F – Page 45 – Femdom Resource

The human birthday card

As I mentioned briefly at the time, I was lucky enough to get to session with Cynthia Stone down in LA last month. She kindly snapped a few pictures of our play together and, after much slacking on my part, I’ve finally put together a page describing some of the very enjoyable activities that we got up to.

As the post title suggests part of it involved turning me into a human birthday card, an activity that really should have its own special name. It’s not really forniphilia, as a card isn’t furniture. Decoraphilia? Craftyism? I’d-hate-to-pay-the-postage-ophilia? Anyway, for anyone wanting to see some very creative domination at work, click through to ‘A birthday card for Cynthia Stone‘.

The image is of the aforementioned Mistress Stone. If you find yourself in the LA region then her session information is here. For the masochistically inclined she’s very definitely someone worth spending time with.

TV Guide

I’m going to interpret my blog tagline – the beauty of dominant women – fairly liberally for this post. It’s not femdom related in the sexual sense, but it does relate very much to a strong dominant women. I’ve just spent an enjoyable evening re-watching the first few episodes of Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren. It comes from a rich tradition of British crime series, which also includes such gems as Cracker and Wire in the Blood.

I have a love hate relationship with these kind of shows. I enjoy the genre and plot structure, but hate the sexual stereotypes they almost always portray. Sex workers are normally damaged powerless victims. The criminals are often sexually warped sadists whose only outlet is violent attacks. It’s certainly not a genre to look at for positive portrayals of BDSM. Despite that, the Prime Suspect series is redeemed by having the wonderful Helen Mirren in the leading role. She plays a strong no-nonsense female character who puts up with a lot of sexist bullshit from her colleagues while still figuring out the cases. It’s a real pleasure to watch such a talented actress sink her teeth into the role.

US TV has a tendency to remake and horribly screw-up British series. I’ve not seen the US version, but looking at some of the online video’s they seem to have repeated the trick here. What was a reserved and complex older female character, with a flinty inner core, has become a skirt-the-rules cop played by a conventionally attractive blonde with a classic in your face New York attitude. In other words, the same thing we’ve seen a million times before. The good news is that netflix has the original UK series available for streaming. I definitely recommend checking it out.

Photograph is of Helen Mirren from a Prime Suspect publicity shot. If you’re a fan of hers, then I also recommend watching Excalibur. It’s a brilliant version of the Arthurian legend featuring her in the role of Morgana.

The ‘dominatrix’ in fashion

It seems that every week I see some fashion article extolling the ‘dominatrix’ look. It’s a regular part of the current fall fashion collections. The latest was this on the DSquared2 fashion show. Typically I steer away from cliched dominatrix shots. But if you’re going to shoot for that, at least do it properly. Every single ‘dominatrix’ fashion look so far has come across as very weak sauce. A pair of leather boots or a tight leather top does not equal dominatrix. If you’re going to do it, do it properly. The image below (courtesy of Fetish World tumblr) is a good example of the look done right. Boots. Corset. Jodhpurs. Crop. Stare. All check.

Stereotypes of submission

A post by Ms Justine Cross pointed me at this interesting article on Salon by Tracy Clark-Flory. The article was written in response to one by Katie Roiphe in Newsweek suggesting that women are newly interested in submission because of the greater power and equality they’re experiencing in the workplace. The original Newsweek article stuck me as particularly muddleheaded and I’m glad to see someone pointing that out. However, in the process it does recycle an old stereotype that always annoys me. Namely that male submissives and masochists are typically powerful and successful career people who need to submit in order to take a break from all the high pressure decisions they normally have to take. It’s the cliche of the aggressive lawyer who spends all morning shouting at staff and his lunchtime wearing pink panties and getting caned.

It’s a point of view often heard from pro-dommes (as Ms Cross also mentions in her post), typically meant to describe their clients, but often applied generally to describe male submissives. And I get why pro-dommes say this. It’s a pre-emptive strike against the assumption that their clients (and by association themselves) are weird or misfits in society. Their clients aren’t just average they’re saying, they’re better than average, taken from the winners in society. But understanding it doesn’t stop it annoying me on several different levels.

Firstly, pro-domme clients are a self-selecting group, not a random sample. Seeing a pro-domme regularly costs thousands of dollars. Men who can afford this are certainly not a representative cross-section of society. Secondly, it’s not something I see discussed in non-professional circles. I’ve never seen someone write “My husband used to just want regular sex, but since he got that promotion suddenly he’s insisting I chain him up and pee on him. I like the extra income but I’ve had to spend half of it on leather outfits and a snorkel set”. Thirdly, a lot of kinky people can trace their preferences back to childhood or adolescence. Which means it’s completely unrelated to profession or success, unless you happen to have been a 13 year old investment banker.

Finally, and perhaps most annoying of all, is the implication that only powerful successful people (lawyers doctors, brokers, etc.) have stressful and high pressure decisions to take. Everyone has to deal with those kind of issues in their lives. In fact I’d say trying to bring up a family while working an underpaid job is going to involve a whole lot more stress and pressure than a rich, pro-domme visiting executive has to deal with.

The truth is that kinky people come from all walks of life. There’s nothing particularly special about having an interest in BDSM. Or at least no more so than all the interesting and quirky factors that go into making us who we are.

Given my original prompt for this post was Ms Justine Cross, that seems like a perfect excuse to feature a picture of the lovely lady in question.

10 ways to tell if your sex article is rubbish

Reading Cosmo has always been a guilty pleasure. When I was young, and furtively reading copies my mother brought home, it seemed a fascinating window into a sophisticated adult world. Now I’m older, and find it in waiting rooms, it’s still a fascinating window into a different world. Unfortunately the world is one of absolutely nutty advice written by people who appear to have absolutely no clue what they’re talking about.

I’ve recently seen a few blog posts pointing to a Jezebel article mocking Cosmo’s BDSM advice. However, I have to say they’re a little late to the game. Cliff over at The Pervocracy has been entertainingly pulling apart their sex advice for years now. And while mocking Cosmo sex advice is like shooting fish in a barrel – if it’s a tiny barrel, and a big fish, and it’s dead already, and you’ve got a shotgun – I have to say she’s doing a much better job of it then Jezebel. Here’s a taster from her most recent post…

If you ask him out on a second date, he’ll likely feel emasculated… and that’s pretty much the worst thing you can do to a guy.

It’s gotta be inconvenient having your gender role defined by what someone else does. You’re going along, being all masculine, and then your date fucks it up and breaks your masculinity so you have to be feminine! And you don’t even own a decent pair of heels so then you have to go shopping! Talk about a pain in the neck!

And here’s a snippet from her take on their article on that book…

Maybe it will discuss how BDSM exists as a community, how it encompasses a broad range of activities and motivations, and above all else, how crucial enthusiastic consent and explicit communication are in BDSM!

Suprise-attack him with a few of these tonight… and that’s an order.

…Maybe not.

Use the back of a brush to swat his thighs when he steps out of the shower–wet skin is more sensitive.

That’s not a sexy surprise, Cosmo. That’s battery.

If you’ve not read any of The Pervocracy articles before, then I think you’re in for an entertaining treat. In the meantime, I’ll use the flimsy above reference to a swat with a hairbrush to feature this image. It’s of Miss Dawn, a professional disciplinary from Cambridge in the UK.

If you find yourself in the Cambridge region and fancy a swat across the thigh with this hairbrush (wet or otherwise), Miss Dawn’s session information is here. I originally found the image on the Strict Women tumblr.

Institutional torture

I’m a little ambivalent about the image below. It’s got a militaristic torture vibe to it, which I have to admit I find kind of hot. There’s what looks like an electrical torture device on wheels, and a mostly naked lady in an incredibly impractical but very sexy boots/hat/gloves military torturer get-up. I passionately hate the idea of any kind of officially sanctioned torture, but this image is sufficiently fantastical in nature that it works for me on a purely abstract and sexual level.

However, the blog post I found for this image describes this as a postcard for March 8th, which it lists as a “Traditional day of torture for the male population…” (via google translation). March 8th happens to be International Women’s Day, a day described in wikipedia as “a celebration for women’s economic, political and social achievements.” So now I’m left wondering what the artist was originally getting at. Is it purely a sexual image for people attracted to female sadists? Or is he trying to make some misogynistic point about women generally torturing men? It can’t be a coincidence that he picked March 8th, and that context makes the image a difficult one for me to enjoy. But purely visually, it does push buttons buried deep in my sub-cortex.

The beauty of the visual

Tumblr is a wonderful resource for writing blogs like this one. I try and create a new post every day, and without the vast number of femdom tumblrs out there to draw on, I don’t think I’d be able to achieve that. Most tumblrs, particularly the sexually explicit ones, focus on a single theme. However, I always enjoy stumbling across a site that casts its net a touch wider.

Blogs in general tend to be one dimensional. This one is a good case in point. If I was writing about the multidimensional paltego there would be a lot more posts on food, wine, cocktails, books, politics, history and science. Unfortunately consuming a written blog post takes time, and so writing broadly limits your audience to those who enjoy all (or at least most) of your topics. As it is you can be a teetotal fruitarian Republican who thinks that Romulus and Remus are Star Trek characters, and still enjoy this blog if you also happen to like femdom. Although if you do perfectly match that description then you have my sympathy. Let’s never be friends.

The beauty of a tumblr is how easily it can be consumed. A viewer can spend 10 minutes or 10 seconds on an image and still have an appreciation for it. This makes it much easier to create a wide ranging blog that had broad appeal. For example, the shot below is originally from the photographer Simon Pais-Thomas, but I found it via the Avalanche tumblr. It’s obviously curated by someone who likes elegant and forceful women. He or she also has a penchant for feet. But along with the femdom related shots, there are bookshops, graveyards, pop culture, architecture and humor. It’s a visually appealing glimpse into someone’s brain.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in the background to tumblr and its design philosophy, the New York Times recently carried an interesting article on it.

When no news is good news

The extended trailer for the movie Cloud Atlas was recently released. It’s a movie I’m really looking forward to, and it marks the return of the Wachowskis, who shot to fame with the original Matrix movie. They also released a short introductory video which is notable for featuring the first official public appearance by Lana Wachowski. She was formerly known as Larry until going through gender reassignment. As this Salon articles discusses, the real big story here seems to be what a non-event this was. There was no big media kerfuffle, just a lot of general positive articles that covered the facts in a non-judgmental way. What a pleasant surprise.

As far as femdom links go, there is a connection, as Lana was (and presumably still is) reported to be a fairly kinky person. She attended BDSM clubs and had a well publicized relationship with Ilsa Strix, a highly regarded pro-domme from LA, as described in an infamous Rolling Stone article. It’s an unwritten law of human nature that people tend to believe what they read, unless they happen to know something about the subject in question. In those cases the writing is invariably found to be horribly wrong and misinformed. Oddly enough, this doesn’t cause people to stop believing everything else they read. I have zero personal knowledge of any of the people in the Rolling Stone article, but it does seem like a lot of sensationalized gossip cooked up by people only peripherally involved. The BDSM comments and discussion of pro-domme behavior are also fairly ludicrous. My favorite was this one, describing how Ilsa Strix played…

If her submissive said, ‘I don’t really think I’m interested in needles,’ she might just come up and, boom, put a couple of needles under their fingernails

Any pro-domme who thinks that a good way to introduce piercing to a submissive is needles under fingernails is going to go broke in short order. By all accounts Ilsa was a smart and excellent domme, and so it’s quotes like that which make me doubt the veracity of the article beyond the very basic facts.

I’ll leave you with a couple of shots of Trinity, from the first Matrix movie. It’s one of my favorite movies, and the appeal of watching Carrie Anne Moss kick ass in slow motion never really fades.

In repose

Yesterday’s post promised hot babes in skin tight leather, and while that was originally intended sarcastically, I thought this photograph would fulfill my promise while still being an interesting image. I’ve no idea if it’s posed or a candid shot taken between poses. There’s no watermark and I couldn’t track down an attribution. I find it kind of sweet. A sleeping person naturally draws out a sentimental and protective reaction. I’d guess it’s an evolutionary programmed response. She’ll be up to beat your ass and slap you with those gloves, just as soon as she’s grabbed a quick 40 winks.

I found this on the Fetish World tumblr site.

Squaring the circle

I was sorry to see that Ms K has decided to retire from professional domination. I’ve never met her – it has been many years since I returned to the UK – but from her blog posts it was clear she was a thoughtful and conscientious pro-domme, and it’s always a shame to lose someone like that from the profession. I found her follow-up post listing some of her reasons for stopping a thought provoking one.

I was finding it hard to reconcile being the Dominant woman I am with feeling a sense of having to oblige those subs who were paying for my time, with things they enjoyed even if I was beginning to find those things less interesting …[snip]… I gave up as I only wanted to play with subs prepared to do it my way.
Ms K

All jobs require compromise at some level. It doesn’t matter if you’re the founder of a start-up or a cog in a big corporate machine, there are always trade-offs to make and boring tasks to complete. Yet most jobs don’t have the idea of dominance and control at the heart of them. As a software developer, I might not like every feature I deliver, but there’s no conflict with my inherent software developeriness. The same can’t be said for a dominant doing something she doesn’t enjoy. What does a domme do when the demands of the business contradict her reasons for doing it?

Professional domination is frequently described in a derogatory fashion as service topping, and that’s something that annoys me twice over. Firstly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with service topping. Making someone happy and delivering a great experience is a wonderful thing. I don’t think anything less of a chef just because she decides to cook professionally. Secondly, I think both service topping and ‘true domination’ (whatever that means) can occur in both professional and non-professional relationships. Money is only one aspect of many in a relationship, professional or otherwise. But I have to agree that it can be a particularly gnarly aspect to deal with.

It’s also a problem that cuts both ways. As a submissive I don’t want someone simply running through a list of activities with me. I want a dominant who is enjoying what she’s doing and expressing her natural creativity as we play. Specifying a ‘to do’ list runs counter to the D/s dynamic, but several dommes I’ve played with in the past wanted exactly that. I’d guess that was partly to make their lives easier, and mostly because too many clients in the past started with “Oh you can do anything you want to me Mistress!” and finished up with “Well I don’t like that, and we didn’t do this, and why this? That wasn’t what I wanted.”

It’s my personal suspicion that the most financially successful pro-dommes are those who can get personal satisfaction both from one-off service top type sessions and from building longer-term relationships involving more D/s elements. I’ve also anecdotally observed that a lot of pro-dommes start with a lot of the former and evolve towards the latter as their careers and interests progress. It strikes me as a pity that both dommes and clients aren’t more open about the distinction between the two approaches. Everything gets lumped under domination, when in fact that’s simply a catch-all for anything under the BDSM and fetish umbrella.

I’m afraid I don’t have any images of Ms K to use (her website has been taken down), so I’ll instead go with another retired pro-domme, the legendary Isabella Sinclaire. It was originally shot for bootlovers.com.