The beauty of dominant women
The drawing below is by the artist Apollonia Saintclair. Her art is erotic and kinky rather than femdom, and has a very unique style. It’s explicit and sensual, but also surreal and off-kilter. If you’re interested to know more about her thoughts and approach, there’s a good interview here.
She has a tumblr here and you can purchase books or prints of her work here. I featured another of her drawings in this previous post.
After years spent in some of the stranger parts of the internet, I thought I knew pretty much all the sexual and kinky inclinations that were out there. This Broadly article on ecosexuality showed me how wrong I was, as it’s a kink I’d never previously encountered.
If I’m doing a BDSM scene in the ecofetishist or Sacred Sadism style, I’ll be the master gardener, and the slave may be the sapling. This configuration switches up the entire dynamic of what the BDSM scene looks like: I plant my sapling in the soil, take care of it, tend it, prune it, and tie it to a stake if it needs to stay up, or whatever.
– Genevieve Belleveau
While I’m all for respecting consent and doing effective scene negotiation, the authors concern for consensual interaction with a tree seems a little silly. There are many good reasons to take care of and respect trees in general, but unless there’s a Dryad around, I’m pretty certain negotiating consent isn’t possible.
Despite growing up in the English countryside, I’m an urban creature at heart, so I can’t say it appeals to me. Although I did have a domme use stinging nettles on my nipples and cock a few weeks back. That felt like a fine use of nature’s bounty.
In the femdom realm, I’d guess Poison Ivy would represent the definitive ecosexual domme. This artwork of her capturing both Batman and Superman is by artist taguiar.
I’ve posted in the past about my liking for images that are modified to scratch people’s specific kinky itches. Not so much for the images themselves, but for what it says about the variety of human desire and the endless drive to feed it.
This image is another case in point. It’s a particularly well done modification I think. The original is from 1910, by Carl Larsson and called ‘Brita in the drawing room‘. Obviously somebody triggered off the school ma’am look of Brita and decided to add a cane to the image. I didn’t actually realize it had been modified initially, and thought I’d stumbled up on an interesting new fetish artist. In hindsight, the contrast between her expression and the rest of her ensemble should have tipped me off.
I’m not sure if this Donald Trump themed Pee Party counts as political protest, art project or just kinky fun. Possible it’s all three. Regardless of that, my favorite bit in the story was Jeeves, Mistress Tara Indiana’s 80 year old personal chauffeur. I can only hope I’m still getting peed on by amazing dommes when (if) I reach that age. I wish him many wild and wet years to come.
I’m personally a little skeptical about the pee part of the Trump Russian story. I can totally believe he’d get involved in a sex sting operation. Everything we’ve seen suggests he’s impulsive, risk taking, doesn’t think long term, doesn’t believe the rules apply to him and is driven largely by the basic instincts of the lizard brain. Those characteristics, besides matching those of a psychopath, also match someone who’d jump into bed with a gaggle of attractive Russian escorts if they knocked on his hotel door. However, watersports are pretty specific fetish. Given his personality, if he was into them, I think we’d have heard about it from other and earlier sources.
This artwork is by the Japanese artist Namio Harukawa. Judging by his portfolio, he was somebody very much into watersports.
I thought I’d finish my short sequence of posts on femdom in history with one on Theresa Berkley. She was one of the earliest and most famous pro-dommes operating as we’d recognize the profession today. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m sure that kink and femdom has been around for thousands of years, but the desire alone doesn’t necessarily translate into a viable domination business. For that you need a wealthy urbanized society and a culture with at least some degree of sexual openness. The existence of that combination in 18th century London allowed Theresa to open a dedicated house of flagellation, which she stocked with furniture and toys of her own design.
Probably the most famous device she created was the Berkley horse, as shown in the illustration below. It allowed the client to tied to it for a beating on their rear, while still giving access to the face and genitals. Judging the following quote, some of her clients were pretty hardcore masochists…
A pound sterling for the first blood drawn, two pounds sterling if the blood runs down to my heels, three pounds sterling if my heels are bathed in blood, four pounds sterling if the blood reaches the floor, and five pounds sterling if you succeed in making me lose consciousness.
Five pounds sterling in 1800 translates to around five hundred and fifty pounds (720 US dollars) when adjusted for inflation, so not all that far off the current price for professional domination in London today. Although I doubt any pro-dommes these days will accept a bonus for making a client lose consciousness.
While the word dominatrix may have relatively recent coinage – as covered in yesterday’s post – the concept of femdom and male submission has been around a lot longer. It’s obviously impossible to know its true history, but given that sex, power and control have fascinated humans for thousands of years, I’m guessing kink has been around since we climbed out of the trees and decided to take an extended camping holiday on the plains of Africa.
Sadly those early humans haven’t left us a lot of information about their sex lives, but if you look to more recent recorded history, there’s no shortage of femdom. For example, the 12th century brings us the story of Phyllis and Aristotle. Although it features a famous Greek philosopher, the story is medieval in origin.
Aristotle advised his pupil Alexander to avoid the king’s seductive mistress, Phyllis, but was himself captivated by her. She agreed to ride him, on condition that she could play the role of dominatrix. Phyllis had secretly told Alexander what to expect, and he witnessed Phyllis proving that a woman’s charms could overcome even the greatest philosopher’s male intellect.
That’s a lot of kinks to pack into a short story. You’ve not only got femdom but also pony play, cuckolding, voyeurism and public humiliation.
This artwork of Phyllis and Aristotle, with Alexander looking on, is circa 1485 and is attributed to the German artist known as Master of the Housebook.
If you’re interested in to read more of the background to this story, and see more of the associated artwork, check out this blog post. The author attributes the historical popularity of the story to male anxiety of powerful women. That’s possible, but couldn’t it also be attributed to kinking on powerful women and an excuse to create femdom artwork in a socially acceptable context?
I don’t use the word dominatrix on this blog very often. In fact, WordPress tells me that this is the first post I’ve ever written with that particular title. Given that this is post number 2,334 on a blog exclusively about female domination, I find that kind of amazing.
While I generally prefer the word ‘domme’, which carries less cultural baggage, it’s undoubtedly true that ‘dominatrix’ is the word the mainstream world most strongly associates with femdom. But do you know where the modern usage derives from?
The word itself can be traced back to the 16th century. However, the original usage wasn’t sexual or related to kink at all. It simply referred to domination in the broadest possible sense. For example, a book from 1852 referred to France’s Napoleon as having been the dominatrix of Europe. Voltaire described destiny as the dominatrix of the gods, as the gods are of the world. Cassell’s Latin dictionary from 1892 defines a dominatrix as a woman who governs or rules (e.g. a town).
The first usage in the modern sense is a very surprising and obscure one. According to ‘The History & Arts of the Dominatrix‘ it was in a pulp paperback by Bruce Rogers called ‘The Bizarre Lovermakers’ published in 1967. Until I came to research this post I’d never heard of either that book or its author. A year later it was used as the title of a Myron Kosloff and Eric Stanton book, and then more broadly popularized in the 1976 porn film ‘Dominatrix Without Mercy‘. If you look at the usage of the word on Google books, it was very obscure until the late 1970’s, and then suddenly bursts into popularity through the 80’s and 90’s.
I think I’d always subconsciously assumed that dominatrix had a similar etymology as sadism and masochism. i.e. Coined by a well known author in a classic book from the 18th or 19th century. In actuality it was given its modern twist by an obscure pulp novelist from the 1960’s.
Here’s an image for anyone who prefers their femdom with a dose of sci-fi, fetish and dehumanization. As is often the case, clothing designers of the future will clearly favor hotness and style over practicality and warmth. That’s a trade-off I’m personally OK with, assuming everyone looks as good as this.
This is by the artist HamletMachine, creator of the comic Starfighter. A lot of her work seems to skew towards more yaoi style man on man action than femdom. If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can read about the comic here, buy prints here and there’s an interview with her here.
I’ve eaten at many amazing restaurants, but I’ve sadly never enjoyed a table with this kind of backdrop. I think it’s worth a Michelin star all on its own.
Google translates the text as “I take my male in patience” while Bing translates it as “I’m taking my male patient”. Neither one really sounds right, so if I’ve any French speakers out there who can help with a better translation, please let me know via a comment.
Update: Thanks for the many helpful comments on this. I’ll quote Mlle Sadie who gave this description…
This is a play on words. “Prendre son MAL (instead of MÂLE) en patience” is a French expression meaning to endure, with resignation, some pain (physical or psychological), some uncomfortable circumstance (think “pain in the ass”!).
So, mal (pain) and mâle (gender) are homonyms the artist has interchanged. The Woman thus endures Her male as/with a “pain in the ass”.
I believe the artist is known as Ladamen Rouge and this was created in Saint Etienne. Thanks to a helpful comment, this may also be be a collaborative piece with an street artist known as Miss Tic or Miss Trick.
A final concluding post (for the moment) on combining different sexual activities with being a dominant woman. I hadn’t planned this one, but then I saw this tweet from the dominant Miss Pearl and it was too perfect not to feature.
Good: I got more time to gag on his cock, which is a major fetish of mine.
Bad: I gagged on his cock so hard I deposited two tablespoons of throat goop on his dick with a bad plumbing noise and now I am shy.
Hopefully for Miss Pearl and her partner Brick it was only a passing shyness.
As I’ve said many times, there are no dominant or submissive activities. Only dominant or submissive attitudes. You can be a domme who loves gagging on cock or a submissive who enjoys tying someone up. What matters is what you bring to the activity and the dynamic you create.
I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for this artist.