Artwork – Page 44 – Femdom Resource

T & D

While I was slacking off in Vegas this past weekend it struck me that it was the ultimate tease and denial town. It dangles the idea of winning lots of money, but rarely follows through. It promises celebrity chefs running restaurants, when in reality all the chefs are off at their main spots in NYC, London, Paris or wherever. Clubs and bars are advertised on the basis of decadent and hedonistic delights, when they’re really just loud crowded rooms full of tourists. When it comes to sexual delights, stripping is the main industry, and that’s the ultimate in tease and denial. Lots of lithe flesh, and naked girls on laps, but no touching or any kind of sexual contact. For those into promised but undelivered pleasure it must be the ideal vacation spot.

I sound like I’m down on it, but I’m really not. I like visiting. I’m just way past the age where gambling, strip clubs and lining up for the latest hot club has any appeal. I like sitting in on a patio with a cocktail, catching up with friends and people watching. I used to think it was the place to go for no holds barred hedonism. Now I think of it as the blue balls capitol of the world.

This teasing image is called Guy Tickling and is by AleX00XelA.

Stick or Carrot?

After a couple of serious posts, here’s something a bit more lighthearted. Personally I’d be asking why does it have to be an either or choice? What’s wrong with some stick and carrot?

This is by ArrakisArt. The links at the bottom of the image no longer work, but you can find more of her artwork at this deviant art site.

Fetlife Fail

Fetlife has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. Somebody scraped a bunch of user data off it and published it on the open web. This wasn’t a hack. They simply created a normal free account, which just takes a few seconds, and then ran a script to browse the site and download user profiles accessible to all fetlife users. They claimed that this was to demonstrate the lack of security in Fetlife. That position was undermined somewhat by the fact that they only took data from female users under 30 years old and published it in a file called ‘The Fetlife Meatlist’.

Understandably this pissed a lot of people off leading to articles like this and this. While the person who did it is obviously an asshole, I can’t say I was particularly surprised. There have been numerous articles over the years highlighting this potential attack, as well as previous technical demonstrations of the approach. Of course that doesn’t much help the 99% of Fetlife users who are busy getting kinky rather than reading techy sex blog articles.

It’s tempting to say that you should expect anything published online to be public. That’s both true and missing the point. Privacy is not a binary concept. At one extreme you have things like password protected accounts for storing private cellphone photographs. At the other you have sites like reddit and blogs like this one. To access the former you need either a hacker or a security flaw in the storage system. To access the latter you just need a web browser and an internet connection. Neither provides guaranteed privacy, as a lot of celebrities recently found out. Yet expectations of the two are clearly different.

Social media sites like Fetlife and Facebook fall someone between those two extremes. The problem is that their business model of eyeballs and advertisers pulls them towards the openness of a reddit or a blog. The expectation of their users, particularly for a content sensitive site like Fetlife, pulls towards greater privacy and protection. To date it seems that Fetlife has biased towards its advertisers over its users. So yes, you should always work on the assumption that anything stored online may become public. But that doesn’t absolve Fetlife of the responsibility to strike the right balance between its business model and its users privacy.

In the meantime, if you do take kinky selfies, be careful how you share them. Although if anyone wants to send me some, I promise to be careful with them!

This is by the Belgium artist Benoit Feroumont, who posts his erotic work under the handle Gracy Gimp.

Blog page housekeeping

I’ve finally got around to do some tidying up on my blog page and blogroll. Dead blogs have been expunged, dormant blogs moved to the dormant section and tweaks made to any that moved. I’ve also added some new blogs both to the page and to the blog roll on the right.

Under the general femdom sections I’ve added…

Under the pro-domme section…

Under femdom art…

A couple of new non-English femdom blogs…

private femdom (German)
Venus in Furs (Dutch)

Finally, under general sex and kink…

If anyone has a blog they think I should consider then please leave a comment or fire me an email. I can’t guarantee I’ll include it or respond particularly promptly, but I’ll normally take the time to look at any interesting links I’m sent.

Adding Sardax’s blog gives me the perfect excuse to feature some more of his excellent artwork. This piece seems particularly appropriate as it features Mistress Sidonia, whose blog also occupies a popular spot on my blogroll. This is from a series of drawings called The Sardax Circus.

Black Widow

The new Avengers movie is out in a few weeks. While I enjoyed the last one, I thought it was a great comic book movie, rather than a great movie in its own right. As a big Joss Whedon fan I’m hoping this new one takes it up a notch. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Scarlett Johansson continue in her role as Black Widow. Joss has always done a great job with strong female characters, so this should really play to his strength.

The image below is from the cover of Black Widow #14. I’ve not read this particular comic, but it’s a fun image, despite the incredibly ineffectual gags on display. Somebody with BDSM experience should tell the artist that a professional like Black Widow would never use the cliched handkerchief gag. They’re hopeless at silencing people.

Cowgirl Contrast

Here’s a horseplay themed image that makes a striking contrast to the previous post. That was an understated elegant image. This is all sweat, passion, pain and naked jiggly body parts.

I’m afraid I don’t know who the artist is. Based on the style, I suspect it’s the same creative talent as this image.

I found this on the Old Erotic Art tumblr.

Pick a number

It’s not femdom related, but I found this article on estimating the percentages of LGB people an interesting one. In most important ways the actual number is irrelevant. It’s clearly millions of people, so I’m not sure why different groups get so riled up over the exact count. It’s the historical and scientific perspective that I find interesting. One thing that comes through clearly from the article is the difficulty in giving a binary answer to what’s not a binary situation. There’s also clearly shifts in the numbers that reflect both changes in public identification and changes in actual behavior.

The precision of the wording in these kind of surveys always makes me smile. In this case I particularly liked the phrase – “someone with whom you have had any genital contact intended to achieve orgasm”. That’s a smooth line to use in a bar – “Fancy coming back to my place? I’ve got a box of Franzia in the fridge and a smooth jazz CD in the stereo. Maybe we could have some genital contact with the intention of achieving orgasm?”

I wonder if there was a line in the survey that would fit these two ladies? I’m not sure about genital contact or the intention to achieve orgasm, but there’s definitely something pretty kinky going on.

I believe the artist is Chéri Hérouard aka herric.

Why wasn’t I told?

I’ve just discovered that Sardax has both a twitter account and a blog. As you’d expect, both contain many interesting images and thoughts. I’m stunned I’ve only just discovered them. Clearly I’ve been failing in my duty as a resource for all fine things femdom.

A refresh of my links and resources pages is obviously in order. I’ve been debating putting together a set of twitter links, and this suggests such a list is overdue. While I ponder the right way to handle that, I’ll leave you with an image from Sardax’s blog of Mistress Lucy Khan. I played with Mistress Lucy only a few weeks ago, so this seems a fitting piece of artwork to feature here.

Getting a good buzz going

Masochists come in all shapes and sizes. For example, I give you Dr Schmidt, inventor of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index which rates certain insects (hymenoptera) by the degree of pain their sting produces. Admittedly he’s an entomologist who studies these insects in the field, so getting stung is part of the job description. I also wouldn’t say that inventing a pain scale automatically makes you a masochist. If you’re a thoughtful scientist who gets stung that seems like a logical thing to do. I think the giveaway is the descriptions he gives the stings.

A Yellowjacket sting is apparently – “Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.” In contrast the Sweet Bee is – “Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. As if a tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.” Nobody can wrote those kind of descriptions without some appreciation for the pleasures of pain.

The above image is by the artist XRenderer. From the pot she’s holding I’m guessing these are supposed to be honey bees. According to Dr Schmidt they feel “like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.” I can’t imagine that can be too pleasant on a scrotum. Unless you like that kind of thing of course.

Sad day

I was very sad to read today about the death of author Terry Pratchett. He’d been suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s for some years, so it wasn’t particularly surprising, but that didn’t make it any less upsetting.

I’ve probably never mentioned it here, but his books are a regular part of my self-aftercare when playing and traveling. My vacations to various cities have a regular pattern. I meet and play with an interesting domme on an afternoon. I go for a beautiful meal in the evening. And, while enjoying a glass of wine and spacey on post scene endorphins, I read Terry Pratchett over diner. His gentle blend of humor, parody and witty references can make the end of a great day close to perfect.

His books have a great number of strong female characters (Esme Weatherwax, Gytha Ogg, Angua, Tiffany Aching, Susan Sto Helit, etc), but not a lot of kinky references. The most obvious one I could remember comes from The Light Fantastic. He’s just introduced a female warrior into the storyline…

“Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one’s shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, tightboots and naked blades.
Words like ‘full’, ‘round’ and even ‘pert’ creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold shower and a lie down.
Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn’t about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialized buyer.
Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling’s Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword.
All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black.”

Terry Pratchett from the Light Fantastic

I’ll leave you an image of another of Sir Terry’s memorable female characters – Adora Belle Dearheart. She’s forceful, opinionated, sarcastic, dresses severely and has been known to put men in hospital with her spiked heels. Just the kind of woman I think my readers would appreciate.

This image is by the artist Rubendevela. Her character is a support and aid to Golems, which explains the large hand holding the ashtray behind her.