Bondage – Page 59 – Femdom Resource

Oh, snap!

I’ve never played with rubber bands, but I think I’m going to have to add them onto my ‘to do’ list. I image there’s a nice building sense of tension and anticipation once the band is stretched back. A whip or cane comes as a strike out of the blue, but with a band you can see the energy just waiting to be released.

The domme is Mistress Varla, and the image is taken from this K is for Kink scene. There’s a short video clip also available, with a very entertaining shot of one of the bands being applied at speed.

Incidentally, if you’ve never played with this kind of plastic wrap, I can definitely recommend give it a try. It’s a really easy way to mummify someone and create a sense of heavy bondage without lots of expensive gear. It also shrinks slightly as it warms, which can create interesting effects over a lengthy play session. I’m not sure exactly what type is being used here, but I know the stuff they using for wrapping boxes on pallets works very well.

The distillation of sensation

The images in today’s post come courtesy of this serious bondage article, and feature Ms Yin Q, now of Glint studio.

I have to admit that before I gained any experience in the reality of BDSM I used to think heavy bondage aficionados were a little strange. I kind of got it on an intellectual and fantasy level. A lot of kinky activities are about the transfer of control, emphasizing power by removing freedoms we normally take for granted. But all the customized leather and rubber equipment just looked so strange, so alien. The weird forms of people wrapped in it seemed to play into the stereotypes of odd fetishists doing unexplainable things in their own little worlds.

Having now had a chance to explore some aspects of these worlds for myself, I think I have a much better appreciation for what’s going on. Truth be told I still think it all looks a little peculiar, but I now understand that it’s not necessarily about fetishizing a material and simply wanting to be wrapped in it. There may be an element of that for some people, but it’s the bondage subspace and the sensory changes that seem to be the main goals. As Ms Yin says in the article…

I am obsessed with sending sensations to different orifices and body bits through Erostek stmulators, temperature control, catheters, and feeding tubes, sound bites to earphones, and remote control vibrators.
Not to mention the simple, but powerful act of letting the body be—stepping away and allowing the subject to melt into their head/body space.

I was personally amazed at the impact that heavy bondage and sensory deprivation had on the way I experienced stimulation. Pain and pleasure very quickly became magnified. A whip stroke that might normally only produce a murmur suddenly produces a howl. Miss Troy Orleans talked about much the same effect in her recent post on layering. It seems that the brain constantly tries to normalize and balance its sensory input. In a noisy environment it helps to tune out the superfluous signal. And in the signal poor environment of heavy bondage and isolation it grabs onto whatever it can and magnifies it.

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There’s an interesting discussion going on over at Delving Into Deviance, triggered by a post entitled ‘The devaluation of male submission‘. I came at it via Tom Allen on his vanilla edge blog, along with his interview at Dishevelled Domina.

I think it’s worth reading and raises some good points. I certainly agree with Tom when he talks about a lack of cultural models for male submission and female dominance. Outside of the stereotypical dominatrix dynamic, there is really no good understanding of these roles in conventional society. I also have a lot of sympathy with Dev in her original post when she expresses frustration at the ice queen archetype and the preconceptions of what femdom should and should not be. I frequently feel the need to fight against the tired cliche of the snarling domme dressed in leather. However, a number of the arguments in her post had me scratching my head.

One contention seemed to be that the ratio of submissive men to dominant women is 1:1, and she links to a post by Bitchy Jones arguing exactly the same thing. Now while there are a lot of good things you can say about Bitchy’s writing, such as entertaining, thought provoking and heartfelt, I never found logical coherent arguments to be her strong suit. In this case the argument seems to run: The ratio of dominant women to submissive men is 1:20 (made-up number), the actual ratio is 1:1 (made-up number), therefore 19:20 (made-up number) women are being excluded from their true identity as dominants. This is because of the current screwed up culture of femdom (supposition without evidence).

All the anecdotal evidence points to the existence of considerably more submissive men than dominant women. As Dev herself says, any woman signing up to a BDSM site is going to get an instant influx of men messaging her to be her slave. I think it’s fine to say that more women would enjoy exploring a more dominant role given better cultural models. But if you’re going to go completely against the existing evidence, and claim that the ratio is actually 1:1, it’d be nice to have some real data points to base that on. Or even some anecdotal evidence to throw onto the other side of the scales.

There’s also this statement:

As I’ve come to realize the fucked up state of femdom, I’ve concurrently become aware of the fucked up state of male submission – namely, it’s devaluation. While female dominants are made out to be some scarce resource, male submissives are depicted as a dime a dozen – common, and, even more disturbingly, weak and worthless.

Who is depicting male submissives as weak and worthless? When does this happen? The role doesn’t exist in the mainstream world, so it’s hard to see how it can be denigrated in that context. Good pro-dommes certainly don’t treat their submissives as weak and worthless. Maybe the reference is to local kink community activities, but that seems like it’d depend very much on the specific local community in question. Male submissives obviously can’t rely on their submission alone to make them valuable, the numbers just don’t work out. But that’s true for most things in life, both kinky and vanilla. Any relationship is about the total package each individual brings into it, and components of that package that are both rare and useful will always be more valued.

Finally, there’s this:

Pro-Dommes meet a need. They are the supply to a demand. However, they contribute to the perpetuation of a picture of female domination that just doesn’t reflect real life.

Whose real life are we talking about? Are not pro-dommes part of real life? They’re certainly part of my life, which seems pretty real to me. There often seems to be a tendency to draw very black and white distinctions between pro and lifestyle play. But in reality pro-dommes are normally lifestyle players themselves. And many lifestyle people enjoying playing with a lot of the accoutrements found in a professional dungeon. Pro-dommes aren’t dressing up in leather because they all own shares in cattle farms. They’re doing it because lots of people find it attractive.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Dev’s writing and I’ll be adding her blog to my blogroll. I’d certainly like there to be a lot more dominant women out there, and treasuring male submission is a fabulous thing to do. I’m just not sure I follow all the arguments in this particular post.

This image has been floating around a number of tumblr sites. I found it on lunar black. I liked it for showing an atypical activity for a femdom situation and still making it work. I’m certainly no fan of strictly demarcated lines for what is and isn’t appropriate dominant behaviour.

Housekeeping

I’ve done some tidying of links on the site.

Over on the right I’ve dropped a few blogs that were no longer being updated and fixed the link Ms Sade’s blog (which was there but broken). I’ve also added a link to wicked inamorata, a lifestyle blog written by a dominant women looking after her sissy Christie.

On the image link page I’ve removed a dead link (the 7 fetishes site seems to have vanished), and added six new links. These are Coisa, Femdom Style Counsel, Pegtastic, Becoming Nathalie, bendoverboyfriend and Gorean Kajirus.

Image is from the Coisa tumblr site, an image blog specializing in pictures of dominant Asian women. A topic which, I have to admit, is particularly close to my heart.

Oxygen is for losers

I had an amazing few hours with Lady Lydia earlier this evening. I spent most of it floating around in subspace, just a big puddle of relaxed submission. She used a variety of tools to get me there, including a leather straightjacket, needles, a ball clamp, a crop and a pair of chopsticks. However, the most devilish tool of all was a simple piece of plastic wrap. Draped over my face it slowly got warmer and stickier, dragged closer with each intake of breath. Careful regulation of breathing helped prevent it closing off the air supply entirely, but it’s tough to breath slowly when somebody is trying to pull your nipple off with a pair of chopsticks. Or slapping a crop across a few carefully positioned needles. The natural tendency is to moan and suck in a big lungful of air. At which point the plastic does its best impression of an alien facehugger, and suddenly oxygen has become a scarce commodity.

We were far too involved in the unfolding scene to snap photographs. Which may come as a relief to those of you out there with a low tolerance for skinny naked British guys in your daily blog material. However, as an alternative I found this infinitely more visually appealing shot of Lydia from her visit to OWK. In this case the plastic wrap is being used for bondage rather than breathplay purposes, but the limited availability of oxygen is a common theme.

I found the image in this free gallery on the OWK cinema site. You can also buy the DVD of the entire session from Lydia herself.

Inching to the edge

Mistress Rex isn’t the most prolific of writers on my blogroll, but when she does post it’s always interesting, thought provoking and highly literate. Her most recent post helped crystallize a number of thoughts I’d been mulling over recently. I suggest reading the whole thing, but I’ll just quote the section I particularly want to talk about.

I’d be bored out of my mind if I stayed within the parameters of what clients (or lovers) told me they think they want. It’s domination. It’s the thrill of control and power. It requires a degree of force and discomfort, a shifting of will. How do you know how much you can take if you’re not challenged? How do you know how much you can give if you’re unwilling to offer it?

Brock Lesner is an idiot, but he happened to deliver a beautiful concept (wherever he got it from) on national TV when he said that, “fights are won by inches.” Technique and skill can take you a long way, but it’s intensity that fills those inches – it’s knowing to keep going when you have your opponent hurt. It’s holding someone’s head under water despite their thrashing, because you know that panic is a moment too soon.

Mistress Rex from her post titled ‘Give Her an Inch and She’ll Walk All Over You‘

I’ve observed that being stressed and forced close to their thresholds of tolerance is a common desire amongst submissives. It’s certainly a desire I have in any session I do. No matter what the activity, I like to feel I’m being pushed and stretched in new ways. That I’m going to go further than I have in the past. I hate to stop an activity because it’s too intense for me (and I almost never do), but at the same time it’s never a completely satisfying session if we don’t briefly flirt with that possibility. It’s a very tricky line to walk.

The need to push for this intensity, to inch forward towards that threshold, is one that has bothered me a little. Am I just doing it for stupid macho-sub reasons? To prove that I can do it? And am I going to run out of inches one day? Find out that there is nowhere left to go and I’ve burnt out. Most other activities in life don’t require this kind of dynamic. I love fine dining and nice wine, but I don’t have a constant need to push my boundaries every time I eat in a restaurant. Why is my masochism and submission different?

I think Mistress Rex has helped me answer these questions. It’s about the shifting of will, the relinquishing of power. It’s only in those last few inches that dominance and control is absolutely demonstrated. What happens up to that point is just sensation. It might be interesting or pleasurable (in the masochistic sense) sensation, but it doesn’t cost the submissive anything until it approaches the edge. It’s the extraction of that payment where both the dominant and the submissive find the real satisfaction.

Mistress Rex’s comment about holding someone’s head under water made me initially think of this image, but I posted it because it represents a type of play that quickly pushes me close to some of my personal edges. I struggle with anything that closely covers my face, whether it’s a leather hood or a tub of water, so using this apparatus would be to extract a very high price from me.

The dominant is Isis Love in a Divine Bitches shoot.

The Femme Bot

This is a nice combination of bondage, sensory deprivation and forced feminization. The female body reminds me a little of the femme bot from the movie Mars Attacks! And I particulary like the silhouetted figure in the control room. The artist has managed to pack a lot of expressive emotion into her outline.

I’m afraid I don’t know the artist so, as usual, feel free to leave a comment if you can help with a correct attribution. I found on the snail meilk image board.

A considerate mistress

I found this image on the Superior Women tumblr site accompanied by the following caption.

Remember to hold some in your mouth this time then the cigarette won’t burn you.

This struck me as deliciously evil, and I salute the imagination that came up with that caption. There’s the double degradation of being used as both a urinal and an ashtray, the potential pain of the burn and the predicament of holding the right amount of liquid (without spilling) to minimize it. Not to mention the nicely twisted psychology of the mistress showing concern whilst infliction the suffering. I always enjoy that particular blend of emotional sadism.

Of course if the slave get’s everything right, what’s the end result? A mouth awash in urine and cigarette butts. It’s a fantastically twisted scenario to make that the best case result.

A better use of chains

After my comments in the last post about the chain top, I stumbled across this far better use of chains. Those are some pretty solid links and shackles and, while I like the pose, it doesn’t look like a particularly comfortable one to be in for any length of time.

I have to admit to possessing a very high degree of naïveté about bondage in my early years of kink. Which is to say, back in the years where I browsed and watched, but never participated. My first naïve assumption was that bondage was all about restraint and control, and not about pain. Of course in reality, bondage is an incredibly effective way to inflict pain. It works for creating everything from a slow building suffering to an almost immediate screaming agony. Some rope and an inventive top are all that’s needed to satisfy both my submissive and masochistic side for many hours.

My second naïve assumption was that bondage was easy. I’m ashamed to say I assumed that ‘bondage model’ meant someone prepared to be tied up and photographed. Not someone who had a particular BDSM skill set. Sure, when I saw images like this one, or this one, I might have acknowledged that some poses might take perhaps a few hours practice to really master. But for the more standard stuff – (Jeremy Clarkson voice) – how hard could it be? Fortunately I’m now a little wiser. A really satisfying and lengthy bondage scene takes significant skill on the part of the top, and a fair degree of physical and physiological stamina on behalf of the bottom. And that’s just for a private play session. Add in a photographer, lighting and the need to deliver dozens of high quality images that you can charge for, and you’re looking at some real kinky mojo on all sides.

I found this image on the Bi Happy tumblr site.

Vernice61 Art

This rather wonderful pencil drawing is from an artist known as Vernice61 who, based on the speech bubbles, I assume is Italian. Using the Google translate tool, I can just about figure out what is being said. The woman on the right of the victim is saying something about standing still, while the woman on the left is saying “Now you can see how we treat inept servants.” The woman on the sofa is instructing the maid to join her daughters and apply the electrical device to the balls, while the seated man is pleading “Please ladies, I beg not the electrical tool.”

There are a number of his drawings available on this thread on the snail meilk site. That thread also includes the full size version of this image, which is 3MB+ in it’s original form. Unfortunately I can’t find any more permanent sites hosting his work at present. It looks like he had a deviant art site at one time, but that’s now dead. If anyone can point me at a homepage, or any kind of more permanent location for his work than an image board, I’d be very grateful.