Photograph – Page 86 – Femdom Resource

Who are you?

This Gizmodo story is likely to strike fear into the heart of anyone who tries to maintain multiple and distinct identities on social media. A sex worker named Leilia had two separate Facebook accounts, one for her private life and one for her job. Despite keeping them distinct, with separate email and phone numbers, her friends and family account suddenly started suggesting her work clients as “People You Might Know.” Obviously Facebook’s algorithms had managed to link the data in someway and decided it was all one big happy social network.

Facebook coming up with surprising and unnerving friend suggestions isn’t a new story. This article, posted a few months ago, describes how it figured out the authors great aunt, despite the fact his father had been adopted as child and had no contact with that branch of the family. With the algorithms getting smarter, the amount of data online constantly growing, and neither of them easy to monitor or understand, I’m sure issues like this are going proliferate.

As a software guy, I find the situation somewhat perverse. Traditionally academic computer systems had very strong notions of user identity, because they were shared systems, where personal computers had no concept of it, because they weren’t powerful enough to support it. Companies like Microsoft and Apple worked for years to bring proper identify management and user isolation to PCs. No sooner had they achieved that goal – Windows XP being a major milestone – than smart phones, tablets and social media software arrived and turned everything into a inter-connected soup with no good way to managed different identities.

For now I suspect the only way to handle the problem is to not use the same social media platform with two different identities you wish to keep distinct. So if you have a Facebook account for a friends/family identity, don’t have one for your kink/sex identity. And if you want a tumblr account to share kinky porn, don’t also create a second tumblr account to share holiday snaps with friends. Pick the product most useful to each identity and don’t assume you can keep two accounts on the same platform distinct.

Life was so much simpler before the internet. It used to be only necessary to slip on a masquerade mask and you could attend any fancy ball of your choice in total anonymity.

This is from a shoot for Marie Claire by Koray Parlak and features Nina Reijnders with Victoria Lipatova.

A Perfection of Dommes

What is the collective noun for a group of dommes? A dungeon of dommes? A deviance? A discipline? I kind of like the idea of it being a ‘perfection’. It’s a little more abstract and has less obviously kinky roots than those previous suggestions, but it captures something of the dynamic for me. Both in terms of the pedestal their submissives put them on and the high standards they expect in return.

Whatever the appropriate noun, October seems to be a popular month for dommes to get together. In New Orleans there was Dom Con. In DC there was the Fetish Ball. And in London there was the Femdom Ball. I sadly didn’t make it to any of them. However, if I were to make arbitrary judgement calls based on social media – which is exactly what I’m about to do – then I have to the Femdom Ball certainly won when it came to style and fashion. Fancy fetish wear is all very well, but nothing is sexier than glamour and elegance. As a case in point I give you this, this, this, this, this and this. I love getting dressed up to go out and I often wish Seattle was less flannel shirts and more French cuffs. Clearly I should check out the Femdom Ball in future years.

I finish the post with another shot from the Ball. My suggestion of a perfection of dommes is sounding pretty good about now, right?

You can see a lot more shots from the event on the twitter feed.

Have you seen this whip?

I think most kinky people have a favorite toy. It might be the one that pushes their buttons perfectly, has sentimental value or is simply something that’s impossible to buy anymore. Nobody wants to lose a toy like that. All that said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone offer a financial reward for the return of a particular implement, much less a $1000 reward.

The toy in question in this case is a rare 15 year old signal whip and the owner is the famous Isabella Sinclaire. She was attending an event called Ellismania in Vegas when it went missing. I’m not really sure what that event is, but based on the photograph below, it seems to involve some sort of fighting ring, women in sexy outfits and Isabella whipping them. What’s not to like? I’m not sure if being whipped was the punishment for losing or the reward for winning. Seems like a no lose type situation either way.

If you were at this event and have any information on her whip, I’m sure she’d be very happy to receive it.

Happy shades of grey

This is continuing the monochrome theme with another image that I’m sure has been tweaked from its original form. I found it via the Happy BDSM tumblr. I’d guess it’s a StrapOn Dreamer image, but I can’t be sure of that, as there’s no watermark and Google image search seems to fail miserably on modified photographs.

Update: It is from StrapOn Dreamer and I even used it in a previous post. Doh!

Making art from porn

A recent interview with Maggie Gyllenhaal quoted her as saying that “that pornography is an art form”. She’s right of course, but she missed one of the key elements: Only when it’s in black and white. Anyone who has browsed tumblr extensively will realize this. Depraved color pornography is instantly transformed into a moody art shot with the simple application of a monochrome filter.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously stated, in Jacobellis v. Ohio, that he knew pornography when he saw it. At the time he was judging Loius Malle’s film ‘The Lovers‘. That was shot in black and white, and obviously that’s why he found it not obscene. It’s basic science.

I don’t have a original source for this image. I’m sure it started as a far more depraved and non-artistic full color shot.

Update: The original source is StrapOn Dreamer.

Always something new

One of the things I love about kink is the infinite variety of possibilities it offers. There’s always a new experience or activity for me to explore. In some cases it can be a very common kinky activity that has simply never made it onto my kinky hit list. Whenever that happens it’s always slightly disconcerting. A bit like realizing there’s a cupboard in your house you’ve never actually opened, despite years of living there.

In my recent trip to San Francisco Domina Yuki used a leash on my collar to lead me around. It wasn’t a big part of the scene or in response to a request I’d made. Just a fun way for her to get me from one area to another in the play space. But as she did it I was struck by the fact it was a new experience for me. The collar and leash is a staple of BDSM porn. It’s even used as a symbol for kink in the mainstream. Yet, in years of play, I couldn’t remember ever being on the receiving end. I was so surprised at that realization I almost forgot to enjoy the moment. Almost.

This is the beautiful Mistress Iris enjoying some leash play with a slave. I found it via her twitter feed.

Room, ensuite bathroom, bonus slave

I’m continuing the domestic service theme with a link to an article and craiglist post that made me smile. It features an F/m couple looking for a female roommate who can play a role in an FLR. I love the fact they spend longer on the size and temperature of the room than the whole kinky dynamic thing.

Personally I find both roommate negotiation and BDSM complex enough on their own, without trying to mix them all together. But maybe I’m just a pessimist and there’s a domme in DC enjoying a cheap room and a submissive landlord.

I’m afraid I don’t have a source for this shot of domestic bliss.

The barter economy

Dan Savage had a letter from a lady considering taking on a cleaning and housework slave in return for some foot fetish play. She’s concerned about the protocol for clearing it with her roommates. I hope it works out for her, but I suspect she’ll have more problems than explaining the naked guy with the dustpan and brush. I’ve heard very few dommes report success on these arrangements, as against a great many complaining about guys who do a terrible job of cleaning and nag constantly for more play. The submissives love the concept initially, but quickly realize that scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets to a decent standard is hard work. As soon as they realize the domme isn’t planning to stand over them in full fetish gear and micromanage the situation, their interest wanes rapidly.

Maybe I’m being unfair and the failures are just more widely reported than the successes. Anyone out there have first hand experience of this kind of arrangement working well? I have noticed Mistress Darcy regularly recruiting slaves to run facets of her empire (for example here and here). She hasn’t written much on the success (or not) of her applicants, but the fact she continues to use that process suggests some value comes from it.

I’ll finish with a nice image of someone both getting some foot fetish action and making himself useful. I’m afraid I’ve no source for this.

Spend your budget wisely (part 3)

Here’s a final few thoughts to conclude my theory of the submissive ‘stress budget’. See the earlier parts here and here.

Phil raised an excellent point in a comment on the first post: The submissive’s budget can also be diminished by stress and overload from daily life. Sometimes kink can be a release from that pressure, but in other situations it’s necessary to take it slowly and allow more time to grow the budget as play unfolds. It also mean a submissive has a duty to perform self-care and be aware of their own mental state prior to playing.

I hope all my readers understand that the budget concept I’ve described is meant very much as a thought experiment and a theoretical way to think about more complex scenes. I’m not suggesting submissives start negotiating scenes by saying their budget today is 75 and while caning is down 10 on the stress-o-meter, whips are up to an expensive 45. I’m also not suggesting that dommes keep a running budget count in their head during play. This is just a possible abstraction for thinking about limits in a slightly more realistic way than the traditional hard/soft definitions.

Finally, if anyone new to kink and femdom is reading this and thinking that it all seems very complicated and somewhat daunting, then all I can say is please disregard everything I’ve written. You can absolutely ignore all this and have an amazingly fun kinky time. Just grab your partner by the balls, bite his neck and whisper that he’s your slut puppy in his ear. I’ve played for years without caring about any of this and had some amazing experiences. You don’t need to understand film theory to enjoy a great movie, and you don’t need to deconstruct kink to enjoy dominating or submitting to someone.

In line with that idea, and as a change from the last couple of crazy kink images, here’s a simple shot to finish on.

I believe this is the actress Giovanna Ewbank with her husband Bruno Gagliasso. You can see more shots from this sequence here and here.

Spend your budget wisely (part 2)

If you’ve not seen my previous post, then I suggest this post will make a lot more sense if you go read that first. Or alternatively, read this one, try and guess what the hell I’m talking about, and then see if you’re right afterwards. Your call.

Assuming you buy my theory of a submissive stress budget, the obvious follow-up question is: What are the implications? How should I use this information?

The simple answer is to be aware of what your submissive budget is and what it costs to spend it on different activities. That’s certainly a necessary thing to do, but hardly radical new thinking. Where I think it gets interesting is when you start planning out scenes with specific goals in mind. Then I think the idea of a budget helps focus the play. You can evaluate if each new element introduced advances you towards the goal or simply wastes budget.

For example, let’s say you both want to do an intense impact play scene. In this case the bigger the whacks the happier everyone ultimately is. This means the budget needs to be focused on riding out the impacts. So make the submissive’s physical position relaxed, give him room to wiggle and don’t add other clips, clamps or spiky things. If you use bondage, make it light and comfortable. Mix the impacts in with things that grow his stress budget, like touch, teasing and visual stimulation. Spend all the budget on the focus on the scene, not on the details around the edges.

As another example, let’s say you want to try out urethral sounding, but that’s a new and scary thing for the submissive. In this case do the sounding as a very separate activity from other play. Making all his budget available for the sounds will maximize the chance of success and minimize the freak-out potential. Then, when he’s had a chance to calibrate, you’ll both have an idea what could be combined with them in future play.

We typically think about kink and BDSM as being all about maximizing intense experiences. But sometimes you want to achieve a particular effect with the minimum amount of stress. For example, tight hoods burn a lot of my stress budget, but I do enjoy sensory deprivation scenes. The solution to this conundrum is to use ear plugs and blindfolds. That achieves the same effect, but leaves a lot of my budget available for adding bondage, breathing control, e-stim devices, etc. In that kind of scene the domme is trying to add a lot of layers, but not burn too much budget on the early ones.

I’ve a few concluding thoughts on this topic I’ll save for a third and final post. Given I was just discussing sensory deprivation, I thought it’d be appropriate to finish with this image. I’m guessing a lot of his budget has been spent on that impressive wrap. Hopefully he’s got enough left to handle whatever she’s planning for the bit left sticking out.

This is obviously from the Divine Bitches site.