Fm – Page 165 – Femdom Resource

The bad old days

Bondage blog pointed me at a long but fascinating interview with John Blakemore. He was one of the very early producers of bondage movies back in the 70’s, shooting stuff for HOM and Cal-Star. The original material was before my time, but various stills and fuzzy video clips have been floating around on usenet for years.

All his movies are M/f and a world away from any kind of female dominant aesthetic. However, for anyone interested in the history of porn and BDSM, it’s an informative glimpse behind the scenes and back in time. As he makes clear, he was operating in isolation, in very murky legal territory and with old fashioned technology.

At the time, the laws in the United States prohibited any form of penetration, or sex with bondage, or actual torture and so I made these films expressly for the European market, to be taken out of the country. They were not even edited here. I had to hand deliver the raw footage. It was never out of my possession. I put it in Barbara’s hands; she in turn put it in the hands of someone from Europe. And even then, it was probably risky, although the film had not yet even been developed. It was raw footage that had not yet been developed. And it went out of the country and it did not come back. I was rather shocked to find out a couple years ago that some of this stuff is available.

While I do find it fascinating, it’s not an interview that makes me warm to the man. His approach and attitude comes across as pretty disturbing. He’s not big on concepts like SSC (Safe, Sane and Consensual) and some of his views are fairly ludicrous.

The simple fact of the matter is that in the Western world for the last 2000 years, if you take a young man that’s full of testosterone…and you put him in a situation where he has the place, the equipment and the ability to do anything to a gorgeous young woman that he wants to, with absolutely no repercussions of any kind, he will torture her and rape her.

Clearly technical issues areas like picture quality and the production values aren’t the only things that have improved since the bad old days of BDSM porn.

Given his work is all male dominant, I’m not going to feature any shots from it here. Fortunately he mentions the artist Bishop in the interview, who also used to do work for HOM. That therefore gives me an excuse to feature some of his wonderful artwork.

What do I owe you?

The Dishevelled Domina put up a post a few days ago that got me thinking about the process of sex blogging and image sharing. The post was entitled ‘Yer not the boss of me!‘ and was a good rant about tumblr’s that accompany their images with very broad sweeping statements about the right way to behave. For example, captions of the form “a real mistress will lock her husband up, throw away the key, and fuck other men” or “inspections are one of the things that a true Mistress knows how to do correctly.” DD was, to put it mildly, not a fan of such things.

To a large extent I’m with her on this one. I find the best image+commentary blogs are the ones that concentrate on their personal reactions to an image. They supply background, point out details or add a little humor. Spanking blog and bondage blog are two good examples of this approach, and it’s one I’ve always tried to follow. I don’t want to reinterpret an image, or interpose myself between it and the viewer, I just want to share my feelings about what I see. As soon as you start adding specific context to an image then you’re no longer sharing the image, but instead you’re sharing your personal modification of it. You create something new, text that imposes its own preferences, which may well clash with your reader’s.

Where I depart ways with DD is in her reaction to this phenomena. I have to ask myself, what does a blogger (or tumblr) owe his audience? Who are they posting for? In her post DD puts an open letter to tumblrs…

…if you try to fucking boss people around or tell us what we ought to like or do I am going to want to stab you in the jimmy, or vajayjay, respectively.
Please stop this deeply annoying shit and try to grow an awareness of something other than your own wank-bank.
Dishevelled Domina

But is there anything wrong with a tumblr being someone’s personal wank-bank? People blog for a lot of different reasons. I don’t write this one to get off, but that approach doesn’t have to be a universal one.

When I see an image and caption like this one, I don’t see it as an instruction for 50% of the planet’s population. Or even for the smaller fraction of dominant females. I see it as someone creating their own new little piece of erotica. It’s a fantasy snippet that, along with the image, tells a story they enjoy. It’s not particularly a story I care for, but the same could be said for a lot of the erotica out there.

I think in many ways the problem is actually a technical one. Tumblr makes it trivially easy to share and reblog images, but it drags all the comments along with it. It really needs better tools to slice, dice and mash the content as it flows between sites.

I’ll leave you with an image from the Superior Femme tumblr (originally by Frank Herholdt). This is a tumblr site whose images I like, but the captions often clash with my personal preferences. In this case the caption was “She’s taken his money, his family, his house. Now she’s working on his dignity.” That really doesn’t do much for me. We could go with “A real mistress will get her cuckold to paint her nails before she heads out for a night of fucking”, but then DD might come and stab me in the jimmy. So I’ll just say I like the coloration of the image, and his look of concentration. I’ll leave further interpretation to the viewer’s preferences.

Organic bondage

I’ve featured Catwoman in the past (here and here for example), and now here’s another of Batman’s female foes, Poison Ivy. I’m no expert on the Batman backstory, but according to her wikipedia page she’s a powerful villainess who prefers to kill her enemies with a poisonous kiss. As a fan of blending the sensuous with the sadistic I kind of like that. Much better than riddles or freeze rays.

This image is by the Italian artist Gabriele Dell’Otto. In a nice kinky crossover the original Poison Ivy was apparently modeled on fetish star Bettie Page. This rendering doesn’t really carry that across, but it’s still a very beautiful sexy image.

I found this via the XombieDIRGE tumblr.

Surrender v’s Submission

Troy Orleans has a new blog post up where she talks a little about her blogging history and what motivates her to write. It also includes an ask for interesting questions for her to answer via the blog. I’m kind of surprised that some readers see her blog as a source of wank material, and simply ask to have scenes described. Given the vast flood of porn available online, with an almost infinite supply of images and fiction, a pro-domme blog seems an odd place to try and elicit material to bash the bishop to. Clearly I have too high a respect for my fellow man. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

I didn’t realize she had had a formspring account for questions, and I enjoyed browsing back through it. One particular comment caught my eye.

I sorta think that most of my play partners are fairly submissive to me, but their submission is something that I’ve earned over time and not “submission” in a fetishistic sense. I’m rarely asking my play partners to do things they don’t want to do or “forcing” them to “submit” to anything. Rather, it’s that they give themselves over to me out of trust and respect and a passion for the journey that comes with good, intense, highly skilled play. Throughout my practice, I’ve always maintained that what I seek is not submission, but surrender.
Troy Orleans

If you look up the dictionary definitions of ‘surrender’ and ‘submission’ they’re almost identical, and yet surrender resonates with me and the way I play much more than the idea of submission. To surrender feels like a voluntary act. When I’m in a session the mistress doesn’t need to be overtly dominant. I cooperate. Encourage even. I enjoy being a partial instrument in my own demise. In contrast the concept of submission seems to suggest a response to a forceful act of domination. The other term often used in this context is ‘bottom’, but that never quite aligns with me either. That loses too much of the power exchange component. After all you can be a dominant bottom. Perhaps I need to coin a new word. Surrenderist? Surrendission? Surrmission?

My ugly neologistic musings aside, if you’ve got an interesting question for one of the top NYC dommes, then I suggest firing it in Troy Orlean’s direction. Just don’t try and use it to pad your wank bank. In the meantime I’ll leave you with an impressive image of heavy bondage from her Salon d’Orleans.

Bruised

I’m feeling a little tender right now. I sessioned with Domina Yuki earlier today, and have collected a nice set of bruises, spread across various body parts. I’m going to see her along with Domina Ai-Li tomorrow, and therefore expect to extend my collection further.

We did get some photographs from today’s session, so expect some first hand evidence of said bruising in future posts. In the meantime here’s a nice shot of someone else’s bruised torso, along with a little high heel CBT. The only area lacking bruises looks like the inside of his thighs. That’s an area which, I can tell you from first hand experience, is really great / hideously painful / great and hideously painful (strike-out as applicable) to apply a tawse or single-tail.

I found this on the Rue Montorgueil tumblr. It’s originally from the sadly defunct Young Goddess site. I commented on the demise of this site in an earlier post. If you go and read the Young Goddess root page it’s now an odd rant on the evils of masturbation by (presumably) the former owner and maintainer of the site. It’s very …. peculiar, particularly given the context.

Relaxing on a bed (really)

Here’s the flip side to yesterday’s post. Once again there’s a bed involved and a male receiving the attention, but the overall dynamic couldn’t be more different. This is a very fun happy scene. I love their smiles and closeness. From a D/s perspective I really hope she’s making the most of the moment and teasing him, but it’s kind of hard to tell from this shot.

My ideal world is somewhere between the two extremes expressed in this post and the last. However, given the chance, I’d take either of them in a heartbeat.

I found this on the Everything For Her tumblr.

Grabbing the goodies

It’s sometimes interesting to follow the path of an image on tumblr. I’ve seen this one pop up repeatedly in different variations. I think it’s a great image. I love the way he’s restrained and yet open. She can tantalize him with a gentle kiss or squeeze her hand to inflict a little pain. As far as I can tell this is the original format format from elements studio (although I can’t find it on their site). Yet I’ve seen it in black and white, or with the logo surgically removed or in various cropped forms that alter the focus and overall composition. I’ve no idea why this particular image has been tweaked so often, as it works wonderfully as is.

A Sole Kiss

As a major change of pace from heavy whipping shots, here’s someone appreciating a freshly washed pair of feet. I’m personally not much of a foot guy, unless they happen to be kicking or trampling me, but this was unusual enough to catch my eye. It’s not often I get to feature an image of someone in a sari. They look like a couple having fun.

I originally found this on the femdom section in reddit. My internet detective skills, honed by many years of ~~tracking down porn~~ productively blogging, led me to the mainstream Indian movie 1940 Lo Oka Gramam from 2008. According to the plot synopsis they end up being declared outcasts and having their heads shaved for this happy frolicking on the sea shore. So a sad context to a happy looking shot.

All the more to aim at…

I thought I’d finish my short sequence of whip posts with these two beautiful images from Mistress Trish and thrash. She’s aiming at a particularly delicate target, and he’s giving her a pretty big bulls eye to go for.

Aside from the visual pleasure of the whip in motion, these shots caught my eye for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I like the way he’s leaning into the strike. He’s helping her to hurt him, which I think is always hot. I also like their expressions. Hers is gleeful and happy. She’s clearly concentrating on what she’s doing, but taking the time to enjoy it. In contrast he looks very inwardly focused, concentrating on his sense of self. I suspect it feels like time is running at a very different pace for the two of them.

Mistress Trish is a professional dominant based out of NYC. This was taken from her gallery page and shot by Aeric Meredith-Goujon photography.

When a problem comes along

She certainly looks like she’s going to whip him into some sort of a shape. Possibly a messy red shape. That’s one hell of a whip.

I think you’d have to be a pretty brave masochist to volunteer to be on the end of this. My experience with single tails consists of screaming and writhing on the receiving end. I’ve never actually thrown one. Intuitively however, I have to think that with something this long, the sweet spot between ineffectual slapping and skin ripping agony is relatively small. Get it wrong and it’ll be a little late for safewords.

I’m a little curious where they shot this. Doesn’t look much like a typical dungeon environment. Although maybe I’m hanging out in the wrong type of dungeons. I do like that couch.

The lady is Goddess Diosa and you can find clips of her in action (including this scene and giant size version of this image) at her clipstore. I originally found this this image on the Rue Monorgueil tumblr.