Tag: Pro-domme

Happiness

Greater Good Magazine has an interview with the sociologists Alicia M. Walker and Arielle Kuperberg on their new book – Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life.

The message of the interview and the book is the happiness BDSM can bring.

VL: What did you discover in your research that surprised you?

AW: I was just really shocked overall about how happy everybody was, which became the crux of the book. There’s never been another group of people that I’ve interviewed, for every single person that I talked to, who was just wildly happy. And this is a huge sample—96 completed interviews, but I talked to far, far more people who didn’t end up completing interviews. That is just extremely unusual.

Obviously, I’m happy that BDSM makes people happy. Far be it from me to knock such a positive message. But I do wonder if more careful qualification is needed here. They’re not necessarily talking about people who are kinky and attracted to BDSM. Nor are they even talking about people who simply practice BDSM. As far as I can tell, they’re talking about a narrower subset – the people who are part of a BDSM community. I think that means people who go to munches, attend play parties, go to community events, etc.

It makes me wonder what the data would look like if you separated kink from sociability. Are couples who practice kink purely in their private lives happier than non kinky couples? How about people who exercise their kinky side with pro-dommes? What about sociable community focused non-kinky people compared to people in the BDSM community? Is it BDSM that makes people happy or the community elements that form around it?

I guess I should read the book and find out if they tease apart that kind of data. In the meantime I’ll leave you with an image of a domme who certainly appears to be in her happy place. It’s less clear how the submissive feels about it, but I’m sure he’s smiling.

This is Miss Erika Rayne, a pro-domme based out of Bristol, UK. I sourced the image via her Bluesky feed. If you’re in the Bristol area and interested in finding some happiness of your own, her session and contact information is available on her website.

Dressing for the Evening

The image in my previous post got me thinking about dommes who create images with a similar aesthetic. That is to say, combining beauty and elegance with explicitly kinky elements, but in a restrained way. Pun possibly intended.

One such domme who immediately came to mind is Natalie Noir. She’s a  Zurich based pro-domme who creates some very beautiful imagery – as featured here before. The shot below, sourced via her Twitter, seemed an appropriate follow-up to the last post. A similar idea, with a smart hooded male and an elegant domme standing over him, but shot in a different way. This shot, I assume from the photoshoot, is equally striking.

If you’re in the Zurich area and would like to session with Natalie, you can find information here.

Inverting the Usual

Spectacular rope suspension bondage typically features young, lithe, female models. Which is undoubtedly hot, but can be a little predictable. This inverted suspension shot flips the script. It’s a super impressive set-up, both for the man in the ropes and those doing the rigging. The former is Tim Sangster and the latter is Mistress Wildfire and Mistress Vivienne L’Amour. From the limited rope suspension I’ve done, I know how tricky this must have been to get right.

Kink and Culture

Ms Jadis Ives has published a really thoughtful article entitled kink, subculture, aesthetic, authenticity and the algorithm. As you can probably guess from that title, it covers a lot of complex topics, making it hard to summarize. However, I guess the nub of it would be the difference between authentic in person play and everything else that now makes up the wide kinky world.

In the past there were relatively well defined niches of lifestyle play, BDSM professionals offering sessions and (limited, rare) kink themed pornography. The boundaries were distinct. Now, thanks to a variety of technological, cultural and financial reasons, it’s a far murkier and more complex map. Mainstream overlaps with the kink subculture. The worlds of content creation, marketing and and in person play are harder to tease apart. Big tech and legal rules warp the discourse even further. What does it mean to participate in BDSM today?

There’s obviously the danger of nostalgia and gatekeeping here, but I don’t think Ms Jadis is heading in that direction. She’s calling out the dangers of losing sight of a key aspect of BDSM – that visceral, authentic in person connection. That’s not all it is, but it is a significant and important part. We shouldn’t let the performative aspects of the current culture overwhelm it.

Ms Jadis Ives is a Sydney based pro-domme. This image was sourced from her website. You can also find her on Bluesky. If you’re in the Sydney area and interested in experiencing a session in person then you can find details here.

Awful but slightly less so

I was being rude about Google a few posts back. They still suck and I hate how they’ve ruined so many great products, but their image search is just a tiny, tiny bit less terrible than I thought. Maybe 0.27% less bad.

Previously I was complaining that they had blocked reverse image search for explicit images and their definition of explicit was ridiculously broad. Having played with it some more I think they’ve tweaked it so it will still find explicit images, but only if they’re exact matches. Normally, if it can’t find an exact match, it’ll give you related or similar shots. If it thinks the image is explicit then it’ll either just give links to the exact matches or nothing at all. That’s still annoyingly puritanical of them, but at least it can sometimes help with image attribution.

For example, I found this image on a tumblr. Google’s reverse image search took me to The Deadly Doll Experience. That’s the site for Kissmedeadlydoll, a domme and talented kinky smut creator based in NYC. The combination of tight rope and latex encasement is beautiful, with the hand to the throat adding extra hotness.

You can see more from Kissmedeadlydoll at her OnlyFans, Film Site, Clips4Sale and ManyVids. Or schedule a session with her in NYC.

Dungeon Tour

If you’re interested in discovering what kinds of toys and equipment can be found in a really well equipped dungeon then I’d point you at this post/video. It feature Domina M showing Rachel Rampage around her Paris space Studio Xème. As you’d expect Domina M has a ton of really cool equipment that looks like it’d be a lot of fun to play with. The metal bondage pieces are a particular highlight.

Here’s a shot of Domina M with some of her bondage furniture, sourced via her site.

Needles

I mentioned a few posts back a recent sessions I did with the fabulous Savannah Sly. I was lucky enough to sneak in a second playtime before she left town. Needles were on the agenda.

The fun thing about doing piercing play is how varied the dynamic can be. It can be meditative and contemplative. Moving progressively across the body, decorating as you go. It can be quite sadistic and intense. A needle in a delicate part of the body gets your attention fast. It can also be sensual and stimulating. Piercings in erogenous zones heighten sensation and make gentle touches light up your pleasure center.

This session was a bit of all of the above. A lovely mix of the mean and the mischievous. Savannah wasn’t using particularly large needles, but they were plenty big enough to get my endorphins surging.  You can see a photograph of my chest taken mid-scene here. It always surprises me the variety of sensation different piercings can trigger. One needle might slide in with barely a pinch, the same size an inch over might have me yelping in pain. You just never know till the pointy end meets the skin.

All this needle talk does give me an excuse to re-post one of my favorite piercing images. Indeed one of my favorite kink shots ever. While my position was similar, this isn’t me and Savannah – it’s Domina Yuki and her submissive (originally posted in 2011 here).

Thanks John

Melissa Todd has a column in Metro where she describes how she got started as a dominatrix. She followed a path I know others have taken – stripping to spanking model to pro-domme. The part of the column I particularly enjoyed was about her first client and her description of that first session. Up until ‘John’ showed up, she’d only had a cushion to practice caning on.

In his seventies, just recovering from some scary operation with the whole of his torso tattooed with a jagged purple scar, he spent most of his hour giving me a tutorial on what tools and implements I desperately needed, the positions most often requested, the idiots best avoided – and he paid me for the privilege!

John let me practise my few pathetic implements on his backside, coaching throughout. ‘Bit to the left. Avoid the whip round. Accuracy before intensity. That’s it! Now try again, but harder…’ I couldn’t have been more thankful.

There’s a notorious kind of client that looks out for young and inexperienced dommes to session with. They seek them out as they know they can push boundaries and take liberties a seasoned pro would never permit. Most pro-dommes will have stories about them. It’s therefore nice to read a positive story about a client helping out a newbie domme and steering her in the right direction. Thanks John.

This is Melissa with a much larger collection of canes then she started out with. Sourced via her Bluesky feed.

Getting the Kinks Out

This has been a good week. I got to enjoy something that has become a relatively rare event for me – in person kinky fun. Savannah Sly is in town for a visit and she was kind of enough to take time out of her busy schedule to beat me up.

Top of the list of activities was what Savannah accurately describes as mean massage. Lots of pummeling, squeezing, pressuring and pounding. It’s a bit like being the chew toy of a giant sexy cat who happens to have a degree in human anatomy. There might also have been some staples in my dick towards the end, which isn’t an officially accredited procedure from any of the schools of mean massage, but is fun all the same.

The end result was a body like a limp noodle, a lot of lovely scratch marks and a blissed out brain. Like I said, a good week.

This shot of Savannah is from her Free Speech Coalition page, demonstrating she can look amazing in almost any setting. If you want to help support Sex Workers Rights then I’d encourage you to visit and support her New Moon Network. They do tons of fabulous things in the sex work community.

Text Based Playfulness

Most pro-dommes invest a bunch of time in brand management and marketing. It’s no good being a wizards with whips or looking lovely in leather if nobody know that. To that end they build websites, curate their social media, film clips, write articles, model fetishwear and generally put their dominant diva selves out there.

I thought I’d seen most ideas for domme brand building over the years – until I stumbled on this article on a domme’s bespoke typeface. London’s Jane Grey worked with WMH&I to create a custom typeface for her brand.

The brand’s distinctive asset is “binds”, strips of their bespoke typeface distorted to appear like ropes or leather, adding a subtly erotic edge to the campaign without nudity. The ability to suggest and entice is key in WMH&I’s arsenal of text based playfulness. “The ‘binds’ are a visual representation of Jane Grey’s psychological control,” says Mark. “Always taut, the binds emanate directly from Jane when present in the scene or act as her omnipresent control when she’s just off camera.” Aiming to disarm an audience of willing “subs”, this text-based experimentation dabbles in the dark arts of mind tricks and manipulation.

You can see the typeface in action via Jane’s website. I’m not sure how much it’ll help attractive submissives, but it is interesting to see the effort that can go into brand building.

This beautiful shot was sourced from one of Jane’s social media feeds.