Mainstream – Page 47 – Femdom Resource

Virtual reality kink

The Oculus Rift headset is one of the hot stories in the tech world. It’s getting a lot of positive reviews and some heavyweight support. Virtual reality started out as the hot new thing in the 90’s, and quickly became a joke thanks to the limits of display technology. It seems that after almost two decades the hardware is finally catching up with the concept.

Of course, it wouldn’t be an exciting new technology without someone trying to use it for sex, and fortunately this is no exception. Their sales pitch suggests imaging playing Leisure Suit Larry but actually being in the game. Frankly that sounds terrible, but I do think the concept is an interesting one. It’s a step towards the Holodeck and, as Scott Adams rightly observed, that will be society’s last invention.

I’ve a personal interest here, as I worked in a research group on VR in the 90’s. Back then only incredibly desperate teenagers would have been turned on by the low resolution graphics, but today it looks like the visuals are rapidly becoming a solved problem. Haptic techology – meaning touch and tactile feedback – is the next big area. I can imagine that BDSM sex apps have an advantage here. After all, it’s easier to create a painful sensation that it is a pleasurable one. However, I wonder if BDSM also requires a greater degree of connection between participants. After all, a lot of people can enjoy masturbating to images or movies, and not feel any particular connection with the people they’re watching. Yet most masochists in my experience don’t get off on hurting themselves. Pain is only enjoyable in the right context and establishing that context might be trickier when some of the participants don’t actually exist.

The image above is by Tink2001 (sites here and here). I think he was one of the most talented femdom artists working in the rendering world, but sadly seems to have stopped publishing new work. As an image I think it’s a great fit for this particular post for several obvious reasons.

The thrill-clit cult

The title sounds like something from a Russ Meyer movie, but it’s actually from a Gawker article on a practice known as Orgasm Meditation (OM). It’s not femdom at all, but I thought it’d be interesting to my readers. After all, they’re from a community that tends to focus on orgasm frequency, either limiting male ones or promoting female ones. Plus, I can actually tie the whole thing back to BDSM indirectly.

The OM practice is summarized as…

The woman removes the clothing from her lower half, and only from that half. The partner—the stroker, typically a man—remains fully dressed. The lights stay on. Over the course of 15 minutes, timed, the partner rubs the upper left quadrant of the woman’s clitoris, and she surrenders to involuntary sensation.

The ‘interesting’ bit is that partner in this case doesn’t refer to a romantic connection. It could be someone you just met. Someone you’re working with. A friend. It’s sold as type of meditation, a way to bond and a way to feel good about yourself. The driving force behind it is a company called One Taste, which comes off in the article as a cross between a cult, a commune, a therapy provider, a tech start-up and a sex club. Much as I like the idea of more orgasms in the world, I can’t say the article inspired me to get involved with them.

The connection I can make back to BDSM is that they relate the benefits of OM to the release of oxytocin. That’s a hormone that’s often associated with subspace and the high that comes from an intense BDSM scene. Both OM and BDSM are ways to hack the brain to deliver it. A psychiatrist in the article claims that the only things that can match OM for triggering oxytocin release are childbirth or breastfeeding. I wonder if she ever studied bondage, whipping and ball spanking? Probably not.

This image of a couple bonding in their own particular way comes from Mean Dungeon. I found it on the Geek Domme tumblr. It seems to combine two excellent ways to generate oxytocin – pain for him and an orgasm for her.

Inadvisable advice

Today’s post features an advice column and an inquiry about becoming a dominatrix. It’s kind of an odd letter, with what sounds like a sudden jump from BDSM newbie to professional domination, but I’m going to give the writer the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s been heavily edited. I’m feeling less forgiving about the advice which has two particularly bad statements in it.

…you won’t be good at dominating another person unless you know what it feels like to be on the receiving end. Have you ever been a partner’s true submissive, consenting to bondage, gagging, whipping and verbal abuse? …. You will understand why they do it if you’ve experienced the scope of it.

I would have thought it obvious that BDSM isn’t symmetric. Unless a person is wired to be submissive or masochistic they’re not going to get anything from being on the receiving end. If you’re not into pain and corporal play, then getting whipped isn’t going to be instructive, it’s just going to hurt. That’s not to say a top can’t experiment with sensations and try out some toys, but that’s about understanding the physics and biology of the situation. Not being someone’s ‘true submissive’ (whatever the hell that means). Oddly nobody ever tells submissives that they need to try dominating someone before they can really understand how to play.

You’re effectively creating a complete power exchange. You are stripping a human being of their autonomy, dignity and free will — and physically abusing them on top of it.

This comment annoyed me even more than the first. I certainly do not lose my autonomy or free will when I play. I might temporarily cede control and give up some power, but I always the retain the ability to make my own informed decisions. Submitting does not make someone less than human. And while some types of play deliberately mess with dignity, a lot do not. Personally I’m pretty proud of my scenes and how they’re conducted.

What I think the columnist should have said is – go learn from pro-dommes already out there. Read their blogs. Scan their forums. Go to their conferences. See if you can apprentice with one in your area. By all accounts it’s a tricky job with many pitfalls. Better to learn those from someone else than repeat them all yourself.

The image is of Mistress Absolute, a London based pro-domme. According to this article she shares my thoughts on starting out as a submissive.

There’s a school of thought that says you should start out submissive before you become dominant,” the dominatrix says as students begin to arrive. “That if you don’t know what it feels like, how can you do it to someone else? I don’t follow that thought. I don’t have a set of balls, but I torture balls.”

Enter the dominatrix

Apparently there’s a new videogame due out called ‘Enter the dominatrix‘. That’s a really stupid title, but that’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to videogames. In a similar vein, I can’t get too annoyed at the use of a dominatrix as the main villain. Yes, it’s lazy and cliched, but so are most videogames. Given the stereotypical view of a dominatrix – an attractive woman in fetish gear who enjoys hurting people – I’m surprised more games haven’t featured them.

The thing that’s even more annoying than the title and the cliched villain is the plot and accompanying press release…

In order to thwart her nefarious schemes and escape to the real world, the Saints will have to counter her army of gimps and sex-workers…

Sex-workers? Really? I’m supposed to fight off hordes of strippers, escorts, cam girls and sensual touch masseuse? The evil minions in this game are people who offer sexy fun times in return for money? Those are not the kind of people I want to virtually gun down. I get that Nazis, demons and aliens have been over-worked as protagonists at this point, but swapping them out for sex-workers is pretty fucked up.

As a further demonstration of the idiocy of the game developers, they couldn’t even put together a super sexy dominatrix to battle. If you’re going to play to a cliche, at least really go for it with a smoking hot domme, and not someone with a stupid cloak and a penis helmet. There are hundreds of better virtual dommes floating around on the web. Take the one below for example, created by Andrew Hickinbottom. It’s excessively exaggerated, and the ring on the collar is a classic fetish faux paus for a domme, but she still looks a way more interesting character than what the Volition team were paid to come up with.

Goddam roleplaying bullshit

I first came across this image via the Selina Minx tumblr. I can’t say I was a huge fan of the bondage. It’s very sloppy, and I’m not sure how it’ll progress into anything that’ll actually restrain. However, I did like the smiles, the casual attitude and the lack of fetish clothing. Encouraging kinky play that’s focused on fun and pleasure seems like a good thing. Unfortunately I then did the reverse image search and stumbled across several very annoying articles. I suspect this is a stock photograph and it has been used for a number of Cosmo ‘spice up your sex life’ articles. For example, this and this. These are almost always terrible. For example, here’s a quote from one of them on bondage…

Although in reality it’s wrong, in fantasies and role play, its significance is completely different. In the real world, restraining someone is assault or rape, even. In role play, in contrast, it signifies: “you’re so desirable that I can’t resist you. You have such power over me that I want you at all costs”. And for a woman, it can be very liberating.

It’s hard to know where to start with this. Yes, bondage can liberating, but for men as well as women, and on both sides of the knots. As for the rest? Words fail me. I don’t play in some fantasy world of magic and unicorns. I play in a reality of bondage, masochism and negotiated consent. The idea of someone being so desirable and irresistible that you want to tie them up whatever the cost is deeply troubling.

Roleplay can be a lot of fun. I’ve nothing against it. But it’s just one narrow slice of kink. Instead it often seems to be treated as all encompassing. That’s particularly true for the mainstream press, who treat BDSM as a subset of roleplay. Can’t we just tie people up and beat them for the sheer hell of it? I want to get fucked up by someone being themselves, not someone pretending to be someone or something else.

R100

Fans of quirky and obscure Japanese movies (that would be me) may enjoy a new one called R100. It apparently tells the story of a bored and lonely guy who signs up for a club that promises him kinky scenes with a bevy of beautiful dominatrices. The only catch is he’ll never know when they’ll appear in his daily life and what they’ll do. Oh, and no matter what happens, his contract with the club is unbreakable. You can read a review here and see a fairly mysterious trailer here.

As a real life set-up it sounds like it’d be an absolute nightmare. No matter how skilful the domme, or how tight her leather outfit is, nobody wants to get attacked while dealing with their boss or entertaining an elderly family member. As a movie set-up it sounds like an intriguing one. I personally find it very hard to resist a movie that can be described as…

…a thoroughly fucked and perverse little film that only gets away with its most outlandish moments if you’re willing to disregard concepts like rationality and find nasty fetishism funny.

Sun, sand, surf

Posting may be a bit erratic for the next few days. I’m taking a vacation in Hawaii. Some friends have rented a house on a beach, so I’m looking forward to relaxing with a tall drink and a book. That’s very much not my typical vacation, but that’s probably a good thing. A vacation is supposed to be a break from the usual after all.

I have absolutely no kinky fun planned at all. However, should a lady in a bathing suit require me to kneel down so she can avoid get her feet wet, then I dare say I could be persuaded.

This is Tatjana Patitz, and the photograph was taken by the fashion photographer Herb Ritts. I found it on StellaNova’s Realm.

A uniform done right

Or if not right, at least better than the slightly over the top latex number in yesterday’s post. This is a lot more understated. I like the way their outfits captures the essence of uniforms, without actually being specific uniforms. I think that’s the ideal roleplay attire. You want to capture the idea for the scene, without tying yourself tightly to a facsimile of reality.

This is by the photographer Gui Paganini for ffw magazine. You can see more images from the same shoot here. I originally found the image via the Derekisme tumblr.

Higher education

I like the idea of making science more interesting to people. I’d certainly be happy to volunteer to dangle over a lecture hall somewhere in academia. Unfortunately, I’m not sure this is all that practical. And I don’t mean the naked slave part, or the bondage, or the professor with a whip. I’m sure those would all be fine. It’s the timing that’d be an issue. I’ve done suspension scenes and they’re not the fastest things in the world to set-up. Getting everything cinched properly in place and the weight balanced right takes time. Doing it three different ways? All your students would be long gone. You’d be better off studying the mathematics of the whip.

The cartoon comes from the very excellent Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Other fine examples from the same source include this, this and my personal favorite this.

Real Sex

The Vulture site is carrying an interesting article on the old HBO show Real Sex. I was amazed to discover it first aired back in 1990 and ran for almost 20 years. I didn’t encounter it until I moved to the States in 2001 and, based on the frank manner it addressed sex, had always assumed it was of a fairly recent vintage.

It was by no means a great show. Although the article claims they aimed to be sincere and to laugh ‘with’ and not ‘at’ the people involved, I always detected an undercurrent of cynicism. Beneath the veneer of education and illumination there were clearly elements of titillation (ok with me) and mockery (not so good). However, all that said, I think it still was a net positive in helping people talk more frankly about their sexual interests. For example, this post from D. Hubby directly references the effect an episode on spanking had on his life.

One particular part of the interview that caught me eye was this quote…

It was always a challenge for us to find good-looking people. It’s certainly true of nudists, but a lot of people doing weird sex stuff are not necessarily young and attractive.
Katie Smalheer, associate/coordinating/supervising producer, 1996–2005

I think that’s a very telling comment. It could be taken to mean that people doing ‘weird sex stuff’ are unusually unattractive.The reality is that this media filtered view of the world is incredibly biased. Visual attractiveness is a valued commodity, particularly when nakedness is involved. Almost all commercial visual media picks from a tiny pool of conventionally attractive people. People into ‘weird sex stuff’ are simply a normal cross-section of the populace, and that clashes with the narrow selection criteria we normally expect for naked people on film. Our perception of what is acceptable or normal is horribly skewed.

I don’t have a particularly great image to use for this post, so I’ll finish with the kind of scene that I’m sure Real Sex would have loved to feature. That Miss Eve from the Young Dommes site.