Game highlights

Superbowl 50 was played at the weekend. If you live in the US it’s an event that’s hard to avoid. It’s part of the culture here, like turkey on Thanksgivings and fireworks on the 4th of July. The game was poor, which isn’t unusual. The halftime show also mostly sucked, thanks to the worlds most boring band – Coldplay. Appropriately enough, in a male dominated event, the only redeeming bits of the whole experience were provided by two women. Lady Gaga did a great version of the National Anthem and Beyonce rescued the halftime show.

Normally, none of this would be relevant to a blog like this one. However, I couldn’t let Beyonce’s outfit and her backing dancers pass without comment. They looked like 70’s revolutionaries if they’d been cast for an exploitation action movie and dressed by Helmut Newton. I thought they were brilliant, both in terms of their fetishistic look and their routine. Obviously there was a political element to it, with reference to the Black Power Salute and Black Lives matter. It also pissed off some assholes, so that was another added bonus. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if they’d invaded the stage and beaten the crap out of the guys in Coldplay. That’s a Superbowl show that would have been worth the ticket price.

Beyonce Backing Dancers

Helpful suspension hints

If you’re interested in playing with suspension, them this article is worth a read. It does a good job of laying out the factors to consider and the associated risks.

Personally I found suspension interesting to try out, but it has a low endorphin to time spent ratio. It looks cool, and it’s fun when you finally get it right, but there’s a lot of faffing around required. If you’re purely looking for sensation rather than aesthetics, them swings achieve a similar rush at lower cost.

Suspension BondageI’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for this artwork. It looks like it has been trimmed on the top and bottom, but I can’t track down a larger version. If anyone can point me at an alternative version or the artist then please leave a comment.

A Royal Warrant

Cheap and cheesy BDSM kits are nothing new. They pop up in sex shops all the time, typically with some weak restraints, a blindfold and a limp flogger. A new kit called ‘Prince and I’ may not improve much on the typical contents, but the marketing is at least innovative. Not many sex toys get associated with royalty, but Vegas domme Carrie Royale has managed to turn 15 minutes of fame into a sales gimmick and tabloid headlines. I’m sure the Buckingham Palace lawyers are putting together the ‘cease and desist’ letters at this very minute, but personally I’m a fan of her approach. The British royal family is an expensive waste of space. The least they can do is provide some valuable marketing material for a domme with a good eye for publicity.

One other thing in common between royalty and dommes (at least of the professional kind) is the love of a good throne. They crop up in dungeons and femdom porn all the time. Here’s Mistress Ella Kross in a particularly ornate one. While a throne may be common, not many dommes can boast a battle axe on the wall behind it.

EllaKrossI should add that the idea of using royalty to sell products is certainly not a new one. It might seem anachronistic but lots of British products carry a Royal Warrant, meaning that they’re supplied to a royal personage. The bottle of HP sauce in my cupboard has the fact that it’s “By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen” emblazoned around its neck. In the list of goods carrying the British Royal family warrant the only sexual one I can find is for lingerie. Dungeon furniture and torture equipment would actually be appropriate for an old aristocratic family, but sadly I don’t see any of that.

Asexual sex

Cosmopolitan hasn’t got a great track record on sex articles. Occasionally however it does put up something interesting. The latest example of this would be an article on asexuality – ‘Can You Be Asexual, but Also Enjoy Kink?‘

It’s better than there usual silly sex advice, and treats the subject seriously. That said, I find it odd the way it describes the intersection of kink and asexuality. It seems to treat ‘sex’ as a synonym for PIV/oral/anal and BDSM as something quite distinct from that. Asexuality is therefore cast as a lack of interest in the former (since that’s ‘sex’), but not the latter. What I know about asexuality you could probably write on the back of postage stamp, but this seems kind of odd to me.

I’ve had a lot of intense kinky fun that didn’t resemble regular vaginal/anal/oral sex. Some of that kinky fun resulted in orgasms and some didn’t, but all of it felt sexual to me. It might not have looked much like sex to any observer hiding under the spanking bench, but it was certainly plugging into my sexual circuits. Of course, that’s a personal perspective. I’m not claiming everyone experiences kink in the same way. But I’d be interested to know how many people enjoy D/s or BDSM and feel it doesn’t connect some,how to their sexual wiring, no matter how unusually configured that wiring is. Is someone asexual if they exclusively prefer BDSM as way to express their sexuality? Alternatively, how many people enjoy BDSM in a non-sexual way?

Dude In DistressHere’s someone from Dudes in Distress enjoying some kinky distress. It might not look like sex to most observers, but if I was in that position it’d definitely be pushing a lot of my internal sexual buttons.

Getting Physical

I don’t normally like my femdom mixed with wrestling or similar types of forceful domination. I understand the appeal of being physically overpowered, but if I have to be beaten down to do something, it doesn’t work for me. I like to do what I’m told, even if it’s going to be painful. In fact, especially if it’s going to be painful.

On the other hand, this image is all sorts of hot. I think it’s the look on her face. She’s in control and also just a little amused by him.

GettingPhysicalThis bout is titled Antscha Vs. Imi and is from the Dirty Wrestling Pit site. I found it via the Alternative Femdom tumblr.

Latex Fashion

Jezebel recently published a lengthy article/interview with Sonia Agostino. If you don’t recognize that name (and I didn’t), she’s a fashion designer specializing in latex. Her most recent claim to fame is providing the outfits for Kylie Jenner in her recent controversial photoshoot.

I thought it was interesting because she repeatedly emphasizes her lack of interest in fetish and kink. She originally started with the Baroness – who is very much a fetish designer – yet has evolved to use latex outside a specifically fetish focused scene. I think her work presents an interesting question – can you create non-fetish fashion from a material inextricably linked to fetish? I’m not sure she’s succeeded in that yet. Celebrities who wear her clothes seem to do so to create an alternative/edgy/kinky image. People still like latex for the fetishistic message that comes along with it, even if the clothing is interesting and elegant in it’s own right. Personally, I hope she succeeds in broadening the appeal of latex. It’s a fun material and I’d love to see non-kinky friends of mine trying it out.

Bird SmokeThis image is entitled Bird Smoke and is from Sonia Agostino’s site.

AVN Season (final)

There might have been little attention paid to kink and BDSM at AVN, but one of the winners does have a femdom connection. Riley Reid, who picked up the Female Performer of the Year award, has done a number of shoots for Femdom Empire. She’s one of a growing number of conventional porn stars who seem to be happy to cross over and shoot kink.

Years ago there was a fairly clear distinction between people who shot BDSM and those who shot conventional porn. That now seems to be breaking down. Partly I suspect that’s down to the growth of BDSM porn and the larger professional studios shooting it. However, I’d guess that an even larger factor might be how often regular sex (PIV, oral, anal, etc.) now gets mixed in with more hardcore bondage and pain shots. I think that mixture puts off a lot of potential BDSM performers, particularly dommes. I’ve talked to several who wouldn’t shoot for kink.com anymore because sex in a femdom scene was considered part of the shoot. Instead they decided either to not shoot or stick to their own clipstores where they had more control. This in turn opens up opportunities for regular porn stars who don’t mind mixing sex and kink. So it has been less a simple removal of barriers, and more an expansion of regular porn and retreat of BDSM specialists.

Riley ReidHere is the aforementioned Riley Reid demonstrating some of the skills and attributes that made her female performer of the year. I hope the owner of this pair of testicles feels that he contributed in some small (painful) way to her ultimate success. This was obviously shot for Femdom Empire.

AVN Season (cont)

I’ve noted the lack of awards for kink, fetish and BDSM at AVN in the past. I think the last time, in 2013, there were only 3 vaguely relevant awards. This year, based on this list of winners, they’re now down to one. That’s the very generic ‘Best BDSM movie’. They don’t even break out separate awards for maledom and femdom. I doubt it’ll surprise anyone to learn that for the last three years that award has gone to a maledom movie.

Breaking out every kinky niche into an award would probably be unmanageable, but I’d have thought top level awards for best male/female top/bottom would at least have been considered. It is after all a very challenging job. Regular porn stars will often tell interviewers how hard it is to have sex in odd positions on unusual furniture when surrounded by a film crew. BDSM performers have to handle all that, plus whips, gags, ropes, canes, crops, chains, cattle prods, nipple clamps, needles, hoods and anal probes. Although hopefully not all at the same time. When a regular porn performer has an uncomfortable position that’s an unfortunate side-effect of getting the right shot. When a BDSM performer has an uncomfortable positions that’s often the goal of the shot.

Here’s an image of Mika Tan and Danny Wylde earning their money for Men In Pain. He’s either very good at acting or that hurts quite a lot.

Earning their money

AVN Season

The annual AVN awards were announced this weekend in Las Vegas. They style themselves as the ‘Oscars for Porn’ and, having attended them myself many years ago, I can confirm they’re as boring and repetitive as the Oscars and other similar industry award evenings tend to be.

This year they were held at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas, which decided it’d be a smart move to harass and expel transgender performers. That’s based on what Lorelei Lee reported on her twitter feed. So someone could get an award on stage one minute and get kicked out of the restroom the next. That’s both incredibly stupid and not at all surprising to me. For a supposed center of hedonism and debauchery, Vegas is incredibly conservative and old fashioned.

The other big story was James Deen and what would be the fallout from the rape accusations. The AVN management didn’t get things off to a great start by cancelling a panel on consent. You’d think that this would be a great time for a conversation about consent in porn, but apparently not. As for the attendees themselves, it seemed that nobody wanted to go on record with an opinion either way. I suspect that means it’ll be business as usual in a few months.

That’s all fairly depressing, but at least mentioning Lorelei Lee does give me an excuse to feature some of her excellent work. This is her pulling a fairly dramatic expression out of David Chase in a shoot for Divine Bitches.

LoreleiLee