The beauty of dominant women
This looks like a fun game. I hope that there’s some sort of penalty associated with each thrown ring that fails to find its target. These kind of things are always better when they operate under a ‘she wins or he loses’ set of rules.
I’m afraid I don’t know the original source for the image. I found it on the Lashkisser tumblr.
I got to enjoy some electrical play with Lydia tonight, so I’m in a particularly happy frame of mind. We didn’t snap any photographs to share but, given the nature of the play, the shot below caught my eye as a suitable one to commemorate it with.
There’s not a lot to see from an equipment perspective, but their exchange of looks really makes the image a memorable one. His is one that I’m sure most submissives will recognize. It’s the look of “I know you’re going to twist that knob, and at some level I kind of want you to do it, but I’m still going to try my forlorn puppy dog look in the hope you’ll only turn it to 9 rather than 10.” Her look suggests amusement but also inevitability. It’s the “I love it when you make those faces, but you really should know by now it’s not going to help.”
I found this on the BDSM++ tumblr (which has some fairly extreme pictures, so browse with caution).
When I was catching up on my blog reading over the weekend I came across an interesting sequence of posts by Lady Anna List. They described a heavy imprisonment scenario, featuring bondage, isolation and sensory deprivation. You can read them in part 1, part 2 and part 3 of a series entitled Incarceration. What particularly caught my eye was the comment about a panic attack during the scene.
He’d fallen asleep and woken up before feeling the entire world closing in around him. Experience has helped him before to talk himself out of his impending attack…
…I’m not sure I would rescue him because this is something he has to get through so he knows he can get through it again in future extreme bondage situations.
That got me thinking about the nature of panic and how we experience it, which in turn led me to this fascinating paper on the subject. It’s fairly readable for a scientific paper and it contends that panic is an evolutionary response to dangerous situations. There’s first a tendency to freeze (so a predator won’t spot us), and then a physical response to divert blood, suck in more oxygen, release cooling sweat and tension muscles before fleeing for home and safety. The paper also talks about agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder where panic attacks can strike out of the blue in everyday life. These panic attacks typical occur in certain locations (wide open or enclosed spaces), or in certain situations (being in crowds of strange people or being far from home). These are scenarios which from an evolutionary perspective represented specific threats, such as being exposed with nowhere to hide, or encountering a number of strangers from outside your tribe.
I found it fascinating because there’s a tendency to think about panic as being purely a mental process, as something you can think your way around. And it’s true that you can condition yourself against it by repeated exposure and positive reinforcement. But the basic response itself is a very deeply embedded one, with real physical manifestations. Nobody would think of telling an agoraphobic to simply snap out of it and think themselves better. And yet I find there’s sometimes a tendency to see panic as a weakness or mental failure in a submissive. In fact it’s really just a million years of evolution doing it’s thing. Like the primitive drives for sex or food, it’s all about maximizing the chances of passing the genes on.
The other interesting takeaway from the paper was in the final section, where the author talks about the difficulty of studying panic in the laboratory. He should get out the lab and into his local BDSM playspaces. I can guarantee his local dommes will have a wide collection of experimental subjects they can push into carefully controlled panic situations!
I’ll leave you with a shot of an item that is great for pushing my panic buttons – a hood. That tight enclosed feeling gets me every time.
I found this via the clitlickslut tumblr.
I was heartened to read today about an “extreme pornography” case in England resulting in a not guilty verdict. Although it’s depressing that the case was even brought to trial, at least the jury saw sense.
I’ve written about this issue before. Back in 2008 the British government introduced legislation to outlaw what they defined as extreme pornography. The part of the act that concerned all BDSM lovers read as follow…
An image falls within this subsection if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following—
(a) an act which threatens a person’s life,
(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,
When the law was introduced it was accompanied by lots of scare stories about snuff films and non-consensual torture. Inevitably, as anyone with a brain might have guessed, it ended up getting applied much more broadly to anything the police thought they could get away with. I’d probably be in trouble because wrapping a plastic bag around someones head is life threatening. And burning someones genitals clearly could result in serious injury.
In this particular case it was fisting and urethral sounding that got the unfortunate victim into trouble. Neither of those things had resulted in serious injury, but obviously the facts weren’t about to get in the way of the prosecution. They also tried the usual tricks of exaggerating the evidence and smearing the defendant. As the defense lawyer describes, they originally suggested it was thousands of images, some involving children. In the end it was down to 5 images, all of consenting adults taken at a private party. It took the jury less than 90 minutes to acquit on all charges.
I’ll leave you with an image that will hopefully now not get my British readers into trouble. It features January Seraph and a nice long shiny sound.
This image is originally from the CBT and Ballbusting site. I found it on the Women with Whips tumblr.
Weirdness often seems to occur at the intersection between the ordinary and the extraordinary. For example, while BDSM dungeons are unusual places, I don’t find them weird at all. Everything is in a common context. However, discovering one of my distinguished elderly aunts sipping a cup of tea while browsing a collection of nipple clamps in a dungeon, now that’d be weird. And possibly therapy inducing.
Pornography is a similar story. I can look at a picture of a bound man sucking a half naked transsexual and just think it’s a hot visual. Yet, occasionally there will be some weird juxtaposition of elements in a scene that turn it into WTF moment. Take the shot below for example. It’s not the dog hood alone that makes it weird. It’s the nonchalant way he’s wearing it, relaxing on the living room couch in his weekend casuals. Exactly what’s the role play here? I think if he was naked and leashed on the floor, in a bizarre way, it’d be a lot more normal a scene.
I found this on the All About Me (aka dominant damp knickers) tumblr. It’s originally from the Sharing My Wife site.
I’ve managed to find some time this weekend to do a few tweaks to the site. On the blog roll to the right (and on the blog page) I’ve added links to two blogs:
On the Femdom Image page I’ve added a collection of new tumblr links:
On the equipment page I’ve added a link to Strict Leather. And finally, I fixed the artwork entry on Augustine to point at some useful galleries rather than his closed image fap page. I’m still looking for a definitive site for his work if it’s out there.
I’ll leave you with a shot of Mistress Olivia Fitzgerald herself, taken from her commercial site. I found it interesting, as it’s one of those shots that if you described it to someone unseen, the resulting impression would be completely contrary to how it actually comes across. What would sound like scary serious S&M play, actually looks kind of sweet and tender in the image itself.
After yesterday’s lengthy post, here’s a nice minimal, clean image as a palette cleanser. I like the bare walls, stripped bed and her simple yet beautiful style. There’s actually quite a lot of interesting play going on – bondage, mummification, CBT, hooding and foot worship. But it doesn’t come across as complex or cluttered. It has a pleasant symmetry.
It’s original from Femdom Sessions. If you check out their tour page you can actually some video from this session, including some nice CBT and nipple torture. I found it on the Queen of Desire tumblr.
After writing yesterday’s post on panic and stress when playing, a further personal observation struck me. This was that it’s not relinquishing control that creates significant stress. I’m happy to release control of my body, and can do quite intense activities, like breathplay or suturing, with no danger of panicking. What dramatically ratchets up the stress level is when I feel that there’s an element that is out of control. Something that we accidentally dropped on the floor when control was passed between us. For example, I’ve no problem with a mistress pulling a plastic bag tight over my head. I won’t be able to breath, but I know that she knows that. A tight hood with a small breathing hole is way more stressful. I fear that the hole will get accidentally blocked, I won’t be able to fix and she won’t know about it. I worry that nobody will be in control, and that uncertainty prays on my mind.
I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way, and so within this observation also lies opportunity. If a dominant wants to increase stress, then they should increase uncertainty. Remove both control and awareness from the submissive. Disconnect them from their surroundings and sense of time. To borrow a term from the software industry, the dominant should strive to create FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.
Conversely, with a nervous submissive, the dominant should try to eliminate ambiguity. Always be very clear about the transfer of control. Keep physical contact to let the submissive know they are still present and in charge of the situation. Encourage two-way communication and try to balance the competing stresses. For example, before increasing a level of sensory deprivation, decrease the level of bondage or the amount of pain.
Given hoods are a good way to do sensory deprivation and create stress, I figure this would be a suitable image to illustrate the post. I like the contrast between his objectified anonymity and her happy smiling face. It features Mademoiselle Belle, a pro-domme based in Madrid. Originally the image comes from her blog site, but I came to it via the darksehnsucht tumblr.
A short post tonight. I just finished an intense session with Lydia and I’m still feeling pretty buzzed and floaty. All I want to do right now is pour a glass of wine and relax on the couch.
We were playing with hoods, an item I’ve had problems with in the past. I’m typically not claustrophobic, but there’s something about sensory deprivation, bondage and pressure around my face that stresses me. We’ve worked on it over time, and tonight we had a great session with a lot of layered bondage and some really heavy hoods (like this one). As usual Lydia threw in some interesting twists, using a leather body bag to wrap me in, and having me on a wheeled trolley bed that she could twirl around. That kind of spinning motion coupled with heavy sensory deprivation (she even used earplugs under the hood) and the layers of immobilizing leather bondage created a very intense head space.
In celebration of me making it through the session with no panicky moments, here’s a nice hood shot I came across on Mina’s Kinks tumblr.
Earlier this evening I poured myself a glass of wine and began browsing the archive pages of the Gorean Kajirus tumblr. It’s one of my favorite tumblrs to look at when I’m simply hunting for eye candy. The curator obviously puts a lot of effort into it, as there’s a huge amount of aesthetically and erotically interesting material. There’s beautiful women or all types, ripped guys in restraints, interesting bondage shots and fun BDSM play in many different flavors. There’s even the odd bit of auto porn.
And then, in the middle of all the visual loveliness, dear God, I spotted myself. Twice. That was a spooky internet moment. It’s one thing to appear on my own blog, or on a domme’s site. After all these shots started life on Domina Yuki’s tumblr, and I even spotted my torso on Lydia’s testimonial page the other day. However, it’s quite another sensation to stumble across them on a random tumblr. Particularly one which tends to the more aesthetic than the functional side of kink.
In the meantime, while I get over the weirdness, let me leave you with a couple of shots of genuine eye candy from that tumblr. The first I think is Goddess Miki, a pro-domme from LA who has been on my ‘to visit’ list for a while. I’ve no idea about a source for the second one.
