Tag: Fm

A nice refreshing drink

This clean couple come courtesy of this post on Homer’s blog (Japanese language). As best I can make out via the on-line translation tools, it’s a cover from an old issue of SM (Suspense Magazine). Washing a child’s mouth out with soap and water is an old punishment for bad language. I dread to think what he must have said to deserve this.

I actually did a scene featuring water in the face a few months ago, although it was poured from a bottle rather than power blasted at me. With a cloth over the face it can give some really interesting options for breathplay *. Unfortunately it was after I’d been tied to a bed for a couple of hours, and the trickling cold water against my skin just made me want to pee. With Lydia sitting on my torso, the fact of not going enough oxygen was a minor inconsequential trifle compared to the torture from my bladder!

Domme spraying water into bound submissive's mouth

* Note that breathplay is inherently dangerous, and this form particularly so. You get some oxygen through the wet cloth but not enough to stay alive. This makes it easy to slip gradually into a dangerous state of hypoxia. I’m not an expert but I do play with people who are. I don’t recommend trying it unless you’re confident the domme knows what she is doing.

The only thing we have to fear…

When I was catching up on my blog reading over the weekend I came across an interesting sequence of posts by Lady Anna List. They described a heavy imprisonment scenario, featuring bondage, isolation and sensory deprivation. You can read them in part 1, part 2 and part 3 of a series entitled Incarceration. What particularly caught my eye was the comment about a panic attack during the scene.

He’d fallen asleep and woken up before feeling the entire world closing in around him. Experience has helped him before to talk himself out of his impending attack…
…I’m not sure I would rescue him because this is something he has to get through so he knows he can get through it again in future extreme bondage situations.

That got me thinking about the nature of panic and how we experience it, which in turn led me to this fascinating paper on the subject. It’s fairly readable for a scientific paper and it contends that panic is an evolutionary response to dangerous situations. There’s first a tendency to freeze (so a predator won’t spot us), and then a physical response to divert blood, suck in more oxygen, release cooling sweat and tension muscles before fleeing for home and safety. The paper also talks about agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder where panic attacks can strike out of the blue in everyday life. These panic attacks typical occur in certain locations (wide open or enclosed spaces), or in certain situations (being in crowds of strange people or being far from home). These are scenarios which from an evolutionary perspective represented specific threats, such as being exposed with nowhere to hide, or encountering a number of strangers from outside your tribe.

I found it fascinating because there’s a tendency to think about panic as being purely a mental process, as something you can think your way around. And it’s true that you can condition yourself against it by repeated exposure and positive reinforcement. But the basic response itself is a very deeply embedded one, with real physical manifestations. Nobody would think of telling an agoraphobic to simply snap out of it and think themselves better. And yet I find there’s sometimes a tendency to see panic as a weakness or mental failure in a submissive. In fact it’s really just a million years of evolution doing it’s thing. Like the primitive drives for sex or food, it’s all about maximizing the chances of passing the genes on.

The other interesting takeaway from the paper was in the final section, where the author talks about the difficulty of studying panic in the laboratory. He should get out the lab and into his local BDSM playspaces. I can guarantee his local dommes will have a wide collection of experimental subjects they can push into carefully controlled panic situations!

I’ll leave you with a shot of an item that is great for pushing my panic buttons – a hood. That tight enclosed feeling gets me every time.

Hood in vintage BDSM shot

I found this via the clitlickslut tumblr.

Rule 34

For those of you that have never heard of it, rule 34 states that: “If it exists, there is porn of it.” It’s often used in a negative way, implying that there is no limit to how goddam weird people can be. Personally, I kind of like the concept. It’s nice to think of people finding others who share their tastes, rather than spending years with only their imagination for company. Although I can’t say the typical mash-ups of popular culture and porn tropes typically does much for me.

I believe this image is an example of the genre. I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books, but from the tumblr comments, this is Hermione and Snape from that series. It’s a nice image, although I’m not sure as a pony he should be licking her boots. That’s more a dog thing. It’s always important to get your animal behavior roleplaying right when drawing pictures of fictional characters doing imaginary things in a parallel erotic universe.

 

Hermione And Snape
I found this on the Mujeres Dominantes tumblr.

Site updates

I’ve done some clean up of dead links and dormant blogs, as well as a number of additions to both pages and my blogroll. To the Equipment page I’ve added a link to Über Kinky (UK site with a wide range of stuff) and Erin Houdini’s rope site. I’ve also linked to the forum site provided by Domina Irene Boss from my BDSM articles page.

On the Femdom Blogs page I’ve added:

Finally I’ve added a collection of new tumblr links, using the new categorization scheme I came up with a couple of weeks ago. Under the more submissive focused heading I added:

Under the general femdom heading I added:

And under the general BDSM and erotica heading I added:

I’ll leave you with an image I found via the newly added Written in the water tumblr. I love the way she’s holding his head in one hand and is about to pinch that nipple with the other. It’s a very sensual but assertive pose.

Pinch

A great example (of how not to do it)

I’ve often considered writing a submissive’s guide to organizing a first pro-domme session. Not that I’m any sort of expert, but I picture it as a letter to my younger self. The sort of article I wish I’d read when I was 21. Fortunately, I’m not sure I need to write it anymore. An article entitled ‘No, a dominatrix won’t have sex with you‘ pretty much provides the definitive guide. Just do exactly the opposite of whatever this guy does, and you should be OK.

Admittedly he didn’t initially realize she was a professional (in purely a taking the money sense of the word), but I don’t think it changes the basic message. For example, if she’s happy to meet you at 2am on the street and then mistakes you for her drug dealer, don’t do what this guy did and return to her apartment. Similarly, if the pre-scene discussion consists of her mentioning her boyfriend and then saying she’ll do it for free because you’re cute, that is not your cue to take your shirt off.

My favorite part of the whole thing was his last line – “The biggest lesson I took from this is one that I will carry to my grave: A dominatrix doesn’t have sex with you.” Really? That was your big learning point? A few others did spring to my mind. Add while that statement is generally true for pro-dommes in the US, for any random OKCupid date you meet collecting garbage on the street at 2am, I’d say all bets are off.

I’ll leave you with a picture of a real pro-domme having fun with her ‘boy toy’. This is Ms Mona Rogers, a genuine professional (in all senses of that word) from NYC.

Mona Rogers doing sensation play

Lessons learnt

During my web wanderings over the weekend I came across this insightful post from Mitsu entitled “Lessons I learned as a dominatrix: 10 things that don’t exist.” It’s a thoughtful list and any one of her points could have formed the basis for a follow-up post. However, I’m going to pick the first item on it: There’s no such thing as intimacy without vulnerability.

Sometimes, a client would come to session with me with his heart set on having the amazing kinky experience he’d always dreamed of, but it would end up disappointing because of something I had no control over: the walls wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t be able to communicate specifically what he really wanted. He wouldn’t be able to let go, of his ego perhaps, and let the scene happen.
Mitsu

As Mitsu goes onto say, this need for vulnerability and lowering your guard is a key part of any intimate relationship, not just a BDSM one. It’s something that rarely gets addressed directly. People come at obliquely, talking about sharing, trust or communication. But the heart of it, something necessary for all those things, is taking a risk and making yourself vulnerable.

The interesting thing I’ve found about doing BDSM scenes is that they can be a two way street when it comes to vulnerability. It’s necessary to let go to make them work, but the scenes themselves can also help you to do that. Pain and psychological stress can put a lot of pressure on any cracks the submissive wants to expose in their personal walls. It’s hard for the ego and super-ego to do their stuff when basic fight-or-flight impulses are ruling the roost.

One of the most powerful moments in any of my scenes came at a moment when I was feeling supremely vulnerable. I’d been in a bondage chair for a couple of hours, watching Lydia at close range, face to face, as she tortured me. I was bound but exposed, pushed deep into sub-space as she caned my inner thighs, applied clamps and zapped me with electricity. Towards the end she applied a number of viciously sharp clips across my body and then stepped back to watch as I struggled to breath through the pain. My thought process was long gone, there was really no me there, just a lot of pain and Lydia. As I stared up at her she came to me and gave me a gentle hug. It was a beautiful moment, comforting and reassuring, and I emotionally dissolved in her arms. Then, still holding me, she slid her body along mine, dragging the clips back and forth. I just about died. That little moment of vulnerability and intimacy combined with the sudden savage pain of the moving clips still gives me a shiver when I think of it today.

IntimacyImage of intimacy was found on the Girls Rule, Subs Drool tumblr.

Aggression is sexy

Seeing this image made me realize how few femdom images show expressions of simple aggression. There are a lot of smiling sadists, haughty stares and dismissive sneers, but not a lot like this shot. Personally, while I’m not a fan of angry domination, I do enjoy seeing controlled aggression. It suggest an emotional engagement with the scene and activity, not simply someone going through the motions. In this case her expression, coupled with the black glove, rope leash and bowed submissive, create a nice sense of focused energy.

AggressionI found this image on the She Rules Me tumblr. The dominant looks really familiar – a West coast pro-domme I think – but I just can’t place her name. If you can help with an identity feel free to leave a comment.

Update: Thanks to my knowledgeable readers I can identify the lady in question as Mika Tan. Her name was on the tip of my tongue I swear!

It’s not a competitive sport

There’s sometimes an unfortunate undercurrent to BDSM discussions that equates ‘better’ with more extreme and more edgy. A subtle suggestion that a bottom who can take a lot of pain or do more spectacular activities is somehow a superior type of bottom.

I think I can understand the mechanism by which this happens. Most kinky people like to push their own personal limits. They want to take six more hits, achieve that more strenuous position, wear the device one more week, get deeper into subspace. Part of the skill of being a top is figuring out just how far to push – up to the line but not too far beyond it. This creates personal goals, which can get all too easily fitted into a social hierarchical. My goals will always be someone else’s achievements. And if I’m aspiring to achieve something, then it becomes easy to think of the person who has already achieved it as being somehow more successful.

Of course understanding how it happens, doesn’t mean it’s not bullshit. The goal is to achieve personal satisfaction and happiness. Not win a ‘Who can slam their dick in the drawer the hardest’ competition. Everybody processes information and sensations differently. Being born with a higher pain threshold, or greater tolerance to extreme situations, doesn’t make you a better bottom. Good communication, empathy, understanding of personal boundaries, self-knowledge and a willingness to experiment are all characteristics of good bottoms. The ability to shove large things in small orifices, or survive sharp things applied at high speed, doesn’t feature in there at all.

BitingThe image features one of my favorite activities – biting. I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution for it. I found it on the Dishevelled Domina tumblr.

A push and a pinch

Something nice and simple tonight. Just a couple of smiles, a push with one hand and a pinch with the other. They look like they’re having fun.

A Push And A PinchI found this on the tumblr of Ms Savannah Sly, a local (from my perspective) Seattle pro-domme. I’d love to have an original attribution for it, so if you know the photographer or the models then please leave me a comment.