.

Mixing work and pleasure

I’ve featured unusual scientific research on pain in past posts. A recent article from io9 continues this theme with details of 1933 experiment that lovers of CBT may find familiar. I’m proud to say it featured a couple of British scientists, whose names have sadly not entered history alongside other greats like Newton, Faraday and Darwin.

They were researching referred pain, a strange phenomena where damage to one part of the body manifests as pain in an entirely different part. They needed an easy way of causing pain and, being men, immediately turned to the idea of squeezing testicles. Also being good scientists, rather than the evil crazy kind, they experimented on themselves, using weights to apply controlled pressure. Presumably the Nut Crusher had yet to be invented. Their conclusion was that testicular pain also manifested in the torso, on the same side as the squeezed testicle. Perhaps my male readers can confirm or deny the truth of this finding? Or maybe try a repeat run? It’s not kinky, it’s just good old fashioned research.

Apparently the originally published paper doesn’t list who inflicted the pain on who. Personally I wonder if they persuaded an attractive medical student to do the job. You know, for science.

Squeezed TesticlesThis couple appear to be conducting an experiment of their own. I’m not sure if it’s under controlled conditions, but she’s certainly generating a statistically significant amount of pain. I found the image on the Innocence is Bliss tumblr. I believe it’s originally from the Female Dom site.

F=ma

This image will doubtless provoke various different reactions in the viewer. I’d predict everything from an ‘Ouch’ through a ‘Yuck’ up to an ‘OMG! That’s hot!’ I wonder how many people out there are like me, and started thinking about vectors, pivot points and applied forces. Possibly I’ve looked at too much porn. Probably I’m still harboring the remains of my crush on Miss Thompson from my high school applied mathematics classes. But I somehow can’t help imagining her drawing lines of force on this picture and telling us to calculate just how many Newtons of force Clair Adams is applying to this gentleman’s testicles (for an assumed mass of Clair).

Claire Adams from Men in PainThis is from the Men in Pain site.

Learning to scream

It’s important that a masochist learns to scream correctly. Not to mention moan, whimper, flinch and wince. Volume or pitch isn’t important, but consistency and honesty is. Anytime I play I’m trying to give good feedback about the intensity of the experience and what headspace I’m in. It’s not like I get hit and then think “Hmmm, that feels like a level 7 moan. And maybe a level 5 flinch.” Instead I aim for a natural transparent reaction, and to resist the urge to occasionally exaggerate my response in order to control the scene. When the intensity is ratcheting up it can sometimes be tempting to do that and get ahead of what I know might be coming.

Of course, an expert domme can normally accurately assess just how painful her actions are and how genuine the reaction to them is. For the less experienced then help maybe at hand. It turns out that computers can be amazingly good at judging how genuine a reaction to pain is. According to this article, when shown video of people experiencing or faking pain, humans were essentially hopeless at guessing which was which, while computer software got it right 85% of the time. I find that an astonishing number. It would be interesting to put a selection of dominants through the same test and see if they were any better at spotting the fakers. I also wonder if adding sound to the test would have significantly improved the score for the humans.

Apparently one of the best indicators is the dynamics of the mouth opening. I’d guess this scene would provide some useful training data for the software. I don’t think he’s faking it.

Man in pain

This is from the Men in Pain site. I found it on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.

Ball, balls and ball

I can’t claim to be a huge an of this ladies outfit – it smacks too much of motorbike magazine cover girl for me – but I do like what she’s done with this suspension. He’s been tied into a tight ball, then she has tied his balls up, and then she’s hung a metal ball from his balls. It’s a ball trifecta.

I’m also thinking that the soles of his feet are going to be awfully vulnerable in this position, and she still has that cane lying on the floor. Bastinado on top of suspension and CBT would be wonderfully evil.

Suspension and ball torture

This is originally from the Men in Pain site. I found it on the written in the water tumblr.