Tag: Photograph

Open for Submissions

A thoughtful reader sent me a link to an amusing short film – Open for Submissions.  It’s only 6 minutes long and was apparently made in just 48 hours for the Instant Films festival in 2001. It’s not laugh out loud funny, but has nice a gentle slice of life humor to it.

I suspect it might generate two different reactions between kinky and non-kinky people. The non-kinksters will smile at the intended juxtaposition of regular daily life with strange kinky behavior. There’s conventional romantic expressions played off against very unconventional behaviors. In contrast, I think a lot of kinksters might look at it and go – “Oohhhh, that’s so sweet! What a great dynamic. Why can’t I have a relationship like that one?”

I wonder if the original writer (Gerald McClanahan) intended that duality?

It was directed by Charles Papert and the actors are Amy Jo Traicoff and David Holcomb.

Elegance

My previous post got me thinking about elegance, style and femdom. Not on the part of the domme I hasten to add. The world is replete with shots of dommes looking composed and stylish. I’m thinking more from the submissive side. There’s a lot of femdom that automatically casts the submissive into a clumsy, ugly and stupid role. I do understand that kink, but it really doesn’t resonate with me. I want to look good while I’m bound, beaten and brutalized. Or at least as good as is possible, given the somewhat limited raw material we’re working with here.

Playing with Lydia was always very intense, but she had a knack of adding both humor and a shared sense of style to our play. I have a particularly fond memory of the start of some of our sessions. Typically, once I’d gotten naked, she’d grab some delicate part of me and forcefully lead me to the apparatus she wanted me attached to. Occasionally she’d pivot that movement into a dance, with her pulling me this way and that in time to her music, floating the two of us around the space. Admittedly, I’m a middle aged English guy with all the natural rhythm of a bag of hammers in a washing machine, but I loved those moments. Often I’d get it wrong, and see her smile as she yanked me painfully back into line. But when I got it right, I was dancing in harmony to the lead of a beautiful dominant woman, and it made me feel like an absolute star.

This pairing is undoubtedly elegant. They may not be dancing, but it has a similar sense of composed connection. I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for it.

Snappy Dresser

It’s probably fairly obvious that I enjoy kink and fetish. It’s probably less obvious that I’m also a fan of clothes and style. I hesitate to say fashion – as that can suggest chasing ephemeral fads and trends – but I do appreciate people who put some effort into their look. A man’s appearance can be immeasurably improved by a well chosen suit or a stylish jacket.

This image therefore falls perfectly at an intersection of two of my interests.  It’s not exactly something to wear for an average evening out, but it’s undoubtedly stylish and perfect for the well dressed latex fetishist. I particularly love the buttons on the cuffs. The whole thing is beautifully executed.

You can see some more shots of their ensemble in this tweet from Dominatrix Chiaki. The owner and model for the suit is @osm2741 and the clearly talented creator of it is @KurageKidO.

Kitchen Submissives?

The amusing kinky food video from a few posts back got me thinking about cooking in a D/s context. Specifically, why do I never seen dommes advertise for a submissive chef? Typically I see asks for cleaners, chauffeurs, PA’s and general dogsbodies, yet never for kitchen help. Actually, to be entirely honest, what I mostly observe is dommes complaining that trying to get a submissive to do anything actually useful to them is more trouble than it’s worth, and most submissives are only keen on what’ll please them and their dick. But after that sadly large group, among those still giving submissives a chance to be useful, I’ve never seen a chef request. I wonder why?

Personally, if I was recruiting for my own household, there would two main chores to offload: Ironing and food preparation. I love cooking, but food prep is a major time sink that I’d happily delegate. On the flipside, as a submissive, I’ve no interest in scrubbing floors, but would take satisfaction in preparing and cooking food for someone. Plus, food prep is full of sexy french terms. Getting beaten for a sloppy chiffonade or uneven brunoise would be extra kinky.

I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for this image. If you can help with that, then please leave me a comment.

Kinky Food Porn

After two posts on serious subjects, I think it’s time for something more lighthearted. This video from Comedy Central has been popping up all over my twitter feed and made me laugh. It takes the conceit of food porn and adds a kinky angle, with a dominatrix who really does enjoy playing with dominating her food. It’s not often you see someone sensually sliding a butt plug into fruit. I particularly enjoyed the exploding watermelon trick. How have I never know about doing that before?

Resistance Fighter

Occasionally I like to do a post that features someone who wasn’t necessarily dominant in the usual sense of this blog, but was an outstanding and forceful figure. A few past examples have included Beryl Swain, Julie d’Aubigny and Marlene Dietrich. Today’s post features another incredible woman – Freddie Oversteegen.

She was a Dutch resistance fighter in World War II, and passed away recently, aged 93. Aged just 14 when the Nazis invaded in 1940, she worked with her sister and a student named Hannie Schaft. As her obituary  in the New York Times explains…

The three staged drive-by shootings from their bicycles; seductively lured German soldiers from bars to nearby woods, where they would execute them; and sheltered fleeing Jews, political dissidents, gay people and others who were being hunted by the invaders.

She obviously didn’t subscribe to the view that there were some fine people on both sides.

You can also read obituaries for her in The Guardian and The Washington Post. Seducing and then shooting Nazis made her a very literal femme fatale. It’s amazing that as a teenager she could do what she did, and also sad that she had to. She was ultimately awarded the Mobilization War Cross by the Dutch government, although not until 69 years after the war ended.

I was originally going to feature some fetishistic femdom military imagery with this post, but then figured that might not be in the best possible taste. So instead here is an elegant Dutch domme – Mistress Manouk. She can definitely pull off the femme fatale look.

Memorial Parade

The New Orleans Dominatrix Convention is coming up in October. Specifically it runs from the 4th to the 8th. I’m sadly not going to be there, but if you can attend, you might want to look out for a Second Line Parade that’s being organized. It has been put together by Simone Justice to remember and celebrate the lives of people the BDSM community has lost in recent years. As their press release says…

More than 100 dominatrixes will strut The French Quarter dressed in full fetish regalia comprised of leather, latex and thigh high boots while dancing to a brass jazz band, waving parasols and handkerchiefs.

The second line parade is a uniquely New Orleans tradition, held for many kinds of occasions, and anyone on the street is welcome to join in the revelry.

You can read more about this New Orleans tradition here. It sounds like this one should be quite the event. If you know of anyone you think should be specifically called out for this memorial, then Simone Justice has been collecting suggestions.

I’ve no idea what fetish outfit Simone Justice plans to wear for the parade, but based on this image, I’m sure any attendees will be in for a visual treat. If you’re interested in seeing her in her professional capacity, her main site is here.

The unhealthy alternative to SPH

This Guardian article on surgical penis extensions isn’t really anything to do with femdom, but I found it fascinating, so I’m going to feature it anyway. Some of my takeaways were that it always seems to be a guy self-esteem issue, their female partners don’t really care about it, and that often the guys getting the surgery aren’t that small anyway.

The really crazy thing is that it doesn’t make any difference to the erect length, it just makes it look longer when its flaccid and hanging. Apparently that’s better for the locker room image. Who seriously gives a shit about that? Between the attribution of Trump’s pussy grabbing to just ‘locker room talk that all guys do’ and now this surgery for a bigger locker room dick, I’m really wondering what kind of gyms people are going to. Personally I just get in, get changed and get out. Apparently there’s a whole sexual dick measuring thing (both literal and metaphorical) going on that I’ve thankfully missed out on.

I’m not into Small Penis Humiliation (SPH), but frankly that seems a way more healthy reaction to dick size issues than having a surgeon chop at a ligament and stuff fat into your dick.  No SPH scene ever left someone with a bent misshapen dick that doesn’t work properly anymore.

Of course another alternative is to go totally artificial. You can have any size you (or she) likes in that kind of set-up.

This is from Mistress T’s twitter feed.

Empathy

In the past I’ve published posts on scientific studies when they had positive things to say about BDSM. For example, this one on flow and this one on psychological health. It seems only fair therefore to feature one that has a more troubling message.

The study in question looked at empathy in female submissives, and came to the conclusion that they have reduced empathy to other peoples suffering. As described in this article, the experiment was done by showing them photographs of people with neutral and ‘in pain’ expressions and watching what parts of the brain lit up. Apparently female submissives had unusually low responses to the ‘in pain’ photos in the parts of the brain normally associated with empathy.

I understand the methodology behind this approach. It reminds me of an anecdote from a doctor studying psychopaths who’d been jailed for violent crimes. He described showing an expression of a frighted man to one of his subjects and asked what he thought the man in the photograph was feeling. The prisoner laughed and said he didn’t know, but it reminded him of the looks on peoples faces just before he stabbed them. Clearly being able to relate expressions to internal emotions is a key part of empathizing with someone.

However, that said, while I understand the general approach here, it does seem flawed in this case. They’re starting from the premise that pain is a bad thing, and therefore seeing someone in pain should trigger empathy and concern. That’s true for most people but not for masochists. We have a much more complex relationship to pain. It’s an ambiguous sensation and therefore context is important. If I see someone stub their toe then I wince and feel bad for them. If I see someone tied up and caned in a BDSM movie I get excited and wish it was me. If I just see a pained expression alone, it’ll probably depend on my mood and what’s on my mind. Lacking context for the pain I’ll add my own, and that could generate all sorts of different emotional responses.

I think if you’re going to study empathy in kinky people, you really need to take into account their sexual wiring. For example, study their responses to happy or surprised faces rather than people in pain. Or put the pain into a suitable context. I’m sure non-kinky people would be disturbed by and empathize with the apparent pain of the man in the image below. As a masochist my reaction to the image is quite different, because I understand in this context the pain for him might be a sort of pleasure.

I’m afraid I’ve no idea who created this image. If you can help attribute it then please leave me a comment.

Top Dog

Here’s a final post (for the moment) on a pet theme. Just after I published yesterday’s post on pro-dommes and animals, I noticed this tweet from Mistress Baton. For those not wishing to click through it features an image with the text “You don’t get to tell me what to do, you’re not my dog.” Her accompanying comment is that “The only creatures who can boss Dominatrice around are our pets.”

So I guess the lesson here is that if you’re going to top from the bottom, make sure you’re as cute as a puppy. Otherwise best do what you’re told.

This image is Mistress Adreena Angela with her personal puppy.