F – Page 47 – Femdom Resource

Holy single tail batman!

I know there are a lot of catwoman fans out there, so here’s a couple of enjoyable images of her. They’re stylistically different but both feature a very happy looking catwoman . The first is by BatgirlOfGotham (free deviant login required), and has a nice big single tail with a stoic (as ever) batman. Hopefully she’ll soon whip a smile onto his face. The second image is by Stephanie Buscema and is based on the Julie Newmar catwoman character. It’s not exactly a kinky shot, but it a very cheerful one, which gives it a great deal of appeal to me. If you like it, she has a number of similar images featuring female superheros on her site. And while I’m on the batman topic, just to finish, here’s a link to great batgirl shot by the artist Houston Sharp.

On the cusp

The shot below is taken from the gallery on Mistress Alex’s site. She has a lot of great images in that gallery, with many that are far more explicitly BDSM than this. There are cages, naked men, whips, floggers and beat downs. All sorts of good stuff. But this slightly more ambiguous image is the one that really appeals to me. I think it captures a moment of balance, the point where all the possibilities of a session begin to resolve into the actualities.

There’s often a lot of laughter and banter at the start of my sessions with Lydia. Some of that is purely practical. It takes time to get ropes tied and bodies arranged, and it’s more fun to talk than not to. A larger part of it is is the nervous energy and anticipation we’re feeding off of. I don’t quite know what’s about to happen, but I’m looking forward to finding out. The domme has got a good idea what’s about to happen, but until it starts to unfold has (presumably) no idea how her ideas will translate into the energy and dynamic of the scene. I love that point of transition, the shifting balance between us, the changing gears of dominance and submission. Hallways are a natural transition place and this image, with its choice of doors and “I was waiting for you” stance, captures an element of that session moment.

Form over function

Here’s a very visually striking pair of Gaspar gloves being modeled by Mistress Veronique. There’s a bit of a militaristic feel to them thanks to all those metal press studs.

While I think these look great, when it comes to playing rather than simply staring, I actually prefer something far more basic. The kind of short black leather gloves you’d use to protect your hands, or improve your grip, or avoid leaving fingerprints. There’s something sexy about function. These have great form, they don’t look all that practical to wear while working a guy over.

I found this on the Bits and Pieces tumblr. It was originally shot for the Boot Lovers site.

A nice kind of sleazy

This image caught my eye because it looks like it was shot in a hotel room, which is a surprisingly rare setting for these kind of shots. I get quite a sexual vibe from it, of rough kinky sex, rather than a D/s scene. I have no idea who the model is or what the context is, but it makes me imagine a fun evening with a high class escort in an expensive hotel. Although that may say more about me than the photograph. And I should again emphasize that’s just the vibe I get from it, I’ve no idea who or where the shot is from.

I’ve only sessioned once in a hotel, and the whole experience created a very interesting atmosphere. It was exciting in a sexy, sleazy and sneaky way. It was in Vegas (always a good start for sleazy) at the Hilton hotel. Vegas has some amazing hotels – Bellagio, Mandarin Oriental, Wynn – but the Hilton isn’t one of them. It has got a real old school feel. By which I mean smoky, worn and a touch shabby. Most of the high end hotels try to keep the hookers from plying their trade too obviously in the casino, but not the Hilton. When I passed through it looked like it a great place to conduct a little business with a lady of negotiable affection.

In my case I’d already pre-negotiated the evening, and it wasn’t affection I was after. I was meeting a pro-domme whose visit overlapped with mine and she was staying and playing in the Hilton. In a normal session, in a studio space, I never feel like I’m doing anything particularly edgy or subversive. The play and the space fit together. Arguably getting naked with a complete stranger for freaky kinky fun is also a pretty good fit for a sleazy Vegas hotel room. But somehow it seemed a lot more socially and morally suspect, which I kind of liked. Trying to keep the screams down so as not to disturb other guests while being draped over the suitcase stand for a caning was definitely a new experience. As was trying to dry off after a golden shower using the paper thin and well used hotel towels. I think I still smelled of pee in the cab on the way back to my hotel, but I’m sure that was no big deal to a Vegas cab driver.

I found this on the Mistress Candy (aka The Ties That Bind) tumblr.

Peaking behind the curtain

I’ve been enjoying catching up on Domina M’s new blog – Look Like Veronica Lake; Think Like Dorothy Parker. She used to be one of NYC’s top pro-dommes, mentored one of the current stars of that city, and has since retired to Barcelona.

She’s writing about the practicalities of being a pro-domme, the behind the scene issues she had to deal with, which I find fascinating. I think it’s always fun to read about unusual jobs. It almost doesn’t matter exactly what the job is – steeplejack, hostage negotiator, matador – there’s just something innately interesting in learning the tricks of a trade. It appeals to the desire to discover a secret, as well as the intellectual pleasure of gaining understanding of a new problem space.

I particularly enjoyed her piece on micro-dommenomics and her attempt to come up with a viable model for an inexpensive session.

A simple foot or OTK session in the morning might be a nice way to start my day. What say $75 for a half hour foot or OTK session in the morning? NO ONE could beat that.
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There was no way I was going to dilute the “Domina M” brand with a blue light special. Besides the argument was that they wanted the minimum, simply a focus on their fetish. Okay fine. I created a new yahoo email account and advertised, “Simple foot/otk sessions with a beautiful, busty, 29-year-old blond. 8AM-11AM. $75 per ½ hour” every free place I could.
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After all of that, how many people did I see in those three months? None. Zero. Goose-Egg.
Domina M

The failure of this approach doesn’t surprise me at all. When it comes to luxury goods and services, price may not be a good discriminating factor, but it is normally a good filtering factor. I probably can’t simply use price alone to choose between a $50 bottle of wine and $100 bottle of wine. But I can normally safely exclude the $5 bottle of wine from consideration. If I saw a very cheap price for an unnamed and unreviewed pro-domme I’d assume either she wasn’t smart enough to price herself correctly or was so bad that she couldn’t get business at a higher price. Neither are appealing characteristics. And, as Domina M discovered, the type of clients who don’t make that kind of assessment turn out to be the type of clients not worth cultivating.

In the comment section Miss Troy Orleans remarked on the fact that she’d recently offered a significant session discount to celebrate her eight year dommiversary, and had been surprised when only one person took her up on it. That also surprised me at first glance, but actually makes some sort of sense from a psychological perspective. A discount suggests that, compared to the normal exchange, one person is losing out on the deal. A client with enough disposable income to regularly see a top pro-domme is unlikely to value a transitory financial saving over the negative psychological association of the discount.

If Miss Orleans had reworded the offer to suggest she was going to extend the session length but still charge her normal rate, I wonder if it would have changed the uptake rate? The cost/time ratio is unchanged, but it creates a different emphasis. Now the client isn’t taking something away, but is instead being gifted with something extra. A bit like how restaurants don’t give regular customers discounts, but do send out additional free courses.

Perhaps that might also have been an answer to Domina M’s discount session experiment. Offer it only as a bonus to regular clients who have already paid the full session rate in the past. That weeds out the wankers while rewarding the regulars. Although of course that does still risk diluting the brand. These things are never simple.

I’ve added her blog to the pro-domme section of my blogroll, so hopefully she’ll be popping up there with many more interesting posts in future. Thanks to hmp for the original pointer.

Photograph is of Domina M. For a little background on the photographer see this blog post.

Young woman, big cock

Here’s an example image of what I’ve previously chosen to call ‘Discovered Femdom.’ That is to say an image that started life in one context, often as a type of vanilla porn or fashion photography, but ended up as an easy target for projecting kinky fantasies.

I found it on the entertaining but inappropriately named 333 images tumblr. My first thoughts were – “Cute girl. Love that smile. Wow, that’s a big cock. What’s not to like?” But then I noticed the lack of straps to hold it in place and, given the professional photographer backdrop, began to suspect it was from a traditional porn shoot. Sure enough, it’s from x-art and features the model Gigi R using it in a more conventional self-pleasuring manner. It’s still a great shot, but I’ll like my mental version of what happened next rather than the actual one.

O Canada!

You’ll have to excuse this post. Or not, your call. Either way, it’s going to be a non-femdom focused one. Instead it’s a couple of random things that caught my eye from north of the border.

The first amused me. It’s a series of commercials for a Canadian porn channel that play with the traditional porn stereotypes. There’s a pool boy, pizza guy and a cop ticketing an attractive young lady. They must have had the only casting call where bad acting was a prerequisite.

The second annoyed me. The beautiful woman below is Jenna Talackova, who was disqualified last week from the Miss Universe Canada competition for being born male. She had gender re-assignment surgery in 2010, but apparently didn’t meet the competition requirements of being born a ‘natural woman’. She’d already made it through to the finals, so clearly the earlier judges must have thought she was a suitably attractive competitor.

Miss World and Miss Universe pageants aren’t exactly at the cultural or intellectual cutting edge, but this struck me as particularly dumb even by their standards. In some circumstances qualifying requirements are obviously necessary. For example, this kind of issue can be a thorny one in the area of sports, where genetic men may have a natural advantage. But in a beauty competition? It’s not like being born male offers any kind of advantage. In fact it’s quite the opposite. Are they worried a flood of guys are going to be inspired to try pulling on a frock and entering? If she can overcome the issues of being born with the wrong body and still end up looking this amazing then good luck to her. They don’t ban cosmetic surgery for the other competitors. It seems hypocritical to ban it for her.

Incidentally, if you happen on a news article covering this story I’d advise you to stop reading before you get to the readers comments. Otherwise you may feel like taking a bath afterwards. When you spend a lot of time hanging out on blogs written and frequented by open minded LGBT positive people, you tend to forget just how many hateful people there are out there.

A fetish diversion

I’m not normally big on posting simple fetish shots. I appreciate an attractive latex or leather outfit, but I always treat them as a bonus to D/s or s&m play, not an end in their right own right.

One possible exception I’ll make for this is the Dutch model Ancilla Tilla. I’m not quite sure why, and what it is about her look that appeals, but something about her photographs always really grabs me. She often manages to pull off an elegant classical look, even when wearing some pretty fetishistic outfits. The fact she reminds me of a kinky Scarlett Johansson doesn’t hurt either.

Nice equipment

After a post featuring a lot of naked me, it seems only fair to provide a contrasting post. This one therefore features 0% scrawny naked English guys, but is 100% packed with hot dominant red headed women. I’m not sure if that’s constitutes a fair rate of exchange, but it’s the best I’ve got to offer.

On a personal note, I have to admit that my first thoughts on seeing this were not about the beautiful woman in the skintight catsuit. Instead they were more along the lines of “Wow, that’s a really cool bondage chair. I’d love to play with that.” I’m not sure if that means I’m turning into a BDSM equipment geek, or I’ve just seen too much femdom porn for my own good. Possibly both.

This is obviously a shot from Club Dom.

A dangerous image

Having mentioned Mitt Romney in a post last week, in the interests of being fair and balanced, I thought I should also devote a post to the other leading light of the GOP – Rick Santorum. Apologies to my readers from outside the US for whom this may not be all that interesting. I know the US primaries get a fair amount of coverage in the world press, so at least this shouldn’t be completely devoid of context for most people.

It turns out that Rick is not a big fan of pornography. That isn’t much of a shocker given his position on other social and sexual issues. He’s also not big on gay marriage, sodomy, contraception, pre-marital sex or abortion. His website contains the following:

America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography.
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Pornography is toxic to marriages and relationships. It contributes to misogyny and violence against women. It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking.
Rick Santorum

That first sentence is a sly one. At first I read it as ‘a pandemic of pornography’, which given porns prevalence on the Internet isn’t too extreme a position. But he’s actually saying a ‘pandemic of harm’, which is far less obvious and calls for a much greater burden of proof. Unsurprisingly that proof is not supplied. He believes in a far stricter enforcement of the US obscenity laws. This old interview with ex-federal prosecutor Bruce Taylor should give you some idea of what is meant by that approach (I’ve linked to this interview before). This blog and pretty much every tumblr site on my images page would be in the firing line as obscene.

I wonder how they feel about images like the one below? It definitely causes me to have prurient sexual thoughts, and I’m publishing it with the intent of creating the same effect on others. I’m also not sure I can make a case for it having redeeming social value. It’s beautiful, but I’m not sure simple aesthetics really count in these matters. Otherwise that’d be a obvious get-out-of-jail card to always play. So, from my perspective at least, this is pornography.

It would seem that this is therefore causing me harm. And possibly creating misogyny, violence to women and sex trafficking. After all it can’t simply be the sight of naked flesh that causes harm. Otherwise it’d be dangerous to look in the mirror when getting changed. Similarly sex itself can’t be toxic to relationships, otherwise the human race would be extinct by now. So it must be something special about the sexual thoughts created when looking at images or movies. This ladies elegant profile, her piercing gaze and her strict governess style outfit are destroying my brain and/or morals as I type. Damn.

If later tonight you find that your relationship has been destroyed and you’ve been forced into prostitution as a result of this image I do apologize. I promise not to post such filth again. At least until tomorrow anyway.

This is by the photographer Ilya Kokorev. I found it on the Continuous State of Desire tumblr.