Incompetent or Evil?

Some rare good news for my old country – the UK has indefinitely suspended introducing their porn blocking system. I’d like to say this was because they realized the danger to free speech and had a sudden burst of sanity, but it was really just down to incompetence. I guess if someone comes up with a stupid idea, the best you can hope for is that they’re too stupid to carry it out properly.

In less good news over this side of the pond, US politicians are once again having a go a free speech online and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. As always, sex workers are the canary in the coalmine. Having used bogus sex trafficking fears to weaken the law with SESTA/FOSTA, they’re now trying to expand the wedge and jam more free speech constraints in place. The online tech companies originally lobbied against SESTA/FOSTA, but eventually caved to the politicians. Presumably they thought it was a safe compromise on a topic they didn’t want to defend. Maybe now they’ll learn their lesson. Politicians have an endless appetite for limiting what people can discuss and share, and compromising in one area will only increase that appetite in other areas.

Here’s an image that seems suitable for a politician trying to limit free expression. Although if all the members of the Soviet’s security forces had looked like this, America might actually have lost the cold war.

This is Mistress Nikita. She no longer takes professional sessions but you can access images and video from her main site here.

A Classic 1950’s Look

Here’s a final post in my fashion themed sequence. This is from a 1952 edition of French Vogue.

I find that many of the European fashion shots from that era (for example) seem to have a more authentic fetishistic and femdom vibe than the far more explicit fashion shots from the 90’s and beyond. Possibly that’s just my particular kinky preferences, but I think the tight severe cuts, long dresses and dark colors tend to suggest restraint, control and authority. They also tend to shoot models alone and staring down into the camera, which is obviously a style a lot of femdom photographers use.

Fashionable Kink

I’m always amused by how many fashion shots reference kinky dynamics, but totally fail to understand them.The photographers grasp the aesthetics and taboos of specific elements, but don’t understand how they fit together in a way that makes kinky sense. It’s like they’re trying to write a story in a foreign language with just a translation dictionary. The individual words are correct, but the whole thing is incoherent.  This linked image is a good example of what I mean. There’s obviously a spanking theme in there somewhere, but I’ve no idea what the overall concept is.

The shots that tend to work best are the simplest. When the photographers just have a single concept and a single subject, then it’s much harder to end up with a confused mess of clashing kinks and weird dynamics. This shot of the model Tatjana Patitz by photographer Nathaniel Goldberg is a good example of that. It’s simple but very effective as a fetish image.

This was shot for Allure Magazine in 2007. You can see more photographs from the shoot here.

Am I a Pervert?

I very much like this video recorded for the BBC by Miss Marilyn. It’s great to see kink positive content being widely shared by a mainstream media source. It’s also good to see them drawing on experts like Miss Marilyn. Too often even nominally positive coverage ends up with journalists trying to awkwardly engage with the topic while personally distancing themselves from it. Plus, Miss Marilyn’s Scottish accent is sexy as hell.

Personally, when it comes to the question posed by the video and post title, I’m with the baby-eating bishop of Bath and Wells. Namely that I am a colossal pervert, and that I’m very happy about it. In modern parlance, I lean in on my perversions.

This image of Miss Marilyn comes from this tweet, which she describes as “straight outta 60’s horror film.” I totally see that, and love it for that reason. It reminds me of the kind of psychological horror movie where I always ended up rooting for the hot, crazy and interesting character over the bland hero.

If you’re interested in seeing more of Miss Marilyn, her twitter feed is here, her professional site here and her clips store here.

LA Fun Continued, Continued, Continued

For my final session in LA I met up with someone I’ve played with multiple times in the past – Mistress Lucy Khan. It was an appropriate end to my trip, as we played longer than the other sessions, and managed to combine an intense mixture of many different things. Some revisited themes of my other LA sessions (tease & denial, scent play, CBT, flogging) while others were unique to this particular event.

Notable in the ‘new activities for this trip’ column was an electrified urethral sound and vacuum cupping. The sounding was one of those activities that seem quite mild and pleasant – right up to the moment where it suddenly becomes an awful lot of ouch. In contrast the cupping was a much more meditative experience, almost relaxing, while producing some really spectacular marks. We shot a picture at the end of the session which shows them off pretty well  – here. My back also received a pretty heavy flogging, so there are multiple layers of marks and texture laid down by Lucy for that image.

After four different sessions with four different but highly talented dommes, it was interesting to reflect back on their approaches and stylistic variations. I enjoyed every session I did, but I think my most natural fit was with Mistress Iris and Mistress Lucy. They tend to a more playful approach, mixing laughter with intense moments. In fact if you look carefully at the image of my back, you can see Mistress Lucy smiling in reflection in the mirror. I take kink seriously, but that doesn’t mean it has to be serious. As I’ve written in the past, I think my fundamental kink is for contrasts, and I love Lucy’s ability to switch gears, sometimes pushing me hard and sometimes joking and playfully teasing. It’s a style which makes for a great play session in every sense of the word play.

This is Mistress Lucy in one of the rooms of her private session space, shot just before our session. You can browse her twitter feed here and visit her professional site here.

Tease, Denial & Bite

My LA trip so far has been a lot of fun. I’ve probably over scheduled my play sessions (as usual) and definitely eaten too much, but there are worse problems to have in life.

It kicked off with a fabulous session with Mistress Iris, where we attempted to answer the question: Just how hard can someone bite my nipple while teasing and frustrating me? The answer is very hard. Very hard indeed. I was still tender several days later. It’s amazing what being tied up and toyed with can do for my pain threshold. I don’t have a vore kink, but being bitten while in subspace does sometimes make the idea of being devoured actively appealing. At least in that moment.

For fans of Mistress Iris, or just fans of great kinky imagery, I’d encourage you to check out her newly launched Patreon. As I’ve written before, I think she produces some of the hottest and most aesthetically interesting femdom content around, so her Patreon should definitely be worth investing in.

This image of Mistress Iris was shot in Japan, with the traditional cherry blossoms as a backdrop.

In Praise of the Pits

Getting older inevitably means there are more and more things I don’t understand. My brain can only fit so much and our culture endlessly creates more and more stuff. I’m at peace with this. What really puzzles me are the things that I’ve known for years and never understood. Like the social pressure for women to remove armpit hair. As this articles highlights, it’s kind of a thing for a lot of people. I get that from an aesthetic perspective a great bushy undergrowth might be best avoided, but what’s wrong with a little scrub? I’ve never understood why totally bare is seen as normal.

I actually feel the same way about pubic hair. I’ve had dommes in the past get slightly annoyed that I’m not completely clean shaven around the genital region, which always tends to provoke a kind of reverse Costanza in me – “Is that wrong? Should I have done something about that? I tell ya, I’ve got to plead ignorance on this thing.”

This is Mistress Youko, a Japanese pro-domme, with a sexy armpit image posted to her twitter feed. Interestingly doing an image search for something like ‘femdom armpit’ produces an endless stream of denuded pits. Hair like this is definitely the exception, not the rule.

The Philosophers Stone

Alchemists believed that there was a mystical substance that could transmute any element into any other element – the Philosophers Stone. The medieval theory for this was that the stone was formed from the intrinsic material of the world, the fundamental base that all other things were made from, and hence provided a means to dissolve and reconstitute materials as the alchemist desired. Since most alchemists got funding by pitching get-rich-quick schemes to wealthy patrons, that typically meant turning lead into gold.

Sadly the philosophers stone doesn’t exist, but the concept got me thinking about it in the context of kinky activities and sexual desire. I like a lot of different activities, which on the face of it are all fairly different. Being hit with sticks is very different to having needles pushed through the skin, which is very different to being pissed on. I enjoy them all, but why? Is there a common element that might not be obvious but that underpins their appeal? Do kinky people have a personal philosopher’s stone?

I’m sure some of you at this point are thinking – “What’s this idiot talking about? Obviously female domination is the key underlying element. Hasn’t he looked at his site name recently?” That’s fair but I think wrong. From a personal perspective there are lot of femdom scenes that do nothing for me. For example, punishment scenes, interrogations, pony play, foot worship, ABDL, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who unconditionally likes femdom in all its different forms. It’s too broad an area. The same argument applies to pain. I like it, but only in certain contexts. I’m not someone who enjoys a good beating for its own sake. I also enjoy scenes that don’t feature pain, so that can’t be the intrinsic element to my kink.

It was actually the picture below that gave me a clue to what I think is my fundamental base kink – contrasts. I love activities that clash contrasting dynamics. Sensual sadism, caring objectification, tease and denial, restriction with sensory overload. Cuckolding is hot as it combines love with betrayal. Punishment beatings are not because I associate them purely with negative emotions. Watersports are hot as they combine intimacy with objectification. Ballbusting is not (to me) as it seems predominantly about taking pain. In the case of the picture below it’s the contrast of beauty with severity. It’s the delicate feminine features of Lady Mephista set against the severe colors and form of her military outfit.

I think this is interesting, because understanding the basis for desires helps you to explore them. It gives me a clue about what else I might like, or how I could modify scenes to work better. I might not enjoy ballbusting on its own, but maybe doing it as a giggling schoolgirl roleplay – with the domme having fun teasing and picking on me – would add the contrast I’d need to make it work.

Does anyone else think they have a kinky philosophers stone? A base element that might not be immediately obvious but that threads through all their fantasies and play scenes?

Lady Mephista is a Berlin based domme whose professional site can be found here.

Easter Bunny

It’s Easter weekend, so what could be more appropriate than a very sexy Easter bunny image? Presumably this lady didn’t want to mess around hunting for eggs and went straight into torturing the source for their location.

What I love most about this image – among many things – is the nipple clamps on the bunny. I can’t imagine they’re particularly effective over that fluffy suit. Although when you’ve got a chained up giant bunny in a corset and a domme wearing sunglasses in a dungeon, then clearly Mr Logic has long since packed his bags and left town.

I’ve no idea where this is originally from. I found it here.