Vintage Breathplay

It’s rare to see this activity in a vintage shot. Corporal punishment and bondage is fairly common in older shots, and medical play not unheard of, but I can’t recall seeing breathplay before.

It makes me smile, as it’s an activity I love. I particularly like the eye contact they are making, as that’s a key part of any breathplay scene for me. People talk about power exchange as an abstract D/s concept, but breathplay creates a focus that crystallizes that exchange. The power over someone’s breath is literally life and death. If I’m giving that up then I want that other person to be very much in that moment with me.

I found this image via this tweet.

Medical Myths

The story of how the vibrator was invented by Victorian doctors to cure women of hysteria is a well known one. There are plenty of online articles that refer to it. I’ve even referenced it in past posts. It has an obvious appeal. Who doesn’t like the idea of a Victorian lady telling her staid husband that she feels a burst of hysteria coming on and she needs to schedule a trip to Dr. NimbleFingers to relieve the tension?

Unfortunately – and you can probably guess where this was going – it turns out not to be true. As this NYTimes article by Hallie Lieberman makes clear, it was invented as a general device for health. Doctors did know there was a risk of sexual excitement, but were very keen to steer away from that usage. It was only thanks to women recognizing its potential that the vibrator gained its sexual usage and benefits.

I particularly enjoyed Hallie Lieberman’s gender swapped example of how unbelievable the hysteria story is.

Imagine arguing that at the turn of the 20th century, female nurses were giving hand jobs to male patients to treat them for psychological problems; that men didn’t realize anything sexual was going on; that because female nurses’ wrists got tired from all the hand jobs, they invented a device called a penis pump to help speed up the process. Then imagine claiming nobody thought any of this was sexual, because it was a century ago.

While that doesn’t sound likely, it does sound like a great scenario for a femdom roleplay. I would happily be a hysterical Victorian man who needs to be restrained  by nurses  and cured via mechanically assisted means. Obviously it’d all be done for my own good.

This is Lady Annisa and Mistress Miranda, two pro-dommes from the UK who are both brilliant at medical scenes. I’m sure that they’d be up for adding a historical twist to them.

Communication Breakdown

The wider acceptance of kink and the corresponding uptick in mainstream articles on it is a good thing. Less stigma is good. More people open to indulging in kink is good. Unfortunately the quality of the mainstream articles is somewhat erratic. For example, take this recent Cosmo one on Cuckolding. It’s not terrible, and it’s certainly positive on the kink. In fact that’s actually kind of the problem. It’s possible to be too positive.

Cuckolding is a great way of strengthening communication in a relationship, as it requires honesty from both partners about what they enjoy, what they don’t and what their boundaries are if they do feel jealous or uncomfortable.

It’s certainly true that cuckolding requires good communication. However, this makes it sound like cuckolding would be a good option to improve communication in a relationship that has a problem with it. I’m not a therapist, but I’m fairly sure that first step in strengthening  communication with your partner isn’t sleeping with other people.

This reminds me of people who think that the solution to a rocky relationship is to have a child. Because when two people are stressed and unhappy, the obvious answer is to add a small screaming person who’ll dominate their lives for the next 18 years. I’ve known two couples like that and it worked out about as well as you might expect. I’m guessing that cuckolding, like having children, is a good way to make a great thing better and a bad thing even worse.

I’m not sure of the background to this image, or who the artist is, but it definitely has a strong cuckolding vibe to it. If anyone can help me attribute it, then please leave me a comment.

Puppy Dog Eyes

I’ve remarked before that a strong love of animals seems to be a common trait among pro-dommes. I suspect it’s actually a common trait for sex workers in general, but my personal experience obviously skews towards dommes.

It’s therefore a smart move for the submissive here – who I think is Deviant Kade – to deploy the puppy dog eyes in a search for sympathy. It doesn’t appear to be working all that well, but you’ve got to give him full marks for the effort.

This is obviously from the Captive Male site.

Strange Logic

A new documentary by Louis Theroux entitled ‘Selling Sex‘ has been creating a stir in my social media feed. As you might guess from the title, it tackles the subject of sex work, following three women involved in the industry. Most of the sex workers I follow were not impressed. This thread by Lola Ruin and this tweet by Mistress Evilyne are pretty indicative of the feedback I saw.  Even the people involved in it were not happy.

I’ve not seen the show so I can’t review it. Instead I want to review a review of it. Specifically, this review in the Guardian by Lucy Mangan. I’m sure if you asked Lucy she’d claim her article, like the show, was a balanced and nuanced take on a tricky subject. Yet I think her final paragraph, containing the sentences below, show just how illogical and confused people can be when it comes to sex work.

The true question is how we define coercion or exploitation. The aim of the law’s definition is surely to ensure that anyone selling his or her body is doing so willingly, as a matter of absolutely free choice. Whether this can be said of any of the women here, I am not sure.

The idea of selling your body is not only a tired cliche but also makes no sense. A sex worker no more sells their body that does an athlete, a fashion model or a nurse. Like all those professions, a sex worker uses their body and their brain to provide a service. At no point before, during or after the transaction does a client own any part of their body. Possibly used underwear or sweaty athletic wear might be purchasable, should both parties tastes run in that direction, but that’s a whole different dynamic.

Logically, if having sex implies some transfer of ownership, then the same must be true regardless of the involvement (or not) of a fee. So does Lucy think that a wife having sex with her husband results in him owning her body? Is she a fan of bringing back the idea of Coverture more widely? It would seem an unusual position for a Guardian journalist to adopt.

The other strange part of that final paragraph is the bar she sets for doing sex work – ‘a matter of absolutely free choice.’ How many of us do our jobs out of absolutely free choice? I love my job, but I’d drop it tomorrow if I had the financial independence to make an absolutely free choice. That’s why it’s my job and not my hobby.

Coal mining is a dangerous, dirty and physically challenging job. As a result miners are often lauded as blue collar hero’s, taking on tough work to put food on the table for their families. Are they doing that as an absolutely free choice? Maybe we should we shut down the mines until we’re 100% sure of that. The idea that miners don’t understand the choices they make would be rightly criticized as patronizing and insulting. Yet people like Lucy are happy to infantilize sex workers and imply that they other people’s judgements (the law) should replace the workers own choices. Instead, shouldn’t we be celebrating sex workers for the difficult job they choose to do?

This is a long post spun from just a few sentences in a review of a show I’ve not even seen. Yet those few sentences seem illustrative of how even intelligent people can have internalized damaging and illogical views on sex work. From the online feedback that seems to be a problem the show’s creators shared.

I’ve no idea what’s an appropriate image to accompany this kind of post. Given I mentioned Lola Ruin at the top of it, I’m going to use that as an excuse to feature a lovely shot of her (from her twitter feed).

Ambiguous Moment

My favorite femdom images are often those with a degree of ambiguity to them. The kind that let you project your own stories and fantasies into them. For example, what’s happening in the image below? Is this a candid shot captured between filming a scene? Aftercare at the end of a whipping? Or just a pause and a chance to inspect her handiwork before wielding the whip again? I like to imagine it as a caring sensual moment, a contrast of touch and sensations to the intensity of the whip. But that probably says more about my kinks than it does about the image itself.

I believe the domme here is Lady Diosa. I’m not aware of a professional site for her, but she does have films posted here.

Strange Comfort

I’ve been in a bondage frame of mind recently. I think it’s the cold weather. There’s something comforting and relaxing about certain types of bondage. Almost like being gently hugged. That sense of relaxing into an embrace, with no further thought being necessary. Some people like to avoid the chill by cuddling in front of a roaring fire. Others tilt towards layers of rope, tight leather straps and isolation hoods. I think my dream scenario would be to combine the two, with heavy bondage and cuddling in front of a roaring fire. I really need to make that happen someday.

This image is by the artist Harry B, sourced via this tweet.

Warning Signs

Apologies for the lack of an update yesterday. This was due to me being collapsed on my couch in a post session haze of endorphins. I had my first session of 2020 yesterday, and Savannah Sly made it a highly memorable one. 

There are two key warning signs that something particularly painful is about to happen when playing. The first is if the domme briefly disappears to find a specific toy and reemerges with a particularly gleeful expression. Whatever she has found will not go well for you. The second sign is if she starts to do something, then pauses, and decides she needs to muffle your moans before proceeding. She might be concerned about the neighbors, but you should be more concerned with what’s about to happen to your delicate parts.

In the case of our session yesterday, the toy in question was Savannah’s medical stapler and (equally important) the staple removal tool. The muffling was required when she decided to apply it to the tip of the cock. Right over the urethral opening. Ouchy.

Here’s a different medical scene showing one of the more fun ways to muffle a patient’s screams. This is of course by the artist Rubex.

Delicious!

At first glance this seems like a perfectly ordinary photograph. Just an attractive masked lady drinking a can of La Croix in a kitchen while a naked man with strange headgear cooks in the background. I’m sure that counts as any Tuesday in Domina Yuki’s world. However, if you look closely, very closely, at the can in the original fullsized image, there is an subtle hidden message. For anyone whose device doesn’t let them zoom effectively, I’ve done the work for you here. There’s absolutely no danger of ever having a shortage of that particular product.

From this tweet in Domina Yuki’s twitter feed.

Jennifer Brooks

A final image in this vintage themed series of posts. Miss Brooks below is Jennifer Brooks who started out as a spanking model and gradually shifted into playing primarily dominant roles over time. I knew her from her work in the Leda videos from Ed Lee. I hadn’t realized until I start researching this post that she actually went on to start her own company for spanking films called Brooks Applications and also published the Femdom magazine Behind the Scene. You can see an example cover from Issue 4 (1993) of that here. 

I’m pretty certain I’ve browsed examples of her latter work, without actually realizing it wasn’t associated with Leda. My bad. She shut down her company just over 10 years ago in 2009. Whatever you’re doing now Miss Brooks, thanks for all the great magazines and videos you created over the years.

I feel I can’t complete this post without a callout to the text alongside the cane image above. It’s not often that kinky porn will include a phrase like “Guaranteed to break the will of the most wretched curmudgeon…” Kudos to whoever wrote that caption. As a man who sees curmudgeon in his future, I’d agree the cane is an excellent implement to break that particular affliction.Â