Making a play for the femdom vote

I try and avoid party politics on this blog. I’m very happy to share my general comments on stupid laws and their intersection with the sexual realm, but I don’t see a big upside to dragging specific policies and personalities into it. I’ve observed that people who agree with you just think you’re stating the obvious – “Well of course, what idiot would think otherwise?” – and people who disagree are unpleasantly surprised – “You seemed so smart, how can you be so dumb about this?” Over a cocktail or two it can be interesting to debate with that second group, but in the asynchronous and low bandwidth communication channel of an unrelated blog it’s a losing proposition.

All that said, I did have to laugh today over a Washington Post article I saw on the Romney family. It’s a very dull article, but this bit on Ann Romney and her love of horses did fire my imagination up.

Her son Josh told another New York Times reporter in 2007 that he had given his dad a rubber horse mask so that if he wore it, “maybe Mom will pay as much attention to you as she does to the horses.”

Now I’m stuck with an entertaining but not particularly appealing mental picture of Mitt in pony gear while Ann leads him through his dressage steps. Feel free to leave jokes about what his safeword might be via the comments.

Of course they can afford top end equipment, so I hope Josh got him something like the incredible horse mask below. It’s from Bob Basset, whose work seems to exist at the intersection between art, fetish and fashion. I’m personally a big fan of his steampunk style gas masks, although more from a geeky sci-fi perspective than anything kinky. You can see more shots of the horse mask in this gallery. There’s also an equally beautiful feminine version currently on sale on ebay. Ideal for female submissives or, if you want to push all the kinky stops out, for cross dressing pony boys.

Horse mask from Bob Basset

Horseplay

Riding gear is a fairly common theme in femdom porn. It’s a natural fit. Leather boots. Tight jodhpurs. Riding crops. There’s also the idea of a woman controlling a big powerful dumb beast with a snapped command or a flick of her wrist. That has a certain resonance.

However, it’s pretty rare to see an actual horse involved in a shot. Normally the man plays that role. In this case the male in question has been forced one step lower in the hierarchy, from beast to inanimate footstool. The horse itself looks fairly bored by the proceedings. I just hope for the footstool’s sake that it doesn’t decide to take a pee at this point. I’m a fan of water sports, but horse piss lapping around the knees is definitely a deal breaker. And there’s a good entry to add to the list of sentences I never imagined myself typing.

Slave acting as foot stool while mistress mounts horseThis is taken from a set of images created by the femdom town site. I found it originally on the Whip Mistress blog.

The meaning of life

This image made me smile. I don’t find it particularly erotic. It’s a little too surreal and impersonal for that. But it did put me in mind of a Monty Python sketch in the movie the Meaning of Life. It features a man who gets to choose the method of his execution and well, you can see what he picks in this clip. It’s not the funniest sketch in the movie (that would be this musical number), but if you were going to re-shoot it for the male submissive this looks like it’d be a great cast to use.

Squadron of asian girls in leatherI found this on the Bits and Pieces tumblr site.

Happy Birthday to Me

Just a couple of days ago this blog turned one year old. It feels like I’ve been writing it for much longer, but the post dates don’t lie. 12 pages, 378 posts and 544 approved comments equals one year of blogging.

Looking back at my statistics for the first month I had around 100 visitors. Twelve months later and I’m serving in excess of 60,000 visitors a month with over half a million page views. I originally purchased a small site web hosting package, I’ve since upgraded through medium to large, and I’m heading towards the super size. All those figures are kind of amazing to me, given this is just a random collection of re-posted images and links accompanied by whatever thoughts are currently floating to the front of my brain.

I have to thank a lot of other established bloggers that linked to me and sent traffic in my direction. This includes (but isn’t limited to) Saratoga, Ms Marie, Suzanne and Her Majesty’s Plaything, who were all important linkers in the very early days. However, I have a special place in my heart for Shohei Yamashiro, who provided me with my very first incoming link from his site Slug on Leather. It therefore seems only fitting to illustrate this anniversary post with one of his fine pieces of artwork.

Shohei Yamashiro Artwork

Haute Cuisine

The images below come to you courtesy of Mistress Troy Orleans, a pro-domme based out of NYC. I’ve never had the pleasure of playing with her, but by all accounts she’s one of the most skillful and talented dommes around. Not to mention very well equipped. The first image shows her bed/cage combo, along with a selection of her leather gear in action. The second image is something I’ve never seen before – a bondage suspension system using springs. I’d imagine heavy bondage combined with that kind of loose floating sensation would create an intense headspace. Particularly when it has been accessorized with the drip feed shown here.

I know in some kinky circles there’s a strong reaction to this kind of expensive custom equipment and leather gear. You don’t need all that stuff to create an intense scene or be a true domme is the cry. And of course they’re right. You don’t need it. In fact on a daily basis it’d no doubt become quickly tiresome. Nobody wants to get home from work each day and immediately jump straight into a suspended leather bodybag. But I look on these kind of images as a child might stare at a poster for Disneyland. I wouldn’t want to live there, but my God, it looks like it’d be fun to try out occasionally. Great femdom doesn’t have to feature expensive equipment and clothes, in the same way great cooking doesn’t have to use expensive ingredients. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun to splurge on an out of this world experience when the mood takes you.

Mistress Troy Orleans and bed/cage combo

Mistress Troy Orleans spring suspension system

The distillation of sensation

The images in today’s post come courtesy of this serious bondage article, and feature Ms Yin Q, now of Glint studio.

I have to admit that before I gained any experience in the reality of BDSM I used to think heavy bondage aficionados were a little strange. I kind of got it on an intellectual and fantasy level. A lot of kinky activities are about the transfer of control, emphasizing power by removing freedoms we normally take for granted. But all the customized leather and rubber equipment just looked so strange, so alien. The weird forms of people wrapped in it seemed to play into the stereotypes of odd fetishists doing unexplainable things in their own little worlds.

Having now had a chance to explore some aspects of these worlds for myself, I think I have a much better appreciation for what’s going on. Truth be told I still think it all looks a little peculiar, but I now understand that it’s not necessarily about fetishizing a material and simply wanting to be wrapped in it. There may be an element of that for some people, but it’s the bondage subspace and the sensory changes that seem to be the main goals. As Ms Yin says in the article…

I am obsessed with sending sensations to different orifices and body bits through Erostek stmulators, temperature control, catheters, and feeding tubes, sound bites to earphones, and remote control vibrators.
Not to mention the simple, but powerful act of letting the body be—stepping away and allowing the subject to melt into their head/body space.

I was personally amazed at the impact that heavy bondage and sensory deprivation had on the way I experienced stimulation. Pain and pleasure very quickly became magnified. A whip stroke that might normally only produce a murmur suddenly produces a howl. Miss Troy Orleans talked about much the same effect in her recent post on layering. It seems that the brain constantly tries to normalize and balance its sensory input. In a noisy environment it helps to tune out the superfluous signal. And in the signal poor environment of heavy bondage and isolation it grabs onto whatever it can and magnifies it.

Bondage session with Ms Yin Q

Bondage session with Ms Yin Q

Bondage session with Ms Yin Q

Bad television

I’m kind of ashamed to admit I immediately recognized the television series this image was captured from. It’s from something called ‘Legend of the Seeker‘, a series I’ve encountered while flipping channels late at night. It’s a perfect example of a program best watched with the volume muted. Beautiful people in exciting fetish wear, combined with terribly clunky dialog. I have to admit however, despite the terrible fantasy script, the creators definitely have a feel for kink and BDSM. Nobody could pack that many leather outfits and exiting torture scenes into a series without some kind of underlying kinky ethos.

Legend of the seeker

My nipples explode with delight*

Ms Marie has a recent post soliciting options on nipple torture. Seeing as it is one of my favourite activities, I obviously had to write a lengthy comment as a response. And then, having done that, I felt a post of my own might be in order. It’s actually quite tricky to find a good image of male nipple torture. Probably because it’s less visual appealing than a lot of other activities like spanking or CBT. However, I did manage to track down the image below from the English Mansion site.

There’s actually a lot going on for the submissive here. There’s some scissor style nipple clamps, with a fancy ironwork stand to hold them in place. There’s various straps and cock bondage. And there’s a a hood and collar to keep his head firmly in place. But I suspect when she slides down to take her place on the queening chair, the one thing she’ll be playing with will be those big tempting clamps that look so easy to twist and pull.

Nipple Torture* For anyone who doesn’t get the title reference, hang your head in shame. This major gap in your comedic cultural knowledge can be rectified here.

Decadence

There’s nothing too unusual (in the world of this blog at least) about beautiful imposing women in leather. But something about adding fur into the mix creates a far more decadent and sensual image. I think it would add an interesting component to a scene, a powerful contrasting element between the pain and discomfort of the submissive and the relaxed mistress luxuriating in a thick fur.

The two women in question here are Cybill B. Troy (a pro-domme based out of NYC) and Delilah Doi (who I can’t locate a current website for).

Cybill B. Troy and Delilah DoiImage was taken from Cybill B. Troy’s gallery pages. If you’re in the New York area, then she’s available for sessions.

Human pets (part 2)

I’d be happy with the collar and leash. The gag might be uncomfortable after a while, but I could live with that as well. And the tail and cock cage look positively fun. But those floppy ears? That’s a particularly nasty brand of sadism.

Collared boy as a dogAgain I don’t know who the artist is. It looks awfully similar in style to my previous post, but without a signature it’s hard to be sure.