Tag: Photograph

The Maths Checks Out

Last week I wrote a post claiming that London was probably ground zero for kinky submissives seeking pro-dommes. You can obviously have a fabulous time in any part of the world, but for a location with the greatest accessibility to the largest number of dommes, it is hard to beat London.

I thought about doing some maths to back up the theory, but ran into a seemingly insurmountable problem. Specifically the problem of me being lazy and that analysis requiring work. Fortunately, a very helpful comment from sobrinoir, pointed me at this post, which provides a list of countries ranked by the number of pro-dommes per capita.  As I suspected, the UK ranks right at the top, with 1 pro-domme per 105,000 people, significantly ahead of countries like Germany and the US.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that the science behind the ranking is more than a little shaky. It’s based on pro-domme counts just a single source – Domina Guide – and a casual inspection of their links show a lot that are dead or outdated. It’s also badly skewed towards Western countries. I find it hard to believe that Japan has just 14 pro-dommes, as the guide appears to claim. Yet despite those issues, I think it is interesting data. The fact that the UK has a roughly comparable number of pro-dommes listed as the US does, while being one sixth the size in population is kind of amazing.

This is the London based Mistress Miranda, with an image from her twitter feed. She’s an expert in bondage and heavy medical play, and her feed features images from some wonderfully intense looking scenes.

50 Shades of Lavender

Literally seconds after I read this Vice article on a new trend for cute BDSM toys and pastel colored fetish gear, the image below showed up in my twitter feed (via this tweet). I think that’s enough evidence to make it official. 2019 is the year of lavender whips, pink cuffs and beige harnesses. Anyone still going old school with black and red is like totally out of date. Until next month anyway.

In all seriousness, fashion designers often seem do a terrible job of adapting BDSM attire into their clothes. This outfit by Dion Lee, and the others featured in Lady Grace’s tweet, are a rather excellent exception. Elegant, with beautiful clean lines, but still retaining the BDSM aesthetic. They were created in collaboration with Fleet Ilya.

The Wrong Kind of Frustration

It’s hard to find good cuckolding imagery. Which is a shame, as I think its mix of tease, denial and humiliation can be a hot dynamic. I’ve written before about unintentionally funny cuckold expressions in porn. The other issue is of course the frequent combination of race play with cuckolding. That always kills a scene for me.

The discussion around cuckolding is often very strange. The frequent racial elements are problematic for people, yet the fundamental dynamic itself is clearly not a racial one. It’s a basic kink that’s been infused (or perverted) by American cultural issues with race. You’d therefore think that there’d be discussion around how best to untangle it from that mess. Or at least an effort to critique it in a selective way. Yet more often people will insist the two are irrevocably tied together, muddying the conversation and creating more problems.

This silly Daily Dot article is a good case in point. It was triggered by a now infamous Oh Joy Sex Toy cartoon on cuckolding that took a lot of online flack when it was released. The cartoon definitely has problems, but I think its fundamental premise is sound. Three people can enjoy a cuckolding dynamic. Full stop. If the cartoon was addressing the history of cuckolding, or the cuckolding genre in porn, or the genesis of the political ‘cuck’ insult, then yes, exploring the racial element would be important. But that’s clearly not its purpose.

Given cuckolding as a kink clearly isn’t going to go away, shouldn’t we promote a point of view that tries to distinguish between the problematic and non-problematic parts? How does tangling it altogether, as the Daily Dot article does, help the discussion?

Cause and Effect

The effect of pornography on its consumers is an endlessly debated topic. I’m sure the study described in this article will not end it, but it does offer an interesting datapoint.

The study in question interviewed some porn ‘superfans’ at AVN and asked them a few simple questions designed to expose misogynistic attitudes. The result showed the porn fans were actually slightly more progressive than the national average on some questions, and no worse than the average on the remaining questions. Not exactly a slam dunk for porn, and the survey does seem incredibly simplistic, but it’s a result that probably runs against mainstream expectations.

It’d be interesting to see a similar study done with a breakdown across the type of porn people liked. You’d hope that femdom porn fans would be particularly supportive of women and their rights, but sadly I’m not sure that life is always that simple. People have a remarkable ability to retain multiple conflicting viewpoints all that the same time, particularly when each viewpoint benefits them in different situations. A depressing large number of guys seems to get off on the fantasy of dominant women while still being selfish sexist assholes on a day to day basis.

Not exactly sure where this image is from. I suspect it’s one of the cuckold themed femdom sites, but I couldn’t track a specific referenence down.

Bondage Liberation

This is a lovely shot from Bondage Liberation and Elise Graves. What particularly makes it work for me is the contrast between the heavily fetishistic bondage scene and the human touch of Elise’s smile and casual pose. It’s great to be intense while still retaining a sense of playfulness.

Image is from this tweet. You can get a lot more similar content at the Bondage Liberation site.

Location, Location, Location

For submissives who primarily play with pro-dommes, where is the best place in the world to live? Setting aside existing relationships – assume we’re talking about a newly minted fresh faced submissive with no history or experience – what location offers the greatest possibilities?

Having just returned from the UK, I think my answer would probably be London. Obviously, like other great cities such as New York or Tokyo, it’s home to a large number of talented pro-dommes and plays host to a lot of visiting dommes. If you want to turn a kinky session into a day trip, then dommes in places like Paris, Manchester, Birmingham and most of the South of England are options. Make it into a long weekend, and suddenly cities like Berlin, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, Edinburgh and Glasgow are all possibilities. On top of this, the UK sex work laws are less stupid than the US (while still being very stupid), and social attitudes to kink tend to be relatively liberal. It’s not perfect, but on balance I think it might just be the best place to be a kinky person in the professional scene.

Obviously quality always beats quantity, and you could have a fabulous D/s relationship with someone while living in a tiny hamlet that’s miles from anywhere. But chemistry is important whether a relationship is professional or lifestyle, and the more people you have to meet, the better your odds of finding that elusive fizzy reaction.

This is Lola Ruin, a Manchester based pro-domme. She’s about a two hour train journey from London. Not exactly a quick trip, but still faster than jetting between major cities in the US. The image is from her twitter feed.

Flying Back

I’m writing this midway between Washington State and the United Kingdom. Below me is 30,000 feet of air, a jet plane and a sore bottom, in that order. The former is courtesy of Boeing, the latter courtesy of Adreena Angela and her cane. There are as many different approaches to femdom as there are dommes, but one thing is always consistent: If you session just before you fly, expect a caning.

Playing with Mistress Adreena proved to be a great way to both start and finish my UK trip. It was ridiculously hot for my final days in London, making everything very sweaty and sticky. Normally that would be a bad thing, but in certain situations and with the right set of kinks, it can actually be a bonus. I love scent play, so having her damp armpit smooshed into my face was a little slice of sweaty heaven. Mistress Adreena was also careful to keep us both thoroughly hydrated, although my liquids came to me via an indirect and secondhand route.

If you’re interested in scheduling a session, Mistress Adreena’s professional site is available here. At the time of writing, twitter has somehow managed to screw-up her account, but her instagram is available here (source for the above picture).

A Session with Domina Emilia

Returning to London for a few days has given me the opportunity to sneak some more kink into the last part of my vacation. Specifically I was lucky enough to set-up a fabulous session with Domina Emilia.

The session was an unusual one for me, as we did a cuckold themed roleplay. I almost never do roleplaying in sessions, but it seemed quite natural and easy to slip into it with Domina Emilia. I think a big part of that was down to the very organized pre-session communication that she did over email, helping set the scene, explore the hot buttons and give appropriate jumping off points. I’ve always found the tease and denial aspects of cuckolding to be very exciting, but never thought it was a good fit for me in a professional dynamic. Domina Emilia showed I was wrong about that, and that the fantasy could be brilliantly spun in the constraints of a time limited session.

The session also featured another first for me – use of audio/video aids. They were very cleverly incorporated to aid the fantasy and set the mood. It made me curious about they could be used more as tools in sessions. Often we think about audio and video as a substitute for physical encounters, but why not play with the combination of them? Kinky play is a type of interactive theater, so why not make got a step further into a mixed media art form?

This image of Domina Emilia is from her twitter feed. If you’re interested in sessions in the London area then I’d absolutely recommend contacting her. I think she’d be a fabulous person to get to know and play more with.