Photograph – Page 202 – Femdom Resource

What do I owe you?

The Dishevelled Domina put up a post a few days ago that got me thinking about the process of sex blogging and image sharing. The post was entitled ‘Yer not the boss of me!‘ and was a good rant about tumblr’s that accompany their images with very broad sweeping statements about the right way to behave. For example, captions of the form “a real mistress will lock her husband up, throw away the key, and fuck other men” or “inspections are one of the things that a true Mistress knows how to do correctly.” DD was, to put it mildly, not a fan of such things.

To a large extent I’m with her on this one. I find the best image+commentary blogs are the ones that concentrate on their personal reactions to an image. They supply background, point out details or add a little humor. Spanking blog and bondage blog are two good examples of this approach, and it’s one I’ve always tried to follow. I don’t want to reinterpret an image, or interpose myself between it and the viewer, I just want to share my feelings about what I see. As soon as you start adding specific context to an image then you’re no longer sharing the image, but instead you’re sharing your personal modification of it. You create something new, text that imposes its own preferences, which may well clash with your reader’s.

Where I depart ways with DD is in her reaction to this phenomena. I have to ask myself, what does a blogger (or tumblr) owe his audience? Who are they posting for? In her post DD puts an open letter to tumblrs…

…if you try to fucking boss people around or tell us what we ought to like or do I am going to want to stab you in the jimmy, or vajayjay, respectively.
Please stop this deeply annoying shit and try to grow an awareness of something other than your own wank-bank.
Dishevelled Domina

But is there anything wrong with a tumblr being someone’s personal wank-bank? People blog for a lot of different reasons. I don’t write this one to get off, but that approach doesn’t have to be a universal one.

When I see an image and caption like this one, I don’t see it as an instruction for 50% of the planet’s population. Or even for the smaller fraction of dominant females. I see it as someone creating their own new little piece of erotica. It’s a fantasy snippet that, along with the image, tells a story they enjoy. It’s not particularly a story I care for, but the same could be said for a lot of the erotica out there.

I think in many ways the problem is actually a technical one. Tumblr makes it trivially easy to share and reblog images, but it drags all the comments along with it. It really needs better tools to slice, dice and mash the content as it flows between sites.

I’ll leave you with an image from the Superior Femme tumblr (originally by Frank Herholdt). This is a tumblr site whose images I like, but the captions often clash with my personal preferences. In this case the caption was “She’s taken his money, his family, his house. Now she’s working on his dignity.” That really doesn’t do much for me. We could go with “A real mistress will get her cuckold to paint her nails before she heads out for a night of fucking”, but then DD might come and stab me in the jimmy. So I’ll just say I like the coloration of the image, and his look of concentration. I’ll leave further interpretation to the viewer’s preferences.

BDSM equipment page now live

The eagle eyed reader may have spotted a new option in the top menu bar – Equipment. This is a new page listing all the interesting sites selling equipment, furniture or clothes that I’ve come across. A few of the links are ones I’ve discovered via my usual random web browsing, a small number are from where I’ve shopped in the past, but the vast majority come from the comments and wish lists of pro-dommes. I figure that they’re probably the best people to listen to when it comes to BDSM hardware and outfits. After all, they buy a lot of it and give it a tougher workout than the average lifestyle player ever will.

If anyone has suggestions for other sites to add to the list then please leave a comment. I’d particularly like to know of smaller sites that offer very specialist craftsmanship. They’re typically the harder ones to track down whilst simultaneously creating the most interesting items.

For illustration I’ve picked two images. The first is from Walsh Metalworks and features Mistress Alex, shot by Natasha Gornik, wearing a metal corset fabricated by Sullivan Walsh. The second is a padded bondage chair from MetalBound. I’m afraid I don’t know the names of the models involved in the second shot.

Update: Both Jim and Lily kindly pointed out via comments that the submissive in the chair in the second shot is Madison Young.

Fetish Density

There’s quite a lot of fetishes packed into this seemingly simply little picture. There’s bondage (he’s in stocks), forniphilia (treating him as a footstool), CFNM and obviously tease and denial. Cuckolding could also feature depending on the relationships between the three of them. Judging by the red marks on his body he has been beaten at some point in the recent past, so we can add general sadism into the mix as well. There’s even high heels for shoe fetishists, although that’s the bit of the picture I like least. Who’d wear ridiculous shoes like that in a garden setting?

By the well known fetishes per megapixel measure (invented 5 minutes ago by yours truly) that comes out as 20.2 palts (named after its brilliant and yet modest inventor). Lookout for this new standard spreading across internet porn sites near you. It’ll make it so much easier to find exactly the level of decadence and depravity you’re really after.

I found this on the Mistress Anastasia tumblr. It’s originally from Planet Femdom.

Surrender v’s Submission

Troy Orleans has a new blog post up where she talks a little about her blogging history and what motivates her to write. It also includes an ask for interesting questions for her to answer via the blog. I’m kind of surprised that some readers see her blog as a source of wank material, and simply ask to have scenes described. Given the vast flood of porn available online, with an almost infinite supply of images and fiction, a pro-domme blog seems an odd place to try and elicit material to bash the bishop to. Clearly I have too high a respect for my fellow man. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

I didn’t realize she had had a formspring account for questions, and I enjoyed browsing back through it. One particular comment caught my eye.

I sorta think that most of my play partners are fairly submissive to me, but their submission is something that I’ve earned over time and not “submission” in a fetishistic sense. I’m rarely asking my play partners to do things they don’t want to do or “forcing” them to “submit” to anything. Rather, it’s that they give themselves over to me out of trust and respect and a passion for the journey that comes with good, intense, highly skilled play. Throughout my practice, I’ve always maintained that what I seek is not submission, but surrender.
Troy Orleans

If you look up the dictionary definitions of ‘surrender’ and ‘submission’ they’re almost identical, and yet surrender resonates with me and the way I play much more than the idea of submission. To surrender feels like a voluntary act. When I’m in a session the mistress doesn’t need to be overtly dominant. I cooperate. Encourage even. I enjoy being a partial instrument in my own demise. In contrast the concept of submission seems to suggest a response to a forceful act of domination. The other term often used in this context is ‘bottom’, but that never quite aligns with me either. That loses too much of the power exchange component. After all you can be a dominant bottom. Perhaps I need to coin a new word. Surrenderist? Surrendission? Surrmission?

My ugly neologistic musings aside, if you’ve got an interesting question for one of the top NYC dommes, then I suggest firing it in Troy Orlean’s direction. Just don’t try and use it to pad your wank bank. In the meantime I’ll leave you with an impressive image of heavy bondage from her Salon d’Orleans.

Double your pleasure, double your agonizing torment

I’m safely back in Seattle after a fun few days in California. Normally blogging service (and email responses and comment replies) should now be resumed.

The night before I left San Francisco I had a very enjoyable but very intense double session with Domina Yuki and Domina Ai-Li. Like my earlier session with just Domina Yuki, we snapped a bunch of photographs, so hopefully I’ll have some good shots to share here. With any luck there might even be an attractive dominant woman in a few of them, rather than just my usual pale scrawny ass.

In the meantime here’s a nice photograph of a happy submissive and a couple of dominant women. Our session didn’t look a lot like this. There was a little less ear nibbling and little more vicious caning. Plus a fair amount of whimpering and non-macho screaming. A stoic silent masochist I am not. However, I do suspect at some points I had a similar happy dreamy smile to the man below.

I found this shot on the Femdom Style Counsel tumblr.

Bruised

I’m feeling a little tender right now. I sessioned with Domina Yuki earlier today, and have collected a nice set of bruises, spread across various body parts. I’m going to see her along with Domina Ai-Li tomorrow, and therefore expect to extend my collection further.

We did get some photographs from today’s session, so expect some first hand evidence of said bruising in future posts. In the meantime here’s a nice shot of someone else’s bruised torso, along with a little high heel CBT. The only area lacking bruises looks like the inside of his thighs. That’s an area which, I can tell you from first hand experience, is really great / hideously painful / great and hideously painful (strike-out as applicable) to apply a tawse or single-tail.

I found this on the Rue Montorgueil tumblr. It’s originally from the sadly defunct Young Goddess site. I commented on the demise of this site in an earlier post. If you go and read the Young Goddess root page it’s now an odd rant on the evils of masturbation by (presumably) the former owner and maintainer of the site. It’s very …. peculiar, particularly given the context.

Relaxing on a bed (really)

Here’s the flip side to yesterday’s post. Once again there’s a bed involved and a male receiving the attention, but the overall dynamic couldn’t be more different. This is a very fun happy scene. I love their smiles and closeness. From a D/s perspective I really hope she’s making the most of the moment and teasing him, but it’s kind of hard to tell from this shot.

My ideal world is somewhere between the two extremes expressed in this post and the last. However, given the chance, I’d take either of them in a heartbeat.

I found this on the Everything For Her tumblr.

Relaxing on a bed

In yesterday’s post I talked a little about how much I enjoy playing on a bed. I like being able to relax into a scene, not having to worry about cramping from strange positions or numbness from extreme bondage. Being bound spread-eagled and have the domme lie alongside me – twisting, tweaking and pinching as she wants – is a great way to play. It creates a sense of intimacy, which I find particularly attractive when mixed with heavy sadism.

Thinking about this type of play sent me scurrying into my picture archives for illustrative shots. Here’s one I particularly like, even though I’m not sure it really shows the kind of intimate and sensual domination I originally had in mind. Maybe it’s the nipple clamps, maybe it’s the tight cock bondage, or maybe it’s the flogger being applied to his balls, but something tells me he’s not all that relaxed, despite the bed. On the other hand it does definitely check the heavy sadism box, so it’s at least partially what I was looking for.

I found this on The Heart’s Dark Desire tumblr (aka women with whips).

Fun furniture for fornication

Neither of these images is really female domination. They’re just cool pieces of BDSM furniture. However, feel free to imagine a corseted woman waving a whip around just off camera if it’ll help. Put her in leather and thigh high boots if you prefer. Go wild.

The first is a sleigh bed by Walsh Metalworks, Words can’t express my lust for this particular piece of equipment. It’s a very cool design and, despite all the interesting and exciting furniture found in most pro-dommes dungeons, I’ve had some of my best experiences bound on a bed. Often furniture can be a big part of a scene, creating interesting positions for bondage and torture, but the very simplicity and familiarity of a bed can be a huge asset. It allows the focus to remain on the participants in the scene, rather than the equipment and toys they’re using.

I’m afraid I’ve no background for the second shot. It’s a fun cage, with an interesting stocks like top section. In contrast to the bed, I have to image that this would be a very intense and stressful piece of equipment to use. I’ve no idea why, but I find that kind of opaque separation of head from body when combined with bondage creates quite a strong psychological effect.

A delightfully wrapped package

After yesterday’s rather tetchy post and extreme image, here’s something a little lighter. The rope bondage looks pretty but also seems effective. I like to imagine the dominant is about to lean in and bite some tender and enticing patch of exposed flesh.

This is from the beauty of submission tumblr. If you’re a fan of F/f images then it’s a tumblr well worth taking a look through.