What’s in a number?

There’s a new sex study popping up on a variety of news sites. It contains an analysis of sexual fantasies divided by gender, detailing what percentages fantasize about what activities. It’s always hard to know just how reliable or well researched these kind of surveys are, but given this one was by the University of Montreal and appeared in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s vaguely meaningful.

The Daily Dot article on it gets the underling message of it right. There’s really no such thing as ‘normal’ and no matter what you like, there’s doubtless a bunch of other people out there that share your fantasy. The Business Insider article is a little more judgmental and focuses more on the normal/unusual/rare categorizing. Those seem like unfortunate and inaccurate labels to me.

Let’s take for example the fantasy of being urinated on. I know that’s one that has appeal to at least some of my readers. It’s classed as unusual in the survey, with 10% of men and 3.5% of women claiming it. With around 300M people in the US, a naive extrapolation and some basic maths tells me that around 20M people in the US have fantasized about being peed on. That doesn’t sound all that rare or unusual to me.

Let’s put that number in context. That 20M is more than the population of New York, LA and Chicago combined (15M). It’s more than the average of 14M people who watched the 2014 World Series – the cliffhanging finale to America’s national pastime.  It’s more than the highest rated sporting event last week (Monday night football at 18.8M) and the highest rate scripted show on cable (the Walking Dead at 14.5M). The biggest selling track of last year was Robin Thicke’s blurred Lines at 6.5M.  So more people would rather get pissed on than buy a track from Robin Thicke. Remind me what’s unusual here again?

Some sexual activities are a little less common that others. Fucking automobiles for example. But if a fantasy is shared by the same number of people that attend Disneyland every year, I’m going to go ahead and say it can’t be called uncommon.

After using the example of watersports I really have to follow-up with a suitable image. This isn’t actually the act itself, but it’s pretty clearly a build up to a liquid lunch.

Preparation to PeeI believe this is another image from the Rinryu site (warning strong content including some scat).

Happiness and avoiding the ER

I’m very happy as I got to play with Lydia tonight. After my recent posts on medical issues and kink, I did have a fleeting thought that the Gods of coincidence and comedy might choose to screw with me, and target me for an emergency room trip. Fortunately Lydia is far too talented and careful for that to happen, so I got to enjoy some sensory deprivation and heavy bondage with no ill effects.

I’ve joked with dommes in the past that if I do wind up in ER, I’m going to be the one moaning quietly to myself on a hospital trolley, while they’ll be out front explaining exactly what perverse sexual practices landed us there. However, I also have a mental picture of it playing out like the overdose scene in trainspotting. I’d get poured into a cab with a twenty in my top pocket, and end up unconscious in front of the local ER. That would be a terrible way to end a session, but great fodder for an X-rated Bob Newhart* style comedy sketch. I picture a calm but slight puzzled doctor phoning my next-of-kin to try and figure out how he should diagnose a naked and collared man with an electrified buttplug at one end and a dreamy smile at the other.

Lots of nurses taking care of an unruly male patientI’m not sure what’s wrong with the gentleman in this picture, but at least he has no shortage of helpful nurses to try and diagnose the issue. Unfortunately I don’t have a source for the image

* If you’re unaware of Bob Newhart’s comedy then I’d suggest checking out his sketch Defusing a Bomb. That should give you a good idea of what you’ve been missing.

Kicks but no licks

I’m safely back from San Francisco after a very enjoyable weekend. Kinky fun was had, and potentially will be blogged about, but I did miss the major kinky event of the weekend – the Dore Alley Fair (AKA the Up Your Alley Fair). I hadn’t realized it was on until a friend who lives in the area mentioned it. He’s not kinky (as far as I know), and doesn’t know about my kinks, so I was amused to here the hushed tones he used to describe it. He made it sound like a cross between Caligula’s court and 120 Days of Sodom, and felt that I’d risk being traumatized should I inadvertently stumble into it.

I was less amused to read this guest post by Denali Winter on Kitty Stryker’s blog about some new rules in place for the fair.

Volunteers and cops alike informed Denali that “no touch that might provoke ejaculation” was allowed, but that they could kick or punch their submissive in the balls as much as they liked.

Even touching a penis in a chastity device was banned, which seems particularly odd given they’re specifically designed to prevent ejaculation. So anyone likely to be traumatized by sucking or fucking is now safe to attend Dore Alley, but those sensitive to people being kicked and beaten should continue to steer clear. It’s a strange set of rules, particularly for a San Francisco street fair, but sadly I’m not all that surprised.

DoreAlleyThe image above is from the fair itself. It features the post writer, Denali Winter (attempting to shoot material for her site Petplay Palace), along with Mistress Alice, Mistress Clair and her submissive Beau. If you’re at all into pet play you might want to check out the site.

Venus in Furs (cont)

While I’m on the subject of the classic book, it would be remiss of me not to mention the new illustrated edition of it by the immensely talented Sardax. I have a kindle edition, which for reasons that escape me has become hard to track down. Isn’t one of the selling points of electronic books that they don’t go out of print and are always in stock? Anyway, if you’re interested in a copy, Sardax has a collection of links to places carrying the hard copy edition.

I have to admit I’m not the biggest fan of the original story. I’m glad I purchased the Sardax illustrated version, as it’s a book I feel I have to own and his artwork is always a pleasure, but unfortunately I find the primary character and narrator whiny and annoying. The writing is also very much of its time, which means its verbose, meandering and very formal in its language. David Ives was undoubtedly wise to avoid a straight translation of the book, and instead do a play with a play, letting him take the theme but put his own modern twist on it.

Of course, mentioning Sardax gives me an excuse to feature some of his brilliant artwork. This is from his illustrated version of the book.

Venus in Furs by Sardax

Experimenting with gargalesis

Sometimes I can be a little slow. For example, I spent ages starting at this image trying to figure it out. Why, I wondered, are two women tickling him, while the third is drawing a picture of a costumed superhero? How could those different things possibly be related? Only after an embarrassingly long time did I figure out that the third woman is actually drawing a color coded map of his ticklish zones. That’s both scientific and particularly evil.

In my defense I will say that I’m extremely ticklish, so a color coded map wouldn’t make much sense for me. All my body parts trigger a strong reaction, so it’d just be red all over. I can’t say I particularly kink on being tickled, but I have noticed that some dommes really get a kick out of the reaction they can provoke with it. So I do enjoy feeding off their reaction to my reaction. It’s a perversely entertaining feedback loop.

Incidentally, the title of the post features the scientific name for tickling. Femdom Resource – bringing you entirely accurate and completely useless information, one post at a time.

Tickle torture

I found this image on the Lunar Black tumblr. It’s initialed with something that looks like DH??, but I can’t track down the artist. If anyone knows then please leave a comment.

Paddling the pigskin

I’m back again in Seattle after suffering through a much delayed flight. Apparently in my absence some sort of sporting event occurred. I’m with Dan Savage on this particular issue…

The team that happens to be located in the city I happened to relocate to 20 yrs ago for non-football-related reasons is ahead!
From Dan’s Twitter Feed

I’ve actually been a 49ers fan since I was a kid, so I lost most of my interest in the proceedings after the NFC championship game a couple of weeks ago. However, it does give me a chance to feature some football themed femdom. Perhaps the Denver cheerleaders should have given this a shot? It certainly would have made for a more entertaining show, and it couldn’t have made things any worse.

Football player spanked by cheerleaders

I’m afraid I don’t know the artist. I found it on the Femdom Artists site.

Still Life

I’m continuing the religious theme from yesterday with a shot that should be appreciated by all CFNM fans. Believe it or not this is actually from an ad for a fitness club. I have no idea what they were thinking with this one. It doesn’t make me want to take to the gym, although it does make art classes more appealing. Even more strangely some catholic groups got upset about it. With all the appropriation of religious themes and iconography that has happened over the years, I’d have thought they’d have given up on harmless stuff like this by now.

Still Life

I found this on the CFNM Classics tumblr.

Nature / Nurture / Whatever

The New York Magazine has an article on the well worn subject of nature versus nurture in the context of fetish and kink. It’s a discursive piece, heavy on anecdotes and light on hard data. It comes down firmly on the side of nurture, although it also admits there’s no simple way to divide up such a complex set of influences and interests.

Personally I wonder if, outside of scientific curiosity, the debate is even one worth having. Unless they identify a very clear genetic cause, which seems unlikely given the current research, the discussion isn’t going to result in anything actionable. Nobody is going to be able to come up with a set of guidelines for bringing up a child with “normal” sexual interests. The cause and effect is far too complex and unique for each individual.

It also seems odd that people are so interested in tracking down the basis for kinky sexual preferences, but seem happy to accept all the other preferences people exhibit without question. If somebody says they don’t like carrots, nobody starts wondering if they had a traumatic experience as a child while watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Wine lovers don’t feel the need to tie their interest back to early experiences with a sippy cup and purple grape drink. Even in the sexual and relationship realm we let vanilla preferences slide without comment. A serial dater of blonde women just has a ‘type’. Nobody wonders if it’s because he watched one too many Marilyn Monroe movies while sitting on his mother’s knee. Yet say he likes dominant blonde women, and suddenly there’s an urge to wheel out old Sigmund to try and figure out why the hell he’s so damn weird.

Given this posts focus on the development of sexual preferences, it seems appropriate to finish with this image – ‘School of Bondage’ by zblabla. The classroom can certainly be a powerful influence on sexual development, but it’s not typically this overt.

'School of Bondage' by zblabla

There’s always a queue for the ladies bathroom

Playing with several people simultaneously isn’t too unusual in BDSM circles. Most pro-dommes will offer double or even triple-domme sessions and, on the lifestyle side, play parties help facilitate public interaction with multiple casual partners. Some guys are even lucky enough to get beaten down by four fabulous women. Compared to the mechanics of regular vanilla sex, with its orifice and appendage pairing issues, BDSM seems a lot easier to coordinate in groups.

All that said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before. That’s 22 women and 1 guy. I particularly like the fact that some of the women at the back are holding crops. Clearly they’re not just an audience, but plan to be close enough to use them at some point. Hopefully nobody suffers from a shy bladder.

Toilet scene featuring 22 women and 1 guy

I should warn readers that the site this comes from features fairly strong content, including scat play. If you’re OK with that then check out the rinryu blog. I believe it’s run by the creators of the infamous yapoo film series.