Photograph – Page 157 – Femdom Resource

Real Sex

The Vulture site is carrying an interesting article on the old HBO show Real Sex. I was amazed to discover it first aired back in 1990 and ran for almost 20 years. I didn’t encounter it until I moved to the States in 2001 and, based on the frank manner it addressed sex, had always assumed it was of a fairly recent vintage.

It was by no means a great show. Although the article claims they aimed to be sincere and to laugh ‘with’ and not ‘at’ the people involved, I always detected an undercurrent of cynicism. Beneath the veneer of education and illumination there were clearly elements of titillation (ok with me) and mockery (not so good). However, all that said, I think it still was a net positive in helping people talk more frankly about their sexual interests. For example, this post from D. Hubby directly references the effect an episode on spanking had on his life.

One particular part of the interview that caught me eye was this quote…

It was always a challenge for us to find good-looking people. It’s certainly true of nudists, but a lot of people doing weird sex stuff are not necessarily young and attractive.
Katie Smalheer, associate/coordinating/supervising producer, 1996–2005

I think that’s a very telling comment. It could be taken to mean that people doing ‘weird sex stuff’ are unusually unattractive.The reality is that this media filtered view of the world is incredibly biased. Visual attractiveness is a valued commodity, particularly when nakedness is involved. Almost all commercial visual media picks from a tiny pool of conventionally attractive people. People into ‘weird sex stuff’ are simply a normal cross-section of the populace, and that clashes with the narrow selection criteria we normally expect for naked people on film. Our perception of what is acceptable or normal is horribly skewed.

I don’t have a particularly great image to use for this post, so I’ll finish with the kind of scene that I’m sure Real Sex would have loved to feature. That Miss Eve from the Young Dommes site.

Group bondage

I’m not quite sure if this should be described as an orgy of rope bondage or a rope bondage orgy. Either way it’s an unusual and entertaining image from the talented ladies at Dudes in Distress. I particularly like the vibrant colors in the shot, as well as the facial expressions of the men.

You can see the original full size version of the image here.

Signs of getting older

I’m not talking about signs of getting old you understand. Just older. While I’m still in still in the prime of my life (stop sniggering at the back), there is the occasional indication that I’m not as young as I used to be. Hangovers that still haven’t dissipated by 11am. A tendency to think that athletes look much younger than they used to. And media kerfuffles over artists and art that I’ve never heard of.

The latest example of that final category is somebody called Robin Thicke. He apparently has a hit song called Blurred Lines (warning very non femdom content), that has been attracting criticism for its rape-y lyrics. It’s a point of view that’s hard to argue with once you listen to it.

The reason I mention it here at all is this pastiche by the Seattle troupe Mod Carousel. I ran across this a couple of days ago, at a time when I’d never heard of the original. The funny thing was, even though I had no idea what it was based on, I instantly recognized this as a parody and knew exactly what the original version would look like. The cultural markers and gender stereotypes are so strong that the parody works with or without the original. And while I like the alternative version a lot, that’s a pretty sad indictment of both the original and the culture around it.

The CFNM style of the parody gives me a good excuse to finish with a CFNM image. I’m really not sure what’s going on here, but like the video, this image made me smile. The two expressions couldn’t be more different.

I found the image on the CFNM classic tumblr. I’m afraid I couldn’t track down an original source.

QOTD

Given the length of the last few posts, I’ll keep this one short and pithy. The quote of the day is:

Anyone who thinks a woman who’s being paid to cane and sodomize people is vulnerable and exploited? Has never caned and sodomized anyone.

That’s from the twitter feed of Mistress Matisse. Feel free to discuss that amongst yourselves.

I was hoping to finish with an image featuring both a cane and a strap-on. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything I liked, so I’ll double down with an image for each. In both cases the ladies in question seem to be tending less to the exploited and more to the happy.

The first image has had the watermark annoyingly chopped, but I believe it’s from Young Dommes. I found it on the Who’s Sorry Now tumblr. The second image is from the Strapon Dreamer site. I found it on the Pegging with a Smile tumblr.

And that’s magic!

Can you trace the origin of your kinks or fetishes? Assuming that you have any. Although if you don’t, you’ve chosen a really odd site to browse.

The NY Magazine article discussed in yesterday’s post on the origins of people’s kinks, talked a lot about triggers and formative events. Things from childhood that could be directly linked to a later sexual preference. It would seem that some fraction of kinky people have very clear triggers, some can point to a range of influences but no single thing, and others have absolutely nothing in childhood to point at. In the comments to the post Miss Margo mentioned that a lot of her clients can identify triggers, while Vista represented the kinky person without that genesis moment.

Personally I’m in the same camp as Vista. I don’t have anything I can point to that twisted me kinky. However, I can very clearly identify the moment when I first showed interest in a kinky thing. Cue a wibbly wobbly screen and swirly special effects as I take you back thirty (ahem) or so years to a much younger paltego…

I grew up in a tiny village. It was basically two streets, one shop, a village hall and (since this is England we’re talking about) two pubs. This was a time when the internet was still the arpanet and British television consisted of 3 channels. Any kind of organized live entertainment was therefore a big deal. There was the occasional village fête, a Christmas carol concert, an agricultural show, etc. Then one year, when I was around 5 or 6 years old, somebody organized a variety show in the village hall. I can’t remember most of it. It was probably the usual amateur song and dance acts with a bad comedian thrown in for good measure. But there was also a magic act. And that act has stayed with me to this day. It was very traditional. Card tricks. Linking rings. Endless streams of colorful handkerchiefs. And a woman in a sparkly costume getting sawn in half (actually the Zig Zag Girl trick). It was this final trick that particularly transfixed me. I can still remember my excitement as she climbed into the box and the magician tied things around her wrists and ankles. She was constrained, in peril, sacrificial and yet willing. He took away her control, yet she seemed to enjoy it.

From that moment on I always kept an eye out for magic acts and escapologists on television. There was something I found very enticing about the ropes, chains, padlocks and perilous situations that featured in their acts. But it wasn’t till I hit puberty, and discovered the idea of bondage (via my parents copy of The Joy Of Sex), that I had my ‘Aha!’ moment. I certainly don’t think the magic act I saw as a child was formative. The wiring was already in place, because it excited me in a strange way the instant I saw it. The discovery of kink just helped me to understand why I’d found that particular act in an otherwise long forgotten village show so compelling.

It was surprisingly hard to find a magic themed femdom shot. A lot of the equipment for elaborate magic tricks looks awfully similar to the contents of most dungeons, yet there seems to be very little direct cross-over. In the end I turned to the prolific Servitor and this amusingly captioned picture. The ‘magician’ in question here is the lovely Lexi Sindel.

I hate balls!

Not me personally. I quite like my balls. They get in the way now and again, but I’ve no personal desire to be neutered. The hatred in this case comes from Katherine Heigl. As she explains in this very amusing video, they’re dangly and disgusting and males are better off without them. I suspect the little sad look she gives at around the 50 second mark, when discussing the difficulty of neutering men, will be fantasy fodder for a decent fraction of my male readers.

Of course neutering does have its downsides. For one thing it removes a bunch of densely packed and sensitive nerves that are ideal for torture. For another, the fiendish humbler device, as shown in the image below, becomes sadly redundant.

This image has been manipulated (in the usual tumblr fashion) but I believe it’s originally from Amber’s Dungeon. I found it on the Under My Heel tumblr.

We have a winner

Last week I posted about a smallest penis competition in Brooklyn. Well we have a winner, and judging by this interview he’s taking his new found fame in his stride. He also seems to have a pretty positive and sensible view on all the whole experience. Of course, if this cartoon is anything to go by, it’s the second place contestant we should be concerned about.

The old cliche is that it’s not the size that counts, but what you do with it. Judging by this picture it looks like someone decided tying it to a metal pole and big toes was the thing to do with it. I’m not sure that’s exactly what the person who coined the expression had in mind.

I found this on the Mistress Alice in Bondage Land tumblr. I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution for it.

Preparation and anticipation

I’m taking a few days vacation up in the fine city of Vancouver, BC. As usual I plan to indulge in some kinky fun and fine food. Hopefully both parts of the plan will work out well, but posting may become a touch erratic in the meantime.

While I unpack my suitcase and inspect the minibar, I’ll leave you with another gentleman enjoying some preparation and anticipation. It’s originally from the CBT and Ball Busting site, but I found it on Freya’s Fancy tumblr.

Revisiting the pro/lifestyle discussion

O Miss Pearl is the latest blogger to venture into the debate around the intersection of pro and non-pro female dominants. She has two recent posts on the topic here and here. I’m going to try and avoid getting deep into the details of her posts. I’ve touched on similar issues in the past (e.g. a series of posts on kink and money here, here, here, a debate with DD here), and while I may quibble about parts of Miss Pearl’s posts, I do agree with the majority of her points. I’m a huge fan of pro-dommes in general, but I still think it’s a bad thing that they’re commonly seen as the primary representation of female domination.

I will say that I think it’s important in these discussions to avoid purely binary classifications. There’s not a single type of pro/client interaction, in the same way there’s not a single lifestyle interaction. These things exist on a continuum. There’s also not a single role that people are uniquely assigned. It’s often acknowledged that a pro-domme may also be a lifestyle dominant, but that same flexibility should also be attributed to her clients. It’s not wrong to occupy multiple categories. What’s wrong is to take a dynamic unique to one and apply it to another. Pro-dommes aren’t looking for a date and lifestyle dommes don’t exist to service male submissive fantasies.

Shortly after reading Miss Pearl’s thoughts I came across this post by Ms Maya Midnight. She’s talking about clients who ask for an ‘easy session’ and what a pain in the ass they usually are. Their definition of what an ‘easy session’ is rarely chimes with hers.

My definition of an easy session is one where I can wear and do more or less whatever I want — or at least have a very wide variety of enjoyable activities to choose from. It also means an easygoing, responsive sub with good communication skills who doesn’t top from the bottom. It does not require much if any prep.

I thought it made for an interesting statement in the context of the pro/lifestyle debate. Often the complaint from lifestyle dominants is that guys expect them to dress like a fetishists wet dream and focus with laser like intensity on the submissive’s very specific fantasy scenarios. i.e. The stereotypical pro/client scenario. Yet, for a pro, her best clients are those who care about the dynamic (rather than an activity or outfit), communicate well and actually submit. I suspect the above list of attributes would strike a cord with lifestyle dominants just as much as professional ones.

The image is taken from Ms Maya Midnight’s website. She’s a NYC based pro-domme. Her interests and a link for booking a session is available here.

A Stoya interlude

This isn’t really a post about femdom. Apologies in advance for that. But I found a fun, sexy and interesting short video that I liked and wanted to share. Fortunately I have a blog that allows me to do exactly that.

The video in question is Stoya sitting at a table and reading aloud from a book by Supervert. What makes it fun is the lady under the table with a Hitachi vibrator. Needless to say this makes it rather tricky for Stoya to maintain focus. You can read her impressions of the event here.

I have to admit to having a bit of a crush on Stoya. She has a rare presence to go along with her striking looks. Not to mention that she writes an excellent and thought provoking blog. Sadly I’m not aware of her doing any femdom material. However, this post does give me an excuse to feature this cute image of her dressed as the character ‘Death’ from the Sandman series. A happy Stoya in black boots as a Neil Gaiman character. What’s not to like?

The image was created by the photographer Lauren Goldberg. You can see more from the same sequence here.