Jul 232024
- Messy Nessy Chic profiles L. Robert and Nativa Richard, who were pioneers of commercialized fetish/BDSM in 1920s and 1930s France, under the name “Yva Richard”. They started in 1914, just before the Great War started, and made their own leather wear and fetish photography, often with Nativa as the model. They operated both as a storefront in Paris and as mail order. The German occupation of France in 1943 ended their glorious run.
- More Archive.org finds:
- John Samson’s 1977 documentary Dressing for Pleasure, which gives a glimpse of the 1970s UK leather fetish culture.
- A PDF of the 2002 Mod Con: The secret world of extreme body modification, which looks into the underground of people who have consensually been castrated and other heavy body mods.
- The documentary Bloodsisters (1995) about lesbian sadomasochists in San Francisco.
- In The New Republic, they talk about the notorious “Project 2025” plan and particularly its emphasis on how “pornography should be outlawed.” The document doesn’t define pornography, but in practice it refers to anything that causes the “normalization” of “non-normative gender expression and identity among young people”. The neo-Puritan element is very strong in American politics right now, and I believe it poses a dire threat to not just queer people and abortion/contraception rights, but kinky people too.
- XBIZ reports how speakers on the National Conservatism Conference were quite explicit that banning pornography for minors is a step towards more restrictions down the road.
- The CARAS Reading Group: History and Theory of Kink and BDSM starts on August 4th, 2024. This will be a monthly meeting on Google Meet. Free for CARAS members, $100 US for others.
- The CineKink film festival is coming on August 1st, 2024.
