Tag: Thoughts

Fantasy Feedback

I received an interesting comment in response to my recent post on the slippery slope of kinky fantasy. That’s sadly not an actual slope involving a lot of lube and frothy frottage fun, but instead the idea that indulging light kinky fantasies inevitably leads to heavier and heavier ones. The comment from Bb was that her fantasies had actually gone in the opposite direction. Watching and engaging in physical BDSM play had moderated her fantasies, resulting in a softer approach.

That got me thinking about the interplay between fantasies and reality. I wonder if anyone has ever studied people who just fantasize versus people who fantasize and use porn versus people who physically play and explore their fantasizes? I think there’s an intuition from the more socially conservative crowd that moving from fantasy to enacting a fantasy is part of the that slippery slope that leads to ever further depravity. In actuality kinky play and its interaction with our imagination is a lot more complex than that. It seems to be a circular feedback mechanism with the two playing off each other in non-obvious and complex ways.

Personally, physical play has clearly altered my fantasies in interesting ways. For example, I used to fantasize a lot about corporal play, and now almost never do. I still like doing it in sessions. I like the headspace it creates, the marks it leaves and the drama of it. But it’s rarely something I now dwell on in sexy alone time. On the flip side, my bondage fantasies have got far more elaborate over time. I think that’s probably because I’m physically limited to what I can do with a screwy lower back and a minor case of claustrophobia. Fantasy therefore fills in for me in an area I can only partially explore.

People worry that indulging a fantasy in reality will escalate it. My experience has almost been the opposite. Either the fantasy becomes grounded and therefore less compelling to fantasize about (while still being fun to do) or it becomes differentiated from reality, and therefore indulged in a more abstract way. I can enjoy it as a pure fiction of my own creation, rather than something I might actually want to try one day.

Talking of elaborate fantasy bondage, here’s a nice example from Jim of Switzerland.

The Philosophers Stone

Alchemists believed that there was a mystical substance that could transmute any element into any other element – the Philosophers Stone. The medieval theory for this was that the stone was formed from the intrinsic material of the world, the fundamental base that all other things were made from, and hence provided a means to dissolve and reconstitute materials as the alchemist desired. Since most alchemists got funding by pitching get-rich-quick schemes to wealthy patrons, that typically meant turning lead into gold.

Sadly the philosophers stone doesn’t exist, but the concept got me thinking about it in the context of kinky activities and sexual desire. I like a lot of different activities, which on the face of it are all fairly different. Being hit with sticks is very different to having needles pushed through the skin, which is very different to being pissed on. I enjoy them all, but why? Is there a common element that might not be obvious but that underpins their appeal? Do kinky people have a personal philosopher’s stone?

I’m sure some of you at this point are thinking – “What’s this idiot talking about? Obviously female domination is the key underlying element. Hasn’t he looked at his site name recently?” That’s fair but I think wrong. From a personal perspective there are lot of femdom scenes that do nothing for me. For example, punishment scenes, interrogations, pony play, foot worship, ABDL, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who unconditionally likes femdom in all its different forms. It’s too broad an area. The same argument applies to pain. I like it, but only in certain contexts. I’m not someone who enjoys a good beating for its own sake. I also enjoy scenes that don’t feature pain, so that can’t be the intrinsic element to my kink.

It was actually the picture below that gave me a clue to what I think is my fundamental base kink – contrasts. I love activities that clash contrasting dynamics. Sensual sadism, caring objectification, tease and denial, restriction with sensory overload. Cuckolding is hot as it combines love with betrayal. Punishment beatings are not because I associate them purely with negative emotions. Watersports are hot as they combine intimacy with objectification. Ballbusting is not (to me) as it seems predominantly about taking pain. In the case of the picture below it’s the contrast of beauty with severity. It’s the delicate feminine features of Lady Mephista set against the severe colors and form of her military outfit.

I think this is interesting, because understanding the basis for desires helps you to explore them. It gives me a clue about what else I might like, or how I could modify scenes to work better. I might not enjoy ballbusting on its own, but maybe doing it as a giggling schoolgirl roleplay – with the domme having fun teasing and picking on me – would add the contrast I’d need to make it work.

Does anyone else think they have a kinky philosophers stone? A base element that might not be immediately obvious but that threads through all their fantasies and play scenes?

Lady Mephista is a Berlin based domme whose professional site can be found here.

Final Thoughts on Two Kinkster Problem

This isn’t particularly femdom, but I think it’s interesting, so allow me to return one more time to the thought experiment I described previously.

It was actually inspired by a study Jonathan Haidt described in his book The Righteous Mind (which I’ve mentioned before). He came up with a set of scenarios that violated social norms in fairly disgusting ways, but didn’t actual cause any harm. For example, a man buys a chicken in a grocery store, takes it home and has sex with it before cooking and eating it. Is that morally wrong? Another one featured a family whose pet dog was run over, and rather than simply bury it, they cooked and ate it. He discovered that general disgust at the scenarios was universal, but that moral judgement varied. Wealthy liberal Westerners, brought up to believe in the primacy of the individual, tended to say nothing was wrong if no one was harmed. Almost everyone else outside that specific narrow group took the opposite view. They treated these major violations of social conventions as moral violations. Haidt went on to point out that the liberal western viewpoint of putting the individual first is actually the exception, both through history and in the world today.

I didn’t actually describe a scenario for Mary or Sam, but it’s pretty easy to come up with one that’d fit Haidt’s study. Imagine if they were roleplaying an actual lynching from the Jim Crow era South. I’d expect (hope) that people would find that disgusting but, assuming they never take it beyond the two of them in their playspace, there is no obvious harm to point at. From a purely Utilitarian viewpoint, they’re happy and nobody else is affected. Of course, the assumption that they can 100% compartmentalize their kinks is a big and questionable one.

Given that my readership skews to Western liberal (in the general rather than political sense) and given what I’d read in Haidt’s book, I predicted that most people would think Mark and Sam can’t do any moral harm in the original thought experiment. That did indeed seem to be consensus. I fit that mold myself. But it’s interesting to reflect that it’s an unusual viewpoint. The majority of people across the world and through history would not share it.

As I’ve said before, it’s tough to come up with an image for these kind of posts. Controversial activities tend to have controversial images. I’m going with an old shot from an ageplay scene in Taboo magazine. I’m not ageplay fan myself, but something about this image always worked for me.

The Two Kinkster Problem Revisited

Last week I posed a kinky thought experiment to consider. For clarity, let me restate it here, with a minor modification. The added italic text really should have been in the original version, as it closes a potential area of ambiguity.

“Mistress Mary and Submissive Sam, both risk aware consensual adult kinksters, enter their own deserted, well equipped private playspace and close the door behind them. An hour later they emerge sweaty, breathless and happy. They both tell you that they had a great time, and then go on their way with no ill effects or further interaction. Later you ask them what they did. At this point, is there anything they can say that’ll make you think they did something ethically or morally wrong?”

I suspect most of my readers would answer that there’s nothing they can have done that was ethically or morally wrong. That was certainly the gist of the comments I received, which didn’t surprise me. If you believe that, then you also must be ‘OK’ with extreme roleplays focusing on race, childhood, incest, Nazis, genocide, etc. Because in their hour alone, Mary and Sam might have indulged in the most heinous fucked up roleplay you can possibly imagine.

Note that by ‘OK’ in this context I don’t mean necessarily enjoying the idea of the activity, or wanting to try it yourself. Just that you’d say that no kink that can be done privately between consenting adults can ever be morally or ethically wrong.

I posed the thought experiment as a response to my ‘Pick a Side‘ post and the online debate I’d see about controversial activities. It seemed that the debate about specific activities was often muddied by the bad behavior of those who did them. I felt this thought experiment crystallized the issues more clearly.

In my original post I said that there was no wrong answer to the question, and I do believe that. While I lean to the anything goes side, I think it’s entirely valid to say that there are things that Mary and Sam can do that would be wrong. However, if you believe that, then I also think it’s incumbent on you to consider why you draw a line between activities and why your own favorite activities are OK in this situation. Kinky people are always keen to emphasize the difference between fantasy and reality. If you deny that boundary for some kinks, why not all?

It’s tricky to pick an image for a post like this. What Mary and Sam get up to in private isn’t necessarily something I want to broadcast to my readers. Nazi’s are certainly a controversial topic, but I think shooting a pair of them should be relatively safe, particularly when it’s done by the Lace Panty Commandos.

The Two Kinkster Problem

I’ve finally got time to get back to my post from last week entitled ‘Pick a Side‘. That was all about the morals and ethics of certain kinky activities. Is it reasonable to cast some kinks as wrong or bad, while falling back on the argument of ‘as long as its consensual adults, its OK’  for other kinks?

I got some interesting comments, which prompted me to think more on the issue, and come up with a thought experiment. Let’s call it ‘The Two Kinster problem.’

Mistress Mary and Submissive Sam, both risk aware consensual adult kinksters, enter their own deserted, well equipped private playspace and close the door behind them. An hour later they emerge sweaty, breathless and happy. They both tell you that they had a great time, and you ask them what they did. At this point, is there anything they can say that’ll make you think they did something ethically or morally wrong?

There’s obviously no incorrect answer. I’m just curious what answers or comments readers might have to the question.

When it comes to philosophical questions, I only know of one famous philosopher with a femdom connection  – Aristotle. I’ve covered the story of him and Phyllis previously. This particular image of them is by the French painter Étienne Jeaurat.

Pick a Side

Apologies if you’ve one of the tiny handful of people who follow me on twitter, as this post is going to be a rehash of a twitter rant I posted there recently. The tweets were an experiment to see if I could use twitter threads for thoughts longer than 280 characters, and if I’d get better engagement with them. The answers were respectively ‘not easily’ and ‘no’, so I think blog posts will remain my primary form of expression.

The rant in question was brought about by multiple social media arguments I’d seen on controversial kinky activities. Topics like race play, extreme age play, incest porn/roleplay and nazi outfits. All these arguments ultimately boiled down to two basic viewpoints. On one side was ‘as long as its consensual, adults can fantasize about anything’, on the other was ‘this activity has serious implications and you’re selfish/evil for treating it as way to get off’. I think both of those can be defensible opinions. What struck me as crazy was people flipping between the two depending how they felt about the topic in question.

The ‘as long as its consensual’ view is basically a get of jail free card. It’s a perspective that puts kinky play in its own little bubble, with no obvious relationship between what happens in the bubble and the outside world. If you believe it, then you can do a non-con sex roleplay, and not think you’re encouraging rape. Or beat someone and not spend any time wondering if you’re encouraging violence. That’s a valid viewpoint in my opinion, but it’s important to realize, it’s activity agnostic. You can’t logically claim your kinks live in a bubble where consent is all that matters, but arbitrary other kinks don’t.

On the other side, I think it’s also reasonable to argue that kinks very much interact with a broader social context. For example, one could discuss the intersection of race play and racism. However, if you’re going to do that, it means all kinks have to be considered in that context. That means a lot of kinks become potentially problematic, and require deeper analysis and justification. I typically don’t see anyone out there wanting to do that work for their personal favorite kinks.

In actuality, what consistently happens is that people play the ‘as long as its consensual’ card for their favorite kinks, and then try to withhold it when the activity in question gives them yucky feelings. Which seems broken to me. Either play the card consistently and let others do the same, or don’t play it at all.

In the femdom realm the combination of cross-dressing and humiliation is one of those controversial topics that can trigger a similar ‘consensual adults’ versus ‘this is wrong’ debate. The artwork here is by Voloh.

Differences in Perception

Mark left a thoughtful comment on my last post, emphasizing the difference between professional and lifestyle D/s relationships. The original post was about the focus on man’s pleasure and the male context as the default one at the expense of the female one. His point was that while that’s true for the professional context, it’s not necessarily true for the lifestyle one, where the negotiation, dynamics and goals can be very different. Oddly enough, I actually think we’re both right.

His point about the difference between lifestyle and professional interaction is undoubtedly true, but the latter part of my post was more about the common representation and perception of femdom. And I think it’s pretty clear that the professionals dominate (*ahem*) that sphere. They are who journalists turn to when they want a quote, an interview or a sex advice column on kink. They’re the obvious inspiration for high end fashion shots and for instagram celebrities looking to shock. They’re commercially incentivized to produce glossy appealing imagery, which gets posted all over twitter and websites like this one.

Any regular readers will know that I huge respect and appreciation for pro-dommes – they’ve literally changed my life. But I can’t pretend that they don’t have significant distorting effect on how society perceives femdom and male submission. Good non-professional representations of femdom are rare and hard to find. Certainly not something the average person will regularly encounter.

This is from a series called ‘Strong Women’ by the photographer Marco Tanaglia (found here). I think it’s a good example of my point, as it’s pretty clear what type of strong woman has influenced this image.

Working from Different Baselines

This article – The female price of male pleasure – isn’t femdom and isn’t even recent (Jan ’18). However, I found it thought provoking and it’s my blog, so here it is.

The basic thrust of the article is that men and women operate on very different scales when it comes to sex and pleasure. For men the range is boring to awesome, for women the range is painful/scary/coercive to awesome. That leads to very different baselines and different normal expectations. On top of that, society has conditioned us to make the male expectation the default one, to the point where people don’t even realize other expectations exist, which in turn distorts any discussion about it.

Although it’s  not about kink and femdom, I think the articles basic point is actually equally applicable to them. If you look around at the online representation of femdom, it would be hard to argue that male pleasure isn’t the primary focus of 95% of it. The dicks might be getting squashed, smacked, beaten, locked up, teased or laughed at, but the dick is still the primary focus. It’s ironic that in a realm where the purported focus is female pleasure and male pain, it’s typically still the women clambering around in the uncomfortable outfits while the men get to sit back and soak in the sensations they crave.

I don’t really have any wise words on how to address this. Hell, this blog is just as guilty of perpetuating the status quo. But if a discussion is going to be productive, all parties have to at least be operating with a shared understanding and a common context. So perhaps just acknowledging the different contexts and baselines that are operating here is a useful first step.

It was tricky to pick and image for this particular topic. I figured a dominant woman enjoying both a candle lit bubble bath and a bound silenced slave to drip hot wax onto was a pretty good representation of what should be pleasure for all concerned. This is Goddess Viper,  a pro-domme based in Manila, with the image taken from her twitter feed. My thanks to Lucy Sweetkill for the original article link.

Chemistry over Cash

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post on the topic of pro-domination and the amount taken as tribute. In that post I argued that the number one factor that drove tribute was the local cost of living and property prices. However, that’s not the whole story. If you look just at a single city and take an average across tribute values, you’ll still find a non-trivial variance. I’ve occasionally seen as much as a two times variance in hourly rate within the same metropolitan area. So what gives with that? Is the experience offered by some pro-dommes that much better?

…There’s a slight pause at this point while I strap my flameproof pants on…

In my entirely personal and anecdotal experience, the answer to that question is no. Among the various well established and independent dommes I’ve played with, I’ve never observed a correlation between session quality and tribute rates. I’ve had lots of amazing sessions and I’ve had a few very average sessions, and which was which always came down to personal chemistry and all the other intangibles that  go along with great kinky play. The amount of cash I had to show up with never made any difference. It’s the same story with equipment and general professionalism. I know dommes with mad scientist levels of equipment stuffed into their play space who charge less than dommes who play out of hotel rooms.  I had one domme who was charging 50% over the average San Francisco rate show up two hours late to our session, where Lydia, who charged around the average for Seattle, was never once late in 100+ sessions.

Of course you should never ever haggle over tribute rates. A pro-domme, or a sex worker of any type, can set her rates at whatever she wants and absolutely have that rate respected. If you don’t want to pay it, then don’t contact her. However, don’t be tempted to think that higher necessarily means a better experience. If you’re budget limited, you’ll almost certainly be able to find an amazing domme who doesn’t charge more than the average for her part of the world.

Of course, everything I just wrote applies only to regular professional kinky play. If you’re into findom of the kind depicted by Sardax here, then all bets are off.

Money, money, money

When it comes to paying a professional dominant – the ‘tribute’ in the industry parlance – it’s said that you get what you pay for. My social media feeds frequently features this sentiment expressed in various different ways, both by pro-dommes and their clients. In other words the quality of the dominant and the experience she offers correlates strongly to the size of the tribute she demands. But is this true?

I can obviously only comment from my limited personal experience, which is entirely with independent and well established pro-dommes.  However, within that limited set, I’d say the number one correlation with the tribute amount isn’t the skill of the domme, but the cost of real estate in her location. High cost cities make it expensive to maintain both a playspace and a personal residence. They also tend to have a highly paid client base who can afford higher fees. So Manhattan has always had very high hourly tribute rates. San Francisco wasn’t too bad a decade or so ago, but has become a lot more expensive in recent years.  Seattle isn’t in San Francisco’s league yet, but is beginning to trend in that direction.

Keeping all this in mind, if there are any American submissives out there with cash on the hip, vacation time in the bank, and a kinky itch to scratch, my top recommendation would be to visit Los Angeles. It’s got a huge and talented pro-domme community, but its sprawling layout leads to a cheaper cost of living and significantly lower tribute rates. For example, Isabella Sinclaire is undoubtedly an outstanding domme, with the skills to match anyone in the world. Yet, her rate for 2 hours is (at the time of writing) $500, which is significantly below the SF average and way below the NYC average. She also has an amazing and well equipped play space.

I hated LA when I first visited it back in the 90’s, but it’s probably the one place in America I’d now consider living outside Seattle. If you’ve not been then I definitely recommend it. Just steer clear of the Hollywood tourist traps.

This shot is from Isabella’s instagram feed. Her contact information for scheduling professional sessions is here.