Tag: Mainstream

Two Runners

Regular readers will know that I occasionally feature a post on women who aren’t necessarily dominant in the femdom sense (as far as I know), but who perform impressive feats and set an example in their field. Today’s example of such a post is a twofer, featuring a pair or runners.

Firstly, there’s this feelgood story of Susan Sellers, who just finished second in the Boston Marathon. It was only her second marathon, and she was a complete unknown, with no sponsors or agents. After a promising junior career, she picked up a major injury, causing her to quit running and take up a nursing job. Now, at age 26, she’s found quite a way to make a comeback with a second place in Boston.

That story put me in mind of Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon in 1967. It seems incredible now, but women weren’t allowed to enter the race because organizers thought women were too ‘fragile’ to handle it. So she entered under the gender neutral name of K. V. Switzer and then relied on her boyfriend and her coach to block officials who tried to physically pull her out the race. Impressively, aged 70, she came back to run it again last year.

It wasn’t until 1972 that women were officially allowed to enter the race. The Boston Athletics Association director said of the 20 year old Switzer – “If that girl were my daughter, I would spank her.” I can only guess his bookshelves were filled with novels like the one below, and he considered himself in the front line of the fight against those evil feminists.

This book came out in 1971, and while the cover suggests it might fall into the ‘so bad it’s good’ category, this review suggests otherwise.

Naughty Nicki

I’ve mostly stopped clicking on links that purport to show me celebrities in dominatrix gear. Normally these links just lead me to someone wearing knee high boots or a leather jacket with a couple of extra buckles. Happily Nicki Minaj didn’t get that particular fashion memo, as she went for a full on dominatrix cliche. The only thing that’s missing here is a haughty stare down at a camera shooting from a lower angle.

Frankly, if I booked a session at a dungeon and the mistress turned up wearing this outfit, I’d think she was compensating for something. It’d look OTT even surrounded by chains, whips and a sex swing. It’s kind of surreal court side at a basketball game at the Staples center. I just hope she got to beat someone after the game.

Sign Up

The impact of the FOSTA-SESTA clusterfuck continues to be felt online and by sex workers. Sadly, I think this is just the start of it. The much bigger impact will be after the bill has been signed into law and a prosecutor picks his first set of victims to go after. That’ll focus minds and trigger a much bigger wave of censorship and purging of voices from the internet.

There’s an online partition against the bill available here. It took me  just 30 seconds to sign it and click on a link. Please do the same. I don’t know what difference it’ll make with the current executive in charge but, at the very least, hitting the required signature count will raise awareness and potentially lead to more articles like this. Reversing these things is never about a single dramatic gesture, but more a slow chipping away and winning over the minds of people who might not otherwise think about these issues. So go sign it.

As a reward for those readers who sign it – here’s a delightful video of a pair of dommes reenacting the famous pottery scene from the move Ghost. Although in this case there’s rather less clay and rather more enormous dildos covered in lube. But remember – no watching unless you sign the partition! You’re on the honor system here.

The video starred Mistress Evilyne and Goddess Anastaxia (pictured above) and was created by ‘Filmed by Duke‘. If the two dommes sound familiar, that’s because they were featured in this heart warming post last month.

Terminal

Fans of deadly femme fatales may want to look out for the movie Terminal staring Margot Robbie. I know basically nothing about it, other than the trailer features a very femme and very fatal looking Margot making wisecracks while shes tortures a man handcuffed to a bed. If you’re anything like me, that’ll put you first in the line when the movie comes out in May.

The image below is Margot doing her best haughty domme stare in a shot for V Magazine. If you’d like to see more of Margot in a PVC catsuit, there’s an image gallery from the shoot here.

Walkies

I love this advert for Trice Insurance. I’ve no idea about the product – the fact youtube removed the ad for deceptive practices doesn’t bode well – but the puppy play in it is as cute as anything.  He’s just so enthusiastic. Thanks to Ferns for pointing me in its direction.

The weird thing for me is that I find the lady’s English accent sexy, despite the fact I was born and raised there, and my own English accent hasn’t changed a bit in almost 20 years of living in the US. Maybe this is part of the process of US naturalization. After 5 years I started spelling color without the ‘u’, after 10 years I said gas instead of petrol, and after 20 years I’m now thinking the English accent makes people sound smart and sexy. I guess that’s good for my own confidence and sense of self-worth. If only I was gay, then I could talk dirty to myself in a sexy English accent.

This artwork is by Arrakis.

Bad Connections

I normally like being able to make new connections between old posts. This is sadly not one of those times.

Earlier this month I featured a surprisingly solid article from Cosmopolitan on nipple clamps. A few days before that I wrote a post entitled Beware Hijackers, warning of the dangers of the #MeToo movement being subverted by the anti-sex crowd. Today brings an unwelcome connection between these two things, with the news that Walmart has pulled Cosmopolitan from its checkout lines.  This was apparently driven by a bunch of fuckheads called the ‘National Center on Sexual Exploitation’ who claimed that the sex articles in the magazine contributed to the #MeToo culture and the sexual harassment of women.

I don’t actually care too much about Cosmopolitan magazine per se, but I do care about the anti-sex crowd twisting #MeToo for their own ends. And I hate the puritanical attitude that seems to be rising in the US. I fear that this is just the start of it.

This is Edie Sedgwick, a model and actress, sitting on her manager Chuck Wein. She was one of Warhol’s superstars in the late 60’s.  I don’t think she was ever in Cosmo, but she was covered in Vogue, and looked stunning. Sadly she died in 1971  from alcohol and drugs. Note that the link in the image doesn’t go anywhere useful.

Voters should have a safeword

So the grade A bullshit that is the FOSTA-SESTA bill (as covered previously here) was passed by the Senate this week. It’s a good indication of the level of dysfunction in American politics that while this dangerous bill was sailing through with no significant opposition, Senator Risch was holding up a one trillion dollar budget bill over the naming of a nature park after a political rival. Words fail me.

The effect was immediate. Craiglist dropped its entire personals section, reddit dropped sex related forums, CityVibe went dark, sex worker advertising forums vanished, etc. And that’s on day 1, before before the bill even becomes law.

It’s possible that you’re reading this and thinking ‘Why do I care? I don’t use any of those things.’ To you I’d firstly say ‘Don’t be such an asshole. Don’t you care about anyone other than yourself?’ This is a bill that’s going to cause active harm to many thousands of sex workers. Secondly, I’d say ‘Just wait. Stuff you do care about is going to follow closely behind.’

My prediction is that in the near future a grandstanding prosecutor is going to pick on some sex workers and claim (incorrectly) that they’ve been trafficked. Then he’ll use this law to go after whatever social media or online sites these workers have used or posted on. The facts won’t matter – just some juicy headlines about his crackdown on online filth and human misery. At which point all sorts of online platforms – twitter, tumblr, instagram, reddit, Google, etc. – will start to aggressively purge anything vaguely related to sex and kink. Or I guess I should say, ramp up their already aggressive efforts in that area. The effect on sex related speech will be chilling and widespread,

In theory the law shouldn’t affect sites like this one. In reality I rely hugely on those kind of platforms to provide interesting content and links. The majority of the images here feature sex workers of some form or another. This site literally wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for my experiences playing with Lady Lydia – a professional dominatrix I found online.

Hopefully the constitutionality of the bill will be challenged in the courts. In the meantime, I’d suggest doing whatever you can to support any sex workers you interact with, make yourself aware of their perspective on the issue  and donate to organizations like SWOP and EFF.

It’s a shame this lady wasn’t on the floor of the Senate to knock some sense into people.

Bubbles of Intimacy

This Business Insider article describes a photographic project capturing couples in intimate moments. The twist in the tale is that they all feature the photographer Marie Hyld,  and a stranger she’s met for the first time just minutes before (as recorded in the corner of the photographs). Most of the shots are fairly conventional sweet/casual/romantic moments, but there’s one fun fetishistic one I’ve featured below.

Mistress Matisse made an insightful comment on the series via a tweet…

So, this photographer is basically tapping into the dynamic that many sex workers create, only she’s doing it in a performative way, instead of it being for the person she’s with.

I have to admit that when I started playing with pro-dommes I was puzzled by the nature of the dynamic. It felt genuine but was also in a sense artificial. Intimacy between relative strangers. Nobody was pretending, but we were also suspending disbelief. Was it real? Or fake?

In the end I decided that these were the wrong questions to ask. It was what it was. A little bubble in time and space. It was genuine of itself, and incomparable to anything else. I didn’t have to try and sort it into my existing categorizations. I could carve out an entirely new space for it.

The series of photographs is called lifeconstructions and can be seen on the photographers web site.

On the hook

Normally when I find or, as in this case, I’m sent an interesting image, I hang onto it until there’s a suitable article or post topic to associate it with. I’ve got a long backlog of images that I like but I’ve yet to find the perfect post to drop them into.

In this case, I’m just going to put the image out there and let it stand alone. I love it. Their expressions are perfect. I just can’t imagine any kind of kinky rant, sexual politics, scene dynamics or mainstream kink story I’ll be able to fit it into. It’s just a thing all of its own.

This is by the artist Miles Aldridge and was shot for the German Stern Magazine. Thanks to Marga and Titia for pointing me at it.