Photograph – Page 175 – Femdom Resource

FYI

Just for your information, while I love getting comments and emails, I’m not the fastest in the world at responding to them. I try and respond to comments within a couple of days, but detailed emails can take a week or so. Job + Blog + Friends + Sleep = 24 hours. That doesn’t leave me much time to write emails, so I apologize in advance if your response is delayed. If I ever manage to fit dating or a relationship into that equation it might involve some fundamental rewriting of the laws of physics. Possibly that could lead to a new form of interstellar travel, but more likely it’ll just mean the end of the universe. So I also apologize in advance if that happens just when you’re finally getting to a good bit. I’ll try not to do it right before a weekend.

Perhaps an alternative solution to this equation would be for me to multitask better. For example, this gentleman appears to be combining cleaning the floor with washing his face. That has got to cut down on wasted washroom time.

The lady helping the gentleman with his ablutions is Mistress Lauren.

The iron lady

Margaret Thatcher’s funeral was earlier this week. She was Britain’s first female Prime Minister and is widely considered to be its most influential leader since the Second World War. Regardless of what you think of her politics, she was undoubtedly hugely successful in her chosen field and a major world figure.

As soon as the obituaries started rolling in I knew there was one word that would inevitably turn up – dominatrix. Sure enough, like many articles written about her during her life, up it popped (for example in Der Spiegel, Slate, The Guardian, etc.). It’s a description that has always annoyed me. It has a very specific sexual connotation. Men can achieve positions of great authority and power without it being tied to their sexuality. A man reaching for authority is treated as normal. Yet if a woman proves to be the best political campaigner, her motives and reasoning are assessed differently. She’s defined not in her own terms, but in reference to the men she’s beaten politically and their feelings. She’s in charge either to satisfy her base sexual instincts for control or because others let her win to satisfy their desire for punishment.

In Margaret Thatcher’s case it strikes me as particularly inappropriate. I was only a young boy when she was in charge, but my kinky personality was already forming, and she never struck me as someone who sexualized power. A dominatrix works within a D/s dynamic that’s created in partnership with a submissive. They are interested in the reaction from their submissive and the interplay of power between them. That might fit some politicians, but Thatcher always came across to me as someone interested only in results. She cared nothing for the journey. She wanted the world a certain way and either you agreed (making you irrelevant) or you disagreed (making you an obstacle to be destroyed). Authoritarianism is not the same as domination.

As this blog shows, I’m a big fan of women who choose to express themselves via domination. But I hate to see women pushed into that group simply because they’re successful and natural leaders.

I originally picked the image for this post as the cricket bat struck me as quintessentially English. It turns out to be a shot from an Austrian fashion designer – Lena Hoshek. So not so English, but still a fun shot with a great 40’s retro feel to it.

Watch out for splinters

It’s odd how often derelict and abandoned buildings show up in the more artistic BDSM shots. I really can’t imagine a worse place for a scene. Damp and decaying wood. Cold breezes. Rusty nails and broken glass. Vermin. Dangerous footing and no sturdy anchor points. It’s pretty much the definition of a bad place to get naked and tie people up. But it does look cool, which is no doubt the motivating factor.

This is my third and, for the moment, final Femdom/Femsub post. While the backdrop might be interesting but impractical, I do like the top’s outfit. It’s not exactly standard domme wear, but it is sexy and does fit the scene. This is also a nice image to spin a story around. Is she in the process of rescuing the tied up woman? Or is she about to kiss her and abandon her?

You can find out more about the image here. It was shot by Joseph W Carey. The domme is Sister Dee from Top Grl and the submissive is Luna Vary. I originally encountered it on the Beauty of Submission tumblr.

Military chic

F/f imagery doesn’t get featured here that often, but after yesterday’s example, I thought a couple more posts on the theme wouldn’t be too out of place.

I have to admit to a bit of kink for military uniforms. It’s not something I actively pursue, but should they happen to come my way, I’m never unhappy. Like a lot of uniforms they carry the suggestion of authority. On top of that they add a dash of danger and style that a police or nurse outfit just doesn’t have. Officer outfits in particular are designed to impress socially rather than be utilitarian. As a fan of history, elegant tailoring and authority figures, they’re a win all around for me.

I believe this one is based on a Prussian cavalry outfit from Napoleonic times. German military uniforms tend to present unique problems of their own thanks to certain historical events. Fortunately in this period the bad guy was a short Corsican with a flair for military command. Or at least that’s what my British history books taught me. So thanks to Blücher, and the fact Germany didn’t even exist as a unified entity at the time, we can enjoy this one with no moral qualms.

I like the subtle D/s vibe in this image. It’s not completely clear whose in charge, but there’s definitely a suggestion of power dynamics at work. It’s by the photographer Yuri Iluhin. I found it on the Selina Minx tumblr.

The latest dungeon toy: MRI scanner

I’ve written about the science of pain in a previous post. That discussed some interesting findings from studies in the 1940’s and highlighted the difficulty in measuring pain in an objective manner. According to this article on brain imaging, that last part may be about to change. Researchers have managed to train a computer model (via machine learning) to analyze MRI scans and predict the level of pain experienced.

The part I found particularly interesting was that the responses across different patients brains was very uniform. They didn’t have to sample a patients pain at say levels 1 and 2 to be able to predict what that patients brain would look like at level 5 or 6. The same predictive model could be used across all patients. Meaning that they could take an MRI scan in from any patient and accurately estimate the level of pain experienced.

That seems counter-intuitive because we have a concept we call pain tolerance. Some people are as tough as nails and others are delicate daisies. Yet the underlying brain mechanism seems to be fairly uniform. Everyone’s brain fires up in similar ways to similar degrees of stimulus. That suggests to me that people’s baseline tolerance to pain, before endorphins and adrenalin kicks in to modulate the signal, is a learned response. You’re not pre-programmed to have a specific tolerance and presumably it could be modified over time.

I’ll leave you with an image of somebody doing a pain experiment of her own. She seems to have neglected the MRI scanner to measure the exact effects but perhaps this is just a practice run. Judging by his expression she should have no problem getting a reading from him.

I found the image on the Some Husbands Need Discipline tumblr. The original commercial site is sadly now extinct.

Underlying motives

I occasionally enjoy reading anti-porn and anti-sex work blogs. Although enjoy is probably not the right word. I find it cathartic to get annoyed and swear at my monitor now and again. Possibly this is related to my masochistic tendencies. It also helps me to a better understanding of the motives of the people behind them.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to worry about what happens when sex and money collide. Sex is a powerful motive force and undoubtedly bad things can and sometimes do happen when it combines with capitalism. I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to worry about how sex is represented in popular culture. However, whenever I go and read the work of these activists (like Gail Dines or Melissa Farley) it’s pretty clear they don’t care about these things. If they did they’d do proper research, provide solid data, talk to a wide range of the participants and present nuanced arguments that capture the inherent complexity of the issue. Instead they provide garbage fact sheets and arguments that dissolve like tissue paper when people such as Brooke Magnanti so much as glance at them.

What these people really want is control over others. And not the good sort of control that involves rope, blindfolds and safewords. They want to control how people live and how they think. I was reminded of this fact when I came across an article by Gail Dines on the new James Franco Kink movie. Unsurprisingly she’s not a fan, but the part that really caught my eye was…

The usual defense of Kink.com is that the women signed a contract and hence agreed to the acts. But as attorney Wendy Murphy of the New England School of Law argues, “torture doctrine is not hampered by concerns about consent because, as a matter of law and policy, one cannot consent to torture.” And anyway, what does meaningful and informed consent mean to the women subjected to these degrading and painful tortures, which are designed to break the body and the spirit?
Gail Dines in counterpunch

She’s not arguing that this material shouldn’t be filmed and distributed. She’s arguing that the very idea of consent in BDSM is meaningless. She emphasizes this opinion by repeatedly conflating the awful non-consensual tortures performed on prisoners at places like Abu Graib with what people consent to do for Kink.com. In her world not just porn would be banned, but BDSM itself would be outlawed by government mandate. The underlying motive here is not to help sex workers or target the issues the commercialization of sex creates. It’s to control how everyone behaves.

I’ll leave you with an image of the kind of activity that obviously should be illegal. That poor man can’t possibly be in his right mind to consent to such inhumane treatment. Although I guess it’s possible that he’s taking advantage of her and she therefore shouldn’t be allowed to be exploited like this. Either way, the evil pornographers taking advantage of these poor helpless people is the Captive Male site.

Grasping the problem firmly by the throat

I love breathplay but I’m actually not a big fan of throttling. It looks cool, but the the reality is risky, uncomfortable and hard to relax into. Squeezing all those delicate vessels contained in the throat is unwise and potentially lethal. If you’re vigorously fucking someone then grabbing them loosely by the throat is a wonderfully hot move. But if you’re trying to modulate oxygen then I think there are more interesting ways to achieve your goal.

It might seem less exciting than throttling, but try some saran wrap over the submissives face. Having clear plastic wrap gently kissed into place over my face has led to some of the great moments in my kinky life. It’s both sensual and incredibly evil. Each kiss seals the wrap closer and cuts off the oxygen a little more. Each breath warms the plastic wrap and makes it cling all the tighter. It’s not as visceral as a hand to the throat, but it’s way more effective and far easier to control.

I found this image on the I Crave Domination site. I believe this is originally a shot from the Men in Pain site.

Ruthless people

I was amused to read this article in GQ on a company that offers a kidnapping service. For a thousand dollars or so they’ll kidnap you, hold you hostage and do a bit of sadistic roleplaying. You even get your choice of kidnappers – either standard male goons or a team of ‘Elite Girls’ in microskirts and stripper heels.

What made me smile was how the writer seemed unaware of the very strong BDSM components. It makes absolutely no mention of that angle, whilst describing things like scene negotiation, safewords, bondage, etc. Pro-dommes have been fulfilling these kind of fantasies for years. Lydia even has an isolation cell she can store her victims in prior to an interrogation. Pretty much any major city will have a pro-domme who’ll be able to offer a kidnap and torture session, so I’m not sure why the writer felt he had to fly to Detroit to experience it.

Of course if you want a really exciting scene, you need a heartless family member on the phone refusing to pay the ransom. Hearing your wife opt for a new kitchen over freeing you would add an interesting frisson to the experience. I always enjoyed Danny Devito playing the heartless husband in Ruthless People.

The image comes courtesy of the Uniform Beauties site and the creative captioning from Servitor over at Contemplating the Divine.

Whipped and fucked

After the verbosity of the last couple of posts I’ll keep it simple tonight. I’ve had a wonderful evening. To start I got heavily whipped by Lydia. My torso now looks like it was mauled by a creature with really big paws. Then I got well and truly fucked. Much grunting and moaning was involved. Finally, I drifted home on a cloud of endorphins, cracked open some good red wine and cooked a rack of lamb extra rare. In my book that’s a damn good evening.

Before I retire to the couch with another glass of wine, I’ll leave you with this appropriate image. Can’t say I’m a fan of the wet look stockings (or boots), but I do appreciate that she seems to be enjoying herself.

Somebody has annoyingly trimmed the watermark off (given the black border I have my suspicions which self-aggrandizing femdom site that would be), but I believe it’s originally from the Strapon Dreamer site. I found it on the Not Like That, Like This tumblr.

In the moment

This is a continuation of my thoughts on the Psychological Surrender article I linked to yesterday. There are too many good things in it to fit into a single post. One section I particularly enjoyed was on subspace.

It is an experience of being “in the moment”, totally in the present. Its ultimate direction is the discovery of one’s identity, one’s sense of self, of one’s sense of wholeness, even one’s sense of unity with other living beings…Within the context of that surrender, a self-negating submissive experience occurs in which the person is enthralled by the dominant partner. The intensity of the masochism is a living testimonial of the urgency with which some buried part of the personality is screaming to be released. The surrender is nothing less than a controlled dissolution of self-boundaries.

There’s an interesting contradiction exposed here. On one hand there’s the idea of letting going, relaxing boundaries and exposing the true self. I’ve heard pain described as ‘a holiday from your brain’ and I like that description. It’s impossible to have complex thoughts or maintain social boundaries while experiencing significant pain. You can only exist raw, unfiltered and in the moment. Yet, despite that, the person who becomes most important in those moments is the dominant. I often feel a wave of tenderness and love (or a chemical facsimile) for her, even as she’s doing something incredibly painful to me. So simultaneously there’s both a strong sense of wholeness and the idea that the dominant is the center of the world and all that matters.

Perhaps a way to resolve this contradiction is to think about personalities as layers. The submissive’s intellectual and social layers are stripped away, exposing their true identity. In turn the dominants boundaries expand, replacing what has been removed. The submissive’s sense of self therefore ends up more intimately entwined with both the dominants personality and their own essential makeup.

This image of a couple enjoying their own particular moment comes courtesy of Divine Bitches. I original found it on the Badkitty Kat tumblr.