Hood – Page 10 – Femdom Resource

Sanity in the juryroom

I was heartened to read today about an “extreme pornography” case in England resulting in a not guilty verdict. Although it’s depressing that the case was even brought to trial, at least the jury saw sense.

I’ve written about this issue before. Back in 2008 the British government introduced legislation to outlaw what they defined as extreme pornography. The part of the act that concerned all BDSM lovers read as follow…

An image falls within this subsection if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following—
(a) an act which threatens a person’s life,
(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,

When the law was introduced it was accompanied by lots of scare stories about snuff films and non-consensual torture. Inevitably, as anyone with a brain might have guessed, it ended up getting applied much more broadly to anything the police thought they could get away with. I’d probably be in trouble because wrapping a plastic bag around someones head is life threatening. And burning someones genitals clearly could result in serious injury.

In this particular case it was fisting and urethral sounding that got the unfortunate victim into trouble. Neither of those things had resulted in serious injury, but obviously the facts weren’t about to get in the way of the prosecution. They also tried the usual tricks of exaggerating the evidence and smearing the defendant. As the defense lawyer describes, they originally suggested it was thousands of images, some involving children. In the end it was down to 5 images, all of consenting adults taken at a private party. It took the jury less than 90 minutes to acquit on all charges.

I’ll leave you with an image that will hopefully now not get my British readers into trouble. It features January Seraph and a nice long shiny sound.

This image is originally from the CBT and Ballbusting site. I found it on the Women with Whips tumblr.

When the going gets weird…

Weirdness often seems to occur at the intersection between the ordinary and the extraordinary. For example, while BDSM dungeons are unusual places, I don’t find them weird at all. Everything is in a common context. However, discovering one of my distinguished elderly aunts sipping a cup of tea while browsing a collection of nipple clamps in a dungeon, now that’d be weird. And possibly therapy inducing.

Pornography is a similar story. I can look at a picture of a bound man sucking a half naked transsexual and just think it’s a hot visual. Yet, occasionally there will be some weird juxtaposition of elements in a scene that turn it into WTF moment. Take the shot below for example. It’s not the dog hood alone that makes it weird. It’s the nonchalant way he’s wearing it, relaxing on the living room couch in his weekend casuals. Exactly what’s the role play here? I think if he was naked and leashed on the floor, in a bizarre way, it’d be a lot more normal a scene.

I found this on the All About Me (aka dominant damp knickers) tumblr. It’s originally from the Sharing My Wife site.

Site Updates

I’ve managed to find some time this weekend to do a few tweaks to the site. On the blog roll to the right (and on the blog page) I’ve added links to two blogs:

Mistress Sidonia von Bork, who I’m sure many of you have heard of, has a blog associated with her English Mansion site.
Mistress Olivia Fitzgerald is a London based pro-domme who is putting together the beginnings of a very interesting blog.

On the Femdom Image page I’ve added a collection of new tumblr links:

On the equipment page I’ve added a link to Strict Leather. And finally, I fixed the artwork entry on Augustine to point at some useful galleries rather than his closed image fap page. I’m still looking for a definitive site for his work if it’s out there.

I’ll leave you with a shot of Mistress Olivia Fitzgerald herself, taken from her commercial site. I found it interesting, as it’s one of those shots that if you described it to someone unseen, the resulting impression would be completely contrary to how it actually comes across. What would sound like scary serious S&M play, actually looks kind of sweet and tender in the image itself.

Clean

After yesterday’s lengthy post, here’s a nice minimal, clean image as a palette cleanser. I like the bare walls, stripped bed and her simple yet beautiful style. There’s actually quite a lot of interesting play going on – bondage, mummification, CBT, hooding and foot worship. But it doesn’t come across as complex or cluttered. It has a pleasant symmetry.

It’s original from Femdom Sessions. If you check out their tour page you can actually some video from this session, including some nice CBT and nipple torture. I found it on the Queen of Desire tumblr.

Adding to the stress

After writing yesterday’s post on panic and stress when playing, a further personal observation struck me. This was that it’s not relinquishing control that creates significant stress. I’m happy to release control of my body, and can do quite intense activities, like breathplay or suturing, with no danger of panicking. What dramatically ratchets up the stress level is when I feel that there’s an element that is out of control. Something that we accidentally dropped on the floor when control was passed between us. For example, I’ve no problem with a mistress pulling a plastic bag tight over my head. I won’t be able to breath, but I know that she knows that. A tight hood with a small breathing hole is way more stressful. I fear that the hole will get accidentally blocked, I won’t be able to fix and she won’t know about it. I worry that nobody will be in control, and that uncertainty prays on my mind.

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way, and so within this observation also lies opportunity. If a dominant wants to increase stress, then they should increase uncertainty. Remove both control and awareness from the submissive. Disconnect them from their surroundings and sense of time. To borrow a term from the software industry, the dominant should strive to create FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.

Conversely, with a nervous submissive, the dominant should try to eliminate ambiguity. Always be very clear about the transfer of control. Keep physical contact to let the submissive know they are still present and in charge of the situation. Encourage two-way communication and try to balance the competing stresses. For example, before increasing a level of sensory deprivation, decrease the level of bondage or the amount of pain.

Given hoods are a good way to do sensory deprivation and create stress, I figure this would be a suitable image to illustrate the post. I like the contrast between his objectified anonymity and her happy smiling face. It features Mademoiselle Belle, a pro-domme based in Madrid. Originally the image comes from her blog site, but I came to it via the darksehnsucht tumblr.

Hoods

A short post tonight. I just finished an intense session with Lydia and I’m still feeling pretty buzzed and floaty. All I want to do right now is pour a glass of wine and relax on the couch.

We were playing with hoods, an item I’ve had problems with in the past. I’m typically not claustrophobic, but there’s something about sensory deprivation, bondage and pressure around my face that stresses me. We’ve worked on it over time, and tonight we had a great session with a lot of layered bondage and some really heavy hoods (like this one). As usual Lydia threw in some interesting twists, using a leather body bag to wrap me in, and having me on a wheeled trolley bed that she could twirl around. That kind of spinning motion coupled with heavy sensory deprivation (she even used earplugs under the hood) and the layers of immobilizing leather bondage created a very intense head space.

In celebration of me making it through the session with no panicky moments, here’s a nice hood shot I came across on Mina’s Kinks tumblr.

Spooky internet moment

Earlier this evening I poured myself a glass of wine and began browsing the archive pages of the Gorean Kajirus tumblr. It’s one of my favorite tumblrs to look at when I’m simply hunting for eye candy. The curator obviously puts a lot of effort into it, as there’s a huge amount of aesthetically and erotically interesting material. There’s beautiful women or all types, ripped guys in restraints, interesting bondage shots and fun BDSM play in many different flavors. There’s even the odd bit of auto porn.

And then, in the middle of all the visual loveliness, dear God, I spotted myself. Twice. That was a spooky internet moment. It’s one thing to appear on my own blog, or on a domme’s site. After all these shots started life on Domina Yuki’s tumblr, and I even spotted my torso on Lydia’s testimonial page the other day. However, it’s quite another sensation to stumble across them on a random tumblr. Particularly one which tends to the more aesthetic than the functional side of kink.

In the meantime, while I get over the weirdness, let me leave you with a couple of shots of genuine eye candy from that tumblr. The first I think is Goddess Miki, a pro-domme from LA who has been on my ‘to visit’ list for a while. I’ve no idea about a source for the second one.

Relaxing on a bed

In yesterday’s post I talked a little about how much I enjoy playing on a bed. I like being able to relax into a scene, not having to worry about cramping from strange positions or numbness from extreme bondage. Being bound spread-eagled and have the domme lie alongside me – twisting, tweaking and pinching as she wants – is a great way to play. It creates a sense of intimacy, which I find particularly attractive when mixed with heavy sadism.

Thinking about this type of play sent me scurrying into my picture archives for illustrative shots. Here’s one I particularly like, even though I’m not sure it really shows the kind of intimate and sensual domination I originally had in mind. Maybe it’s the nipple clamps, maybe it’s the tight cock bondage, or maybe it’s the flogger being applied to his balls, but something tells me he’s not all that relaxed, despite the bed. On the other hand it does definitely check the heavy sadism box, so it’s at least partially what I was looking for.

I found this on The Heart’s Dark Desire tumblr (aka women with whips).

A delightfully devious device

This looks like a particularly exciting device for nipple torture. I think it’s called a nipple tree. There’s a name which conjures up a fairly weird mental image. I’ve seen them used before, but this is by far the prettiest, with its chrome and perspex design. I imagine it must ideal for very carefully inflicting just the perfect amount of pain via the clover clamps.

As for the mistress in these shots, I could swear I know who it is, but I just can’t connect the face to a name. It’s driving me slightly nuts, and reverse image searching hasn’t helped. So if you can help me attribute correctly then please leave me a comment with the lady’s name.

Updated: Thanks to a comment by Downlow I’ve finally identified the mistress as the talented Dante Posh. She’s a NYC/NJ based pro-domme, although she also travels extensively. I believe this is from a scene she shot for the English Mansion.

I found these two images on the appropriately named Tortured Nipples Tumblr.

Tasting Menu

In a comment to my previous post ‘Masochist vs Fetishist vs Submissive‘ Saratoga asked an interesting question.

Do you think your feelings of submission, as distinct from masochism or fetish, are different for you, than, say, for me, because yours involved Pro Dommes with whom you don’t have a non-professional attachment, whereas all of mine, save one instance, were lifestyle, relationship- or association-based FemDom experiences?
Saratoga

In many ways this is an impossible question to answer, given I don’t know know what his feelings of submission are. I’ve also only had vanilla relationships prior to getting involved physically involved in BDSM, so I don’t even have a good comparison to make in my own life. However, it did seem an interesting thing to think about in general terms. What are some of the potential difference between professional and non-professional play?

In a follow-up comment Saratoga likened pro-play to an unhealthy snack as compared to a good balanced meal. I don’t like that analogy at all. An unhealthy snack suggests something bad for you, a guilty weakness that you’d be better off resisting. That doesn’t align at all with how I feel about my sessions. Despite that, the food analogy, always a popular one in this kind of context, does have some merit.

I’d liken a professional session to a tasting menu in a high end restaurant. It’ll probably showcases techniques and ingredients you might find it difficult to replicate at home. With the right kind of chef in the kitchen it’ll probably be designed and prepared with intensity and passion. It can deliver an out-of-the world experience for a few hours. I’ve had some restaurant meals that have almost been spiritual experiences the food was so good. But it’s a context free, self-contained experience. It stands alone as a very pure event. There’s not all the shared emotional history and deeper connection that you might get with a specially prepared home cooked meal.

The purity of a professional session is a mixed blessing. On the downside it means dealing with a very disconnected world. There’s a session and there’s normal life. If you can’t deal with that kind of discontinuity then professional play probably isn’t a good idea. It also limits the evolution of the D/s dynamic. Even when you session regularly with the same pro-domme (as I do), it’s hard to create a sense of continuity between sessions. On the upside, there’s no emotional baggage to interfere with the dynamic. No residual tension, unspoken issues or unresolved arguments. There’s just a dominant woman, a bunch of equipment design to fuck someone up and a naked willing submissive.

It would be a mistake to confuse this purity with emotional simplicity. I think it’s instructive to compare a pro-domme session with a casual, just for fun, sexual encounter. To the outside observer these might look like very similar things. The activities are different, but they both involve people outside a relationship engaging each other in intense physical sensations. Neither of them feature any kind of emotional commitment or a broader context. And yet, in my experience, they are very different. The fun sexual encounter is just that, fun. It’s an emotionally light, physically pleasant way to pass the time. In contrast I’ve experienced incredibly intense emotions in sessions. I’ve been pushed into places I never knew existed, and headspaces that left me buzzed and happy for days. There’s an intensity to BDSM play that can work well even without the richer emotional context of a deep relationship.

Given a lot of this post featured pro-dommes along with a food metaphor, I thought this would be a particularly apt image to use. This is Mona Rogers, a pro-domme from NYC, feeding dinner to one of her slaves. I don’t think he’s getting a tasting menu. If you’d like to try that rather cool doggy helmet our for yourself, her contact information is here.