The beauty of dominant women
If you’re physically aroused by the sight of some shaped and polished steel, then you might be a little strange. After seeing this, I know I am. I went from “Wow, that’s hot” to “Wow, that’s weird I’m actually being aroused by that” in about 30 seconds.
This beautiful piece of chastity hardware is called The Torture Puzzle and was created by the talented folks at Steelwerks. I can’t see it being survivable for long-term wear, but it would certainly be fun to break out for special occasions!
Here’s an image to restore mental peace after the battle of the last post. My lizard brain can enjoy the attractive dominant lady, her leather garb and that excitingly tight top. My simian brain nods approvingly at the outdoor appropriate clothing, the hefty chain leash and the appropriately positioned slave.
The lady in question is, of course, the wonderful Mistress T. She recently seems to be on a one women mission to make the already fine city of Vancouver an even more exciting location to live. This image was shot far from there, in my old part of the world, for the English Mansion site.
I found this image on the Rebel Mistress tumblr.
After the verbiage of yesterday’s post, here’s something short and sweet – a cute young couple and a chastity device.
It’s my impression that chastity play is something people grow into over time. When you’re enjoying the surging hormones of youth, then the idea of delayed gratification is not a familiar one. Certainly when I was young the idea of locking up my new found source of entertainment would have sounded like crazy talk. Although I’m guessing a girl as cute as this could probably have talked me into it. And by probably, I mean with 100% certainty, if she’d smiled sweetly and whispered in my ear.
I found this on the I Crave Domination tumblr. I think it’s originally from the Submissive Cuckolds site.
Using a camera phone to snap a reflected mirror shot is one of the new genres in candid porn. There are entire web sites dedicated to it, typically involving young women. It often hits the news when celebrities do it, or when the girls involved are teenagers and inadvertently create completely ridiculous legal problems for themselves and their friends.
Here’s a fun variation on the theme – showing your bound, gagged and cock locked slave off. Personally I’d say that it’s the best version yet.
I found this on the Fuck Yeah Femdom tumblr.
Buying Christmas gifts for friends is always tricky. You don’t want to create a problem for them by sticking them with something they don’t like or can’t use. My circle of friends often defaults to wine, which leads to a lot of pointless circulating of bottles between us. Fortunately I have one friend with imagination, and she got me one of my best presents ever – a vintage vibrator.
The device in question can be seen below, with a couple of alternate angles here and here. She actually inherited it from a relative who collected antiques and vintage mechanical/electrical devices. Apparently her partner commented that it looked like it’d be very painful and you’d have to be crazy to allow it anywhere near your private parts. For some odd reason that immediately brought me to her mind, and I therefore had the pleasure of unwrapping it in a busy Seattle restaurant. I’m sure our server at least got a smile out of it.
Anyone surprised that vintage vibrators even exist should check out this article on their history. They were originally developed to ‘cure hysteria’ in women around the end of the nineteenth century. In a nice bit of Victorian double-think, since women weren’t sexual then using a device to induce a ‘hysterical paroxysm’ wasn’t sexual either. It was just a useful medical technique. They were even openly advertised in housekeeping magazines of the time. Here’s an advert I managed to track down for my very own device. Apparently I can look forward to a clear beautiful complexion and wonderfully attractive hair.
From a kinky perspective, the most dangerous bit looks to be the old frayed power cord. Nobody wants to get involved in some inadvertent electrical play at 120V.
Although vibrators are traditionally associated with inducing pleasure they can also be used for some interesting orgasm torture. Forced, ruined and denied orgasms are all fun kinky options. The shot below features Lexi Sindel forcing an orgasm for a man in chastity, which must be particularly uncomfortable. You can click through on the image to see the animated gif at the Femdom Empire blog.
I’ve posted in the past about the effect a smile in an image can have. It’s often the difference between an average image I’ll zip past on a tumblr and one that’ll have me looking for the save option. The shot below is a good case in point. I like the shiny chastity cage, the fact she’s making him do all the work and her relaxed pose with the cigarette. But the thing that really makes it an image worth posting is her smile. There’s a nice air of amused anticipation to it.
I found this on the sex is not the enemy tumblr.It’s originally from the strap-on dreamer site.
I’ve been pondering on pain in recent days. What draws some people to it? What makes a masochist and why do other people find them so strange?
I think if you asked most people why they didn’t like pain, they’d assume you were crazy. It hurts. What else is there to say? However, when I look at how people experience pain in everyday life, I suspect that it’s not the sensation itself that’s the primary issue. Instead, it’s the fear and uncertainty that comes with it. Sure when you hit your thumb with a hammer there’s that brief flash of agony that temporarily blocks out coherent thought. But after that, as it subsides to a dull throb, what stays with you is the uncertainty. Have I fractured something? Did I damage the nail? Is it going to swell up? Will I need a trip to the ER? It’s a similar story with chronic pain, like a bad back or a damaged ligament. The pain might be manageable, but what stresses people is the lack of control. They don’t know when it’ll stop, when it might flare up, how much it might impact their daily life.
It’s hard to find examples of pain in normal life that doesn’t have this element of fear and uncertainty. However, there are a few – working out, eating spicy food or playful biting and scratching during sex. The sensations here are often painful ones, but are not described that way. There is no fear or uncertainty, the situation is a controlled one, and therefore the perception is a much more positive one.
When discussing masochism there’s often a lot of talk about wires getting crossed in the brain, as though there’s something fundamentally different about masochists. I wonder how true that really is. Growing up I was never particularly interested in pain. What fascinated me was exchanging control. Pain seemed like an interesting way to emphasize that exchange – I can hurt you and you can’t stop me – but it didn’t seem like an end in itself. It was only when I got physically involved in BDSM that I began to think about it differently. The very safe and defined limits of a play session allowed me to experience the sensation of pain, but divorced from the negative connotations it usually has. I began to explore and appreciate the sensation both in its own terms and as a tool for play.
I therefore wonder if there are a lot of other people out there who would be masochists, but never have the chance to find out. Is appreciating pain perhaps something not inherent in certain people but – at the risk of sounding like a cross between a Bond villain and a Cenobite – just something that needs to be cultivated? People can learn to appreciate oysters and good wine. Maybe nipple clamps and leather floggers are a similarly acquirable taste.
I’ll leave you with a couple of shots from Divine Bitches of Mistress Madeline helping somebody cultivate their own particular palette for pain. If he hasn’t developed one already, this looks like the perfect time to start.
I like this shot for the very delicate way she’s handling the situation. Part of the hotness of chastity play comes from the importance of the cock. It’s not just a piece of meat. It’s the focal point for a male’s sexuality. As Ferns recently wrote when describing chastity play…
he became sensitised in a way he had never been before, his entire way of walking around in the world changed, his view of himself changed, his relationship with his sexuality was emphasised, and I was the owner of all of it.
Often chastity shots emphasize the key or the device, but neglect the erotic and sexual nature of the play. In contrast, this shot really captures those elements for me. The delicacy and sensitivity of the appendage is highlighted, with her focus obviously on the man himself, and not the nuts and bolts of the device.
I found this on the Volens Datorem tumblr. It’s originally from The Kinky English Lady, Miss Hybrid.
Emily Nagoski has an interesting post up in relation to this Jezebel article on female pleasure and the emphasis put on the orgasm. The writing is in the context of vanilla sexual relationships rather than kinky ones, but it got me thinking about how the ideas related to more unconventional sexual interactions.
For men, orgasm and pleasure are closely linked. They’re practically the same thing. They can enjoy arousal without orgasm, sure, but basically they can tell if they had a good sexual experience by whether or not they’ve had an orgasm.
And they apply that standard – THEIR standard, the male/masculine standard – to their women partners. As though women are men, and as though to be anything else is to be broken.
So even if a guy wants his female partner to have orgasms because he wants to make her feel good, which is lovely and very nice, why can’t he just MAKE HER FEEL GOOD because he wants to make her feel good, without the performance demands of orgasm?
Orgasm is often slower and more effortful for women than for men; it’s more variable from woman to women, more variable from day to day in an individual woman. Sometimes orgasm just isn’t there for her; she can still experience truckloads of pleasure, though.
Emily Nagoski
It’s tempting at this point to start getting pedantic about the definition of sexual experience. I’ve had some amazingly enjoyable experiences being bound, beaten and burnt that I’d consider as very sexual but that didn’t feature orgasms. However, for the sake of argument lets just consider sexual experiences as they’re more commonly defined, where genitals and stimulation of some sort is involved. In that scenario I think it’s still incorrect to say that an orgasm is necessary for a kinky man to have a good sexual experience. But I do think that the idea of an orgasm is a key part of the experience. Chastity play and tease and denial all concentrate on the removal of the orgasm. Edging is all about repeatedly approaching the point of orgasm without tipping over it. Ruining an orgasm is about spoiling the moment itself. These different type of orgasm control may or may not feature an actual physical orgasm, but they do put the idea of it right at their heart.
In contrast some women (and it’s impossible to avoid stereotyping here as Emily acknowledges) are not wired in that way. Lack of orgasm isn’t necessarily a sign of total failure in bed, in the same way that your partner achieving orgasm doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a fantastic lover. To quote Emily once again – “pleasure is a destination, not a journey; if you feel good, you have already arrived.”
Where I think this gets particularly interesting in the kinky domain is how it relates to lifestyle male chastity arrangements. I have to tread a little carefully here, as I’m not speaking from first hand knowledge of that specific type of play. However, I’ve never let lack of knowledge get in the way of my opinions before, and I don’t see any reason to start now.
I browse and read a variety of kinky blogs (not all of them linked to from here) and one of the subtexts I observe in a lot of male chastity blogs is a type of transference of sexual expectation. It often seems that simple denial or control over the male orgasm isn’t enough. To be truly satisfying their has to be frequent orgasmic sexual experiences for their female keyholder. There are no doubt a lot of complex reasons behind that, but a key factor seems to be avoiding turning a deliberate denial of sexual pleasure into a total absence of sex. From the male perspective sex involves orgasms, and if he’s not having them, then it’s necessary (or at least highly desirable) that she is.
That of course then runs directly into the issues Emily is addressing above. Male expectations around sex and orgasms can’t automatically be projected onto women. And yet long term chastity play seems to encourage that very projection, with the resulting conflicts you’d expect from that.
I’m afraid I have zero answers for how to resolve this issue. Other than perhaps being aware of its existence and using that knowledge to think creatively around the conflict. In the meantime, while I brace myself for a flood of comments from men in chastity telling me I’m full of crap, here’s a nice shot of a steelwerks chastity device. It’s from their blog and was supplied by one of their clients.
Here’s another piece of artwork that caught my eye, with once again a distinct shift in style and color from the previous days post.
The depiction of a submissive wearing a chastity device while simultaneously being penetrated by a strap-on is a fairly commonly one. The additional emphasis it places on the dominants sexual control and power has an obvious appeal. However, this image struck me as showing an usually tender scene. Despite the manacles, fetish wear and padlocked cock cage, there’s a real sense of tenderness and vulnerability. She looks like she’s more likely to whisper sweet nothings in his ear than call him a slut. Which I personally think would be a definite improvement from the usual cliched domme pillow talk that often gets scripted in these scenarios.
I found this on the True Servitude tumblr site, which contains a lot of hentai images of various fetishes
