Mainstream – Page 56 – Femdom Resource

Sex Therapy

This isn’t so much a post as a pointer to an article of interest. It isn’t even a femdom related article, although it does feature kinky violent sex. I just thought it was an extraordinary article and worth sharing.

The article in question was written by Mac McClelland, a journalist who specializes in visiting the less pleasant parts of this world. After an intense and difficult trip to Haiti she began to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and found that a night of violent forced sex helped her to deal with it and move on.

I’ve fortunately never had to deal with anything as remotely difficult or emotional damaging as what she has been through. But, without wishing to draw any kind of direct comparison, I do understand how this very powerful blend of physical intensity and mental stress can lead to a cathartic release.

Deadly Little Miho

In my last post I mentioned I wasn’t a big comic book fan. As far as the traditional superhero comics go, this is a true statement. I was never a fan of their infinite episodic nature, the endlessly complicated back stories and their clunky expository dialogue style. However, in recent years I have started purchasing the hardback collected editions of some of the more interesting and self-contained comics (or graphic novels). Titles such as Sandman, Hellboy, The Last Man and Fables manage to combine striking artwork with interesting and complex storytelling.

By far my favorite purchase to date has been the Frank Miller library edition of Sin City. The story is ridiculous, the violence excessive and the morality dubious. But I love it. The artwork is both distinctive and beautiful, and the dialog has the staccato brutality of James Ellroy crossed with the romance of Raymond Chandler.

There’s certainly no shortage of characters with a fetish or BDSM slant. But my personal pick would have to be Miho, the sadistic Japanese assassin. Silent, lethal and unstoppable, she toys with each man she fights, before finishing him off in spectacularly violent fashion. She may not be a domme in the commercial sense, but she’s undoubtedly a beautiful dominant woman.

The first image below is taken from the film version, starring Devon Aoki as Miho. The second image is Frank Miller’s drawing of her from the cover of the Family Values story.

Super Sub

This image put a smile on my face when I stumbled across in earlier today. Not sure who the mysterious lady is (I was never a big comic book fan), but she seems to have put Superman in his place.

Although as I come to think about it, Superman would probably be a pretty boring slave to own. He’d be able to complete all his tasks and chores very quickly, but that would mean he’d be hanging around waiting for more instructions all the time. And he’d be pretty tough to punish unless you had some kryptonite toys. I guess you could get him to punish himself, but where’s the fun in that? In a genre packed with kinky subtext and power games, he always was one of the most conventional and vanilla characters.

Updated: This is probably carrying my fetish for attribution a little too far, but thanks to sub2mgi I can now add that the mysterious lady is someone called Star Sapphire. I was also hoping to add a couple of terse sentences describing exactly who she is. However, after looking at her wikipedia page, it’s clear she’s one of the many comic characters whose back story requires a supercomputer and a team of nerds to keep track of. As best I can tell, she’s something to do with the Green Lantern.

Hanging a left on geek street

Despite matching a number of the geek stereotypes (smart, bookish, analytical, software hacking guy) I typically don’t like the stereotypical geek TV shows. Things like Star Trek, Doctor Who, X-Files and the new Battlestar Galatica do absolutely nothing for me. However, there is one exception to this rule – Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I love this show with a passion that goes well beyond any rational measure and borders on the scarily obsessed (although not quite to the extent Simon Pegg portrays in the brilliant series Spaced). Powerful female characters, clever writing, multi-layered story arcs and tweedy British sex symbols – what’s not to like?

Of course my favorite character was always Willow, the quiet, shy, super smart, super nerdy red head, whose alter-egos always turned out to be über-dommes. The first of these was vampire Willow, shown in the first image below, who tried to both kill and make-out with her good counterpart. Then came dark Willow, shown in the second image, who pretty much tried to kill everybody.

If you’ve never seen the show, then it’s well worth queuing up on netflix. There are no sparkly vampires, and if you feel the need to intellectually justify watching a show about teenagers, then feel free to browse some of the academic papers writen on it.

Fuckingham Palace

I was pretty surprised to find myself creating a royal wedding post earlier this week. As I said in the post, I’d had zero interest in the event and the surrounding media hoopla. However, that pegging plate was just too good to ignore.

So you can imagine my surprise to find myself creating yet another post on the same subject. This time it’s a video clip that’s caught my attention. The clip in question is from the Daily Show, and can be seen here. It’s certainly not the funniest bit of writing they’ve come up with, but as soon as I saw the show I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist referencing it. I’m not sure if it’s something about this particular couple, or just that everyone assumes the British aristocracy is packed with kinky perverts, but Kate screwing William appears to be a popular idea. Perhaps Peter Acworth over at kink.com should start thinking about spinning up a RoyalBitches.com? Or maybe PrincesInPain.com?

Pegging, by Royal Appointment.

Despite my British background, I’ve had zero interest in the recent royal wedding. About the only entertaining aspect was the cheap commemorative rubbish that showed up for sale on late night television. I particularly enjoyed the replica engagement ring, complete with a real faux sapphire, genuine cubic zirconia surround, silver plate metal and velveteen presentation box, yours for only $19.99. A real heirloom to treasure and hand down to the kids.

However, that unintentionally amusing souvenir has now been replaced in my affections with this fantastic ceramic piece. Pretty much any aspect of popular culture get interpreted on the internet in a pornographic manner (as stated in rule 34), but it’s rare to see it take the form of a commemorative plate. She looks like she’s enjoying herself, although he doesn’t appear to be showing the stiff upper lip that should be expected.

I’ve no idea how genuine it is, but should you have a spot reserved in your china cabinet for that one special piece, then it’s allegedly available at Gribsby’s Shop.

Fairytale bondage

This is where I jump from toilet play to Disney in consecutive posts. How’s that for versatility?

I haven’t seen the movie Tangled and, lacking any kids that I need to entertain, I probably never will. However, I did like this shot from it. The film is Disney’s spin on the Rapunzel story, and she’s clearly using her hair for a bit more than a simple escape rope. I think there’s a really nice D/s vibe that comes through the image, with her aggressive stance and his upturned nervous look.

As a child I was always fascinated by fairy tales and in particular by the way evil characters mistreated the good characters. The classic stories are littered with examples of imprisonment, bondage, choking, poisoning, torture and miscellaneous punishments. You know, all the good stuff. They also seem to have a lot of aggressive and sadistic women causing the suffering, from evil queens through vindictive step-moms to beguiling enchantresses. I’m sure sociologists and academic feminists have had a lot to say about that over the years. But from a personal perspective, as a young immature proto-submissive, I found it very erotic, long before I knew there was even such a concept as ‘erotic’.

Bad television

I’m kind of ashamed to admit I immediately recognized the television series this image was captured from. It’s from something called ‘Legend of the Seeker‘, a series I’ve encountered while flipping channels late at night. It’s a perfect example of a program best watched with the volume muted. Beautiful people in exciting fetish wear, combined with terribly clunky dialog. I have to admit however, despite the terrible fantasy script, the creators definitely have a feel for kink and BDSM. Nobody could pack that many leather outfits and exiting torture scenes into a series without some kind of underlying kinky ethos.

Domme School

Vice magazine recently posted an article describing several days in the life of a NYC pro-domme. The purported set-up was one of their writers following the domme with a view to becoming a professional herself. But the actual format is much the same as it always is for these type of articles, offering readers a chance to look at someone else’s weird and twisted lifestyle.

I’m in two minds about the article itself. On one hand the writer seemed to enjoy herself, and it’s certainly not written from a negative point of view. Coming from something called ‘Vice magazine‘ that’s probably not unexpected. However, I find it hard to imagine a vanilla but potentially kinky person reading it and thinking “Yes, that sounds like something I want to get involved in.” There’s an undercurrent of sleaziness that comes through to me, although I struggle to put my finger on exactly why that is. Perhaps its comments like this one.

The whole scene makes me feel like I’m an actress in a really bad porno. It’s pretty cool.

Having a session that feels like a bad porno movie definitely doesn’t sound cool to me. And in fact, setting the tone of the article aside, the main thing that stood out for me was how incredibly different my sessions are from the ones described. I don’t role-play at all, and my interactions with the domme are both lighter (chatting and joking in early parts of the session) and darker (floating in subspace after some intense pain later on). I also tend to involve a lot more equipment and tools, utilizing everything from simple needles and clamps through to custom dungeon furniture. The type of play in the article sound like a kind of sexual community theater. Where I always feel mine are more like a cross between extreme sports and medieval torture.

That contrast led me to two different conclusions. The first was that it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming most people play in a way at least vaguely similar to your own preferences. I always get annoyed when non-kinky people pigeon-hole BDSM as simply leather, whips and chains, but I’m probably guilty of doing a similar thing at a different level. It’s easy to forget just how big the kink universe really is. The other conclusion was that a good pro-domme must posses an incredibly ability to shift quickly between different head spaces. I tend to think of the domme skill-set as being a highly technical one: How to do a rope suspension; how to wield a single tail; what’s a safe way to do cutting and piercing. I’m very aware of these kind of technical skills in each and every session. What I don’t see is the transition between sessions and the mental gymnastics needed to create new moods and session themes. Offhand it’s hard to think of another job that requires quite that level of versatility.

Image is taken from page 5 of Vice Magazine article.

Three new blogs

I’ve added the following three blogs to my blogroll over on the right.

Mistress160’s Abode is run by a lifestyle dominant and documents her ongoing D/s relationship with her husband Sol. There’s a wealth of information there, covering everything from getting started in BDSM to more extreme edge play. I particularly enjoyed her very lengthy description of a chemical play session she’d organized, which has inspired me to try something similar in the near future. That also happens to be the post that led me to Mistress160’s blog in the first place, thanks to the miracle of referral logs and her link to an old post of mine.

The Fetish Furniture Factory is managed by Vanessa Chaland and features a large amount of queening and cuckolding. She also describes the custom furniture that she designs and modifies specifically for those acts. The one based around a Sardax drawing looked fairly ingenious, and was even appreciated by the great man himself.

Finally, last but certainly not least, is Sexonomics, a new blog by Brooke Magnanti aka Belle de Jour. As its name suggests, she intends to focus on social and political issues relating to sex. It’s still early days for the blog, but given how much I enjoyed her writing as Belle, I have high hopes for this one. As I alluded to in my earlier post on ‘Women and porn‘, I’m very grateful to intelligent sex positive people who can reach out and confront some of the lazy stereotyping that passes for analysis of sexual issues in the mainstream media.

The image is of Billy Piper playing Belle de Jour in the television version of ‘The secret diary of a call girl’. Which I admit is a bit of a loose connection to the blogs themselves, but it seemed a shame to mention Belle and not take the chance to post it.

Vanessa Chaland