On the Ladder

This original bondage set-up comes courtesy of Domina Dia Dynasty. I’ve not  seen a ladder used quite like that before.

The vulnerability of the position is appealing, but I think I’d struggle with the stress position and predicament aspect of it. Be tough to relax into the bondage without a lot more rope in support.

You can find more from Dia Dynasty on her professional site and her Bluesky account.

Index of Consensual Sexual Sadism

There’s a new way to measure just how sadistic you or your domme is: The  Index of Consensual Sexual Sadism. According to this article in the PsyPost it’s a tool designed to measure sadism in the context of consensual relationships, rather than the more pathological and destructive sadism inflicted non-consensually.

While teasing those two manifestations apart seems a worthy one, there is some bad news in the early findings…

One surprising finding was how consensual sexual sadism was related to marginally worse romantic relationship satisfaction,” Kinrade said. “This suggests that although these tendencies may be practiced consensually, they may nevertheless negatively impact satisfaction in romantic relationships or coincide with other behavioral tendencies that reduce romantic relationship satisfaction.

I don’t think they’ve enough data to say why that is, but I’d speculate that it could simply be due to the difficulty in finding compatible partners. Aligning kinks can be tricky. If your pool of suitable partners is smaller then that is likely to lead to less satisfaction, particularly if you’re not overtly selecting for that kink.

My biggest problem with the article is the picture they chose for the top. It looks less like a sadist in action and more like someone who has just been given a gag gift for a hen night. They need something a little more along the lines of this image.

This is Ashely Fires shooting with Jesse Carl for Divine Bitches back in 2011.

Fork, Shoe and Candle

This short but very sexy film by Contessa Klaudia Keys caught my eye today. It features all the implements of the title deployed to great effect on a bound man. I love the fact it manages to be minimal and very sensual all at the same time. You can find it on her instagram and (unfortunately) her Twitter.

Contessa Klaudia Keys is a Montreal based pro-domme. You can find her professional site here. The above image was sourced from her Bluesky account.

Financial Mismanagement

Reddit recently had an ‘Ask Me Anything’ thread featuring a woman whose husband secretly spent $200K on financial domination. I’ve no idea how they validate the authenticity of these kind of posts – Reddit is full of creative writing these days – but it is kind of interesting to pick through.

What struck me from the comments was how often the old cliche of kinks being tied to previous trauma came up. I thought we’d all moved past that a longtime ago. There may or may not be correlation in this case, but there are plenty of people making stupid decisions without kinks, and plenty of kinky people lacking any kind of traumatic background. Hopefully, there is a good therapist involved here to unpack the mess and help them figure it out.

It’s a lot of money to spend, but the financial domination part of it seems like a bit of a red herring. Any kind of regular engagement with professional sex workers is going to get expensive, whatever your kinky proclivities. An average in person session with a pro-domme these days is $800 or more. Do it once a month for 10 years and you’ll be closing in on $100K. I’ve never done the math on my outgoings, but it has got to easily be into 6 figures. Fortunately, I’m an overpaid tech type with no dependents to worry about. In the case of the couple in the AMA, it’s the cheating and dishonesty here that the real issue, not the type of kink.

This captioned image has been floating around on various femdom tumblrs. Not sure of the original source. It seemed appropriate here.

Categorization Complexity

Is it rude to turn art into porn? To take a shot originally intended as art and present it in a sexual context? To change the artists intentions? Assuming we can judge their intentions of course.

The most obvious cases of this are image captioning  – literally putting words into peoples mouths. A good number of these take regular non-pornographic imagery and re-cast them into a pornographic context. However, even posting an image to a themed tumblr or a blog like this changes the interpretation. I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of that.

This image is of Anna Monroy di Giampilieri, shot by Slim Aarons in 1984. He was an American photographer, famous for his images of celebrities and what in those days was known as the jet set. It clearly was intended to capture the wealth, power and beauty of his subject. I think that also makes it work for the Femdom inclined, but wonder how the artist and subject would feel about that.

The Rules

I’ve mused in past posts on the difference between art, erotica and porn. Categorization can be tricky. Fortunately, Mistress Matisse is here with a Bluesky post to clear things up…

I’ve modeled nude for art, and I’ve modeled nude for porn. And here is the way you know which is which.

In art photos:
You don’t wear shoes
You don’t look at the camera
And you don’t smile

So if you’re wearing shoes, looking at the camera, smiling? It’s porn.

NOT doing those things? It’s ART

I think that puts these images from NYCs Mistress Trinity firmly in the porn camp. Smiling – Check. Looking at camera – Check. Shoes – Unclear, but likely Check. Thankfully, while it might be porn, it’s really good fun porn. The best kind.

You can find Mistress Trinity’s Bluesky feed here.

Hooks

Writing about Fakir Musafar reminded me of one of the activities he helped bring into kinky culture – flesh hooks combined with suspension. His promotion of it was controversial, bringing charges of cultural appropriation. It’s a ritual used in multiple cultures – including some of the Native American tribes – and a bunch of white people adopting it into kinky culture was understandably not a welcome development for some.

I’ve never done it, but I have had several dommes say they’d love to do a flesh hook scene with me. Not sure what it is about me that creates the desire to suspend me from big metal hooks, but there clearly must be something. I doubt I’ll ever have the combination of nerve and opportunity.

While I might lack the right stuff, I do remember Mistress Matisse writing of her experience of a flesh hook scene. Oddly enough she was a participant rather than a coordinator. You can read about it over three of her old Control Tower articles – part 1, part 2 and part 3.  An intense scene.

This is Mistress Matisse from a recent photograph on her Bluesky feed.

A body to Live In

Film fans in the London area might want to check out A Body to Live In. It’s a film about Fakir Musafar that’s showing as part of the BFI Film Festival. The Guardian has an article on it that also covers some of the biographical detail.

We hear the artist narrating his early experiments in body play – such as during a weekend when he was 17 when his parents were away. Alone, he fasted for two days and restricted his waist with a chain, and clipped his body with hundreds of clothes pegs – an experience he said gave him feelings of belonging and of power. In adulthood, Musafar started throwing self-taught naked “piercing parties”, then starred in “freakshow” performances inspired by circus acts, such as lying on beds of nails in front of audiences as weights were placed on top of him.

He described his gender and sexuality as being ‘in the cracks’ and from the Guardian article and others on him, that seems like a good description. His life and work seems hard to pigeon hole – existing at intersections of art, kink, body modification, gender exploration, ritual, transformation, etc.  Growing up in the 1940’s and 50’s in South Dakota he was obviously forced to blaze his own distinctive trail.

This is Annie Sprinkle with Fakir Musafar, in a shot taken in the early 80s.

Into the Dark

If you’re interested in exploring age play and similar kinks then I’d point you to this online course running this Thursday (20th).  It’s being run by Princess Natasha Strange, who is an experienced player in this area. Here’s a chance to pick up a few tips from her for a small course fee.

This is Princess Natasha Strange pictured in ‘Mother’s Den’ at her Portland play space. I sourced it via her Bluesky feed.

Monochrome

Apologies for the lack of recent posts. Last week was a crazy busy one at work, which left me zero energy and time for blogging. Hopefully, normal service should now be resumed.

My last post on black and white outfits got me thinking about monochrome porn photographs. Sometimes the images started out that way, but more often than not it’s manipulation of a color image after the fact. You can find an lot of tumblr content like this – for example. Why is it such a popular style?

Part of the answer is that it obviously makes the image less porny and more arty. Mainstream black and white photography is often by artists, so it’s an easy manipulation to do to create that connection. Fashion advertisements occasionally use the same trick.

However, that doesn’t really answer why it’s such a popular thing to do. My guess is that color images feel like depictions of reality, where monochrome is more distanced and abstract, which makes fantasy projection easier. A detailed color image captures the world as it was, making me simply a distant observer. A monochrome image is more dreamlike, allowing me to imagine being part of the story.

Here’s a story I’d happily be part of. I’m not sure of the original source. I found it via tumblr.