Tag: Mainstream

Life Coaching

BDSM isn’t therapy and a domme is not the same as a therapist. That said, BDSM can be a very positive influence in peoples lives and, as this Guardian article makes clear, a dominatrix can be an effective life coach.

The article is by Sofia Barrett-Ibarria and describes how she hired LA based pro-domme Justine Cross to bring some structure and direction to her life. Based on this account it seems to have worked. It’s not specifically a sexual dynamic and there’s no punishment spankings involved, but this quote does suggest a certain sexual frisson.

I do, however, enjoy being told what to do, which is something I’d always been somewhat ashamed to admit. I love mean, beautiful women, and I love when they boss me around.

It would seem she’s managed to hook into a certain dynamic that motivates her and used it to create a more productive daily life. I wonder if I could pull off a similar trick? Maybe tie my next session into finally clearing out my spare room and scrubbing the shower in the bathroom? Somehow that doesn’t sound quite as exciting as my previous plan of getting an attractive lady in latex to sit on my face and torture my nipples.

This is Mistress Justine Cross, possibly demonstrating where she puts people who don’t update their monthly planners on time.  This is from her social media feed. You can find her professional website here.

Breaking the Taboo

This post risks making a lot of pro-dommes very mad. I’m going to go out on a limb for my readers here and talk about a very taboo session activity. Something that almost all professionals will say absolutely never happens with any of their clients. Yet I’m here to tell you that just sometimes, if the mood and dynamic is right, if the right level of trust is established, it can happen. The submissive might actually be allowed to pick the playlist for the session music.

I know this to be true because – in the immortal words of the Penthouse readers letters page – I never thought it would happen to me, until a mysterious but very attractive lady propositioned me with it sometime last year. I say mysterious because I’m definitely not going to say who it was. I may be crazy enough to risk the general wrath of pro-dommes with this post, but I’m not going to risk the very specific wrath of someone who I may session with in the future. I’d hate for this to come back and haunt me when I’m naked, bound and she has me quite literally by the balls.

For those readers who have never done a session with a pro-domme, I should make clear that background music is the one true constant of sessions. More so than black dungeon walls, leather cuffs and incomprehensible controls on janky showers. I don’t think I’ve ever done a session without some sort of music. And given that pro-dommes are inevitably younger and hipper than I am, rarely have I any idea what’s being played. Typically it’s a grab bag of electronic, ambient, dance, industrial and obscure indie. Good for drowning out screams, but not exactly my kind of jams.

With the domme in question – who I should make clear is still very much younger and hipper than me – we actually share some  musical interests. Which is how I came to get my ass beaten to some choice selections from the early oeuvre of Iron Maiden. Personally I think the energy and tempo changes in Phantom of the Opera make for great session music, but I’m not going to hold my breath for it to catch on more widely.

This image of a puppet pianist comes from the photographer Konrad Bak.

50 Shades of Lavender

Literally seconds after I read this Vice article on a new trend for cute BDSM toys and pastel colored fetish gear, the image below showed up in my twitter feed (via this tweet). I think that’s enough evidence to make it official. 2019 is the year of lavender whips, pink cuffs and beige harnesses. Anyone still going old school with black and red is like totally out of date. Until next month anyway.

In all seriousness, fashion designers often seem do a terrible job of adapting BDSM attire into their clothes. This outfit by Dion Lee, and the others featured in Lady Grace’s tweet, are a rather excellent exception. Elegant, with beautiful clean lines, but still retaining the BDSM aesthetic. They were created in collaboration with Fleet Ilya.

Better Late than Never

The Huffpost has an article about a woman who discovered BDSM in her 50’s and ended up with a kinky partner twenty four years her junior. It’s a cute tale and I liked the part about their cleverly constructed cover story for how they met.

What I found surprising about it was the idea of being awakened to BDSM late in life by going to a class on it. I absolutely  don’t mean that critically. I’m always keen for more people to discover kink and I totally get her attitude of “OMG! I need to try all the things!” when exploring the physical side of it for the first time. It’d be great if more people could be converted to the joys of BDSM via classes. I just find it odd – as someone who had kinky thoughts from a very early age – to imagine being not kinky for decades and then suddenly getting into it. For me it seems like a very fundamental love/hate kind of thing, but obviously that’s not true for everyone.

I’m afraid I don’t know the artist for this drawing.

Update: Thanks to a helpful comment I can now attribute this to the artist Kirsty Whiten.

Multidimensional Sexuality

I thought this article covering the latest research on the link between sexual orientation and genetics was interesting. The short version is that’s no such thing as a single ‘gay gene’. Instead there are multiple genes that play a role in sexual orientation, and genetics are only part of the story.

Another interesting aspect – as this tweet makes clear – is that sexual attraction needs to be judged on two dimensions rather than one. The classic kinsey scale is one dimensional, running from 100% heterosexual to 100% homosexual. This latest study shows that we need to think in two dimensions – same sex and opposite sex attraction. Feeling more attracted to the same sex doesn’t necessarily mean being less attracted to the opposite sex, and vice-versa. You could be attracted to strongly to both, strongly to one or strongly to neither.

This image is from the Sunstone comic series by Stjepan Šejić. It’s a series that manages to cover a pretty full set of sexual dimensions.

Dating Skills

This New York Post article on a domme class for Manhattan women to up their dating game is a strange one. On one hand I’m all in favor of encouraging more interest in femdom and people learning new kinky skills. On the other, it seems very mercenary and calculating, and not in deliberate findom type way. Learning to top so you can match the fantasies of a rich guy and hence convince him to marry you seems like the opposite of female empowerment. But maybe I’m being too sensitive about the whole thing.

This is a screen shot from the show Billions (mentioned here previously). With Maggie Siff playing the partner and domme to Paul Giamatti’s Manhattan power player, it’s cited in the Post article as inspiration for the kinky curious.

The Warrior Princess

I’ve always had a bit of a thing for Katherine Hepburn ever since seeing her in the African Queen as a young boy. Much as I enjoyed watching Bogart as the cranky captain, it was the spunky and bossy Hepburn character that really caught my eye. Much like the late great Lauren Bacall in her movies opposite Bogart.

This image is Katharine Hepburn as Amazon warrior princess Antiope in a stage production of The Warrior’s Husband (1932). The set might look a little shoddy, and their shin guards fake, but her pose and body language is all kinds of hotness. The lucky man whose hair she’s grabbing is Colin Keith-Johnston.

Dogs Don’t Wear Pants

Fans of mainstream movies that explore BDSM and take kink seriously might want to look out for the Finnish movie ‘Dogs Don’t Wear Pants‘.  You can read a variety review here, a cineuropa one here, and an interview with the director here. I described it as mainstream, in the sense its not porn, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope of catching it at your local multiplex. Web or streaming is probably your best bet to catch it when it has a wider release.

The storyline features a man who loses his wife to a drowning accident, and then is drawn to breathplay with a dominatrix to work through his emotions. Part of me dislikes the fact that it makes a connection between trauma and kinks. I love breathplay and yet have zero wet dead relatives. At the same time I understand that ‘normal man and normal woman have kinky fun because they enjoy it’ does lack something in dramatic tension and narrative drive. I’ll take interesting explorations of BDSM over the usual kink and sex work cliches.

Her Barking Dogs

This is a continuation of the public worship/service theme from yesterday’s photograph. It’s a cute shot, although in its original context I’m not sure how much D/s was actually going on. Reverse image search tells me it’s from a 2015 Japanese movie called Orange, which appears to be a mainstream teenage drama/fantasy/love story. No mention of any kinks.