Slave – Page 40 – Femdom Resource

Ignorance is bliss?

When you spend as long as I do hanging out on sex positive blogs, it’s easy to forget just how much attitudes can vary outside that bubble. I was intrigued to stumble across this post quoting a Mormon on the subject of sexual compatibility. He was a virgin when he married, as was his wife, and he looks on that fact as a plus…

If we had “shopped around” or experienced sex with many different people, it would have ruined the beauty and simplicity of what we have.

I’m going to guess most of my readers will react as I initially did to this, which was to laugh and wonder how ignorance can possibly be a good thing. How can he make any kind of informed judgement? Maybe they’re having really bad sex and have no idea it should be any different.

But then it got me thinking about the relative nature of happiness. There are few absolutes when it comes to assessing satisfaction and quality of life. For example, studies have shown that when it comes to wealth, happiness isn’t related to the amount you earn, but how much you earn relative to your social circle. Being the ‘poor’ person in your group makes you unhappy, even if your absolute income is high. Knowledge in that case makes you unhappier. So if a couple are happy having mediocre sex, is that a bad thing? Are you better off not knowing what you’re missing out on?

Obviously the ideal state is to know for sure you’re having great sex! And as an information junkie, I think I’d always rather be informed, even if it made me more aware of problems. But it’s an interesting angle to ponder, particularly when I reflect back on life and the ‘might have been’ situations. I often feel regretful that I waited until my 30’s to act on my kinky inclinations. I feel I lost a decade or more where I could have been enjoying all BDSM has to offer. Yet, the knowledge of the pleasure it brings me has undoubtedly complicated my life. It makes dating and finding a suitable partner a lot harder for a start. Would I have been better off not knowing? Leaving that side of myself alone? Most of my friends have married over the last few years and started families. Could I have been happy in a vanilla relationship? Will I ultimately look back on my exploration of kink as a curse rather than a blessing? I hope not, but as Einstein observed, knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

The image is by the Scottish painter Jack Vettriano. A lot of his work has a sexual and kinky vibe to it, and he’s obviously got a fetish for 50’s costumes and high heels, although not typically with a femdom slant. There’s more background on him available in this article.

Cultural Anomaly

There’s an ongoing and tedious debate about the cultural meaning of facials. According to the ever moderate Gail Dines it’s one of the most degrading acts in porn. That’s a statement which makes me wonder what she’d make of some of my porn movies and images.

Unfortunately I’ve yet to find any really well reasoned philosophical analysis of shots involving men hanging upside down having self-facials administered by elegantly dressed ladies. If I stumble across such a thing I’ll be sure to let you all know. In the meantime I’ll leave you with this image from Femdom Chronicles. Hopefully nobody will feel too degraded after viewing it.

After the fact

Here’s a nice brace of shots to pair with yesterday’s post. That showed the build up to a cuckold scene. This shows what I assume is the aftermath to one. I guess it could be his own cum she’s about to feed him, but I suspect not.

Incidentally, these plug style gags seem to be very popular in Japanese BDSM porn, but rare in the Western equivalent. I’m not really sure why that is, as they look pretty sexy. All the benefits of a ring style gag, without the risk of it rotating in the mouth. Plus, the insertable plug adds a nice touch of objectification.

I found these images on the Felm Cyber tumblr. I’m afraid I have no idea where they originally came from.

The complexity of cuckolding

I’ve never been involved in cuckolding. I’m not sure I ever will be. But I do find it a fascinating topic.

I think part of that fascination is to do with the different ways it can manifest itself. Just looking at my blogroll demonstrates that. I apologize in advance if I mischaracterize anyone here, but I think it’s very clear there are quite distinct approaches described. Vanessa seems to have one of the more traditional approaches. She goes out and fucks guys, and enjoys rubbing it in her husbands face (quite literally). Scott and Em also play with the humiliation angle, but the action often involves Scott as well, even if that just means he’s present in the room. It’s more of a pair plus one, rather than two distinct pairs featuring a single female. Then there’s Suzanne, whose relationship seems to be more of a trio, with her sissy husband playing a very intimate role in her sexual couplings. And of course there are those bloggers like Axe who personally dislike the general idea of cuckolding.

As someone who doesn’t kink on emotional masochism or humiliation I tend to side with Axe’s point of view. I certainly get the activity at an intellectual level, but it doesn’t typically push my buttons sexually. However, it’s such a complex dynamic that I find it hard to say for sure. For example, I can imagine a tease and denial type cuckold play that could be very hot. That wouldn’t be a type of rejection or humilation, but simply temporary denial and sadism via sexual frustration. After all, a lot of submissives kink on chastity, orgasm control and very obvious female pleasure. Of course for that style of play, you have to almost completely set aside the emotional aspects of it, which for others is exactly the appeal. As I said, it’s a complicated topic.

I’ll leave you with this shot, originally from Cuckold Sessions, I found it on Femdom Archive tumblr. It looks like it’s taken from an intro-sequence, with a helpful cuckold preparing his mistress for her fun to come.

Back home

I’ve returned safely from my vacation in LaLa land. However, I’ve now got a relative flying in to stay with me for a couple of weeks, so posting may continue to be a bit erratic. Apologies in advance for that.

I’m looking forward to sharing the photographs of my sessions from the last few days. I got to experience all sorts of interesting activities, and we photographed a lot of them. In the meantime, while I go and prepare the spare room for my new guest, I’ll leave you with this shot that I found on reddit. Not sure of the context or who created it, but I thought it was striking and a little unusual.

When anything goes

Mistress T has an interesting and instructive post up about negotiating a scene. Her key point is that a submissive saying he’ll do ‘anything’ the domme wants is both useless and highly unlikely to be true.

My go-to (smart-ass) answer these days if they say they’re into anything that will make me happy is: “Great. You do the house work while I watch TV in my PJ’s and ignore you. Just leave the money on the counter.”

Her point is an excellent one but from the submissive point of view, it does touch on a real point of dilemma. How do you negotiate a scene without making it feel like you’re ordering from a restaurant menu? I’ve done scenes with new dommes where I’ve an expressed interest in X, Y and Z, and ended up with 40 minutes of each in that order. Pro-dommes typically complain when clients get very specific about scripting a scene and controlling how it should unfold. But the reverse situation also applies. I don’t want to feel I’m controlling exactly what the domme does.

Mistress T goes onto to suggest that of the 120 fetishes she has listed, the number of things a random submissive would hate is far longer than the list of things they’d like. I’m not sure about that. I don’t have access to her list, but I know of other examples from domme’s I’ve played with. For example, Domina Yuki’s and Lady Lydia’s. They both have 50 or so activities listed. Of those there are probably 2 or 3 that are hard limits for me and a couple of things that I’d do but aren’t particular interesting to me. The other 40+ things are all just dandy as far as I’m concerned, and I’ve done almost all of them at some point. Yet, in my experience, negotiating a very open scene based on 40 potential activities really doesn’t work well. Most domme’s tend to classify you as one of those ‘anything but not really’ guys, and assume you’re going to be unhappy when reality sets in.

I don’t have any great answers to this problem. The best advice I can give is to slowly build trust by doing multiple sessions, each featuring a limited number of different activities. Once you’ve built chemistry with someone and demonstrated a genuine breadth of interest, you’re more likely to be able to transition into a more natural and free-form dynamic. When I play with Lydia these days I suggest only a single idea as a possible direction and let her improvise from that point on. She knows by now that I’m open to a lot of different activities, and don’t have a fixed idea of how a scene should play out. I think last time I simply suggested something involving bondage on her bed, and ended up trapped in much rope, sporting an electrified butt-plug, with several piercings, many scratch marks and a plastic wrapped face.

I’ll leave you with an image of Mistress T and Amica Bentley, originally from The English Mansion that I found on Mistress T’s blog. I suspect for a lot of the ‘anything you want’ guys this particular activity is likely to transition into a ‘but not that’ response.

Swinging the single-tail

I had my back and ass well and truly striped today by Mistress Cynthia Stone. She used one of the heaviest single tails I’ve yet experienced and the resulting marks are pretty special. We snapped photographs so hopefully in a future post I’ll be able to share some images.

Until that exciting moment (settle down at the back there), I’ll restrict myself to this shot (via Selina Minx’s tumblr) of a whipping from the movie The Million Eyes of Su-Muru. With an imdb rating of 2.6/10, it’s clearly not a forgotten classic. However, it does look like the kind of film I’d have watched as a teenager with rapt attention and a strange feeling in my underpants.

Oh, that works!

I like this image because her expression is one that I know well. I suspect it’s familiar to a lot of submissives. It’s the expression of “Oh, that works, excellent! Let’s do more of that.”

There’s often a lot of improvisation in a scene. As Helmuth von Moltke (the elder) famously said “No plan survives contact with the enemy”. Most BDSM scenes start with a master strategy but degenerate (or evolve) as physics and sweaty bodies get involved. However, I’ve noticed that as the improvisation unfolds there’s often an ‘Aha!’ moment. It’s that key moment the dominant discovers which of her ideas work really well. From a submissive point of view, its a little bittersweet. There’s a shared happiness that the scene is coming together, but a sense of dread that things are only going to get significantly more painful from here on out.

This image is from the Divine Bitches site.

Clamping the tender parts

A quick post tonight, as it’s a busy holiday weekend for me. This image caught my eye for it’s sense of tenderness and togetherness. I always like play that blends a little cruelty with a little tender affection. The only thing better is play that blends a lot of cruelty with just that bit of tenderness.

I found this originally on the Work Is Never Over tumblr, but I believe it’s from a movie called Whipsmart from Good Vibrations starring Mistress Morgana. She’s undoubtedly a fan of nipple clamps, as she makes clear on her entertaining biography page.

Invisible touch

Yesterday’s post triggered several interesting comments and prompted some further thoughts on the perception of a scene. One particular comment was by Mark on the touching hands in the image I featured.

Notice her hand gently resting on his. For me, an incredibly powerful element of the scene.

I wonder if that gentle, reassuring touch would mitigate, somewhat, the ramp up in intensity that you described when under the blindfold.

I had noticed (and enjoyed) that aspect of the image, but the post was getting so long I decided not to comment further on it. Mark’s observant comment got me thinking about touch, and what a great example of shifting perceptions it can be.

Simple caresses can play a huge part in a scene. Not everything has to be about extremes of pain or pleasure. Fingers skating across the skin, tracing the lines of muscle or caressing a limb. Each little contact plays a part in building the dynamic. When I can see them, touches to me are predominantly sensual. They’re about the pleasure in the contact of another body. They might be soothing after an intense pain, or promising of what’s to come, but the underlying message is a hedonistic one.

Yet take my sight away and a touch becomes quite different. Partially they’re reassuring. Little grounding moments that tell me I’m OK, she’s right here with me. Like an animal being petted, I relax into her hand. But this reassurance is a double edged sword. It can be taken away. Giving it subtly emphasizes its importance to me. So there’s now an element of fear. What if she takes it away? What if I need that emotional contact? Losing a sensual touch is disappointing, but losing a reassuring one can be scary. It moves the balance from pleasure to control, a shift of perception unrelated to the physical contact itself.

I’ll leave you with an image of what appears to be some very pleasurable touching, with a nice undercurrent of control. It was shot by Michele Block-Stuckens and is called Toy Boy.