Tag: Mainstream

A little prick in the rump

At a quick glance this could be an image from a femdom pegging or a medical play porn scene. In fact it’s an advertisement for disposable one use syringes. You can see the full size version of it here.

The tag line is that ‘non-disposable syringes are the second biggest cause of HIV’, so I guess their pose is meant to allude to the biggest cause. Although that doesn’t make a lot of sense, as pegging is probably one of the safest forms of penetrative sex you can have. I’m also not sure what the bowl of apples is about, unless it’s another allusion to sex and sinful temptation. Still, whatever the confused philosophy, I’m certainly a fan of advertisements featuring this kind of medical scene.

LittlePrick

Headline Hard-ons

There have been a lot of dicks in the news recently. And no, that’s not a set-up for a Donald Trump joke.

Firstly, there was the story with the headline grabbing title – ‘Is your penis really shrinking?‘ Apparently falsely believing your penis to be shrinking is a defined medical phenomena known as Koro. I know men think all sorts of strange things about their dicks on a daily basis, but panicking that it’ll vanish back into the body is a new one on me.

Then there was the story about a penis transplant. A lot of headlines billed it as the ‘first’, where in fact it was only the first in the US and the third in the world. A penis transplant sounds like a set-up for a great porn movie or a terrible horror movie, but in fact it’s a fascinating medical and human interest story. The recipient seems like an interesting guys who has tackled the issue in a very open and honest way.

Finally, in slightly different medical news, there was the English surgeon who wore a chastity device while performing operations. The story is full of lurid details of a penis torture device, but from the description it just sounds like a regular plastic CB device or something similar. He wasn’t discovered because of the bulge in his scrubs, but because he snapped photos in a hospital locker room and emailed them to a ‘professional’ (note quotes) dominatrix. She then turned him into the hospital authorities who suspended him.

I’m in two minds about that last story. On one hand he doesn’t seem to have exhibited great judgement, which isn’t a good sign for a surgeon. On the other hand, I’m really not sure what the big deal is about doing your job in a chastity device. The article talks about hygiene issues, but unless he was doing surgery sans pants, I can’t imagine that would be a problem. If it was a vibrating butt plug or nipple clamps then I’d understand the concern, but some people wear chastity devices 24×7. I’d be more concerned with his bad judgement in snapping photographs and picking a horrible domme than the device itself.

Dick PicI’m afraid I don’t know where this particular dick pic is from. It has the look of a cropped image from kink.com.

What a lovely canoe

I’ve written about some of America’s crazy cultural issues in the last couple of posts, but it’s not alone in having some strange attitudes. All countries have odd cultural baggage when it comes to sexuality and gender. The latest example from Japan would be this story of an artist and her vagina canoe.

As any porn aficionado will tell you, Japan has odd laws around pornography and obscenity. Japanese producers create some fairly extreme (to Western eyes) material, but the genitals must be obscured. Artist Megumi Igarashi pushed this law to the point of absurdity by distributing the data that would allow someone to ‘print’ a 3D model of her vagina. She did so to help fund a canoe also modeled on her body.  Amazingly, for distributing what’s basically a mathematical description of part of her own body, she was found guilty of obscenity and fined 400,000 Yen (about $3,680). The problem with pointing out the absurdity of a law is that after you’re done with the absurdity the law bit is still there. One can only hope that the sheer ridiculousness of the ruling may provoke a change.

Past artists have worked around the censorship laws with strategically placed objects. Mike Myers had fun with that approach in this Austin Powers clip. Namio Harukawa was a little subtler in the image below.

Namio Harukawa artwork

Taking a tinkle

I like the United States. I’ve enjoyed living here and I can’t see myself leaving. Yet, despite the fact I’ve been here over 15 years, it can sometimes still feel like a very foreign place. The so called culture wars rage here with an intensity and strangeness that doesn’t seem to exist in Western Europe. There are some toxic topics here – abortion, guns, goverment regulation, religion in public life –  that are unique to the history of the place. You can live here for years and not understand why they create such passionate debate.

Occasionally these culture wars wage a battle by strange proxies. The latest example of this is the public bathroom. Having failed to stop gay people have sex and get married, some conservatives have decided to draw the line at transgender people using the bathroom. Fighting for such a ridiculous cause is perhaps indicative of the desperation of their position, but that doesn’t stop it being any less harmful to transgender people.

Vox has a good article on the history of this and how it’s being used as way to generally attack LGBT rights. John Oliver also did his usual excellent job of demolishing some of the bullshit arguments involved here. Although perhaps my favorite piece of political activism comes from Shakina Nayfack who is touring North Carolina (current epicenter of the battle) and peeing in a lot of urinals.

Of course other countries have their issues with bathrooms as well. For example, based on this image, it looks like Japan has an issue with men getting trapped in ladies toilets. I just hope she spots him before it’s too late. Otherwise the poor chap might get awfully wet.

BathroomThis is from the Team Rinryu site.

What a dildo

I don’t like to feature politics too heavily here. There’s enough of it in the mainstream press, without it intruding into your sex blogs. However, this article on Ted Cruz was too amusing to resist.

Apparently, in his role as Texas solicitor general he once argued that dildos and vibrators should remain illegal in Texas.

In perhaps the most noticeable line of the brief, Cruz’s office declared, “There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.” That is, the pursuit of such happiness had no constitutional standing.
David Corn in Mother Jones

I’m not sure about you, but I don’t want to live in a country where I can’t stimulate my genitals for non-medical purposes.

Of course, the same guy who wants to monitor peoples sex toys is also the same person who believes in a small goverment that stays out of people’s lives. It takes a very peculiar kind of mind to hold both these points of view at the same time. And for any Ted Cruz supporters out there who I’ve offended, I can only apologize and ask: What on earth are you doing reading this blog? This is a ticket straight to hell.

There is of course only one way to finish a post like this. Here’s a lady sporting a dildo and stimulating her genitals. I’m not sure about her interpersonal status, but that doesn’t look like a medical or procreation situation to me. She better hope President Cruz never takes office.

Stimulation

Objectification (of the bad sort)

In the last week the British press has been full of a story featuring John Whittingdale – a politician and member of the government – and a dominatrix who worked under the title Mistress Kate. Almost universally the coverage of it has been terrible and depressing. The facts seem fairly straightforward: They met via match.com in late 2013 and dated for six months. He allegedly had no idea what work she did until someone tried to sell the story in early 2014. When he found he broke off the relationship. In 2015 he was appointed to a more senior goverment position, one related to press regulation, and in 2016 the story broke in the newspapers.

The depressing element in most of the coverage (for example this) is how they objectify the woman involved. She is made to seem entirely ‘other’. Given they dated for 6 months, and attended a number of events together, they presumably had made a connection. Their meeting on a conventional dating site suggests it was just two people looking for a partner and a relationship. Yet in the articles she’s reduced to a purely sexual persona based on her job. She’s a chance for papers to list some titillating details about her dungeon or services while pointing at him for being so stupid as to date such a person. It’s taken as read that obviously he’d break off the relationship when he found out. Everyone involved, both him and the journalists, seem to treat her a non-person once her role as a sex-worker was revealed. It’s a horrible thing to see.

Even the more positive writers seem to miss the point. Articles like this and this use the story to make the point that seeing a dominatrix is a perfectly fine thing to do. Obviously I agree with that general point, but it once again objectifies the woman by equating her with her job. She’s a sex worker, and a pro-domme. Emphasis on work and pro. Maybe she’s kinky in her private life but maybe not. And if she is kinky at home, she might be a domme, a switch or a submissive. They met on match.com, not on fetlife and there’s no indication I’ve seen that they had a D/s relationship. It’s a bit like hearing somebody is dating a professional chef and exclaiming ‘Wow, you must really love food!’ Well perhaps the chef cooks at home and a passion for food is one of the elements that brought them together. But maybe they’ve many other things beside that in common, or perhaps the chef doesn’t like to cook at home, or it might just be a job to the chef. We can separate people from their professions in almost all other cases, yet not it seems when it comes to sex workers.

Given this post has been all about the unpleasant kind of objectification, let’s finish with something more cheerful. This is the sexy and more literal kind of objectification.

Stool

Witchy

Those who like to mix spiritually and paganism with their BDSM may be interested in this article. It discusses some of the overlap between the two, both in the practices and the communities.

Alternatively, for those who aren’t so much into the spiritual side, but do like to see a sexy powerful witch, I’ve got you covered as well. Here’s Charlize Theron as the evil witch queen Ravenna from Snow White and the Huntsman. Not a great movie by all accounts, but Ms Theron can always brighten a film up.

EvilQueen

Caveat venditor

Top tip of the day: If an unknown person on the internet offers you a large sum of money for doing very little, it’s probably certainly a scam. The latest example of this comes to us from New Zealand, where women were offered thousands of dollars for photographs of their hands and feet. Unsurprisingly the money never showed up, but some of the photographs did make it to a fetish website.

Clearly the people that did this are assholes of the first order. Taking advantage of people is a shitty thing to do. However, if the worst thing that happens to you is untraceable foot photographs showing up on a fetish site, then maybe you can treat it as an important life lesson that was cheaply learned. Whoever you’re dealing with, whether it’s selling a sofa on craiglists or photographs for drooling internet perverts, always get the money up front.

I particularly enjoyed the byline to the news article – “Internet watchdog warns ears and elbows could be next as young people are being duped into sending pictures of body parts to fetish websites.” That makes it sound like there’s some bizarre hierarchy of perversion. Watch out kids, after ears and elbows, it’s just a small step to the serious hard pornography of armpit hair and nasal passages. These perverts are working their way around all parts of the body and they must be stopped!

Only a handful of people were scammed, so it’s probably the work of a single maladjusted fetishist with nothing but a gmail account and zero social skills. Somebody should tell the internet watchdog that pretty much by definition fetishists tend to have highly focused interests. They’re not going to switch their sexual attention from feet to ears just because their scam got spotted.

FetishGiven this post has been all about fetishes, you’ll have to excuse me if I indulge one of mine with this image. I’m always a sucker for an elegant and well dressed lady in a tight pair of boots.

Some of the best of LA

TimeOut guide for Los Angeles recently published an article listing its suggestions for the best professional dominatrices in LA. I like the fact that mainstream publications are covering BDSM in a mature way, rather than using it as a excuse to snigger at the freaks, but it’s also a bit odd. How do they know who the best pro-dommes are? How does anyone know? It’s not like going to a restaurant or a theater performance, where all customers might get a similar repeatable experience. I’m not saying you can’t divide the talented from untalented. I just don’t think you can divide the talented into the best and the rest.

I was happy to see Mistress Lucy Khan on the list. I’ve played with her on several occasions and always had a wonderful time. I was disappointed to see that Cynthia Stone, Inga Larsson and Mistress Lexine weren’t listed. They certainly deserve to be there based on my experiences, which just shows how silly it is to call these lists ‘the best’.

One name that did make it was Isabella Sinclaire. She has been a very well respected name and face in the pro-domme and fetish world for a long time, and somebody I’ve always wanted to play with. Here she posing in front of a particularly spectacular piece of dungeon equipment.

Isabella Sinclaire