Tag: Mainstream

Valerie Leon

I’m moving on from C S Lewis, but sticking with kinky button pushing moments from childhood. This image is Valerie Leon with Peter Sellers from the movie ‘Revenge of the Pink Panther‘.

The original scene – viewable on youtube here – now comes across as horribly dated. It leans into all sorts of uncomfortable stereotypes. However, back when I first saw it in the mid 80’s, it was my first awareness of the dominatrix role. There were plenty of screen characters who’d pushed my buttons already (like Catwoman and Miss Peel), but nothing as sexually overt as Valerie Leon’s role here. For all its cliches, it helped me connect some of the dots around sex and kink. This whip wielding dominatrix might be played for laughs, but the fact that type of character actually existed was a big part of putting together my kinky puzzle.

The Silver Chair

I’m going to continue the C S Lewis theme for one more post. That’s probably not an opening sentence you’d expect to find on a kinky sex blog. However, as one of the comments on the previous post attested, Lewis did have form in the kinky realm. He signed some of his letters ‘Philomastix’, meaning lover of the whip, and at age 19 wrote this to a friend…

Across my knee” of course makes one think of positions for Whipping: or rather not for whipping (you couldn’t get any swing) but for that torture with brushes. This position, with its childish, nursery associations would have something beautifully intimate and also very humiliating for the victim.

That definitely reads as someone with a kinky and most likely submissive side.

Another commenter suggested his book The Magician’s Nephew contains hints of a Female Led Relationship. I don’t remember enough about the story to comment on that. However, I do remember the plot of his book ‘The Sliver Chair‘, and in hindsight the fact that particular plot stuck with me isn’t too surprising. It features another powerful and seductive witch, who captures and entrances a prince, and then has him tightly bound every night to an ornate silver chair. Admittedly, once he’s bound in place, at no point does the witch turn up for some cock-and-ball torture or nipple play. Yet even with that (sad) omission, I think the femdom elements are fairly clear.

This is one of the original illustrations of the Silver Chair by Pauline Baynes. The prince is tied in place and about to be ‘rescued’ by the heroes. That chair definitely would not look out of place in a BDSM dungeon.

The White Witch

Most kinky people can point to moments in their youth where they had a sudden awareness of their kinky side. It can be almost anything – a scene on TV, a particular outfit, a movie character – but whatever it is, their kinky wiring goes ‘Bzzzzz!’ They might not even understand exactly what is happening or why, but there’s a sudden rush of both excitement and curiosity.

My favorite version of these are the really early ones. The ones that triggered me even though I was too young to know about sex or kink. Where I remember a strange attraction to something, but it’s only obvious in hindsight why. The existence of these events before I reached adolescence speak to the very deep and intrinsic nature of my kinks.

I discovered a new one recently. A tweet mentioned the White Witch of Narnia, from the books by C. S. Lewis, and suddenly a penny dropped. I think I was around 9 or 10 when I read them and I remember being fascinated by the White Witch. Particularly the scenes where she seduces Edmund with warm furs and Turkish delight. There was also her habit of turning disobedient creatures into statues. In hindsight the idea of a cruel, powerful and sensual woman with a taste for objectification and fornophilia would be an obvious draw for a young paltego. It’s just taken me a few decades to realize why.

This is Tilda Swinton in the role as Jadis the White Witch, from the 2005 movie.

Animal Crossing

One winner from worldwide quarantine seems to have been the Nintendo game Animal Crossing. It’s not only been a big mainstream hit, but also a hit in the kinky community. I’ve seen an amazing number of dommes in my social media feed talking about playing it and involving their subs in helping them. I thought that was just my particular slice of the kinky world, but then I came across this Vice article and this Wired article. People are even figuring out ways to connect sex toys up to it.

I find it amusing that it’s a Nintendo game that has triggered this kind of response. They’re the ultimately kid friendly gaming company. Sega and Sony were always more edgy, and PCs  the Wild West frontier. I guess it’s a sign that people will always be attracted to a high quality well designed product and then, once you’ve attracted them, people will always try and pervert it.

Personally, I’m an old school PC RPG fan. The kind of games where you start off killing rats in a grumpy villagers cellar, spend many hours in what’s basically a fancy spreadsheet in a nice frock, and finish by taking on the local God to stop the world being sucked into hell. There is probably an interesting post to write on the contrast between dommes liking fun collaborative social games and submissives like myself wanting to micromanage the hell out of wizards and clerics in a single player fantasy game. Unfortunately, this isn’t that post.

I believe this is from the artist Mosbles7.

Unseen Terror

This is a bit of an odd one. I believe it’s a still is from the movie Elektra Luxx. It’s one of those images you can project your own story into. Personally I like to imagine it as a story of modern black magic. He’s been picked up in a bar by a beautiful woman, gone back to her apartment for what he imagines will be hot sexy naked fun and has just discovered he’s about to be sacrificed to one of the old Gods in her spare bedroom. At least that’s my story for it. I’ve no idea what original context was.

That’s Carla Gugino with a naked Vincent Kartheiser.

Be Careful What You Wish For

This problem page letter in the Guardian made me smile. It’s somewhat short on detail but, reading between the lines, I suspect the man concerned was looking for hot kinky sex involving bondage and exciting leather outfits. His wife obviously had other ideas. On being handed the metaphorical and possibly literal whip hand,  she decided that being in charge meant lots of nice massages and minimal amounts of sucking his dick. I feel bad that their kinky needs are obviously not aligned, but he probably shouldn’t be too surprised that his non-kinky wife’s idea of taking charge looked less like a pornhub video and more like a spa day.

I guess it could be worse for him. His wife might decide that what she really wants to do is spend an hour or two with the Sunday papers and a convenient footstool.

Sadly I don’t have a source for this image. I suspect it’s from a UK femdom site from some years back, but my attribution skills have failed me.

Submission Possible

Anyone who has run out of Netflix and Hulu shows to watch might want to check out ‘Submission Possible’ by Madison Young on Revry. I’ve not seen it, so can’t offer a personal recommendation, but according to Madison it’s “a kinky queer travel show…exploring different kink and queer communities in different cities.” You can read a bit more background on it articles here and here. This isn’t a great time to be pitching a travel show, but after endless food and chef themed travel series, it’d be nice to see a kinky variation.

This is Madison Young shooting for kink.com. I love the look of predatory intent she has in this shot.

Oh Sir!

A final post on school bullies. This one continues the theme from yesterday of nervous teachers with very forward students.I particularly like his expression and the position of his hands. He looks like he’s trying to become one with the wall. In contrast she’s pushing forward, pulling backwards and floating in the air.

I’d guess this in an illustration from a 1950’s or 60’s pulp novel about college professors and their insatiable students. Sadly I’ve not managed to track down who the original artist was.

Update: This is the front cover of the Amy Harris novel Prize Pupil, publish in 1966. Based on this page, the artist is unknown.

Update 2: A reader suggested that the artist in question is Robert McGinnis. That’s very possible as it’s definitely in his style, but I don’t have a link for the attribution.

Bully

I generally don’t indulge in kinks tied to my traumas. Most of my kinks come from a positive dynamic, although it might not look that way to an outsider. I desire to be controlled, objectified, to please, to suffer for her. Not having to think, to be a plaything, is a very relaxing space for me.

In contrast I react very negatively to being bullied or humiliated. As an unworldly book smart skinny geek from a poor family, I got plenty of that when I was at school. I had many tough years of bullying, and have no desire to revisit them. Even just pulling my hair or slapping me a certain way in a scene can trigger a strong negative emotion.

Yet oddly, I can kink on the abstractions of that dynamic. Humiliation, bullying, anger and abuse can be hot in porn or art. I find that odd. For example, I really like the image below. Yet I’m sure I’d hate to roleplay that in a scene. Why does the image work but the roleplay not? Is that because I just haven’t yet fully come to terms with my traumas? Is art a way to work through them gradually? Or is it because the abstraction of art allows me to selectively pick up on the elements I like while not pushing my emotional buttons?

This is artwork from the Rockstar game Bully. I found it – along with some other similar examples – via this tweet.

Teddy Girls

I’d guess that the phrase ‘Teddy Boy’ doesn’t mean much to most of my readers. Despite the name, it’s not a furry thing, or a niche kink for gay guys into teddy bears. It was actually one of the very first UK youth subcultures. It started in the 1950’s and leaned heavily on Edwardian fashion cues from the turn of the century. It’s particularly meaningful to me because I’ve seen old photographs of my father and his friends from the late 1950’s dressed in the Teddy Boy style.

What I hadn’t realized was that there were Teddy Girls as well. This twitter thread has some great photographs of them, along with a modern fashion shoot that was inspired by that subculture. The images below are two examples taken from the thread. Obviously, none of this is really related to femdom at all, but I just love the confidence, style and dash of the girls involved.

What’s particularly fascinating is that these images were all shot by Ken Russell, who’d later go on to direct films such as Tommy, Women In Love, The Devils and (particularly relevant to this blog) The Lair of the White Worm.  He took a whole series of striking black and white photographs of teenagers in 1950’s London, capturing both the destruction of the war and the postwar exuberance of youth. You can find more of his work and the background to it in articles here, here and here.