Pro-domme – Page 41 – Femdom Resource

Playing footsie

I’m feeling a little sore right now. I’m also buzzed, floating, happy. Lady Lydia gave me a good working over with a variety of slappy, swishy and swingy things. There was one particularly evil device, a short heavy plastic/rubber cane, that had the biggest delay from impact to pain that I’ve ever experienced. It was a case of WHAP…wait…wait…make a coffee…phone a friend…do your taxes….wait…OWWW – fuck me that hurts. Particularly evil when applied quickly in succession so the pain radiates and spreads in layers over time.

Two good learning points. One is that somebody digging their nails into my thighs and then dragging them hard across a very red and bruised posterior gets a spectacular yell out of me. Two is that being beaten on the feet and then tickled on the soles is a truly evil combination. In honor of that second point I thought I’d feature a little bastinado as the image.

This is Lady Jenny, a pro-domme based in Hungarian. I found the image on the Whipping Mistress blog.

Healthcare, British style with Lady Anna

A few weeks ago Lady Anna emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in reviewing her site – The Anna List Medical Fetish Clinic. She’d give me free access for a month and in return I’d write an honest review on what I found there. Obviously my first thoughts were around the ethical dilemma this posed. The best reviewers – the Michelin inspectors, the New York Times correspondents – never accept any kind of gratis service. They pay as they go. Don’t my readers deserve the same kind of journalistic integrity? My second, third and fourth thoughts were “Woohoo! Free kinky porn!”. After wrestling with these complex issues for at least 7 or 8 seconds, I rationalized that my readers deserve an honest appraisal of the kinky content that’s out there, whatever the risk to myself. I shouldn’t be worrying about the cost to my public image when I have a higher duty to look at all this porn for my readers. And if you don’t like that rationalization, I have others.

Immediately after emailing her to accept I was struck by another troubling thought. What if the material sucks? It’s one thing to comment on random images I stumble across on the web, but quite another to write my typical nonsense when the creative person in question is staring over my shoulder. Fortunately for me, and other kinky porn connoisseurs out there, it definitely doesn’t suck. I think she’s managed to capture on video a really good sense of some very compelling D/s sessions.

I guess I should start with the technical stuff first. She has four main video sections – dental, medical, rubber and operating. There’s also a collection of audio only files and an archive with older footage that’s less overtly medical. Most films are 10 to 20 minutes in length, and are shot in high def with solid camerawork. It’s not simply a static camera that captures everything from a single wide angle viewpoint as I’ve seen elsewhere. There are around 60 films, so far mostly in the medical and rubber clinic sections, and a new film is added each week. As should be obvious from her facilities page, she has a very well equipped set-up, with one of the best collections of medical equipment that I’ve seen. It gets used to for a lot of breathplay, anaesthetic roleplay and immobilizing bondage.

When it comes to the actual sessions themselves, her style is very cool, calm and collected. There’s no ice queen or snarling mistress here, just a matter of fact, it’s for your own good style of domination. There’s a genuine feel to it, which seems a weird thing to say given the heavy medical trappings. After all, you’re clearly not watching genuine medical procedures. Yet there’s a real sense of connection and trust between Lady Anna and her patients. This isn’t a couple of fetish models who just met an hour or so before a scripted scene. She also has a nice style of communication, chatting to the patient, but adding commentary for the viewer in the process.

Sometimes in professional porn it feels like you’re watching a circus act, a kinky cirque du soleil. The submissives are super-subs, pushed through a rapid sequence of extreme and amazing acts. They might express pain, but it’s rare to get a genuine sense of fear or a difficult limit being flirted with. In contrast both Lady Anna and her patients come across as a lot more human. There’s a feeling that the submissive is being challenged and the D/s dynamic between them explored. It’s not fast cutting, high paced material, but it does capture more of the feel of a real session.

Downsides? There’s really nothing that shouldn’t be obvious from the site itself. Obviously it’s just Lady Anna playing with her submissives in a medical fetish context. So if you’re looking for a wide variety of skinny models wearing traditional pro-domme gear then you’re liable to be disappointed. And while there’s less pure medical roleplay than you might expect, the setting is clearly a clinical one. If medical type activities doesn’t appeal, or you’re looking for lots of non-medical style play (e.g. corporal, cuckolding, strap-on, etc.), then I’d look elsewhere. But if the preview material is appealing to you, then I can’t think of any reason not to give it a shot.

A congress of dildos

I’m not really sure what the collective noun for a group of dildos is. Searching on the web didn’t result in a definitive answer, although I did like the suggestions I saw for ‘A quiver of dildos’ and ‘A battery of dildos’. Personally after the last few years in the US, I’m thinking that ‘A congress of dildos’ might be a good collective form. Plus, it opens up all sorts of japing potential around the misfortune of spoiling your congress with some Santorum.

My dildo train of thought (an expression which according to google has unsurprisingly never been uttered before) was triggered by some of my friends who work at the giant Internet retailer Amazon. They’re in the software and management part of the company but, as per company policy, had to spend a week running around a giant shipping warehouse preparing orders for customers. Apparently it’s mandatory for all employees to do it, whatever their level. It’s so they have some idea what it’s like at the retail cutting edge, where the virtual turns into the material. One thing that surprised them, and in turn me, was the sheer number of sex toys that they had to deal with. I’d always assumed that people tended to shop at specialist retailers for that kind of item, rather than a large general purpose site. Their comments were confirmed by this (long) Mother Jone’s article on what its like working for an online shipping company.

Really, a staggering number of dildos. At breaks, some of my coworkers complain that they have to handle so many dildos. But it’s one of the few joys of my day.
…it’s a welcome distraction, really, to imagine all these sex toys being taken out from under a tree and unwrapped. Merry Christmas. I got you this giant black cock you wanted.
Mac Mcclelland

With a little reflection it became less surprising why people would turn to Amazon or other large retailers for these kind of purchases. I assume it’s for safety. The boxes are commonplace, the credit card entry unspecific and the chance of being scammed zero. There’s no fear that a package is going to turn up in your condo lobby labelled “Freaky Sex Toys Inc. Please treat this giant vibrating penis as fragile. This way up.”

For an illustrative image or two I turned to the site of Mistress Nina. She has a very fine congress of dildos in some unusual shapes (additional shot of a few more here). It also seemed a shame not to also show the lady herself, so here she is looking rather fearsome is in the woods with a pair of whips.

Mistress Nina is a pro-domme based out of Belgium. Her session information is here and information on her private members site is here.

BDSM equipment page now live

The eagle eyed reader may have spotted a new option in the top menu bar – Equipment. This is a new page listing all the interesting sites selling equipment, furniture or clothes that I’ve come across. A few of the links are ones I’ve discovered via my usual random web browsing, a small number are from where I’ve shopped in the past, but the vast majority come from the comments and wish lists of pro-dommes. I figure that they’re probably the best people to listen to when it comes to BDSM hardware and outfits. After all, they buy a lot of it and give it a tougher workout than the average lifestyle player ever will.

If anyone has suggestions for other sites to add to the list then please leave a comment. I’d particularly like to know of smaller sites that offer very specialist craftsmanship. They’re typically the harder ones to track down whilst simultaneously creating the most interesting items.

For illustration I’ve picked two images. The first is from Walsh Metalworks and features Mistress Alex, shot by Natasha Gornik, wearing a metal corset fabricated by Sullivan Walsh. The second is a padded bondage chair from MetalBound. I’m afraid I don’t know the names of the models involved in the second shot.

Update: Both Jim and Lily kindly pointed out via comments that the submissive in the chair in the second shot is Madison Young.

Surrender v’s Submission

Troy Orleans has a new blog post up where she talks a little about her blogging history and what motivates her to write. It also includes an ask for interesting questions for her to answer via the blog. I’m kind of surprised that some readers see her blog as a source of wank material, and simply ask to have scenes described. Given the vast flood of porn available online, with an almost infinite supply of images and fiction, a pro-domme blog seems an odd place to try and elicit material to bash the bishop to. Clearly I have too high a respect for my fellow man. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

I didn’t realize she had had a formspring account for questions, and I enjoyed browsing back through it. One particular comment caught my eye.

I sorta think that most of my play partners are fairly submissive to me, but their submission is something that I’ve earned over time and not “submission” in a fetishistic sense. I’m rarely asking my play partners to do things they don’t want to do or “forcing” them to “submit” to anything. Rather, it’s that they give themselves over to me out of trust and respect and a passion for the journey that comes with good, intense, highly skilled play. Throughout my practice, I’ve always maintained that what I seek is not submission, but surrender.
Troy Orleans

If you look up the dictionary definitions of ‘surrender’ and ‘submission’ they’re almost identical, and yet surrender resonates with me and the way I play much more than the idea of submission. To surrender feels like a voluntary act. When I’m in a session the mistress doesn’t need to be overtly dominant. I cooperate. Encourage even. I enjoy being a partial instrument in my own demise. In contrast the concept of submission seems to suggest a response to a forceful act of domination. The other term often used in this context is ‘bottom’, but that never quite aligns with me either. That loses too much of the power exchange component. After all you can be a dominant bottom. Perhaps I need to coin a new word. Surrenderist? Surrendission? Surrmission?

My ugly neologistic musings aside, if you’ve got an interesting question for one of the top NYC dommes, then I suggest firing it in Troy Orlean’s direction. Just don’t try and use it to pad your wank bank. In the meantime I’ll leave you with an impressive image of heavy bondage from her Salon d’Orleans.

All the more to aim at…

I thought I’d finish my short sequence of whip posts with these two beautiful images from Mistress Trish and thrash. She’s aiming at a particularly delicate target, and he’s giving her a pretty big bulls eye to go for.

Aside from the visual pleasure of the whip in motion, these shots caught my eye for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I like the way he’s leaning into the strike. He’s helping her to hurt him, which I think is always hot. I also like their expressions. Hers is gleeful and happy. She’s clearly concentrating on what she’s doing, but taking the time to enjoy it. In contrast he looks very inwardly focused, concentrating on his sense of self. I suspect it feels like time is running at a very different pace for the two of them.

Mistress Trish is a professional dominant based out of NYC. This was taken from her gallery page and shot by Aeric Meredith-Goujon photography.

Beautiful red lines

While I’m on a whipping theme, here’s an ‘after’ shot courtesy of Mistress Simone Kross (on the left). The whips aren’t quite as fearsome as the one from yesterday, but they certainly seem to have done an effective job on this slave.

I love having marks like this. I’ll inspect them immediately after a session, and then every morning and night as I’m changing. There’s something very satisfying about them, particularly if they raise the skin and I can actually run my hand across the surface to feel them. Partly it’s the reminder they give me of the session. The intensity of that moment. Partly it’s a sense of pride. I took it all without quitting. But mostly I think it’s the sense of connection. They’re the marks the dominant chose to give me. It’s a very personal gift and I’m always sad when they fade.

Update: Thanks to a comment from Jim I can supply a little additional background. This is a shot from ClubDom and the mistress on the right is Goddess Deanna of Boston.

Safewords

Salon has an interesting and disturbing article about people ignoring the abuse of safewords within the BDSM scene. I’ve heard similar stories before and while it’s depressing, I’m not particularly surprised. Closing ranks and suppressing internal dissent is a common trait in groups that are, or perceive themselves as, persecuted minorities. I don’t play in ‘the scene’ or attend community events, so other than pointing people at the article, I really can’t add anything to that specific discussion. However, it did get me thinking about safewords in general, and my personal experiences with pro-dommes.

The usage of safewords was a shock to me when I first started playing for real. Not that people used them, but the fact that some people didn’t. The BDSM community has done such a good job of promoting the idea of safewords that they’ve entered into mainstream discourse. If you surveyed a random sample of non-kinky people I suspect you’d find that the majority would know about the idea of a safeword, despite never needing one themselves. It’s an idea that appeals on a intellectual level as a clever solution to a problem and on an emotional level as magical secret word. After all the idea of transforming a situation with a nonsensical but powerful word, like Abracadabra or ‘Open Sesame’, crops up again and again in stories. There’s something innately appealing about that concept.

Among the different pro-dommes I’ve played with, I’ve noticed three distinct approaches.

Pro-dommes that use a safeword.
Pro-dommes that don’t use a safeword and genuinely don’t need one.
Pro-dommes that don’t use a safeword and really should.

The first category is the most obvious one and, in my limited sample set, the commonest. You agree a word (red, pineapple, ouch, etc. ), and head off for kinky fun.

The second category is rarer but satisfying when you encounter it. I’ve never had a safeword when playing with Lydia and it has never been an issue. That doesn’t mean I’ve never stopped a scene because of cramping or some other significant problem, but it has always been easy to step away from the action and communicate normally. Lydia is also an expert at reading body language and subtle physical tells. I’m always amazed when we deconstruct a scene after the fact and she describes the little touches and glances she used to figure out where I was at mentally and physically. She’d make a hell of a poker player.

The final category is of course the problematic one. It actually manifests itself in two different ways. The obvious issue is of pushing something too far and putting the submissive in a situation where he’s withdrawn consent but can’t communicate that. The other more subtle problem is of going to the other extreme and constantly checking in with the submissive. It becomes impossible to relax into the moment if every action triggers a “Is that OK?”. Repeatedly being asked to regulate the scene intensity is not conducive to a submissive mindset. It feels like being forced into topping from the bottom.

In a strange way the dommes in this final category remind me of a problem I occasionally face when writing staff appraisals at work. Expressed coarsely it’s that idiots don’t know they’re idiots. Smart competent people have well developed critical analysis skills. Idiots, almost by definition, don’t. A good domme will choose either category 1 or 2 based on an honest self-assessment. A bad domme may confidently assume she’s category 2 when in fact she’s category 3.

As a result of this, despite my numerous good experiences playing without a safeword, I tend to think it’s wise to always insist on one when playing with someone new. If you’ve got domme who can genuinely run a scene without one, then you’ll not need to use it anyway. In time, as you get to know each other, it can be consigned to history. Alternatively, if you’re unlucky enough to find a domme whose critical self-assessment doesn’t align with reality, then you’ll probably end up very grateful you insisted on selecting one. I should also add that none of the pro-dommes I’ve ever named and written about here fall into this unfortunate third category.

If all else fails, and you find yourself needing out of a scene, then “lawsuit” is always a good backup option. Or, more boringly, simply “safeword” itself.

Original image is courtesy of Strict Miss and was captioned by Servitor. I like the caption and the brandished cane. Less keen on her outfit.

Zippering with Lady Lydia

Last week I was lucky enough to spend a couple of hours doing some zippering with Lady Lydia. As I mentioned in this post from the night itself, I had a wonderful time and it has jumped high on my list of interesting activities to do. For the uninitiated zippering uses clothespins (or somethings similar) in combination with some thin cord. As the clips are attached the cord is passed through them, connecting them as a single continuous line. Then a swift pull of the end of the cord rips them painfully away from the skin.

I have to admit to going into the session with a little bit of blasé attitude. I’ve had clothespins attached in the past and haven’t found them all that painful. I normally need something with a sharper narrower jaw to get my attention. However, it turns out that having lots of them attached very close together does hurt. And having them quickly ripped away really hurts. It almost reminded me a little of a caning. There’s the moment of shock, where you feel the sensation but not the pain. Just the briefest of pauses. Then the pain strikes like a sharp hot line across the body. A line that in my case was then made worse by Lydia squeezing and pinching the vivid red marks left behind.

Another surprisingly enjoyable aspect was the rhythm of the session. There’s a slow-build up as each clip is put into place. It’s like being decorated, with an associated sense of objectification. Then comes the moment of tension. The little tugs on the cord. The smile as she teases, watching me shift nervously as the anticipation builds. Finally, the sudden jerk and the snapping jaws as they pop free of flesh. The pain hits and there’s that moment where everything in the world is about that sensation. The brain can’t process anything other than the nerves that are screaming at it. The whole sequence is a wonderful combination of slowly building tension and sharp punctuating pain.

The first shot on the left (click to enlarge) was taken at the end of the first half of the session. We were using Lydia’s St. Georges chair and she’d already done a number of zipper lines across different parts of the body. The one shown was probably the biggest and the most painful, running all the way from under the arm to the outer hip. Although there are a number of clips on the cock Lydia (thankfully) didn’t zipper those. Too much danger of ripping the skin there.

The other two shots show a little bit of zippering bondage we did towards the end of the session. I was on a tilted padded leather table, and Lydia arranged the clips and cord across both my arms, chest and belly. The end result was that any movement of my arms tugged painfully against my torso, leaving Lydia free to tickle, tease and generally torment me.

A couple of hours after the session I shot some pictures of the resulting bruises. In these you can see my chest area, my left side and my right side.

For anyone tempted to try this stye of play, I’d offer the following tips.

If the submissive is skinny like me then adopt a position that’ll give some slack in the skin. Seated worked well for us. Being stretched taut, either horizontally or vertically, can make it too easy for the clips to pop free ahead of time.
The placement of the clips really makes a difference to the pain level. Down the sides of the torso isn’t too bad. Across chest where the skin is thinner hurts a little more. Across the belly is surprisingly painful, and almost a little nausea inducing (although that soon passed for me). Down the inside of the thigh is the most painful spot of all (at least of what we tried).
Once the clips are in place don’t be in too much of a hurry to pull them off. The top can create some really interesting sensations by pushing and stretching the skin with their hands. That also has a very strong psychological effect, as the close contact is both simultaneously comforting and painful.
Tickling when the clips are in place is a particularly sadistic thing to do. It creates a bunch of involuntary movement that stretches the skin and makes the clips wriggle in place.
Ripping only part of the clips away is another very sadistic trick. This happened with the diagonal zipper shown on the left. The submissive gets a big blast of pain, and then just as they recover from that, there’s the rapidly dawning realization that isn’t over yet and more is about to come.

Kink, sex and money (concluded)

So here’s what I promise is my third and final post in this mini-series. Having talked about different types of sex work and the way I believe the law has shaped them into their current forms, I though it’d be interesting to mull over what would happen if the laws were liberalized. Would that be a good thing?

On the face of it this seems like a dumb question. Removing the legal risk for both sex-workers and clients would seem to benefit them both. I think that’s certainly true for escorts and their clients, but the picture is potentially a little more complex in the kinky domain.

Lets assume that I was right about the impact the law has had on the shape of the commercial BDSM industry. Lets also assume if the laws were liberalized that we’d see a similar evolution to what happened in the pornography industry. The two current distinct markets of sex and BDSM would intermingle and the intersection between them become a far more significant factor. That not only mirrors what happened in porn, it would also more closely reflect how a lot of kinky people play in non-commercial settings. What might the effects of this be?

Firstly, it means pro-dommes could set boundaries based on their personal limits rather than legal constraints. For some, probably a majority, this wouldn’t change anything. But undoubtedly a non-trivial fraction would be open to incorporating more sexual play (which is not necessarily the same thing as conventional intercourse). At the same time the way would be open for escorts to more easily contact and market to current pro-domme clients. The forums and boards that only allow discussion of legal kinky activities would be able to host a much wider range of topics and sex worker views. The end result of all that would be a more complex and varied market place. The (almost) universal rules about not requesting any sexual activity would be out the window.

You could argue that this wouldn’t matter. A session setup is always a negotiation between two individuals anyway. Not all dommes do the same set of activities today, so what would be different? I suspect that one difference might be the hassle factor. With a fuzzier definition of what’s acceptable, clients would have much more varied expectations, and more to negotiate about. The “…but mistress x let me do this…” factor would rise significantly. Another difference might be pressure to compete in the marketplace against more sexual providers. Would we lose experienced and expert mistresses who couldn’t remain commercially viable at limits they were comfortable with?

It might also affect the intake of new pro-dommes. I think the current barrier to entry to the profession is lowered by the fact a domme remains clothed and sexual activity is not an option. Arguably this attracts too many women without a kinky bone in their body who see it as an easy way to make good money (see this article for example). I think that’s a very misguided approach, as being a good pro-domme requires immense skills and talent (as I’ve said in the past). However, I wonder how many pro-dommes got involved because traditional sexual activity wasn’t required, and then discovered a kinky dominant side that they enjoyed exploring. How many potentially great dommes would be lost in a more sexual market space?

My final point is a kind of obscure one, and a little bit of a personal one. At present I suspect that there is a hidden subsidy that flows from one group of pro-domme clients to another. Today a guy into body worship, verbal humiliation and tease and denial may well visit the same pro-domme as a guy into heavy leather bondage and electrical play. The latter requires expensive equipment while the former requires very little. So those clients into the lighter side of kink are helping to subsidize the guys who enjoy all the custom furniture and expensive toys many pro-dommes own. If the market was more finely segmented that subsidy might vanish. Maybe a kink savvy escort would be a better fit for the body worshiping verbal humiliation guy? As someone who indulges in a pretty broad spectrum of play, but definitely enjoys all the toys and tools of a well equipped pro-domme, that change wouldn’t be a welcome one. It’d potentially reduce the number of pro-dommes with well equipped playrooms.

Of course at the end of the day, all this is idle speculation. As far as the US is concerned, there’s little chance of having a sensible political conversation about legalizing sex work. The political system is far too screwed up for that to happen. As someone who tends to the socially liberal point of view, I think that’s a shame. Despite my speculation on possible downsides in some areas, I think when considering the bigger picture then legalization would be without doubt the right thing to do.

Picking a picture for this post was hard. The future repercussions of sex work legislation doesn’t lend itself to kinky photo fun. In my last post I mentioned Mistress Matisse, and given her varied career in sex work I thought she might be a good candidate for an image. She’s worked as a dominatrix (obviously), as a stripper (described here), as a peep show dancer (at Seattle’s now defunct Lusty Lady) and as an escort (memorably captured in her essay ‘The Whore on Christmas‘). Here’s a nice shot of her about to paddle the hell out of some lucky guy’s ass.