Artwork – Page 49 – Femdom Resource

Sharing her toy

Here’s a piece of art that I suspect will divide my readers into two distinct groups of ‘love it’ and ‘hate it’. I’m in the former, as I love the connection between her and the submissive. There’s his plaintive look, the eye contact, her hand on his head and his hand around her thigh. Pure man on man action doesn’t do much for me, but add a feminine element into the mix and somehow it works. I know for others the prospect of sweaty man sex is always a deal breaker.

The image puts me in mind of a story called Basement Suite by Orestes. If you like the image you might want to check that out. And if you like that story, I’d also suggest Equal Partners by the same author. That has similar themes with some cross dressing and forced feminization thrown into the mix.

The image is signed ‘Galuss’, but I’m afraid I’ve failed to track down any information at all on that artist. The only examples I’ve found with similar names look completely different in style. If you know anything about the artist then please leave me a comment. I found it originally on the Felm Cyber tumblr.

Normal service will be resumed shortly

I believe the last week or so has been my slowest posting rate since I started this blog. A double header of vacation and sickness will do that for you. Fortunately I’m back in Seattle now, and so if I can just shake off this damn bug, I can get back to posting more normally.

Despite my germ cursed state, I did manage to indulge in some kinky play in San Francisco. I’ll be blogging about that in coming posts. I’ve also some photographs and a short video to share, assuming I can figure out how to edit and convert it appropriately. In the meantime, while I go hunt down some NyQuil, I’ll leave you with something that made me smile. I think it’s by the artist Bathgate21 who also did this drawing. Pepé Le Pew is notorious for not taking ‘No’ as an answer. Perhaps some time as bottom to Bugs will cure him of that.

Perversity (of the wrong kind)

Most of my posts tend to the positive and upbeat. This one might be a bit more of a rant. Let’s put a nicer spin on it, and call it constructive feedback. It’s aimed squarely at dominants and centers on something that has happened to me too many times to be a coincidence.

Here’s my ~~rant~~ feedback: When you’re playing with someone fairly new, and that person has outlined a few limits (hard or soft) to stay away from, then stay the hell away from those limits. Don’t try and figure out exactly where the line is drawn. Don’t try and determine exactly what about the activity makes it a limit. Don’t toy with anything vaguely related. Just avoid, avoid, avoid.

I’m not a submissive with a lot of limits. When I look at a typical list of play activities, it’s quicker for me to list what I will not do rather than what I will. I’ve a soft limit with hoods and claustrophobia, I’ve a hard limit on humiliation, and I’ve a slightly screwed up lower back that makes extreme bondage positions tricky. That’s about it. Not a lot to remember. Yet multiple times in the last couple of years I’ve played with new dommes who, having been given this list, proceeded to flirt with activities that ran awfully close to these problem areas.

The last time it happened was a couple of months ago. It was my first time I’d played with this particular dominant. Not fifteen minutes into the session, and after my standard limits discussion, she pulled out a hood and asked if it’d be OK because it had both mouth and eye holes. Suddenly I’m thrown out of my happy subby mindset and into evaluation mode. How scary does it look? Can I handle it? Is it an integral part of the scene she wants to try? It would have been fine to show the hood pre-scene to get my opinion, but why bother suggesting it after we started to play? I ended up refusing and it made absolutely no difference to how the scene unfolded.

A similar thing happened towards the end of last year. It was again someone fairly new to me and, after mentioning my screwy back, she proceeded to try for a really awkward bondage position. She had me on my back on the floor, knees pulled up towards my shoulders and my arms pulled down towards where my feet would normally be. After pointing out that this wasn’t a great position for me she gave up on the plan, but it seemed so unnecessary to attempt it at all. Maybe we could have got it to work given time, but I estimate there are around three million and seven safe positions to tie me into, so why try for the tricky number three million and eight?

None of the examples (and I have multiple others) felt like deliberate attempts to break a boundary. It just seemed the limits discussion planted ideas, and that saying “Heavy X is a limit” somehow translated into “… but let’s do light X!”. This seems perverse to me, and not in the good way. Assessing intensity or risk is very hard with someone you don’t know. Much better to stay as far away as possible from potential minefields. Just because someone has handed you a map, doesn’t mean you need to go up to the minefield boundary and start jumping up and down. There’s no shortage of other interesting places to explore.

This artwork by Shohei Yamashiro manages to capture both hoods and an awkward position to bend a slave into. Now if you can just imagine she’s calling him a worthless fool, it’ll have nailed 3 of my personal limits.

Fisting injuries

Apparently fisting can be dangerous. If you’re not careful the dominant might end up laughing so hard that she bumps her head. That’s at least according to this post by Rain DeGrey.

I’ve never tried fisting and, after reading her post, I can’t say I’m in a big hurry to. The intensity of it sounds a little intriguing but more disturbing. I’ve gone icy cold during heavy play, and experienced pins and needles in non-constricted extremities as my body pulls back blood into its core. But I’ve never experienced the kind of brief blindness that Rain describes. I suspect that would freak me the hell out.

The charming sequence of images below are by the artist Gracy Gimp. They are actually from a sequence of 9 images titled Adèle & Lambert. Shown below is the first four and the very final one (click to enlarge any of them). The missing intermediate drawings are numbered 5, 6, 7 and 8.

La Maupin

A recent Max Fisch thread was discussing the topic of dominant women in history. Who are the most obvious or the most famous? Obviously one has to be careful assigning the idea of sexual dominance to a public persona. Queen Boudica might have led a rebellion against the Romans, and have become a leading female figure in British history, but the books don’t tell us what she enjoyed doing with her husband Prasutagus. Maybe she enjoyed being spanked in the dull moments between slaughtering Romans? After all, we don’t automatically assume that success in a man implies a particular sexual preference.

That caveat aside, I think my top pick for a dominant woman from history would be Julie d’Aubigny, otherwise known as La Maupin. She was famous as a swordswomen, a singer, an actress, a lover and someone who generally buckled a lot of swash. There’s a good article on her here, another written for frat boys here and a wikipedia article here. Somebody even turned her life into a play.

My favorite story about her would be when she dressed as a nun to break into a convent in pursuit of her lover. The girl in question had been hidden there by her parents, not anticipating that La Maupin would break in, fake the girls death, set fire to the place and then escape with her love (temporarily) in tow. My second favorite story would be the duel she fought against three men, beating them all and injuring their leader. Who she then nursed back to health and started a passionate love affair with. I think whatever definition you care to use for a dominant woman, Julie d’Aubigny would qualify.

I believe this image is of her duel with Louis-Joseph d’Albert de Luynes, son of the Duke of Luynes. That would be the gentleman she injured in a duel and who ended up as a life-long love.

Wise words from the web

There have been a number of thoughtful and interesting blog posts popping up recently. Obviously that doesn’t include anything from this particular location, but several posts from my blogroll have caught me eye.

Firstly, Miss Pearl came up with 33 things every submissive man should know. This is territory that a lot of bloggers have covered in the past, but rarely as succinctly and effectively as Miss Pearl has done here. In a similar advisory vein Ferns tackled the tricky issue of ‘How does a sub say no‘. There’s not easy answer to that, but Ferns does a nice job of exploring the complexities of it. HMP and Dymion delivered a rare double header on the subject of ‘Longevity in D/s relationships’. The original post started over HMP’s blog and Dymion followed it up with his thoughts. Both provided some thoughtful commentary. Finally, Kaya wrote about a very emotional and complex scene from her past. It’s not femdom, and her relationship to BDSM is quite different to my own, yet I found the post fascinating.

In other blog news I was happy to see that Constanze Borgia has started updating her site again. She’s been busy helping out an animal charity, and I’m sure she’d be grateful to anyone who contributed.

I’ve also added the ‘Girl on the Net‘ blog to the ‘Sex & Kink Blogs’ section of my blogroll on the right. It’s more sexy fun times rather than BDSM, but I’ve enjoyed reading it. Plus, the eponymous girl is British and some of her phrases and cultural references points make me smile and think of home.

I’ve no idea what picture is suitable for such a wide range of material, so here’s a naked lady with a whip. You can never go too far wrong there.

This image is appropriately entitled Whip, is by the artist RedPandaDee.

Emergency procedures

I just had a really wonderful scene with Lydia. Many needles and much moaning on my part was involved. However, I don’t want to talk about that tonight. Instead I want to talk about a bad scene. A scene with an abusive asshole of a dominant. Specifically, this scene described by Little Dorky Cyclops. I’m not going to try and summarize it, so feel free to go read it if you want the rest of this post to make sense.

I have to admit that a few years ago, when I was not particularly young and still stupid, I would have been sympathetic but bemused by that scene description. I would have been the idiot saying “Why not just safeword? That’s what it’s for.” Now that I’m definitely older and possibly wiser, I get it. I don’t play in public and I’ve been lucky enough to encounter very few bad dominants. I’ve only really had one session go seriously sour on me (described here and here), but I still completely understand LDC’s reaction in the scene. It’s tough to switch gears and take control back from a dominant. You’re fighting the natural dynamic of the scene and a desire to do your bit to make it work. It’s always tempting to think it’ll get better, that that you just need to hang on till the endorphins kick in. It’s easy to safeword on cramping or going numb, but this scene was a far more complex dynamic, with social pressure added into the mix as well.

Obviously the dominant here – Jefferson is his fetlife handle (aged 50, in NYC) – behaved abusively and there are serious questions the people who attended the event should be asking themselves. Hopefully making this public reduces his chances of going to other events and repeating the process, although given he’s done it before I’m not optimistic. From a submissive (and possibly selfish) perspective it makes me wonder what I can do to avoid getting caught in a similar situation. Even assuming the BDSM community can do a better job of policing itself (big assumption), bad dominants will continue to be a fact of life. So what are good self-defense techniques for a submissive to practice?

In a weird way this problem puts me in mind of a common problem in computer systems, namely handling backup and recovery when disaster strikes. I know that sounds like a bizarre connection, but stick with me on this. The problem computer users often have isn’t defining the recovery process or setting up the emergency systems, it’s making sure they work when needed. They’re hard to test properly and are rarely used. Unfortunately when you need them, you need them to work flawlessly, the first time of asking and in the most difficult circumstances. That’s a really bad combination. Typically people find out their recovery system isn’t working the first time they try and use it.

I wonder if submissives face a similar problem? They have a theoretical mechanism for safety, but the only time they use it is when they’re already in a bad situation. That’s exactly when you want to fall back to a frequently used and easily deployed mechanism, not step further into the unknown.

I’ll continue this post tomorrow with a few more thoughts. Feel free to leave comments until then. I’ll finish with what seems like an appropriate image. Thanks to Little Dorky Cyclops we’ve found out about some of that lurking evil in one particular man.

This image is by the artist Ybar. I found it on the Velvet Underground tumblr.

Paddling the pigskin

I’m back again in Seattle after suffering through a much delayed flight. Apparently in my absence some sort of sporting event occurred. I’m with Dan Savage on this particular issue…

The team that happens to be located in the city I happened to relocate to 20 yrs ago for non-football-related reasons is ahead!
From Dan’s Twitter Feed

I’ve actually been a 49ers fan since I was a kid, so I lost most of my interest in the proceedings after the NFC championship game a couple of weeks ago. However, it does give me a chance to feature some football themed femdom. Perhaps the Denver cheerleaders should have given this a shot? It certainly would have made for a more entertaining show, and it couldn’t have made things any worse.

I’m afraid I don’t know the artist. I found it on the Femdom Artists site.

The stupidest garment in the entire world

Would be this Japanese bra, that allegedly only opens when the wearer falls in love. Criticizing this is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. From the basic idea, through the technology to the cultural subtext around female sexuality, it’s incredibly stupid. Perhaps they should instead focus on creating male underwear that only comes off when the nearest woman actually wants it to. That would have both social value and a ready market amongst the chastity play fans.

This artwork is by the French artist Walter Minus. I found it on the Lunar Black tumblr.

You fugging shyster

I’ve two reasons for featuring this particular comic panel. Firstly, it’s classic example of Eric Stanton’s style. There’s a big powerful woman, some great artwork and real sense of energy to it. Secondly, the dialog is brilliant. Not only the ‘fugging shyster’ bit, but also phrases like ‘spineless schmuck’ and ‘pop my cork’. Modern femdom art really needs more lines like these.

It’s from a short story called Bonnie & Clara, which I assume is a spin on Bonnie and Clyde. The tough as nails lady below is Bonnie and she’s caught the shyster in question stealing her money and seducing her lover Clara. As you’d expect in a Stanton series things do not go well for him. Much beating follows, including a very painful looking dartboard scene.