Tag: Photograph

Honorifics

The UK is doing stupid authoritarian shit again.  However, it’s too annoying and depressing to post about that, so instead I’m going to talk about honorifics.

I recently read a social media post from a domme complaining about submissives not using her appropriate title. She was fed up with emails that skipped it entirely or used the more general ‘Mistress’. If you’ve built a very consistent personae around a particular title I can totally understand how that would be annoying. However, as someone who – via this blog – has cause to link to and mention a lot of dommes, let me add one or two words of defense.

I’m often surprised at the inconsistency of honorific use. Some dommes will have one title on their site, a different one on their social media banner and then post using yet another one. If someone describes themselves as Domina in one place, Mistress in another and the text on their website uses simply their name, what is the right form of address? I’ve spent way longer than I’d care to admit going back and forth between sites, trying to figure out the right way to title dommes in posts. If the URL to a website is ‘Domina’ but the banner is ‘Goddess’ then which is right?

There’s the added wrinkle that some dommes don’t like to use particular honorifics unless they’ve accepted you as a submissive. Others insist on them from the first point of contact.

I certainly don’t say this to criticize dommes. Or to defend lazy submissives who don’t do their research. Just to highlight that even for someone like myself, involved in the culture and community for many years, it can be sometimes be tricky to get right.

Here’s one answer to slaves who say the wrong thing. It’s tough to get ‘Mpmmphhh!’ wrong. Image is sourced via tumblr and I’m afraid I don’t have an original source.

Well Dressed

One follow-up thought to the sissy themed post from earlier this week. And when I say thought, I mean a series of highly unscientific anecdotal observations from yours truly.

I think if you go back ten or more years and look at material created on the sissy theme, it tended to lean heavily into the extreme. Big wigs, heavy makeup, lots and lots of frilly pink, etc. That in turn tended to lean more into the humiliation elements of the kink. Looking good ran somewhat counter to that primary goal.

I’d suggest that has shifted in recent years. I see a lot more imagery posted on social media where the emphasis is on being well dressed, elegant and with expertly done make-up. There’s obviously still a heavy emphasis on femininity and roles like maid, waitress, escort, etc. The roleplay hasn’t changed but often the approach and style has.

As I said at the top of the post, this is based on nothing more than my random observations. I haven’t been doing a sissy survey or anything. But assuming it’s true, it’s interesting to wonder why it might be. Perhaps more people wanting to explore cross-dressing without being interested in humiliation? Is that in turn triggered by more transgender people being out and visible in society? I’ve no clue, but it’d make for a great research subject.

This image is from the Bluesky feed of Lady Justice. She’s an Edinburgh based pro-domme.

Sissy

Interesting twitter thread here on the subject of sissies from Mistress Mercer and Lady Vi. It’s a pushback on the negative press that type of play can often get. For those who understandably choose not to frequent twitter, I’ll reproduce a couple of the relevant tweets here…

My very first long-term ‘sissy’ partner PROMISED Me they “weren’t trans”, and it was just a weird sex humiliation thing.

She ended up transitioning within 6 months of being in a safe and loving environment where her gender expression and exploration was honored and appreciated.

You absolutely *do not fucking know* what someone is going through, and it’s extremely harmful to judge the way that they are coping, processing, relieving, or coming to terms with their own desires.
Mistress Mercer

It’s true. I took on a sissy years ago who wanted an extended “sissy maid” training session to prepare them for a play date they had (or something along those lines).

We only had one session and then they decided to divorce their wife and transition. People discount how profound it can be to feel safe, seen and accepted.
Lady Vi

I don’t have much to add to the topic, but it seemed like a perspective worth sharing. There must also be a large number of people who have explored this kink and – in an ideal world – would consider transitioning, but can’t bring themselves to take that step. We’re sadly not living in an open minded and accepting time.

Here’s a theme appropriate image sourced from Mistress Mercer’s twitter feed.

Mistress Mercer is a ‘Suffering & Sissification Specialist’ based out of Myrtle Beach, SC. You can find all her relevant links here.

Good Kicking

I’m sporting some lovely deep bruises on my chest and arms today. Savannah Sly was in town and last night she gave me a damn good kicking. Not to mention slapping, punching, gouging, pinching and general mashing. It left me a bruised but very happy bunny.

This photograph is not us and not from last night. It’s by Aaron Hawks from 2005. I picked it because I felt it captured a little bit of the energy of our play. Controlled deconstruction. Everything scattered but with purpose.

You can find Aaron Hawk’s professional web site here. He’s a professional photographer and artist based in my hometown of Seattle.

Art, advertising or kink?

The streets of Soho (NYC edition) recently featured an unusual collaboration between fashion brand Alexander Wang and artist/domme Sabine Tautou. Designed to promote a new handbag, it featured a heavy mummification scene with a man bound to a lamppost. Yahoo news has some  background and TMZ has a  bunch of photographs. On the streets of SF during something like the Folsom Fair it’d be no big deal, but I imagine Soho commuters and shoppers might have been a touch taken aback.

Hopefully the man wasn’t enjoying it, because then it’s obviously art. Anyone passing by was getting a free cultural experience and should be grateful. On the other hand, if he was getting off on it, then that’s a kinky scene that is non consensually involving strangers. AKA a terrible thing to do. They didn’t ask to be subjected to such perversion. Of course, if he enjoyed some bits and not others, then it’s ethically more complicated. Does one cancel the other? Or is it both a cultural experience and a nonconsensual kinky scene simultaneously? Like Schrodinger’s cat, just with less cat and more duct tape.

Multitudes

My last post touched on humiliation as a kink and elicited some interesting comments. It reminded me again that what looks like a single kink is always really many kinks hiding under a single title. It’s never a case of someone simply being into X. It’s always X done in a certain way for a particular reason.

Take watersports for example. If you’re not into it then piss is just piss. There’s only one way to not like it, but hundreds of different ways to be into it. Maybe it’s the animalistic primal nature of it. Or maybe it’s being objectified as a toilet. For one person it could be demeaning. For another it’s worship. Someone into wet messy piss play will have a very different scene to someone who dreams of being turned into a piece of toilet paper.

Humiliation is another example of a kink that’s simple on the outside, many things on the inside. A kinkster might enjoy a bullying dynamic that humiliation enhance. Alternatively, humiliation could be a cathartic release via an ego death. Maybe it’s about enhancing the domme by diminishing the submissive. Or maybe reliving an adolescent trauma that’s been eroticized over time. If you’re into objectification then humiliation might be all about reinforcing that reduction of self.

To horribly rework Tolstoy’s comment about marriages – every unhappy kinkster is alike, but each happy kinkster is happy in their own way.

My personal humiliation kink is very mild, but aligns a little with this kind of caption. It’s a positive and upbeat kind of humiliation.

This was a from a tumblr that had a bunch of similarly themed images. It’s sadly vanished, gone the way of many tumblrs. I wish I could find the creator again, as they authored a lot of well written femdom captions.

New Things

My LA trip continues to be a kinky delight. I’ve done two sessions with the amazing Domina Sophie Agenoux, both of which were a hell of a lot of fun. My last post gave a pretty clear hint about some of our activities. However, I also got to try a couple of new things. Given I’ve been playing for many years that’s an unusual but welcome experience.

The first new thing was a chastity cage. It seems weird to say this, given they’re such a staple of femdom and I’m a big fan of tease + denial, but I don’t think I’ve ever worn one before. This wasn’t a lengthy lock-up by any measure. Just a segment at the start of the session to set the mood. But it was fun to try and definitely did help create the right headspace. My top takeaways were that doing it more seriously for a longer period would require a properly fitted custom cage, and mixing pubic hair with hinges and locking mechanisms is a bad idea. Shave first.

The other new thing we worked into our second session was some gentle verbal humiliation. Until now that’s been a verboten dynamic for me. I was always concerned how I’d react to it and if it’d curdle into a sour post play emotion. I took a chance here as it seemed to be a nice fit with the tease/denial/objectification dynamic we were doing, and I trusted Domina Sophie to ease into it carefully. That turned out to be a great call, as it added a lovely frission to the play and Domina Sophie judged it perfectly.

I don’t think I’ll ever get into heavy and overly negative humiliation play. Being called a loser or useless does not spark my interest. However, there’s a variation I think of as the backhanded compliment: You don’t get to have X, you’re no good for X, but you do make a great Y. It’s demeaning – given a conventionally desirable X and a Y that is decidedly not – but in an oddly positive and hot way.

This shot of Domina Sophie Agenoux was sourced from her Bluesky Feed. If you’re in the Southern Californian area and wish to schedule a session then you can find her professional site here. I really can’t recommend her highly enough.

Milking the Dog

I’m a big fan of the objectification this set-up creates. The heavy and full coverage dog suit is dehumanizing – and therefore hot – in its own right. The suspension bondage reduces agency still further. The motorized milking machine will drag a specific reaction from his body whether he likes it or not. The fact he can helplessly flail those stubby limbs around but change nothing makes for a lovely finishing touch.

The creator of this scene is Mistress Hinako and she posted this along with a short video to her Twitter feed. As she says there – ‘I wake up early every morning to milk my dog’.

Working with Couples

Boston base pro-domme Jane Cockatrice has a thoughtful post up about working with a kinky couple and helping mentor them. The woman was interested in becoming  “…more confident in her dominance and learn how to create more intense experiences for both of them.”

I wouldn’t describe it as a ‘how to’ piece, but there are plenty of useful observations and wise words in there. For example…

Sometimes women become so focused on whether they are doing everything correctly that they don’t fully allow themselves to enjoy their dominance. They wonder whether they look dominant enough. They worry that their dirty talk isn’t perfect. They continuously monitor whether their partner is enjoying himself. They may feel responsible for producing his ideal fantasy while forgetting to notice what the experience feels like for them.

I think there’s an interesting balance to strike here from the submissive perspective. Obviously you never want to treat a domme as a kink dispensing machine. I always strive for sessions that have an organic and natural flow to them. One’s where the domme has the freedom to evolve as the mood takes her. On the other hand, you can also go to far in the other direction. The kind of sub who just says ‘Oh, do whatever you want Mistress!’ Dommes are not mind readers and guessing games don’t make good sessions.

I guess one could draw an analogy with collaborating over a painting. You can’t expect someone to be creative if you give them a paint by numbers picture and scrutinize every brush stroke. At the same time you can’t simply show up with a blank canvas and expect them to do all the work.

Image of Jane Cockatrice was sourced from her Bluesky feed. You can read more of her excellent blogging content on her professional site.

Money, Money, Money

Mistress Blunt has written a long and interesting article on the dynamics of long term findom relationships. You can find it here.

The common manifestation of findom – drains, cash meets, pay pigs, etc. – leaves me cold. I can intellectually get why someone might be into that, but it does nothing for me emotionally. Reading Mistress Blunt’s article was the first time the dynamic has really clicked for me as an erotic thing to do.

In practice, this dynamic can mean daily tribute requirements. Or it can mean you report your income to me. Or it can mean I approve of any discretionary spending. It can mean a legally drafted financial contract. It always means that the dynamic does not end when the session does, because there is no session. There is only your relationship with me, beneath me.

I kink on control and that level of control is undoubtedly hot. However, reading it also left me uncomfortable and with a slight sense of ickiness. It took me a while to figure out why.

It’s definitely not because I think Mistress Blunt is doing anything wrong or unethical. Far from it. She clearly puts a lot of thought into her relationships.

I think it’s due to how I connect money with independence and therefore consent. I need to be independent for consent to be meaningful. If I can’t easily walk away then I can’t withdraw it. And my ability to walk away – from anything, not just relationships – is anchored in my control over my money. I grew up with very little and I treasure the independence having it now gives me.

Of course, that connection with control and dependency is why I found her description of the dynamic so hot. I’m sure it’s also why others engage in it. I’m just not sure I could ever let go in that way.

This shot of Mistress Blunt is from her Bluesky feed. You can find her professional site here.