Mar 072025
 

Ask any kinky person where they got their first hint of BDSM desire, and chances are they will name something from mainstream film or television: Catwoman or Emma Peel on 1960s TV, the whipping scenes in gladiator movies, the damsels-in-distress in a thousand melodramas. Generations of fans found these scenes of fetishistic pleasure and assembled them into collections, piecing together a history of sadomasochistic moments.

The Celluloid Dungeon uncovers the hidden history of BDSM in the mainstream media, a complex dance of repression and desire. For every step to expand the visibility of kink on screen, there’s an equal and opposite reaction to contain it. Popular successes like Secretary or Fifty Shades of Grey show kink, but only the most conservative form of it.

About the Presenter

Peter Tupper is a Vancouver, BC writer and historian. He is a two-time winner of the National Leather Association’s Geoff Mains award for non-fiction, a co-founder of Metro Vancouver Kink, and author of A Lover’s Pinch: A Cultural History of Sadomasochism (2018). He has presented at events across North America on the history of BDSM. He blogs at www.historyofbdsm.com

Date: Sunday, May 18, 2025
Time: 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Time Zone: Central Time – US & Canada (change)
Location: LA&M Etienne Auditorium,
6418 North Greenview Avenue
Chicago, Illinois, United States

Leather Archives & Museum event

Fetlife event

May 292018
 



Apr 222025
 
Apr 222025
 

Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography is a 1981 Canadian documentary, directed by Bonnie Sherr Klein. It includes interviews with adult photographer Suze Randall, stripper Lindalee Tracey (aka “Fonda Peters”) and porn performer Marc Stevens. There are also interviews with and footage of second-wave feminist figures like Kate Millett, Robin Morgan, Margaret Atwood, Susan Griffin and more.

Obviously, a lot has happened in the 44 years since the film was released. In 1981, the home video revolution was just starting, almost no one had heard of AIDS, Times Square in Manhattan had porn theatres and live sex shows, and the Internet only connected a few universities and government agencies. Cruising came out the previous year, and the “lesbian sex wars” were just gearing up. However, the issues in this film are still very relevant, especially considering the neo-Puritan movements of the 2020s.

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Apr 182025
 

Elust is the only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month.

Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice, or kinky discussions, it’ll be here at Elust.

If you have a post included, please re-post the latest edition on your own blog, ideally with your own unique comments next to each link, or a paragraph for each category and/or write your own introduction.

For SEO purposes, non-identical re-posts of Elust are much better for search ranking, and it’s more appealing for readers.

Here’s an Example of Elust 183 published by Mx Valentina with unique comments next to the links.

Thank you to Valentina for the repost and also Tantric Sexual Healing, Miss Ruby Reviews, Ambyr Leigh, Jerusalem Mortimer, Morgan Destera, Sex Worker Search, and Femina Viva. That’s 9 reposts in total last month including mine. 9 is pretty good! The more people do the reposts, the greater the value Elust has for everyone with a link included in terms of site visitors it generates and for SEO from all the new backlinks you get.

Click here to Subscribe to email updates if you’d like to receive Elust as an email once per month.

Oz

Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships

Tantric Sexual Healing, The Everyday Ecstasy: Bringing Tantra into Your Daily Routine

Erotic Fiction

Simone Francis, Painted Stripes

Schey Place Books, Zero

Jerusalem Mortimer, In the Realm of the Sensei – Prologue 10

Jasmine Gold, Learning to Obey: Her Fantasy Denial

Product Reviews

Morgan Destera, Funzze 3-in-1 Sucking Flapping Vibrator

Man at Jerk, Fantasy Grove Amanita dildo review

Sydney Screams, Uncover Creations Equiknot Dildo Review

Miss Ruby Reviews, We-Vibe Wand 2

Thoughts & Advice on Kink & Fetish

Kim Rub, Ectomorph Latex Design 40 Year Anniversary

Sex Work

Kristina J, Thank You Sex Work 

Fox Digital, Your Opinion of Your Website Doesn’t Matter—Here’s What Does

Sex Worker Search, Sex Worker Resources (mostly U.S.)

Hellga, A Duo with Christine Love at Blue Door Dungeon

Sandra, Bound, Gagged and Throat-Fucked

Oz Bigdownunder, Sweet Cherry Pie. Custom Made Video Clips

State of the World

The Sex Shed, We asked 1000 people: How do you do it? (survey on masturbation habits)

Femina Viva, Is it time to start outing trans people?

Blogging

Liz X, Diving into Digital Desire – Exploring Nomi AI and its AI Companions

Ramone Quides, Surviving Two Changes of Seasons

Erotic Non Fiction

barefoot sub, Chase The Rainbow – Beautiful Marks

Mx Valentina, The Tantric connection to chastity and orgasm denial

Writing about writing

Ambyr Leigh, On Writing Anal Sex Scenes

Books and Movies

History of BDSM, The Idiots (1998): The Celluloid Dungeon

Apr 022025
 

Youtuber Matt Bernstein speaks with Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub (of the podcast In Bed With The Right) about “The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right”. The right wing/conservative resurgence we’ve seen over the past decade or so swings widely from the puritan to the libertarian in sexual matters. There’s a desperate scramble to seize the sexual high ground, to present themselves as the side of beauty and pleasure, and denigrate the sex of queer people and feminists as ugly and boring.

In particular, the conversation follows the trajectory of the “tradwife” image, epitomized by the “raw milkmaid dress”. They describe how the tradwife went from the epitome of conservative female modesty and domesticity to a sexualized fetish outfit over the span of only a year or two. Classically Abby, one of the best known advocates of tradwifism, shut down her Youtube channel late last year, because of the raunchy side of her supposed supporters.

There’s a long-standing precedent of female clothing that is supposed to de-sexualize the wearer becoming sexualized and fetishized; e.g. the French maid cliche. That a fetishized version of the tradwife image would appear so quickly is hardly surprising.

It represents the internal rift in the conservative movent, between the puritan and libertine wings. The image of the tradwife in Evie magazine, as modest yet seductive, sexually adventurous yet strictly hetero and monogamous, proved untenable. They couldn’t reconcile that dialectic.

Puritans and libertines have one thing in common: they both believe they should have control over other people’s bodies. In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale, the patriarchal, theocratic fascists of Gilead subdivide women into specialized groups, each with their own sartorial code: handmaids in red for reproduction, wives in blue for running households, aunts in brown to manage handmaids, marthas in green for housework, and jezebels in fetish costumes from the old “decadent” days. They’re all different parts of the same system.

Mar 262025
 

Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist is a 1997 documentary by Kirby Dick about the titular Bob Flanagan, an artist with cystic fibrosis and, unusually, lived into his 40s. Flanagan combined his performance art and artworks with his BDSM practice, including being the slave of his mistress and wife, Sheree Rose.

(Most of the Celluloid Dungeon project is about fiction films, but I will explore a few documentaries along the way.)

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Mar 172025
 
Mar 172025
 

The Idiots is a 1998 Danish black comedy/drama written and directed by Lars von Trier, shot under the rules of the Dogme 95 manifesto.

The semi-mockumentary film concerns a small group of people who pretend in public to be mentally disabled, which they call “spazzing”. They do this as an elaborate prank, as a kind of performance art, as a passive-aggressive attack on society (épater les bourgeois), and for other reasons. Rotating members of the group play “the minders”. Karen, a seemingly lost woman, is swept up in the group and stays with them.

Stoffer draws Karen into the group of “spazzers”.

George Costanza: [In a depression clinic] I should be in a place like this. I envy this woman. You get to wear slippers all day. Friends visit. They pity you. Pity is very underrated.
Seinfeld, S03E02 “The Truth”

I discuss this film because it brushes up against certain expressions of masochism, particularly those that involve public roleplay and abjection. We know that Hannah Cullwick and Arthur Munby often did public roleplay, as did Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Aurora Rumelin. This connects with the kink of disability fetishism, such as the creative works of “Paracathy“, as well as certain forms of ageplay.

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Mar 032025
 

Babygirl is a 2024 drama directed by Halina Reijn and starring Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson and Antonio Banderas.

Romy (Kidman) is a corporate executive in an automated shipping company. She’s also the mother of two teenage daughters, and wife to her stage director husband Jacob (Banderas). One montage shows that she subjects herself to exercise and cosmetic treatments, like botox.

Her backstory is that she was raised in hippie communes, but went into the corporate world, and brings her smartphone to bed with her. Much of her job appears to be performing prepared scripts for corporate videos, full of neoliberal buzzwords. She puts a human face on what is basically an inhuman process, represented by shots of blocky robots working in an automated warehouse.

The pressures of Romy’s seemingly ideal life leave her stretched thin. After faking an orgasm with her handsome and loving husband, she tiptoes to her home office, plays maledom/femsub porn on her laptop, and masturbates while covering her own mouth.

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Feb 172025