Bondage – Page 45 – Femdom Resource

That’s just not cricket

This series of images makes me smile for it’s cartoon like progression. The four shot sequence reminds me of an old photo booth filmstrip. However, I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying to reproduce it. Falling backwards like that onto your hands and arms like that would not be good. I think this is also the first time I’ve ever seen a cricket bat used in a BDSM shot. As implements go it’s probably a little heavy to use effectively, but it’s certainly fearsome.

The female model is Lorelei and the photographer is Titus Powell. As you’d expect given the sporting equipment, they’re both UK based.

Any publicity is good publicity?

The kink company has been in the news recently. They’re a very high profile producer of BDSM porn, so anything that happens to them tends to reflect on the wider community.

On the plus side there’s a James Franco documentary coming out about the company that apparently paints them and BDSM in a very positive light. It’s getting some good mainstream coverage, although the Hollywood Reporter writer appears to be unable to review it on its merits without lapsing into offensive speculation about who might watch such material. I haven’t noticed similar speculation being attached to reviews of thrillers or horror movies where people are shot, knifed and strangled for the enjoyment of the audience.

On the negative side there has been a lot of coverage of founder Peter Acworth’s recent arrest for possession of cocaine. The drugs issue isn’t one that bothers me, but some of the follow-up stories have presented a more complex and troubling picture of the company. The SF Weekly had a lengthy article on the company that was less than positive, and Maggie Mayhem put up a long post that detailed some significant issues she has with the kink workplace culture.

I’ve zero personal experience of the company, so I can only provide links to others with better information. I think it’s undoubtedly true that the company has improved the overall quality of BDSM porn. However, I think as an ethical porn consumer it’s always important to know more about exactly who is producing the images and videos we’re watching.

This image is from the kink site Divine Bitches. I found it on the Girls Rule, Subs Drool tumblr.

A game for two or more

It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of not leaving a bound person unattended. Should you ever be tempted to do so, I’d suggest you keep in mind the story of the Montreal guy who popped out for groceries while his submissive was tied up by her collar. While he was figuring out what to have for dinner, she died of asphyxiation. He tried to claim it was an accident but, quite rightly in my view, was found guilty of criminal negligence.

While I’m all for maximizing safety, I found part of the first linked article a little surprising.

…put safety first, which means buying the right equipment that has release devices allowing subs to free themselves from bondage and similar confinement situations. In other words, subs must always be able to effortlessly free themselves because, for example, a domme/dom could be standing two feet away and suffer a heart attack or something.

I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of bondage and I can’t think of anytime I’ve been in quick release devices. I get the need when you’re playing with someone you’re not too familiar with, but for normal play in an established relationship? Being able to effortless free myself would seem to miss the point somewhat.

It’s true that a heart attack for the domme would present a problem for me. But so would a heart attack for the guy doing 70 mph on the freeway behind me tomorrow morning. Or come to that, a heart attack all of my own. Or getting randomly shot in a bar. Or deliberately shot in a bar for that matter. Not every American takes kindly to my drunken theories on the innate superiority of British music and comedy. Life is full of risks.

Only using quick release cuffs would also seem to rule out rope bondage. That would be a great shame as it can be very beautiful.

Both of these images are from the bondage is not a crime tumblr. You can see a couple of other shots from the same sequences here and here.

Phrases of dread

There are any number of ominous phrases that I dread to hear. For example – “I’m not racist, but…” You can guarantee that something horribly racist always follows that. Another ominous one is – “We need to talk.” In my experience, nothing enjoyable or pleasant has ever followed that statement. “Please don’t be angry” is also a sign that happy fun times are not ahead. But perhaps the scariest one of all is – “For the sake of the children.” This phrase is a clear indication that provable harm to adults is about to be done in an effort to avoid nebulous and ill-defined harm to theoretical children.

The latest example of this comes from the beautiful country of Iceland. According to this and this article in the British press they’re thinking of banning online pornography to protect their children. The articles are full of weasel words and unsupported claims, with the usual suspects (such as the reliably overwrought Gail Dines) bringing along their axes to grind. The headlines would lead you to think they’re just targeting violent porn, which would be bad enough. However, in a nice bit of double-speak, it appears they’re defining all pornography as violent, so they get to ban it all.

I could pull any number of quotes out of the articles to mock, but I think my favorite was – “A strong consensus has been building, with people agreeing that something has to be done.” Which reminds me of the old expression: Something has to be done. This is something. Therefore, we have to do this.

I’m not sure how big the BDSM scene is in Iceland. I do know there are least a couple of pro-dommes there (Mistress Freyja and Mistress Dont U Dare). Last month I had around 700 page views from Iceland, which might only be 0.1% of the US total, but still indicates a non-trivial number of readers. So for all my Icelandic readers, I’ll share some horribly violent pornography with you before my site gets banned. I hope this doesn’t send your children off on a murderous rampage.

The obviously obscene and dangerous image is called Romance and is by Reraizure (free deviant art login required).

The importance of posture

I sessioned with Lydia tonight, so right now I’m feeling very happy and buzzed. Many photographs were snapped, so hopefully I can share in a forthcoming post. Although I still need to publish some of the photographs I grabbed with Ms Troy Orleans last week. As problems go, excessive kinky imagery to sort through is not a bad one to have.

In the meantime, let me highlight a particular porn bugbear of mine: Awkward postures for dommes. The D/s dynamic suggests that a scene should always be focused around what the dominant wants. So anytime I see a dominant looking uncomfortable or in a non-ideal posture for them, it screws with any fantasy I might want to create around an image. It suggests the cameraman or the submissive is in charge and the dominant is subordinate to them.

Take the two images below. I kind of like the head in a box idea. I’ve got to think it’d be a real mindfuck to have you head isolated and immobile in that way. But her position looks so awkward. On tiptoes right at the edge of a table isn’t a great place to be. Not to mention the muscle effort needed to ride him from that kind of posture. In contrast the second image, while less visually dynamic, looks a far more reasonable position. I can enjoy that picture without some annoying bit of my brain niggling me with “That looks uncomfortable. Why would she do it like that? Does she not have a cushion to use?”

I found these images on Lash Kisser and X Ray Ted respectively. I believe the first is from Divine Bitches and the second from Men Are Slaves.

Astride her captive

I’m not sure where I found this image. A reverse image search tells me it’s a character called Fujiko Mine from the manga series Lupin III. I’ve never seen the series, but wikipedia says she’s a professional burglar who uses her attractiveness to fool her prospective targets. In this case it seems to have worked out well for her, although her captive appears to be having second thoughts.

Escape

Tomorrow I flee the freezing NYC region to return to the warmer and wetter state of Washington. It has been a fun trip, and it ended on a very high note. I spent a good portion of today with the brilliant Miss Troy Orleans. We had a great session and snapped a lot of photographs. Hopefully, when I’ve had chance to sort through them, there will be a detailed session post.

Given I enjoyed some heavy bondage and restraints today, it seems fitting to finish the post with a pointer to an interesting article I read on Harry Houdini. I’m not sure he could be described as a femdom aficionado, but he certainly seemed to have a strong interest in bondage, masochism, exhibitionism and edge play. Given his skill, I’ve no doubt he could have emerged from the ropes in the photograph below in a matter of seconds. For the rest of us submissive types, even if we had the skill, I’m not sure escape would be our first choice…

I found this on the darksehnsucht tumblr. I don’t know the original source, but I’d guess it’s from one of the kink.com sites.

Let me have just a little bit of peril?

I’m in NYC for the first time in several years, and I just got out of a very enjoyable session with the wonderful Miss Troy Orleans. There’s a lot I could write about, so the obvious topic to pick is an old children’s cartoon called The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop.

You can blame this strange selection on D from Dumb Domme and her post ‘damsel in distress‘. She’s clearly not a fan of the iconic ‘tied to the railroad tracks’ trope…

It angers me that she doesn’t fight the villain harder and that she doesn’t struggle more to escape her bonds. It disgusts me when I suspect she exerts more effort craning her neck to see if a hero is coming than she does in trying to free herself.

This particular post grabbed me, because that villain/heroine dynamic is one of my earliest recollections of being excited by restraint, control and dominance. Specifically in the aforementioned Perils of Penelope Pitstop. If you’ve never seen it then this clip should give you some idea of the plot. Based on a 1914 series called The Perils Of Pauline, the cartoon featured a dashing and attractive young lady who constantly finds herself tied up and threatened by deadly Rube Goldberg like devices. As a child I never knew why it excited me, or how I related to the roles, I just knew there was something very compelling about it.

I get where D is coming from with her dislike of the scene, but I think she misses the submissive’s perspective on it. It’s the victim’s job to be the object of the desire. With ‘object’ being a key word. The villain is charge and creates the danger. The hero is in charge and (hopefully) removes the danger. Both of them desire the victim, but in different ways. The victim gets to be desirable but, as an object, doesn’t get to have control. She looks for the hero because that’s his role and his choice, not hers. She fears her fate but doesn’t control it. And that’s hot. It turns me on just thinking about it.

Obviously as a child I didn’t want to see Penelope actually get bisected by a train. But the combination of danger and helplessness pushed some deep internal buttons. The powerless female and mustache twirling villain might not be great role models, but I’m not sure that matters. After all I grew up wanting to be the victim. Although I never did develop Penelope’s love of pink.

When it comes to pictures of peril, Augustine is always a reliable resource. His images always seem to be the missing the hero character however.

Awards season

As part of writing this post on the Adult Video News (AVN) awards, I took a look at what had won this year. The general idea of giving awards to specific movies strikes me as an anachronism. Who buys porn DVDs these days? However, I figured the specific performers and genres recognized might be interesting. I was very surprised to discover how little attention BDSM and fetish got. There were just three awards that looked vaguely relevant – Best BDSM release, best femdom strap-on release and best foot/leg fetish release. This is out of a total of more than 100 other awards.

I’ve no idea if the titles that won were actually any good. Rubber Bordello looks like it might be fun, the other two (His Booty Is My Duty 2 and Asphyxia Heels The World) look like average porn movies with just passing nods to their supposed audience. But regardless of the selections, I was shocked there was so little recognition of BDSM. They didn’t even distinguish between maledom and femdom. There are no awards for top performing domme, or best submissive, or best rigger, or really anything interesting. What a missed opportunity.

I actually attended the awards ceremony back in 2003. I can’t say I recommend the experience. It’s fun to dress up and walk the red carpet, but the awards themselves are very dull. Amazingly, they’re not allowed to actually show explicit clips, so you end up with a lot of thank you speeches accompanied by Cinemax style edited soft porn. Getting to see Larry Flynt give the hall of fame speech and sitting next to Rocco Siffredi in the bar afterwards were the highlights. Of course if you do it with someone like Mistress T then you might be in for a slightly more exciting time (Updated: You can see Mistress T & friends in her latest AVN experiences here).

Kink is one of the biggest BDSM producers these days, but the only thing they won for was ‘Best Alternative Website’, whatever that means. I’ll leave you with a shot from their Divine Bitches site featuring Maitresse Madeline getting alternative on Robert Axel’s ass.

Playing with deprivation

I’ve had some interesting sessions in the last couple of weeks playing with sensory deprivation. It’s not normally a hot-button topic for me, but I’ve grown to appreciate some of the intense experiences it can deliver. Five years ago I’d have described this type of play as weird and unappealing. All the strange leather and latex equipment seemed too fetishistic and specialized. Fast forward a couple of years and I finally figured out the appeal, but thought it was too intense for me to deal with. That’s still partly true, but I’ve improved my bottoming skills with practice. Mostly that’s due to building a rapport with Lydia and her ability to ease me gradually into difficult situations.

The first session was built around a leather sleep sack. You can see a couple of shots of me in it here and here. Firstly, Lydia wrapped my limbs and torso in plastic wrap to try and minimize contact between my body parts. She even wrapped each finger individually so I couldn’t touch my fingers together. Then I was zipped into the sleep sack and the straps around it tightened. My head got treated to a form fitting hood, a towel packed around my ears, the sleep sack hood and a layer of plastic wrap. Finally, some rope applied across the body and electrics applied to the cock finished the whole thing off.

The second session I did featured a latex vacuum bed. We didn’t snap any shots off this, but if you’ve ever seen one of those in action, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the session unfolded. Lots of latex, tight restraint and breathplay.

One thing I found particularly interesting in both sessions was the interplay between stress and subspace. Being bound pushes me into subspace. I go quiet and a little spacey as my body gets locked down. But putting things around and over my head raises my anxiety levels and pulls me back out of subspace. My mind and my breath start racing and I have to consciously focus on not panicking. That mental effort of dealing with my instinctive stress reaction makes it hard for me to let go. What helps reverse this response is mild pain. Anything too intense just kicks up the flight or fight response, but mild pain gives me a focus. It also plays into my natural masochism and helps release the endorphins I need to zone out. A caress and a pinch in just the right place is the ultimate stress reliever for me.