Photograph – Page 179 – Femdom Resource

PDS

I was going to follow-up my previous post with some comments on my personal feelings about PDS (Public Displays of Dominance and Submission). However, as I started to write it, I realized I really wasn’t adding much to the debate. The rules on how a shared public space should be used are endlessly debatable and mutable.

So instead let me make a meta-point: Everyone stands on a slope. By which I mean there is no fixed point and stable surface from which to cast other opinions down. If you read the comments on the two articles I previously linked to (here and here) you’ll see a lot of de facto assumptions about what is appropriate behavior in public and what should be reserved for private spaces. The comment writers don’t seem aware that their universal truths are not universal at all. Unfortunately, if you hang out on BDSM forums and blogs, you’ll often see much the same attitude coming from the opposite direction.

This isn’t to say that there’s no right or wrong. Just that whatever position you adopt on any subject, be aware that you’re on a continuum. It’s still possible to draw lines and acceptable limits. Just don’t try and pretend that what you’ve chosen is somehow God given or universally accepted. Anyone arguing from that perspective instantly loses credibility.

After all that pontificating, let me make amends to my readers with some more leash shots. In this case they’re from The Properly Leashed Male tumblr and feature gentlemen being pulled by something a little more sensitive than a neck.

Leash laws

Earlier in the week I came across this story on a public display of D/s. It’s an advice column, and featured the story of a woman taking her leashed partner for walks in a residential area. The letter writer was a concerned neighbor who wanted to know how to handle it. While the ultimate advice given was good (be friendly and don’t worry about it), the tone it was couched in was obnoxious. It seemed to have no understanding of why somebody might do it and attributed it entirely to a juvenile desire to shock.

I was pondering writing about this when, courtesy of a post from Mistress T, I was pointed to a follow-up article. The domme in question, a woman named Kai’enne, had seen the article and contacted the columnist. It’s a much more positive piece and puts across their D/s lifestyle in an understanding manner. It reflects well on all involved, although the reader comments are depressingly full of the usual hateful rubbish you might expect.

Then, just minutes after I’d read that article, I came across this post by Mistress Alex. It features leashes, public exhibitionism, bootblacking and the photograph below. I wonder what the original letter writer would have said to this scene in her neighborhood?

Mistress Alex is a NYC based pro-domme. Her blog is available here and her professional site is here.

The good old days

After mentioning the bad femdom porn of yesteryear in my previous post, it seemed a shame not to share some. This struck me as a particularly brilliant example. It’s so bad I think it actually becomes good again, by virtue of making me laugh.

The lady on the left is brandishing her flogger like it’s a long dead skunk that she wants to keep as far from her as possible. The lady on the right is falling out of her strange outfit, while expressing a strong revulsion to the idea of actually hitting the gentleman’s bottom. And for a man about to be trained by two wicked bitches in leather, he looks remarkably cheerful. He’s no doubt justifiably confident that he’s unlikely to need his safeword in the scene. What I find particularly amazing is that judging by the titling, this was the lead image for the magazine or the photo-spread. They must have looked at all the other shots and gone – “That’s it! That’s the one to lead with! This really sets the scene for the air of powerful dominance and complex sensuality that we’re trying to put across here.”

There’s a lot of justifiable complaining about bad femdom porn. I can’t deny that there’s a lot of it out there. But in an hour on tumblr you can find more good BDSM porn today than you could have found in a month of hunting in the 90’s. And I dread to think what it must have been like for kinksters prior to the spread of the internet.

I found this in a collection of vintage shots at Femdom Times.

Glimpses of the past

I’ve been enjoying dipping and diving around the links on this page. It’s a collection of interviews, articles and photographs from old BDSM publications. To be frank the site itself is a bit of a mess. There’s very little context given and the presentation is horribly jumbled and confusing. However, there’s some interesting stuff there if you’re willing to dig around. For example, this article on Cynthia Slater covers background on the San Francisco SM scene and the formation of the society of Janus in the early 70’s.

The image below, of Empress Kat Prowles, is one that brings back some memories for me. There were several shots of this domme regularly recycled on usenet in the 90’s. I didn’t know anything about her, but the pictures stuck in my mind. It was an era of really bad femdom porn. Typically it consisted of conventional glamor models pulling on a pair of boots and waving a limp flogger towards a camera. It cemented in my mind a sense of unreality around BDSM. That it was all just a fantasy that people didn’t really do. Then I stumbled across the shots of the lady below. She looked real. Like she actually might want to hit me. And that she might even enjoy it. It was one of the first times I imagined myself interacting with a domme, rather than simply jerking off to a leather clad porn model. Those sexy sneering models have all long faded from my mind, but the shot below has stuck with me for well over a decade now.

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.

I’m safely back in Seattle. Unfortunately I’m feeling pretty wiped out after spending a day in NYC and then around ten hours traveling (door to door time). So it’s time for a short simple post using something from my random grab bag of images that I’ve enjoyed.

I found this one on the devoted sub tumblr. I haven’t determined it’s original source, but I believe that’s the model Xenia Tchoumitcheva. It looks like it could be a candid behind the scenes shot captured while on a fashion shoot. If that’s the case, then the gentleman helping out the beautiful Ms Tchoumitcheva appears to have one of the world’s more interesting jobs.

Escape

Tomorrow I flee the freezing NYC region to return to the warmer and wetter state of Washington. It has been a fun trip, and it ended on a very high note. I spent a good portion of today with the brilliant Miss Troy Orleans. We had a great session and snapped a lot of photographs. Hopefully, when I’ve had chance to sort through them, there will be a detailed session post.

Given I enjoyed some heavy bondage and restraints today, it seems fitting to finish the post with a pointer to an interesting article I read on Harry Houdini. I’m not sure he could be described as a femdom aficionado, but he certainly seemed to have a strong interest in bondage, masochism, exhibitionism and edge play. Given his skill, I’ve no doubt he could have emerged from the ropes in the photograph below in a matter of seconds. For the rest of us submissive types, even if we had the skill, I’m not sure escape would be our first choice…

I found this on the darksehnsucht tumblr. I don’t know the original source, but I’d guess it’s from one of the kink.com sites.

Depressed

I’ve followed the 49ers since I was a young boy in the UK. The first game of American Football I watched and actually understood featured Joe Montana and Jerry Rice destroying some hapless opposing team. At the time I didn’t realize I was watching two of the greatest players to ever play the game, but I did realize I was seeing something special, and I’ve followed the team ever since. I’m therefore feeling pretty grumpy right now, after watching them lose a Superbowl for the first time ever.

I’ve got nowhere I’m really going with this. I just wanted to share my grumpiness. As for the image, I stumbled across it earlier tonight and it put a smile on my face, despite the circumstances. I loved her tie and glove combo. Hopefully it’ll have an equally positive effect on my readers.

I’m afraid I don’t know the original source for this image. I found it on Ms Roxanne’s tumblr.

Never play alone

While I was searching for images for my post on sensory deprivation I came across this very sad post on the death of a leading kink engineer. It’s a very clear example of the dangers of attempting to do BDSM activites alone. By all accounts Matt was a very smart guy and an expert in his field, but even that didn’t save him. There’s a degree of danger to all BDSM activities, but attempting them solo magnifies the risk massively. Just don’t do it.

I’ve never played with a vacbed from Kink Engineering, but I’ve heard a lot of great things about the quality of their product and their attention to detail. The company was founded by Matt and his partner Archean, and it seems she has done a great job in taking the company forward despite incredibly difficult circumstances. Having read through her posts I’m personally in awe of how well she’s dealt with such an awful situation. If you’re a latex or vacbed lover, they sound like a great company to deal with.

The shots below feature a beautiful vacbed from Kink Engineering. You can also see a short video clip of the bed in action here.

The mirror shot genre

Using a camera phone to snap a reflected mirror shot is one of the new genres in candid porn. There are entire web sites dedicated to it, typically involving young women. It often hits the news when celebrities do it, or when the girls involved are teenagers and inadvertently create completely ridiculous legal problems for themselves and their friends.

Here’s a fun variation on the theme – showing your bound, gagged and cock locked slave off. Personally I’d say that it’s the best version yet.

I found this on the Fuck Yeah Femdom tumblr.

Punk, porn and femdom

After publishing my post on the AVN awards a couple of days ago, I dug a little deeper into the background of the BDSM award winner, Rubber Bordello. It looked like it was made with more humor and style than is usual for porn movies these days. I noticed it also won for the best soundtrack and best song, written by someone called Fat Mike. It took a few seconds for the penny to drop that this was the Fat Mike – founder, lead vocalist and bassist for legendary punk band NOFX. Not to mention his very entertaining side project of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (famous for punk covers like Over The Rainbow). I’ve been a fan of his music for years, but never expected to hear a ragtime BDSM porn soundtrack from him.

It turns out his partner is Soma Snakeoil, domme, fetish model and director/writer of the movie. By all accounts Mike is a pretty kinky guy…

It’s something that I’ve always done in my life, but people think most of the stuff I write about is bullshit. “Oh, he must have made that up because there’s no way a Japanese dominatrix put out cigarettes on his nipples.” Yep, that actually happened. We probably have thirty hours of footage that didn’t make it onto Backstage Passport and it’s of me getting beat up in Japan by Japanese doms. That’s a double feature right there.

That’s taken from this interview on the background to writing the Rubber Bordello soundtrack. There’s also a more general one on his BDSM interests available here. I’m not sure if a punk musician can be described as mainstream (unless you’re Billie Joe Armstrong), but it’s nice to hear someone like him talking openly and honestly to the press about their kinky proclivities.

The image features Soma Snakeoil as the player and Perfect Miss Pixie as the cello. You can find more shots of Soma on her members website. Alternatively, if you’re in the LA region, there is the possibility of arranging a session with her.