Mainstream – Page 49 – Femdom Resource

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.

The mainstream adoption of BDSM images

The New York Times featured an article on BDSM today. It wasn’t anything too surprising. Just the obligatory mention of 50 Shades of Grey and commentary on how BDSM is moving more into the mainstream. It’s nice to see a positive non-judgmental article in a major newspaper, but that’s nothing too unusual these days. What did surprise me was the photograph they featured with it (viewable here).

The 50 shades phenomenon has triggered a lot of BDSM articles and most of them either feature stock images of equipment (handcuffs, gag, etc.) or a cliched dominatrix trope (leather boots, a coiled whip on a hip, etc). The dominatrix photograph doesn’t make much sense given that 50 shades was a maledom story, but using an attractive women in a sexy outfit to sell a story isn’t exactly unusual. What surprised me about the NY Times images was that it actually featured a femdom image with both a man and a woman in it. That’s rare in my experience. Most mainstream articles are happy to describe BDSM play but rarely feature an image of it.

This isn’t to say D/s pairs can’t be seen in mainstream media. Fashion photographers seem to love that dynamic. I regularly stumble across arty fashion shots that have models portraying ideas of dominance and power. So it would seem mainstream publications are happy to use D/s pairings to sell entirely unrelated products, but are reluctant to use them in factual stories about real D/s. That must make sense to someone, but that someone isn’t me.

This image is from a fashion shoot called ‘The Night Porter’ by the photographer Harvey Miedreich for The Libertine. I found it on the Undiscovered Limits (aka Untamed Dark Mane) tumblr.

Sex addicts anonymous

I’ve never been particularly convinced by the idea of sex addiction and this article by Dr Marty Klein does a good job of knocking the concept down. What I found particularly fascinating was the link he provided to a sexual addiction test. In just a few minutes you can allegedly find out if you’re a sex addict.

I took the test, answered honestly, and discovered that I was in fact a sex addict. Surprised by that result I took it again, answered equally honestly, and discovered that I was not a sex addict. This seemed to suggest the survey methodology might be a touch flawed. The problem is the ambiguity of the questions. Two different but valid interpretations can give two different but valid answers. For example…

Are any of your activities against the law?
Well it depends what US state I’m in, but if I’m doing it right, yes.
Have you ever felt degraded by your sexual behaviors?
Personally I think it’s hot when a domme pees in my mouth, but it’s a good sort of degradation. Does that count?
Do you hide some of your sexual behaviors from others?
I have to be honest. I haven’t told 100% of my friends about my love of electrified butt plugs.
Do you spend a considerable time surfing pornography online?
Well this blog isn’t going to write itself. But it’s purely for research purposes. Honest.
etc. etc.

Oddly one of the questions asks if you regularly engage in sadomasochistic behavior. So presumably that’s some sort of indicator. Maybe my first survey result was right after all. And judging by his expression, the gentleman below might be in danger of developing my addiction as well. That young lady is clearly a dangerous sex dealer.

This image is originally from Strapon Dreamer. I found it via the Your Vengeful Goddess tumblr.

PDS revisited

After my posts earlier this week (here and here) on PDS (Public Display of D/S) I thought I was done with the topic. Then I stumbled on the image below and felt like riffing on it a little more.

Personally I don’t kink on humiliation and I have a very low embarrassment threshold. I can get embarrassed just watching television on my own. Some people hide behind the couch when watching horror movies. I do it when watching comedies like Fraiser or Seinfeld. All this means that I’m not big on being leashed and led through the local shopping mall in a pink tutu.

On a more general philosophical note, I’m also not a fan of dragging innocent bystanders into a scene they’ve not consented to. However, when it comes to public spaces a little bit of my libertarian side does tend to leak out. A shared space means it should be for everyone. The fact I may not appreciate a couple making out, or practicing their fetch/sit/stay commands, doesn’t mean they should automatically be prevented from doing so. It’s their space as much as it is mine. After all, if it was left to me, I’d ban Ugg boots and Cargo pants from public display. Aesthetically I think I’d be right, but it’s hard to argue from a provable harm point of view.

For me the deciding factor for a lot of these ambiguous situation lies in intent. If you’re trying to piss people off and get off on their shock factor, then that’s obnoxious and out of line. But if you’re genuinely immersed in your thing, and trying to do it in the least confrontational way, then you should get a lot of leeway.

All of which brings me to the picture below, which I thought was very sweet. It made me smile. For all my fear of embarrassment, I’d be very happy to be this gentleman. And anybody complaining about it could go and kiss some other part of my anatomy.

I found this on the appropriately named Kiss the Feet tumblr.

The cutting edge of gender issues (beware of icebergs)

I was amused to read this gawker article on an ironic Fox News snafu. The original Fox article was all about the benefits of traditional marriage and traditional gender models. Unfortunately for them the picture they picked to illustrate it was of the first same-sex couple to get married at the Empire State Building. Sadly they eventually spotted their faux-pas and changed the picture.

Although the picture problem was funny, the article itself is also pretty amusing. My favorite section is …

Prior to the 1970s, people viewed gender roles as as equally valuable. Many would argue women had the better end of the deal! It’s hard to claim women were oppressed in a nation in which men were expected to stand up when a lady enters the room or to lay down their lives to spare women life. When the Titanic went down in 1912, its sinking took 1,450 lives. Only 103 were women. One-hundred three.

Now I’m a man. Far be it from me to dictate when life was best for 50% of the world’s population. But I have to say that as general measure of happiness and liberty, the “chances of dying in a cruise ship disaster” test doesn’t strike me as the most representative one. If I had to pick between early access to lifeboats and say the right to vote (8 years after the Titanic sank), equal pay (<50% in 1912, and still only around 75%) and protection from workplace discrimination (not introduced till the 60’s), then I’m taking my chances in the icy waters. Although if I have to also listen to that God awful Celine Dione song then it might be a trickier decision.

While it’s idiotic to use simple gender based social conventions as markers for oppression, that doesn’t mean the social niceties themselves aren’t worth preserving. I enjoy the opportunity to display some old fashioned manners. Sadly, while standing for a lady is common enough, someone asking me to adjust their garter is a touch rarer. While this shot has an older feel to it, but is actually from 1981. It’s by Helmut Newton for Vogue.