The beauty of dominant women
This image is taken from a Korean film called Werewolf Boy. I’ve never seen it but, from what I’ve read, it tells the story of a young woman finding, befriending and taming the boy of the title.
I’m not sure that it’s really a story of female dominance in the conventional sense, but I do like this image. There’s a beautiful sense of stillness and control in it. Their respective positions speak to the idea of knight and queen as well as beast and owner.
Someone dropped me a link to this video advertising Wodka Vodka. It’s an amusing commercial, featuring a woman getting jobs done thanks to a quick internet ad and a succession of helpful horny slaves.
However, it particularly caught my eye because of a post I recently stumbled across from San Francisco’s Vinyl Queen. In it she lists the efforts she goes to in order to get a client to actually show up at her play space. The vodka commercial is entertainingly unrealistic, but it wasn’t until I read her post that I realized the extent of the gulf that exists in professional BDSM between advertising and closing the deal. For a lot of her new clients…
These men ultimately hate the fact they can’t rid themselves of this part of their psyche, so it comes out sideways in their dealings with the ONE person who can offer them a brief respite from their desire to submit/serve/be tortured—you get the picture. So instead of my calendar booking up like a medical office, it fills up in a manner unique to this profession. Enter: The Hand Holdee
Despite my website being very detailed and clear about my interests and limits, the Hand Holdee loses all semblance of reading comprehension and memory. It’s like he WANTS me repeat what he KNOWS is on the computer screen in front of him. He is so conflicted internally that he has to hear the words he wants come out of my mouth so he will feel more secure in the days/weeks/or months leading up to our time together.
So for a pro-domme advertising and marketing is only a starting point. Ironically enough, and to tie it all back to the starting point of the post, for vodka marketing is pretty much the first, last and only point that matters. The basic product is interchangeable, varying only slightly depending what filtering is done and what water is added. So, as this fascinating article describes, how you market it is key. The Wodka of the kinky commercial is actually trying a new approach in that respect.
I’m starting this post with a warning about the links it contains. Normally that would mean I was about to discuss edge play and feature potentially disturbing images. However, in this case the links are to conservative journalists talking about kink. I realize that may still constitute edge play for some people. On the face of it they’re discussing extreme porn from kink.com, but it quickly gets into general issues of consent and sexual ethics.
What started this unlikely flurry of posts was an essay by Emily Witt entitled What Do You Desire. The heart of the piece is a description of a shoot for the Public Disgrace site, but it also encompasses the tech culture, San Francisco culture and Emily’s own personal life. It’s an essay that got a lot of attention across the web, not just from the writers below. Personally I was unimpressed. As a kinky and techy person, who lives on the West Coast and visits the Bay Area often, I expected to read something I could relate to. Something that reflected, at least in some way, my experiences. Instead it comes across as a high concept piece. Rather than immersing herself into the culture and drawing conclusions from it, I got the impression Emily went in with a concept and cherry picked her observations to match.
While I might not have been impressed, a lot of other people were. What particularly entertained me were a series of posts from conservative writers. Roughly in order (as they responded to each other) there was: Rod Dreher, Noah Millman, Alan Jacobs, Noah Millman 2, Rod Dreher 2, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Conor Friedersdorf and Rod Dreher 3.
There’s enough material in those articles for a dozen posts, but I’ll try and limit myself to just this one. As you might expect they have a few interesting insights scattered randomly through a whole steaming mound of ignorance. I don’t fault them too much for that. No doubt if I was writing about Conservative Evangelical Christians in the South on the basis of a single provocative article I’d also reveal a lot of my ignorance about that group. What I will fault them for is the horrible underlying logic in some of their arguments. Particularly Rod Dreher writing here on the subject of consent.
His argument is, at the heart of it, a variant on the slippery slope fallacy. He starts out by defining consent as the way people judge right from wrong. He then points out consent alone can never be enough, because people can consent to terrible things. For example, the cannibal who ate a willing victim. And therefore, if consent is not your guiding light, then what can be? How can anyone define what is morally right? The only answer must be God.
For all its many flaws, Christianity (like Islam, like Judaism) at least offers a standard by which to judge right and wrong….
…Christianity at least holds on to the idea that Truth exists, and is knowable, however imperfectly.
The huge glaring flaw in this appeal to absolutism is of course the problem of defining religious Truth. Saying Jesus would have frowned on cannibalism is uncontroversial. But what was his position on silk scarves tied to the headboard? Or a little nipple biting during coitus? And if that’s OK, does he draw the line at nipple clamps? How about anal sex between a loving couple? What if it’s a loving gay couple? I haven’t noticed too many burning bushes appearing recently to give us guidance on these areas.
Of course what people like Rod Dreher really want to impose with a religious standard is their standard. They really know what God meant to say. Of course in reality they have no divine hotline. They’re just people making judgement calls about right and wrong like everyone else. They just don’t trust the rest of us to do it properly.
I’ll leave you with an image of two sinners doing terribly wicked things. I know it might look like a beautiful image of two people enjoying an intense and intimate moment, but that can’t be right. Nipple clamps are clearly the work of Beelzebub.
The image is from the always excellent bondage is not a crime tumblr.
A few posts ago I was writing about domination for dummies. This post is the double converse of that – submissive who are dumb. It was sparked by the tumblr of Mistress Ouch and her series of posts on some of the dumb things wannabe clients say to her. I found them highly entertaining. A few of my favorites were…
“Hi Mistress, I want a really simple easy session and since all that other stuff you do is gross and weird you’re probably really glad to have such a simple easy boring session. Can I have a discount?”
“I disagree with your boundaries. I am very logical and your boundaries are very illogical. Let me use my awesome logic skills to show you how stupid and crazy your boundaries are. Why aren’t you agreeing with me? You’re stupid and crazy.”
“Wait, you’re letting me choose when I get to come in? You mean you don’t dominate me during the booking process?”
She has plenty more amusing example of obtuseness from the little s brigade. They’re well worth a read as examples of the kind of idiocy that pro-dommes have to regularly sort through.
I thought picking a picture for this post might be tricky until I stumbled on the one below. Butthead would make the stupidest submissive possible. I don’t think they ever did a Beavis and Butthead episode featuring a pro-domme, which feels like they missed a trick. The dialog just writes itself. It starts with “Uh huh huh huh. We’re totally going to do it. Come to Butthead”. Swiftly followed “Owww! Get off me you asswipe! That hurts”.
This image was never part of the TV show. It’s taken from a 1997 book called The Butt Files.
Sadly the post title doesn’t refer to another entry in the eponymous Dummies series. Which is a shame, as I think it might make an entertaining read. Instead it refers to a one-woman show by Eleanor O’Brien. It’s based on her experiences training as a pro-domme in NYC and looks like it might make for an amusing evening. Apparently one of the dommes she mimics is called Margo, but I’m sure that’s no relation to the NYC based Miss Margo of my blogroll! If you’re in Portland and interested in attending, it’s playing this weekend (14/15/16 June) at the CoHo theater.
I have to admit my first thought on seeing the original article title – once I got over the strange syntax (surely it should be Domination for Dummies) – was that if you’re a dummy, you probably shouldn’t be a dominatrix. My second thought, hard on the heels of the first, was I wonder if anyone has a fetish for incompetent dominatrices? The kind who’d hit themselves with their own whip, giggle during serious interrogation roleplay and tie themselves into knots rather than the submissive. I’ve never heard of such a kink, but if the internet has taught us anything, it’s that if you can imagine it, somebody will fetishize it. If it does exist, then it strikes me as one of the most dangerous kinks you could possibly have.
Picking a picture this post was tricky. I didn’t want to use a recent shot and risk an angry email from an offended domme. Luckily when you’re looking for incompetency in kink, you can always turn to 70’s porn. This one’s a real doozy. There’s a weird belt leash, an incompetently waved whip, some strange eye makeup, a slave apparently enjoying his dinner and a domme about to brain him with a champagne bottle for some reason. Perhaps she think slaves should be christened in the same way ships are?
Discovered femdom is how I mentally classify images that are femdom as discovered by the viewer rather than intended by the artist. This is a good case in point. It features Tala Birell from a 1933 film called Nagana.
The film tells the story of a doctor’s search for a cure for sleeping sickness. That doesn’t sound like something that would contain a lot of female domination. Yet this image is great. I love the attitude, her expression, the dress and his subtly subservient pose. I’ve no idea what’s actually going on. A femme fatale in a tropical medical drama seems an odd mix. Is she secretly on the side of the sleeping sickness? But regardless, this single frame works for me.
Apparently May 25th is Geek Pride Day. It’s based on the release date for the first Star Wars movie (25th May 1977), but also ties into Towel Day (for fans of Douglas Adams) and the Glorious 25th of May (for fans of Terry Pratchett). Personally I can take or leave Star Wars. The positive feelings generated by the first two and a half movies have long since been dissipated by the crap that came afterwards. However, I am a big fan of the late great Douglas Adams and the prolifically great Terry Pratchett. So, as a geeky guy myself, a post to mark the day seems in order.
Cosplay is a natural fit for both Geek Pride Day and this blog. There are any number of classic domme style cosplay outfits I could have featured. For example, Black Widow, Cat Woman or The Baroness. But somehow the slightly less conventional Joker character below grabs me. Partly because it’s so well done, partly because of the gender twist, but mostly because of the intensity of that look.
This is from San Diego Comic Con 2009 and features TysKas.
I’m always a fan of pulpy novels featuring predatory female figures. This one’s particularly good, with both a sultry blonde and a tough as nails older woman. However, the catchy line above the title – “She lured him into the world’s oldest trap’ – is a bit puzzling.
The luring part is fairly obvious, given the flashed leg and low cut top. But what’s the world’s oldest trap? In modern internet slang that would imply that the older woman was packing a penis in her panties. Given the context though, I doubt that’s it. Marriage doesn’t make sense, as that’s a relatively modern social idea. The same goes for monogamous coupling and child rearing. I’ve got to think that the world’s oldest trap is a pit covered in branches. That’s how they used to catch woolly mammoths after all. It seems an odd way to catch a guy, but it’s the only thing that makes sense to me. I guess it might still be better than relying on your OK Cupid profile.
Often this kind of pulp cover is associated with some fairly poor fiction. But this story is actually by the great Jim Thompson. I’ve not read this particular novel, but he’s famous for such works as The Getaway, The Grifters and The Killer Inside Me. He also collaborated with Kubrick on The Killing and Paths of Glory (although didn’t receive proper credit). If you’re a fan of the pulp crime genre he’s definitely an author worth exploring.
Something short and simply today. This is from the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal strip. It sounds like a clever parenting plan, but she better hope her daughter isn’t dating a budding CBT fan.
This article’s title – Lingerie firm launches women’s underwear for men – has me slightly confused. If you’re launching an underwear line for men, doesn’t that by definition mean it can’t be women’s underwear? It’s like saying you’re selling a bright red ball that happens to be blue.
The logic fail continues into the article itself with the line that “the company are keen to stress the garments are not just for gay men.” I suspect that this thoughtless association between women’s lingerie, crossdressing and gay men can be blamed on the article’s author rather than the company itself.
It’s an interesting concept, but I’m be curious to know exactly who they think their target demographic is. The company site seems to avoid the crossdressing angle and focuses on it being fun, lacy underwear for guys. The photographs don’t try and depict the male models as women or hide their masculinity. But at the same time they also sell bra’s, an item which has a very specific function that doesn’t map to the male physique. I’m not sure why you’d create a bra if the goal was to create underwear that took style cues from women’s lingerie but was functionally designed for men.
Image is from the Homme Mystere site that offers lingerie tailored for men.
