Puppy Play

The rather sexy image below is from Lady Pim who plays out of the Ritual Chamber in Toronto. She also has a short but informative thread on puppy play here.

I’ve never yet indulged in this kink, but it does make sense to me. It pushes buttons around giving up control, obedience, caring dominance, physical restraint, etc. Like a lot of BDSM dynamics, it allows the submissive to simplify his thinking, give up real world concerns and focus on the dominant and her instructions.

Technical Issues

Apologies if you had any trouble trying to reach the site in recent days. I’ve been dealing with some technical issues. I’m still not sure they’re entirely resolved, but hopefully it should at least remain reachable for anyone reading.

I always wonder what the the technical support people from my hosting company make of this site. From the names of those involved, the first line support staff appear to mostly be women based in India. It must be a tough job to suddenly be dropped into a chat function with a strange guy called paltego who is wondering where his site full of dominant ladies, tied up men and sexually explicit imagery has vanished to.

Speaking of which, here’s a fun photograph of a tied man and a couple of happy looking dommes.

I’m afraid I’ve no idea where this is from. The text is Spanish for ‘Tied Love’ (according to the online translators), but I haven’t tracked down a site or photography studio. As always feel free to comment if you can help me attribute it.

Corner Time

This is a pretty clever design for a restraint system. It reminds me of a bondage chair, which is always one of my favorite things to be strapped to in a dungeon. They create a great sense of vulnerability, while also allowing the submissive to see the dominant and know exactly what she’s about to do to him.

In this case hanging the submissive on the walls not only removes the need for an extra piece of furniture, but also adds a touch of objectification. It’s not very clear, but I assume there’s some sort of shelf that he’s perched on, so all the weight doesn’t fall on the limbs. Just perfect for some CBT and nipple torture.

This particular piece of dungeon apparatus is located at the Sub Rosa space in Portland Oregon. This image came courtesy of Mistress Viola’s twitter feed.

Two Pets

Here’s an image for anyone who prefers their femdom with a dose of sci-fi, fetish and dehumanization. As is often the case, clothing designers of the future will clearly favor hotness and style over practicality and warmth. That’s a trade-off I’m personally OK with, assuming everyone looks as good as this.

This is by the artist HamletMachine, creator of the comic Starfighter. A lot of her work seems to skew towards more yaoi style man on man action than femdom. If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can read about the comic here, buy prints here and there’s an interview with her here.

Face Funnel

Regular readers of this blog will know I’m not a big fan of hoods. I have to make an exception in this case however, because this one is just so fucking hot. There’s something incredibly objectifying and utilitarian about it. I’m not sure I could cope with wearing it in reality, but I do love the idea of it.

This is from Mistress Natsumi’s twitter feed.

More Mainstream Porn stupidity

While I’m on the subject of stupidity and porn, as I was just a couple of posts ago, I should tip my hat in the direction of the NY Times. They’ve had a couple of recent articles that would fit under that umbrella.

To be fair to the first one – What Teenagers Are Learning From Online Porn – it’s hard to tell if the problem stems from the article itself or the porn education classes it’s reporting on. Possibly a little of both. It feels terribly dated, and that impression isn’t helped by the pictures that look like they’re taken from 80’s VHS tapes. Sexuality and pornography are incredibly complicated and interesting topics. Deconstructing porn and understanding how/why people use it and make it should be a fascinating area to dive into. Instead this turned it into ‘Porn isn’t real and can be bad, m-kay?’

The real stupidity comes with Ross Douthat’s column ‘Let’s Ban Porn‘. I might not agree with the title’s sentiment, but it’s a defensible one from a particular moral viewpoint. The stupidity comes when he tries to tie it to the #MeToo movement. Apparently widespread pornography has led to a lot of men who think it’s OK to sexually assault women because they’ve seen it in porn. It’s wrapped in a lot of bullshit and accompanied by much fact free hand waving, but that’s the heart of his point.

A slightly more fact based observer might note that men have being doing this shit for decades before the internet was invented. The key enablers appear to have been men in positions of power, with companies and social structures that covered for them, and a society that actively punished people for speaking up about assault. There have been some truly piss poor excuses offered by some of the men called out, but I haven’t seen any stoop so low as to blame internet porn. I’m sure they would if they thought they could get away with it.

A man trying to re-purpose #MeToo from a story about women speaking up about sexual assault into a way to push your personal politics is pretty obnoxious. And blaming internet porn for some men’s terrible behavior is a stupid as blaming comic books, rap music, movies or videogames for violence in society. Oh wait…

I guess if Ross Douthat was right, then publishing this kind of filthy pornography would actually be contributing to future sexual assaults. I guess it’s therefore a good job he’s got his head up his ass.

Updated: Thanks to a helpful comment, I can attribute this to Goddess Serena, a UK based pro-domme.

Kink with Homework

This article on Mistress Velvet is (deservedly) all over my social media feeds and inbox. The title, in classic Huffington Post fashion, encapsulates the story – “Meet The Dominatrix Who Requires The Men Who Hire Her To Read Black Feminist Theory.

It’s a surprisingly well done article. It gives Mistress Velvet space to expand on the intellectual and emotional challenges of her job, while omitting a lot of the salacious detail that usually accompanies mainstream articles like this. Her relationship as a black domme  with her mostly white, cis and well off clients is obviously a complex one. I love the fact that she’s managed to structure her sessions as positive for both her and her clients, while also creating a platform to explore issues of race and privilege.

If I’m not only doing these physical things to them, but also saying, “Hey, my graduate education is also focused on BDSM as healing for black women, and I think about this all the time.” Then they’re like, “Whoa, yeah, she’s the real deal.” They kind of get terrified. But I think it makes it more real for them.

I don’t think I’ve ever been assigned homework by a domme, but I do understand the kind of dynamic she describes above. Submissives typically enjoy things that pull them mentally back into that D/s dynamic, even many days after playing. Something as simple as a bruise can remind them of the dommes presence and physicality. I’d imagine engaging with writing and arguments that she’s passionate about would have a similar ability to conjure a sense of her presence.

Mistress Velvet is based in Chicago. If you’d like to schedule a session, her contact information is here.

Bound Cuckold

I’m not sure if this counts as a cute cuckold shot or an intense cuckold shot. Either way I like it. It avoids two of the main tropes in cuckold porn – silly expressions and racial stereotypes.  Instead there’s a heady mix of bondage, sensory deprivation, tease, denial and hot sexy fun. I’m honestly not sure which guy I’d rather be.

I’d love to know where this is from, but I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution.

Her Cutie Pie

I’m continuing my theme of interesting things I’ve found on twitter. This is from Lady Hinako’s feed. You can even see a short video clip of the scene. The post title comes from that tweet.

I always feel that when I post images like this, I need to slather it in disclaimers. I have this mental image of someone dipping their toe in femdom, browsing this site and thinking that this represents the kind of activity they’ll need to get involved in. Or a domme seeing this and getting annoyed that the only representations of femdom are leather clad porn stars or shots like this of extreme play. I do get that, but at the same time, I love that there are people out there doing crazy stuff. It’s not so much that I want to do this myself – although I kind of do – but that I always enjoy seeing people pushing boundaries and exploring their desires. We should applaud the passionate and the unusual. They make the world a more interesting place.

Twittering

So having just burnt a series of posts on the dangers of maintaining dual identities on social media, what’s the next logical thing for me to do? Obviously it’s to create a new social media account. So you can now find me on twitter as @paltego1.

I’m not actually sure what I’m going to do with it. I originally created it just to get rid of all the ‘This media may contain sensitive material’ twitter warnings that were driving me crazy. Sensitive material is 90% of my reason for doing anything online. Then it seemed a good way to follow interesting kinky people. Now I’m debating if I should more actively manage it. Maybe use it as an overflow for links I don’t get to cover here? Or as way to bookmark articles before I have change to write in more detail on them? At the very least I can use it to publish the existence of a new post here.

If you’re a twitter user feel free to follow me and maybe I’ll end up doing something useful with it. I’ll also be on the lookout for interesting people to follow, so feel free to point me at anything or anyone you like!

Twitter does seem a particular rich source for fun kinky shots and short video clips. Most of them are casual shots snapped with a phone, but occasionally you get a gem like the one below. This is Domina M in Paris and was shot by Will Santillo.