Photograph – Page 219 – Femdom Resource

Humpty Dumpty

The comments on my earlier post entitled ‘Femdom doesn’t exist‘ got me thinking a little more about definitions and categories. This isn’t new ground for me, as I’ve pondered BDSM labels in the past. This time I thought I’d come at it from a different angle, and rather than start with the existing labels, I’d try and define new categories based on what I’ve observed. I can then see how (or if) my groupings map back into the well known labels people regularly throw around. The two dimensions I’m thinking about are masochism and submission, and it seems a lot of the complexity arises out of the latter.

Non-masochistic / Non-submissive
We all know about these people, as they make up the majority of the population. Vanilla. Boring. Let us speak of them no more.

Masochistic / Non-submissive
These people enjoy pain purely for the sake of the sensation. They want to be hurt and enjoy the associated adrenalin rush without necessarily giving up power. A well known subset of this is the Smart Ass Masochist (SAM), someone who likes deliberately teasing and provoking a domme in order to create a reason for punishment.

Masochistic / Sexual submissive
This defines someone who enjoys both pain and power exchange, but only in the context of ‘sexual’ play. This play might be a session in a dungeon, an event at a party or simply a couple having fun in the bedroom. But it’s essentially a bounded experience in time, where control is only temporarily relinquished. The stereotypical example of this would be the high powered CEO or hot shot lawyer who skips out of the office for a couple of hours so he can be tied-up and beaten by a pro-domme.

Masochistic / Lifestyle submissive
I suspect for a lot of readers of this blog, both male and female, this represents the most desirable category. It integrates a kinky sexuality within a female led relationship. This doesn’t necessarily imply a specific division of responsibility or a predefined assignment of roles in daily life. It simply means the D/s dynamics and power exchange shades daily interactions as well as specifically sexual ones.

Non-Masochistic / Service submissive
These people find satisfaction in performing tasks and being useful for the dominant. This might be something as simple as cleaning or cooking, or as elaborate as being turned into a human-pony and used to pull a buggy. Pain, if it’s employed at all, is a mechanism for punishment not pleasure.

Now having defined these anecdotally observed groupings, how do the common labels of bottom, slave, masochist and submissive map to them? I think the answer to that is ‘with difficulty’. Three of the five feature some type of submission, and three of the five feature masochism. Slave certainly maps to the last group, but arguably also applies to the lifestyle category. And I think the term bottom could be equally applied to both non-submissive and sexually submissive masochists. It’s therefore not really surprising that confusion and misunderstandings frequently occur when writing about femdom. The basic vocabulary we’re using is woeful inadequate and imprecise. And to make it worse, people frequently use the terms as if they were well defined and universally agreed.

I guess at this point I should really propose a solution to the problem. Perhaps the paltego labeling system of Mas/NonSub, Mas/SexSub, Mas/LifeSub and NonMas/ServSub? Or maybe some kinky equivalent to the geek code (if that doesn’t already exist)? There’s already the hanky code of course, but that’s mainly concerned with specific activities rather than models of interaction. It’s also hard to take a code seriously where a few wash cycles can change your sexual preferences from anal sex, into uniforms, into oral sex, into aquaphilia (dark blue, medium blue, light blue and aqua respectively). Lets at least shoot for something that’s machine washable in future.

One additional point of interest is the categories I decided to omit from this list, namely the non-masochistic versions of sexually submissive and lifestyle submissive. This isn’t to say people in those groups don’t exist. It’s just that I wonder if they would actually define themselves as kinky. A non-masochistic sexual submissive would be someone who enjoys receiving pleasure and letting their partner take control during sex. In many ways that seems more a sexual preference or style, rather than a kinky activity.

Finally, after all that random musing from me, I think a little eye candy is in order. The picture has no real relationship to the text, I just found it (on Domenique von Sternenberg’s tumblr site) and enjoyed it.

Oh, and for anyone that has made it this far, and is still wondering about the title of the post, it’s a reference to one of my favorite parts in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master – – that’s all.’

Translating psi into decibels : Sadism 101

Looking back over the last few weeks there have been a lot of images featuring submission and bondage, but not a huge amount of material for the sadists and masochists amongst us. As I count myself amongst that happy band it seemed time to remedy that situation, so here’s a nice shot that put a smile on my face.

My favorite part of this is actually imagining the off camera aspect. I picture the mistress staring down at him, ever so slowly rocking her foot back and forth, smiling at the screams as they modulate in time with the applied pressure.

I found this on the domme and pet in love tumblr site. It’s obviously originally from Divine Bitches.

Pleased to see me

I thought this was an interesting shot for its naturalistic depiction of a strap-on. It’s a lot subtler that the usual brandishing and waggling at the camera I often see.

The site it’s from isn’t even a femdom one. It seems to follow more in the style of Japanese futanari videos. I’m by no means an expert on these, as they’re not really my thing, but from what I’ve seen they typically feature lesbian scenes where the women use the strap-ons as if they were real cocks. They wear them under clothes, make them ejaculate and try to hide their fake nature as much as possible. As a genre it seems to occupy an odd middle ground between lesbian porn and transgender porn (both mostly aimed at straight men). Of course, as you might expect, the Japanese videos typically seem to feature a lot of demure schoolgirls being led astray, where the Western version looks a lot more explicit and aggressive.

In general I find the design of strap-ons and their depictions in porn to be curious. There’s obviously a wide-range of designs out there, from the ultra-realistic to the very abstract, but the majority occupy a sort of odd middle ground, both cock and not cock. They take elements of the natural appendage (ridges, shape of the head, some hint of veins), but shy away from anything that looks too realistic. It’s as if they want to carry across some of the mental associations people have, without at the same time causing guys to freak out about being fucked by a ‘real’ dick.

I found this on the Pegtastic tumblr site. It’s originally from the strap-on cum site.

Caption Required

This is an image that cries out for a caption done in the style of the letter she’s writing. Perhaps something like “…and in other news, John has been making himself useful around the house recently. After losing his CEO job he probably sees his new duties as a small step down in responsibility, but I like him to feel he’s still making a contribution to the household.”

I like the kneepads and the hood. The former is practical and suggests a lengthy time in position, while the latter is nicely objectifying. I’m less keen on her dress. The fetish nature of it kind of clashes with the ‘normality’ (in femdom world at least) of the activity.

I found this on Awesome Femdom.

As disgusting/exciting as you like…

This is an image where the degree of perversity is assigned by the mind of the viewer. Obviously it starts at a base level of perversity that’s pretty unavoidable. I don’t think he came in for the remote control and tripped and fell awkwardly. But maybe she’s just forcing him to watch and nothing more. Or maybe there will be a few drops to clean-up from her after the fact. Or maybe…well…you get the idea. Beauty is not the only thing in the eye of the beholder.

I’m not going to say what my preferred interpretation is. I’ll just mention that I like the look of, lets say, ‘concentration’ on her face.

Annoyingly it looks like this image had a watermark and somebody scrubbed it out. I hate it when people do that. Feel free to comment if you can help me attribute it. I found it on erotic haecceities.

Updated: Thanks to pedamore I believe this is Mistress Yuliya Kate from Vancouver. I can’t see this exact scene in her clip store, but there’s one showing a similar bathroom and a couple of her in that top, so it seems to be a pretty positive id.

A striking skirt

The great thing about porn and the internet is that no matter how obscure your kink, there’s something out there for you. For example, I’m sure there are people out there with a thing for being punished by women in hideous 1970’s skirts. This image is for them.

The skirt aside, I do like the everyday outfit, the business-like stance and the rolling up of the sleeve. It looks like the warm-up has just finished, and she’s about to get serious with that strap.

I found the image on the Femdom Marriage tumblr site. It’s originally from Cassie Canes site, which features a lot of corporal punishment in non-fetish wear.

Just hanging out…

I’m not sure if this image really counts as femdom, but I liked it so much I thought I should share. It was taken at the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, probably the only place in the US where this kind of street scene could be captured.

I just love it for the body language. They seem so relaxed and casual. Just having a chat.

Him: So how has your day been?
Her: Pretty good. Did some shopping. Snapped a few photographs. You?
Him: Oh you know, the usual. Naked. Chained to a mesh fence next to a car park. That guy over there wrote something about balls on my chest. Typical Saturday really.

I found this courtesy of a photostream on flickr (probably need a free flickr account to view) created by Leon Kew (aka Q8765) who helpfully commented on an earlier post of mine. I believe it was originally posted on flickr by more_or_less.

You and me babe, how about it?

This image is taken from a sequence titled ‘Backyard Love’ by the photographer Ville Varumo. That title makes me think of a pulpy porn novel set in the deep south of the US, with a cover featuring a busty blonde in daisy dukes. Instead it’s actually based on the classic love story ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Or, if like me you tend to the cynical, the classic tale of two idiotic teenagers who would make fine candidates for a Darwin award.

Anyway, regardless of the source, I kind of like the image. Although I’m not sure I can put my finger on why. There’s a nice sense of balance and elegance to it. The wall and the blindfold actually makes me think of a firing squad, which isn’t sexy, but certainly adds an interesting edge to it. You can see the rest of the sequence at the homotography blog.

Oh, and ten bonus kinky points (zero monetary value, non-transferable, void where prohibited) to anyone who can name the link between this post and the title I gave it.

Head back, ass down, smile for the camera

After yesterday’s lengthy post, this one will be short and sweet. Just a nice image of a normal everyday scene, with a woman taking her naked man for a ride.

Personally I’m not a fan of hair pulling. It’s not an easy pain to eroticize, and it puts me in mind of scrappy playground fights. But this looks kind of fun and it has certainly put a smile on her face.

I’m afraid I don’t know the original source for the image. I found it on the Luv Looking tumblr site.

Femdom is broken

At least it is according to this post by weezie over on the Not Just Bitchy blog.

Did we keep the receipt? I don’t remember filling out the warranty card. It’s probably lost in a kitchen drawer along with all my appliance instruction manuals. And what is the standard returns policy on a social/sexual/lifestyle orientation?

I actually have a great deal of sympathy for the underlying point of the post. I’d like to see more material focused on genuine emotional connections between people. Random fetish elements and kinky trappings alone do nothing for me. However, I think a good underlying point is lost in a huge overreach, with big generalizations that just don’t stand up.

You’d be hard pressed to find a single collection of images, interviews, articles, or books that doesn’t make the cock (artifical or otherwise) the central star of the story. When did everything become about dicks and not about d/s?

When I look around image blogs or interview sites or article collections I really don’t see a surfeit of cocks. If anything there’s a lack of male bodies and appendages. There are certainly a lot of dominant women (in a variety of attire) and a fair amount of traditional BDSM activities and toys, but I’m typically not having to wade through wall to wall cocks (if you’ll forgive the mental image). Sites like kink.com take a lot of criticism from some sections of the femdom blog community, but whatever their faults, I do think they’ve made a positive contribution by actually introducing more male bodies into their material. I remember the old days of kink porn (the late 80’s and early 90’s in my case), when it mostly consisted of naked tied up women or annoyed looking dommes in leather outfits. Sites like leda showing ‘genuine’ M/f or F/m interaction were the exception, not the rule.

I think we can all agree that FemDom porn is particularly terrible.

Really? All of us? I don’t want to be out on my lonesome here, but…ahem….raises hand. Firstly – particularly terrible? That suggests that within the porn genre itself, the femdom segment is particularly egregious. I’ve argued in the past that femdom porn is actually one of the more authentic genres. It at least sometimes represents how some people in the community play in their leisure time when the camera’s aren’t rolling. Would anyone argue that other well known porn segments (lesbian, milf, teen, racial, ts, etc.) are in some way better or more authentic? And secondly, what absolute standard are we holding femdom porn up to? Thanks to the internet it’s certainly better now than it has been at anytime in the past. So what’s the comparison point? I’d agree there’s a lot of crap out there, and a lot of viewpoints are under-represented, but that’s not quite the same as saying it’s particularly terrible.

I think the argument goes something like this: If a submissive is willing to take a dozen lashings, or engage in CBT, or even go into an orgasm-denial full-time-relationship, that “proves” the submissive loves his partner and is willing to devote his body and life to her.

News flash: HE PROBABLY LIKES THOSE THINGS. See that stiff cock in all of those circumstances?? Do Dominants really truly believe it’s all about them and not about his dick? Does he cuddle? Does he nuzzle their neck without prompting?

It was this section in the original article that really triggered this post, as I found it very puzzling. Obviously any submissive engaging in corporal or CBT enjoys it at some level. That’s why he (or she) does it. Similarly, a service submissive gets satisfaction from cleaning or cooking or whatever service is required. And somebody who cuddles or nuzzles their partner is doing it for the emotional and physical closeness it brings. We enter into relationships for what we think we’ll get out of them. That’s true whether it’s D/s or vanilla, gay or straight, romantic or platonic. The trick of course if finding someone with complimentary needs.

There seems to a presumption in the original article that because CBT might be physically satisfying to the submissive that somehow makes it invalid as femdom. Well here’s a new flash in return – sadists actually like hurting people. When I’m doing CBT, or any kind of intense masochistic activity, I’m not only enjoying the power exchange and the physical sensation, I’m also enjoying the pleasure my partner takes in it. I’d hate to play with someone who was bored or annoyed. The goal is mutual satisfaction, in whatever weird and wonderful forms that may take for both parties. Just because the submissive enjoys it doesn’t somehow make it ‘topping from the bottom’.

As I said at the start, I actually kind of agree with where weezie is coming from. There are many facets to femdom, and most of them are very badly represented in our culture. But I tend to get frustrated when I see ‘My preference isn’t represented’ stretched into ‘and your preference is wrong’.

I was tempted to illustrate this post with a big close-up of a wax spattered cock. But instead I’ll go in a different direction, and try something explicit and yet intimate. This is from the musing and muses tumblr site.