Category: Uncategorized

Dealing with Ambiguity

I’m returning here to my prior post on the question of what is owed when ending a relationship between a pro-domme and a client. What’s a respectful way to navigate that transition?

The obvious response is that it depends on the history. If you’ve played together intermittently and just a handful of times, then the answer is likely nothing. It’d be ruder to reach out to announce you’ll not be requesting another session than silently moving on. If you’ve developed a deep and personal relationship, where the financial aspect is only part of the arrangement, then the answer will be very context dependent and impossible to generalize about here. But how about the middle ground? What about an ongoing relationship, with regular encounters over an extended period? The sessions wouldn’t happen if the client wasn’t paying, yet there’s also a shared understanding and familiarity that has developed over time. What then?

I think this situation can be awkward for clients to navigate for a number of reasons. Firstly, pro-dommes all have very different ways they approach things. That’s not just in style of domination, but also protocols, approach to sessions, communication, expectations, etc. For some, reaching out to explain would be a form of time wasting. For others, it’d be common courtesy. It might be hard to judge which scenario applies to your case. It’s not exactly a question you can easily ask!

Another challenge is the fact that pro-dommes can and do retire with little to no notice. Or decide to move and practice their profession elsewhere. I’ve had both happen to me and it can be quite disconcerting. Obviously, a domme can manage her career however she wants, but the possibility of a sudden departure is now always at the back of my mind.

Ultimately, I think what we owe each other should be the same thing. If I’d expect unusual consideration from a pro-domme if she moved on, then I should extend the same courtesy if I choose end the relationship. Outside of that very rare situation, I think a thoughtful email is a very reasonable approach between long term professional play partners.

In this gentleman’s case, moving on doesn’t appear to be one of his current options, although hypothermia might be. I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for the image.

Update: Thanks to my awesome readers I can now attribute this. It’s Princess Amber shooting for Brat Princess.

Taking It Literally

I was planning to post some follow-up thoughts to my last post, but the night is late and time has run short. Instead, consider this post as a humorous intermission between serious musing. It features a couple who really decided to run with the golden shower concept. I suspect that – as is always the way with makeshift outdoor showers – the warm ‘water’ will run out before he can soap off properly.

I’ve no idea where this is from. Reverse image search doesn’t link to anything useful sadly.

What do we owe each other?

I pose the question in the post’s title based on this thread by Dia Dynasty. She writes about a long term slave who abruptly ended their relationship via email. A fact which hurt and deeply disappointed her. It’s a sad situation, but one which I think raises the general question: What do we owe each other in that kind of relationship?

I’m specifically referring to a professional relationship which – thanks to its length and close nature – has developed beyond just a simple transaction. Obviously, in a non-professional context a kinky relationship is no different to breaking-up in any relationship. At least in terms of the need for compassion, understanding and respect. But how does the presence of a transactional element change things?

I don’t have a glib or easy answer. I just thought it was an interesting question to ponder. Maybe, for the little they’ll be worth, I’ll share some musings in a follow-up post.

This is Dia Dynasty, a wholistic femdom practitioner, based out of NYC. You can find her professional site here and her twitter feed here. She’s also the Matriarch of the Femdom Farm.

Eva’s Peasants

My subby fantasies were tickled by this news story on Eva Green. Apparently she had a falling out with the producers of a project she was working on and told them exactly what she thought. This included insults such as ‘peasants’, ‘arseholes’ and ‘fucking morons’. I’ve no idea if these barbs were justified or not, but I do have to agree with the article writer when he says…

She’s haughty and imperious. She knows exactly where she stands in the world, and she would rather die than hang around with the likes of us. Her contempt is tangible and, really, isn’t that exactly what we want in a movie star?

His conclusion is that we’d all like to aspire to this level of free expression. That might be true for the majority, but some of us would rather be on the receiving end of Ms Green’s acid tongue. Haughty and imperious are sexy attributes whatever someone’s profession. It also struck me that if she ever puts her face to a perfume then ‘Tangible Contempt’ would be an excellent name for it.

This is a shot of Eva from ‘A Dame To Die For‘, the follow-up to Sin City.

Why not both?

One final comment on the recent ‘Fetish or Fashion’ pop-quiz I’ve been running. Servitor posed the very reasonable question: Why not both?

That’s a fair point. As far as the resulting images go, they contain significant elements of both fetish and fashion. I guess I should frame the question around the image creators and their primary industry. Is it a pro-domme / fetish producer or a model being paid for a shoot with a (relatively) mainstream publication. Is it someone who spends more time in dungeons and playspaces than they do strutting a catwalk? What kind of animal do they usually have at the end of a leash? Petite Pomeranian or a perky puppy boy?

There’s clearly a healthy interchange between the fashion and fetish worlds. However, I’m not sure it’s always a equally balanced exchange. A lot of pro-dommes are extremely fashion aware. Unfortunately, on the flipside, fashion editors and photographers often seem confused about kink. A charitable take would be that they’re deliberately re-interpreting and re-contextualizing kink to tell their own stories. After all, their ultimate goal is different to someone creating material for a kink or fetish market. A less charitable interpretation would be they’re raiding kink for easy shock value and then haphazardly mashing its elements together without any really understanding.

I think the distinction between fashion or fetish often doesn’t come down to the clothes, styling, make-up or beauty of the subjects. It’s down to their understanding and intelligent use of the kinky elements. Or not.

This mainstream fashion shot is from Vice Serbia, features rapper Sajsi Mc and was photographed by Alek Živković.

Fashion or Fetish? Part III

Here’s the third and final part of my fetish or fashion game. This time it’s a two-for-one deal, with an image from each category. But which one is from the world of fashion and which from the world of fetish? I suspect regular readers may find it a little easy given who is featured, but it’s an image I couldn’t resist.

If you guessed the first was fashion and the second was fetish then congratulations. Have a gold star. Or maybe, more appropriately, a shiny leather one. The first image is Carmen Electra, shot by  Josef Jasso for Nylon magazine. You can see more images from the shoot here. The second one is, as I’m sure many readers might have recognized, the incomparable Mistress Iris. This was from her twitter feed.

Fashion or Fetish? Part II

Here’s a follow-up entry in the fashion or fetish guessing game. Was this snaffled from a recent Vogue shoot? Or is someone who can expertly crack a single tail? Couture or consensual cruelty?

Answer: In this case it’s the latter option – fetish. This is Lady Mephista from a recent tweet. You can see more on her OnlyFans site and arrange in person sessions via her professional site.

Fashion or Fetish?

Somebody should really do a site where you have to guess if a shot is from a pro-domme gallery page or an arty fashion magazine. For example, take this image. Is it from a tweet by a rising star in the LA pro-domme scene? Or NYC’s latest supermodel shooting a cover story? Is she involved in a sordid world of drugs, money and older men taking advantage of younger women? Or is she beating men up for a living?

Answer: In this case it’s fashion, not fetish. Specifically, it’s Lindsey Wilson shooting for ODDA Magazine. I believe the latex was supplied by Vex Clothing.

Hot Advice

I’m always a fan of mainstream magazines running positive articles on BDSM and ideas for kinky play. Getting more people to explore their sexual interests is great. However, the media have a tendency to lead with the high risk stuff, which is pretty much the last thing new kinksters should be trying in their bedroom.

Take for example this Vice article on temperature play. It’s titled a beginners guide, but in the first half dives into topics like making fire torches with alcohol and dropping flammable propane bubbles on people’s skin. Admittedly they add a bunch of caveats about not trying it without training, but why start there in a beginners guide? There’s a ton of fun temperature stuff you can do with hot wax and ice cubes that isn’t likely to land you in the ER. Pretty much by definition, if you’re learning about temperature play for the first time from a Vice article, there’s nothing you should be doing in the nude with flammable gases or liquids. Leave it to the professionals.

This is the striking Lady Lola, someone who is very much a professional. She is a London based pro-domme who lists fire play as one of her specialties. You can find her professional site here and her twitter feed here.

Cocking a Leg

I’m all for finding creative angles to shoot femdom imagery, but I’m not sure they thought this image through properly. Her look is a very attractive one, but it doesn’t seem entirely appropriate to the high street shopping she’s clearly partaking in. A leashed man in a suit is a fine thing, but how is he going to pee against that flower pot with his pants still on? He’ll just get a wet leg and damp pants. Which is a kink in itself, but probably not the one they’re shooting for here. Basically she’s got too few clothes for the setting and he’s got way too many.

I’m afraid I don’t know the source for this. It’s from an old tumblr and all my reverse image searches show up empty. If you’ve any idea of who originally shot it then please help me attribute via a comment.

Update: Thanks to a helpful comment, I now know this is from the site of Lady Asmodina. Sadly she doesn’t appear to have a web presence anymore, so I’m assuming she has retired.