Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

The ratio of dominant women to submissive men is a topic of conversation that pops up fairly regularly across femdom blogs and forums. Most submissive men will maintain their are lots more of them than dominant women. In contrast, I’ve observed some dominant women claim that lots of the play events they attend have a ratio close to parity or even skewed to a majority of dominants.

I’ve done my own highly unscientific research in the past, and now OKCupid  have done something a bit more scientific, sampling their userbase. They have a chart showing ‘Turn-ons by gender’, which has good news in general for kinky people, but bad news for people searching for a Femdom relationship.

The good news part is a lot of people seemed to be into general kinkiness. Over 60% of both genders liked of the idea of ‘rough sex’ and over 50% ‘being bitten’. Even enjoying ‘some pain’ was over 30% of both genders. Those numbers are higher than I’d have guessed, although I’m sure the general populace would skew lower than OKCupid users.

The bad news is that the survey terms that tend to be high for both genders don’t differentiate top from bottom. Once you start doing that, then a more stereotypical view of kink emerges. Over 40% of men in this survey like tying people up but less than 20% enjoy being tied up. A majority of them like taking control (~60%) but only around 20% are happy for their partner to take control. Women are pretty much the reverse of that Less than 10% of survey women like taking control or doing the tying. In contrast over 40% like being tied up and over 60% like their partner taking control.

That means, purely from a population size perspective, anyone hunting on OKCupid for an M/f relationship is likely to have a much easier time of it than an F/m one. In terms of the ratios, then it looks roughly like a 2:1 between dominant women to submissive guys. Almost 20% of guys like being tied or giving up control, where a little less than 10% of women enjoy being in charge of the ropes.

This is by the photographer Martin Duerr from a series called The Hotel.

Something for the grandchildren

This shot is apparently by Amauary Grisel (featured here in the past). I say apparently because I haven’t managed to track down the original posting, despite lots of other sites listing this as by Amauray Grisel. It makes me smile and I’d love to know the background story. It looks like a shot from a quirky indie horror movie featuring ravenous kinky grandmothers who like to tie up their man meat before devouring it. And also, maybe snap a few selfies for the family while they’re doing it.

Roleplay with an edge

Some people use BDSM to temporarily escape reality, while for others it’s a way of working through and exploring real world issues. I’m definitely in the escapist camp. I like to take a vacation from my overactive and constantly nagging brain by giving it a big wash of adrenaline and hormones. Being reminded of stuff that depresses me on a day to day basis is the last thing I want sneaking into my kink.

The people in this Broadly article clearly feel differently. The title sums it up pretty well – ‘Inside a BDSM Dungeon with a Hillary Dom and a Guilty, Diaper-Clad Trump Voter’. So on top of wall to wall political coverage in the media, you can now also politics in your local playspace. Assuming your local playspace is La Domaine Esemar that is.

The Domme in question is Mistress Couple (featured here in the past), who started offering a Hillary/Trump roleplay as joke before the election. When Trump won, and the joke became decidedly less funny, she continued with the twist that wannabe Trump submissives had to prove a donation to the ACLU or Planned Parenthood before a session.

I like the idea of generating money for a good cause and giving Mistress Couple the satisfaction of hitting a Trump voter in the nuts with a golf club. I just wish our politics wasn’t so fucked up that it’s ripe for being turned into BDSM role play material.

This street artwork, featuring Catwoman and Trump, is entitled ‘The revenge of women’ and is by Herr Nilsson.

It’s unlikely the ‘Mike’ featured in the Broadly article is a reader of this blog, but on the off chance he is, I’d just like to say: ‘Mike, you’re a goddamn idiot’.

Bruises on bruises

I’m safely back in Seattle, recovering from my LA hijinks. Doing 8 intense hours of sessions over 6 days definitely wasn’t wise, but it was a lot of fun.

I finished by playing with Mistress Lucy again, whilst sporting fresh and vivid whip marks from Mistress Isabella Sinclaire. You can probably guess what happened next. Do you think that on being shown the day old marks…
a/ Mistress Lucy observed how tender they looked and was careful to avoid them for the rest of the sessions, or
b/ Gleefully raked her fingernails across them and then pulled our her slappy leather whip to add her own layer of marks on top?

The vivid bruises on my back will testify to answer (b). There’s something about showing a tender spot to a sadistic top – they just can’t help poking at it to get a reaction. Or, in this case, beating it with a big leather thing to get a scream.

This isn’t me in the picture with Isabella below, but my marks were (and are) remarkably similar in pattern. Or at least were until the next layer got added!

I found this on Mistress Isabella’s Instagram.

Undesired desires

Metro recently published an interview with Goddess Avivia that made me laugh. For the most part it’s a pretty standard mainstream magazine interview with a pro-domme. That is to say, it’s generally positive with an minor undercurrent of sneering and sensationalism. It also has the requisite reference to submissions all being rich alpha types that always bugs me. The bit that made me laugh was this…

Most of my clients are privileged white men: 6-feet tall, fit, in their 30s, usually working in a high-powered position. These men are used to being in control, getting what they want and having women cater to their desires. It’s exciting for them to experience the polar opposite of their day-to-day.

As regular readers will be aware, I’m huge fan of pro-dommes and always enjoy playing with them. And I’m sure that Goddess Aviva is a lovely person and an excellent domme. However, I’m also pretty certain that all her 6 foot tall clients are getting exactly what they want and are still having a woman cater to their desire. That is, after all, what they pay for. It might be unusual to desire to be beaten or humiliated or peed on by an attractive woman, but it’s still a desire. Unless of course they have been prescribed invigorating beatings  for the good of their health, and really don’t enjoy them at all.

I understand what she’s getting at, but the wording did make me smile. I’ll leave you with an old image of Mistress Madeline apparently refusing to give her slave what he desires.

So it’s come to this

This is, I swear, my last retrospective post to commemorate my 2000th post anniversary. If I’m not careful I’m going to be still writing about it when post 3000 rolls around. So normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Until then, let me finish by sharing links to some of my favorite past posts. These are the ones I most enjoyed writing and I think best represent what I’m trying to do here. So here, in no particular order, is my top 10.

  1. The post ‘Reality and Physicality‘, featuring a quote from the book Neuromancer, captures a sensation from kinky play that I often experience, but haven’t seen described elsewhere. It also features some lovely shots of Domina Yuki.
  2. I’ve frequently posted on the silly stereotype that most submissive men have stressful high power jobs and like the chance to unwind in a dungeon (for example here). I think this particular post is the best rant I’ve managed to date on that.
  3. Stupid legal situations have been another good area for angry cathartic posts, particularly featuring the UK. This was the one that made me laugh the most.
  4. This post on Bob Flanagan wasn’t anything too special, but it did trigger one of the most interesting comments I’ve ever had (from scott Kelly).
  5. This post and it’s more constructive follow-up highlighted an issue in scene negotiation that has bitten me in the past. Hopefully they might have saved others from a similar situation.
  6. My posts obviously rely a lot on artwork created by others. This post had one of the cutest pieces, and also addressed an important issue.
  7. You can prove anything with statistics – including the fact that more people fantasize about being peed on that watched the 2014 World Series.
  8. Large tech companies doing stupid things with adult content is a frequent and significant problem. I thought this post on why that might happen presented a perspective on it that’s rarely heard.
  9. BDSM bloggers often write about pain in scenes, but less frequently address how stress can build up in play. I thought Accumulating Stress and it’s follow-up Relieving Stress were an interesting take on that.
  10. Being listed as a top sex blogger back in 2012 was nice, but even better was the chance to write this Colbert-esque acceptance piece.

For images I hunted back to find something that I really liked. Expressions and smiles have been a common theme and it seemed appropriate to repeat that. Not to mention some cool suspension rope bondage.

Past Play

I thought I’d continue my 2000th post celebration with a somewhat self-indulgent review of a few of my more interesting sessions over the years. The list below wasn’t necessarily chosen based on pure enjoyment – although some were definitely that – but more on memorable moments that stuck with me.

  1. There was the time I tried to beat a heavy cold through the healing power of BDSM. That didn’t work out too well.
  2. I’ve been decorated in a wide variety of ways over the years. A Victorian Christmas Tree with Lydia and a Tailors Dummy with Cynthia Stone stand out in my memory. The blood decorated plaster cast also by Cynthia rates an honorable mention.
  3. Lydia was always an expert with needles. I loved the beautiful design she did on my back in 2015. The session I nicknamed Gulliver’s Travels was also a really interesting use of needles and twine.
  4. The most unusual technique I’ve experienced was probably a Staple Zippering. I’ve never seen this done anywhere else and domme’s I’ve described it to tend to look at me like I’m crazy.
  5. It wasn’t all needles and surgical staples when playing with Lydia. There was the time I almost kicked her on the ankle. Fortunately, my sense of self-preservation kicked in just in time.
  6. I’ve had countless great sessions over the years and documented a few of them here. There’s only ever been one really bad session when things went sour. I wrote about that here and here. I never did play with that unnamed domme again.

I’ll finish with an image of my favorite domme indulging in one of my favorite activities – breathplay. Nothing pushes me more quickly into subspace than a domme playing with my oxygen supply.

Post MM

This is my 2000th post. I find that fact astonishing. I launched the blog in September of 2010, exactly 2395 days ago. That means I’ve average a post roughly ever 28 hours for the last 6 or so years. Putting it another way, estimating the average post to take 45 minutes, and assuming a standard 40 hour work week, I’ve spent just over 37 weeks on the full time job of blogging. As jobs go, it’s certainly a satisfying one, although the salary of negative several hundred dollars a year could be better.

Thanks to everyone who has commented on the blog, emailed me, linked to me, written posts I’ve shared or published images I’ve used. Thanks in particular to all my readers. If nobody ever showed up, I doubt I’d have made it to 200 posts, let alone 2000. I hope I’ve added a little kinky happiness into people’s lives over the years.

I’ll probably do some more follow-up thoughts in a subsequent post. For the moment I’m just going to bask in the achievement of making it this far. For my 1000th post I featured the artwork of the talented Yumine Guo. Let me continue that tradition in post 2000. I’m feeling pretty pleased at making it this far, and here’s a lady looking equally happy with herself.

If you like Yumine’s work then consider support her Patreon.

Behind the fantasy

Courtesy of linking from Mistress T I found this article on the rewards and challenges of being both a sex worker and a parent. I’ll admit it doesn’t really have a femdom angle to it. However, this blog relies heavily on the fantasies that sex workers help create. I feature beautiful photographs of sex workers, articles by them and descriptions of amazing scenes they help create. I therefore always appreciate the chance to acknowledge and humanize the people behind the fantasy.

I’ll add an entirely anecdotal observation of my own to the story. A lot of the pro-dommes I’ve interacted with have been very caring people and very pro-animal. They’ve kept animals, or fostered animals, or volunteered at shelters or contributed (and encouraged others to contribute) to animal charities. Obviously this is based on a very limited data set, but it does seem to me that pro-dommes at least, tend to care about animals and their welfare far more than the average person on the street does.

Of course there are always exceptions. There’s one type of animal they tend to do some really horrible things to.

This artwork is of course by the great Sardax.