Tag: Artwork

The Two Kinkster Problem

I’ve finally got time to get back to my post from last week entitled ‘Pick a Side‘. That was all about the morals and ethics of certain kinky activities. Is it reasonable to cast some kinks as wrong or bad, while falling back on the argument of ‘as long as its consensual adults, its OK’  for other kinks?

I got some interesting comments, which prompted me to think more on the issue, and come up with a thought experiment. Let’s call it ‘The Two Kinster problem.’

Mistress Mary and Submissive Sam, both risk aware consensual adult kinksters, enter their own deserted, well equipped private playspace and close the door behind them. An hour later they emerge sweaty, breathless and happy. They both tell you that they had a great time, and you ask them what they did. At this point, is there anything they can say that’ll make you think they did something ethically or morally wrong?

There’s obviously no incorrect answer. I’m just curious what answers or comments readers might have to the question.

When it comes to philosophical questions, I only know of one famous philosopher with a femdom connection  – Aristotle. I’ve covered the story of him and Phyllis previously. This particular image of them is by the French painter Étienne Jeaurat.

Intermission

I had intended to write some followup thoughts to yesterday’s post. Unfortunately, I ended up spending too long in the kitchen tonight. The chicken escabeche, roast potatoes and spicy arugula salad that resulted was well worth it, but I ran out of blogging time. I’ll therefore offer up this rather lovely artwork by way of an intermission. This is by the Spanish artist Anna Dart.

Update: Via a comment Ferns pointed out that this is actually based on a photograph of David and Victoria Beckham. Oddly enough, I  featured that original photograph in a post just over a year ago.

Pick a Side

Apologies if you’ve one of the tiny handful of people who follow me on twitter, as this post is going to be a rehash of a twitter rant I posted there recently. The tweets were an experiment to see if I could use twitter threads for thoughts longer than 280 characters, and if I’d get better engagement with them. The answers were respectively ‘not easily’ and ‘no’, so I think blog posts will remain my primary form of expression.

The rant in question was brought about by multiple social media arguments I’d seen on controversial kinky activities. Topics like race play, extreme age play, incest porn/roleplay and nazi outfits. All these arguments ultimately boiled down to two basic viewpoints. On one side was ‘as long as its consensual, adults can fantasize about anything’, on the other was ‘this activity has serious implications and you’re selfish/evil for treating it as way to get off’. I think both of those can be defensible opinions. What struck me as crazy was people flipping between the two depending how they felt about the topic in question.

The ‘as long as its consensual’ view is basically a get of jail free card. It’s a perspective that puts kinky play in its own little bubble, with no obvious relationship between what happens in the bubble and the outside world. If you believe it, then you can do a non-con sex roleplay, and not think you’re encouraging rape. Or beat someone and not spend any time wondering if you’re encouraging violence. That’s a valid viewpoint in my opinion, but it’s important to realize, it’s activity agnostic. You can’t logically claim your kinks live in a bubble where consent is all that matters, but arbitrary other kinks don’t.

On the other side, I think it’s also reasonable to argue that kinks very much interact with a broader social context. For example, one could discuss the intersection of race play and racism. However, if you’re going to do that, it means all kinks have to be considered in that context. That means a lot of kinks become potentially problematic, and require deeper analysis and justification. I typically don’t see anyone out there wanting to do that work for their personal favorite kinks.

In actuality, what consistently happens is that people play the ‘as long as its consensual’ card for their favorite kinks, and then try to withhold it when the activity in question gives them yucky feelings. Which seems broken to me. Either play the card consistently and let others do the same, or don’t play it at all.

In the femdom realm the combination of cross-dressing and humiliation is one of those controversial topics that can trigger a similar ‘consensual adults’ versus ‘this is wrong’ debate. The artwork here is by Voloh.

Pegging Problems

Dan Savage’s advice column is always worth reading. This weeks column caught my eye because it featured a man who enjoyed being pegged and his partner who very occasionally, when the stars aligned, enjoyed doing the pegging. Dan’s advice about talking more and carving out dedicated time was good and wise. However, I did think he missed a trick by not following up on this part of her letter…

I just want to get it over with and move on with our day, not deal with the pageantry of dress up, stiletto heels, collars and cuffs, lubricating buttholes, graduating to bigger dildos in a session, etc.

I’m not averse to a bit of femdom pageantry myself, but it’s always a nice optional bonus when time and circumstances allow, not the main event. You can have a mind blowing pegging scene with just a simple lubricated strap-on. If time and energy are the issue, then cut the fluff rather than dropping the entire event. Hell, if anal play is the goal, then just a disposable glove, a bit of lube and an enquiring finger (or two) can create amazing sensations.

Despite the fact that I’m lucky enough to experience a lot of femdom dress up and elaborate scenes, my personal pegging fantasy features absolutely no kinky accouterments at all. I always picture a snuggly Sunday morning, when our only plans are to sleep in, read the papers and for me to cook Sunday dinner. I’m happily dozing as my partner slips out to grab her harness and slide back into bed with me. There’s no ropes, leather or stiletto’s. Just some nibbling, nuzzling and hot, intimate sex, that happens to be a pegging scene. I guess we always fantasize about what we don’t have.

This pegging artwork is by Jas. She has a Patreon you can support here and merchandise available here.

Baby Bird

This 1970’s Japanese Femdom image comes courtesy of Bacchus at ErosBlog. In his original post he mentions the prevalence of spitting in modern porn and how it’s often used to add a note of humiliation into a scene. That’s certainly true, and it’s not a kink that does much for me. However, I think that spitting can be a surprisingly flexible act. Much like a golden shower scene, it can work as humiliation, reward or intimacy at a distance.  It just depends where you direct it.

One spitting technique that’s particularly fun is ‘baby bird’. That’s where the domme carefully drops her spit into the open mouth of the submissive. Done with a snarl it could of course be humiliating, but its typically more an offering dynamic. It’s an intimate act, a reward, but with a sense of control and distance from the domme. Where tease and denial meets kissing. A neat variation on it is for the domme to take a swig of water and then trickle it into the mouth of the submissive. This pushes much the same buttons, but has the added advantage of being able to hydrate a submissive in the middle of a scene when he’s still tied up. I will add, from personal experience, that throwing an open mouth gag into the mix makes this kind of scene particularly hot.

The most evil thing…

I was sad to learn that Mistress Cynthia Stone has decided to retire. She was a fabulous domme, and someone I did many interesting sessions with. That included things like casting, piercing all over the body, a unique birthday card and one of the best double sessions I’ve ever had (with Inga Larsson). She also takes the credit for what I think is the most evil thing a domme ever did to me.

Anyone who has ever played with me knows I’m pretty ticklish. It’s not a kink of mine, just a fact of life. While I don’t particularly get off on being tickled, I do enjoy the glee some dommes get from tickling me. It tends to generate a lot of involuntary movements and vocal responses, which as far as I can tell is the equivalent of domme catnip. In the scene in question, I was flat on my back, tied in some places, but with my legs and feet free. Cynthia was moving around me, poking and prodding in various painful ways, and ended up at my feet with a surgical scalpel in her hand. She slipped the blade into the gap between my big and index toes, holding it against the taut skin so I could feel it, and told me I better keep still if I didn’t want to get cut. Then she tickled my feet.

Ahead of time, I would have sworn it was absolutely impossible for me to be tickled like that and not jerk my feet. It turns out that what’s possible is just a matter of the right incentives. All those ‘involuntary’ movements were magically suppressed and my foot moved not a single fraction of an inch. Mind over matter.

Later, after I’d had chance to think about it, I said “That was just a mindfuck, right? You turned the blade so it was the blunt side down. You weren’t really going to cut between my toes were you?” She looked at me like I was crazy. Apparently it had always been sharp side down.

I’ve done plenty of scenes that were a lot more painful than that one, but I can’t think of any individual activity that was quite as creatively evil as that scalpel move. So good luck Cynthia with whatever life brings you in the future. I’ll miss your sadistic creativity and devilish imagination. Thanks for all the great sessions.

When it comes to predicament bondage and ticking, there’s one artist who immediately springs to mind – Augustine. This particular work is from his tumblr.

You’re a dirty, dirty voter

Given the US midterms are upon us (Go Vote! Go Vote!) it seems an appropriate time to feature this article by Justin Lehmiller on the differing sexual fantasies of liberals and conservatives. Lehmiller, who is a fellow at the Kinsey institute, surveyed thousands of American adults and discovered that while the frequency of fantasizes is shared, the subject matter isn’t.

Republicans thought a lot about swinging, infidelity, orgies and cuckolding. In contrast Democrats kinked on BDSM, masochism and D/s dynamics, leading Stephen Colbet to have some fun with the survey on his show.  Lehmiller attributes these differences to a theory called reactance, where people are drawn to what is forbidden to them. So conservatives, who traditionally support strong social structures and group cohesion, are drawn to activities that would disrupt that. Liberals, who prioritize individual freedom and caring for others, are similarly excited by dynamics that impose control and punishment. I’m not quite sure where that leaves people like myself, who find all of the above exciting. Does that make me a swing voter or just a pervert?

I hadn’t intended to turn this into yet another book themed post, but the discussion of conservative and liberal values reminds me of one of the best books I read this year – The Righteous Mind.  This is a total aside, as it’s not related to kink at all, but if you’re at all interested in psychology and how people reason about politics and religion, it’s absolutely worth reading. As someone from the liberal side of the fence it definitely gave me a better understanding and appreciation of the conservative mindset.*

In the spirit of bipartisanship, I’ll leave you with an image that should appeal to all. There’s clearly an orgy and voyeuristic angle here, as well as a BDSM one. It’s by sylverarts.

* I should qualify that when I talk about the conservative mindset, I’m talking about the traditional conservative values, not what Trump and the GOP have morphed them into. Trump is to conservatism as Bernie Madoff is to the financial planning industry.

Book Club

I’ve had a variety of book related links come my way recently, so I thought I’d gather and share them via a post.

Ferns has published volume 2 of her Happy Femdom Stories.  She’s shared a series of these on her blog and they always put a big smile on my face. There’s a huge amount of fantasy and professional femdom content online, but very few positive stories about real femdom relationships, so I love what Ferns is doing here.

Domina Jen is working on a book of her own and using Patron to support it. Check that out if you enjoy her writing and want to interact with her as the novel progressed.

Miranda Birch sent me a link to her site and asked if I’d feature her femdom fiction here. She has a large back catalog of work covering all sorts of kinky femdom scenarios, so that might be worth a look if you’re after new erotica.

Finally, I enjoyed this article on the passage of the bill that decriminalized sex work in New Zealand. There’s an associated book ‘My Body, My Business‘, featuring the stories of sex workers and their thoughts on the industry that’s due out later this month. That’s one to add to my Christmas list.

This pin-up librarian is by the American artist Gil Elvgren.

Imagine the Spinoffs

It is generally said that all technology innovation is either driven by sex or quickly co-opted for sexual purposes. Apparently, at least according to this SMBC comic, the telegraph was no exception. Perhaps morse code should be a new mode option for Tens units?

As an interesting but sad historical sidenote – Samuel Morse was actually inspired to explore rapid long distance communication after his wife died and he missed her final days and burial. Heartbroken that he’d not been informed of her failing health, he set himself to create something faster than a man on a horse carrying a letter.

Lady of Mystery

I believe it’s compulsory around this time of year for blogs like this to post a sexy Halloween picture. It’s part of the contract you sign with the domain registrar. Or possibly the web hosting company. Somebody certainly requires it if you want to go on blogging.

I’ve done my bit in the past, but I generally not a happy Halloween participant.  So here’s something a little different to the usual big breasted horror movie character. While not an obvious mystical theme, I think the woman has a mysterious dark witchiness to her. She looks like she might have a beautiful modern house, with an extensive underground wine cellar, and you should pay no attention to the oddly out-of-place iron manacles or the strange chalk markings on the floor down there. Now run along and fetch her another bottle of that dark claret she loves so much.

This is by the artist Jn3 and you can see a lot more of his elegant work on his tumblr ‘Lost in the Echo‘. You can also buy prints here.