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| | The Sexual Fetish World | | | Friday, October 16, 2009 (1:50 PM)
(I'm feeling creative) | | The Sexual Fetish World
June 22, 2009 by Richard Block
Sexual Behavior The Internet Has Brought a Whole New World of Wierdness into the Home
Freud said the only truly abnormal sexual behavior was total abstenence, Freud didnt have the internet in his time or he might have had a different opinion. The amount and variety of the sexually bizzare on the internet exceeds any previous imagined venture.
There are sites for every fetish and desire, not matter how unusual or peverted that a person can imagine. Every body part is somehow turned into a sexual sensory area, foods and syrups become condiments to be used on a partner(s) and whips, chains and restraints are now mildly
interesting instead of the once more taboo desires they once were.
The onslaught of the truly disgusting is also only a google search away, many of these sites involve such disgusting acts that it is hard to imagine that anyone finds it arousing and is only there for shock value. Every and anything a human can imagine has a web site, usually with video that will show it, from beastiality, to domination to spiked heels and rubber dolls, to cross dressing and that doesnt even touch transexual and transgender or hundreds of other different venues to explore.
In 2006 world wide porn revenues exceeded $97 Billion, with China, South Korea and Japan leading the way in revenue for porn. And with no end in sight the revenues will continue to grow, sex sells and with the internet it sells a lot. It is now so easy and accessable that literally anyone with a computer and an internet connections can view almost any type of sexual fetish possible.
Now this article isnt a sermon about the evils of porn or sexuality, not at all sex is normal and healthy and is a basic as breathing and should be engaged in between consenting adults as often as possible. Our lifes are short enough as it is and denying a basic need and something as pleasurable as sex is stupid and harmful.
However with that being said, where did some of this stuff come from, I mean I am open minded but some of this stuff on the internet is horrific and these people need to be on meds for it, I mean some serious stuff like Lithium and years and years of therapy.
Barring that I am sure they will open a few more web sites....................
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| | A Mother of a 12-year-old Girl Lets a Man Train Her Daughter as a Dominatrix | | | | Friday, October 16, 2009 (1:49 PM) | | A Mother of a 12-year-old Girl Lets a Man Train Her Daughter as a Dominatrix
September 26, 2009 by DZBO
DZBO Published Content: 1Total Views: 1Fans: 2View Profile | Follow | Add to Favorites Single pageFont SizeRead comments (2) Share Popular searches: meghan mccain | halloween parties | Search more Todd Barkau Takes Charge of a Child and Trains Her for Sexual Services and the Mother Lets Him Get Away with It
Todd B. Barkau, of New York State, and the mother of a young girl, the mother's name is not being published to protect the identity of the daughter, were charged in the seven-count indictment. They once lived together in Blue Springs, a Kansas City suburb in Missouri, where they allegedly ran sex business. They are being accused of training the woman's 12 year old daughter to be a dominatrix, selling her sexual services and photographing some of the acts. Federal prosecutors, who investigated the case for nearly two years, have filed a motion to detain both suspects in federal custody without bond.
Todd Barkau, started training the daughter to be a dominatrix and engage in sado-masochistic sex acts. He also began training her to engage in acts of sexual bondage, domination, sadism and masochism with him and others, according to prosecutors. He used pornography to teach the girl and watched while others had sex with her. Barkau also admitted producing and selling access to video of the girl's sex acts. He also had the girl watch pornography on the Internet as a teaching tool. When the victim was 14, Barkau set up an online business, marketing her as Mistress Alisha in both online and in-person sexual encounters.
The prosecutors said that the girl's mother assisted in the business and received financial compensation. The mother was the first parent in the United States to be charged with the commercial sex trafficking of their child in a human trafficking case. The victim, who is now 22, attended the plea hearings and told the judge that she approved of the plea agreements. Under the plea deal, Barkau and the girl's mother must forfeit the $80,000 they made from the abuse.
Todd Barkau pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Kansas City to commercial sex trafficking of a minor. He will be sentenced to 25 years in prison without parole, as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors. The girl's mother pleaded guilty to the same charge. Her plea agreement calls for a 15-year sentence.
Todd Barkau Takes Charge of a Child and Trains Her for Sexual Services and the Mother Lets Him Get Away with It
The girl's mother, whose voice seemed emotionless as she entered her plea, admitted that she knew what was going on and profited from her daughter's abuse. She showed little reaction in the Kansas City courtroom when her daughter told the judge that she supported the plea deals. Assistant
U.S. Attorney Cynthia Cordes told Judge Nanette Laughrey that the victim didn't want to go through details of her abuse again at trial. Barkau and the girl's mother originally pleaded not guilty last year to the seven counts and could have faced life in prison if convicted.
Barkau was arrested near Niagara Falls and had an initial court appearance in Buffalo, New York. The mother was arrested in Dallas.
Barkau and the woman will be sentenced after pre-sentence investigations are completed.
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| | Is it Possible to Have a Fetish for Weird Fetishes? | | | Friday, October 16, 2009 (1:47 PM)
(I'm feeling creative) | | There are some very weird fetishes out there. Sure we have all heard of foot and shoe fetishes by now, but there are some pretty twisted and terrible fetishes out there (I'll spare you the sordid details). Some people can have sexual fetishes for inanimate objects other than shoes like
statues or buildings (remember the big news story about the woman who married the Eiffel Tower?), and some people can develop fetishes for clothing of the opposite sex or clothing made from rubber and latex, just to name a few of the tamer examples. With so many weird fetishes out there and the tendency of humans to be curious about all that is strange and difficult to understand, it has led me to the realization that there are probably those out there who have a fetish for fetishes, especially the weird and wacky kind.
There is an article by a "sex researcher" on nerve.com who explores the many weird fetishes he's encountered over the years, including men with fetishes for "giant" women or women with fetishes for men with beards. These fetishes don't seem as weird as some of the grosser and more disturbing types out there, but they are very strange if you really think about it. As someone who doesn't have any weird fetishes, it's hard for me to understand how a beard, a mannequin, or a prosthetic leg can be seen as something arousing, but that's what makes these weird fetishes so interesting to us normal folk.
There are people with fetishes that aren't quite as weird, like a fetish for music. I can see how sexy music can be a bit of a turn-on, but I guess it joins the list of strange fetishes when the music becomes an object of obsession, not just background noise to set the mood. But just type in "strange fetishes" or "weird fetishes" into a search engine, and you'll find that there have been many lists dedicated to fetishes far stranger than enjoying music a little too much.
And when it comes to web users looking for information about strange and weird fetishes on the internet, the stranger and weirder the better ( but isn't this the rule when it comes to looking up any kind of information on the internet?). Doubleviking.com has a list of strange fetishes
found all over the web, from a website dedicated to women posing with their hands on their hips to video of people pushing gas pedals in their cars and women sneezing, there are plenty of weird fetishes on this list that will make even the most educated fetish researcher shake their head in disbelief.
But what is it about weird fetishes that make them such an internet sensation? Perhaps its because everyone enjoys having a good, uncomfortable laugh at the expense of those who enjoy these fetishes. A big part of web culture is having a good laugh at the expense of others, be it the president, a Pokemon character, or people who do odd things. We humans can't help but be intrigued by the unknown, things we don't understand, and things we've never seen before; something deep within the fibers of our beings just makes us that way. Perhaps we're hardwired to take an interest in anything and everything around us as a survival skill; after all, our best weapon has always been knowledge and learning.
So perhaps while it is possible to have fetishes for fetishes, it seems that people just really all have a mild fetish for the weird. It may not be as fun as wearing a rubber onesy or stomping on packets of ketchup, but at least we'll learn something out of this morbid curiosity (although we often wish we can unlearn it later).
SOURCES:
http://www.nerve.com/personalessays/Saknussemm/my-ten-favorite-fetishes-a-lifelong-sex-researcher-on-his-most-unusual-discoveries/
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7283494
http://www.doubleviking.com/bullet-points-10-really-weird-fetishes-6984-p.html
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| | JOVOVICH'S KNIFE FETISH | | | Friday, August 7, 2009 (1:02 PM)
(I'm feeling accomplished) | | JOVOVICH'S KNIFE FETISH
FIFTH ELEMENT actress MILLA JOVOVICH harbours a knife fetish - she collects weapons to decorate her home.
The Resident Evil star opted to play with warrior toys rather than girlie dolls as she grew up and her deadly fascination has continued into adulthood.
The model-turned-actress now collects dangerous pieces and puts them on show around her house.
She says, "I have so many weapons at home. It's not like I sit at home twirling knives, but I've always been into handling weapons. As a kid I liked ninja warriors, not dolls. I have some kukris. They are one-handed knives and a bit like machetes, very vicious instruments with a curved blade. They are used for hacking and I love them because they are so versatile. You can really get into the meat of an animal, slice cucumbers and kill zombies - all in one day."
07 August 2009 08:11
Also see: Fifth Element - Milla Jovovich
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/jovovichs-knife-fetish_1112173
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| | Are Men Necessary? | | | | Tuesday, February 10, 2009 (12:52 PM) | |
Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009 03:14 PST
Are men necessary?
That's the question one might wonder, given men's recent short shrift in the the press. First, on Sunday, the New York Times Magazine ran a feature by Emily Bazelton on single-by-choice mothers who "forgo romantic and sexual relationships for extended stretches." Shrugging off dating as an inevitable casualty of motherhood, the women instead rely on fellow solo moms for social and emotional (if not sexual) support. Not that the women seem to miss it much -- one woman refers to the men of her pre-motherhood life as "deadbeats," another considers the quest for a mate "like adding on a big mess to something that's comparatively stable." And, according to the author, all the women in the story expressed satisfaction with not having to share their parental authority with another person.
Perhaps they're sensing the bad vibes coming from their partnered friends -- witness the furor this week over Parenting.com's atomic screed "Mad at Dad," which Broadsheet writer Abigail Kramer previously discussed. In it, writer Martha Brockenbrough acknowledges she gets "furious" at her husband over his parenting style -- and finds she's far from alone. Reading through Brockenbrough's litany of women's complaints -- their spouses' devotion to their TiVos and video games, their inability to pull together a meal or get their kids in mittens -- one would have to wonder if no dad is better than that lump on the couch.
I don't for a second dismiss the choice of any working single mother to opt out of the dating scene. And I've got your back on the charge that a lot of dads phone it in. For what it's worth, I'm no apologist for nuclear families. I was raised without a father and managed to grow up reasonably sane and secure.
But I don't quite see how this notion of men as optional is good for any of us -- men or women, boys or girls. My kids have a dad who is flawed, forgetful and who, for the record, worships them and enriches their lives in a thousand ways I'd never have come up with on my own. Men -- friends, fathers and lovers -- aren't expendable. They're part of the world in which we raise our kids. Some of them are duds, but guess what? So are some of us, ladies. And isn't the notion of dismissing one gender as hopeless fuckups just a little ... sexist?
? Mary Elizabeth Williams | | | | 68 Views | 2 Thumbs Up | 1 Comment | |
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| | Sexual perversity in America | | | | Tuesday, February 10, 2009 (12:48 PM) | |
Sexual perversity in America
Author Daniel Bergner talks about extreme erotic behavior and why we have more in common with sadists and fetishists than we might like to believe.
By Sarah Hepola
Jan. 27, 2009 | A Wall Street retiree wearing a red latex bodysuit and a black hood is strapped to a table while electric shocks surge into his penis. Talking to Daniel Bergner in his new book, "The Other Side of Desire," the man compares his masochistic ecstasy to having onion skins stripped off his psyche.
"Is this a weird way to deal with life?" he asks Bergner at one point. "Consider the man who bought Mark McGwire's seventieth home-run ball for three million dollars. Who's weirder?"
In a series of four stories, Bergner grants us entree into dark worlds of extreme lust and longing: there is the foot fetishist wracked by shame, the dominatrix so turned on by inflicting pain on others that she once roasted a man on a spit, and the stepfather capsized by lust for his 12-year-old stepdaughter. There is even a love story involving amputee fetish. But what's remarkable about Bergner's book is not the way these tales shock or confound or titillate (though they do those things sometimes), but how sympathetic their plights and hungers become. Bergner, whose previous books include "God of the Rodeo," about convicts in Louisiana's Angola prison, is a keen storyteller but above all a humane one, and in his hands, these characters do not seem like freaks so much as shadows of ourselves.
A New York Times Magazine staff writer, Bergner spent four years compiling "The Other Side of Desire," delving into vast psychiatric research and fascinating anthropological studies along the way -- from a tribe in Papua New Guinea that instructs young boys to fill themselves with semen by performing blow jobs on male teens to recent eye-opening research on female desire, all of which he weaves throughout the narratives. (The latter topic was the subject of Bergner's recent Times magazine cover story, "What Do Women Want?") Struggling to find answers among an ocean of conflicting data and evidence, the sex therapists become as much a focus of the book as the afflicted. They remind us of the frustrating imperfection of science as we try to unlock the riddle at the core of these tales: How is our sexuality created, and why do we want what we want?
Salon spoke with Bergner on the phone from his home in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The first character we meet is a foot fetishist. Can you tell us about him?
Jacob is an Everyman in a sense: this devoted father, successful businessman. But he has, from a very young age, been powerfully attracted to women's feet. He lives in a northern city, and when the weatherman talks about "feet of snow" it can drive him mad with desire. He's got a great relationship with his wife, but he's too ashamed to tell her. He doesn't want her to be tainted by it.
And one of the questions becomes, where does this foot fetish come from? What are the theories?
The debate breaks down, to be a little simplistic, between forces of nature and forces of nurture. The doctor he seeks out, a compassionate psychiatrist named Dr. Berlin, puts the emphasis on the purely biological. At the other end of the spectrum are psychologists who put much more stress on our experience. One psychologist thought -- well, Jacob had severe reading disabilities as a little boy. Being called on in the classroom, looking down at the exact moment when he felt anxiety, when he felt such an intense charge, might have resulted in the eroticization of the objects he saw. That might sound far-fetched, but I do think there's something to the idea that experience plays a significant role in how we become who we are sexually.
And why are feet a common fetish?
There are all kinds of theories. One is that they are very rich in smell, and smell plays such a big part biologically in terms of our animal ancestry and our sexuality.
In the book you mention how some fetishes may be informed by the culture and times.
Yes, it's very interesting -- one of the sexologists I spent time with pointed out that if by looking at pornography one tries to trace the evolution of fetishes, one can see real changes, and those changes can be linked to shifts in the way we live our daily lives. Fetishizing hair is something that was much more prominent when women and mothers would sit in front of the mirror and do their hundred brushes of their locks every night. Or rubber fetishes, he pointed out, were more prominent when training pants were made of rubber.
One of the most poignant things about Jacob is how alone he feels. You would think one of the things the Internet would provide would be a brotherhood of people who feel the same way.
There were times with Jacob, especially toward the end, when I did step out of my journalistic role and say, "What would happen if you brought this up to your wife? Are you really so alone -- don't you realize there are other people out there?" And he just couldn't hear it. The shame was so strong. That might be hard for people to understand, because foot fetishes sound so benign, even comical. But I think what has to be understood is that, for all of us, sex is this shame-prone realm. If you think about being very different in that realm it might help explain why he insists on secrecy and can't even find solace in the fact that, yes, the Internet would suggest there are plenty of people not unlike him.
Do you see that potent shame as being something that is particularly American?
The anthropologist Margaret Mead would tell us that other cultures have a far different attitude toward lust. Mead was probably partly right, but my guess is that the private place of eros within us, no matter the culture we live in, is prone to shame, because eros is a force that cultures all over the world regard with some degree of fear and attempt to constrain.
In reading his story, and a lot of these stories, I kept thinking of political falls from grace -- Eliot Spitzer, Larry Craig, Mark Foley. In each of their scandals, there was such a potent mix of denial, shame, lust. How did working on this book inform how you saw those scandals?
Though of course there was plenty of humor in the predicaments of these politicians -- who can forget Spitzer's socks? -- and plenty to worry about with Foley, there was also plenty to sympathize with. We're so quick to ridicule and regulate lust, probably because the forces of eros often make us uncomfortable about ourselves. We can handle desire, so long as it's moderated. When lust gets out of control, as in the cases of these public figures, we leap to purge it from our presence. It's as though we're trying purge our own psyches, rid ourselves of our own powerful longings, make sure our own desires don't overtake us.
On the opposite end of the shame spectrum is the story in your book about a dominatrix known as the Baroness, who is not the least bit embarrassed about her desires.
I do see her as a counter to Jacob. Where he is consumed by shame and self-loathing she completely embraces her erotic self, to the point where she's evangelical about the S/M world. She was a rare glimpse at someone who becomes orgasmic through inflicting pain. There are plenty of paid dominatrixes out there, but only a few who are getting that level of direct sexual charge from their work. And then to watch the people who came to her was fascinating, because what they were after seemed very much universal -- that is, having sex take them to deep places within themselves.
I found myself so curious about how the Baroness became this way. One psychoanalyst you spoke with talked about how sadism and masochism might be brought about by some "lack of parental bond, some wounding absence or brutality." Did you think that was that case?
I don't know. I also talked to other psychoanalysts who were very reluctant to assign any cause at all to the behavior. I mean, what is perversion? As one analyst in the book describes it, perversion is the sex that you like and I don't. Oral sex was once seen as a perversion. | | | | 77 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
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| | Dominatrix Work Forces Recession to its knees | | | | Tuesday, February 10, 2009 (12:44 PM) | | Your Headline of the Day:
Dominatrix Work Forces Recession to Its Knees
When the going gets tough, the tough get out their whips.
Are you listening to me?
(Whapisssh!)
One of the kinkier trends to emerge from this recession is that many professional women are turning to dominatrix work to supplement their incomes, Tracy Quan reports in her “Kinkonomics” blog on the Daily Beast.
Quan interviews some of the women who’ve turned to fetish work, including “Linda,” who works as a editor by day and a dominatrix at night.
>
via CNBC
>
Source:
Kinkonomics
Tracy Quan
Daily Beast, February 3, 2009
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-02-03/kinkonomics | | | | 97 Views | 2 Thumbs Up | 1 Comment | |
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| | Our More Fully Realised Selves The best, most deviant, and therefore most potent forms of Sado-Masochistic practice are always explorations of the nature of the self. Beyond responding to the need for pleasure gained from suffering pain, the truly deviant impulse moves towards transcendence of the everyday limitations of life, allowing a deeper insight - if it is sought - into who and what we are. This is apparent in the kind of interactions that take place between skilful players. A serious b | | | Wednesday, January 14, 2009 (2:43 PM)
(I'm feeling cheerful) | | Our More Fully Realised Selves
The best, most deviant, and therefore most potent forms of Sado-Masochistic practice are always explorations of the nature of the self. Beyond responding to the need for pleasure gained from suffering pain, the truly deviant impulse moves towards transcendence of the everyday limitations of life, allowing a deeper insight - if it is sought - into who and what we are.
This is apparent in the kind of interactions that take place between skilful players. A serious bottom wants more than to feel the cut of the cane across their buttocks, or the sting of a whip on their back. A good Top is never content to simply administer a beating. Although skilfully applied pain in itself can be satisfactorily stimulating, it is the extra-physical communication between partners that elevates the exchange beyond the mundane and allow us a glimpse into a wider reality. Because, let’s face it, we can receive or give mundane pain in all manner of circumstances if that’s all we want, from getting ourselves beat up in an argument or picking a fight on the street.
In good S-M practice the pain exchange takes place in a context that incorporates the surrender of what can be called normal social identities, swapping them for roles that allow us to inhabit others. These other identities act in relation to yet others (Top or bottom) that accentuate the subjective identities adopted. So, a bottom needs a Top in order to be a bottom, and a Top needs their bottom to be a Top. And I’m not just talking about role-play.
For example, I often play with Tops who want nothing more than to visit me and cane me. But their pleasure is gained from administering the strokes in an environment where they are able to enter into this experience and savour it, confident that I am able to take what they want to give. They are then free to concentrate on the sight, sound and feel of the activity. My own enjoyment comes from their skilful application of rattan to flesh made more satisfying through my confidence in them and their ability. This allows me to endure the pain and undergo the slow release of endorphins it brings. It enables me to enter that elevated mental space beyond physical discomfort that I ultimately want.
This is dependent on us adopting roles in relation to one another that allow both of us to step outside of what would be our normal social experience. We enter a theatre of play that enacts a relationship that otherwise exists on a level of fantasy, in our imaginations, where secret urges play out in our minds. Even without role-play, we are playing roles. And those roles only work in relation to one another. So together we make the whole. And this whole is entirely conjured from our individual imaginations.
In more elaborate role-play, where we play out scenes of domination and submission to contextualise what is always the pay-off of the pain exchange, this is more obvious. We are always only ever acting according to our own fantasies. For a bottom, our Top is always the Top of our imagination, or as close as we can expect to get it. And for a Top it is the same (as a transvestite submissive I understand that I am playing a mostly approximate fantasy role for many of my male, heterosexual Tops. But I am always dressed and made-up to make it as real for him as possible).
When our fantasies are brought into physical reality like this we inhabit a transformed mental space, with all the sensual heightening that accompanies such a shift. This creation of an alternative reality is beyond the usual, socially defined constant reality we spend most of our waking time in. But it is one we are drawn to even as we occupy our socially defined identity in our day-to-day life. It is a crucial part of what we are, existing at a deeper level of consciousness than that required to exercise our duties at work or college or in the family.
Having entered into this other reality, we can begin to recognise the roles we play in normal life in relation to others, and how much we only see others in terms of the roles they play in relation to us. Such an insight allows us to understand not only the deeper currents of desire we, and others, feel. But also how much the identities we take on in life are framed by our adopting roles in relation to others that are conditioned by a limited understanding of what we are. And that ultimately these roles avoid a fuller realisation.
We can go further, and understand how much social roles are adopted in order to avoid what might be considered costly alternatives, where we anticipate what might be our fate if we were more fully conscious. Mostly this is a fear of loss of stability and security. The occupying of more fully realised identities threatens the regularity of what we have, even if what we have is unsatisfying. At the bottom of this is a fear of loss of normative social status among other things. And at the bottom of that is the fear of loss of physical protection. Deep down we fear at the level of the body.
Sado-Masochistic play enables us to overcome a fundamental fear that otherwise inhibits us - that of physical pain. It allows us to enter into pain's truer, more complex workings, and to realise how the body processes it, with a correspondence in the mind. In fact, we learn that the mind and body are all of a piece, a singular whole, intricately bound in its reactions to stimulus. And that what we fear in the mundane, everyday mind, can become its opposite in the more fully realised mind, as pain turns to pleasure and beyond those opposites. And when we realise that, we can begin to imagine the transformations that might take place in a more fully realised life. S-M play, in that respect, can be much more than a simple playing out of secret desires; it becomes a part of much greater exploration of the self. | | | | 74 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
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| | New Law on Violent Imagery is Appealing to Reactionary Attitudes | | | | Wednesday, January 14, 2009 (2:20 PM) | | New Law on Violent Imagery is Appealing to Reactionary Attitudes
Last week The Sun newspaper published an article in which a reporter took part in a sado-masochistic session in a loft. It was accompanied by pictures of her smiling to camera with a riding crop pressed against a man’s bottom. It was treated as harmless fun. In a book published last year based on ‘Britain’s biggest ever sex survey’, several of us testified to a variety of sexual desires in which bdsm-related fantasies featured very highly. So why is this kind of play still treated as a depraved practice in our culture, with men and women pilloried for their involvement and new laws set to curtail the private viewing of S&M images on computers?
In the survey for ‘Sex and the Psyche’ by Brett Khar, based on 19,000 BDSM and spanking at The Sunrespondents, among the many and varied fantasies described, 33% said they fantasized about playing a submissive or passive role during sex. 25% fantasized about being tied up, 23% about tying someone else up, and 29% about playing a dominant or aggressive role during sex. There is a distance between fantasy and actually playing out the desire, and there is distance between playing a submissive role in sex and being beaten with a whip. As there is a distance between playing an aggressive role and seriously punishing another person.
But figures like 33% and 29%, extrapolated from a representative survey among adults in this country – so excluding those not of appropriate age but bearing in mind there are 60 million of us here – does suggest the desire is present for several millions of people. And of those several millions, the numbers of players – if only in private - is likely to be closer to millions than thousands, and to include huge numbers at the heavy play end of a wide spectrum of taste. By which I mean players who enjoy serious pain exchange and/or stringent restraint.
The Sun article described how the reporter was taught by a professional dominatrix to beat the man on the bottom as he was bent over a whipping bench, blindfolded. It then went on to describe the activities of a North London couple that regularly use a whip in their lovemaking. “The rush you get from a little pain is so good. It’s addictive,” a woman is reported as saying. It was about mild kinkiness rather than serious play, but it was about the infliction of pain by one partner on another, and it does hint at the extremes of the practice. The using of paddles and whips on naked flesh is inevitably going to cause bruising and more.
The Sun is in the market to sell copies and is probably cashing in on the latest scandals around bdsm in the media, taking advantage of its temporarily raised profile. And promoting such practices, recommended to spice up a couples’ sex life, has been a standard feature in many mainstream magazines and newspaper articles over the years. These publications are commercial enterprises appealing to an acknowledged interest in its readership. Similarly, TV documentaries and reality shows featuring aspects of the scene are run regularly.
So is the media hypocritical to run these promotional articles while simultaneously publishing scandal pieces depicting bdsm players as perverts in need of public exposure? Not if we understand that their function is to sell product. And it is we who buy the papers. So by that reckoning, what it testifies to is the fact that, as a nation, we enjoy being titillated by reading about this kind of activity – whichever way it is dressed up. Which, in turn, testifies to the fact that we, as a nation, generally remain confused, or at least divided, about our attitudes towards the subject.
It is worth noting that the positive type of article recommends play as part of an otherwise normal relationship. And the negative type is usually focused on the secretive, playing behind the partner’s back sort of deviance. There is no acknowledgement of bdsm’s deeper resonances as an activity that raises an implicit critique of so-called normalcy. Happy hetero couples engaging in hetero sex remain the ideal from which S&M spiciness digresses for the purpose of maintaining the norm. This is how many on the so-called scene prefer to view their own and general practice. But others, subject to deeper and more radical impulses are forced to recognise their own distance from so-called normalcy, leaving them the options of either self-identifying as weirdos and absorbing the guilt, or asserting their right to act in private with consenting adults without prejudice.
Only a collective collusion in the general cultural repression of our desires, allowing what amount to repressive attitudes to continue, leads to the demonising of extreme players. And this, in turn, allows the climate of opinion that enables the outlawing of imagery that services the sub culture. The passing of new laws that could empower the police to arrest us, and the judiciary to punish us, for using images of violence to create arousal, is only possible because a social schizophrenia exists. It suggests a mass internalising of guilt about sexual fantasy and a lack of genuine tolerance among the population. But my guess is that there is a genuine split between progressive and reactionary sections of the public that is only reflected here in politics and the media. It is to the discredit of the government that it chooses to side with the intolerant and repressed in the face of evidence of a more broad-minded attitude and collective practice generally. | | | | 68 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
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| | London Loves a Dominatrix | | | | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 (4:11 AM) | | London Loves a Dominatrix February 22, 2007 With a goth revival apparent for A/W 07, a dark mood was in evidence at the London shows, where victoriana mixed with a heavy dose of S&M dominatrix. Collections entirely in black were shown by more than a few designers, with crushed velvets and silk fabrications mixed agressively with leather, rubber and PVC. A style favoured last season by Brit darlings Gareth Pugh and Giles, the dark vixen is making a welcome return this year. Corpse brides floated down the runways at Gardem and Victim, whilst Nathan Jenden put an 80s pop twist on the victoriana shapes. Elsewhere latex bodysuits covered arms and legs- shown under even the brightest clothing collections (Manish Arora), and for those more demure designers, black tights added a sombre touch. With designers taking such an aggresive stance, it’s time to put away the girlie dresses and let women reclaim their power.
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