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.

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.

For the Love of Dog

Over the last decade or so I’ve been lucky enough to meet and interact with a lot of fabulous pro-dommes. They’ve all had their own unique style and approach, but there is one unusual commonality that I’ve observed. It’s not that they were intelligent, empathetic, well-organized and excellent communicators. I mean all those things were true, but being a successful professional dominant  tends to naturally select for them. Pointing those out is like pointing out that most basketball players are tall and most politicians can lie convincingly. It comes with the territory.

The unusual commonality I’ve observed is a love of animals. That’s obviously not a characteristic unique to pro-dommes, but it seems to be significantly skewed compared to the general population and to manifest itself in many different ways. Pro-dommes are frequently enthusiastic and proud pet owners, adopters of abandoned animals, volunteers at pet rescue centers, vegetarians or vegans and supporters of animal related charities. I’m obviously generalizing a lot here about a big group of people, and it won’t be true for everyone, but it is true for most of the dommes I’ve played with and true for a lot of the pro-dommes I see posting on social media.

I actually made this observation to a pro-domme last year. Although in fact, I only got as far as saying that there was one common theme I’d noticed before she beat me to the punch. I hadn’t even managed to finish my sentence before she came out with exactly the same observation.

An optimist might suggest that this trait derives from dommes possessing a nurturing and empathetic personality type that fits well with caring for animals. A cynic might suggest its because the average pet is a lot more obedient, dependable and trainable that 95% of male submissives.

This shot is from Mistress An Li and features, in her words, her two bitches playing. The one on top is her puppy and the one apparently losing the fight is her submissive in a pet crawler outfit.

Mistress An Li is an LA based pro-domme, and her professional site is located here.

You Do You

Mistress Evilyne has put up an excellent and very personal post on Whorearchy, the shaming of female desire and what sexual acts are appropriate for a dominant. Hint: It’s whatever they damn well decide. As she concludes the post with…

As long as you are not hurting anybody either physically or mentally, then go ahead and do what you want to do! Be you and rock it! And don’t let anyone shame you or tell you that they are better than you.

It’s a topic I’ve touched on before. The last time, in a post entitled Demarcation, I linked to writing from Domina Victoria Rage and Mistress T that made similar arguments. As I said then, I think the legal issues of sex work to tend to distort not only the topic, but even our ability to discuss it openly. For example, I wouldn’t discuss a pegging session here unless the pro-domme in question was publicly open about offering it on her site. Just penetration alone can be problematic legally, let alone if you throw an orgasm or two into the mix.

Theoretically this is only a problem in the professional realm, but in reality I think it tends to spill across all of femdom. Lacking other strong cultural models, people take cues from porn and pros. So we end up in this fucked up situation where patriarchal laws distort professional femdom, and patriarchal norms suppress other representations of femdom, and ultimately the distorted former being an outsized influence on the latter.

This is Mistress Evilyne enjoying some public humiliation play. She’s a London based pro-domme.

Reclamation

This Paper Magazine article presents some interesting discussions with several different sex workers in various  fields.  The one that really caught my eye was from Karmenife, who is currently working as a pro-domme. To quote her from the article…

I actually found sex work through an art project that I did. When I was on campus, I was raped my freshman year and I thought it pretty much ruined me. One way that I reclaimed my space for myself is I did an art project where I dress up like a dominatrix and I dommed frat guys in front of the frat house where I was raped. I had never felt so powerful and beautiful, and to feel that in a space where I had been ripped apart was beyond empowering.

I hunted around online and found this article from 2016 describing the art project she mentions.I can’t believe I missed this when it was originally published. It’s kind of an incredibly story, both to reclaim her power via that project and then to channel it into a career. There’s a site for the project itself here, which is where the following image is from.

Karmenife is currently based in NYC and the twitter feed for her professional persona is here.

Top Tips

If you’re looking for some interesting tips on training a submissive, then you might want to browse this twitter thread started by Mistress Eva. I have to admit that most of the suggestions don’t appeal to me personally. Spanking and naps are childhood things I’ll gladly revisit, but I’m eternally happy to be permanently done with punishment, chores and homework. However, if that’s the kind of thing you like mixed into your kinky play, then you should probably check out the thread.

Of course this also gives me the a great opportunity to feature a photograph of the lovely Mistress Eva herself.  From her site she offers online training as well as in person sessions.

I found this image on Mistress Eva’s twitter feed.

Crime Flick

I’m not normally a fan of using big industrial spaces for kinky shoots. They often seem very artificial and impersonal. I’ll make an exception for this striking shot however. It puts me in mind of British crime and gangster movies from the 70’s and 80’s. Flicks like The Long Good Friday (which had a scene with men suspended upside down in a warehouse) and the original Get Carter (one of my favorite movies of any genre).

In a modern movie, this’d be the scene where the hero is captured and tortured by the crime bosses evil female lieutenant. In the downbeat 70’s, the anti-hero would be working with the lady with the whip, and this’d be the point where the plan starts going sideways and just before everyone ends up dead. Of course no matter what the era, the plot or the identify of the hero, I’m sure my readers would all be rooting for the lady with the whip.

This is Mistress Manouk, a Dutch pro-domme, as shot by Alex Charilaou. I found it via this tweet.

Update: You can also see a very short clip from this shoot here. Thanks to Daria for the pointer.

Medical Sadism

Well I’m on the topic of professional dommes producing great kinky imagery, let me give a shout out to Mistrix Sade, and in particular this medical themed post. It has some lovely imagery that takes medical play and adds a slightly unsettling undertone of horror and mad science. I think it’s another good example of taking familiar tropes and making them work afresh.

Mistrix Sade is a NYC based pro-domme. Information on scheduling sessions with her can be found here.

Can’t argue with science

I’m generally not a fan of news stories that poke fun at scientific studies. You probably know the sort of article I mean. In between all the lifestyle pieces on how chocolate, red wine or sleep  is good or bad for your health, lifespan or sex life, there’ll be a mocking article on how money is being wasted on silly studies. Any scientist today wanting to study finch beaks, hot mud or mold in dirty lab equipment, better be prepared for the tabloids to attack them as out of touch boffins who waste tax payer money.

All that said, let me now mock this study of online dating. It discovered the ground breaking fact that attractive people are attractive. Apparently, people on dating sites tend to try and gets dates with people more attractive than they are. Given that good looking people are used to attract us more ordinary folks to movies, clothes, music and just about every service and product in the known world, it’s hard to see why anyone thought dating would be different. Did they think people be stupid enough to fall for hot models in commercials, but then suddenly get all realistic and pragmatic when it came to their own dating lives?

Other astonishing results included the fact that men tend to be more active about messaging women, and that women get a higher response rate from their messages to men. I assume there next area of study will be if women like being send dick pics or if pornography can lead to masturbation.

I’ll end the post with an image of someone who definitely qualifies as highly attractive, and I’m sure would happily ignore any number of messages from people like myself on a dating site. This is Adreena Angela, a UK based pro-domme and model.