Mainstream – Page 49 – Femdom Resource

The iron lady

Margaret Thatcher’s funeral was earlier this week. She was Britain’s first female Prime Minister and is widely considered to be its most influential leader since the Second World War. Regardless of what you think of her politics, she was undoubtedly hugely successful in her chosen field and a major world figure.

As soon as the obituaries started rolling in I knew there was one word that would inevitably turn up – dominatrix. Sure enough, like many articles written about her during her life, up it popped (for example in Der Spiegel, Slate, The Guardian, etc.). It’s a description that has always annoyed me. It has a very specific sexual connotation. Men can achieve positions of great authority and power without it being tied to their sexuality. A man reaching for authority is treated as normal. Yet if a woman proves to be the best political campaigner, her motives and reasoning are assessed differently. She’s defined not in her own terms, but in reference to the men she’s beaten politically and their feelings. She’s in charge either to satisfy her base sexual instincts for control or because others let her win to satisfy their desire for punishment.

In Margaret Thatcher’s case it strikes me as particularly inappropriate. I was only a young boy when she was in charge, but my kinky personality was already forming, and she never struck me as someone who sexualized power. A dominatrix works within a D/s dynamic that’s created in partnership with a submissive. They are interested in the reaction from their submissive and the interplay of power between them. That might fit some politicians, but Thatcher always came across to me as someone interested only in results. She cared nothing for the journey. She wanted the world a certain way and either you agreed (making you irrelevant) or you disagreed (making you an obstacle to be destroyed). Authoritarianism is not the same as domination.

As this blog shows, I’m a big fan of women who choose to express themselves via domination. But I hate to see women pushed into that group simply because they’re successful and natural leaders.

I originally picked the image for this post as the cricket bat struck me as quintessentially English. It turns out to be a shot from an Austrian fashion designer – Lena Hoshek. So not so English, but still a fun shot with a great 40’s retro feel to it.

Ruthless people

I was amused to read this article in GQ on a company that offers a kidnapping service. For a thousand dollars or so they’ll kidnap you, hold you hostage and do a bit of sadistic roleplaying. You even get your choice of kidnappers – either standard male goons or a team of ‘Elite Girls’ in microskirts and stripper heels.

What made me smile was how the writer seemed unaware of the very strong BDSM components. It makes absolutely no mention of that angle, whilst describing things like scene negotiation, safewords, bondage, etc. Pro-dommes have been fulfilling these kind of fantasies for years. Lydia even has an isolation cell she can store her victims in prior to an interrogation. Pretty much any major city will have a pro-domme who’ll be able to offer a kidnap and torture session, so I’m not sure why the writer felt he had to fly to Detroit to experience it.

Of course if you want a really exciting scene, you need a heartless family member on the phone refusing to pay the ransom. Hearing your wife opt for a new kitchen over freeing you would add an interesting frisson to the experience. I always enjoyed Danny Devito playing the heartless husband in Ruthless People.

The image comes courtesy of the Uniform Beauties site and the creative captioning from Servitor over at Contemplating the Divine.

The lair of the white worm

That title sounds like something from a bad porn movie. It’s actually the name of a book by Bram Stoker of Dracula fame. More importantly, for the purposes of this blog, it got turned into a crazy film by Ken Russell.

It stars Hugh Grant (in one of his earliest starring roles) and a very sexy Amanda Donohoe. She plays the role of Lady Sylvia Marsh, a seductive snake lady who protects the lair of the aforementioned worm. In the scene below she’s taking care of a boy scout who is unlucky enough to come calling at her mansion. That look on his face in the second image is what you get when you let seductive snake ladies bite you in delicate areas. Things don’t end well for him, as this animated gif shows.

I can’t say it’s a great movie. Or even a good movie. It’s pretty cheesy with some ridiculous dialogue. But if you feel in the mood for an entertaining old school monster movie, then you could do worse than this. It even has a catchy soundtrack.

Roaring Trade

These two images are from a stage play called Roaring Trade by Steve Thompson. Judging by this old review it’s about bond traders and the finance business rather than sex or BDSM. However, give these images, there’s clearly some sexual power and femdom dynamic involved at some point. I like the fact they added that element without invoking the stereotypical powerful and rich city guy sees a dominatrix in his lunch hour.

I found this via the Fashionably Femdom tumblr.

Long live the new flesh

The image below is of Debbie Harry, singer in one of the greatest New Wave bands, and star of one of my favorite movies – Videodrome. Directed by David Cronenberg, it’s a strange hallucinatory film, blending horror and science fiction with BDSM and media culture.

This shot is taken from it but, unfortunately for femdom fans, it’s not indicative of her character as she doesn’t play a domme role. Instead she’s a masochistic pleasure seeker, mixed up with a sleazy TV executive (James Woods) and a weird pirate S&M TV channel. It’s a movie very much ahead of its time as this video review makes clear. It’s also very much a love/hate kind of movie, and if you like clear plots and unambiguous characters I’d steer clear. On the other hand, fans of weirdness, stylish cult movies and strange thought provoking scenes will probably love it. Plus, it features a very sexy piercing play scene between the two stars, which must be unique in Hollywood movies.

I found this on the he stoops to worship (aka Devoted Sub) tumblr.

All the latest celebrity gossip

I don’t typically read tabloid showbiz stories or celebrity news. However, maybe it’s the influence of LA rubbing off on me, but this gossipy story about Olivia Wilde caught my eye today. She took her fiance Jason Sudeikis to a strip club and…

There, a witness told us, “Olivia booked the private champagne room with two dancers. She took Jason inside, and while he wasn’t allowed to touch the dancers, she could touch them.”

That sounds like a particularly entertaining form of tease and denial. Two dancers and Olivia Wilde, and he can’t touch? That’s deliciously evil.

Normally I’d accompany this post with a nice tease and denial femdom image. Unfortunately my hotel internet connection is following the standard law of hotel bandwidth – the nicer the hotel the crappier the internet connection. Surfing sites for a good image to use is therefore far too painful, and I’ll simply settle for a shot of the beautiful Ms Wilde herself.

An article for masochists (in the wrong way)

I try and bring my readers a range of links. Some smart, some funny and some annoying. Sadly, this article on Slate by William Saletan is from that final category. His basic point seems to be that S&M will never go mainstream. That may or may not be true, or even desirable, but his backing reasoning is idiotic. It takes the form of slippery slope arguments, a sure sign of a poorly thought out point of view. For example…

BDSM can be quite dangerous. Responsible practitioners insist it must be “safe, sane, and consensual.” But it attracts people who like to push boundaries. Some submissives are adrenaline junkies: They don’t believe in safety. Recently, several men have admitted to or have been charged with or convicted of crimes including sexual abuse, kidnapping, and murder, all under the cover of BDSM. These men don’t represent BDSM, but they do represent the far end of sadism.

The first part of this is just dumb. Some people like motorsport, rock climbing or parachuting out of planes. They’re adrenaline junkies. Do they also not believe in safety? And if some people go motor racing without a crash helmet does that mean it’s inherently unsafe for all? The second part is offensive. If they don’t represent BDSM then why bring it up? It’s like talking about dating and then bringing up the fact that some men are rapists.

He then goes onto claim that consent cannot be maintained, safewords don’t work and that non-consensual slavery is alive and well. It’s tempting to go through his reasoning line by line and pull it apart, but life’s too short to spend on this kind of drivel. However, I do want to comment on some of the posts and comments I’ve seen around the internet that followed the article. As you’d expect a lot of people were annoyed by it (including Dan Savage) but a few tended to make the argument “Yes, there are crazy people doing X but there’s nothing wrong with Y.” Inevitably X was something they thought weird (piercing, electricity, breathplay, etc.) and Y was something they liked (bondage, pegging, D/s roleplay, etc.). In doing this there making exactly the same mistake Saletan does.

There isn’t a hierarchy of kinky activity or gateway activities to the world of the Cenobites. People doing edge play don’t have more issues with consent or safewords than people doing light bondage. Dangerous activity isn’t limited to BDSM and the capacity to abuse isn’t correlated with your sexual tastes. Sadly assholes who put others at risk and have issues with consent are a worldwide problem in all parts of life.

I’ll finish with an activity that Mr. Saletan considers particularly harrowing – breathplay. I just hope the Sado Girls site didn’t need to pay for psychological counseling for these two after the photoshoot.

Office bully

The first image from yesterday’s post put me in mind of this shot. I like the fact it works whoever you prefer to imagine to be the titular boss. She can either be a controlling subordinate or a bullying manager and it’s still hot.

I first stumbled across it on the Thoughts of a Dork tumblr. It’s originally from a fashion shoot for Harper’s Bazaar in Spain. It was shot by Benjamin Kanarek and features Yulia Kharlapanova.

Celebrity or parent?

Advochasty recently put up in an interesting post describing his enjoyment in being assigned tasks, and it reminded me of an older post by Lily that I’ve been meaning to link to for ages. Lily’s post draws on a book called Real Service that describes a categorization scheme for dominants and submissives. What stuck in my mind was the spectrum of domination styles it defined, ranging from parental to celebrity.

The “celebrity dominant” stays outside on the cell phone while their s-type goes into the restaurant, arranges for a table they know the dominant will like, begins ordering the food, and orders the dominant’s favorite cocktail. The dominant snaps their phone shut, sweeps into the restaurant, sits down, and begins enjoying the meal.
…
The parental dominant, by contrast, chooses and drives to the restaurant, orders for both of them, and is definitely carrying the wallet.

I’ve never really explored a service D/s dynamic. Mostly that has been an opportunity problem, but for a long time I also wondered if it was something I’d even be interested in. I’d read blogs that featured a service dynamic and find the idea very unappealing. I hate micro-managing and I hate inefficient decision making. So when I read Lily’s post it was a light bulb moment. The idea of simply taking care of things and smoothing the way for the domme was highly appealing. Clearly I’d be reading about parental types where I needed a celebrity dominant! And there’s no shortage of celebrities playing with a domme look. Maybe Miranda Kerr or Katie Holmes would be up for a coffee sometime?

For a post illustration I thought I’d go with a couple of different styles of service. The first makes me think of the celebrity PA style. Although in this case, whatever he’s done, she doesn’t look too pleased about it. The second is obviously a fair more personal and hands on type of service. I found both on the Miss tumblr.

Book porn

Strictly speaking this isn’t femdom. I just thought/hoped that there would be a pretty good overlap between my usual readers and fans of this image. That’s the extremely attractive Felicia Day (who featured in Buffy and Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) standing in front of a whole bunch of books. As combinations go, that’s a pretty good one. Feel free to imagine she’s reading a guide to testicle trampling if you need a little added BDSM in your daily post. Alternatively, for a larger version of the image, check out the original post on the he stoops to worship tumblr.