The beauty of dominant women
I’m not a fan of Clair Adam’s outfit in this image. It’s fetishistic almost to the point of parody. However, I do like all those clothespins and the smile on his face. She has positioned those clips in some sensitive spots. If she’s going to rip them off zipper style then I predict that smile will be at least temporarily dispelled.
Image is obviously originally from the Men in Pain site.
I’m currently reading Staci Newmahr’s Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy. It captures some interesting data but it’s a frustrating book. I’ll dig into why that is in a future post. For the moment I want to tackle one very specific phrasing that caught my eye. It’s on the subject of power in BDSM scenes and how it’s described.
Power and control are obviously significant parts of BDSM play and the author is careful to qualify them with terms such as ‘apparent’ and ‘illusion’. In describing the various phases of a scene (negotiation/play/aftercare) she wants to make it clear that what’s being constructed is an elaborate facade. A type of theater where the actors themselves have to suspend their disbelief. I should add that this isn’t unique to this book. A lot of academic BDSM books adopt similar descriptions, presenting it as an insight into the underlying reality that the players themselves don’t acknowledge.
I always find this approach a very facile one. It ignores the complexity of power in other situations and reduces the value of the descriptive term. Outside of kink we’re happy to use descriptions of power in a nuanced way, without the need for heavy qualifiers. For example, we would be comfortable describing the CEO of a company as having power. He has a degree of control and a corresponding freedom that his employees don’t have. That doesn’t mean he can do anything. It also doesn’t mean that his employees have no options. They can always quit and walk away from their job. But we don’t feel the need to describe his power as illusory just because he requires a degree of cooperation from those who wish to work for him.
To pick another example, when describing the dynamics of a conventional relationship, people will often use terms related to power and control. Those dynamics can play a role in all sorts of relationships, not just D/s ones. Yet nobody feels the need to say something like – “His wife is really in charge of vacation planning, she makes all the decisions. Although of course it’s only an illusion of control because he could always leave her if he wanted.” The second part is implicitly understood, but it doesn’t make the first part any less true.
When I’m stripped, bound and gagged in a BDSM scene, I’m giving up control and relinquishing power. There’s no illusion or suspension of disbelief necessary. I don’t get to control where she puts that needle, where the cane lands, where she puts the but plug (although I can probably guess in that case). The fact the dominant doesn’t have absolute power doesn’t make it an illusion of power. Yes, I can stop the scene at any time and walk away. I can also quit my job at any time and walk away. Neither fact means I’m the one with the power.
It seemed appropriate to finish with a shot featuring a classic demonstration of power – the hand to the throat. This is from the Divine Bitches site. I originally found in on Thy Queendome Come tumblr.
See if you can spot the problem between the title of this article and the data presented. Apparently the author, Amanda Chatel, can’t tell the difference between an absolute value (as implied by the title) and a relative value (as measured by the survey). Based on this approach, a town than went from 1 to 2 kinky people would be kinkier than a town that went from 1000 to 1500 kinky people. I know most journalists find anything beyond grade school mathematics confusing (see any recent mainstream economics discussion for proof of that), but this is pretty poor even by their conventional low standards.
Personally if I had to pick the kinkiest town in the US, it would be between San Francisco and New York. Given that SF is considerably smaller, it would probably get the nod based on a percentage of population estimate. With that in mind, I’ll finish with a shot of San Francisco’s own Vinyl Queen. This image is from her tumblr and features tickle torture. That’s a love/hate activity for me. I often think about putting it on my hard limits list, but I do perversely enjoy the fact that many dommes seem to love tormenting me with it.
Should you wish to be tickled or otherwise tormented by Vinyl Queen, her professional site is here
I’m not quite sure if this should be described as an orgy of rope bondage or a rope bondage orgy. Either way it’s an unusual and entertaining image from the talented ladies at Dudes in Distress. I particularly like the vibrant colors in the shot, as well as the facial expressions of the men.
You can see the original full size version of the image here.
One of the problems when writing about the origin of kinky preferences is the tendency to treat the personal as the universal. It’s human nature to assume individual experiences are widely shared, or even that they are the default experience. That’s particularly problematic with something as complex and multifaceted as kink is.
An interesting comment from Budman reminded me that not everyone traces their preferences back to early childhood. He feels that his triggers came from early adolescence. That’s something I’ve seen reported by others. I’ve also seen posts from people who came to kink even later, years into their adulthood. It was something that they grew into, not an itch that was always lurking under the surface of their sexuality. Humans are annoyingly complicated.
For me however, my kinky nature was in place long before adolescence. How else can I explain me and Penelope Pitstop? As I’ve posted in the past, I loved watching this show as a child. There was something especially tingly about watching Penelope be tied up and placed in peril. Like the magic act I talked about yesterday, it wasn’t a formative experience. There was no traumatic or exciting event that got associated with cartoon bondage. I just loved the idea of control and how it could be taken away. Reaching adolescence just slotted the next piece of the jigsaw in place for me.
I think the fact that people come to different kinks, in so many different ways, and at so many different times, emphasizes the problem in trying to associate particular interests with only single formative events. After all, how many people experienced similar events, and didn’t become kinky? We never hear from the guy who was dressed up as a girl by his sisters, and didn’t become a cross-dresser. Perhaps there’s an underlying predisposition in just a fraction of the population to having a flexible sexuality. One that casts a wider net for stimulus. Some people are always aware of it, some access it via childhood events, some as their sexuality emerges in adolescence, and some discover it via experimentation in later life.
Having mentioned Penelope Pitstop, it seems fitting to close with this image. It has similar feel, with an extravagantly costumed villain, and a helpless well bound victim. Fortunately for the purposes of this blog, it’s a rare reversal of the damsel in distress trope. It’s entitled Fred Stolen by a Villainess and is by the artist Barry960.
Can you trace the origin of your kinks or fetishes? Assuming that you have any. Although if you don’t, you’ve chosen a really odd site to browse.
The NY Magazine article discussed in yesterday’s post on the origins of people’s kinks, talked a lot about triggers and formative events. Things from childhood that could be directly linked to a later sexual preference. It would seem that some fraction of kinky people have very clear triggers, some can point to a range of influences but no single thing, and others have absolutely nothing in childhood to point at. In the comments to the post Miss Margo mentioned that a lot of her clients can identify triggers, while Vista represented the kinky person without that genesis moment.
Personally I’m in the same camp as Vista. I don’t have anything I can point to that twisted me kinky. However, I can very clearly identify the moment when I first showed interest in a kinky thing. Cue a wibbly wobbly screen and swirly special effects as I take you back thirty (ahem) or so years to a much younger paltego…
I grew up in a tiny village. It was basically two streets, one shop, a village hall and (since this is England we’re talking about) two pubs. This was a time when the internet was still the arpanet and British television consisted of 3 channels. Any kind of organized live entertainment was therefore a big deal. There was the occasional village fête, a Christmas carol concert, an agricultural show, etc. Then one year, when I was around 5 or 6 years old, somebody organized a variety show in the village hall. I can’t remember most of it. It was probably the usual amateur song and dance acts with a bad comedian thrown in for good measure. But there was also a magic act. And that act has stayed with me to this day. It was very traditional. Card tricks. Linking rings. Endless streams of colorful handkerchiefs. And a woman in a sparkly costume getting sawn in half (actually the Zig Zag Girl trick). It was this final trick that particularly transfixed me. I can still remember my excitement as she climbed into the box and the magician tied things around her wrists and ankles. She was constrained, in peril, sacrificial and yet willing. He took away her control, yet she seemed to enjoy it.
From that moment on I always kept an eye out for magic acts and escapologists on television. There was something I found very enticing about the ropes, chains, padlocks and perilous situations that featured in their acts. But it wasn’t till I hit puberty, and discovered the idea of bondage (via my parents copy of The Joy Of Sex), that I had my ‘Aha!’ moment. I certainly don’t think the magic act I saw as a child was formative. The wiring was already in place, because it excited me in a strange way the instant I saw it. The discovery of kink just helped me to understand why I’d found that particular act in an otherwise long forgotten village show so compelling.
It was surprisingly hard to find a magic themed femdom shot. A lot of the equipment for elaborate magic tricks looks awfully similar to the contents of most dungeons, yet there seems to be very little direct cross-over. In the end I turned to the prolific Servitor and this amusingly captioned picture. The ‘magician’ in question here is the lovely Lexi Sindel.
The New York Magazine has an article on the well worn subject of nature versus nurture in the context of fetish and kink. It’s a discursive piece, heavy on anecdotes and light on hard data. It comes down firmly on the side of nurture, although it also admits there’s no simple way to divide up such a complex set of influences and interests.
Personally I wonder if, outside of scientific curiosity, the debate is even one worth having. Unless they identify a very clear genetic cause, which seems unlikely given the current research, the discussion isn’t going to result in anything actionable. Nobody is going to be able to come up with a set of guidelines for bringing up a child with “normal” sexual interests. The cause and effect is far too complex and unique for each individual.
It also seems odd that people are so interested in tracking down the basis for kinky sexual preferences, but seem happy to accept all the other preferences people exhibit without question. If somebody says they don’t like carrots, nobody starts wondering if they had a traumatic experience as a child while watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Wine lovers don’t feel the need to tie their interest back to early experiences with a sippy cup and purple grape drink. Even in the sexual and relationship realm we let vanilla preferences slide without comment. A serial dater of blonde women just has a ‘type’. Nobody wonders if it’s because he watched one too many Marilyn Monroe movies while sitting on his mother’s knee. Yet say he likes dominant blonde women, and suddenly there’s an urge to wheel out old Sigmund to try and figure out why the hell he’s so damn weird.
Given this posts focus on the development of sexual preferences, it seems appropriate to finish with this image – ‘School of Bondage’ by zblabla. The classroom can certainly be a powerful influence on sexual development, but it’s not typically this overt.
Last week I posted about a smallest penis competition in Brooklyn. Well we have a winner, and judging by this interview he’s taking his new found fame in his stride. He also seems to have a pretty positive and sensible view on all the whole experience. Of course, if this cartoon is anything to go by, it’s the second place contestant we should be concerned about.
The old cliche is that it’s not the size that counts, but what you do with it. Judging by this picture it looks like someone decided tying it to a metal pole and big toes was the thing to do with it. I’m not sure that’s exactly what the person who coined the expression had in mind.
I found this on the Mistress Alice in Bondage Land tumblr. I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution for it.
Playing with several people simultaneously isn’t too unusual in BDSM circles. Most pro-dommes will offer double or even triple-domme sessions and, on the lifestyle side, play parties help facilitate public interaction with multiple casual partners. Some guys are even lucky enough to get beaten down by four fabulous women. Compared to the mechanics of regular vanilla sex, with its orifice and appendage pairing issues, BDSM seems a lot easier to coordinate in groups.
All that said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before. That’s 22 women and 1 guy. I particularly like the fact that some of the women at the back are holding crops. Clearly they’re not just an audience, but plan to be close enough to use them at some point. Hopefully nobody suffers from a shy bladder.
I should warn readers that the site this comes from features fairly strong content, including scat play. If you’re OK with that then check out the rinryu blog. I believe it’s run by the creators of the infamous yapoo film series.
After yesterday’s post, which talked about sexual orientation and BDSM, I did what I should have done right from the start and searched for other posts on the topic. That led me to this excellent one by Clarisse Thorn. I think she covered the complexity of the discussion rather well.
To this point I’ve tended to think of sexual orientation as being specifically about what gender someone is attracted to. Not because I believe that BDSM isn’t an intrinsic part of some peoples identity. Just that the common and accepted usage of sexual orientation is around gender, and I don’t like overloading terms unnecessarily. However, I did find one of the comments in Clarisse’s post particularly interesting. It quotes Charles Moser and lists the factors he believes makes up an orientation…
Lifelong – Difficult to Suppress
Prepubertal Recognition
Interest Despite Aging
Immutable, but Fluid
Emotional Price to Do or Not Do “It”
Lust – Specifically and Especially Sexually Arousing
Effect of Testosterone/Anti-AndrogensOne does not have to satisfy all 7, but they distinguish a “lesser” sexual interest from an orientation. It also means that not everyone who does a behavior (even repetitively) has an orientation. Also, an orientation can satisfy less than 7, but it is hard for me to imagine someone who satisfies all 7 not having an orientation.
I’m not quite sure what he means by the one on Testosterone, but when it comes to my BDSM interests, I’m batting 100% on all the rest. I think they make for an interesting checklist to consider.
Of course, if the complexity of the human condition is all too much for you, becoming a coffee table is always an option. I’m pretty certain they don’t have a sexual orientation.
I found this on the Undiscovered Limits tumblr.
