Tag: Photograph

Femdom in the Twitterverse

Domina Victoria Rage has an interesting and thoughtful post up on the culture of twitter around kink and femdom. I’m somewhat of a twitter newbie – only having joined a couple of months back – but I’ve definitely observed the phenomena she comments on. Like her I follow a mix of kinksters of various persuasions and orientations and, as regular blog readers might guess, a fair number of pro-dommes. Most tweets from that group seem to fall into the following categories…

  1. Fun sexy stuff from playing or the planning that goes along with it.
  2. Issues and complaints related to sex work in general or specific client behavior.
  3. Comments and jokes about politics, life, food, etc.
  4. Plugging new photos, site updates, travel plans, etc.
  5. Aggressive marketing leaning on the specific D/s dynamic where submissives are all pathetic losers and worms not fit to be in the presence of the angelic domme. Oh, and send money you beta cuck.

The problems obviously comes from dommes who frequently or exclusively tweet in that final category. It’s also not a new problem. For more years than I’ve been writing this blog people have been complaining about that dynamic (often from femdom porn) polluting the more general femdom environment. However, it seems so much more front and center in twitter than anywhere else I’ve seen. Rather than negotiating and opting into a consensual dynamic, it’s like there’s a constant background hum of humiliation, abuse and fin-domme.

Obviously careful curation of who you follow can help limit it, but that’s not really the problem here. I might by mildly annoyed by marketing in the form of abuse, but it’s not going to warp my views on D/s or kink. I worry more about people new to it  and using twitter as a means of exploration. At least with a porn video it’s pretty clear exactly what is. A tweet from a domme seems so much more personal. I think it’d be very easy to form the opinion that humiliation and abuse are a standard way for dommes to interact with submissives, rather than a specific kink to be negotiated and explored within a defined scene. As Domina Victoria eloquently puts it.

…if you’ve encountered some of that negativity online and it’s left a bitter taste in your mouth or put you off of exploring kink – just know, those individuals do not represent the majority. I, and every other reputable Top I’m aware of, share the sentiment that it’s vital to love, cherish and adore your submissive partners and admirers. Domination doesn’t come from a place of indifference, anger or blatant disregard.

This image is of the lovely Victoria Rage herself. If you’re in the Seattle area and wish to schedule a session, her professional page is here.

A National Treasure

I’m always fascinated by stories that capture a unique aspect of a particular culture. For example, in the US articles arising from the gun control debate are both common and unique to its culture. Nowhere else is that kind of discussion happening. This story from Japan last year was another example of a story that could seemingly only be written in that country. Nowhere else allows hardcore pornography while simultaneously prosecuting someone distributing an abstract mathematical model of the female genitalia.

The latest example I have is from France – who just declared the Marquis de Sade’s manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom a National Treasure. I can’t think of many countries whose politicians would he happy to declare a snuff pornography book – featuring teenage girls being tortured to death and children raped – as a national treasure. I don’t state it in that way to necessarily say there were wrong to do it, just to emphasize the cultural dissonance. Even by modern standards, Sade’s work remains shocking and unpleasant. While I can imagine a lot of politicians owning and jerking off to a copy, I can’t imaging many outside of France speaking up to defend its cultural value.

Sade of course gave us the word sadism, which gives me an excuse to feature a nice sadistic image. I’m not exactly sure what’s just happened in the scene below to make him dance like that – I’m guessing that riding crop she’s holding was involved somehow – but it certainly looks like it hurts.

I believe this is originally from the Sado Ladies site.

Just a little off the sides

I’m endlessly fascinating by why unexpected things can  elicit strong emotional reactions in people – both in the good and bad sense. I very much include myself in the target category, as even in my 40’s I’m still discovering stuff that can push my buttons in ways I didn’t expect. Normally that’s a good thing – it means there’s a fun new experience to explore – but not always.

One thing I only just discovered I had a strong negative reaction to was head shaving as part of a kinky dynamic. Isabella Sinclaire recently did a sequence of posts with the female submissive Greyh0und who’d been shaved just a few days before. From the comments a lot of people liked the look, but I personally found it very disquieting. I think because it puts me in  mind of concentration camp prisoners, and once that thought enters my head there’s no getting rid of it. I don’t make that connection with shaved heads in daily life, but there’s something about the combination with a power dynamic that pushes my internal ‘nuh huh’ button.

For those that do enjoy it, the image below is from a fun video for Charly Calderon photography. Check it out if a woman on a mission with a razor is your kind of thing.

Sniffder

I’m used to flipping past some fairly crazy kinky outfits on my tumblr and twitter feeds. This one gave me a moment of pause however. Lots of kinky equipment focuses on controlling movement, breathing, eating, sight, etc. There’s not much that targets the sense of smell. If it’s considered at all, smell is usually a second order effect from materials like leather and latex. This cuts all those out and goes straight for the natural pheromones.

Amazingly, it’s not actually from a kinky source. It’s an art/science project by James Auger focused on blind dating and predicting compatibility. It was part of an exhibit at Moma and was featured in the NY Times.

It may not have started off with a kinky slant, but I can imagine a lot of people wanting to use it that way. Particularly if modified from a two  way to one way flow.

Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can

This image isn’t femdom, but I liked it too much to not feature it in a post. It’s normally hard enough to get a suspension scene with a single person right, let alone get a small crowd suspended successfully and simultaneously.

It puts me in mind of a scene from a Spiderman comic, where he’s just zipped past a bunch of dimwitted henchmen, sticking them to the walls and ceiling with webbing. In the best traditions of supervillain henchmen, they’ve even all got color coordinated outfits on.

I found this image via this tweet. Based on the translation, I’m guessing it’s from a bondage workshop in Paris.

Face Torture

One of the fun things about social media is the random insights it gives you into other cultures. It’s hardly a scientific analysis, but it is entertaining from an anecdotal (and possibly highly inaccurate) perspective. For example, domme twitter accounts from Japan seem to feature way more food shots than similar Western ones. I’ve no idea if that’s typical for twitter in Japan in general or something more specific to Japanese dommes.

My other entirely random and anecdotal observation is that facial bondage and torture is bigger over there than it is here. I almost never see Western dommes offer it as an activity or post pictures of it. Yet it seems not uncommon in Japan, with awesome twitter posts like this one or the image below (from here). Typically Western dommes are very functional when it comes to the face. It’s all about covering the eyes, plugging the ears, opening/closing the mouth or locking the whole thing away. I see plenty of that in Japanese BDSM as well, but they also seem to enjoy screwing around with the face a lot more. Distorting it, hurting it and exposing it in unusual ways. It doesn’t particularly appeal to my kinky side, but it does make me curious as to the reasons behind it (assuming my anecdotal observation isn’t complete bullshit).

Suspended Target

A few posts back I was musing on scenes where the level of pain is radically different from the visual the scene presents. This is the exact opposite of that. The scene looks awesome. I love the suspended bondage, the minimalism of the space and the dynamism of the whip. Yet I’m sure it also hurts like hell. The bondage alone looks challenging. Adding the sting of a single tail against taut flesh is particularly cruel.

This is from twitter feed of Mistress Iris. However, I believe that’s Mistress Rika on the other end of the whip.

Silly Lists

The KinkD people have played one of the standard cards that kink related companies use to get free PR, releasing a list of top kinky US cities based on their user data. Given this is such a common gimmick, you think they’d put some effort into crunching the numbers to produce an interesting story, but no such luck.

The top 3 cities for the largest numbers of kinky people (or at least KinkD subscribers) are NYC, LA and Chicago. Unsurprisingly, if you look at the top US cities by population, the top 3 are … wait for it … NYC, LA and Chicago. Obviously they’ll have the most the kinky people. They’ve got the most everything.

Really the story here shouldn’t whats good, but what places suck to live in if you’re kinky. Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas and San Jose are all in the top 10 most populous US cities, but despite their numbers, don’t make the KinkD top 10 list. They’re the ones bucking the trend here, not places like NYC or LA.

Another way to look at is the ratio of kinky people to city population. If you assume the KinkD subscribes numbers correlate to kinky people in general, and the city definitions they’re using are the same as here (two pretty big assumptions), then sorting their top 10 by that ratio gives…

  1. Portland
  2. Seattle
  3. Austin
  4. San Francisco
  5. Philadelphia
  6. Los Angeles
  7. San Diego
  8. Chicago
  9. Houston
  10. New York City

Now the smaller cities known for more alternative culture leap to the top three spots. Of the massive cities, LA now does the best in the mid-pack, and NYC goes from top spot to the bottom.

Silly numbers aside, the truth is that anyone living in the above 10 cities will have access to a pretty large kinky community. The real challenge is for the kinksters who finds themselves in places like Emmetsburg (Iowa), Centerville (South Dakota) or any of the thousands of small towns scattered across the country.

I sadly don’t have any hot femdom images from kinksters in Emmetsburg or Centerville. Instead I’ll go with something from one of the major metropolitan areas. This is Mistress Tess, one of NYC’s top pro-dommes.

Teasing with the Tongue

For anyone cringing after yesterday’s cock piercing close-up, here’s a little sexy eye bleach for you.

I like her unconventional outfit and his tight rope bondage. What makes me smile is the tattoo on his torso. Maybe it’s some famous figure from history that I don’t recognize, but to me it just looks like someone going “Oh, Jesus. Not this shit again…”