Tag: F

Bayonetta

Having touched on gaming in my previous post, that does give me an excuse to segue onto a game related topic. Specifically the game Bayonetta, which features a tall, aggressive leather clad female protagonist. It clearly draws on BDSM culture (as alluded to here by one of the designers), but I’d always dismissed it as an example of the typical adolescent dominatrix fantasy that crops up fairly often in video games. Maddy Myers, writing in Paste magazine, thinks otherwise. It’s an interesting article, and she clearly identifies with both the dominant role and the leading character.

We don’t just get invited to watch Bayonetta, we also inhabit her. When I play, Bayonetta is me, and the camera’s glances are just the “sub gaze”—the male submissive’s gaze. Bayonetta holds all the cards.
Maddy Myers in Paste

It’s rare to read such a thoughtful commentary on a video game. It’s even rarer to have a woman come out as a dominant in a non-professional BDSM setting. Pro-domme tell-all articles are a dime a dozen, but I can’t remember the last time I encountered a woman identifying that way in the context of her professional non-kinky life. You can read more from her at her site.

While I head off to Amazon to order a copy of the first version of the game, I’ll leave you with some Bayonetta cosplay by TraumaticCandy. The original character design is deliberately freakishly long-limbed, and this costume does an amazing job of capturing that.

Bayonetta by TraumaticCandy

Tell me where it hurts

Kink and fantasy medial scenes are a pretty natural pairing. Kink and actual medical professionals can be a bit more problematic. The Daily Beast has a good article on that topic entitled ‘Coming out kinky to your Doctor, in Black and Blue‘. It covers some of the risks and dilemmas involved in sharing exactly where that bruise or rope burn came from.

Personally if there was ever an issue I needed to discuss, or I was directly questioned about it, I’d be open with my doctor. After all if I’m willing to share my kinks with a professional dominatrix, why not a medical professional? I also assume that doctors see unusual stuff all the time, and whatever I’ve done is going to be old news to them. I once spent an instructive few hours browsing a forum for medical interns. They were sharing crazy stories from the emergency room, and it was pretty clear that whatever kinky shenanigans I got up to, it was never going to top what the average trainee doctor sees on a regular basis.

Of course I’m lucky. I have good healthcare, live in a liberal city and have a wide choice of doctors. If my choices were more limited I’d perhaps feel differently.

Nurse Eleise De Lacy

The image is of the wonderful Eleise De Lacy of Femme Fatale Films.

Songbird in leather

Celebrities strutting their stuff in fetish gear pop up constantly in the gossip rags (example case in point). The shot below is a little different. Eagle eyed readers may recognize the lady on the right. Yes, it’s Barbra Streisand in leather and brandishing (well limply holding) a whip.

You can see more shots from the same sequence in this article. It was taken in 1970 and was shot for a prop used in a movie called The Owl and the Pussycat. According to the article the prop was only used briefly, but they still seem to have shot an awful lot of images of Barbara posed a ‘cycle slut’. I guess I might have done the same given the chance.

Barbara Streisand in Leather

The million eyes of Sumuru

Based on its imdb page, the million eyes of Sumuru was a pretty terrible movie. Despite that, I have a soft spot for these kind of cheesy 60’s exploitation flicks. They’re impossible to defend on an artistic, cultural or political level, yet hard for me to resist when I stumble across them late at night with a drink in my hand. I love the over-the-top poster below, and I’m guessing that a lot of my readers might enjoy this clip from the movie.

SumuruYou can see the trailer for the movie here. In typically culturally sensitive fashion, the ‘asian’ Sumuru was played by the wonderful but very non-asian Shirley Eaton (famous for her role in Goldfinger)

Still Alive

I think this must be the longest I’ve ever gone without a post in 3+ years. No major problem I’m happy to report. Just stuck in the wilds of British Columbia for the weekend without an internet connection. And when I say the wilds, I mean a house on a beach with a hot tub, grill and well stocked fridge. For me any accommodation without high speed internet and room service is akin to 19th century arctic exploration.  Fortunately I wasn’t compelled to eat any traveling companions, although several bottles of red wine were sacrificed.

I’m afraid I’ve no kinky fun to report. It would have been the perfect place for this kind of outside leash play. There were plenty of chains around, I just lacked a lady to hold the end of it.

Chain Leash

Dubious decor

No matter how long her whip, or how sternly she points, I don’t think I could take any scene seriously when surrounded by that decor. She’s undoubtedly an attractive lady in a hot outfit. And I’m all for getting away from cliched dungeon shots. But that carpet, floral wallpaper and short chaise lounge remind me too much of my grandmother’s parlor. I’d never be able to relax. I’d be naked, vulnerable and constantly expecting a small old lady to pop in and ask if we’d like a cup of tea and a slice of cake. Oh, and were we really sure that was hygienic? Well just as long as your nice new friend has washed her hands dear…

Interesting Decor

The image is originally from the Only Tease site. I found it via the darksehnsucht tumblr.

The flip side

Over the last couple of years I’ve written a lot of posts about positive experiences of professional domination. That’s not a matter of selective editing. From my perspective, as a client playing with independent dommes, my experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. However, I think it would be remiss of me to not feature articles that show a less positive side of the profession. One such article is ‘The Commercial Dungeon Experience: Abusive Management And Exploitation‘ hosted by the Tits and Sass site. It features four dommes who experienced some fairly horrendous treatment in commercial houses.

I may post some follow-up thoughts tomorrow, but for now I’ll just offer the link as reading material. If you’re at all involved in sex work (on either side of the transaction) then the Tits and Sass site is generally well worth reading. Although if you’re on the client side of the equation I strongly suggest limiting yourself purely to reading, and not butting into the discussion.

The image below is by the photographer Susan Meiselas and was taken at NYC’s Pandora’s Box in associated with the Nick Broomfield documentary Fetishes. Note that I’ve no idea where the four dommes in the article worked and I’m not implying a connection between the article and that particular house. It just seemed a suitable image to use, given that it’s one of the most well known houses in NYC, and the documentary is one of the most well known representations of a commerical BDSM house. This was from back in 1995.

Image by Susan Meiselas from her book Pandora's Box