Category: Uncategorized

Vanishing Vice

Vice Media is killing a lot of jobs and its primary web site. You can read about some of the business shenanigans behind all that here. It’s bankrupt and shifting to publishing purely via other sites.

While it has been a controversial outlet, with an abhorrent founder, I’ll be sad to see it go. While it definitely wasn’t above kinky clickbait, it had some of the better kink coverage in mainstream media. Looking back I linked to its articles fairly often. For example, on kinky therapists, on gooning, on fin-domme, on pro-domme sessions, etc.

It’s funny how the internet is simultaneously so permanent and also impermanent. It’s true that it’s almost impossible to erase a salacious photograph, an unwise tweet or an incriminating screenshot. Yet at the same time, whole sites can be wiped out in seconds. Hundreds of years of work involving thousands of people gone. Just traces left in archive sites and inaccessible local copies.

Last night I was watching a documentary on the origin of the British Exchequer and it mentioned their earliest records – in the form of pipe rolls – date back to 1130. They form a series from then until 1833, just over 700 years. What are the odds that any of our current electronic records will still be as accessible in 2724?

I’ve no idea what femdom image best suits the failure of a major media company, so let’s run with that medieval theme instead. This is the unmistakably work of Augustine.

Dom Speak

I mentioned the disappearance of Max Fisch a few weeks ago. It’s still AWOL, so I guess we can finally say it’s gone for good.

Lady Cheyenne has established a new forum site, with a very similar look and feel to Max – Dom Speak. If you’re a fan of femdom and classic web forum then check it out. I just created an account there and it took just a few seconds. Not a huge number of posts there right now but that’s inevitable in something this new. Given the fiasco that is Twitter, it’s good to have other options out there.

I’ll leave you with a shot of the control center from Dom Speak. Moderators and site admins all hard at work under the right kind of leadership.

This is actually by Helmut Newton from American Vogue back in 2002.

Chamber Pot

Here’s an unusual image for its time. Whipping and other forms of corporal punishment is pretty common in vintage shots. Bondage occasionally pops up, as do feet and boot fetishes. But I can’t remember seeing a watersport or toilet play vintage shot before. It must have been a particularly shocking image for its time. It still packs a punch even now.

I’m guessing it was taken in Europe in the early 1930’s, but I don’t have a specific attribution. I sourced it via Madam Is All.

More Manipulation

After a fun weekend in Vegas I’m heading for home. I once again visited the city of sin and didn’t do any sinning. Must be getting old. I did go and see the U2 show at the Sphere which was pretty amazing. I think it’s a space that’s going to set a new standard for concert venues.

For the image in today’s post I’m continuing  the theme of photoshop and image manipulation. I’m not sure of the original image source (it shows up in a bunch of equestrian themed pinterests) but I think the man has been added after the fact. I sourced this version via the Brutal Women tumblr.

 

Tweaking the Image

Before AI there was photoshop. A favorite tool for kinsters who wanted to modify an image to align with their preferences. I’m always amused when scrolling through tumblrs and I stumble across a photograph modified this way. In an internet awash in explicit BDSM imagery, dedicated kink fans still want to create new ones that speak to their passions.

Here’s an example I spotted on the Assertive Ladies tumblr. Originally it was from a photoshoot for a failed ABC show called Mind Games shown back in 2014. The actor is Jamie Ray Newman. I’m not sure who gave her the paddle. They did a decent job of the tweak, although there’s clearly something a little off about the pose.

Mysterious Ways

Apologies for the gap in posting. I’m traveling and that’s been messing with my schedule.

If I’m honest, I’m feeling a little maudlin tonight. I normally enjoy dining in restaurants alone. Being brought food and wine while I read a book is my non-kinky happy place. Seeing groups or couples having fun never bothers me. What makes me sad is couples who have nothing to say to each other. There was a beautiful and elegant woman who sat across the room from me tonight and totally pinged my domme-dar. She was with an older man, who barely said a word to her through a 2hr+ meal. I’d like to think she was a sex worker making serious bank for the hours they were there. But probably not. Life’s far too short to spend time with people who don’t spark joy.

This is by the Scottish painter Jack Vettriano.

Red Scare

If there’s one Femdom related word that sets my teeth on edge it’s paypig. Not sure exactly why. Just one of those things – like wacky capitalization – that grates against my eyeball anytime I see it.

I mention it because the word is scattered all across this Vice article on communist findommes. I guess it makes more sense in that context than most, given that capitalist pig is a well worn epithet. I’m very much not an expert on communism, but I was under the impression that neither Marx nor Engels were fans of sex work.

While most pro-dommes I’ve met are unsurprisingly socially liberal, a good percentage were also pretty capitalist. I guess it comes with running a small business and the constant hustle that requires. You need a fairly wide entrepreneurial streak to make a success of any small business, let alone one that faces constant legal and social hurdles.

This image has been manipulated and reposted a bunch, but I think the original source is DomNX on DeviantArt.

The New Voight-Kampff Test

Ridley Scott’s may have produced a masterpiece of sci-fi in his movie Blade Runner, but he did get one thing very wrong – The Voight-Kampff Test. That was the test used to distinguish humans from the movie’s AI replicants. He imagined a series of questions designed to provoke an emotional response where, as we all know now, he should have just asked them to draw a pair of hands. AI might take just a few seconds to write an essay, beat a chess grandmaster and run a scam mimicking your grandmother, but it still seems to struggling to figure out fingers.

Here’s a good couple of examples from the Femdom realm. In the first one she appears to have two fingernails on her pinkie and his hand has been chopped off and dropped somewhere behind her. In the second her finger is merging into the phone. Its also unclear where her right leg is. Somebody needs to send these AIs to Anatomy 101.

I’m not sure who (or what) originally created these. I sourced them via Madam Is All.

Alexandra Aderhold

After last post’s old school domination theme, we’re moving onto new school kink and fetish. This image is by German photographer Alexandra Aderhold. It’s a stunning shot, pulling off the trick of being both aesthetically and erotically charged. I want to be in it and yet also have it hanging on my wall.

You can see more from Alexandra, including a book of photographs she’s published, on her professional site. There’s also an interview with her available here. I originally stumbled across the image via labstrakts.

Bye Bye Max?

Max Fisch appears to have dropped off the net. It’s been flaky for years, but one has to wonder if this is the final goodbye.

For those that don’t know what I’m talking about- Max Fisch is (was?) one of the longest running Femdom forum sites and Domina directories. It first showed up back in the 1990’s and for years was  one of the primary sites for pro-domme information and discussion. Sadly, like a lot of these sites, social media sucked away a lot of the potential users and the admins and moderators lost interest in maintaining it.

The loss of internet forum culture to a few huge social media companies is a great shame in my view. It’s not that the quality of the debate was particularly great on the forums – online people are the same all over. But the forum’s were more focused, the conversations longer and the posts were both durable and searchable. You could post a review of a session and another user would be able to find it years later. Good luck doing that on Twitter. You also didn’t have to deal with all the algorithmically driven rage-bait garbage the social media sites throw out you.

Of course there’s nothing technically stopping someone running a femdom forum today. The problem is getting to critical mass when so many of the casual users gravitate to social media.  It’s hard for simple web base forums to compete with thousand of social engineers doing whatever they can to drive more swipes on a media feed.

If you’re like me and find the history of femdom and internet culture fascinating, using the wayback machine to browse old domme site can be a great way to kill a lot of time. For example, looking at the very first capture of Max’s domme listing from 1999, I spotted a link to the famous Ilsa Strix. That in turn led me to her archived site and old interviews with her. You can even still find her original contact protocol.