Slave – Page 7 – Femdom Resource

The danger of labels

In yesterday’s post I wrote how much I disliked the alpha v’s beta personality categories. Apparently I’m not the only one, as this post by Stabbity is a fine rant on submissive guys who also describe themselves as alpha males. She makes some good points, and I agree with most of it. However, contrarian that I am, I feel I should offer a defensive of submissives that use that terminology. Or if not a defense, perhaps what I think is an explanation for some cases.

One frequent complaint from dominant women is the number of men who approach them whilst proclaiming their worthlessness. Typically these are men who have spent far too long watching bad femdom porn. “Mistress,” they’ll say. “I’ll do anything you want. I exist to serve you. I’m just a doormat. Something beneath your beautiful feet that I’m not worthy to lick – although it’d actually be really great if I could do that.”

Women in kinky spaces are understandably annoyed by this and respond that they want a strong confident submissive. Someone who can think for himself, show initiative and make a positive contribution to a relationship. I believe some submissive guys see that kind of description and think “Aha! That description looks a lot like the stereotypical alpha male. That’s an ideal label to quickly differentiate myself from those worthless worm idiots.”

I don’t disagree with Stabbity that it’s a vague term, possibly insulting and probably a sign of insecurity. As I wrote yesterday, I hate the alpha and beta labels. But I can understand the underlying dynamic that provokes some submissive men to use the term. Essentially both sides are reacting to a negative portrayal of submission. Unfortunately in trying to differentiate themselves with the word alpha, submissive men drag in a bunch of additional baggage they (possibly) don’t intend.

I’ve not seen a ball gag with formal wear before, but it makes for a nice combination. Glad to see they color coordinated it as well. This image is from Men in Pain.

Love v’s Sex (hot sweaty kinky glorious sex)

The Girl on the Net has an interesting guest post entitled ‘Choosing Love Over Kink.’ You can go read it for yourself, but the title is pretty self-explanatory. It’s written by someone who is clearly deeply kinky but has chosen to settle down with someone who isn’t.

My initial reaction was to think of all those bloggers, forum posters and Savage Love letter writers who are stuck in unsatisfying relationships with exactly this problem. It’s easy to point to examples where sexual incompatibility has destroyed relationships. Yet one has to be careful about observational bias (aka the Streetlight Effect). Unhappy people tend to be loud and vocal. Kinky people who have successfully suppressed their desires for the sake of a specific relationship are typically not going to be posting online about that fact. Perhaps the world is full of sexually incompatible people with great relationships based on other factors.

That said, I am one of life’s natural cynics, and find that unlikely. It’s true that all relationships involve negotiation and nobody gets exactly what they want. Unimportant things can be discarded while important things can be compromised. Unfortunately, sex is an incredibly important thing, and there’s no compromise involved in this story. In fact, if you’re fundamentally sexually mismatched, I’m not sure compromise is even possible. It’s also my observation that points of tension in a relationship don’t become less important over time. They’re the bit of grit that rolls around jamming up the works.

Of course as a single guy who has never been married, perhaps I should keep my observations to myself. I’m not exactly the go-to expert here. While I ponder that depressing thought, I’ll leave you with a scene of domestic bliss. Hopefully this gentleman’s idea of sexual compatibility involved nipple clamps and ironing.

I’m afraid I don’t have an original source for the image. I found it on the Seductive Domme tumblr.

Quirky and kinky

I was done with posts on public play, temporarily at least. Then a commenter left me a pointer to an intriguing video that I just had to follow-up.

Regular readers may remember the story of the lady in London leading her man by a leash. It generated an unusual amount of media speculation and, as I covered in a follow-up post, turned out to be an art project. In that follow-up post I featured this image and jokingly commented that “I wonder what artistic statement they’re making?” I’d assumed it was a conventional kinky image, or possibly a provocative shot from a photographers portfolio. As it turns out, thanks to my very helpful commenter, I now know it actually was a more extended artistic work.

It’s taken from a 2 minute film entitled The woman and her Man, featuring a lady, her helpful submissive and a street preacher. It’s a quirky piece, kinky but not freaky, gently amusing and kind of cute. No Oscars will be awarded, but it’s unconventional and I liked it. The creator has a couple of different YouTube channels – ImaginePark and GirlFairytales. The movies and acting are a pretty mixed bag, but if you liked that first movie a couple of similar ones include The Women on the Bench and Famine Relief.

For an accompanying image I thought I’d step it up from my previous subtle fare. In some of the earlier comments we were debating where exactly the line on public play should be drawn. Here’s a good example of something that everyone can hopefully agree on. It’s hot, but probably isn’t acceptable outside the Folsom Street Fair.

I’ve actually failed to trace the original source of this image. I believe that’s Mistress Madeline and that Folsom is the only place that would allow this kind of public scene. But if anyone has any better information, feel free to let me know.

PDP

I’ve written fairly often on what I term PDS – Public Displays of D/S. Generally I come down on the side of letting shared public spaces be truly shared, rather than giving the majority veto power on their use. Kinky people are tax paying members of the public after all (or as Louis C.K. might put it).

However, this New Zealand man seems to have drifted into PDP – Public Display of Perversity. He was in his home standing at a window, when…

Burley placed a balaclava over his head before committing an indecent act using a sex toy, clothes pegs and a leather whip.
…
“The victim and her two friends look out the kitchen window several times as they could not believe what they were seeing,” it said.

I don’t want to make light of it, as clearly this was an asshole thing to do. But that bit about having to look several times (along with her friends) did make me smile. Apparently he was excited at the idea of getting caught. Given he’s now looking at jail time, I imagine that excitement might have diminished slightly.

His choice of implements no doubt added some extra weirdness to the story for most people, but I’ve had a lot of (consensual) fun over the years with those toys. Clothe pegs as zippers can be particularly interesting, as Aiden Starr shows below. I particularly like the red marks running down his legs from where they have just been ripped away.

This image is from this shoot for Divine Bitches. You can see another image of her putting the zipper in place here.

Missed opportunity

Advice columns have become far more entertaining thanks to the spread of the internet and the more open sexual culture that has gone along with it. Instead of questions on gift etiquette or workplace squabbles, we now get questions about what to do when your friend’s new girlfriend turns out to be your dominatrix.

I don’t think the basic advice given – ‘stop seeing her’ – is necessarily wrong, but the logic and framing of the response is horrible. It would seem like a good opportunity to reduce the stigma of sex work and focus on the work aspect of it. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant or a pro-domme. If you’re overlapping a professional relationship with a social one then there are a few obvious questions to answer. For example: What happens if I need to end just the professional relationship? What information am I comfortable sharing with someone in both circles? Is this likely to lead to a conflict of interest? What are the odds of problems in one form of the relationship spilling over into the other?

It might be that the answers to these questions indicate that there’s not a problem to resolve. I can conceive of some relationships and social groups where mixing in pay for play wouldn’t be an issue, although this particular case doesn’t sound like one. But there’s no reason to make this specifically about sex and and sex work. It’s really about making smart decisions that minimize risk for everyone involved.

Having missed one opportunity the columnist then really screws the pooch by making the blanket statement that ‘sex workers are not notorious for their long, stable relationships.’ So rather than reduce stigma she manages to increase it with a gratuitously offensive stereotype. She might have got the basic answer right, but the rest of the column is a huge fail.

The artwork is by the artist Camille MM. Given the original letter writers description of his sessions, it seems like an appropriate one.

Enjoying the sights

My solution to easy blogging while on vacation is to ~~shamelessly steal~~ promote other great blogs. In this case it’s the work of photographer Natasha Gornik.

This setting should be recognizable to anyone who has visited Central Park in NYC. The horse drawn carriages are the more famous means of viewing the park (and have drawn the ire of the new mayor), but this looks like one of the pedicabs. Typically they carry tourists, but in this case it’s Mistress Alex and Keith who are enjoying the sights.

I love the contrast between the formal and the fetish in the shot. You can read Natasha’s take on shooting it, along with other images from the scene, in her original post.

Just another day at the office

This rather playful image is from Mistress Jadis. It’s not the typical pro-domme shot (despite the latex) and I like it particularly for that reason.

Mistress Jadis actually has a couple of different galleries. Her archive images are far more traditional domme shots – lots of her looking wonderful in latex and corsets. Her more recent gallery is themed in this very 40’s and 50’s style. Purely on a simple button pushing capacity, the traditional shots do more for me. I like the aesthetics of the retro-shots, but it’s not a look that features in many fantasies. However, if I was in the Sydney region and looking for a pro-domme, it’d be the retro-shots that would catch my eye. The reason being that every pro-domme has a gallery of her looking great in fetishwear. Featuring something different, something lighthearted and playful, that’s intriguing. It makes me wonder what kind of fun and interesting sessions we could do together.

The photographer for this was Bexterity. If you’re in the Sydney region and intrigued by Mistress Jadis then her list of interests is available here.

Whipping a ‘slave’

Apparently my posts on femdom and race are like buses. Nothing for ages, then you get two at once. My previous post was intended to be a one off, but then I spotted this article by British comedian Ava Vidal on a visit she made to London’s Club Pedestal. It’s an odd article, written by someone who clearly isn’t kinky. Unsurprisingly she therefore finds the whole thing strange. She finishes it by talking about race, and her discomfort with the idea of whipping someone and calling them slaves. Whatever your reaction to her comments (and I’m intentionally omitting mine from this post), it is interesting to see how somehow outside the kinky bubble might react to play that kinksters wouldn’t give a second thought to.

I’ve never attended Club Pedestal but it’s a fairly well known event. I was therefore surprised to read this in the article…

A white lady hands me a whip and tells me to beat the black man standing next to me…. later have a conversation with the black man and it turns out that this is his first time too.

It sounds incredibly dangerous to give a novice a whip and expect her to use it on another novice. Particularly in a space with other people around. She could severely hurt the submissive or take out the eye of a passerby. As the back of the man below shows, it’s possible to inflict some serious damage with a real single-tail. I can only hope that she was really given a flogger or a crop and is using whip to mean anything she could swing and hit with.

Unfortunately I’ve no idea who created this image. If you can help me attribute it correctly then please leave a comment. If found it on the Dominalova tumblr.

People tell me I’m white…

I really liked this image when I first stumbled across it. She has a beautiful smile, and their contrasting skin tone is aesthetically pleasing. I was less enamored of it when I dug into its source and discovered it came from a site called Black Girls White Slaves. Even though the photograph was unchanged, the fetishization of the racial elements spoiled it somewhat.

I don’t write about racial kinks here. I’m probably the least qualified person in the world to do so. I’m a white guy who grew up in a small English village, went to a very traditional homogeneous English university and now works in tech on the US West coast. That makes me both privileged and ignorant in this area. I have an instinctive discomfort when confronted with race based kinks, but I’ve never analyzed that deeply enough to figure out if it’s rooted in genuine intellectual problems with them or simple liberal squeamishness with the idea of making an issue of race.

That said, I will make one observation that’s very indirectly related to this area: When watching US television, you can always instantly tell the relationship pairings. It doesn’t matter if it’s an advertisement or a sitcom. There will always be a mix of races, and almost zero interracial couples. I didn’t set out to observe this, it was simply something that was obvious to me when I moved here and was surrounded by US culture. I don’t think it’s true for the actual people living here, but it’s certainly true for what they get to watch on television. I wouldn’t claim that as a causal factor in racial fetishes, but I suspect it’s symptomatic of the kind of cultural influences that create them.

For those that don’t recognize it, the post title is from a long running joke on the Colbert Report. Stephen will start with “I don’t see race. People tell me I’m white…” and then finish with some punchline featuring a white stereotype. For example – Now, I don’t see color. People tell me I’m white and I believe them because police officers call me “sir”. Or, check out this clip for another example.

A stroll in the city (update)

A couple of days ago I blogged about a woman spotted in London taking a man for a walk at the end of a leash. There was a lot of social media speculation about who they were and what they were doing. Well apparently the ‘mystery’ has been solved. According to this article in the Independent it was an acting/art project designed to provoke and film the reaction of passersby. The guy was the ‘director’ who’d recruited the woman via an acting website.

Hmmm. It reminds me of an artistic project I’ve been trying to put together. It’s a very provocative, but very creative piece. Absolute nothing, and I want to make this very clear, absolutely nothing pervy about it. I’m looking for 2 or 3 talented actresses willing to challenge their ideas of what theater can be. Nobody with latex or leather allergies please. Past experience with knots would be a bonus, as would trapeze skills and small hands. I’ll provide the male talent, the location and a very detailed script. Obviously as a starving artist I can’t offer any monetary compensation, but I can promise an unforgettable experience.

While I wait for the applicants to come flooding in, this story does give me a chance to post another PDS scene. From the sign this looks like it was shot in Portland, but I’ve zero background on it. I wonder what artistic statement they’re making?