Tag: Gag

Lies, Damned Lies and Sex Trafficking Crackdowns

When the US government was passing SESTA/FOSTA and shutting down backpage, sex workers were very vocal in claiming it would do nothing to stop sex trafficking and would actually make it harder to track. Now thanks to this article on newly discovered government memos, we can see how right those sex workers were. Backpage was apparently incredibly helpful in tracking dubious advertisements and alerting authorities when they thought children might be being trafficked. They allowed users to report ads, flagged photographs of anyone looking underage, worked with authorities on best practices and suggested filtering based on phone numbers that law enforcement could provide.

None of this stopped prosecutors spinning horror stories in the press about backpage, because of course the attack on backpage and sex workers (by proxy) was never about stopping trafficking. It was all about the look of the thing, scoring cheap political points and imposing control over what women can and cannot do with their bodies. The end result has been exactly what sex workers said would happen. Rather than working with a site with established expertise to solve the problem, the authorities have spent a fortune prosecuting them while losing any visibility they had into genuine exploitation.

I had no idea what an appropriate image for this post would be, so I’ll settle for a drawing showing exactly what I’d like to happen to every prosecutor involved in this fiasco. The artwork is by Annmo Night. 

See No Evil, Speak No Evil

This shot from Lady Pim is very cute and sexy. It has a lovely contrast between the sensual and the harsh.

As a personal aside, I do find it weird how things I don’t like in sessions can still continue to appeal to me visually. Blindfolds like this one are a good example. Enemas are another. Both of those are on my ‘meh’ list for kinky activities. Yet I still like the idea of them a lot.

I get how the idea of something can be exciting, but the reality of it disappointing when tried in play. That’s a fairly normal thing to happen. But how does the idea remain exciting beyond that? Somehow the reality never intrudes into the theoretical sexual fantasy.

Lady Pim is a Toronto based domme and her site for professional sessions can be found here.

Happiness

This Swaddle article makes the case that BDSM can make you more successful at work. As one dominant woman in the article says…

I began to notice that especially on days after we had engaged in a play scene, I would feel more focussed, composed and clear-headed. It was almost as if the satisfied feeling I felt in bed, in that position of power, flowed over the next day. I feel like I know more about myself — my mind and my body.

I’ve blogged on the concept of flow in the past (for example here), but reading the Swaddle article made me wonder if something more basic could be at play. Is it simply that being happy makes people more effective?

I know when I’m feeling happy at work (from kinky play or any other reason) I’m more likely to engage effectively in discussions and do a better job of selling my ideas. On the flipside, if I’m feeling unfulfilled or down, I’m more likely to get hung up on pointless arguments and trying to win the debate at all costs. Being effective in my work is often as much about knowing when to let something I disagree with slide as it is about doing the right thing. If I’m buzzed and flying on endorphins from a great play session, then I think I’m smarter about picking my battles. Not looking to work for emotional fulfillment actually leads to smart decision making and hence a more productive work life.

In summary: I should be able to claim on expenses for my kinky play with pro-dommes. It’d be a net gain for my company. I look forward to trying that argument out with my boss. I’m guessing it’ll have to go under the “Miscellaneous” section on the expense form.

Talking of happiness – here’s a very cheerful looking lady. Hopefully the man destined to wear that interesting funnel gag she’s holding is equally happy with the idea.

Speaking Up

I like twitter, but I’m not very good at it. I struggle to condense my thoughts to tweet sized chunks. Take for example this thread started by Lady Pim on submissives speaking up mid-scene. I think it’s an interesting topic, but I got fed up trying to write a response in short snippets. I figured I’d just write a post, and so here we are.

The first thing to acknowledge is that it’s genuinely difficult for submissives to know how and when to speak up. Most don’t want to be accused of topping from the bottom or second guessing their domme. Part of the joy of D/s is relaxing into the moment and telling your inner monologue to take a break. So making judgement calls about how and when to communicate an issue can be a hard mental gear change to make. Submissives shouldn’t beat themselves up for finding that difficult. As the old joke goes, that’s her job.

The other thing to internalize is that doing a scene always involves a degree of risk on both sides. If you stop and talk about every potential issue, no matter how minor, you’ll never get anywhere. If you let things play out, then there’s always a chance of going past a point of comfort before you can do anything. Both domme and submissive have to accept and deal with that risk. Obviously nobody should deliberately violate boundaries, but if you’re exploring new territory then occasionally you’re going to inadvertently wander across one or two.

Experience and practice are obviously one answer here. Playing with the same person repeatedly is another. I’d also say that chemistry is a big factor. When your respective styles and approach to kink aligns, then it makes it a lot easier to communicate. The better you understand each other the more communication becomes about the shared task (of her beating your ass) and less about presentation and parsing motives. I’ve played with super talented world class dommes who I just didn’t click with, and it made in scene communication so much harder, as I just couldn’t read their intentions easily.

I’ve some further thoughts, but I’ll save them for a follow-up post. Apparently I can’t shrink my verbiage to a single post, let alone a single tweet. I’ll finish this post with a picture I particularly like from Lady Pim’s twitter feed. Once the gag goes in you better practice your grunting and hand signals if you want to speak up.

Lady Pim is a pro-domme based at the Ritual Chamber in Toronto. You can see her professional page here.

Fastened to a Wall

There’s a common theory from the anti-porn crowd that the more porn you look at the more extreme your tastes will be. It’s a typical slippery slope argument. One day you’re getting off to 60’s playboy covers, and a few months later you’re tracking down pictures of oiled up Roman gladiators doing unspeakable things to each other with a rubber trident and a well trained octopus.

It’s obviously bullshit, as my 20+ years of looking at naughty pictures demonstrates. My tastes may have broadened, but they haven’t got significantly more depraved. In fact, in many ways I’ve got more critical of unrealistic or extreme imagery. I’m now drawn to scenes that have a stronger connection with reality and ones that I can almost imagine doing myself.

For example, what caught my eye in this image was the carefully placed padded bolster in his back and the tight but not too tight straps. It’s very hot bondage, that’s certainly difficult to pull off this neatly in reality, but it’s not crazy or an impossible physical position. Even his verbalization, with the moans and coughs through the bit gag is relatable.

I’m afraid I don’t know the original artist for this work. As usual, if you can help me attribute it, then please leave a comment.

Stupid Tech

I’m generally a fan of combining fancy equipment with kinky sex. It’s certainly not necessary, but it can be a lot of fun. However, I do draw the line at the idea of this cockring combined with a camera. That’s the stupidest combination of technology and sex toy I’ve seen since the vibrator that reported your usage of it to the parent company. What are you possibly going to see on a cockring camera that’d be interesting or titillating? It’ll just be dark, shaky close-ups of random body parts. It’s tough enough to frame a decent shot with a proper camera, let alone trying to do it by waving your dick around.

Although perhaps there’s a opportunity for a creative modern artist here. It might be stupid as a sex toy, but how about as the basis for a cutting edge art installation piece? Maybe they could combine it with a chastity device for an added twist. Andy Warhol famously made an eight hour movie of the Empire State Building in slow motion. How about a 72 hour film from the point of view of a dick in a chastity device? It’d be a striking social commentary on the phenomena of the dick pic and a critique of a society that seeks to both exploit and constrain sexuality. Not to mention a handy visual guide on effective peeing whilst in chastity.

If you’re going to attach something to a dick, this leash seems like a lot more effective and fun to play with.

Failing to Read the Room

Like most bloggers I get my fair share of emails pitching advertising, paid content and guest posts. Normally I junk them as fast as they arrive, but one caught my eye today. Its opening paragraph, designed to prevent me applying my usual whack-a-mole approach, ran as follows:

….before you decide to stop reading, let me assure you that we don’t dabble in pornographic content of any kind, and therefore won’t make any indecent proposals.

Wow. Did they misread the room. I guess it worked, because I did keep reading to find out who’d be stupid enough to send a sexual explicit blog that kind of opening. They even ended up with their own post, albeit without any kind of link or name. Personally I’d love to get a few indecent proposals. I think my life has been sadly lacking in them.

In honor of my new puritanical email friends, I’ll close with an entirely non-pornographic image. This is a simple head shot, with no naughty naked bodies in view. Just a very nice lady whispering sweet nothings into her beau’s ear. Nothing indecent about that.

This is of course from the Divine Bitches site.

More communication is never a bad thing

This Frisky interview with Joanna Angel annoyed me. Her stated goal of creating toys more appealing to kinky dabblers is a good one. But then we get to her advice for beginners, which contains the following…

Some people make it out like you really need to plan this shit out and really discuss it, like, I don’t know, do you really need a safe word with your partner? It seems like everything has to be so formal.

To which I’d say “Yes Joanna. If you’re going to bind, gag and beat someone, which is what your toys are designed for, you’d better fucking discuss it first. And when you’re just beginning to explore kink, that’s absolutely the time you need a safeword.”

Ironically, given her claim, I rarely feel the need to agree a safeword when playing with professionals. They know how to read me and can tell the different between “No (but do it some more)” and “No (my back is playing up and I’m reaching my limit).” Playing with a novice, who might be unsure exactly how hard she can push, and doesn’t have the technique to smoothly escalate intensity, is exactly the time you need a clear communication channel. It’s reassuring to both parties if there’s a magic emergency button always available to push.

This rather beautiful image comes from a tweet by mrunderheel. Despite his gag, they look like they’re in a happy space for communication. I love her smile and the marks on his body. Sadly I don’t have an original attribution for it. Amusingly, when I do a reverse image search on Google, the only thing it suggests is that a related search term is ‘fun’ and then it gives me the Merriam-Webster definition for ‘fun’. It’s both very wrong and very right all at the same time.

Bondage Therapy in Seattle

Bondage virtuoso Elise Graves has been in Seattle for the last few days. Primarily she was here to shoot for House of Gord, but she did reserve time for a couple of private sessions, and I was lucky enough to score one of them. A lovely mix of whipping, electrical play and bondage was the result. We didn’t get pictures, but fortunately for me, she did shoot them in her other session, as shown here.  I’m not sure who the other Seattle submissive is, but my thanks to him for these shots. He appears to be doing a better job of handling the rope suspension than I did.

Rope isn’t normally my favored bondage medium. I realized today that a big part of that is the time it often takes. When I’ve limited time to play, and I’m paying by the hour, I somewhat resent burning a lot of the session getting into and out of bondage. The process can be enjoyable, but not as enjoyable as what comes afterward. Fortunately, with an expert like Elise, that becomes far less of an issue. I’ve played with a lot of word class dommes, but I think she’s the fastest rigger I’ve ever experienced. She very quickly pulled together well balanced positions, with just the right degree of stress.

Elise’s smile in this image is very indicative of the way she plays. There was a lot of happy positive energy in our scene today. This image is from her Bondage Liberate site. I found it via her twitter feed.

Money, money, money

When it comes to paying a professional dominant – the ‘tribute’ in the industry parlance – it’s said that you get what you pay for. My social media feeds frequently features this sentiment expressed in various different ways, both by pro-dommes and their clients. In other words the quality of the dominant and the experience she offers correlates strongly to the size of the tribute she demands. But is this true?

I can obviously only comment from my limited personal experience, which is entirely with independent and well established pro-dommes.  However, within that limited set, I’d say the number one correlation with the tribute amount isn’t the skill of the domme, but the cost of real estate in her location. High cost cities make it expensive to maintain both a playspace and a personal residence. They also tend to have a highly paid client base who can afford higher fees. So Manhattan has always had very high hourly tribute rates. San Francisco wasn’t too bad a decade or so ago, but has become a lot more expensive in recent years.  Seattle isn’t in San Francisco’s league yet, but is beginning to trend in that direction.

Keeping all this in mind, if there are any American submissives out there with cash on the hip, vacation time in the bank, and a kinky itch to scratch, my top recommendation would be to visit Los Angeles. It’s got a huge and talented pro-domme community, but its sprawling layout leads to a cheaper cost of living and significantly lower tribute rates. For example, Isabella Sinclaire is undoubtedly an outstanding domme, with the skills to match anyone in the world. Yet, her rate for 2 hours is (at the time of writing) $500, which is significantly below the SF average and way below the NYC average. She also has an amazing and well equipped play space.

I hated LA when I first visited it back in the 90’s, but it’s probably the one place in America I’d now consider living outside Seattle. If you’ve not been then I definitely recommend it. Just steer clear of the Hollywood tourist traps.

This shot is from Isabella’s instagram feed. Her contact information for scheduling professional sessions is here.