The joy of referrals

One of the things I’ve most enjoyed about creating this blog is all the interesting sites it has led me to. My original plan was simply to use it to share all the random links and images that I personally appreciated. But thanks to comments, emails and my referral logs, I’ve ended up gaining far more than a simple place to broadcast my opinions.

The latest interesting incoming link that I’ve spotted is from the “he stoops to worship” blog. It’s an unusual femdom blog, in that it contains a much broader selection of artwork than most, drawing from both mainstream and kinky sources. It’s written by slave c and he’s done an excellent job of both selecting the images and providing useful background to them. There’s everything from German pre-war art, through Hollywood Film Noir to erotic illustrations.

The following two images were taken from a post featuring the work of Craig Morey. I think the contrasting bodies together with the sense of balance and symmetry creates something really beautiful.

he stoops to worship

Humpty Dumpty

The comments on my earlier post entitled ‘Femdom doesn’t exist‘ got me thinking a little more about definitions and categories. This isn’t new ground for me, as I’ve pondered BDSM labels in the past. This time I thought I’d come at it from a different angle, and rather than start with the existing labels, I’d try and define new categories based on what I’ve observed. I can then see how (or if) my groupings map back into the well known labels people regularly throw around. The two dimensions I’m thinking about are masochism and submission, and it seems a lot of the complexity arises out of the latter.

Non-masochistic / Non-submissive
We all know about these people, as they make up the majority of the population. Vanilla. Boring. Let us speak of them no more.

Masochistic / Non-submissive
These people enjoy pain purely for the sake of the sensation. They want to be hurt and enjoy the associated adrenalin rush without necessarily giving up power. A well known subset of this is the Smart Ass Masochist (SAM), someone who likes deliberately teasing and provoking a domme in order to create a reason for punishment.

Masochistic / Sexual submissive
This defines someone who enjoys both pain and power exchange, but only in the context of ‘sexual’ play. This play might be a session in a dungeon, an event at a party or simply a couple having fun in the bedroom. But it’s essentially a bounded experience in time, where control is only temporarily relinquished. The stereotypical example of this would be the high powered CEO or hot shot lawyer who skips out of the office for a couple of hours so he can be tied-up and beaten by a pro-domme.

Masochistic / Lifestyle submissive
I suspect for a lot of readers of this blog, both male and female, this represents the most desirable category. It integrates a kinky sexuality within a female led relationship. This doesn’t necessarily imply a specific division of responsibility or a predefined assignment of roles in daily life. It simply means the D/s dynamics and power exchange shades daily interactions as well as specifically sexual ones.

Non-Masochistic / Service submissive
These people find satisfaction in performing tasks and being useful for the dominant. This might be something as simple as cleaning or cooking, or as elaborate as being turned into a human-pony and used to pull a buggy. Pain, if it’s employed at all, is a mechanism for punishment not pleasure.

Now having defined these anecdotally observed groupings, how do the common labels of bottom, slave, masochist and submissive map to them? I think the answer to that is ‘with difficulty’. Three of the five feature some type of submission, and three of the five feature masochism. Slave certainly maps to the last group, but arguably also applies to the lifestyle category. And I think the term bottom could be equally applied to both non-submissive and sexually submissive masochists. It’s therefore not really surprising that confusion and misunderstandings frequently occur when writing about femdom. The basic vocabulary we’re using is woeful inadequate and imprecise. And to make it worse, people frequently use the terms as if they were well defined and universally agreed.

I guess at this point I should really propose a solution to the problem. Perhaps the paltego labeling system of Mas/NonSub, Mas/SexSub, Mas/LifeSub and NonMas/ServSub? Or maybe some kinky equivalent to the geek code (if that doesn’t already exist)? There’s already the hanky code of course, but that’s mainly concerned with specific activities rather than models of interaction. It’s also hard to take a code seriously where a few wash cycles can change your sexual preferences from anal sex, into uniforms, into oral sex, into aquaphilia (dark blue, medium blue, light blue and aqua respectively). Lets at least shoot for something that’s machine washable in future.

One additional point of interest is the categories I decided to omit from this list, namely the non-masochistic versions of sexually submissive and lifestyle submissive. This isn’t to say people in those groups don’t exist. It’s just that I wonder if they would actually define themselves as kinky. A non-masochistic sexual submissive would be someone who enjoys receiving pleasure and letting their partner take control during sex. In many ways that seems more a sexual preference or style, rather than a kinky activity.

Finally, after all that random musing from me, I think a little eye candy is in order. The picture has no real relationship to the text, I just found it (on Domenique von Sternenberg’s tumblr site) and enjoyed it.

Oh, and for anyone that has made it this far, and is still wondering about the title of the post, it’s a reference to one of my favorite parts in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master – – that’s all.’

A lost fashion accessory

I’ve posted multiple times in the past about the sexiness of dominant women in glasses (for example here and here). But this image represents the first time I’ve posted what looks like a dominant women in a monocle. I’m not about to forsake my love of the bi-lense design, but there is something appealing about this drawing. It makes me think of aristocratic accents, decadent countesses and perverse sexual practices in secluded chateaus. You know, all the good stuff.

The text is in Italian, and as best I can make out (from a combination of google translate and bing translate), says something like – “I have nothing against play spanking as an erotic game, even as mild aphrodisiac I don’t mind”.

I’m afraid I don’t know the artist. I found it on “Yes, Mistress” tumblr site.

Updated: Once again my excellent blog browsers come through for me with an attribution via the comments. This is by Leone Frollo. You can read a little about him and see more of his work here.

Translating psi into decibels : Sadism 101

Looking back over the last few weeks there have been a lot of images featuring submission and bondage, but not a huge amount of material for the sadists and masochists amongst us. As I count myself amongst that happy band it seemed time to remedy that situation, so here’s a nice shot that put a smile on my face.

My favorite part of this is actually imagining the off camera aspect. I picture the mistress staring down at him, ever so slowly rocking her foot back and forth, smiling at the screams as they modulate in time with the applied pressure.

I found this on the domme and pet in love tumblr site. It’s obviously originally from Divine Bitches.

Pleased to see me

I thought this was an interesting shot for its naturalistic depiction of a strap-on. It’s a lot subtler that the usual brandishing and waggling at the camera I often see.

The site it’s from isn’t even a femdom one. It seems to follow more in the style of Japanese futanari videos. I’m by no means an expert on these, as they’re not really my thing, but from what I’ve seen they typically feature lesbian scenes where the women use the strap-ons as if they were real cocks. They wear them under clothes, make them ejaculate and try to hide their fake nature as much as possible. As a genre it seems to occupy an odd middle ground between lesbian porn and transgender porn (both mostly aimed at straight men). Of course, as you might expect, the Japanese videos typically seem to feature a lot of demure schoolgirls being led astray, where the Western version looks a lot more explicit and aggressive.

In general I find the design of strap-ons and their depictions in porn to be curious. There’s obviously a wide-range of designs out there, from the ultra-realistic to the very abstract, but the majority occupy a sort of odd middle ground, both cock and not cock. They take elements of the natural appendage (ridges, shape of the head, some hint of veins), but shy away from anything that looks too realistic. It’s as if they want to carry across some of the mental associations people have, without at the same time causing guys to freak out about being fucked by a ‘real’ dick.

I found this on the Pegtastic tumblr site. It’s originally from the strap-on cum site.

So I’m a lamp. Want to fight about it?

While I’m on the forniphilia theme, here’s an image in that genre that made me laugh. The foot stool and picture look suitably cowed and submissive, but the lamp has a far more belligerent stance. It looks like at any moment he’s expecting aspersions to be cast on the quality of his lampshade, or his light throwing ability, and he’s ready to punch the person concerned. I can picture him standing guard outside a nightclub doorway, the lampshade still on his head, just daring a drunk idiot to make a comment about it.

The image comes from InerMiss on deviantART (free deviantART account required to view). The domme is Goddess Magdalena and the photograph was from the Secret Boudoir photography studio (and not the mature escort site with a similar name in the UK that turned up at the top of the search results!)

Caption Required

This is an image that cries out for a caption done in the style of the letter she’s writing. Perhaps something like “…and in other news, John has been making himself useful around the house recently. After losing his CEO job he probably sees his new duties as a small step down in responsibility, but I like him to feel he’s still making a contribution to the household.”

I like the kneepads and the hood. The former is practical and suggests a lengthy time in position, while the latter is nicely objectifying. I’m less keen on her dress. The fetish nature of it kind of clashes with the ‘normality’ (in femdom world at least) of the activity.

I found this on Awesome Femdom.

As disgusting/exciting as you like…

This is an image where the degree of perversity is assigned by the mind of the viewer. Obviously it starts at a base level of perversity that’s pretty unavoidable. I don’t think he came in for the remote control and tripped and fell awkwardly. But maybe she’s just forcing him to watch and nothing more. Or maybe there will be a few drops to clean-up from her after the fact. Or maybe…well…you get the idea. Beauty is not the only thing in the eye of the beholder.

I’m not going to say what my preferred interpretation is. I’ll just mention that I like the look of, lets say, ‘concentration’ on her face.

Annoyingly it looks like this image had a watermark and somebody scrubbed it out. I hate it when people do that. Feel free to comment if you can help me attribute it. I found it on erotic haecceities.

Updated: Thanks to pedamore I believe this is Mistress Yuliya Kate from Vancouver. I can’t see this exact scene in her clip store, but there’s one showing a similar bathroom and a couple of her in that top, so it seems to be a pretty positive id.

A Fastidious Dominant

I’m pretty certain this is artwork by Kahori. It has his* very distinctive artistic style and the symbol/signature in the corner resembles the ones on other drawings from him.

Like a lot of his work it shows a more delicate and less forceful style of domination than is normally seen in other femdom images. His artwork often does a good job of conveying the idea of a relationship between the participants, rather than simply focusing on the mechanics of a kinky activity.

Little thoughtful moments in a scene, like wiping the cheek of a gagged slave, really touches something deep within me. That’s partly because it plays to the idea of the caring sadist, a blend of sweetness and acidity that I find so appealing. But I think it’s also because it emphasizes what the dominant is not doing. She could simply remove the gag if she wanted him to stop drooling. Wiping the cheek instead reinforces the fact that removal isn’t currently an option. She’ll do what’s necessary to keep him exactly as she wants him.

* I’m using a male pronoun in this post for clarity, but I don’t actually know the gender of the artist. Apologies if I’ve got it wrong.

Needles with Lady Lydia

This is one of those occasional posts where I post some original content, in the form of images from one of my own scenes. Some of the past examples of this have included butterfly boarding, suturing and saline injections.

Like those previous scenes, this one was done with the wonderful Lady Lydia McLane, and contains activities some might consider edge play. There are images of piercings and of some blood smeared on skin. If that doesn’t sound like something you want to see, I advise you not to click through the link below.

I feel I should also point out that I don’t only play in this fashion. I’m a bit of a kinky omnivore, and regularly enjoy a very wide variety of activities. However, I think there are enough shots on the web of people getting caned, bound, smothered, flogged, etc. The world probably doesn’t need more from me, and so I don’t tend to try and capture those kind of scenes for posterity.

All that said, for anyone who hasn’t already moved onto the next post at this point, and wants to see what you get when you mix a great domme with a skinny British guy and a selection of needles, feel free to click through to the images and scene description.