Thoughts – Page 23 – Femdom Resource

Domme School

Vice magazine recently posted an article describing several days in the life of a NYC pro-domme. The purported set-up was one of their writers following the domme with a view to becoming a professional herself. But the actual format is much the same as it always is for these type of articles, offering readers a chance to look at someone else’s weird and twisted lifestyle.

I’m in two minds about the article itself. On one hand the writer seemed to enjoy herself, and it’s certainly not written from a negative point of view. Coming from something called ‘Vice magazine‘ that’s probably not unexpected. However, I find it hard to imagine a vanilla but potentially kinky person reading it and thinking “Yes, that sounds like something I want to get involved in.” There’s an undercurrent of sleaziness that comes through to me, although I struggle to put my finger on exactly why that is. Perhaps its comments like this one.

The whole scene makes me feel like I’m an actress in a really bad porno. It’s pretty cool.

Having a session that feels like a bad porno movie definitely doesn’t sound cool to me. And in fact, setting the tone of the article aside, the main thing that stood out for me was how incredibly different my sessions are from the ones described. I don’t role-play at all, and my interactions with the domme are both lighter (chatting and joking in early parts of the session) and darker (floating in subspace after some intense pain later on). I also tend to involve a lot more equipment and tools, utilizing everything from simple needles and clamps through to custom dungeon furniture. The type of play in the article sound like a kind of sexual community theater. Where I always feel mine are more like a cross between extreme sports and medieval torture.

That contrast led me to two different conclusions. The first was that it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming most people play in a way at least vaguely similar to your own preferences. I always get annoyed when non-kinky people pigeon-hole BDSM as simply leather, whips and chains, but I’m probably guilty of doing a similar thing at a different level. It’s easy to forget just how big the kink universe really is. The other conclusion was that a good pro-domme must posses an incredibly ability to shift quickly between different head spaces. I tend to think of the domme skill-set as being a highly technical one: How to do a rope suspension; how to wield a single tail; what’s a safe way to do cutting and piercing. I’m very aware of these kind of technical skills in each and every session. What I don’t see is the transition between sessions and the mental gymnastics needed to create new moods and session themes. Offhand it’s hard to think of another job that requires quite that level of versatility.

Image is taken from page 5 of Vice Magazine article.

What are you?

The terminology in BDSM is always a source of confusion for me, and in particular the labels people attach to themselves and each other. I remember joining fetlife and being stumped by the mutually exclusive set of options they provided. I think my choices included submissive, bottom, masochist, slave, fetishist and kinkster. I kind of get masochist and fetishist. But what’s the difference between submissive and bottom? Or submissive and slave? Where does kinkster fit in? And why are these mutually exclusive decisions? Can I not have an ‘All of the above’ option?

I was therefore happy to stumble on this post by the very knowledgeable Irene Boss which gives her thoughts on the definitions of these terms. From a personal perspective I also particularly enjoyed the following comment in the article.

It is not uncommon for me to bond (and become friends) with a submissive masochist who also digs bondage, which is the rarest and most enjoyable breed of client for me.

I think that combo of labels captures my particular predilections fairly well. So while I’m guessing it’s unlikely I’ll ever be friends with Irene Boss, it’s nice to know I might make an enjoyable client! Although I am a little surprised by the rarity, as she observes it, of that specific kinky wiring.

When it comes to the D side of the equation, there are an equally mixed set of labels: Dominant, Mistress (or Master), Top and Sadist. But it seems people feel a lot more relaxed about using these interchangeable, or at least that’s my impression. Sadist has a very clear and distinct definition, but the other three get used and swapped fairly freely. I wonder if that’s down to the existence of professional dominants, who are happy to blur their personal boundaries in order to work with a wide variety of clients. Or if it’s a natural outcome that flows from the attitude of a typical dominant personality. i.e. Less obsession with labels and less need to carefully categorize their preferences.

Of course none of this even touches on the idea of a switch, which adds a whole new dimension to the matrix!

So what are you? And do you think the label is useful or matters in anyway?

An illustration of a Mistress/Top/Dominant/Sadist/Kinkster/Fetishist with a Slave/Submissive/Bottom/Masochist/Fetishist/Kinkster (strike all that aren’t applicable depending on your preferences).

OK, so I’ll admit, the image doesn’t relate to much to the text. But I liked it and wanted some eye candy to end the post!

Women and porn

I think as blog post titles go, that’s got to rate as a pretty brave one. Half the world’s population and one of its most popular and controversial subjects, all covered in one post. Fortunately for any readers out there, I’m not going to venture many of my thoughts. Instead I’m going to link to a couple of articles I stumbled upon within a few hours of each other this evening. I should also point out this post is not related to female domination at all. If you’re looking for a post on that, then be patient and I’m sure one will be turning up very shortly. This is just me pointing towards a couple of articles on sex, women and pornography that I thought were intriguing to compare and contrast.

The first one is from the British paper the guardian, and is about women and pornography addiction. It annoyed the hell out of me. It’s a typical sex negative article, packed with underlying assumptions about pornography and the people who create and use it. The writer even manages to imply that masturbating to pornography is comparable to a heroin habit. Obviously any addictive behavior that negatively impacts your normal life is a bad things, but the clear agenda of this articles author tainted the entire piece.

The second one is from Miss Maggie Mayhem, a writer and porn performer, and describes how she found herself masturbating to Penn Jilette (of Penn and Teller fame). I was still grumpy from the porn addiction article when I read this, and it managed to cheer me up and put a big smile on my face. The positive, happy and unapologetic way she discussed her sexuality and pornography was a welcome breath of fresh air after the previous rubbish I’d read. It’s a long article, but well worth reading in my opinion.

I live so much of my virtual life on the Internet at sites that are kink and sex positive, that it’s sometimes easy to forget how many negative viewpoints are out there. The communities I inhabit consider a controversial topic to be if incorporating excrement into a scene is a safe or sane thing to do. Or what are sensible limits to adhere to when experimenting with breathplay. I try to imagine those topics being addressed in and coherent thoughtful manner by a mainstream publication and my brain starts threatening to explode. There’s a lot of ‘fertilizer feminism’ out there as Maggie amusingly puts it, and I’m grateful to her, and women like her, for speaking up with their alternative point of view.

And with that, I declare this minor deviation from the regular programming at an end. Normal femdom service will be resumed forthwith.

Needles and Thread

This is one of those infrequent posts where I bring you a little bit of original content courtesy of myself and the amazing Lady Lydia. It’s not quite as extreme as the previous session I posted, but as the title suggests, it does involve needles and piercing. So anyone who is a little squeamish about that kind of thing might to not want to click through the link below.

In the week prior to the session I’d been on vacation and had managed fit in a little playtime with Miss Fenne Demore. That resulted in an enjoyable but fairly ‘light’ session – BDSM foreplay if you will. This is certainly no criticism of Miss Fenne. We didn’t know each other and weren’t playing in a space where we could really properly cut loose. But it did leave me hungry for a little more of an intense experience, and that’s something Lydia can always deliver. Given this goal, it seemed an opportune time to try a little suturing, an activity that had been on my to do list for quite a while. Lydia was happy to oblige, and if you follow this link you’ll be able to see exactly how things worked out.

An extreme scene

This post is a little outside my usual material, as it features a scene description with a female submissive and at least one male dominant. However, I found it a thought provoking read and I’m guessing others may feel the same way.

The scene in question is a lengthy interrogation, featuring several dominants and submissives, and incorporating a lot of the techniques the US military have used. For example, stress positions, loud noise, sensory deprivation, breath control and, the really controversial one, water boarding. Emma Jane, one of the female submissives interrogated, wrote a detailed description of it on her blog. It’s an intense read.

This is the second time in the last few days that I’ve linked to what I would call an extreme activity. The previous post on scat and toilet play generated some interesting comments and can be read here. Both of these activities fall well outside the conventional BDSM play that takes place every day in bedrooms and pro-domme dungeons. But speaking from a personal perspective, I actually have a much easier job understanding the appeal of the scat play than I do this interrogation scene. I may not want to be a human toilet, but I get the buttons it pushes in terms of worship, service, intimacy and a kind of personalized objectification (if that’s not a contradiction in terms). This kind of interrogation seems to go way beyond that typical power exchange, and into a brutal stripping away of power. I always feel that even in very cruel sadistic play, the dominant has some sort of emotional connection with the submissive. It might be a twisted complex connection, but it’s still there. This scene appears to try and do everything possible to remove that, which makes it really difficult for me to get into and understand their headspace.

This isn’t to say I don’t understand the appeal of interrogation scenes. I can certainly imagine role playing an exciting scene with sadistic secret policewomen in their underground torture cellar (to pick a random example from my fevered imagination). Some old fashioned electrodes on the testicles or needles under the fingernails seems so much more personal and understandable.

I also struggle a little with the idea of doing water boarding scenes. Not from a safety or play perspective, but from their current political context. It makes me sick to think that the US military has tortured prisoners, and it somehow seems wrong to adopt their latest techniques for our ‘entertainment’. I realize this isn’t an entirely rational viewpoint, but closeness in time and space to awfulness does seem to matter. Role playing a Vietnam POW torture scene today might be weird, but I don’t think anyone would be too upset. It would have been a lot more troubling to do in back in the 60’s when American POW’s were actively suffering.

Anyway, while I might not personally be queuing up for an afternoon in the woods with this group of dominants, I do admire the courage and dedication it take to go through with this type of play. Not to mention the level of trust needed, and the skill required to pull it off properly. My thanks to Emma Jane for the fascinating write-up.

Hard Limits

I don’t have a lot of hard limits when I play. This certainly isn’t to say I’m any kind of super-submissive or ultra-masochist. There are definitely activities I sometimes struggle with. It’s just that I’m wired to enjoy D/s and power exchange, and therefore like almost any kind of interaction that facilitates that. I think this tends to be in contrast to those submissives who fetishize a certain style of play or type of activity, and therefore have much stricter lists of what is and what isn’t acceptable. Plus, I’m a big believer in Sir Thomas Beecham’s dictum: “In this life try everything once, except incest and country dancing.”

However, one hard limit I do have is scat play. I get it on an intellectual level. After all, I do like piss play, and in someways that can have a similar dynamic. But just on aesthetic and health grounds, I can’t never ever see me putting scat play on the menu (if you’ll excuse the expression). That said, I was interested to read Mistress Kendra Knight’s writing on ‘Shit-play and toilet slavery in dominance/submission‘. It didn’t change my mind at all about the activity, but hearing about it from a well known dominant and a couple of her slaves did give an insight into the mindset of people who do enjoy it. I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear them use such words such as spiritual, sensual and sacrament in the context of eating excrement. And even more surprised to see someone inspired to write poetry written about it.

Note that the article is text only, split over 6 pages, with no pictures, apart from of the beautiful Mistress Kendra herself. But despite the lack of graphic images, the text is fairly explicit in describing this extreme activity and it’s probably best avoided if you’re squeamish.

Tura Satana

I was sad to read of the death of Tura Satana earlier this week. She had roles in a number of TV shows and movies, but she’s most famous for her leading role in Russ Meyer’s movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! If you’ve never seen it, the title and tagline – Superwomen! Belted, buckled and booted! – should give you a pretty good idea of what it was all about. She played the role of Varla, a karate chopping go-go dancer, who dominates both the movie and every other character in it. I wouldn’t go as far as John Waters, who described it as “beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made”, but it’s certainly a classic movie that reaches out far beyond it’s exploitation roots. Her brilliance in it created an iconic image of a tough powerful female, and that character has been very influential in pop-culture ever since.

The Guardian published an obituary that gives some more background on her life. Apparently she became a nurse after she retired from acting. That must have made for some interesting medical appointments. I imagine it would have been quite a shock to go in for a routine checkup and find yourself in the hands of Nurse Satana!

Kink in the 19th Century

There’s an interesting article in salon on kink and sexuality in the Victorian era. I always knew that there was a fair amount of hypocrisy around sex in Victorian times, but didn’t realize it was quite as extreme as the article describes. The huge number of prostitutes in Victorian London is well documented, but I hadn’t realized it was actually legal. Or that there were even gay male brothels.

However, some alarm bells did go off for me when I read this section of the article…

…..these gentlemen who went to private schools like Eton were whipped for punishment as kids. If they did something wrong they would be publicly birched — a collection of birch branches tied together would be used. The boy’s pants would be taken down and he’d be bent over this special block and it would be public. Any schoolboys who wanted to could come and watch. For many of these boys, of course, it was traumatic, but for other boys it’s an erotic experience. It developed into this masochistic eroticism.

This is a common line of reasoning for the origin of kinky desires, and it always strikes me as facile and simplistic. I don’t remember having needles shoved into me on a regular basis as a child. Or being electocuted, or tied up, or screwed in the ass, or suffocated, or whipped, or pissed on. But I enjoy all those things as an adult.

It’s no doubt possible that some Victorian gentlemen were hooked on flagellation from their early experiences. But it seems much more likely to me that they were simply kinky people utilizing one of the common and well understood ways of the era to inflict pain. If you enjoy power exchange and D/s play, you’ll reach out for convenient tools to create the dynamic. In an era before places like the stockroom existed then a collection of birch branches is a natural pervertible. Nobody is going to be playing with an ErosTek unit when Edison and Tesla are still fighting over the correct way to build an electrical grid. And in a time before widespread use of antiseptics, and when Lister’s pioneering work was still considered a fad, sticking needles in someone or cutting them was never going to be a popular style of play.

The psychology of BDSM and kink is both fascinating and complex. I think it does it a disservice to reduce it to a form of very basic imprinting.

The vintage femdom image is taken from this post on the ‘call me Miss’ tumblr site.

Crediting Content Creators

I sometimes feel a little guilty about the parasitical nature of this site. I try to add what little value I can to the content I post via my random thoughts and opinions. But at the end of the day, the only reason people are going to keep coming back is for the photographs, artwork, articles and links I provide. I edit and I collate, but I don’t typically create.

Hence, I make every effort I can to credit the original creators of the work I post. If I feature a pro-domme I always try to link to her web site and session scheduling information. If it’s an artist or fetish site I try and direct people to where they can see and possibly purchase more content. I also make every effort to identify the content I’m posting, even it’s not obviously watermarked. TinEye is very useful for that, as is many years of looking at far too much femdom porn. In general I like to think that anything I post here is a net positive for the original owner, even if only by a small amount.

I therefore find it incredibly annoying when I spot sites re-posting a lot of the images I’ve published here, but dropping any mention of where it’s originally from or who it features. Obviously with so many blog and tumblr sites posting and re-posting the same images, it’s often hard to be sure of exactly who lifted what from where. But sometimes based on timing or the sequence of images posted, it’s a fairly obvious trail of evidence to follow.

If you’re going to re-post images from here, and I have managed to give some attribution, then please carry it along in the re-post. A link here would be nice, but given I’m in no position to be claiming ownership of anything, far from essential. The content creators on the other hand, really do deserve to be credited properly. And your readers will thank you for the extra background information.

Whipping

Mistress Katya had some poetic words to say about her whips on a recent forum post.

This may also sound absurd but each whip holds a personality within them. My morgan is playful but to the point. It’s my all purpose whip and my most comforting one. It’s like carrying a teddy bear with you. I feel “off” if I don’t have it with me. My Tellas are a little more serious. Sexy black and broken in, they mean business. When I’m using these, it’s because I want to send a message.

The Patterson dragon tail is playful in a very sadistic manner. It’s cute, sexy and will fuck you up. The burn is different then the other whips, it’s like kissing your lover after he ate a ghost pepper. That kiss that burns forever but feels so good as well.

Mistress Katya in a forum post at ‘The Hang’

This caught my eye for two reasons. Firstly, it’s just damn sexy. I want to be in on the receiving end of the kiss that burns forever. To relax and linger in her whips embrace.

Secondly, I think it’s a beautiful illustration of the pleasure a top can take in her tools and from a type of play. There’s often a lot of attention payed to the reaction of the submissive: adrenalin, endorphins, marks and bruising, sub-space, etc. But speaking personally, one of a key components of a good scene for me is that the top is also really enjoying themselves. I don’t want to be with someone just going through the motions. A good scene should be highly sensual, a gratification of senses for both the sadist and the masochist. Ideally it should be a shared intimate act. Not simply a fun fair ride for the submissive.