The beauty of dominant women
Here’s a man making himself useful. He’s holding her beer, cleaning her feet and providing a comfortable seat. If he could just hold that remote for her with his other hand and flip channels on request, he’d be perfect. As it is, she seems to be happy enough with the services on offer.
I found this on Freya’s Fancy tumblr. It’s originally from the Men are Slaves site.
This image caught my eye for the positioning of the hands. Him trying to protect himself and her trying to pull his hands away for a clear shot. It captures nicely that moment of balance where he wants to do what he’s told, but the instinctual need to protect a hurt area interferes.
This is originally from the Young Dommes site. I found it on the equally deep in your eyes tumblr.
I’m having too much fun in NYC to blog properly. I’ll therefore stick to simply posting images I like. This one has a nice trio of facial expressions. It features Lexi Sindel and Lea Lexis and is from Femdom Empire. Personally while I like the C part of CBT, I’m not big on the B. That long drawn out ache is tough to deal with. I’d guess this guy is going to be living with the results of that squeeze for a while.
I found this on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.
I have to admit that I’m not always the best organized blogger. Some people have multiple posts and drafts lined up in their queue ready to go at the push of a button. I typically have a bunch of thoughts, a few random images, and a glass of wine to work with. Sometimes they come together. Often they don’t. When I’m stuck and it’s late at night, I turn to some of my favorite tumblrs for inspiration. I figure if I can find a good image I’m 80% done already.
One of those ‘go to’ tumblrs is the Happy BDSM one. A feel-good photograph of a grin and some kink is always an easy one to blog about. I was therefore perturbed to browse it tonight and discover a whole bunch of my old posts popping up on it (all with the correct attribution). Did nobody tell these people that they’re where I go for images? It doesn’t work if it’s the other way around. It’ll end up as an infinite loop of reposting with zero added value, much like the Huffington Post. Somebody has to do some actual work here, and I’ll be damned if it’s going to be me.
Anyway, while the Happy BDSM folks sort themselves, out, I’ll leave you with the kind of image I was hoping to find and steal from them. This was actually from the Kaisub blog.
I feel that I should be able to track an original source for this image. It looks like something from a professional shoot, but nothing pops up on a Google reverse image search. The Japanese style genital blurring is also kind of odd for what looks like a Western image. Anyway, if anyone can help me attribute it, then please leave a comment.
One of the things I enjoy about blogs is watching opinions and discussions ripple out across them. As a medium they exist somewhere between a newsletter, a diary and a conversation. The dynamics are complex and I’m often surprised by what posts will sink without a trace and what will trigger a storm of discussion and controversy.
One recent example of this was a post by that well known troublemaker Ferns on the subject submission, consent and the D/s dynamic. That was followed by this post by kinkinexile taking issue with the definition of dominance used. That provoked maymay into a series of posts written with his usual tact and subtlety on the theme that ‘Dominants are Rapists’. You can read them in chronological order as post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, post 6, post 7 and post 8. That’s a lot of posts, so if you’re short of time then 1 and 6 are probably the key ones to read. Spinning off from all that was this post by Tomio Black and this by gingernic, plus no doubt others I failed to spot.
I was planning to stick my nose into the debate, but for the moment I’ll play the role of the lazy college lecturer and simply throw it out there for discussion. I am, after all, a resource site. Possibly I’ll come back to it in a future post. It should also go without saying that a link here does not imply endorsement of any particular viewpoint. The set of things I find interesting includes many which annoy or infuriate me.
As a meta-comment on the debate itself, I will say that maymay’s case is not enhanced by his tendency to classify the emotional and angry responses generated as proof that he’s getting close to the truth. I could post that all submissives are sad losers who don’t deserve a real relationship and generate a lot of strong responses. That wouldn’t constitute proof that I’d hit a nerve and was onto something. It reminds me of the old joke – ‘Yes, it’s true they laughed at the Wright brothers, but it’s also true that they laughed at Bozo the clown’.
I wasn’t really sure what image to go with here, but seeing as Ferns mentioned chores, I’ll run with that particular theme.
I thought I’d seen most forms of CBT, but this is a new one to me. I’m not sure if the silver foil is designed to spread the heat, concentrate the heat or simply ensure he bastes evenly in his own juices. Either way it looks like a particularly intense form of torture. On the plus side he might end up with some stylishly coiffured pubic hair.
This is originally from the OWK site. I found it on the Dominalova tumblr.
At the risk of making the blog endlessly self-referential, I’m going to continue the theme of autonomy from yesterday’s post, and respond to an interesting comment that was left. You can read the whole thing here but the essence of it was: What about 24×7 mistress/slave relationship that doesn’t use safewords? That is a loss of autonomy, but in the context of a loving trusting relationship. How can that be abuse?
I think the issue of safewords in this context is a red herring. I also don’t use safewords when I play with people I know well. I trust they’ll play safely and respond when I communicate a problem. And in the context of an daily 24×7 relationship it’d be kind of weird to safeword. They’re really a very specific safety mechanism that’s useful when doing particular types of scenes or playing with someone new.
What I think is key is that the slave always has an option to step-back and renegotiate (in the loosest and most general sense of that word). Ultimately they must always have the option to walk away. That doesn’t necessarily give the slave control of the relationship. The dominant might simply say it’s my way or the highway, and that single simple choice to consent might carry a lot of significant implications. But meaningful consent can only come from autonomy – from the ability to make an un-coerced decision. If you don’t have that then you can’t consent. And if you don’t consent then that’s an abusive relationship.
I was going to go on to say that you can never negotiate away the need for consent, but with further thought I’m not sure that’s true. I can conceive of doing it for short time periods. For example, a heavy corporal scene where a submissive agrees to be tied down and given 12 stripes of the cane with no option for escape. That seems a reasonable situation for a submissive to briefly give up his autonomy entirely. It might be painful, but it’s not dangerous, and it’s for a very limited time period. I don’t think it’s reasonable to stretch that kind of agreement for weeks or months. I’m not sure where that line is drawn, but I’m sure there is one.
Of course there is one scenario where a lack of autonomy doesn’t necessarily imply abuse, and that’s if you’re unlucky enough to be caught up in the penal system. Prisons don’t go much for negotiated scenes and safewords. I’m not sure what crime the man below committed, or what police department issued her uniform, but I’m sure justice will be served.
The image is by the very talented artist Vernice61. I believe she’s saying ‘And drink it down!”
This is a post about semantics and definitions rather than hot femdom action. That might sound a touch dry, but language shapes how we think, and writing about the language and labels of kink helps me understand my own kinky nature better.
The trigger for this was a post last week entitled Inadvisable advice and a followup comment by Grumpyoldswitch. I’m not going to repeat it all in detail here (feel free to follow the links), but the crux of it revolved around autonomy, free will, power and control. What do you give up in a BDSM scene and what makes a scene exciting? I originally stated that I never gave up autonomy in scene and the commenter suggested that I did or at least pretended to. He felt that doing so, and being dehumanized in some way, was attractive and what a lot of people looked for. So what does a submissive give up in a D/s interaction?
Power and control are two obvious things that are relinquished. It could be simple, like the power to talk and move around. Or it could be more complex, like the power to make certain decisions or behave in a certain way. So does autonomy and agency go hand in hand with this? After all, if I don’t have control over my body, and I can only make narrowly constrained choices, do I really have autonomy? I would say the answer is a very firm ‘Yes’.
The definition of autonomy is the freedom to choose one’s own actions. As Wikipedia puts it – it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision. That means that any relationship where someone loses autonomy is automatically an abusive one. That is an important line to draw. I might only have one decision available to me – the option to shout ‘STOP’ – but with that decision all my power must come flooding back to me. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 1 hour scene in a dungeon or a 24×7 D/s relationship. The ability to step back and renegotiate is an essential one that should never be lost.
So what about pretending to lose autonomy? That’s where it gets interesting to me, as I think that’s what BDSM play is often about. Some people fetishize the activites themselves. They love bondage, or spanking, or whatever. But for a lot of others, including myself, the activities are a means to an end. They’re a way of creating a D/s dynamic. By emphasizing all the decisions I can no longer take the illusion is created of a loss of autonomy, where in fact it has just being temporarily stripped back to its bare minimum. When I’m busy being the best damn coffee table I can be, then I don’t have to worry about anything else, and it’s easy to pretend that the option to just not be a table doesn’t exist.
This image has been cropped but I believe it’s originally from My Slave Life. I found it on the Consensual Spanking blog.
I’ve heard people describe their mental state after a scene in many different ways. Words like floaty, zoned, buzzed, energized, peaceful, sleepy and emotional often crop up. Personally I often think of the word gooey. That seems to capture the kind of happy mushy emotional puddle that ends up as me curled on the couch. My natural cynicism takes a well deserved rest and I end up feeling oddly soft and sentimental.
The image below bears absolutely no physical relationship to the scene I just did tonight with Lydia. That featured mummification, sensory deprivation and a lot of nipple torture. Yet it’s the kind of image that catches my eye when I’m in this aforementioned gooey state. It makes me go “Ahhh” and puts me in mind of all the fun little connections that get made during my scenes. It’s sweet, and that goes well with gooeyness.
This is originally from Whipped Ass. I found it on the Girls Rule Subs Drool tumblr.
Religious imagery is not unusual in porn. Priests, nuns and martyred saints proliferate. This shouldn’t be too surprising. Given the impact religion can have on young people, combined with it’s screwed up views on sexuality and all the naked tortured bodies, I’m just amazed it’s not more prevalent than it is. Fortunately I grew up with the Church of England, which is currently one of the more low key religions. A vigorous discussion over tea and cake is as fraught as it ever gets. It’s not exactly the Spanish inquisition.
Typically when religion and porn collide there are lots of sexy nuns, buff priests and flirty catholic schoolgirls. You’d never mistake any of the characters for real religious figures. I was therefore particularly entertained by the image below. The vicar looks remarkably realistic and genuinely surprised to stumble across an attractive lady in tight red latex. He reminds me of a local vicar from my youth. Subsequent shots show him losing the collar and getting caned. I’m therefore guessing he’s not a real man of the cloth. I’m just happy he found his niche playing true to life masochistic vicars for Mistress Annabelle.
