Tag: Fm

Open for Submissions

A thoughtful reader sent me a link to an amusing short film – Open for Submissions.  It’s only 6 minutes long and was apparently made in just 48 hours for the Instant Films festival in 2001. It’s not laugh out loud funny, but has nice a gentle slice of life humor to it.

I suspect it might generate two different reactions between kinky and non-kinky people. The non-kinksters will smile at the intended juxtaposition of regular daily life with strange kinky behavior. There’s conventional romantic expressions played off against very unconventional behaviors. In contrast, I think a lot of kinksters might look at it and go – “Oohhhh, that’s so sweet! What a great dynamic. Why can’t I have a relationship like that one?”

I wonder if the original writer (Gerald McClanahan) intended that duality?

It was directed by Charles Papert and the actors are Amy Jo Traicoff and David Holcomb.

Elegance

My previous post got me thinking about elegance, style and femdom. Not on the part of the domme I hasten to add. The world is replete with shots of dommes looking composed and stylish. I’m thinking more from the submissive side. There’s a lot of femdom that automatically casts the submissive into a clumsy, ugly and stupid role. I do understand that kink, but it really doesn’t resonate with me. I want to look good while I’m bound, beaten and brutalized. Or at least as good as is possible, given the somewhat limited raw material we’re working with here.

Playing with Lydia was always very intense, but she had a knack of adding both humor and a shared sense of style to our play. I have a particularly fond memory of the start of some of our sessions. Typically, once I’d gotten naked, she’d grab some delicate part of me and forcefully lead me to the apparatus she wanted me attached to. Occasionally she’d pivot that movement into a dance, with her pulling me this way and that in time to her music, floating the two of us around the space. Admittedly, I’m a middle aged English guy with all the natural rhythm of a bag of hammers in a washing machine, but I loved those moments. Often I’d get it wrong, and see her smile as she yanked me painfully back into line. But when I got it right, I was dancing in harmony to the lead of a beautiful dominant woman, and it made me feel like an absolute star.

This pairing is undoubtedly elegant. They may not be dancing, but it has a similar sense of composed connection. I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for it.

Biff!

Here’s the final entry in my trio of punching/beating posts. This is of course by the great Namio Harukawa.

Fans of his art may be interested to know there’s a relatively recent book of his work available – Garden of Domina. While he’s well known in Femdom circles, he’s not exactly a mainstream artist, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover the book was available in the US and featured an English translation.

I was also amused to see Amazon advertising to me the “Prime Book Box For Kids” right below a product description featuring the sentence “Kana loves to abuse men with her tremendous buttocks, and they explore the cruel joys found beneath her stunning endowment.” I’m all for expanding children’s imaginations via literature, but maybe not to this extent. Amazon’s AI is clearly not smart enough for world domination just yet.

Pow!

Here’s an image that particularly resonated with me today. Not so much for the kink, but for the anger and visceral satisfaction it represents. I imagine a lot of people who have been reading the news in America or browsing political threads on social media may feel the same way. I’d never condone non-consensual violence in real life, but the fantasy can sometimes be one to savor.

I found it via this tweet. Based on the machine translation, I think it’s from a Japanese manga called ‘God App’.

Kitchen Submissives?

The amusing kinky food video from a few posts back got me thinking about cooking in a D/s context. Specifically, why do I never seen dommes advertise for a submissive chef? Typically I see asks for cleaners, chauffeurs, PA’s and general dogsbodies, yet never for kitchen help. Actually, to be entirely honest, what I mostly observe is dommes complaining that trying to get a submissive to do anything actually useful to them is more trouble than it’s worth, and most submissives are only keen on what’ll please them and their dick. But after that sadly large group, among those still giving submissives a chance to be useful, I’ve never seen a chef request. I wonder why?

Personally, if I was recruiting for my own household, there would two main chores to offload: Ironing and food preparation. I love cooking, but food prep is a major time sink that I’d happily delegate. On the flipside, as a submissive, I’ve no interest in scrubbing floors, but would take satisfaction in preparing and cooking food for someone. Plus, food prep is full of sexy french terms. Getting beaten for a sloppy chiffonade or uneven brunoise would be extra kinky.

I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for this image. If you can help with that, then please leave me a comment.

Adult Babies

Dr Kate Lister via the iNews site has published a short but decent overview of the adult baby kink. As she says, it’s a much misunderstood kink that can often generate both disgust and disapproval. Even for pro-dommes it tends to be a divisive kink, with some specializing in it and others not offering it at all.

I’m firmly in the YKINMKBYKIOK camp, but tend not to cover ABDL stuff because it’s a somewhat niche interest that doesn’t really mesh with my person kinks. It’s also tough to find images on the theme that have broad appeal for a general site like this one. This particularly one of a Birthday Spanking is by the artist swabbs.

The unhealthy alternative to SPH

This Guardian article on surgical penis extensions isn’t really anything to do with femdom, but I found it fascinating, so I’m going to feature it anyway. Some of my takeaways were that it always seems to be a guy self-esteem issue, their female partners don’t really care about it, and that often the guys getting the surgery aren’t that small anyway.

The really crazy thing is that it doesn’t make any difference to the erect length, it just makes it look longer when its flaccid and hanging. Apparently that’s better for the locker room image. Who seriously gives a shit about that? Between the attribution of Trump’s pussy grabbing to just ‘locker room talk that all guys do’ and now this surgery for a bigger locker room dick, I’m really wondering what kind of gyms people are going to. Personally I just get in, get changed and get out. Apparently there’s a whole sexual dick measuring thing (both literal and metaphorical) going on that I’ve thankfully missed out on.

I’m not into Small Penis Humiliation (SPH), but frankly that seems a way more healthy reaction to dick size issues than having a surgeon chop at a ligament and stuff fat into your dick.  No SPH scene ever left someone with a bent misshapen dick that doesn’t work properly anymore.

Of course another alternative is to go totally artificial. You can have any size you (or she) likes in that kind of set-up.

This is from Mistress T’s twitter feed.

Empathy

In the past I’ve published posts on scientific studies when they had positive things to say about BDSM. For example, this one on flow and this one on psychological health. It seems only fair therefore to feature one that has a more troubling message.

The study in question looked at empathy in female submissives, and came to the conclusion that they have reduced empathy to other peoples suffering. As described in this article, the experiment was done by showing them photographs of people with neutral and ‘in pain’ expressions and watching what parts of the brain lit up. Apparently female submissives had unusually low responses to the ‘in pain’ photos in the parts of the brain normally associated with empathy.

I understand the methodology behind this approach. It reminds me of an anecdote from a doctor studying psychopaths who’d been jailed for violent crimes. He described showing an expression of a frighted man to one of his subjects and asked what he thought the man in the photograph was feeling. The prisoner laughed and said he didn’t know, but it reminded him of the looks on peoples faces just before he stabbed them. Clearly being able to relate expressions to internal emotions is a key part of empathizing with someone.

However, that said, while I understand the general approach here, it does seem flawed in this case. They’re starting from the premise that pain is a bad thing, and therefore seeing someone in pain should trigger empathy and concern. That’s true for most people but not for masochists. We have a much more complex relationship to pain. It’s an ambiguous sensation and therefore context is important. If I see someone stub their toe then I wince and feel bad for them. If I see someone tied up and caned in a BDSM movie I get excited and wish it was me. If I just see a pained expression alone, it’ll probably depend on my mood and what’s on my mind. Lacking context for the pain I’ll add my own, and that could generate all sorts of different emotional responses.

I think if you’re going to study empathy in kinky people, you really need to take into account their sexual wiring. For example, study their responses to happy or surprised faces rather than people in pain. Or put the pain into a suitable context. I’m sure non-kinky people would be disturbed by and empathize with the apparent pain of the man in the image below. As a masochist my reaction to the image is quite different, because I understand in this context the pain for him might be a sort of pleasure.

I’m afraid I’ve no idea who created this image. If you can help attribute it then please leave me a comment.