Tackling the Dangerous Issues

I try and keep the politics fairly light around here. I don’t want to put people off with a rant or alienate readers who don’t share my views. Yet, I think we might have now reached a point in the US where the politicians are so stupid, it almost doesn’t matter what side you’re on. Pretty much anyone can point and laugh at them.

After the recent tragic Florida school shooting, The Florida House of Representatives leapt swiftly into action  – by declaring pornography a public health risk. This was immediately after they’d declined to debate gun control. Note that it wasn’t that they declined gun control, but they declined to even debate it. I’d hope we can all agree, not matter where you stand on gun control or on the political spectrum, just from a PR perspective this is incredibly stupid. How can people by smart enough to get elected, but dumb enough not to recognize how bad this sequence of decisions would look? I have strong opinions on the issues, but I oddly find it more depressing that the politicians can’t even by smart about managing their image, which is 90% of the job of being a politician.

Then Florida Senator Marco Rubio came out and basically said that bad guys will get guns whatever the laws say. Essentially there’s no point legislating control, because people will always find a way around. So when it comes to pornography – something that can be made by anyone, endlessly copied, easily encrypted, transmitted freely across borders and stored in the cloud – legislation about its risks is clearly necessary. When it comes to guns – things that are hard to make, not copyable, difficult to ship across borders and can’t be stored in a million different ways – well there’s no point legislating control of those. Again, I don’t think it matters where you stand on the actual issues here, but the cognitive dissonance involved is incredibly. I’m amazed Marco’s head doesn’t explode from holding such contradictory positions simultaneously.

I’ll leave you with some more of that public health hazard. If you feel that this has put you at risk, then I guess you should contact your senator.

I’m afraid I don’t have a source for this.

Updated: Thanks to a helpful comment I can now attribute this to the 5-inch-and-more tumblr.

Apologies and Shoutout

Apologies for the lack of regular posting recently. There’s a bunch of topics I want to write about, but my back has been screwed up, which precludes me sitting at a computer for lengthy periods. It’s kind of funny (although not in a ha-ha way) that I can actually trace my back issues to a specific play session back in 2011. At the time I though I’d just strained some muscles. It turns out that thanks to a couple of decades hunched over keyboards, I’d managed to screw a couple of my lower discs up, and that session was the one that pushed them over the edge. It really hasn’t been the same since that night. Who’d have though that having hot sauce smeared on your genitals would lead to chronic back issues? The human body is a truly wonderful thing.

If you’re in your 20’s or 30’s and spend a lot of time sitting at a desk, I’d strongly urge you to take regular breaks, exercise whenever possible and consider taking up yoga. Although if you’re anything like me at that age, you probably think it’ll never happen to you, so I’m  wasting my time giving advice here.

Changing the subject entirely – if you’re in LA from the 23rd to the 25th, let me point you in the direction of Lady Hinako. I’ve featured her work in the past (here and here) and she’s visiting LA from Japan on those particular dates. Lady Chiaki (previously featured here) will also be in LA at the same time. If I hadn’t been in LA just a couple of weeks ago, I’d be considering a trip down in order to play with these talented dommes. As I type this, they still have time slots available to play.

Both these images are from Lady Hinako’s twitter feed.

Kink with Homework

This article on Mistress Velvet is (deservedly) all over my social media feeds and inbox. The title, in classic Huffington Post fashion, encapsulates the story – “Meet The Dominatrix Who Requires The Men Who Hire Her To Read Black Feminist Theory.

It’s a surprisingly well done article. It gives Mistress Velvet space to expand on the intellectual and emotional challenges of her job, while omitting a lot of the salacious detail that usually accompanies mainstream articles like this. Her relationship as a black domme  with her mostly white, cis and well off clients is obviously a complex one. I love the fact that she’s managed to structure her sessions as positive for both her and her clients, while also creating a platform to explore issues of race and privilege.

If I’m not only doing these physical things to them, but also saying, “Hey, my graduate education is also focused on BDSM as healing for black women, and I think about this all the time.” Then they’re like, “Whoa, yeah, she’s the real deal.” They kind of get terrified. But I think it makes it more real for them.

I don’t think I’ve ever been assigned homework by a domme, but I do understand the kind of dynamic she describes above. Submissives typically enjoy things that pull them mentally back into that D/s dynamic, even many days after playing. Something as simple as a bruise can remind them of the dommes presence and physicality. I’d imagine engaging with writing and arguments that she’s passionate about would have a similar ability to conjure a sense of her presence.

Mistress Velvet is based in Chicago. If you’d like to schedule a session, her contact information is here.

Say it with knives

I’ve always disliked Valentine’s Day. It seems designed to make singles feels lonely and couples feel like they aren’t romantic enough. Fortunately, I have friends who feel the same way, so I had dinner at their place this year,  playing many games of ‘tag you’re it’ with their children. Six year olds may be horribly cheaters when it comes to tag, but it was still better than being crammed into a restaurant and dealing with harried servers.

That said, being single at Valentines can sometimes work out. I remember visiting LA in February a few years back and being very puzzled how hard it was to get a dinner reservation. It wasn’t until I snagged one and arrived at the restaurant that I realized what day it was. I was the single solo male in sea of couples. The menu was 9 courses of shared plates, which the kitchen obviously couldn’t be bothered to re-portion for their one confused single. So they sent me what was literally dinner for two for half the price.  Then the next day I went and got my ass kicked by a fabulous domme. That turned out to be a pretty good Valentines.

This is from How to Kill Your Husband by Kathy Lette.

Auntie

In my last post I was ragging on the New Jersey police for stopping a former domme from becoming a cop. I thought it only fair to balance that up with an organization that is a little less puritanical – the BBC. The journalist Nichi Hodgson spent some time working as a professional domme and is now employed as a journalist by the world’s biggest and oldest broadcasting organization. According to this recent article she actually made more money working as a domme than as a journalist, but I guess that’s what you get for working for a public service company.

In years gone by the BBC was famously straitlaced. Its nickname of ‘Auntie’ or ‘Auntie Beeb’ was derived from the idea of a prudish maiden Aunt who always knew what was best. Of course, for some people, a strict maiden Aunt who thinks she knows best, is a source of joy and pleasure. This is Juliana Granger in a shoot for Auntie’s House.

Miss Granger is a professional disciplinarian based in Sheffield UK.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

For those who have been following the Kristen Hyman saga I have bad news – she lost her fight to become a cop.

For those of you who have no idea who I’m talking about, let me provide some context. Kristen Hyman briefly worked as a pro-domme and produced some femdom movies under the title Domina Nyx. I even featured an image of hers back in 2012. After quitting that career, she went on to train as a police officer. She was just days away from graduating when somebody blabbed about her past life and she was suspended. There was the standard sensationalist coverage in the press, with their usual hypocrisy of stigmatizing sex workers while using their stories to make money. Now, after spending significant time and money to qualify as a policewoman, she is out of a job.

I hadn’t covered the story up to this point because I was hoping she get re-instated and I didn’t want to add to the publicity on her past life. Now, with her name plastered across hundreds of tabloid articles and immortalized online, that seems kind of moot.

The reason I mention it at all, is to highlight the challenges sex workers face and the sacrifices they make. Society disparages their profession, criticizes their decisions and forces them to operate without the proper protection the law should provide. Then, even when they move onto jobs deemed more ‘worthy’ by society, the sex work they did can still be used as a cudgel against them. And why? Because they gave sexual pleasure to others while earning money for themselves and their families? How fucked up is that? They should be handing out medals, not blocking them from worthwhile careers.

The artwork is of course by the incomparable Eric Stanton.

My inner feline

What’s better than playing with an awesome domme in LA? That would be playing in LA and then playing with the same awesome domme a week later in Seattle. Yes, God was good to me this week. Although technically it was more Mistress Iris and her travel schedule than God. They are at least similar in their ability to bring grown men to their knees.

I got to enjoy some amazing tease and denial, along with sensation play and some sounding thrown in for good measure. Most of my play partners would liken the noises I make in a session to a dog or a bear. There’s a fair amount of growling, snarling and barking that goes on. I think today might have been the first time I purred in a session. Clearly Mistress Iris is bringing out my inner feline. I didn’t even know I had one.

This is Mistress Iris with not me. I can only wish I rocked a garter belt and pair of stockings like that. This is from Mistress Iris’s twitter feed.

Belated SOSS

Once again, I kind of missed the boat on the Share Our Shit Saturday. Better late than never I figure, so here are some links to interesting stuff that caught my eye recently.

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

Slutting Around

My algorithm for picking people to play with when I’m travelling has a problem. Admittedly, it’s a problem in the sense that spilling champagne on your Ferrari’s leather upholstery is a problem, but I’m going to share it anyway. I will not be expecting a great deal of sympathy.

The original algorithm for travelling was simple: Find someone I had chemistry with and play with them exclusively. Partly that was because I wanted to build a deeper rapport and invest in a richer D/s dynamic. Partly it was because I didn’t want to have to explain my weird kinks and perversions to more unfamiliar women than I absolutely had to.

Unfortunately, no matter how careful the planning, schedules didn’t always co-operate. With only a few days in a town, there was always a chance the domme I usually played with would be travelling or busy. So I inevitably ended up occasionally playing with someone new – and I came to realize that this was a good thing. Playing with someone new was an opportunity to learn. Sometimes I learnt what I didn’t like, but more often my experiences made me a better submissive and a more self-aware masochist. Plus, once I started writing about my kinks here, explaining them to the nice ladies in the exciting outfits became considerably less stressful.

My updated algorithm therefore became: Do two sessions. One with someone I knew and liked and one with someone new. Push limits with the former and learn new things with the latter. It was a win-win.

Unfortunately, once I played with a new domme, they automatically moved into the category of ‘dommes I know’. And since so many of them were amazing and awesome to play with (like Damiana Chi from yesterday’s post), they became ‘dommes I know, like and will travel thousands of miles to play with again’.

This gave my latest iteration of the algorithm: Do three session. One with someone I’ve know for years, one with someone I’ve played with a few times and one with someone new. You don’t have to be a genius to see the pattern here, or the long term problem. It’s possible I can keep adding more sessions per trip until my body or bank account gives out, but I’m not sure it’s entirely the smartest solution.

The amusing side to this ‘problem’ is that I get called a slut by some of the dommes I play with (in the nicest possible way). Given my monastic years through my teens and twenties, that makes me smile. I’m a reserved, quiet, introverted, middle-aged British male slut. I’ll take that.

I’ve no idea what an appropriate image for this post is, so here’s a random one I like.

The Customer is Always Ignored

I’ve posted before on what a mecca Beverly Hills is for high heel fans. I think it’s also a great destination for fans of being ignored or humiliated.

I was browsing in one of the high end department stores here today. All the male sales assistants had been their useful effusive helpful selves. Any section I wandered into would generate a greeting and an offer of assistance. Then I crossed into an area run by a rather striking lady. She was a tall attractive brunette, sporting tight leather pants with knee high boots. That’s the kind of look that’ll catch my eye in any situation. I swear to God, she took one look and then visibly sneered at me. Some pro-dommes would have killed to capture her expression at that particular moment in their gallery pages. There was a slight disdainful wave away with her hand, and then she went back to chatting to her friend. Who, I might add, was sporting some outrageously high heels of her own.

For some submissives this might have been a major thrill. For me, I took my business elsewhere. If she’d come across and started bossing me around, she probably could have sold me any number of ridiculously over-priced Italian jackets.

This is Karen Elson in a shoot for Vogue magazine by Steven Klein. I found it here.