Tag: F

There is More to the Story

Regular readers will probably be aware who Mistress T is. A prolific producer of Femdom porn and a kinky blogger, I’ve featured her on this site multiple times in past posts (e.g. here, here, here, etc.) Now she’s added another string to her bow as the author of her autobiography – There is More to the Story. I’ve just finished reading it and thought my readers might appreciate a review. The short version is that it’s an extremely entertaining and fast read that kept me eagerly flipping pages right to the end. If that isn’t enough to get you to hit the “Buy Now” button,  then read on.

It’s probably worth starting with what the book is not about. It’s not an analysis of kink, D/s or why her clients are into the fantasies she creates. Nor is it a guide to repeating her success as a femdom content creator. Anyone looking at the ‘how’ or ‘why’ of professional femdom should look elsewhere. Instead it’s a very revealing and personal reflection on the life of a complex, curious and kinky woman who happens to have ended up as a femdom porn producer.

Mistress T isn’t a professional writer, but she is a talented amateur one, and the anecdotes and stories she has to tell zip past the reader at an astonishing rate. It bounces from dodging white slavers in Thailand to taking ayahuasca in South America. From stripping in Canadian mining towns to shooting BDSM porn for some of the biggest producers in California. There are challenging relationships, a difficult childhood and messy breakups. Not to mention the peep shows, poop scenes and angry monkeys (fortunately not all at the same time). It’s probably fortunate that Mistress T chose to keep the story moving at a rapid pace. With this wealth of material, a writer given to endless scene setting and self-analysis would have produced something of a length to rival Game of Thrones (albeit with less violence and more sex).

For me, while I enjoyed reading about some of the more outlandish situations Mistress T finds herself in, what really stood out was how much she shared about her life. The book’s title is well chosen. I’m sure it would have been easier to string together some entertaining stories and sell another version of her Mistress T persona. Instead she’s honest about the emotional challenges she’s faced and the toll they’ve often taken. I’m sure it took a lot of courage to share those details, and its those sections that really give the book its heart. She also does a great job of closing the circle and pulling everything together in the final chapters.

Criticisms? Just two minor ones. I’d have been tempted to more tightly edit the sections on working vanilla jobs and expand the later sections on her as Mistress T. The problems of crappy low paid jobs and messy love affairs have been tackled by many great writers, but managing a complex personal life whilst also becoming a successful business woman producing kinky porn is a less well trodden path. I also found it slightly odd she chose to pick fake names for some of the production companies she worked with. Anyone vaguely interested in femdom porn will quickly work out who/what she’s talking about, so it doesn’t add much other than momentary confusion. Perhaps that was done under legal advice?

You can pick up a copy of ‘There is More to the Story’ at Amazon in either kindle or paperback form. I absolutely recommend that you do. It’s one of the best autobiographies I’ve read from someone in the adult entertainment business.

You can read more from Mistress T on her blog and purchase her porn here.

Sweet Smooshing

I hadn’t intended to do another Valentine Day themed post, but somehow these romantic fireside photographs of a ‘Happy Valentines’ cake getting smooshed were too fun not to feature. I’m not really a fan of food play or feet, but this made me smile. Possibly I need more frosting in my life. The lady doing the smooshing is Madame Ingrid, a Pittsburgh based pro-domme.  You can see other shots from the sequence in this tweet.

If the cake play isn’t doing it for you, then check out this Vice article on Valentines Day for Doms and Subs.  It interviews a variety of kinky people about what expressions of love and romance means to them. Oddly enough, licking dessert from your Doms feet doesn’t feature in it anywhere.

Top of the Pops

The LA Weekly has published an interesting list of their top 10 fetish inspired bands. I have to admit that while I’d heard of the more obvious ones like NOFX, Genitorturers and Adam and the Ants, most of the list was new to me. I was particularly intrigued to learn that there used to be a Portland punk band called ‘The Submissives’ who wrote exclusively about femdom. Sadly they only released one album before their guitarist ‘Pig Champion’ passed away. You can listen to the album here. As a punk and thrash fan I kind of like it, but I will concede it’s definitely a niche taste. Fans of romantic ballads should steer clear.

This is an image of Gen, the lead singer from the Genitortures. They’re currently touring with another of the bands from the LA Weekly list – the Lords of Acid. You can catch them both via the Pretty in Kink tour.

Crack the Whip

This is the model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley shot by British photographer Rankin. The odd thing is that this version of the image, which I believe is the original one, isn’t the one that has been widely shared. That would be this cropped and color modified version that I originally found. I guess people are happy to trade bad composition for a closer look at Ms Huntington-Whiteley.

This is from a book by Rankin called Ten Time Rosie shot in 2010.

Manners Maketh Man

A tweet by Mistress Tess recently caught my eye.

I was helping him into a dress. He put his hand near my shoulder and said “May I?” instead of just automatically putting his hand on my shoulder to balance. This is called having RESPECT AND MANNERS! It’s not okay to freely touch your Goddess. Remember that guys.

I liked this for a number of reasons. Firstly, politeness is all sorts of hot. I’m not big on high kink protocol,  but love the more gentle dance of manners and courtesy in daily life. Secondly, it reminded me of my yoga teacher, who is a stickler for checking before touching any part of me. Initially it made me smile. I’m not used to women checking before grabbing me. Over time I’ve come to appreciate it and her attention to that kind of detail.

Finally, I liked it because denial leads to desire. To be close to someone as amazing as Mistress Tess, to have her do terrible but wonderful things to you, and yet to not touch her is a gift in itself. To be so near, and yet so far. As a masochist I deal with pain by drawing on my feelings and submission to the domme. The deeper those feelings, the greater the reverence I hold for her, the harder and further I can push into intense play. Respect and restraint really helps build that kind of dynamic.

This image is from the website of Mistress Tess. The post title comes from this rather well done fight scene.

Vulnerability

Mistress Lola Ruin has published a lovely blog post on her experiences of sharing her own vulnerability with slaves and letting the facade of being a perfect dominant Goddess slip. I like the post a lot because I’ve always thought the idea of needing to present a perfect invulnerable facade to be a great domme was badly flawed. Deep down we know that we’re all human, so to pretend otherwise lacks authenticity. A domme shouldn’t have to fit herself into a submissive’s fantasy in order to be respected and exalted. Those things should come even with knowledge of the dommes humanity and vulnerabilities. That’s what makes them meaningful.

Mistress Lola Ruin is  a pro-domme based in Manchester, UK. You find her twitter feed here and information on arranging a session with her here.

Final Thoughts on Two Kinkster Problem

This isn’t particularly femdom, but I think it’s interesting, so allow me to return one more time to the thought experiment I described previously.

It was actually inspired by a study Jonathan Haidt described in his book The Righteous Mind (which I’ve mentioned before). He came up with a set of scenarios that violated social norms in fairly disgusting ways, but didn’t actual cause any harm. For example, a man buys a chicken in a grocery store, takes it home and has sex with it before cooking and eating it. Is that morally wrong? Another one featured a family whose pet dog was run over, and rather than simply bury it, they cooked and ate it. He discovered that general disgust at the scenarios was universal, but that moral judgement varied. Wealthy liberal Westerners, brought up to believe in the primacy of the individual, tended to say nothing was wrong if no one was harmed. Almost everyone else outside that specific narrow group took the opposite view. They treated these major violations of social conventions as moral violations. Haidt went on to point out that the liberal western viewpoint of putting the individual first is actually the exception, both through history and in the world today.

I didn’t actually describe a scenario for Mary or Sam, but it’s pretty easy to come up with one that’d fit Haidt’s study. Imagine if they were roleplaying an actual lynching from the Jim Crow era South. I’d expect (hope) that people would find that disgusting but, assuming they never take it beyond the two of them in their playspace, there is no obvious harm to point at. From a purely Utilitarian viewpoint, they’re happy and nobody else is affected. Of course, the assumption that they can 100% compartmentalize their kinks is a big and questionable one.

Given that my readership skews to Western liberal (in the general rather than political sense) and given what I’d read in Haidt’s book, I predicted that most people would think Mark and Sam can’t do any moral harm in the original thought experiment. That did indeed seem to be consensus. I fit that mold myself. But it’s interesting to reflect that it’s an unusual viewpoint. The majority of people across the world and through history would not share it.

As I’ve said before, it’s tough to come up with an image for these kind of posts. Controversial activities tend to have controversial images. I’m going with an old shot from an ageplay scene in Taboo magazine. I’m not ageplay fan myself, but something about this image always worked for me.

Side effects

Weird question of the week for my readers: Has anyone done a flogging or whipping scene that left their skin incredibly itchy?

Playing in LA last week, I did a scene featuring a fairly heavy flogging and a moderate whipping. It left me with some beautiful marks on my upper back, but it also left that whole area very rough and itchy. Given its inaccessible location for scratching, that makes it particularly frustrating. I’m guessing the skin was dry from the LA heat, and then damaged enough by the heavy flogger to trigger the wound healing itch reaction. It’s kind of odd however, as I’ve never had this kind of reaction before, and certainly nothing that lasts this long. Really hoping I’m not suddenly developing an allergy to leather. That would really cramp my play options.

Given the topic of leather and whips, this striking photograph of Mistress Adrienne of NYC seems an appropriate one to feature. Whatever I was hit with, it was nothing as fearsome as that particular single tail.

The Self Sustaining Pain Reaction

My kink-tastic LA 2018 tour (fall edition) continues apace. Yesterday I was lucky enough to get to play with Mistress Damiana Chi. Flogging, whipping, heavy bondage and CBT all had their opportunity to feature in the proceedings. Also screams, yowls, groans and whimpers.

Mistress Damiana was kind enough to snap a few images of me mid-torment. This shows saran wrap bondage, with layers of rope added on top, all based on suspended bondage board. The design of the board is quite clever, as the ropes quickly snap into the eyelets on the side, making it relatively fast to rig. You can see another angle here, showing the legs are wrapped and immobilized separately. The bondage and the gentle swaying movement of the suspended board was quite relaxing, which is more than can be said for the CBT devices deployed.

The metal ring around the cock (show in this close-up) is a Kali’s teeth type device. I think the general idea is to prevent erections by creating pain as the cock swells. That’s clearly a flawed design when masochists get involved. Pain = Exciting = Engorging = Pain. It’s basically the self-sustaining fusion reaction scientists have been searching for all the years, just with the output being endless whimpering rather than clean energy. Fortunately, the spiked vice on the balls was uncomfortable enough to damp down the effect, and prevent a runaway reaction and a critical penis mass. Nobody wants to deal with that kind of fallout.

This photograph of Mistress Damiana Chi is from her site. You can also follow here on twitter here.

Kitty O’Neil

Welcome to another post in my occasional series on women who were awesome without necessarily being dominant in the BDSM sense. In the past this series has included motorcycle racers, resistance fighters, film stars and aristocratic swashbucklers. The newest entrant into this series is all around daredevil and badass Kitty O’Neil, who died recently aged 72.

You might not know the name, but the odds are you’ve seen her in action at some point. She was the stuntwoman for the original Wonder Woman TV series, as well as movies like the Blues Brothers and Smokey and the Bandit. She also set water speed records (275 mph), water skiing records (105 mph), land speed records (512 mph average, peaking at 621 mph) and participated in tough off road races like the Baja 500 and Mint 400. If all that wasn’t enough, she did it after overcoming spinal meningitis in her teens and two bouts of cancer  in her 20’s. Oh, and she was also deaf, thanks to a childhood combo of measles, mumps and smallpox. What an amazing woman.

This is Kitty performing a 127 foot dive from a hotel balcony for the Wonder Woman TV show.