Mainstream – Page 39 – Femdom Resource

Bayonetta

Having touched on gaming in my previous post, that does give me an excuse to segue onto a game related topic. Specifically the game Bayonetta, which features a tall, aggressive leather clad female protagonist. It clearly draws on BDSM culture (as alluded to here by one of the designers), but I’d always dismissed it as an example of the typical adolescent dominatrix fantasy that crops up fairly often in video games. Maddy Myers, writing in Paste magazine, thinks otherwise. It’s an interesting article, and she clearly identifies with both the dominant role and the leading character.

We don’t just get invited to watch Bayonetta, we also inhabit her. When I play, Bayonetta is me, and the camera’s glances are just the “sub gaze”—the male submissive’s gaze. Bayonetta holds all the cards.
Maddy Myers in Paste

It’s rare to read such a thoughtful commentary on a video game. It’s even rarer to have a woman come out as a dominant in a non-professional BDSM setting. Pro-domme tell-all articles are a dime a dozen, but I can’t remember the last time I encountered a woman identifying that way in the context of her professional non-kinky life. You can read more from her at her site.

While I head off to Amazon to order a copy of the first version of the game, I’ll leave you with some Bayonetta cosplay by TraumaticCandy. The original character design is deliberately freakishly long-limbed, and this costume does an amazing job of capturing that.

Gamergate and Wonder Woman

The Colbert Report finishes its run later this year. That makes me sad. Not just because it’s one of the funniest and cleverest shows on television, but also because Stephen has featured a lot of smart, assertive female guests who can happily trade shots with him. I’ve long harbored a crush on Emily Bazelon, who has covered a lot of legal issues with him. On Wednesday’s show he gave us a duo of brilliant guests.

First there was Anita Sarkeesian who educated him on the toxic clusterfuck that is Gamergate (other good coverage of that here and here). She has done a whole series of thought provoking articles on Tropes vs Women in Video Games, which is well worth checking out for anyone interested in gaming. Then he talked to Jill Lepore, a history professor from Harvard University who has just written a book on ‘The Secret History of Wonder Woman‘. I can’t say I’ve ever been a big Wonder Woman fan (apart from enjoy the TV show as a kid), but apparently her creation had links to the woman’s suffragette movement, early supporters of birth control and the political activism of the 1920’s. Despite being the first and most famous female superhero, I’ve never really thought of her as a feminist icon, but that’s what the book apparently claims. I’m looking forward to getting a copy to review.

Of course all this talk of Wonder Woman and feminism is really just an excuse to feature some fun femdom artwork. This is entitled ‘WHAP!’ and is by the artist godstaff.

Enthusiastic consent

Gawker has published one of the better articles I’ve seen recently in the mainstream press on sex and kink. Entitled ‘Vanilla Sex: A Perfectly Fine Way to Fuck‘ its message was to avoid trying to categorize sex and instead concentrate on discussion. What matters is what you and your partner(s) want, not some arbitrary definition of normality. It finishes with fine advice applicable to almost any sexual situation…

And that, I think, is what’s missing from vanilla sex. Rather than trying to “spice up” your love life with imported sexual practices that don’t fit your tastes, why not borrow kink culture’s emphasis on dialogue and enthusiastic consent? The hottest move your sex life can steal from kink isn’t handcuffs, it’s discussion
From a Gawker article by Monica Heisey

It’s tricky to pick an image to represent the concept of enthusiastic consent, so here’s a couple who at least look happy and enthusiastic about what they’re doing. Plus, if you’re going to do breathplay like this, consent is pretty important.

This is from the Hom Smother site. I found it on the Felm Cyber tumblr.

Pulling him close

Here’s another happy man wrapped in some rope. Admittedly I can’t actually see his expression, so unlike yesterday’s shot, I can’t definitely say he’s happy. But I’m willing to wager that he’s feeling pretty good about his situation.

The image is oddly entitled ‘Brutal‘ (free deviant art login needed). Not quite sure about the title, but I do like the image. It’s by Pavel Ryzhenkov, known on Deviant Art as West-Kis, a photographer based in Belarus. I found it on the Femdom Delights tumblr.

The Duke of Burgundy

As far as film titles go, The Duke of Burgundy isn’t an obvious one to use for a period piece movie focusing on a lesbian D/s relationship. It is also rare to see this kind of opening statement in a mainstream newspaper’s film review…

The Duke of Burgundy is the most tender love story you’ll see in which a woman forcefully urinates in her lover’s mouth

While it might be unusual, the majority of the reviews seem to love it. There’s that one in the Guardian, another in the Austin Chronicle and this one in the IndieWire. From their descriptions it seems to be a movie that really has an understanding of the dynamics of BDSM and some of inherent contradictions in a Dom/Sub relationship.

It’s not released until October 10th, but I’ll certainly be looking out for it after that. In the meantime it gives me an excuse to feature a fun vintage shot. These two ladies seem to be enjoying both nautical dress-up and spanking.

Songbird in leather

Celebrities strutting their stuff in fetish gear pop up constantly in the gossip rags (example case in point). The shot below is a little different. Eagle eyed readers may recognize the lady on the right. Yes, it’s Barbra Streisand in leather and brandishing (well limply holding) a whip.

You can see more shots from the same sequence in this article. It was taken in 1970 and was shot for a prop used in a movie called The Owl and the Pussycat. According to the article the prop was only used briefly, but they still seem to have shot an awful lot of images of Barbara posed a ‘cycle slut’. I guess I might have done the same given the chance.

The million eyes of Sumuru

Based on its imdb page, the million eyes of Sumuru was a pretty terrible movie. Despite that, I have a soft spot for these kind of cheesy 60’s exploitation flicks. They’re impossible to defend on an artistic, cultural or political level, yet hard for me to resist when I stumble across them late at night with a drink in my hand. I love the over-the-top poster below, and I’m guessing that a lot of my readers might enjoy this clip from the movie.

You can see the trailer for the movie here. In typically culturally sensitive fashion, the ‘asian’ Sumuru was played by the wonderful but very non-asian Shirley Eaton (famous for her role in Goldfinger)

Defined Lines

I featured a video parodying Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines last summer. It turned out to be a song and video ripe for parody, with even Weird Al getting in on the act. I recently stumbled on another particularly excellent example, that I’m sure my readers will enjoy. It’s called Defined Lines and is by the Law Revue group. To give you an idea of the theme let me quote some lyrics – “Let me emasculate you, because your precious dick can’t beat my vibrator.” Amazingly it even got briefly pulled from youtube for inappropriate content, which boggles the mind given some of the things to be found there.

Admittedly I’m about 12 months late bringing you this link, but hopefully it’ll be new to some of my readers. There are leashes, clingfilm bondage, scantily clad guys, forceful women and pointed lyrics. In other words, it’s all sorts of good things.

James Franco’s Kink

I’ve been waiting to watch the kink documentary for a while now. It first popped up back in 2013, but it seems Mr Franco is practicing a form of tease and denial, because it has been very hard to track down. There’s a new trailer out, which you can see in this recent article/interview on the film. Yet, despite a release date of August 22, I can’t seem to find a showtime anywhere for it. So while millions might be browsing kink.com‘s erotic material via tumblr everyday, the documentary remains more elusive than a helpful comment on youtube.

The image is from the kink.com site Men in Pain. It features the brilliant Clarie Adams and the strangely named but equally great EuroSex.

Day & Night

Courtesy of this Huffington Post article I discovered this photographic series by Forest McMullin. Entitled Day & Night, it features pairs of photographs with kinksters in their daily life and then dressed for play.

The article itself is kind of a silly one. It has a sense of wonder and surprise that kinky people can have ‘normal’ daily lives. I get the feeling the author expected BDSM aficionados to spend their days dressed in leather or crawling around on all fours. Rather than a ‘Hey, normal people can be kinky!’ message it ends up being a “Wow, some normal people are secretly freaks!” one.

As for the photographs, I do like the variety of people they show. Photographs peeking inside kinky lifestyles are nothing new, but shooting pro-dommes in New York or inside trendy fetish clubs in LA is one thing, shooting regular folk from Georgia is a little different. I just wish the settings had been, for want of a better expression, slightly less porn-y. Most shots feature dungeon equipment or fancy toys. I get that makes for a better contrast to the ‘daily life’ shot, but I’m not sure it’s representative of a lot of kinky people. Some pervertibles from Home Depot and less in the way of fetish wear might have made for more realistic and quirky shots.

That said, I have to say I particularly enjoyed the shots of Adriana, Dea, Suzina & Tim, and Kim-Lady_Hotchkiss (shown below).

You can see the full set of photographs in this flickr stream.