Slave – Page 27 – Femdom Resource

FYI

Just for your information, while I love getting comments and emails, I’m not the fastest in the world at responding to them. I try and respond to comments within a couple of days, but detailed emails can take a week or so. Job + Blog + Friends + Sleep = 24 hours. That doesn’t leave me much time to write emails, so I apologize in advance if your response is delayed. If I ever manage to fit dating or a relationship into that equation it might involve some fundamental rewriting of the laws of physics. Possibly that could lead to a new form of interstellar travel, but more likely it’ll just mean the end of the universe. So I also apologize in advance if that happens just when you’re finally getting to a good bit. I’ll try not to do it right before a weekend.

Perhaps an alternative solution to this equation would be for me to multitask better. For example, this gentleman appears to be combining cleaning the floor with washing his face. That has got to cut down on wasted washroom time.

The lady helping the gentleman with his ablutions is Mistress Lauren.

Watch out for splinters

It’s odd how often derelict and abandoned buildings show up in the more artistic BDSM shots. I really can’t imagine a worse place for a scene. Damp and decaying wood. Cold breezes. Rusty nails and broken glass. Vermin. Dangerous footing and no sturdy anchor points. It’s pretty much the definition of a bad place to get naked and tie people up. But it does look cool, which is no doubt the motivating factor.

This is my third and, for the moment, final Femdom/Femsub post. While the backdrop might be interesting but impractical, I do like the top’s outfit. It’s not exactly standard domme wear, but it is sexy and does fit the scene. This is also a nice image to spin a story around. Is she in the process of rescuing the tied up woman? Or is she about to kiss her and abandon her?

You can find out more about the image here. It was shot by Joseph W Carey. The domme is Sister Dee from Top Grl and the submissive is Luna Vary. I originally encountered it on the Beauty of Submission tumblr.

Estrogen and subspace

While I was writing yesterday’s post on the brain’s response to pain I stumbled across another related article. It addresses the hoary old argument of pain tolerance in men versus women. It’s commonly said that women have a higher tolerance and this article claimed to have found a reason for that – estrogen.

One way estrogen helps women to cope with pain, he says, is by increasing the availability of endorphins — brain chemicals that help dampen the pain response.
When estrogen levels are high, there’s an increased number of areas in the brain where endorphins can “park.” The more “parking places” available, Zubieta says, the more endorphins there are on call, waiting to flood the body with “feel good” chemicals capable of overriding pain signals.

According to the article in yesterday’s post, brains all react to pain in a similar way. How individuals respond is down to social conditioning and secondary factors like the production of endorphins. And based on this article, women have a natural advantage on the endorphin front. When it comes to bragging rights, I’m not sure this really helps. It implies that it’s not down to simple mental toughness or fortitude. Women (in general) just have more natural opiates floating around their brain.

More pertinently, for the purposes of this blog, it makes more wonder if women tend to experience a more intense subspace. The rush associated with endorphins is a big part of subspace, and having more on tap would suggest a potential for a deeper experience. The fight or flight reaction is also part of getting into subspace, and that’s another thing men and women experience differently. Both sexes produce cortisol from the adrenal gland under stress, but women produce more oxytocin which counters the effect of cortisol and creates more relaxing and nurturing feelings. I know from personal experience that my subspace contains elements of all these things, from the rush of endorphins through the edginess of adrenaline to the calmness of oxytocin. But if men and women typically produce different proportions of these it would suggest the subspace they experience might typically be different as well.

Whatever the science of all it – and I’m most definitely not an expert – it does give me an excuse to feature some hot F/f artwork.

This artwork is by Shiniez and you can find a lot more on his Deviant Art pages.

The latest dungeon toy: MRI scanner

I’ve written about the science of pain in a previous post. That discussed some interesting findings from studies in the 1940’s and highlighted the difficulty in measuring pain in an objective manner. According to this article on brain imaging, that last part may be about to change. Researchers have managed to train a computer model (via machine learning) to analyze MRI scans and predict the level of pain experienced.

The part I found particularly interesting was that the responses across different patients brains was very uniform. They didn’t have to sample a patients pain at say levels 1 and 2 to be able to predict what that patients brain would look like at level 5 or 6. The same predictive model could be used across all patients. Meaning that they could take an MRI scan in from any patient and accurately estimate the level of pain experienced.

That seems counter-intuitive because we have a concept we call pain tolerance. Some people are as tough as nails and others are delicate daisies. Yet the underlying brain mechanism seems to be fairly uniform. Everyone’s brain fires up in similar ways to similar degrees of stimulus. That suggests to me that people’s baseline tolerance to pain, before endorphins and adrenalin kicks in to modulate the signal, is a learned response. You’re not pre-programmed to have a specific tolerance and presumably it could be modified over time.

I’ll leave you with an image of somebody doing a pain experiment of her own. She seems to have neglected the MRI scanner to measure the exact effects but perhaps this is just a practice run. Judging by his expression she should have no problem getting a reading from him.

I found the image on the Some Husbands Need Discipline tumblr. The original commercial site is sadly now extinct.

Underlying motives

I occasionally enjoy reading anti-porn and anti-sex work blogs. Although enjoy is probably not the right word. I find it cathartic to get annoyed and swear at my monitor now and again. Possibly this is related to my masochistic tendencies. It also helps me to a better understanding of the motives of the people behind them.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to worry about what happens when sex and money collide. Sex is a powerful motive force and undoubtedly bad things can and sometimes do happen when it combines with capitalism. I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to worry about how sex is represented in popular culture. However, whenever I go and read the work of these activists (like Gail Dines or Melissa Farley) it’s pretty clear they don’t care about these things. If they did they’d do proper research, provide solid data, talk to a wide range of the participants and present nuanced arguments that capture the inherent complexity of the issue. Instead they provide garbage fact sheets and arguments that dissolve like tissue paper when people such as Brooke Magnanti so much as glance at them.

What these people really want is control over others. And not the good sort of control that involves rope, blindfolds and safewords. They want to control how people live and how they think. I was reminded of this fact when I came across an article by Gail Dines on the new James Franco Kink movie. Unsurprisingly she’s not a fan, but the part that really caught my eye was…

The usual defense of Kink.com is that the women signed a contract and hence agreed to the acts. But as attorney Wendy Murphy of the New England School of Law argues, “torture doctrine is not hampered by concerns about consent because, as a matter of law and policy, one cannot consent to torture.” And anyway, what does meaningful and informed consent mean to the women subjected to these degrading and painful tortures, which are designed to break the body and the spirit?
Gail Dines in counterpunch

She’s not arguing that this material shouldn’t be filmed and distributed. She’s arguing that the very idea of consent in BDSM is meaningless. She emphasizes this opinion by repeatedly conflating the awful non-consensual tortures performed on prisoners at places like Abu Graib with what people consent to do for Kink.com. In her world not just porn would be banned, but BDSM itself would be outlawed by government mandate. The underlying motive here is not to help sex workers or target the issues the commercialization of sex creates. It’s to control how everyone behaves.

I’ll leave you with an image of the kind of activity that obviously should be illegal. That poor man can’t possibly be in his right mind to consent to such inhumane treatment. Although I guess it’s possible that he’s taking advantage of her and she therefore shouldn’t be allowed to be exploited like this. Either way, the evil pornographers taking advantage of these poor helpless people is the Captive Male site.

Grasping the problem firmly by the throat

I love breathplay but I’m actually not a big fan of throttling. It looks cool, but the the reality is risky, uncomfortable and hard to relax into. Squeezing all those delicate vessels contained in the throat is unwise and potentially lethal. If you’re vigorously fucking someone then grabbing them loosely by the throat is a wonderfully hot move. But if you’re trying to modulate oxygen then I think there are more interesting ways to achieve your goal.

It might seem less exciting than throttling, but try some saran wrap over the submissives face. Having clear plastic wrap gently kissed into place over my face has led to some of the great moments in my kinky life. It’s both sensual and incredibly evil. Each kiss seals the wrap closer and cuts off the oxygen a little more. Each breath warms the plastic wrap and makes it cling all the tighter. It’s not as visceral as a hand to the throat, but it’s way more effective and far easier to control.

I found this image on the I Crave Domination site. I believe this is originally a shot from the Men in Pain site.

Whipped and fucked

After the verbosity of the last couple of posts I’ll keep it simple tonight. I’ve had a wonderful evening. To start I got heavily whipped by Lydia. My torso now looks like it was mauled by a creature with really big paws. Then I got well and truly fucked. Much grunting and moaning was involved. Finally, I drifted home on a cloud of endorphins, cracked open some good red wine and cooked a rack of lamb extra rare. In my book that’s a damn good evening.

Before I retire to the couch with another glass of wine, I’ll leave you with this appropriate image. Can’t say I’m a fan of the wet look stockings (or boots), but I do appreciate that she seems to be enjoying herself.

Somebody has annoyingly trimmed the watermark off (given the black border I have my suspicions which self-aggrandizing femdom site that would be), but I believe it’s originally from the Strapon Dreamer site. I found it on the Not Like That, Like This tumblr.

In the moment

This is a continuation of my thoughts on the Psychological Surrender article I linked to yesterday. There are too many good things in it to fit into a single post. One section I particularly enjoyed was on subspace.

It is an experience of being “in the moment”, totally in the present. Its ultimate direction is the discovery of one’s identity, one’s sense of self, of one’s sense of wholeness, even one’s sense of unity with other living beings…Within the context of that surrender, a self-negating submissive experience occurs in which the person is enthralled by the dominant partner. The intensity of the masochism is a living testimonial of the urgency with which some buried part of the personality is screaming to be released. The surrender is nothing less than a controlled dissolution of self-boundaries.

There’s an interesting contradiction exposed here. On one hand there’s the idea of letting going, relaxing boundaries and exposing the true self. I’ve heard pain described as ‘a holiday from your brain’ and I like that description. It’s impossible to have complex thoughts or maintain social boundaries while experiencing significant pain. You can only exist raw, unfiltered and in the moment. Yet, despite that, the person who becomes most important in those moments is the dominant. I often feel a wave of tenderness and love (or a chemical facsimile) for her, even as she’s doing something incredibly painful to me. So simultaneously there’s both a strong sense of wholeness and the idea that the dominant is the center of the world and all that matters.

Perhaps a way to resolve this contradiction is to think about personalities as layers. The submissive’s intellectual and social layers are stripped away, exposing their true identity. In turn the dominants boundaries expand, replacing what has been removed. The submissive’s sense of self therefore ends up more intimately entwined with both the dominants personality and their own essential makeup.

This image of a couple enjoying their own particular moment comes courtesy of Divine Bitches. I original found it on the Badkitty Kat tumblr.

Sit!

I love the incongruity of this scene. There’s the very 50’s style domestic setting, the elegant housewife and well loved family pet. With just one minor quirk…

I’ve personally never done any animal roleplay, but I do get the appeal. It pushes all sorts of kinky buttons. Obedience, restraint, training, collars, control, commands, etc. Pet owners are supposed to both care for their pets and also make sure they’re trained to behave appropriately. The pet itself doesn’t have to think too much, it just needs to offer love, affection and obedience. Or at least that’s the case for dogs and their human counterparts. Cats just need to look cool while swaggering around trying to conceal their disdain for the world.

The image comes from Mistress Liliane Hunt’s blog from a post on a Loup Garou Adoption Day. She’s a San Francisco based pro-domme. The pet is Tyke Puppy. I originally found the image on Selina Minx’s tumblr.

The least visible group in porn?

As regular readers might guess, I spend a fair amount of time hanging around tumblrs. I only feature femdom material here, but I can find material that pushes my buttons across a wide range of kinky activities and gender combinations. Hence my tumblr browsing is broad. One thing I found fascinating is looking at how different kinky groups typically skew their selection of material. Obviously my observations are entirely anecdotal and completely unscientific but what the hell. This is a blog, not a peer reviewed paper for Nature (although somebody should write one of those).

As you’d expect, lots of straight male submissives feature dominant women in exotic undergarment, with the occasional naked man as just a prop in the scene. They also have a smattering of what I’d call action shots. i.e. Images that catch a more complex D/s interaction. Essentially they post what they desire (the dominant woman) and, to a lesser extent, the interaction they wish to experience.

Straight female dominants also tend to post what they desire, buff naked submissive men, together with action shots. But the ratio is different to what submissive guys post. As a SWAG (Stupid Wild Ass Guess) I’d say it’s more like 50/50 compared to 80/20. There’s a clear preference towards more complex interactions and connections over eye candy.

Straight male dominants are heavily focused on their object of desire – naked bound women. The vast majority of shots are either of sole females or of disembodied males interacting with females. There might be an appendage in the shot, or a hand, or a whip, but almost all of the material is designed to let the viewer imagine himself as the dominant. It’s rare to see intense emotional connection in the images.

The most interesting one I find is the straight female submissive. Following the pattern above you’d expect them to post a mixture of Mf action shots and images of hot male dominants. And yet from my observation there’s a very heavy skew to posting shots of female submission. They might post more action shots than male dominants, but they rarely seem to post images of buff male dominants. Uniquely amongst these four groups they seem to post what they’d like to experience or who they’d like to be, rather than what the type of person they desire.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that male dominants are the least visible group in BDSM pornography. That’s a conclusion that should raise a few hackles given the ubiquity of the Mf dynamic in culture and porn.

The image is of Claire Adams from Men In Pain. I found it on the ‘my Wife, my Goddess‘ tumblr. It represents the kind of shot I personally enjoy the most.