Tag: gag

[↑] Hardcored – Title unknown (201X); [↓] All Fine Girls – Title unknown feat. Amia Miley (201X)

This was originally supposed to be a juxtaposition as commentary post.

That, however, shifted when I discovered that the version of the top image posted by @partialboner (who blocked me, for some reason, apparently–which sucks since he runs a damn fine art porn blog) was a crop of the original.

My initial reading of the crop version of the top image was: this is aggro but fucks with notions of public vs private in a way that this is more edgy than uncomfortable–even the extra color saturation enhances the feeling that what we’re seeing has been carefully negotiated.

The uncropped original skeeves me out because of the production company whose water mark it bears. (I’m fine with BDSM–I’m a switch–but BDSM demands a baseline minimum of respect for boundaries and hinges upon complicated questions of verbal and non-verbal consent. (More on this in a bit…)

The lower image is more visual complex-yes, it’s still very porn cliché-y but it’s at least less flat than the top image.

Initially, I wanted to feature this as a juxtaposition as commentary post in order to underscore varying degrees of visual legibility, as well as how the top scene is ostensibly public and the lower one is obviously transpiring in the privacy of a boudoir.

Also, I wanted to create a comparison/contrast between the way panties (an object) are employed in a manner for which they were not designed–a gag and a penetrative object, respectively.

The post would get close to going up and I’d kick it down to the bottom of my queue because I knew it belongs here but the framing of juxtaposition as commentary seemed too toothless a means of engaging with it.

Part my initial reluctance to post this was a direct result of allegations made by Leigh Raven and Riley Nixon… and, well: nothing about the scenes they are speaking out about are acceptable things to not have explicitly negotiated boundaries/consent in advance.

I think the problem I have with these runs much deeper and has everything to do with objectification. You wouldn’t be out of line to respond: methinks the lady doth protest too much–after all she does run a sex blog that frequently showcases graphic and/or explicit depictions of sexuality.

In for a penny, in for a pound, you’d think; except…

Porn deals in fantasy. You can argue until you’re blue in the face that a person who sees a pornographic video and goes out and treats the video like a how-to guide is a full psychopath. I mean how often has the pizza deliver guy shown up holding a pizza with his schlong just hanging out and the scantily dressed woman who answers to door just pulls him in and starts using his member to probe her tonsils. The world doesn’t work like that and you’d expect that most folks would realize that’s not how things work IRL; except…

Increasingly folks do not have access to fact based, reliable, comprehensive and honest sex education. So in some ways the argument that it’s all fantasy and everyone knows that and only a real fuck-up would think the world operates like that doesn’t follow here because part of porn being a fantasy involves the suspension of disbelief.

Beyond the absurdity of some of the scenarios porn features, what is someone who lacks strong sex education to believe and disbelieve? It’s dangerous to assume and not assuming makes things very thorny.

Generally, I think you can argue that in most porn you can presuppose that the participants have consented. However, I think it’s EXTREMELY dangerous to extend that presupposition to more BDSM elements–since those sorts of scenarios demand additional verbal consent as a result of the escalation.

And I realize I’m applying my impression of the one studio to all of their work; except…

I don’t know it’s hard to read either of these images as if the women are anything more than objects for sexual gratification. And honestly that’s where my primary beef sits: I think there is an onus on porn producers whose bread and butter involves scenes of women being manhandled and acknowledge as little more than warm, more or less moist orifices to penetrate really do have a responsibility to convey something with regard to an awareness of and respect for consent.

It’s definitely easier to do that in a video–I’m not sure how you do it in a single, static frame (it would likely be difficult to impossible and would dramatically slow down production).

But I do think we really have to do better about being mindful of consent when producing this kind of content, fwiw.

The Tiger and the Pilgrim – Friends. (2016)

This photo was made using Kodak’s 800 ISO Portra emulsion.

The higher the speed of a film, the better it is at producing photographs in low-light settings; however, the higher the speed the more visible the grain.

It’s also a film that is optimized for tungsten light sources, i.e. the color temperature of light emitted by most incandescent light bulbs.

It’s also low contrast—as a result of which this image suffers. It also doesn’t help that it was made using at the minimum a ceiling mounted overhead lighting fixture. (In other words: some of the most aesthetically unappealing light imaginable.)

But I’m here for what this depicts more than how it’s depicted.

…

I’ve been aware of the Folsom Street Fair since well before I started this blog. However, my conception of it has been off.

Basically, I had understood it as Pride only for leather and BDSM folks. It seems it’s quite a bit more than a celebratory parade. I’m not entirely clear on the rules governing it but it does seem to be closer to an open air sex party.

…

A while back adult content creator and performer Chelsea Poe (of whom and of whose work I am a tremendous fan) posted several images of her being dominated by Eden Alexander publicly at the Folsom Street Fair.

As kids these days are fond of saying: #AllTheFeels

…

The images of Ms. Poe tied to a tree reminded me of the above photo. In both cases a woman is physically restrained in a public space and she has consented to having her boundaries tested.

I’ll admit that it’s a tenuous connection. But it’s something I keep coming back to and I think I’ve finally figured out how to articulate something about it but it’s going to involve rather a good bit of TMI.

…

Give or take: I began masturbating when I was eight.

It wasn’t like I was horny. In fact—it was only vaguely tied up with anything sexual. It was more curiosity.

With hindsight, I realize that this curiosity was informed as a result of being molested when I was six. I didn’t understand the contradiction of the extreme interest on the part of my abuser with the parts of my body that I was otherwise told over and over and again and again were sinfully unclean.

Quite by accident, I discovered that by touching myself in very particular ways (read: humping my pillow), I could trigger this warm and fuzzy tingling sensation. I’d hump, feel myself start to climax, pause, ride the wave of the sensation and as it ebbed I’d go right back to humping my pillow, chasing the next endorphin rush. Sessions usual involved 4 to 7 orgasms.

I knew instinctively that because what I was doing involved the parts between my thighs, that it was something about which I shouldn’t ever tell anyone.

I think I figured out what I was doing was termed masturbation when I was eleven. My instinct not to tell anyone about it made a lot more sense…

…

Two things happened more or less simultaneously. Puberty struck and the way I masturbated shifted. Whereas previously, I would have spent an hour or so more or less continually stimulating myself with intermittent pauses; I started to experience more forceful orgasms. Like before I would feel the sense of release building, I would feel myself pass the rubicon and then my body would lock up. I would orgasm and then my intimate parts would be painfully sensitive.

I still needed the same endorphin rush but it took me sometimes as long as a half an hour before I could begin again.

The second thing that happened was that my peers and I were informed that masturbation was a mortal sin. It was presented in the following fashion. Girls were generally not interested in it and those who were didn’t because they weren’t gross floozies. Boys who were good Xtians didn’t and boys who weren’t strong Xtians might but they should repent and sin no more.

We were told that if we were freaks who experienced urges that we should pray that God removes the impure thoughts and desires from our hearts.

For the better part of a year, every time I felt the need to get myself off. I would pray. But unlike masturbation—which always felt like a prayer and an answer to that prayer; my actual prayers to God, never went any higher than the ceiling.

…

I feel it’s also important to note that although I conceptualized masturbation as sexual behavior, it was all but devoid of causal connection. It was something I did for the dopamine hit to my system.

It didn’t shift to being sexual until I was in my late teens.

…

There was this episode the reboot of The Outer Limits in the mid-90s staring Alyssa Milano. I remember being so aroused that it physically hurt.

The next day while I was in the shower—the only place I had any privacy—I masturbated but as I passed the point of no return, I kept seeing flashbacks to the show from the previous night and instead of stopping I climaxed once and without any pause came again after roughly three minutes.

It was a game changer.

…

I have no idea what prerequisites have to be satisfied for me to have multiple orgasms while masturbating. I’ve managed it roughly a dozen times—each time seemingly isolated from the rest.

I have substantially better luck with partners.

I think part of it is comparable to solving a chess problem vs figuring out how to get out of check without fucking yourself when you are playing against an actual opponent. In the first case, you control both the moves and countermoves in advance; in the second, you only have a vantage to the moves you make. Someone can make a move that surprises or confounds you.

A better analogy may be found contained within the observation that it is impossible to tickle yourself.

…

What I’ve discovered with a partner is that my experience of sexual pleasure is analogous to a river—the water level rises and falls depending upon other factors.

If the water overflows, there’s a levee to safely channel the excess. However, any overflow into the levee gets processed by my body as a pain sensation.

Even when it’s happening to me, I wouldn’t label it pain. It’s merely an amplification of sensitivity to a point that although I crave the sensation, my body actively revolts and recoils from continued stimulation.

…

The act of refusing to cater to this instinctive recoil from continued stimulation in the face of heightened sensitivity is called post-orgasm torture.

There are an increasing number of videos out there for it. As a lesbian, I’m very put off by anything I’ve ever seen involving femme folk subjected to post-orgasm torture. (Another reason I am into the above photo—it seems post-orgasm torture-y but in a way that is an intense as it is consensual.)

I end up watching a fair amount of content featuring post-orgasm torture involving masc. folks. (For example: this one—although vertically oriented video is never acceptable—is pretty run of the mill; this one is over-long, poorly edited and the technique is a little galling in it’s heteronormativity—also, I think the boy, contrary to the on-screen count, only orgasms twice, I think the rest are just leaks despite his concerted efforts at avoiding ejaculation. His response when he does actually finish and the way he responds to continued stimulation is one of the best documents of a body’s response to post-orgasm torture that I have ever seen.)

…

What does all this have to do with the initial photo? Well, given the way her back is arched and the way the vibrator is pressed vacuum seal tight against her genitalia—it’s probably understandable how I’d make the leap to this as a depiction of post orgasm torture.

The fact that she also appears to be the singular focus of a group of people is also appealing. (As someone who is over-stimulated any time there are more than four people in a room at a time, the social over-stimulation combined with physical over-stimulation is also something I would like to explore.)

The Chelsea Poe images make me curious as to whether a scenario like the image above might be possible at the Folsom Street Fair. The thought of being publicly subjected to post-orgasm torture while very publicly restrained is a prospect that I’m into. As long as I was blindfolded and trusted my dom to not let obviously creepy people touch me, I would be into a modicum of crowd participation.

And I think that’s the ultimately realization that engaging with this photo over the span of several years has made me realize that it’s not that I’m not into BDSM/kink, it’s that my relationship with it is very specific. I don’t want to be humiliated. Being humiliated is a massive turn off for me. I also don’t get the pain as pleasure exchange; mine has more to do with pushing the limits of pleasure so they pass through pain and back into pleasure again.

Source: tigerandpilgrim

Nawa-Art – Erika Yukio (1961)

It’s difficult to untangle all the various threads with this–largely because I read zero Japanese; also: it’s weird to me that while translations for Romance languages via Google Translate have improved marked over the last three years, it’s still only the babiest step above word salad for ideogrammatic languages. (I know ideogram is not technically the right term but I can’t think of the right term at the moment–I’m essentially pointing to the way romance languages group characters that make particular sounds in particular situations into words which name things, convey concepts, etc. vs. languages consisting of characters which a vaguely pictorial and convey concepts, i.e. Mandarin and Japanese; although it seems to me that kanji is maybe intended to be closer to the an alphabet? Don’t quote me on any of this–linguistics is one field where I will readily admit a complete absence of any sort of even baseline understanding.)

Anyway, as best as I can tell: Nawa Art is a site where someone–who seems not to want to be viewed as a collector–has archived pornographic BDSM materials that are apparently from brochures disseminated via a secret club in Japan circa 196X.

None of it is even half as edgy as what your average kink-focused Tumblr curator includes on the reg. But to my naive eye–it’s fascinating to consider the effect such material likely had in shaping the overarching vision of someone like Araki.

I really appreciate the presentation of this–there’s a physicality to it: the four holes at the right margin (seemingly from two staples), the way that it both simultaneously seems xeroxed + the way that the strips of black and white (in concert with the thin margin between the images) makes the photos appear three dimensionally stacked; additionally, I really dig the simplicity of the layout–the top half mirrors the bottom half with only a horizontal mirroring (the black and white strips makes it seem far more complicated than that but it’s actually a solid tact for making something simple look more complicated than it really is–good design usually flips that script; however, it can be used to strong effect if it’s used sparingly and in a conceptually resonate fashion).

Two other observations concerning layout: not how the upper left and bottom right image are connected by the inclusion of the dark ribbon looped around her neck, whereas the top right and bottom left are both square (vs. rectangular) and were almost certainly taken in sequence; there’s also the way what appears to be the drain of a bathtub behind Erika Yukio’s head in the top right, top left and lower right frame managed to break up what would’ve been a cloying repetition of fours (staple perforations + photos).

The other thing about this that appeals to me is that as put off as I am by mainstream porn of any kind–I am especially put off by depictions of BDSM in pornography. There is–in my experience–this fixation on both extremity and humiliation that just doesn’t appeal to me personally. (I’m not about to kink shame anyone though–you do you and know that as long as you have the utmost respect for consent; then I support your kinks).

I think it’s because I grew up in such a repressive community that I really don’t enjoy being made to feel dirty about physicality–I struggle with that enough already. But it’s more complicated than that, honestly; as much as I’m not at all into humiliation, testing boundaries is something that I crave.

I think that’s what I appreciate about this–there’s a sense of discomfit paired inextricably with a curiosity. That appeals to me greatly.

Source unknown – Title unknown (201X)

While I think this could probably be interpreted as an allegory of how to behave on the internet when given a front row seat to explicit content, i.e. drool appreciatively and keep your comments to your self.

But I’m gonna go a different direction. I saw this the morning after having a dream that was very similar in tone–look but don’t touch. I’m intrigued enough to want to track it down even though I suspect I’m going to end up turned off when I discover the original context.

Does anyone happen to know where it’s from?

Source: modern-kink