Tag: Photograph

Domme Song Dummy

Taking a break from the vacation posts to link to this Harper’s article entitled Domme Songs. It’s an essay by Michael Robbins reflecting on his masochism, experiences with a domme and how it links to the state of the world.

It’s a piece that I’ve seen posted to social media several times recently, often with positive comments from people I respect. I find that odd, because I hate it. I’m not the only blogger to feel that way. Miss Pearl has written a passionate and detailed criticism of it in a post here. She’s done a far better job there than I will do here, so go read that if you want more than my cursory thoughts.

My main beef with the piece is his attempt to link masochism with the destruction of the planet and our unfolding ecological disaster. Which is nonsensical. We’re not destroying the planet because we get a thrill from doing so. We’re doing so because we want stuff, we want it now and we don’t want to think about the consequences. A point he seems to acknowledge later, but then he does nothing with this apparently contradictory thought.

People’s kinks are complex and highly personal. Not political. Someone who has both masochistic and anxious tendencies may well use the former to address the latter. Nobodies kinks exist in a vacuum. But the theater of BDSM play has bugger all to do with the disappearance of snails in Hawaii. I’m all for thinking deeply about kink and what it means to you, but this article fails to do that. There’s no honesty, just pretension and wordplay.

No idea what the source of this picture is but it seemed appropriate. One sometimes needs a hint on when to keep quiet.

Vacation Continued

I had a fabulous session with Troy Orleans this week. Much bondage was involved. I’ve a bunch of photographs to share, but haven’t yet had time to sort through them. I’ll try and do that in the coming days and put together a post on the session.

I have a session with someone else lined up for tomorrow, which required a very painful and unusual sacrifice tonight. I went to a fancy tasting menu restaurant, but ordered the nonalcoholic beverage pairing. I’ve never done that before. Sadly, I’m now at an age where I can’t drink a bunch of wine at night and play hard the next day. Getting old sucks. At least tomorrow should be fun, in a cleared headed way.

I’ll leave you with a shot of another kinky gentleman on his holidays.

Don’t have a source for this. I found it via tumblr.

Happiness

Greater Good Magazine has an interview with the sociologists Alicia M. Walker and Arielle Kuperberg on their new book – Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life.

The message of the interview and the book is the happiness BDSM can bring.

VL: What did you discover in your research that surprised you?

AW: I was just really shocked overall about how happy everybody was, which became the crux of the book. There’s never been another group of people that I’ve interviewed, for every single person that I talked to, who was just wildly happy. And this is a huge sample—96 completed interviews, but I talked to far, far more people who didn’t end up completing interviews. That is just extremely unusual.

Obviously, I’m happy that BDSM makes people happy. Far be it from me to knock such a positive message. But I do wonder if more careful qualification is needed here. They’re not necessarily talking about people who are kinky and attracted to BDSM. Nor are they even talking about people who simply practice BDSM. As far as I can tell, they’re talking about a narrower subset – the people who are part of a BDSM community. I think that means people who go to munches, attend play parties, go to community events, etc.

It makes me wonder what the data would look like if you separated kink from sociability. Are couples who practice kink purely in their private lives happier than non kinky couples? How about people who exercise their kinky side with pro-dommes? What about sociable community focused non-kinky people compared to people in the BDSM community? Is it BDSM that makes people happy or the community elements that form around it?

I guess I should read the book and find out if they tease apart that kind of data. In the meantime I’ll leave you with an image of a domme who certainly appears to be in her happy place. It’s less clear how the submissive feels about it, but I’m sure he’s smiling.

This is Miss Erika Rayne, a pro-domme based out of Bristol, UK. I sourced the image via her Bluesky feed. If you’re in the Bristol area and interested in finding some happiness of your own, her session and contact information is available on her website.

CFNM Fetish Style

In looking at this image it struck me how rarely I play with dommes in serious fetishwear. The common stereotype of a pro-domme is someone dressed head to toe like Vespa here from Reflective Desire. All tight latex, straps, heels and corsets. Yet in reality that look only gets widely used in content creation or in very specific fetish sessions. It looks fabulous but it’s just too much of a pain to put together and work with for a regular session of a couple of hours. If only these kind of outfits worked like the Futurama spray on bikini.

This is Vespa and Heavy shooting for Reflective Desire. You can see more via their site and their Bluesky feed.

Pink and Black and Why?

After featuring some strikingly beautiful images in the last few posts, I thought we’d go in a different direction with this one. Although I guess it is still striking.

I’m always astonished by the fashion industries ability to take beautiful women, dress them in exciting fetish fashions and yet somehow produce weird unsexy images. Past examples include Monica Bellucci and Anne Hathaway. To that list we can now add Carmen Cass in this shoot for Vogue Czechoslovakia.

What is with that pink decor? And that oddly placed ugly vase? And the lights and lighting? So strange. It does make me think that if a domme ever wants to create a really scary dungeon space, she should forget the bondage furniture and black walls. It’d be a lot more disconcerting to do a scene in a room like this one – all pink, twee and 1980’s.

Dressing for the Evening

The image in my previous post got me thinking about dommes who create images with a similar aesthetic. That is to say, combining beauty and elegance with explicitly kinky elements, but in a restrained way. Pun possibly intended.

One such domme who immediately came to mind is Natalie Noir. She’s a  Zurich based pro-domme who creates some very beautiful imagery – as featured here before. The shot below, sourced via her Twitter, seemed an appropriate follow-up to the last post. A similar idea, with a smart hooded male and an elegant domme standing over him, but shot in a different way. This shot, I assume from the photoshoot, is equally striking.

If you’re in the Zurich area and would like to session with Natalie, you can find information here.

Dapper

This is a lovely blend of ideas. The neatly fitted and well made gag and blindfold both align with the suit and contrast against it. Her pose and outfit is more casual and relaxed, yet her positioning is clearly dominant. He looks in control of himself and yet controlled at the same time. Plus, it’s not often you see a pocket square in a bondage scene.

I’ve hunted around online but sadly I can’t find an original source. I’m wondering if it has been cropped from the original. It looks a bit like the kind of image that Domina M creates, but I can’t prove that. If anyone can help attribute then please leave me a comment.

Updated: Domina M kindly left a comment to indicate it’s not her (although she’s a fan of the aesthetic), but is fairly certain it’s Miss Grey of SF.

Inescapable

After the impressive bondage of the last post I thought I’d go in the other direction with this.

James Bond is notorious for escaping from many tight situations, but I don’t think he’ll be too taxed by this one. A good shrug would probably do it. Maybe the villainess has been looking at too much early bondage porn. That often featured a few randomly placed lengths of clothesline as a means of restraint. Of course if Karin Dor had tied me up, I probably wouldn’t be struggling too hard to get away either.

This is of course Sean Connery and Karin Dor in You Only Live Twice.

Inverting the Usual

Spectacular rope suspension bondage typically features young, lithe, female models. Which is undoubtedly hot, but can be a little predictable. This inverted suspension shot flips the script. It’s a super impressive set-up, both for the man in the ropes and those doing the rigging. The former is Tim Sangster and the latter is Mistress Wildfire and Mistress Vivienne L’Amour. From the limited rope suspension I’ve done, I know how tricky this must have been to get right.

Kink and Culture

Ms Jadis Ives has published a really thoughtful article entitled kink, subculture, aesthetic, authenticity and the algorithm. As you can probably guess from that title, it covers a lot of complex topics, making it hard to summarize. However, I guess the nub of it would be the difference between authentic in person play and everything else that now makes up the wide kinky world.

In the past there were relatively well defined niches of lifestyle play, BDSM professionals offering sessions and (limited, rare) kink themed pornography. The boundaries were distinct. Now, thanks to a variety of technological, cultural and financial reasons, it’s a far murkier and more complex map. Mainstream overlaps with the kink subculture. The worlds of content creation, marketing and and in person play are harder to tease apart. Big tech and legal rules warp the discourse even further. What does it mean to participate in BDSM today?

There’s obviously the danger of nostalgia and gatekeeping here, but I don’t think Ms Jadis is heading in that direction. She’s calling out the dangers of losing sight of a key aspect of BDSM – that visceral, authentic in person connection. That’s not all it is, but it is a significant and important part. We shouldn’t let the performative aspects of the current culture overwhelm it.

Ms Jadis Ives is a Sydney based pro-domme. This image was sourced from her website. You can also find her on Bluesky. If you’re in the Sydney area and interested in experiencing a session in person then you can find details here.