Bondage – Page 38 – Femdom Resource

Depression and BDSM

Constanze Borgia has an interesting guest post by Phil Beck on the subject of depression and BDSM. It talks about depression in general, provides some personal anecdotes and offers some advice about dealing with the intersection of BDSM and mental health. I’m signal boosting it as it’s rare to see such a thoughtful discussion of the topic. I often hear people refer to dommes as therapists, or state how beneficial BDSM play is, but they’re casual references flung around with little thought. This is a far more balanced and nuanced article.

I’ve suffered from depression a couple of times in my life, but it was many years ago, and didn’t overlap with any kinky activity. So I’ve no idea how the two would interact together for me. Generally kink makes me happy and buzzed, but when you’re dealing with brain chemistry it’s hard to predict how things will unfold if you complicate the mix.

I can definitely relate to Phil’s experiences with mummification. He wrote that:

Being totally immobilized in that way made it possible to release my concerns about the outside world and my sense of emotional well being somehow began to rise up as I began to sink into a trance like state.

I’ve always found that very extreme bondage of this type is both liberating and soothing. Hopefully the gentleman below is feeling equally soothed by his situation…

This is obviously from a Divine Bitches shoot.

Making the sparks fly

Lydia and I had some fun playing with her violet wand last night. I was extensively scratched, slapped and shocked. There was a lot of screaming by me and laughter from her. I’ve played with wands in the past and they usually just leave a few red marks, but for some reason this left me itching and scratching all today. Not quite sure why my skin reacted that way, but it definitely added an extra element of torture. I’m sure Lydia would have been entertained to see me fidgeting around in all my work meetings.

If you’ve not seen one in action, Aemilia Hawk has a couple of videos that demonstrate both the visuals and the sound of them. Their intensity can vary quite considerably depending on the attachments used. Big round bulbs are quite mild, but sharper curves and points can concentrate the charge considerably. I was getting zapped under my fingernails with a pointy bulb and it was definitely generating more of a reaction than Aemilia shows in her videos!

They don’t appear that often in porn, which I find surprising given how visually appealing they can be. Here’s one highly fetishistic example from Absolute Cruelty. Not quite sure why the domme is wearing the gas mask rather than the slave, although I guess it does give her an impersonal and faintly alienesque appearance. You can see another angle of the scene here.

Rope & candles

I don’t feature a lot of posts with female submissive imagery. In fact, looking at my post tagging, there have been around 60 Ff images, out of over 1,200 total posts. That’s not because I don’t appreciate it. I enjoy its aesthetic and can relate to the submissive experience of any gender. The problem is that so many Femdom/Femsub images end up fixated on the submissive at the cost of the dominant and the dynamic between them. They end up being femsub rather than femdom, and I figure there are quite enough pictures of bound and gagged women floating around with a blog about female dominance adding to them.

This image is an example that strikes the right balance for me. The dominant is an integral part of the scene, and it nicely captures a moment of tension. It also continues the Shibari theme from yesterday’s post, which pleases the anal retentive blogger in me. It’s by the artist RedPandaDee and, according to his comment on it, the dominant is Saki Kamijoo and the submissive is Skinny Redhead. You can see a video of Saki Kamijoo at work here.

Rope & heels

I love the fact that this very intricate bondage is both beautiful and functional. Shibari is frequently aesthetically pleasing, but can sometimes look impractical for serious play or simply be ornate without restraining. This pulls off all the elements. I particularly like the detailing around his feet and legs. Those heels look painful, but I don’t think he’s going to be getting away.

This is by Mistress Juri from Ginza Prezis, as featured previously in this post.

Experimenting with gargalesis

Sometimes I can be a little slow. For example, I spent ages starting at this image trying to figure it out. Why, I wondered, are two women tickling him, while the third is drawing a picture of a costumed superhero? How could those different things possibly be related? Only after an embarrassingly long time did I figure out that the third woman is actually drawing a color coded map of his ticklish zones. That’s both scientific and particularly evil.

In my defense I will say that I’m extremely ticklish, so a color coded map wouldn’t make much sense for me. All my body parts trigger a strong reaction, so it’d just be red all over. I can’t say I particularly kink on being tickled, but I have noticed that some dommes really get a kick out of the reaction they can provoke with it. So I do enjoy feeding off their reaction to my reaction. It’s a perversely entertaining feedback loop.

Incidentally, the title of the post features the scientific name for tickling. Femdom Resource – bringing you entirely accurate and completely useless information, one post at a time.

I found this image on the Lunar Black tumblr. It’s initialed with something that looks like DH??, but I can’t track down the artist. If anyone knows then please leave a comment.

Chilly willy

Last month I ranted on the topic of limits and avoiding them. I didn’t intend that rant to turn into a monthly occurrence but, as luck would have it, I do have a new topic to address – chilly dungeons. It’s not quite as serious an issue, but what use is a blog if you can’t have a good rant now and again?

Admittedly a cold dungeon is probably more realistic. I doubt that medieval castles had much in the way of underfloor heating or goose down duvets for their prisoners. Yet oddly enough, when I’m naked and being carefully tied to a spanking bench by an attractive lady dressed in leather and heels, historical accuracy isn’t high on my list of requirements.

You might also think that a masochist would enjoy the extra torment of a freezing space. Or that it might help distract from the actual pain being inflicted. Yet oddly enough, I find it makes it much harder to deal with intense play. Everything is more snappy and stingy when it’s cold. Skin is more sensitive, and it’s hard to get into the right head space when being distracted by shivering body parts. I want to relax and soak into the pain, not spend my time wondering how warm the straight jacket hanging in the corner would be.

In the handful of times I’ve encountered this problem, it has never been the fault of the domme I was playing with. They’ve always been renting a space that was badly set-up, too cold to start with, and they couldn’t fix it in the time we had available. So if you’re reading this and you own a play space, my ask to you is either…

Design it as one or more small spaces that can be warmed up quickly and individually, or
Get enormous and efficient space heaters that can quickly warm up your large space, or
Have some way of dynamically partitioning up the space (e.g. heavy curtains) so that one area can be heated separately if necessary.

I think the perfect set-up is to have one large traditional playroom and then several smaller spaces that can be used if necessary. That’s what Lydia has and what I’ve seen in several other commercial spaces. Or I guess you could live in a hot region and play outside like these two. He might now have to worry about ants and spiders, but at least he’s warm.

This is Isis Love and Rok from a Men in Pain shoot. I found it on the Femdom Experience tumblr.

Learning to scream

It’s important that a masochist learns to scream correctly. Not to mention moan, whimper, flinch and wince. Volume or pitch isn’t important, but consistency and honesty is. Anytime I play I’m trying to give good feedback about the intensity of the experience and what headspace I’m in. It’s not like I get hit and then think “Hmmm, that feels like a level 7 moan. And maybe a level 5 flinch.” Instead I aim for a natural transparent reaction, and to resist the urge to occasionally exaggerate my response in order to control the scene. When the intensity is ratcheting up it can sometimes be tempting to do that and get ahead of what I know might be coming.

Of course, an expert domme can normally accurately assess just how painful her actions are and how genuine the reaction to them is. For the less experienced then help maybe at hand. It turns out that computers can be amazingly good at judging how genuine a reaction to pain is. According to this article, when shown video of people experiencing or faking pain, humans were essentially hopeless at guessing which was which, while computer software got it right 85% of the time. I find that an astonishing number. It would be interesting to put a selection of dominants through the same test and see if they were any better at spotting the fakers. I also wonder if adding sound to the test would have significantly improved the score for the humans.

Apparently one of the best indicators is the dynamics of the mouth opening. I’d guess this scene would provide some useful training data for the software. I don’t think he’s faking it.

This is from the Men in Pain site. I found it on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.

Tip of the taint

Here’s my BDSM tip of the day: If you’re looking for a particularly painful place to drip candle wax, then the taint is a great go to area. It’s even more painful than the balls or the cock. I acquired this information first hand courtesy of Lydia. I think I may be washing bits of wax out of odd crevices for days to come.

This image doesn’t feature that particular area of the body, but it does have rope, tender nipples and chest waxing, which also featured in my evenings entertainment. This is Bobbi Starr in a shoot for Divine Bitches.

Hooded kiss

Here’s something simple yet beautiful to start the weekend. A lovely blend of rope bondage, sensory deprivation and sweet sensuality. This is Mistress Juri from Ginza Prezis.

I originally stumbled across this image on the Sensual Fetish tumblr.

Caught in a rope web

I enjoyed some rope bondage with Lydia tonight and now I’m left with some beautiful rope marks across my torso. I was positioned on my back, but rather than simple anchor me at the wrists and ankles, Lydia used a number of ropes to enmesh by whole body. Everything was in tension, the ropes working against each other so I could constantly feel them hugging me. Typically I don’t struggle much in bondage, so I can sometimes almost forget that I’m tied up. There was no danger of that tonight, as every breath and twitch pulled against the web that held me.

The image below is obviously a suspension scene, which is a little different to mine, but I’m guessing he’ll also be left with some nice rope marks afterwards. The domme and rigger is Ms Tytania of London. You can see more image from the same session in this post. Suspension is always fun, but I particularly like the little teasing touch on his cock in this shot.

If you’d like the chance to enjoy some of Ms Tytania skills in person, her contact information is available here.