Tag: Mainstream

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

That’s Mistress Hillary to you

I couldn’t do posts on politics and photoshopped images without featuring this famous one of Hillary Clinton. It’s from Spy magazine in 1993. That was Bill’s first term, when Hillary was driving for a health care plan known (inevitably) as Hillarycare.

These days this would be considered as the kind of amateur photoshop job that can pop up anywhere on the internet,, but back then it was fairly eye catching.  I remember seeing it and feeling oddly aroused. This was from a time when I hadn’t fully figured my sexuality out. I wonder how many Senators and Congressmen – from both sides of the aisle – saw it and felt the same way?

hillaryspymagazine19931

Creative kink

It’s not femdom, but I thought this article on the composer Georg Friedrich Haas was interesting. On the surface it’s interesting just for the people and dynamic involved. At the meta level it’s interesting how it was covered in a very clear and non-sensational fashion by a mainstream newspaper.

PianoThis lady has obviously misplaced her piano stool, but she’s not letting a silly thing like that stop her bashing out a tune or two.

Project manager

I’m afraid my blogging might be a bit erratic for the next few weeks. I have contractors in to do some remodeling work on my place. Unfortunately our work habits don’t mesh all that well. I like to stay up late drinking wine and writing. They like to turn up very early and hit things with hammers. Asking them to hammer quietly has so far not met with success. The end result is a grouchy paltego with not much time to write at night before he falls asleep.

What I really need is a take charge project manager who can get things done in half the time and a quarter the volume. The lady below looks like she wouldn’t take any nonsense when it came to civilized working hours.

BossThis is Yulia Kharlapanova shooting for Harper’s Bazaar.

Sleepy Paul

Here’s my final celebrity themed post for the moment. This time it’s Paul Giamatti and the incident in question is a fictional one from his latest showtime series Billions. He plays a kinky attorney who enjoys being dominated by his wife (played by Maggie Siff). I personally haven’t watched it but, according to this article, it sounds like they’re treating the kinky dynamic in a more mature and respectful fashion than usual. Normally a domme is just thrown in mid-season to spice a series up and provide an excuse to feature a hot woman in leather.

You can watch the opening scene from the series here. There’s bondage, torture and the strong suggestion of a golden shower. Not exactly your standard opening to a Wall Street drama. I was also amused to read that Paul Giamatti was tied up by a specialist rigger and reacted by falling asleep. That’s not a rare reaction to bondage, as it can create a soothing and protected sensation. However, I wouldn’t have expected an actor dealing with a script and a film crew to have responded quite so strongly to the bondage.

MaggieSiffDommeYou can see an extended version of the above image in animated gif form here.

Don’t be scared Kanye

I’m continuing the celebrity theme – moving from Beyonce to Kanye West. In one recent silly and pointless twitter feud (is there any other kind?) he was accused of enjoying ass play, a claim which he firmly denied. So amazingly dumb was the whole thing it made Jenny McCarthy look like the smart one. That’s not a phrase I ever thought I’d find myself writing.

If he genuinely keeps partners ‘away from that whole area’ then he’s really missing out. Ass play can be a lot of fun. But I suspect Kanye knows that already. Shame he couldn’t own up to it.

Ass play artwork by Yumine GuoImage is by the brilliant and talented Yumine Guo. The original, inspired by the artwork of Junji Ito, can be found here.