m – Page 10 – Femdom Resource

Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist

I recently watched Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. It’s a documentary detailing Bob’s life as a writer, performance artist and sexual submissive masochist. What made him particularly extraordinary was that he suffered from cystic fibrosis, a disease that normally kills people before they reach their mid 20’s. He died age 43, making him one of the worlds longest lived suffers from it.

If you’ve never seen it I’d urge you to rush out and get a copy. I thought it was an extraordinarily moving film. I’m not ashamed to say I cried a little at the end. I also think it captures some aspects of masochism, submission and D/s better than any other film I’ve seen. Using a fairly standard documentary format, cutting interviews of friends and family into home movie footage, it paints a very frank and honest picture of his life with his partner and mistress Sheree Rose.

This is actually the second time I’ve seen the film. I first saw it over 10 years ago, before I’d gotten physically involved in BDSM, and I remember being fairly horrified at some of the SM activities they did. Now I look at the footage and think “Yes, done that. Loved that. Oh play piercing, that’s fun. Drinking piss, done that…..” I’ve never actually nailed my cock to a board as Bob does at one point in the film, but my sense of ‘normal’ has clearly shifted.

There’s some attempt in the film, particularly by his parents, to tie his early childhood experiences with his illness to his kinkiness. I understand that desire to look for a cause and effect, but it seems to be misplaced. The vast majority of kinky guys don’t have major childhood trauma and medical procedures. I think he was someone with cystic fibrosis who happened to be kinky. The one clearly influences the other, but it seems misplaced to think of it as a cause.

Two quotes really stuck with me. The first from Bob was near the start of the movie. The second is from Sheree and was towards the end when he was getting very sick.

People don’t think of the masochist as being a strong person. The stereotype that the masochist is sniveling and weak is actually not true. The masochist has to know his or her own body perfectly well and be in full control of their body, in order to give control to somebody else or to give control to pain. So the masochist is actually a very strong person.
Bob Flanagan

I don’t even think he’s a masochist anymore. I think life has beaten him down too much. The pain he lives with every day is so intense that there isn’t any other kind of pain that he can even think about right now.
Sheree Rose

I certainly agree with the first quote, and I think the second helps emphasize the same point. Being a masochist (or submissive) doesn’t mean being a needy person or someone who has no control over their life. You need control and a strong sense of self in order to successfully gift that to another. By the end he’d lost that, the disease was taking over and he could no longer give away power. His body and its sickness had already stolen it.

The movie is available on DVD from amazon. You can read Roger Ebert’s review of it here.

Update: Scott of Mrs Kelly’s Playhouse was actually friends with Bob in the early 90’s. He’s left a lengthy comment on this post describing some of his memories of Bob. My thanks to Scott for that additional information.

All sorts of good stuff

A quick post tonight. Having fun in Vegas is not particularly conducive to writing thoughtful and intelligent blog posts. Some might argue I struggle to achieve that under the best circumstances, let alone after much food and wine.

Fortunately this image contains all sorts of good stuff that speaks for itself. There’s a cute cross-dresser. I particularly like her flowing curly hair. There’s an interesting CBT humbler device. And finally there’s the predicament bondage involving high heels. I’ve no idea what the context for this shot is, but I like it.

I found this image at the Curious Asian tumblr site.

I know why the caged slave sings

It’s because someone is shocking his genitals with an ErosTek unit.

Readers will be happy to know that this is the last of my “What I did on my holidays” posts. That was always the first school essay assigned for the fall term when I was child. In those days it always ended up being about sandcastles and ice-cream on the beach. These days it’s more about whips, electroshock and being pissed on. But I guess spanking and screaming are still common elements, so not everything has changed.

The shots below were taken during my double domme session with Mistress Yuki and Mistress Ai-Li. The quality isn’t great, as they were snapped quickly with an iPhone mid-session, but given then inventive nature of the set-up I thought it was worth sharing (click images to enlarge).

Our session space had a narrow free standing cage I was told to climb into. Once the door was locked they started attaching vicious little clips all over my body and tying them off to the cage bars. Very quickly they built up a web of tense twine and painful clamps. The last image on the right shows a good close-up of that. With dozens of clips pulling tightly in all directions it made any slight movement very painful. Swaying forward to reduce the strain on the nipples and cock would pull the clips attached my back and lower legs, and vice-versa. Of course that’s when the ErosTek unit and its remote control fob came into play. It’s quite hard to stand still when your genitals are being shocked with a very large number of volts. And amazingly that wasn’t the worst part. Standing still while Mistress Yuki zapped my cock was tricky, standing still while Mistress Ai-Li tickled the sides of my feet was impossible. That was a sneaky trick and resulted in much screaming.

The Femme Bot

This is a nice combination of bondage, sensory deprivation and forced feminization. The female body reminds me a little of the femme bot from the movie Mars Attacks! And I particulary like the silhouetted figure in the control room. The artist has managed to pack a lot of expressive emotion into her outline.

I’m afraid I don’t know the artist so, as usual, feel free to leave a comment if you can help with a correct attribution. I found on the snail meilk image board.

A better use of chains

After my comments in the last post about the chain top, I stumbled across this far better use of chains. Those are some pretty solid links and shackles and, while I like the pose, it doesn’t look like a particularly comfortable one to be in for any length of time.

I have to admit to possessing a very high degree of naïveté about bondage in my early years of kink. Which is to say, back in the years where I browsed and watched, but never participated. My first naïve assumption was that bondage was all about restraint and control, and not about pain. Of course in reality, bondage is an incredibly effective way to inflict pain. It works for creating everything from a slow building suffering to an almost immediate screaming agony. Some rope and an inventive top are all that’s needed to satisfy both my submissive and masochistic side for many hours.

My second naïve assumption was that bondage was easy. I’m ashamed to say I assumed that ‘bondage model’ meant someone prepared to be tied up and photographed. Not someone who had a particular BDSM skill set. Sure, when I saw images like this one, or this one, I might have acknowledged that some poses might take perhaps a few hours practice to really master. But for the more standard stuff – (Jeremy Clarkson voice) – how hard could it be? Fortunately I’m now a little wiser. A really satisfying and lengthy bondage scene takes significant skill on the part of the top, and a fair degree of physical and physiological stamina on behalf of the bottom. And that’s just for a private play session. Add in a photographer, lighting and the need to deliver dozens of high quality images that you can charge for, and you’re looking at some real kinky mojo on all sides.

I found this image on the Bi Happy tumblr site.

Natasha Gornik

I’ve spent the last hour or so browsing the blog and portfolio of the photographer Natasha Gornik. She appears to be the photographer of choice for a lot of pro-dommes, particularly those based in New York. I recognized shots she’s done of Mona Rogers, Mistress Sade, Mistress Alex and Ms Oliva Black amongst others on her site. She’s created a beautiful collection of work, extending far beyond the boundaries of simple fetish and glamor shots.

The image below was taken from her blog, and it caught my eye for the many different layers of restriction it depicts. There’s what looks like a zentai style suit, a metal head cage with chain, a web of white rope, and finally a large solid metal cage. I’m not sure if that level of bondage would be either comforting or claustrophobic, but I do enjoy this shot of it all in place. The rope work was by Ms Yin Q of glint studios, and Natasha comments on the scene as follows…

for one scene, Yin had her subject in a cage and intricately tied him up with white rope. she did a beautiful job. it was very quiet in the room and you could hear the sound of the rope rubbing against itself and the floor. i’ve always found this process so cathartic. i would watch it often when i was shooting bondage videos. it usually takes a while, and it was nice to zone out and watch the domme make these beautiful designs and listen to the sounds of the rope. i wouldn’t even have the camera on, but i would stare through the viewfinder and just watch. it has a poetic-ness about it.

Buckles and Pegs

This looks like a very intense but interesting predicament to be in. I always find there’s some pleasantly objectifying about using lots of buckles and straps. Rope bondage can often be relaxing and comforting, the rope hugging the body and creating a sense of security. But using straps seems much more business like. A quick and efficient way to completely immobilize the thing in question. Rope bondage can seem like an end in itself. But when you strap someone down it’s because you really don’t want them moving for what’s about to happen next. In this particular case, it looks like a lot of creative placement of clothes pegs and a big metal sound was what happened next.

I’m afraid I’ve no attribution for this image.

Pillory

This looks like a fun piece of equipment. I’m imagining being forced to stand on tip-toes, keeping the tendons and muscles taut, whilst being caned on the back of the legs. The mistress would take it slowly, circling me with the cane in her hand, waiting till fatigue started to set in, waiting till she could see faint tremors rippling down the back of the legs, then ‘whack!’. A sharp red horizontal line joins its companions. That would surely be both an ‘Mmmmm’ and an ‘Arrrghh’ moment.

It’s available from the eXtreme Restraints site.

Urinal Hood

This is a deliciously degrading hood. The anonymity of the hood, combined with an open mouth gag and liquid catching trough must make for a very objectifying and dehumanizing experience. I may have to break out a credit card.

It’s available at the Mr. S Leather site. Not exactly a cheap toy at almost $300 however. I discovered it thanks Mistress Sade’s blog. She seems pretty taken by it.

Rice Torture

Rohosub posted about an interesting form of punishment that I’ve never heard of before. I’ll let him tell it in his own words:

Here is a photo visualizing one of my wife’s favourite forms of discipline……I usually receive this form of discipline when I’ve failed to do my household chores to her satisfaction. Usually the kitchen chores and the disciplining then typically happens in the kitchen.
She just lays out a decent amount of rice on the floor, tells me to undress and sit or kneel in the rice. It’s ok for a short while but it’s pure torture after a while.

This strikes me as a particularly effective and nasty punishment, as it would seem hard to either sexualize it or get any endorphins flowing. It’d just be boring, then uncomfortable and finally painful. I often read about “punishments” that in other circumstances people pay good money to have inflicted. I can’t see anyone paying a pro-domme to spend an hour kneeling on some of her rice.

Taken from this post by Rohosub.