Tag: Artwork

More bad news from D.C.

This report – US internet firms drop opposition and back bill to fight online sex trafficking – sounds like very bad news for sex workers of all types. On the face of it, with no additional context, it appears to have a laudable aim. After all, who could be in favor of sex trafficking? The problem is that government and law enforcement aren’t good at distinguishing between consensual and non-consensual sex work. And that’s putting the best possible spin on it. A more realistic view would be that they deliberately obfuscate regular sex work with sex trafficking.

The problem for the morality police (literal and figurative) is that sex work is a complex issue for many people. There are a lot of shades of grey and not a big majority for interfering with what consensual adults do in their own time. In contrast, attacking sex trafficking – which is by definition non-consensual – is always going to get a lot of support. So claim that all sex work is inherently trafficking and bingo, instant leverage to impose your morality regardless of reality.

The bill amends the Communications Decency Act to remove protection for online service providers if third parties us them to assist, facilitate or support sex trafficking. You don’t have to be Cassandra to see the chilling effect that might have. Given the tendency of law enforcement to define sex trafficking in the broadest possible terms, and given tech firms tendency to want to avoid any kind of sex related controversy, the pressure will be to remove any and all sex work related content. After all, how is Google to know that the pro-domme whose website they’re linking to hasn’t been trafficked? Or what about that pro-dommes web hosting company? Or how about the sites sex workers advertise on (e.g. Slixa or Eros)? It only needs one case that law enforcement can distort into a trafficking scenario and suddenly they’ll be potentially liable.

As you’d expect the Sex Workers Outreach Project is against it as is the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  If you’re a US citizen I’d encourage you to either contact your state representative about the bill or donate to organizations like SWOP or EFF to fight it.

I’ve no idea what image is appropriate for a piece like this, so I’ll leave you with a shot of a woman doing to a man what politicians do to the electorate. The difference being, he’s actually enjoying it.

This is by the artist Sheggy.

Who told you to stop?

This is from a Lezhin webcomic series called Sadistic Beauty, written by Yunhee Woo and drawn by Geumsan Lee. You can see more panels from the same sequence in this tumblr post. I don’t know anything about it, other than what you see here, but this sequence definitely make me want to explore it further. The first few episodes are free, and after that it’s just a buck or so an episode.

Slutty Witch

It’s Halloween in the US, which means only one thing in the paltego household. I’m curled up with a bottle of red wine, safe in the knowledge that there’s a condo concierge, a key locked elevator and a thick door between me and the hordes of ravenous tiny people roaming the streets for candy. Nobody can accuse me of not getting into the festival spirit – namely because I steer clear of everyone on these kind of occasions. I am the E. Scrooge of Halloween, minus the annoying ghosts and the last minute change of heart.

The other thing Halloween means is lots of shots on twitter of professional kinksters wearing fetish gear to parties. That seems like cheating to me. It’d be like Superman turning up at a fancy dress party dressed as Superman. Sure, it’s an unusual outfit, but shouldn’t your costume be something different to what you normally wear? Although come to think of it, Clarke Kent dressing as Superman for the Daily Planet Halloween party would actually be a great costume.

Anyway, for those that do celebrate the festival, I hope you had a great time. I’ll leave you with this from the War and Peas comic series.

The one where I vent on a deeply stupid article

I’m happy that BDSM and kink are gradually getting more mainstream exposure. I know some people like the thrill of doing something somewhat illicit, or enjoy being in a secret club that is hard to join, but that never appealed to me. In a philosophical sense I’m a ‘more the merrier’ type  -while being a ‘get the hell out my face and leave me alone’ type in the literal day-to-day sense.

Unfortunately, the problem with more people being aware of kink is that more people are going to write stupid stuff about it. Even worse, they’re going to conflate it with abusive behavior and offer protective cover to assholes who treat people like shit. As a case in point I give you this Rolling Out article on R Kelly and his abusive relationship with Kitti Jones. It’s based on a Rolling Stone article that couldn’t be more cut and dried. It describes classic abuser behavior of isolation, degradation of self-worth, emotional manipulation, finding fault, jealousy, etc. It could be used as a case-study on abusive behavior. Yet somehow, from all that, Rolling Out magazine decides a great article title would be ‘Are women victims or willing BDSM submissives?‘

The articles final paragraph is jammed with so much stupid bullshit it’s hard to pick out a single quote. Perhaps this is the best, by which I mean absolute worst.

However, the description of Kelly and the multiple women he has been involved with seems to fall into what is known as domination and submission. Kelly can be considered a dom, in these relationships if the women are to be believed.

If the women are to believe, Kelly can be considered an abusive manipulative asshole. It’d be bad enough to try and connect his behavior to a consensual BDSM relationship based on his statements. To try and make that connection via what the women have said is insane.

I’ve no idea what the solution to this kind of journalism is, other than kinksters doing their best to educate people about the importance of negotiation and consent whenever they get the chance. I’ve also no idea what would a suitable image to accompany this kind of post. Maybe this one of a woman responding in the correct way to a man trying to pull off any stupid bullshit in a relationship?

Heavens Above!

I swear a fair amount in daily life. I always find a well placed curse word to be highly satisfying. Typically I never use religious expressions – except when I’m playing. No idea why that is. While I might scatter the odd ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ around my daily screw-ups, bend me over and beat my ass, and suddenly I’m muttering ‘Oh, God’ and “Jesus! That hurt.’

There are probably some deep psychological issue at work here. Possibly having a domme in charge brings the idea of a higher power to mind. In the meantime I should probably avoid playing with committed Christians. They might take offense and beat me even harder, leading to an endless spiral of blasphemy and increasing violence.

This gentleman seems to be invoking an entire pantheon of higher powers. I’m afraid I don’t have an original source for the image.

More Yapoos

I’m not sure if 11Dutch spotted my post from yesterday or it’s just great blogging karma, but a year after his last Yapoo themed post, he has just put up another one in his series. Even better, he has managed to find someone working on an English translation of the original novel. There are only 3 chapters completed to date (out of a total of 14), but that’s a good start and I’m going to enjoy catching up with what’s there already.

My thanks to 11Dutch for his excellent find and to the translator N A Feathers for the work to date. This is also gives me a chance to feature some more pictures from the Team Rinryu site. I try and avoid posting their more extreme material on my front page, so I’ll go with a couple of drawings from their blog that were obviously based on the Yapoo themes.

Better Than Life (final)

An interesting post on the liberating experience of VR porn from a trans man perspective got me thinking about femdom and VR again. I previously posted about my experiences with it, current niches it was suited for and the potential for combining it with e-stim technology.  I’ve been meaning to write a post on its future potential, and I guess this is going to be it.

My first prediction is that the VR future will be interactively rendered scenes that you can move around in, rather than simple 3D recorded movies. The latter are fun to try, but in many ways emphasize the limits of the medium rather than play to its strengths. So with that assumption taken, let’s make some simple technology projections…

  • Headsets will get lighter, wireless and offer better quality displays.
  • Computers will be able to create interactive VR scenes and people that are indistinguishable from recorded film.
  • Motion and facial capture will be able to accurately capture movement and gestures using simple cameras with no fancy bodysuits or reflective dots.
  • Speech technology will support voice warping to mimic any particular intonation/pitch required.
  • Somebody will build something similar to the kind of e-stim device I described here. It won’t mimic touch or allow you to feel virtual surfaces, but it will be able to create interesting and complex sensations across your body.

None of these things require any new technology breakthrough. They’re simply extensions of what’s already happening. The last one is probably the most risky projection, and that’s only because it’s a niche product that doesn’t have the obvious mass market applications of the others. If you put all these pieces together, what kind of experience could you create?

Imagine two people located in different parts of the world but sharing a virtual space of their choosing. The environment visualization and their embodiments in it are indistinguishable from reality. Their headsets are light and untethered, meaning they can freely move around. As they do so, the system captures the body position and facial expressions and mimics them in the space. A bow, a wagged finger or a blown kiss are perfectly captured. Their bodies and clothes can be whatever they want them to be. They can talk and their voices will be modified to a desired intonation. They can’t touch one another but, using a mixture of computer controlled e-stim and vibration devices, they can create complex and interesting sensations across their physical bodies. A particular gesture could be a gentle tickle, a sharp zap or a wave of pulses and vibrations. Would all that be a compelling experience?

I guess some people might see that as a depressing scenario. Two isolated people surrounded by technology in a fake space pretending to be someone they’re not. Personally I think it’d be incredibly liberating and empowering. It’d allow experimentation with roles and a sense of self. Gender, age and appearance all become malleable. It’d allow complex long-distance relationships and allow people to escape physical or geographical limitations. It could be used for everything from casual chatting and hookups through to complex roleplay and storytelling. It’d be fun as hell. Like creating your own Gollum, but in realtime and with a much sexier character. Unless your idea of sexy is a slimy, hairless grey creature, in which forget that last part.

I’m sure the sex industry would also quickly figure out a commercial angle. People already pay cam girls and pro-dommes for live streaming sessions. Imagine if, rather than in a 2D computer window, they were suddenly sitting on the couch next to you. And the couch was in the middle of an orgy in ancient Rome. Of course the beautiful domme sitting next to you with the sultry voice might actually be a 60 year old guy in Wichita.  But at least that means people previously shut out of the sex industry because of gender/age/appearance would now have new opportunities to shine.

Not all of this is going to happen in the next year or two. But I’d be amazed if it hadn’t been realized in the next five to ten years.

This 3D rendered image was created by xrenderer in 2007. It still looks pretty good, but in computer years, that’s an eternity ago.

Bondage Trio

My last couple of posts were joking about ‘arty’ monochrome shots created from porn. To flip that around, here’s some serious monochromatic artwork in a kinky theme, created by Hélène Planquelle, based on photographs from Stéphane Arnoux. This image shows three different drawings put together. You can see larger versions of each piece in this tumblr post.