Dr. Gloria Brame posted this video of vintage dominatrix photography, going back in the 19th century.
May 302012
Peter Tupper
May 292012
Ana’s internal exclamations of “Crap!” are becoming tiresome. She doesn’t even swear like an adult.
After the photo shoot (and why does Ana have to be present for that?), Christian asks her out for coffee. Maybe I’m paranoid, but Christian’s actions still seem a little suspicious. For example, he makes a point of separating Ana from her friends and being alone with her, instead of, say, meeting with all of them for a little post-session lunch.
Money changes things, particularly when one person in a relationship has a lot of it and the other has a lot less. A woman I know once told me about working as an interior designer, which involved lunch and dinner meetings with the men who owned deluxe offices and mansions. When you’re a woman having dinner with a guy who thinks nothing of $600 dinner-and-drinks bill, there’s a tension in the air, and sometimes there are… expectations.
May 292012
I got the “thin envelope” from the Leather Archives & Museum, after I applied for their Visiting Scholar program a while back. I didn’t get it.
However, they did say:
…the committee was impressed with your proposal, specifically the wide scope of sexuality study you will visit in the text. The LA&M is inspired by your work and its potential contributions to sexuality scholarship.
….
In the mean time, if the Archives can support your project from a distance, please feel free to contact me. The selection committee has authorized a $50 photocopy duplication fee / postage credit for your project to be used by the end of 2012.
That’s nice of them. Not even sure what I will do with the micro-grant.
May 292012
Chapter 2 goes into some exposition on Anastasia’s background, such as her field of study, English Lit. She’s doing a paper on Tess of the D’Urbervilles (I guess Wuthering Heights would have been too on-point). It also introduces Jose, Ana’s platonic friend, and I believe he’s supposed to be the Jacob analog in this parallel universe.
The sibling-like relationship between Ana and Jose is another reiteration of the theme of Ana’s (figurative and perhaps literal) virginity. Again, it’s so strongly emphasized that it becomes a little suspect.
Continue reading »
May 262012
It’s generally a bad sign when a book written in a female character’s first-person POV opens with her looking at herself in a mirror. In short order, I knew more about how Anastasia Steele looked and dressed than anything else about her. To be fair, this may be attributed to EL James’ background in television, in which visuals, dialogue and action tell the story, instead of introspection or exposition.
Continue reading »
May 252012
So, why a read-through on EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey? And why should anybody listen to what I say about it?
I’ve been involved in the BDSM culture for twenty years. I’ve organized parties, served as communications coordinator for organizations, and was a founder of Metro Vancouver Kink, and then served on the board for three years.
I have a parallel career in studying the history of BDSM, since at least 2005. I also have a BA in History and a certificate in journalism. This blog is to document my research towards a finished book on the subject.
I’ve also been writing BDSM erotica for about the same time, including a story in the Circlet Press anthology S/M Futures, entries in several other Circlet anthologies, and a collection of steampunk erotica short stories, The Innocent’s Progress & Other Stories.
I’m writing this series because, first, this book is a matter of historical interest. This is a book that has bridged the gap between the mainstream and BDSM erotica.
Second, for better or for worse, this book will be a lot of people’s first exposure to BDSM, and past experience has taught me that people tend to “imprint” on whatever they encounter first, and retain those ideas later in their BDSM careers. Fifty Shades needs to be scrutinized and, if necessary, corrected in order to properly educate people new to BDSM.
I should also mention that I have not read any of the Twilight books, or seen any of the movies, or even read the Twilight fanfiction, “Master of the Universe”, upon which Fifty Shades of Grey is based.
So, come and join me as we walk through the story of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey.
May 102012
Gloria Brame posted scans from “Legs and Attitudes“, a leg fetish magazine published in July 1930, Paris.
In 1930, women’s legs and lower bodies were a relatively recent discovery, having been hidden away in Western fashion for centuries. The photos posted seem based on the idea of glimpsing a stocking top or bare thigh in an unguarded moment (in a boudoir, after tripping on the street, a woman carelessly sitting to let her skirt slip), not a brazen display.
Apr 302012
The Montreal by Words podcast interviews me on my Maria Monk “nun porn” story in MaisonNeuve magazine. It starts at about the 15 minute mark.
Apr 112012
The Seduction of Venus blog has a more detailed discussion of Penthouse magazine’s first BDSM pictorial in the February 1976 issue. It includes some unpublished photos from the same shoot.
Taking a very different approach to the likes of Jeff Dunas’ and Earl Miller’s location-based, soft-focus romanticism he [photographer Stan Malinowski] posed his unnamed models in a studio with just a standard studio backdrop and bright, even harsh, lighting.
[…]
The text, as it is, consists of a number of four line verses of poetry (you can see some examples further down) which are very much themed on the idea of one woman inflicting pain on the other. No lovey-dovey “friends who became lovers mush” or, indeed, any suggestion that really the ladies, of course, prefer men, as most of the other girl/girl sets suggested. So the text is as radical for Penthouse, as the pictures.
While it may be a bit of a stretch to associate Penthouse with progressive views of female sexuality, this pictorial and its accompanying text at least breaks with the idea of female-female sex as an adjunct to heterosexuality or associated with pastoralism and coy “friends become lovers” narratives. Despite apparent reader approval, Penthouse did not take a turn to the hardcore after this.
This is obviously a much more professional piece of work than was probably common in BDSM porn of the time, and also in a publication that had a much wider distribution and larger readership than your typical under-the-counter bondage magazine. It may have been the first-encounter for a lot of people.
Apr 092012
The theme of violence against women is front and centre in the Mad Men episode “Mystery Date”, and what leads into that phenomenon is a tangled web of fear, anger and desire.
The episode is haunted by the Richard Speck rape-murders in 1966, an incident which its own Gothic details: sexualized violence, women in danger, etc. The lone survivor of Speck’s massacre of student nurses escaped by hiding under a bed.
At the SCDP office, Joyce, a journalist friend of Peggy, brings in a sheet of photos of the Speck crime scene not fit for publication. Joyce describes the crime in melodramatic detail, as if imagining herself as the sole survivor and de facto hero of the narrative (Cf. the Final Girl of slasher filmes). Peggy and the other creatives are gruesomely fascinated and study the pictures. It’s new copywriter Michael Ginsburg who looks at the pictures but then denounces the others as “sickoes”, and says he wishes he hadn’t looked at them.
