Looking Back

As part of my ten year kinkyversary I thought it’d be interesting to look back and try to figure out exactly who I’d played with over that time. I keep all my emails, so in theory I should be able to come up with a pretty accurate list. Actual sessions are way too numerous to count, but as far as people are concerned, I think the total is 37 different pro-dommes. On one hand that seems like a lot, but on the other hand, this is over a decade and spread across 9 different cities.

I wrote last year about my relative success rate in terms of identifying dommes I think I’ll have good session chemistry with. Looking at this list supports the rough estimates I made back then. There were 14 dommes who I played with once and didn’t feel that we had suitable chemistry. At the other extreme, there have been 11 dommes I loved playing with and always reached out to any time our paths crossed. The remaining 12 are dommes I’d like to play more with, but so far time, geography and circumstances have conspired against us.

Two other things also pop out from the list. Firstly, I’m surprised how many dommes on it are now retired from the profession. So if there’s someone you’ve always wanted to play with then I’d encourage you to reach out sooner rather than later. You never know when they’ll decide to hang up their whip (at least from a professional perspective).

The other thing that strikes me is the amazing diversity in styles, techniques and personalities. After all, this isn’t a random list. These are all pro-dommes I researched and decided would be a good fit for my kinks and preferred dynamic. When you browse pro-domme sites and see repeated common lists of activities and equipment you might be tempted to think the variance in play would be small. After all, when you think of other professional services – lawyer, doctor, masseuse  – you don’t expect massive variation between different providers. Yet that’s exactly what you find in the dynamics of a pro-domme session. Even the more creative professions, like a chef or an actor, don’t compare. The best analogy I can think of is a fine artist. An artist will have a distinctive personal style that is common to all their work, but every artist is unique in their own approach.

This is Mistress Eleise De Lacy, someone who definitely falls into the category of people I’d love to play more with, should time and space not conspire against us. We intersected once in Vancouver back in 2013, but since then she has been based in Europe and the opportunity for further play hasn’t presented itself. Should you be similarly constrained, she does have an OnlyFans site you can join for a virtual experience.

Kinkyversary

Today is a significant date for me. It’s exactly 10 years to the day from my very first session with a pro-domme. Which means it’s exactly 10 years from my first shared kinky experience and my first physical exploration of BDSM.

I wrote about the causative event for this a few weeks back. Despite the fact I made a decision to see a pro-domme before Christmas 2009, the anal retentive researcher that shares my brain took several weeks to figure out exactly who that should be. The final recommendation from my internal librarian was Lady Lydia McLane. I think a big part of that was the easy contact form she had on her website that simply allowed me to tick activity boxes rather than writing scary words in an email. The fact she was a stunningly attractive redhead might also have played a small part in the process. It turned out to be an inspired choice. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to guide me on the start of my kinky journey.

Lady Lydia has been retired for some years now. Her playspace, where I experienced so many of my kinky firsts, was razed and turned into condos. Such is the story of Seattle over the last decade. However, it did seem appropriate that I celebrated my kinkyversary tonight with another amazing Seattle domme – Savannah Sly. I hadn’t particularly planned to session on this specific date, but it ended up feeling appropriate that I did so. Particularly because we were playing in the same neighborhood, and I parked in almost exactly the same spot I did back on January 28th 2010.

My first session consisted mostly of a simple caning. Tonight’s also featured the heavy use of a cane, but Savannah also added paddles, staples, needles, electricity and breathplay into the mix. My kinky appetites have expanded somewhat over the last decade. What hasn’t changed is the joy each session brings me and the gratitude I feel to the dommes involved. They’ve literally changed my life.

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on my kinky journey to share in subsequent posts. In the meantime I’ll leave you with a shot of Lady Lydia that captures the essence of her play. Astonishingly beautiful, intensely sadistic and so happy in the moment.

This is Lady Lydia shooting for kink.com with EuroSex back in 2007.

Chained Hogtie

I typically group chains with handcuffs when it comes to bondage. They’ve got striking visual appeal, they sound great when you ratchet them tight or clink them against each other, but they’re not all that practical. If they’re tight then they’re uncomfortable and if they’re loose then they’re irrelevant.

However, I might have to make an exception for this hogtie set-up by Daddy An Li. The combination of leather and metal is smart, as you get the tight comfortable grip of the leather with the visual and psychological appeal of the chains. Plus, using chains with a hogtie creates the striking juxtaposition of his bent soft body against the tight unyielding metal. It’s a tough bondage position at the best of times and this really up the perceived intensity.

You can see more like this from Daddy An Li on her twitter feed and her Stars AVN site.

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.