Tag: Mainstream

Incompetent or Evil?

Some rare good news for my old country – the UK has indefinitely suspended introducing their porn blocking system. I’d like to say this was because they realized the danger to free speech and had a sudden burst of sanity, but it was really just down to incompetence. I guess if someone comes up with a stupid idea, the best you can hope for is that they’re too stupid to carry it out properly.

In less good news over this side of the pond, US politicians are once again having a go a free speech online and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. As always, sex workers are the canary in the coalmine. Having used bogus sex trafficking fears to weaken the law with SESTA/FOSTA, they’re now trying to expand the wedge and jam more free speech constraints in place. The online tech companies originally lobbied against SESTA/FOSTA, but eventually caved to the politicians. Presumably they thought it was a safe compromise on a topic they didn’t want to defend. Maybe now they’ll learn their lesson. Politicians have an endless appetite for limiting what people can discuss and share, and compromising in one area will only increase that appetite in other areas.

Here’s an image that seems suitable for a politician trying to limit free expression. Although if all the members of the Soviet’s security forces had looked like this, America might actually have lost the cold war.

This is Mistress Nikita. She no longer takes professional sessions but you can access images and video from her main site here.

Pride Knights

Here’s another Pride themed post to finish the weekend off. This is from a tweet by A. Archer, an artist, model, cosplayer and adventurer.  Not strictly femdom, but I’m sure there’ll be many readers out there who appreciate a lady in armor with a big sword. I think it’s a very fun shot, particularly with the six different colors represented across the back row of people.

It seems odd to see brightly colored outfits for combat, but for hundreds of years that was actually common. Not sure anybody ever went in for a rainbow outfit, but before the days of accurate long distance rifles and rapid firing machine guns, camouflage was a low priority.  It was better to look good and create cohesive units that could be easily identified. It wasn’t until the wars of the late 19th and early 20th century that being hard to see suddenly became a big advantage. As an interesting aside, the creator of the Pride Flag, a man called Gilbert Baker, was actually an army veteran who served between 1970 and 72.

If you’d like to support future work of Archer Inventive, there’s a Patreon here.

Sunday Fantasy

Readers in the London area might want to consider checking out the exhibition entitled Sunday Fantasy by Zoe Williams. It’s not really femdom, but it is about women taking control of and exploring their sexual fantasies. I particularly liked this description of one part of the exhibit…

two women exert themselves energetically to remove the fantasist’s clothes while she does all she can to keep them on. The result is often more pillowfight than catfight, with the women wrestling hard only to collapse periodically in exhausted giggles.

That seems a particularly fun fantasy. I like the contrast in types of desire – clothed and in control versus naked and sexual powerful. Apparently the exhibit also features pee as a linking element and references to 70’s Gothic lesbian horror movies, both of which are very fine things. The exhibition is at Mimosa House and you can read an interview with the artist here.

This image isn’t connected in any way with the exhibit in question. But it does at least feature a woman happy about taking someone’s clothes off. In this case, he doesn’t appear to be resisting all that much.

A Classic 1950’s Look

Here’s a final post in my fashion themed sequence. This is from a 1952 edition of French Vogue.

I find that many of the European fashion shots from that era (for example) seem to have a more authentic fetishistic and femdom vibe than the far more explicit fashion shots from the 90’s and beyond. Possibly that’s just my particular kinky preferences, but I think the tight severe cuts, long dresses and dark colors tend to suggest restraint, control and authority. They also tend to shoot models alone and staring down into the camera, which is obviously a style a lot of femdom photographers use.

Combining Talents

By an odd coincidence, just after my previous post on the failures of fashion and kink, I spotted this tweet from Mistress Iris. Apparently she is in Paris shooting with Ellen Von Unwerth. That should make for a fabulous combination of talents.

I’ve featured Ellen Von Unwerth in previous posts (for example here, here and here). She seems to be one of the few fashion photographers with at least an inkling as to how kink actually works. Similarly Mistress Iris has been featured in the past (for example here, here and here). She’s not only a great domme, but I think she produces some of the most interesting kinky femdom imagery. I can’t wait to see what they’ll end up creating together.

This is Sophia, Ellen Von Unwerth and Mistress Iris. If you’d like to see more of Mistress Iris and her work, she has a patreon here.

Fashionable Kink

I’m always amused by how many fashion shots reference kinky dynamics, but totally fail to understand them.The photographers grasp the aesthetics and taboos of specific elements, but don’t understand how they fit together in a way that makes kinky sense. It’s like they’re trying to write a story in a foreign language with just a translation dictionary. The individual words are correct, but the whole thing is incoherent.  This linked image is a good example of what I mean. There’s obviously a spanking theme in there somewhere, but I’ve no idea what the overall concept is.

The shots that tend to work best are the simplest. When the photographers just have a single concept and a single subject, then it’s much harder to end up with a confused mess of clashing kinks and weird dynamics. This shot of the model Tatjana Patitz by photographer Nathaniel Goldberg is a good example of that. It’s simple but very effective as a fetish image.

This was shot for Allure Magazine in 2007. You can see more photographs from the shoot here.

Bonding

Netfix has a new show coming out later this month that might appeal to the typical reader of this blog. It’s called ‘Bonding’ and, as described by Netflix, it’s the story of a New York City grad student moonlighting as a dominatrix who enlists her gay BFF to be her assistant. You can see the Netflix intro here and a trailer for it here.

I find the premise a little odd, despite the fact it’s apparently based on the real life experiences of actor Rightor Doyle. I know of pro-dommes who have behind the scenes assistants to clean their studio or run errands. I also know that offering ‘forced’ bi scenes requires the occasional stunt cock or two. However, generally speaking, I get the impression that an obvious male presence in a pro-domme business wouldn’t be at all popular. Clients are often nervous about their privacy and sharing their kinks. It’s a very intimate thing. A male assistant sounds like a total business killer. I’d  suspect that the number of men who hire dommes and also have fantasies about the domme’s nervous gay BFF showing up in their scenes is non-zero but very small.

On the plus side, Zoe Levin does look great as the domme. There’s also a chance it might be a mainstream series that shows kinky sex in a funny but positive light. So I’m definitely willing to give it a shot and hope for the best.

Relaxing in Rope

Vice has an interesting article on someone discovering and using rope bondage as an aid to coping with the anxiety. I can’t say it has that effect on me, but I do understand where he’s coming from, particularly with more complex and ornamental bondage. Concentrating on a difficult physical activity can often bring focus and a meditative state, and bondage enhances that with a sense of control and being held.

I also like the comparison he draws with yoga. This bondage scene looks a bit like a variation on locust pose, although I can’t imagine it’s a great position for reducing anxiety or relaxing.

This ropework is by the famous Julie Simone (from her bondage gallery), who was the first woman to win the ‘Best Rigger’ award in 2004. She’s currently based in SE Missouri and available for personal sessions.

Discretion is the Better Part of Valor

You’ll find professional play spaces in all sorts of neighborhoods, in a wide variety of buildings and decorated in a lot of different styles. However, there’s one very consistent feature that applies to all of them – discretion in how you approach. When I’m playing with someone new, they’ll often spend a lot longer on the protocol for getting into the space than on the actual pre-scene discussion. Nobody wants a horny guy in a gimp suit wandering up and down the street knocking on doors and asking if anyone knows where Mistress Whiplash lives.

The perils of attracting the attention of the neighbors is highlighted by this recent story in the NY Times. While technically it might be totally legal to set-up a BDSM playspace, the reality is that the neighbors actually have a lot of leverage. Most people aren’t going to want to run the gamut of loud and disapproving locals when they’re trying to scratch a kinky itch. In this particular case it seemed one particular crazy religious neighbor (who suggested submissive guys would want to snatch kids off the street) was enough to torpedo a location.

Charlotte Taillor – the domme in question – did eventually manage to successfully relocate, but only after a lot of hassle and expense. It’s a tale worth keeping in mind for anyone visiting a professional space. You really don’t want to be the one to catch the eye of the local morality police and create a lot of problems for your domme.

This is Charlotte Taillor and the site for the Taillor Group is here. It’s billed as supporting ‘Female Empowerment & Education for the Kinkster or the Curious’.

Beware the Nipple

Exhibit number 1,024,604 in the case of ‘sexually repressed crazy people vs sanity’ would be this story of a teacher fired for a topless selfie. The woman in question sent a topless shot to a colleague she’d previously dated, which got leaked to a student. In any sane world this would result in a collective shrug. If you were you going to punish anyone, it would obviously be the male teacher she sent it to. He was at best careless and at worst vindictive. However, because this is the worst possible timeline we’re all living in, she was the one fired.

I realize this story isn’t femdom related, but it is a great example of the fucked up way attitude society has to female sexuality. She wants to give her partner a little visual treat, and gets punished for it. The students and the man violate her privacy, and as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing happened to them.

The good news is that she’s sued the school for discrimination. The case is based on the fact that a male topless shot wouldn’t have been any big deal. I hope she wins, but I wish it was less about discrimination and based more on the idea of minding your own goddamn business. You’d think an internet awash in millions of naked people would have desensitized us to this kind of thing, but apparently not.

Here’s some male nippilage to finish the post. Hopefully he doesn’t have any students to scandalize.