Mainstream – Page 53 – Femdom Resource

TV Guide

I’m going to interpret my blog tagline – the beauty of dominant women – fairly liberally for this post. It’s not femdom related in the sexual sense, but it does relate very much to a strong dominant women. I’ve just spent an enjoyable evening re-watching the first few episodes of Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren. It comes from a rich tradition of British crime series, which also includes such gems as Cracker and Wire in the Blood.

I have a love hate relationship with these kind of shows. I enjoy the genre and plot structure, but hate the sexual stereotypes they almost always portray. Sex workers are normally damaged powerless victims. The criminals are often sexually warped sadists whose only outlet is violent attacks. It’s certainly not a genre to look at for positive portrayals of BDSM. Despite that, the Prime Suspect series is redeemed by having the wonderful Helen Mirren in the leading role. She plays a strong no-nonsense female character who puts up with a lot of sexist bullshit from her colleagues while still figuring out the cases. It’s a real pleasure to watch such a talented actress sink her teeth into the role.

US TV has a tendency to remake and horribly screw-up British series. I’ve not seen the US version, but looking at some of the online video’s they seem to have repeated the trick here. What was a reserved and complex older female character, with a flinty inner core, has become a skirt-the-rules cop played by a conventionally attractive blonde with a classic in your face New York attitude. In other words, the same thing we’ve seen a million times before. The good news is that netflix has the original UK series available for streaming. I definitely recommend checking it out.

Photograph is of Helen Mirren from a Prime Suspect publicity shot. If you’re a fan of hers, then I also recommend watching Excalibur. It’s a brilliant version of the Arthurian legend featuring her in the role of Morgana.

Ignorance is bliss?

When you spend as long as I do hanging out on sex positive blogs, it’s easy to forget just how much attitudes can vary outside that bubble. I was intrigued to stumble across this post quoting a Mormon on the subject of sexual compatibility. He was a virgin when he married, as was his wife, and he looks on that fact as a plus…

If we had “shopped around” or experienced sex with many different people, it would have ruined the beauty and simplicity of what we have.

I’m going to guess most of my readers will react as I initially did to this, which was to laugh and wonder how ignorance can possibly be a good thing. How can he make any kind of informed judgement? Maybe they’re having really bad sex and have no idea it should be any different.

But then it got me thinking about the relative nature of happiness. There are few absolutes when it comes to assessing satisfaction and quality of life. For example, studies have shown that when it comes to wealth, happiness isn’t related to the amount you earn, but how much you earn relative to your social circle. Being the ‘poor’ person in your group makes you unhappy, even if your absolute income is high. Knowledge in that case makes you unhappier. So if a couple are happy having mediocre sex, is that a bad thing? Are you better off not knowing what you’re missing out on?

Obviously the ideal state is to know for sure you’re having great sex! And as an information junkie, I think I’d always rather be informed, even if it made me more aware of problems. But it’s an interesting angle to ponder, particularly when I reflect back on life and the ‘might have been’ situations. I often feel regretful that I waited until my 30’s to act on my kinky inclinations. I feel I lost a decade or more where I could have been enjoying all BDSM has to offer. Yet, the knowledge of the pleasure it brings me has undoubtedly complicated my life. It makes dating and finding a suitable partner a lot harder for a start. Would I have been better off not knowing? Leaving that side of myself alone? Most of my friends have married over the last few years and started families. Could I have been happy in a vanilla relationship? Will I ultimately look back on my exploration of kink as a curse rather than a blessing? I hope not, but as Einstein observed, knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

The image is by the Scottish painter Jack Vettriano. A lot of his work has a sexual and kinky vibe to it, and he’s obviously got a fetish for 50’s costumes and high heels, although not typically with a femdom slant. There’s more background on him available in this article.

Swinging the single-tail

I had my back and ass well and truly striped today by Mistress Cynthia Stone. She used one of the heaviest single tails I’ve yet experienced and the resulting marks are pretty special. We snapped photographs so hopefully in a future post I’ll be able to share some images.

Until that exciting moment (settle down at the back there), I’ll restrict myself to this shot (via Selina Minx’s tumblr) of a whipping from the movie The Million Eyes of Su-Muru. With an imdb rating of 2.6/10, it’s clearly not a forgotten classic. However, it does look like the kind of film I’d have watched as a teenager with rapt attention and a strange feeling in my underpants.

Invisible touch

Yesterday’s post triggered several interesting comments and prompted some further thoughts on the perception of a scene. One particular comment was by Mark on the touching hands in the image I featured.

Notice her hand gently resting on his. For me, an incredibly powerful element of the scene.

I wonder if that gentle, reassuring touch would mitigate, somewhat, the ramp up in intensity that you described when under the blindfold.

I had noticed (and enjoyed) that aspect of the image, but the post was getting so long I decided not to comment further on it. Mark’s observant comment got me thinking about touch, and what a great example of shifting perceptions it can be.

Simple caresses can play a huge part in a scene. Not everything has to be about extremes of pain or pleasure. Fingers skating across the skin, tracing the lines of muscle or caressing a limb. Each little contact plays a part in building the dynamic. When I can see them, touches to me are predominantly sensual. They’re about the pleasure in the contact of another body. They might be soothing after an intense pain, or promising of what’s to come, but the underlying message is a hedonistic one.

Yet take my sight away and a touch becomes quite different. Partially they’re reassuring. Little grounding moments that tell me I’m OK, she’s right here with me. Like an animal being petted, I relax into her hand. But this reassurance is a double edged sword. It can be taken away. Giving it subtly emphasizes its importance to me. So there’s now an element of fear. What if she takes it away? What if I need that emotional contact? Losing a sensual touch is disappointing, but losing a reassuring one can be scary. It moves the balance from pleasure to control, a shift of perception unrelated to the physical contact itself.

I’ll leave you with an image of what appears to be some very pleasurable touching, with a nice undercurrent of control. It was shot by Michele Block-Stuckens and is called Toy Boy.

Half drag

This isn’t really a femdom related post. Instead it features an image from a series that I found fascinating, and thought a lot of my readers would also appreciate.

The photograph below is from a sequence entitled ‘Half Drag’ by the photographer Leland Bobbé. It features pictures of drag queens and, in the words of the photographer, is designed to “capture both the male and the alter-ego female side of these subjects in one image.” None of the shots in it are composite images. They’re a single photograph taken after the subject has been very carefully made-up on just one side of their face (in this particular case that of Pusse Couture’s). Both from a craftsmanship and artistic perspective I think they’re amazing shots. You can read more background and donate to the project on the artist’s blog.

As far as I’m aware (and I’m no expert) drag queens occupy a particular unique niche of their own. There may be complex intersections with gender roles, sexual orientation, fetish, performance, etc. but it’s not the same as any of them. However, just to jump back into the kink arena for a moment, the idea of an exaggerated female persona does seem to be a popular theme with male submissives. Some see it as a form of humiliation, which is not something I’m a fan of and therefore don’t typically feature here. For others it seems to be a very positive change, an aspiration to be an object of desire or a chance to explore a hidden side of themselves. It’s a shame that these two alternatives often seem to get conflated together.

Weirdly sexy

This is undoubtedly a sexy image. Gorgeous woman. Well proportioned guy with a cute bow-tie. Nice D/s vibe from the positions. Yet oddly, I find the fact her lingerie is mismatch the sexist element of all. I have no idea why, other than the fact I’m weird.

I found this on the Work is Never Over tumblr (whose author also commented on the mismatch). It’s taken from a fashion shoot and the photographer is Antonio Andrade.

Nurse Ratched Revisited

Medical role play is pretty common in BDSM and particularly in femdom. It’s a natural fit with the dominant female authority figure and all those invasive and potentially painful medical treatments. Everything from needles and catheters through to straightjackets and dental gags have been appropriated into the kinky domain.

Most femdom medical imagery is pretty fetishistic, with lots of shapely nurses brandishing random medical equipment and staring into the camera. For example, this kind of shot. Pretty but not all that scary. For really disturbing kinky medical themed images it turns out the fashion industry is the place to look. Specifically this shoot for Interview Magazine by photographer Steven Klein featuring Karolina Kurková and Crystal Renn.

Apparently it draws heavily on the institutional white trend of Spring 2012 and features such designers as Jennifer Fein, Stella McCartney and Dolce & Gabbana. It’s certainly one of the most fetishistic and BDSM heavy fashion shoots I’ve ever seen. I’m guessing they must have hired a professional bondage rigger for the ropework shot. I think if a photographer for somewhere like Kink.com had come back with these images they’d have sent him away with the instructions to come up with something a little less fucked up next time.

The beauty of the visual

Tumblr is a wonderful resource for writing blogs like this one. I try and create a new post every day, and without the vast number of femdom tumblrs out there to draw on, I don’t think I’d be able to achieve that. Most tumblrs, particularly the sexually explicit ones, focus on a single theme. However, I always enjoy stumbling across a site that casts its net a touch wider.

Blogs in general tend to be one dimensional. This one is a good case in point. If I was writing about the multidimensional paltego there would be a lot more posts on food, wine, cocktails, books, politics, history and science. Unfortunately consuming a written blog post takes time, and so writing broadly limits your audience to those who enjoy all (or at least most) of your topics. As it is you can be a teetotal fruitarian Republican who thinks that Romulus and Remus are Star Trek characters, and still enjoy this blog if you also happen to like femdom. Although if you do perfectly match that description then you have my sympathy. Let’s never be friends.

The beauty of a tumblr is how easily it can be consumed. A viewer can spend 10 minutes or 10 seconds on an image and still have an appreciation for it. This makes it much easier to create a wide ranging blog that had broad appeal. For example, the shot below is originally from the photographer Simon Pais-Thomas, but I found it via the Avalanche tumblr. It’s obviously curated by someone who likes elegant and forceful women. He or she also has a penchant for feet. But along with the femdom related shots, there are bookshops, graveyards, pop culture, architecture and humor. It’s a visually appealing glimpse into someone’s brain.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in the background to tumblr and its design philosophy, the New York Times recently carried an interesting article on it.

When no news is good news

The extended trailer for the movie Cloud Atlas was recently released. It’s a movie I’m really looking forward to, and it marks the return of the Wachowskis, who shot to fame with the original Matrix movie. They also released a short introductory video which is notable for featuring the first official public appearance by Lana Wachowski. She was formerly known as Larry until going through gender reassignment. As this Salon articles discusses, the real big story here seems to be what a non-event this was. There was no big media kerfuffle, just a lot of general positive articles that covered the facts in a non-judgmental way. What a pleasant surprise.

As far as femdom links go, there is a connection, as Lana was (and presumably still is) reported to be a fairly kinky person. She attended BDSM clubs and had a well publicized relationship with Ilsa Strix, a highly regarded pro-domme from LA, as described in an infamous Rolling Stone article. It’s an unwritten law of human nature that people tend to believe what they read, unless they happen to know something about the subject in question. In those cases the writing is invariably found to be horribly wrong and misinformed. Oddly enough, this doesn’t cause people to stop believing everything else they read. I have zero personal knowledge of any of the people in the Rolling Stone article, but it does seem like a lot of sensationalized gossip cooked up by people only peripherally involved. The BDSM comments and discussion of pro-domme behavior are also fairly ludicrous. My favorite was this one, describing how Ilsa Strix played…

If her submissive said, ‘I don’t really think I’m interested in needles,’ she might just come up and, boom, put a couple of needles under their fingernails

Any pro-domme who thinks that a good way to introduce piercing to a submissive is needles under fingernails is going to go broke in short order. By all accounts Ilsa was a smart and excellent domme, and so it’s quotes like that which make me doubt the veracity of the article beyond the very basic facts.

I’ll leave you with a couple of shots of Trinity, from the first Matrix movie. It’s one of my favorite movies, and the appeal of watching Carrie Anne Moss kick ass in slow motion never really fades.

Lessons in control

In the last few months there have been countless mainstream articles using the 50 Shades of Grey phenomena as a jumping off point to write about BDSM. I’ve commented on some of the poorer examples in the past. Today I’m happy to bring you one of the better ones. It’s by Vanessa Pinto and describes her experiences in a class on female domination run by Midori.

It’s a 3 day course and features lectures, a field trip and a lab session with a trainer bottom to practice on.

Something very primal came over me, and as I circled him like a bird of prey, I could see that he wasn’t as complacent as he once was. When I wound up to slap him in the face and saw the reaction that I yearned to see, one of peace mixed with excitement. I knew that he was mine to do with as I pleased.

It struck me that I’d absolutely love to be one of those trainer bottoms. And that’s not because I particularly like the idea of the play itself. I’m sure that an hour or two with a strange and novice domme is not going to compare to the regular sessions I enjoy with experts who have done it for years. I also don’t kink on semi-public play or exhibitionism. What makes the role so appealing is the chance to watch someone else discover the joy of BDSM. There’s a lot of discussion on femdom blogs about how the culture of kink puts potentially dominant women off. Just for once it’d be nice to see the other side, where a talented educator can help some women explore a repressed and potentially important part of their sexuality and personality. I think it’d be immensely fulfilling to be part of that process.

The image below features Midori and Mayan and is most definitely not taken from her introduction to female domination class. I’m fairly certain suspension scenes would be in the advanced school. This is from the movie Silken Sleeves by Maria Beatty.