Tag: Thoughts

Oxymoron?

Writing my last post raised a question for me: Is it ever possible to do a consensual blackmail scene? Isn’t it actually an impossibility?

Consensual blackmail is clearly a well established niche in findomme play. The domme gets hold of embarrassing material, either directly from the submissive or by creating it from their interactions, and uses it to threaten the submissive. It might be used as a one-off scene or part of an ongoing dynamic involving regular payment.

The thing that makes me question the consensual element isn’t the role of the domme or the submissive. It’s the need for a third party. Pretty much by definition there must be someone who’d be shocked by the material exposed. Blackmail isn’t effective because of the dynamic between the blackmailer and blackmailee. It works because it leverages the relationship between the blackmailee and the other people in their life. If they don’t care, there is no leverage. But if they do care, then how is this ever consensual? The need for shock and offense seems an intrinsic part of the recipe.

I guess you could roleplay the idea of exposing the information, with both parties agreeing that the final step would never be taken. However, that doesn’t typically seem to be how these things play out. It’d certainly drain a lot of energy out of the scene. Roleplay typically focuses on the context and setting for the scene, not the execution. A teacher/student scene is a roleplay, but the beating is still real.

This artwork is by Lera Balashova, found on her Dribble site.

Mistress Blunt and her finsub

I’m continuing the financial domination theme by linking to this article by Mistress Blunt. It features a lengthy interview with her female financial submissive. That combination of a professional domme, a female submissive and a findomme kink is pretty rare.

I really enjoyed the way the interview unfolded, and their dynamic comes across as both very hot and cute. It really captures the appeal of financial domination, even for those not into it. However, the intensity of the play did make me a little uncomfortable, particularly given that it only started this year (based on comments in the interview). I’m guessing the submissive is a young professional, in a career with a high earnings growth potential. I really hope she doesn’t do anything to cause her future self to curse the foolishness of youth.

I was lucky enough to find myself in a similar position in my career when I moved to the US. In hindsight, there are a lot of things that make me want to reach back in time and slap some sense into the younger me, but fortunately money management isn’t one of them. I always split my finances into essential (food, rent, etc.), discretionary (luxuries, trips, etc.) and investment (saving for retirement). One thing I did right was to be strict about funding my kinky fun purely from the discretionary bucket. Obviously I was hugely privileged and lucky to be able to fund all three, but I’m very glad now that I kept that distinction. I don’t have a financial domination kink, but it would have been very easy to have gone wild splurging on multi-day multi-domme play and lengthy kinky foreign trips.

For me it’s important to always treat professional kinky interactions as a luxury item. That’s not to say kink itself is optional, but paying for it with a professional certainly is. I imagine that it becomes a lot harder to maintain that kind of distinction when your kinks are intimately bound up with money and how its distributed. I can only hope the finsub in question can picture a conversation with her future self and ensure she’s careful to make it a happy one.

This is the beautiful Mistress Blunt, in an image from her gallery page. She’s a NYC based pro-domme whose professional site can be found here and her twitter feed here.

Looking Back

After a decade of blogging I thought it might be interesting to look back and see what has changed.

The obvious answer is that there are a lot less bloggers. I love and appreciate the people on my blogroll, but social media has sucked in a lot of people’s attention and creative output. That in turn has created some interesting knock on effects. When I started blogging I posted and linked to a lot of debates around femdom. They were centered on topics like the invisibility of the domme  in society, the negative perception of submissives, the distorting effect of professional dominance, cliches in femdom porn, etc. Sadly, I’m not sure we’ve improved from a cultural perspective in those areas, but there is less writing about those issues. I think the angst about it has moved to social media and that’s a far more ephemeral medium. It’s hard to capture a serious debate in 240 characters or less, particularly when they’re randomly mashed into a stream of thoughts from dozens of other people.

Another change has been a reduction in curated image and artwork sites. Artists and their fans used to create dedicated sites to collect artwork. Kinky porn companies used to shoot a lot of still imagery and publish galleries from scenes. Now most artists and fans publish via social media and kinky porn tends to focus on video only clips. For someone like myself, with a minor fetish for archiving and collating material, it’s somewhat frustrating. I’ve been less compelled to update my resource links, because there is less ‘permanent’ content to link to.

When I started blogging it felt like the dominant model of the internet was a library that anyone could donate a book to. Now it feels more like a big party house with endlessly swirling conversations, a lot of which feature bad faith actors and paid for guests. Much as I enjoy things like Twitter and Reddit, it doesn’t feel like a healthy change. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and yell at some kids to get off my lawn.

Birthday celebrations should usually be accompanied by cake, so here’s Lucy SweetKill serving one up. I’m not sure this approach is one Emily Post would recommend, but it works for me. Fittingly enough, given the contents of this post, I found this on twitter, via Lucy’s feed. It was photographed by JCPhotoMedia.

Not Like That, Like This

My post from last week entitled Mood Killer triggered some thoughtful comments on the subject of feedback after sessions. It’s an interesting topic that rarely seems to get discussed. Pro-domme websites will often feature lots of positive comments and praise from grateful clients. Femdom sites will host review forums of highly variable quality and value. Yet it’s very rare to see feedback built into the 1 on 1 scene negotiation process. I’ve done a fair number of sessions over the years with different dommes. In all that time I think I’ve been explicitly asked for feedback just twice.

I should make it clear that my thoughts in this post are primarily about professional domination. The lifestyle dynamic, where kink is just a part of a bigger relationship picture, is obviously very different. In that case the motivation for working through issues and trying to solve mismatched desires via feedback is obviously much higher than a purely kink focused professional relationship.

My default approach when I’m playing with someone new and the scene doesn’t click is simply to not see them again. With little invested on either side, walking away is the obvious answer. I think volunteering feedback in that situation would be as pointless as writing feedback after a failed first date. Nobody needs that kind of nonsense in their life. Chalk it up to experience and move on.

It’s trickier with someone where I do feel a spark, but some parts of our scenes don’t quite work. Even with someone I know very well, I’m very reluctant to give negative feedback after a scene. However, there are a few approaches that I think work pretty well in these situations.

Emphasize the positive. This is an obvious move. Emphasize the bits you really enjoyed and make them a focus of your next pre-scene discussion.

Avoid pink elephants. This is the flipside to the above. I’ve found it’s better to totally avoid vaguely negative things in pre-scene discussion. Saying X didn’t really work last time or you’re not fond of Y makes some dommes instantly start thinking about they could fix that problem for you. Now they want to try them! You’ve mentioned the pink elephant and they can’t stop thinking about it.

Use your limits. There’s no reason to have the same set of limits for everyone you play with. They’re a function of trust and negotiation between two people, not a global declaration of your submissive capabilities. Make an activity a limit if it’s really not working for you. This is different to a pink elephant because you’re putting something very clearly out of scope rather than making it sound like a problem to be fixed.

Optimize for the dynamic. It can be tempting to focus on a favorite activity or kinky desire of the moment, but I often find it’s better to go with what works well for the two of you. Better to have an amazing spin on your 2nd favorite thing rather than an average one on your 1st.

Take a hint. Sometimes, despite using all of the above approaches, I’ll still find a domme repeatedly comes back to something that doesn’t really work for me. It might be an emotional response, an activity, an attitude or even just a practical thing around scheduling. Whatever it is, I’ve found the trick is to either make peace with it or walk away. If you’re getting frustrated by a predictable thing, then you can only blame yourself.

When it comes to dommes providing feedback to submissives the options are a little broader. Here’s one who looks pretty happy with the feedback she’s about to deliver. Hopefully he’ll take it in the constructive way it’s intended.

I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for this image. As usual, if you can help me out with that then please let me know via a comment.

Happy Memories

Lack of play has got me thinking about past sessions. In particular I was thinking about the little expressions and sayings that have pushed my buttons and given me a sudden rush of subby happiness. An obvious candidate is ‘Good Boy’ which never fails to please, but others have been less predictable. Below are a few examples taken from experiences earlier this year.

“God, I love masochists.”
This was uttered by a domme less as specific praise to me, and more as a general declamation to the world. At the time I was tied to a chair with my legs spread and I was beginning to space out as she jammed her heels hard into my inner thighs. I think it was my physical arousal and eagerness for the pain that triggered the statement.

“Oh – Owie! Owie! Owie!”
Said in a mock sympathetic and caring tone while the domme was looking into my eyes and doing something vicious to my genitals. That emotive phrase from childhood in the context of a sadistic scene was a great button pushing contrast.

“He follows directions well.”
Not actually said to me directly, but put in a tweet the day before our session. I’d not met the domme before and she was tweeting generally about her session planning process and the new client she was seeing the next day. Seeing myself described that way put me in a happy subby space hours before the session started.

“It’s so wet, and warm, and you’re so, so close.”
Said during some tease & denial play. I was tightly bound and the domme, having trapped my dick between her upper thighs, leaned in to whisper this into my ear. You can probably guess what she was referring to. The memory of her scent and breath on my cheek still gives me a shiver today.

This image has no particular connection to the above quotes, other than the fact I like it and it gives me a similar subby buzz. Clearly from the watermark it’s a Mistress Sophia from NYC, but she appears to have retired from the scene.

The Bug

The big news story of the day is the new strain of coronavirus that has been spreading around the world. With people dying and the economy tanking, it seems somewhat silly to talk about its affect on kink and sex. However, those are the primary subjects of this blog and you get what you pay for, so here we go.

The key question for anyone with either casual play partners or when doing professional sessions is: What level of precaution makes sense? Do you keep going as normal? Stop until we’re told the pandemic has passed? Only do scenes involving full body prophylactics or bullwhips with a reach of longer than 6 feet?

It gets even more complicated for pro-dommes and other sex workers. On one hand getting sick from close interaction is a major risk. On the other, a stream of cancellations and clients being afraid to book means no income. I’ve already seen a lot of social media commentary on this, with a wide variety of emphasis on risk avoidance versus lost opportunities. Some professionals are temporarily relaxing their cancellation penalties to discourage playing while sick. I even saw one suggestion of only seeing clients from certain ‘safe’ areas, both to reduce risk and to reassure clients from those areas that sessions would be low risk.

For those without specific government rules around quarantine, I think everyone has to draw their own lines in the sand. Guidance around washing hands and not touching your face aren’t much help when it comes to deciding on the safety of say genital torture versus smothering. Although I would love to have the Surgeon Generals opinion on that.

The one piece of advice I’d give would be to be as transparent as possible with your play partners. Consent is about making an informed decision, and information is obviously a very necessary part of that. If I have any minor thing pop up in the days before I play, I’ll always email my prospective play partner to let them know. That gives them plenty of time to assess the risk and decide if they want to cancel, reschedule or wait to see how it develops. If I end up too sick to play, they at least they got an early heads-up. Obviously nobody should ever be playing with others if they think they have the new strain of coronavirus, but for other bugs I’ve been surprised at the variety of reactions. Some pro-dommes are OK as long as I can stagger to their playspace, where others have strict rules around staying away until fully healthy.

So share your health information and share it early. If it’s a regular seasonal cold then both parties need to make an informed decision. If it might be COVID-19 then get tested and stay in quarantine if necessary.

This medical themed image is from Domina Contessa Cara. She is based in Essen and her professional site is available here.

Pet Peeve – Contact Form Feedback

Time for another PPPP – Paltego Pet Peeve Post. This time it’s pro-domme contact forms for scheduling sessions. Specifically, the type of contact forms that give little to no feedback to the user. From my experience, that’s 9 out of 10 of them.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, allow me to explain. Rather than having submissives send random and badly structured emails, many pro-dommes have a contact form that elicits the specific information they require. This is a good thing. The problem comes when, after many rounds of editing and proofreading, you say a silent prayer and hit the submit button. At that point almost anything can happen. Maybe it’ll clear all the text and give you no clue if it worked or not. Maybe you’ll get some obscure error code or connection error. Maybe you’ll get a blank page. It’s impossible to predict.  Even if it gives a ‘Thanks for your submission’ type response, you’ve still no idea if it really worked or not. Did it email the info to the domme? Did it delete everything? Or did it just email all my contacts with the fact that I’m interested in exploring watersports, puppy play and like being called a dirty little boy?

What prompted me to talk about this was actually the rare example of a contact form done well. Domina Esme Crane’s – built on Jot Forms – actually emailed me back with all the information I’d just submitted. That not only let me know it’d worked, but also allowed me to see it had got all the relevant information. Genius!

If you follow any pro-dommes on social media you’ll often hear complaints about submissives who are too demanding and expect rapid responses to any communication. I’d suggest one way to reduce that is to remove ambiguity from communication. It you’re not sure if something worked properly or not, it’s always going to be tempting to assuming not and to try it again.

This is the aforementioned Domina Crane in an image from her twitter feed. She’s a San Francisco based pro-domme. Sadly, despite her well executed contact form, it doesn’t look like we’ll manage to intersect on my next visit to the Bay area. Hopefully I’ll be better organized for future visits.

Popping My Cherries

Writing about my decade in kink got me thinking about my kinky firsts over that time. Given I started out as a total kink virgin there have been quite a few. What surprises me in retrospect is how few cherries I actual remember being popped. I don’t remember who gave me my first golden shower or when I received my first pegging. I do remember my first caning – because it was session #1 – but I don’t remember my first paddling, whipping or flogging. I’m going to hope that this is due to the varied kinky life I’ve subsequently led, rather than old age or alcohol induced amnesia creeping up on me. Some new experiences have stayed with me however.

The first piercing. I almost fainted. A short lie down and drink of water was required to recover. Fortunately we persevered and it became one of my favorite activities.

First time in a cage. Made me so relaxed I almost fell asleep. All the reassurance and comfort some people find in bondage, without the discomfort that often comes with lengthy bondage scenes.

My first rope suspension. I had a vision of it being the erotic pleasure of bondage crossed with the fun of a child’s swing. In reality it was more like construction work crossed with roleplaying a side of beef. Rope suspension is tricky, particularly when you’re a somewhat out of shape middle age guy and not a lithe, young and light bondage model.

My first session injury. A chemical scene in 2011 where I triggered back issues that plague me to this day. Admittedly, I’m sure the source of the issues was decades of bad posture hunched over keyboards. The muscle clenching in the session just happened to be the straw that broke paltego’s back.

The first time a domme pulled out a gasmask for me.  My initial thought was – ‘Wow. I’m going to look like a seriously kinky freak. This is some top level pervert stuff we’re into here.’

First time I kissed a domme in a session. A very rare event but it has happened once or twice. Okay. Once. The domme had brought a fancy electrical accessory that made her whole body charged and capable of shocking me. We were having a lot of fun with it and she wanted to see what it’d be like if we kissed and touched tongues. I think I was more nervous doing that than I was when she was sticking needles into my dick.

I’ll finish with an image of a cherry I’ve yet to pop. ‘Forced Bi’ joins cuckolding and cross dressing as activities that have yet to make it into my sessions. I guess you always want to save something for the second decade.

The artwork is by the always amazing Sardax.

Looking Back

As part of my ten year kinkyversary I thought it’d be interesting to look back and try to figure out exactly who I’d played with over that time. I keep all my emails, so in theory I should be able to come up with a pretty accurate list. Actual sessions are way too numerous to count, but as far as people are concerned, I think the total is 37 different pro-dommes. On one hand that seems like a lot, but on the other hand, this is over a decade and spread across 9 different cities.

I wrote last year about my relative success rate in terms of identifying dommes I think I’ll have good session chemistry with. Looking at this list supports the rough estimates I made back then. There were 14 dommes who I played with once and didn’t feel that we had suitable chemistry. At the other extreme, there have been 11 dommes I loved playing with and always reached out to any time our paths crossed. The remaining 12 are dommes I’d like to play more with, but so far time, geography and circumstances have conspired against us.

Two other things also pop out from the list. Firstly, I’m surprised how many dommes on it are now retired from the profession. So if there’s someone you’ve always wanted to play with then I’d encourage you to reach out sooner rather than later. You never know when they’ll decide to hang up their whip (at least from a professional perspective).

The other thing that strikes me is the amazing diversity in styles, techniques and personalities. After all, this isn’t a random list. These are all pro-dommes I researched and decided would be a good fit for my kinks and preferred dynamic. When you browse pro-domme sites and see repeated common lists of activities and equipment you might be tempted to think the variance in play would be small. After all, when you think of other professional services – lawyer, doctor, masseuse  – you don’t expect massive variation between different providers. Yet that’s exactly what you find in the dynamics of a pro-domme session. Even the more creative professions, like a chef or an actor, don’t compare. The best analogy I can think of is a fine artist. An artist will have a distinctive personal style that is common to all their work, but every artist is unique in their own approach.

This is Mistress Eleise De Lacy, someone who definitely falls into the category of people I’d love to play more with, should time and space not conspire against us. We intersected once in Vancouver back in 2013, but since then she has been based in Europe and the opportunity for further play hasn’t presented itself. Should you be similarly constrained, she does have an OnlyFans site you can join for a virtual experience.

Strange Logic

A new documentary by Louis Theroux entitled ‘Selling Sex‘ has been creating a stir in my social media feed. As you might guess from the title, it tackles the subject of sex work, following three women involved in the industry. Most of the sex workers I follow were not impressed. This thread by Lola Ruin and this tweet by Mistress Evilyne are pretty indicative of the feedback I saw.  Even the people involved in it were not happy.

I’ve not seen the show so I can’t review it. Instead I want to review a review of it. Specifically, this review in the Guardian by Lucy Mangan. I’m sure if you asked Lucy she’d claim her article, like the show, was a balanced and nuanced take on a tricky subject. Yet I think her final paragraph, containing the sentences below, show just how illogical and confused people can be when it comes to sex work.

The true question is how we define coercion or exploitation. The aim of the law’s definition is surely to ensure that anyone selling his or her body is doing so willingly, as a matter of absolutely free choice. Whether this can be said of any of the women here, I am not sure.

The idea of selling your body is not only a tired cliche but also makes no sense. A sex worker no more sells their body that does an athlete, a fashion model or a nurse. Like all those professions, a sex worker uses their body and their brain to provide a service. At no point before, during or after the transaction does a client own any part of their body. Possibly used underwear or sweaty athletic wear might be purchasable, should both parties tastes run in that direction, but that’s a whole different dynamic.

Logically, if having sex implies some transfer of ownership, then the same must be true regardless of the involvement (or not) of a fee. So does Lucy think that a wife having sex with her husband results in him owning her body? Is she a fan of bringing back the idea of Coverture more widely? It would seem an unusual position for a Guardian journalist to adopt.

The other strange part of that final paragraph is the bar she sets for doing sex work – ‘a matter of absolutely free choice.’ How many of us do our jobs out of absolutely free choice? I love my job, but I’d drop it tomorrow if I had the financial independence to make an absolutely free choice. That’s why it’s my job and not my hobby.

Coal mining is a dangerous, dirty and physically challenging job. As a result miners are often lauded as blue collar hero’s, taking on tough work to put food on the table for their families. Are they doing that as an absolutely free choice? Maybe we should we shut down the mines until we’re 100% sure of that. The idea that miners don’t understand the choices they make would be rightly criticized as patronizing and insulting. Yet people like Lucy are happy to infantilize sex workers and imply that they other people’s judgements (the law) should replace the workers own choices. Instead, shouldn’t we be celebrating sex workers for the difficult job they choose to do?

This is a long post spun from just a few sentences in a review of a show I’ve not even seen. Yet those few sentences seem illustrative of how even intelligent people can have internalized damaging and illogical views on sex work. From the online feedback that seems to be a problem the show’s creators shared.

I’ve no idea what’s an appropriate image to accompany this kind of post. Given I mentioned Lola Ruin at the top of it, I’m going to use that as an excuse to feature a lovely shot of her (from her twitter feed).