Tag: Fm

Happy New Decade!

I hope all my readers had an enjoyable end to their year and that the next decade will bring them many good things and new experiences. From a personal perspective the last ten years have been an amazing period of kinky experimentation and personal growth. I’m hoping I can continue that growth for at least another decade to come.

We’re now heading into the twenties, which means we’ve finally got a sensible name for our current period of history. It’s also an evocative one, given the huge cultural and social changes that happened in the previous twenties.  This image is from around that era and was a product of Studio Biederer. The clothing may be a touch more conservative than today’s typical femdom whipping scene, but clearly people’s kinky proclivities haven’t changed in a hundred years.

I find it impossible to post an image from Studio Biederer without also mentioning that the two brothers behind it were both Jewish, and killed by the Nazi’s in the holocaust. People’s kinks may not have changed in the last hundred years, but neither has their capacity for racism, violence and cruelty. Something we should all keep at the forefront of our minds as we move forward into the next decade.

A Dame To Die For

I’ve been watching a bunch of film noir over the holidays, so this seems an appropriate image to share. It’s odd that guns and knives in BDSM  are a total turn off for me, yet I’m a sucker for a deadly femme fatale. Particularly the scenes where she turns the tables on the helpless schmuck she’s ensnared, holding him at gunpoint while explaining what a fool he’s been. I think it’s because the gun in these scenes is incidental, a necessary device to give her power, rather than being a fetishistic focus. I’m actually kinking on the betrayal and the masochistic pleasure of trusting someone you know is going to ultimately hurt you.

This illustration is by Robert Maguire, an artist famous for his crime noir covers. I believe (based on this article) that it was for a novel called ‘So Cold, My Bed’ by Sam Taylor.

SMpedia

Fans of Japanese BDSM may want to check out SMpedia. Based on a machine translation of their front page it’s ‘a non-profit database established to accurately convey the process of the birth and development of post-war Japanese SM culture to future generations.’ I have absolutely zero ability to read Japanese, but the modern browser translate tools seem to do a pretty good job to convey the gist of its pages. There is an English language version known as Nawapedia, but there’s a lot less content and it doesn’t appear to be being updated.

The artwork below is from the site and by 小悪征夫, which Google translate as Yukio Koaku.

There is also a twitter feed for the site, which is where I spotted this image.

Greta Garbo

I don’t think this really counts as femdom, but it is a lovely picture. It’s from 1929 and a movie called The Single Standard, with two of the A list stars of the time –Greta Garbo and Nils Asther. Given the positioning of her in the chair and him at her feet, you can definitely project a D/s vibe into there if you choose to.  However, while they both hid their sexuality during their film careers,  in reality he was gay and she either gay or bisexual. So it’s really just two beautiful people in a beautiful shot.

Edging Changed My Life

That post title sounds like hyperbole, but it really isn’t. Edging did change my life. I don’t think I’ve shared this story here before, but it seems an appropriate time to do so. After all, it is a holiday tale, albeit one with a touch more masturbation than is traditional for that genre. It starts sadly, but in common with most holiday stories and self pleasuring, has a happy ending.

The year was 2009 and I was grumpy. It was the week of Christmas and my friends were all out of town or busy with their families. My dating life had been non-existent all year and I was stuck at home, bored, alone, watching the Seattle rain. My life wasn’t particularly bad, it just felt like I was spinning in place, achieving little.

These days I’d tackle the holiday blues by arranging some hot kinky play. Sadly, back then the idea of actually exploring my kinks with another real life person seemed impossibly scary. I knew dommes existed, I just couldn’t imagine myself interacting with one. So instead I whiled away my vacation hours wandering through some of the stranger areas of the internet. It was there, on some obscure femdom forum, that I found a link to a series of femdom audio hypnosis files.

Hypnosis isn’t my kink, but one of the titles caught my eye: The 12 days of Christmas. It was an edging challenge. 12 hypnosis tracks based around edging at the end of each day, with no orgasms allowed until the last track. The accompanying blurb promised that the final days orgasm would be the most spectacular one of your life. I can’t speak to the truth of that – I only made it to day 10 – but the week or so of edging leading up to that did crazy things to my brain chemistry. I don’t think I was ever hypnotized, but I was so pleasantly frustrated and happily horny it broke down all my natural shyness and fear of reaching out to a domme. With a brain awash in endorphins, I resolved to shake things up and actually do something about my desires. In January 20210 I scheduled a session with a local pro-domme. My kinky self was finally out and has been flying high ever since.

To my eternal shame I don’t remember who produced the audio tracks. I only used them that one time, the disk they were on has long since died and all the similar examples I’ve found online aren’t quite the same thing. The bits of the hypnosis that were supposed to enthrall and dedicate me to their creator clearly didn’t stick. But that singular 10 day edging experience really did trigger a change in my life.

I’m not sure this shot of Mistress Madeline is strictly edging, but given the look on Parker London’s face, the build up has been pretty tortuous.

Use Your Words (revisited)

My safeword post from last week generated a number of thoughtful comments. The general consensus seemed to be that simple open communication was a good way to go and that safewords didn’t need to be particularly original.

poe2600 raised the interesting point that most submissives are very resistant to using safewords, even when they probably should. I think there’s a good deal of truth in that, although there always exceptions. I remember one pro-domme telling me about a client who she call the traffic light guy. He thought he should accompany their entire session with a constant stream of  ‘green… green… yellow… green… yellow… red! red!… yellow.’ Needless to say that wasn’t exactly conducive to a good D/s dynamic. Exceptions aside, I think it is true that there’s a natural inclination to try and avoid breaking the flow of play with a safeword. Which makes for another good reason to use your words and communicate in a more graduated and subtle way than a simple go/stop approach.

The trickiest situations for me are those where I see a possible problem arising later in the session and have to make a judgement call on when or if to call it out earlier. Typically this is when complex bondage and layered sensations are involved. For example, playing in NYC earlier this year I had a situation involving some particularly painful nipple clamps, a straitjacket and a lot of leather straps. Nipple clamps are usually painful going on and off, but become numb when on. These were not reacting like that. The pain was high and not diminishing, but it wasn’t yet at my stop point. However, the domme was about to tighten the straitjacket over them and I could see a lot of leather straps ready to go around it. Adjusting the clamps when they were hidden under all those layers would be a significant undertaking.

My solution in these situations is always the same – given the domme the information and leave the decision to her. I might be misreading her plan and adjusting later will be easier than I expect. Or she might prefer to push on and deal with any adjustments if it becomes necessary. In this case I told her that they were intense and bearable for a short period, but possibly not something I could handle over an extended period. She then elected to swap them for a different pair before pulling all the bondage into place. The remainder of the session then unfolded flawlessly.

These situations are always tricky because they’re not a simple binary choice. I also don’t want to be another traffic light guy and overload the domme with feedback. It’s ultimately a judgement call based on the the likelihood of needing to adjust something and how difficult it looks like that adjustment will become.

I’m fairly certain this shot of bondage and nipple torture is of Domina Yuki. That’s not me in the photo, but I’ve done a very similar scene in that space.

More Gift Ideas

If the handmade Italian leather boots from my last post aren’t quite what you’re after for the holiday gifting season, then perhaps I can direct your attention to something considerably more affordable and practical – a new book from Ferns. It’s called “How to Handle Disobedience” and comes complete with a handy acronym at no extra cost. By way of SLAPS you can get control of your unruly submissive and bring harmony to your D/s dynamic. Links to buy the book are located at the bottom of her latest post on it.

In the highly unlikely event that the wisdom of Ferns and SLAPS doesn’t work out for you then Dan Savage has another acronym to keep in mind – DTMFA.

This is a happy shot of domestic harmony and obedience. I’m afraid I don’t know the original source.

Kinky Equivalent of 69

Here’s a cute image of shared mutual pleasure. She gets a comfy spot to dominate him and drink her tea. He gets to make her happy and enjoy her feet smooshed in his face.

I’m not into feet as a kink, but this is an image that still appeals to me. Their contrasting facial expression with the shared connection via the cup and saucer really make it work.

The artist is signed as Suzy. I think that’s Suzy Q who has this instagram and is Lady Suzy Q, a specialist in foot fetish sessions (twitter site here). However, given I’m working via translation tools, it’s hard to be 100% sure. Image originally sourced from this tweet.

Use Your Words

Cosmo has an article out on picking and using a safeword. I’m going to go ahead and say that if you need help to pick a safeword, then BDSM probably isn’t for you. It’s only going to get a lot more complicated from that point onward. Maybe start with a good therapist to address your chronic indecisiveness and/or lack of imagination before getting the rope and whips out.

I also think it’s strange how all these articles assume beginners are starting off with heavy consensual non-consent scenes or  elaborate roleplay scenarios.

The minute you’re starting to feel uncomfy is the exact moment when you should go ahead and holler whatever safe word you and your partner chose to go with.

Obviously you could do that, but how about using your words? I’ve done hundreds of scenes, some of them pretty intense, and I don’t think I’ve used a safeword a single time. That has never stopped me communicating a wide variety of issues. In fact I think it’s quicker to say something like “I’m feeling faint” than it would be yell a safeword and then explain what’s going on.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a safeword. It’s good to have a single unambiguous stop button that brings everything immediate to a halt. But that’s not necessary for most scenes and most problems. Common issues that make people uncomfortable are pinching bondage, awkward positions, tingly fingers, anxiety, a bad fantasy headspace or just too much intensity in the sensations. It’s a lot easier to adjust for these as the scene progresses by communicating as you go rather than by simply stopping everything. Plus, it saves your safeword for those times when something is seriously awry and you want that to be communicated entirely unambiguously.

Let’s hope that these two negotiated a non-verbal safeword before starting this scene. He’s not going to be able to yell ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ with that funnel in place.

Artwork is of course by the famous Jim.