femdom review

Femdom Review: The Control Book by Peter Masters

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controlOr, as an unofficial subtitle… A Manual on How to be That Guy.

This is a bad book. It gets a lot wrong, wastes a lot of the reader’s time doing it. I’m going to be charitable and suggest that Masters is expressing himself poorly and would never endorse violations of consent. However, based on how this is written, the advice contained within has no place in a contemporary BDSM scene. It’s a pity because there aren’t really much in the way of (focused) resources about the behaviours you can use to compliment and express power dynamics. It mistakes talking a lot for making an argument and has enough problematic suggestions that it has no place in any kink curriculum.

So if you want to read it, basically imagine you were going to do a comedy skit about the ponderous True Dom you may have had the misfortune to meet at a munch, and expect a combination of tedium and terrible advice.

[Before I go any further, it’s worth noting that everything I stand for is pretty much diametrically opposite to this guy’s approach in this book. I can’t actively claim that Peter Masters is a bad person with any confidence, so if you are the author rest assured that I’m the kind of TNG/18-35 tumblr born brat that’s probably ruining kink and my shit probably looks just as appalling to you. That being said you are wrong about things with this book. WRONG.]

Here’s the highlights of the yuck:

  • D/s is only 24/7 and that’s what makes it distinct from topping & bottoming.
  • There’s no such thing as a switch and no room for them.
  • The best way to approach and gain submission is to start ordering subs around at a party.
  • Negotiation? What negotiation?
  • Subs are slightly brain dead, but it’s hard(er) to control a sub who is a good communicator.
  • Safewords are a barrier to D/s & here’s how to ignore/avoid them.
  • Lots of unsubstantiated pop psych.
  • Gender archetype Warrior/Mother examples without much examination of where they might come from.

Need more critique? I’ve got more to say.

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Femdom Review: Safe Words by Drury Jamison

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Safe words by Drury JamisonTitle: Safe Words
By: Drury Jamison

Tl;DR: Your standard thriller romance, with a jaded cop hero, but  bonus femdom self discovery.

There’s a handful of books with this title (and zip between the covers to do with it, other than an offhand romantic joke) but Jamison breathes some pleasant life into a by the numbers plot. A killer is stalking femdoms, and our heroine, Detective Eleanor Silver, ends up discovering a bit more about her own desires over the course of the investigation. Inevitably she has to become a femdom to catch a killer and the guy helping her out takes things in an equally real direction. Also she’s a troubled cop with a drinking problem and a great deal of dedication to her job to the point of burn out. This is policing written meaner and more dangerous than the statistical experience of the average police officer. Assume you are reading an erotic thriller novel, not getting an inside scoop into anything real. But, it’s ok. The skill of a genre fiction writer is in their ability to manage our expectations, much like a sex scene will always involve sex by some value of the term, but can be written well or poorly.

Safe Words, despite the generic title, is good.

Specifically, there’s a few things I think are worth calling out as being particularly well handled. The main one being that we see submissive men as a wide range of complicated people with lives outside the bedroom. There’s no cliches about high powered executives blowing off steam or docile meek folk- every single guy has the same range of human agency and can be a good person or a bad person.  The love interest, Anderson, shows both agency, preferences and a spine. He’s, dare I say, cute and not ruled exclusively by his kinks. He’s well adjusted and likes himself. I could see myself chasing him.

Silver is written with some of the standard romance heroine problems (dowdy wardrobe, just doesn’t connect with dudes), but she is a hundred percent turned on by sub guys, and unlike many books in the genre has a loving and adorably vulnerable attitude to femdom. She doesn’t think less of submissive men and crave a dom or a “real man”. He dowdy clothes are her desperately trying to gain the upper hand in a world where her femaleness is a vulnerability and as soon as she gets introduced to the idea of femdom we get to see her masturbating to the subject enough not to worry that she’s just doing it to keep her boy interested.

That private time is a sneaky way that Jamison manages to pack more erotic punch into a burgeoning romance. I liked this handling, as it helped illustrate what falling in love is like and avoid making the actual interactions between her and the guy she is falling in love with drag or feel gratuitous.

What about the hero?

Romance has a hard time with sub men. With the genre aimed at making men into sexual objects, a lot of novels fall flat by making the guy either a pushy weirdo or a non-entity. Anderson, Eleanor’s psychologist-guide to the kink scene, is a bit of a cipher as we don’t really get a direct window into his head, like a nuanced person with other stuff going on than his penis. That’s damning with faint praise, but in a writing genre where “he had an erection” is used as shorthand for “he is interested and interesting” it’s nice to see that Jamison tries to have him express himself through word and looks. As a person has his own agenda, reputation with other characters, and past relationships. He makes good and bad choices, expressing a lot of courage but also managing to convey a desperate attraction and vulnerability to the heroine that he keeps on a short leash to be polite.

Gender comes in here a lot. Our male protagonist is not a sissy, but several of the other male sub characters are (and one is actually trans), and some of the development of their relationship is Elanor realising she doesn’t so much mind being a woman as what she previous assumed was mandatory submission and passivity. Anderson’s version of a sub knows and enforces his limits with pleasant firmness (for example where explains he is not a sissy, and the Mistress he would obey would not want that) and we don’t fuck around with “no but your dick says you want this!” limit pushing.

What he provides is what most femdoms want, someone who affirms and loves who she is, and gives her space to express the vulnerability of command.

Okay, what about the book as a whole?

I think my favourite part of this is that there’s enough characters that you get a lot of examples of femdom relationships with real humans- and see a spectrum of sub guys from the killer (anyone who has gotten an unhinged inbox message knows how believable it is that there is a Buffalo Bill knock off out there); nice, really loving husbands; hot singles, etc… When male submission in fiction tends to be treated like a bizarre anomaly or some sort of inborn fetish reflex that turns off a person’s personality, seeing it sketched out in a broader sense is much needed room to breathe.

We need more femdom books in general. On the plus side, the fact that it won a Golden Flogger award at  BDSM Writers Con means I hope we’ll see more like it. I am looking forward to the sequel where our Heroine gets to solve more mysteries and hopefully we see a continuation of her relationship with Anderson.

Femdom Review: Dancing Backward- An Adventure in Male Submission

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Dancing backwardDancing Backward: An Adventure in Male Submission by Thomas Lavalle

Nope, didn’t like it. Dancing Backward was a pretty good example of how not to make me happy, and really a good percent of what is wrong with femdom porn if you are trying to appeal to female readers. Or male ones who don’t get something out of self hate.

Some of this was simply it not being my way of expressing my F/m kink, but it had a lot of oopsies and pitfalls typical of the genre- as much as I hate to pillory the creative output of other people, this is precisely the sort of book that makes it hard for women think they would enjoy being a dom, and indeed represents male submission as something pathetic. On the other hand it’s one of Amazon’s more popular femdom novels, so if my review is scathing, I’m sure the author will dry his tears with a handful of the royalties he’s earned.

To briefly summarize the plot: This is a story about a control freak who marries a passive sponge, and then when he proves to be a passive sponge, turns him into a punching bag.

The most glaring problem was that I never got any sense of why the couple liked each other. An interesting premise, essentially of a gender inversion 1950s marriage, turned into odd abusive weirdness sans any sort of context- our hero Christopher is essentially an ambulatory submissive erection, while his wife, Kelly, didn’t really have any characteristics other than hawt n’ dominant- her G cup breasts had as much personality as she did, while she groped about the femdom cliches with inexplicable motive, coming across as less kinky and more that the universe had dictated this was how things worked because the author said so. Really, you know you’re going to have a bad time when the description blurb calls the femdom “spoiled” and “bossy”. About the only moment she seemed human is the vague mention she had decorative ballerina figurines- otherwise I got the impression that literally any idiot who met her minimum threshold of attractive and she could push around would do as she was just a culmination of everything the audience is supposed to find attractive crammed into one barbie doll shaped carapace. She had no beginning and no end, just ambition and a sense of self importance that came from no place other than narrative dictate. Hell, when the novel opens she doesn’t actually appear to have any close friends.

The writing honestly, is good at least as sketching out the male protagonist as a believable person (albeit a realistic waste of space or a victim, depending on your reading), but as a female dominant I found Kelly repulsive- angry and condescending, with a side order of female superiority wankery and nothing to back it up other than that she makes gobs of money. The side character, Carmen the Cuban, was actively offensive, a fetishists idea of what a Hispanic is, making sure you knew Ai AM EL SPANISH! every other sentence, in a way that made her feel like Dora the Explorer’s sociopathic cousin. None of the female doms made me want to be them or even in the same room as them. If a guy handed me this book and asked “can we do this please?” I’d probably run away.

And then there’s the whole subject of the weird abusive stuff, which was encoded into the universe such that the audience was supposed to see the aggressive mistreatment of males as not grounds to call the police, but just vaguely titillating. I’ll take the time to say this now: Mr. Lavalle, nobody this side of the ’90s says “you go girl!” unironically, and certainly not regarding CBT or how the only true way to deal with life is to dom the lesser menz. The only people who are still using that tired little phrase is the sort of persecution complex MRA who never actually interact with actual women and write eight page screeds on why women are out to get them.

As a writer of non-con who gets off on rape as a concept, you think I’d be all on board with the setting’s darker side- after all, I am quite the sadist. However, the rapey nonsense is all over the fucking place, and not even particularly empowering or just a sadistic fantasy for women- for example just incidentally in the background, Kelly worries about the impact on her career of turning down some random wealthy dude. This was forshadowed as her cuckolding partner in the next book, without examination of how creepy it is that now the guy is aggressively sending her mash notes bout how their hookup is inevitable. Of course, like any porn dom, rather than, you know, getting off on male submission, she’s written to actually want a Real Man TM, like Stalky Pants McSouthAfrican and this forceful attitude is not time to speak to HR, but a rare moment she seemed to respect a male.  Do. Not. Want.

Meanwhile Kelly, herself, also comes across as way less domly and more abusive. She isolates her husband, banning him from friends and hobbies. Even before they bring in the whips and chains side of things and she’s waffling about with a pure power exchange relationship, she mentions offhand that she rarely had to slap her husband as a sign of his goodness. This is supposed to be a normal relationship up until that point. Heterosexual dudes in relationships reading this, if your female partner slaps you and it is not part of a consenting dynamic or to get your attention while you sleep walk off off a cliff, that shit is not okay.

And then when she decides that they are going F/m full bore femdom, of course she doesn’t ask because in this universe male subs are just defective men who will go along with any nonesense as long as the woman forces them too. Half the time she’s mumbling about female superiority, the other half the time she’s debating who will actually fuck her now since a sub guy won’t do. Our hero devotes a extensive amount of whining and carrying on about how he’s sooooo emasculated, and yet as much as they started out exploring an inverted 1950s dynamic, much is said about how useless he is as a housekeeper, etc, etc…

Which is back to my point, Kelly talks about how her Christopher is ‘sweet’, but all he does is either fail to keep house (so she can punish him) or whine about how terrrrrrrible this new thing is, never showing an ounce of romantic initiative, agency or creativity. We learn that when he met Kelly in college, he dropped out of his graphic designer program a few credits shy of graduation to be her full time house husband, and never expressed himself creatively again. He does not turn around and flourish in the home. Instead, he becomes this useless lump who actually hates housework and does it for fear of punishment. He does not act remotely emotionally fulfilled by a life of service, but neither is he good enough at it to make me feel like Kelly’s getting a good deal- instead she spends much of the book pissed off that her partner is dull and clingy as wallpaper paste. Her solution, to transition from domestic D/s, to full sadomasochistic BDSM, feels like more effort than just hiring a damn maid and throwing him out on his ear.

If you are a sub guy into being treated badly (at least in fantasy) with stabs at SPH, domestic service, feeling emasculated by obedience, and the idea that nursing at big boobs are hot, you will have yourself at least one fantastic wank reading this. If, I suppose your SO lets you. Although if you have an SO, you’ll know this is pure fantasy, and one hopes your relationship is a lot more nuanced and healthy than the nonesense written in here.

If you are a dominant woman, you will come away feeling vaguely insulted and disappointed that once again, your kinks are simply not considered to matter when you can be used as a fantasy object.

Category: Erotic romance
Rating: o (1/5)
How I got it: Bought it!
TL;DR: Rising star executive Kelly turns househusband Christopher into her slave. An unsatisfying turn off, with unpleasant main characters.

Femdom Review: Lance Hart

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19Ridiculously conventionally attractive guy decides to take on the abysmal nature of current femdom porn and make his own videos? Yes please! His stage name is Lance Hart, and if you haven’t heard about him, you probably should.

As well as femdom, he also is trying to do something better about the quality of FM/m cuckold porn. A surprising odd facet of the industry- its actually apparently very hard to get a lot of actors who will do gay and straight male roles. his other specialties- M/m (for you women who love to see two dudes at the same time), ball busting and spandex. And you’d think the last part would be weird but he’d been pretty creative with a bunch of superhero spoof videos.

lancefacepicAs a producer and actor, Lance is working his butt off on his own personal corner of the fetish world. Although he’s simply phenomenal looking (I mean jesus, dat bone structure), he’s also putting his money where his mouth is and rather than complaining about porn with male subs depicted as unworthy and unwanted, everything I’ve seen him in completely acknowledges you could actually prefer male submission.

I had the good fortune to get some review copies of his videos, and then like a giant flake, dropped off the map.  So here’s my chance to try to make it up to everyone and give a sincere review of the stuff he’s producing for one of his projects: Sweet Femdom.

Here’s the scoop on his self produced malesub/femdom work:

What he gets right– Videos depict sub guys as inherently desirable and the focus of sexual attention. Amusing ideas that put female dominants in a role with more agency than just being irate. I find it easy to project myself into the actresses in his vision. and how often do I get to say that?

What didn’t work for me– Try as I might, many of the scenarios lacked a little bit of chemistry or tended to veer into too absurd. For example I liked the idea in one of his sample videos of a woman who hires a stripper to take advantage of- turning what was supposed to be a sexy dance into wicked abuse. One the other hand the mood ended up being good natured confusion “Oh, you want to kick me in the balls repeatedly instead? Oooookay!” thus losing the forced elemen. While Lance Hart’s body is made for still photography, he’s still testing the waters for the right mood in motion- looks super vulnerable in stills, tends to look mildly flabbergasted when acting in his own stuff.

Nonetheless, I’d be interested to see what he is producing in another couple of years- there’s some raw talent these I hope gets nurtured. He definitely deserves a break and I’d totally put him on the list of people to follow with enthusiasm. Also kink.com does a very good job making use of his talents- so check out their work with him- guy’s got a very expressive face- when he’s on a roll with the acting he’s fun as well as hot.

So without further ado:

Twitter: @lancehartfetish
Instagram: Candid shots and stills.
His Work With Kink.Com: Their direction with him is fabulous.
Gofundme (He’s working on improving his videos): fetish film fund

Femdom Book Review: Glamourhai by Jess Mahler

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Glamourhai by Jess Mahler

Jess Mahler is also the author behind “Fantasy for the Kinky“, and has released one of her serials in ebook form, complete with a lovely cover- I’ve reviewed her work already with the short story “Fealty“. As such I had the good fortune to get a review copy of Glamourhai.

When people write BDSM stories, they are generally wank material or romances. Whether they are con-non-con, torture tourism or strictly spank and smooch, sexual and romantic desire is a central point behind the main characters’ interactions. This book is none of these.

What it is, is a femdom focused fantasy novel by an experienced writer. That’s pretty much the best one could wish for, to have the subject material handled by someone with strong technical skills and a love for the subject material. On the flip side, it’s a surprisingly chaste book about coming into your own regarding your orientation- there is more fantasy adventure here than fucking, and the romance is mostly onto the side characters.

To summarize the plot: In a land ruled by fairie lieges who feed on the emotional energy of human thralls, a young man (Mattin) trades himself in a lifetime of service to a relatively benevolent fairy lady to try to win back a sister (Marta) who has been claimed by a much less kind fairie lord. However, things are not all they seem- between finding his feet in a bizarre magical household and navigating the dangerous politics of the realm, Mattin must discover if he can truly submit to his Lady. She, for her part, has to deal with actually needing to let someone adjust to their role instead of a comforting, easy insta-sub like the rest of her household and a strong desire to have him accept his role willingly.

Fantasy, as a genre, often provides us with conceits that let us explore alternative social arrangements and relationship dynamics that are otherwise improbable or rare- in this book, the prevailing mode of business is poly. From the perspective of the sympathetic characters, rape and non-consensual torture is morally wrong, but regrettably common and the human subjects of the fairies collectively live in a feudal system where they  live like medieval vassals.

If I had to make a comparison to Jess Mahler’s style, it’s as if Mercedes Lackey or maybe Anne McCaffery took up writing femdom- by this I mean that it’s a very personality and feelings driven story- in which the central conflict is settling precisely what is the correct emotional approach and practical coping skills for a new environment- with bonus sensible perpetually middle aged types and experienced hands watching out for whatever awakening is taking place.

And yet it’s a world laced with sex that is without much sex between the primary characters- to be frank, Mattin’s awakening was a lot closer to a religious calling. The fairie lady everyone serves simply does not fuck her servants just to punch up the erotica factor gratiously.  She might sexually tease them, but if servants get horny, it’s up to their fellow humans to figure that part out. Not much time is devoted to her sexual head space in favour of a focus on her emotional desires, and her hopes and dears for Mattin.

Indeed, Mattin doesn’t persue her in that sense eithere- his sexuality is expressed in a way that’s almost vanilla, the sort of tasteful sluttiness matched with the equal tastefully slutty human female household member. There’s a m/m side romance between some other characters, and everyone else has a jolly, happy attitude to sexuality that is more cozy than vulgar.

Personally, my sexuality and my BDSM is more vulgar than cozy, and a lot less nice. Thus I found myself in an uncomfortable position, which I have to move into spoilers to talk about- so, after the jump…

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Review: Taste by Beth Taylor

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It’s actually hard to give a good effort a bad review. I think Beth Taylor didn’t excactly rob me for $3.01, and I wouldn’t be gauche enough to demand a refund. However, I just couldn’t get into Taste: An Aristocratic Femdom Love Story by Beth Taylor,  mostly because of the writing style.

I tried, and I thought about not reviewing it at all. Maybe I simply didn’t give the characters a chance? It focuses on the love lives of a bunch of upper class British people with titles. It’s supposed to be about duty, but the duty element doesn’t really leap out while people are having impassioned email spats about their sexual desires and are supposed to be over educated and leading jet set lives.

Taste probably got off to a bad start by using the format of an email discussion, at least for me, I feel like I’m reading a chat log of someone’s RPG and I’m not really feeling it. I couldn’t make myself care about any of the characters or take their problems seriously. Here’s an excerpt of what I mean:

As he continues to lightly rub each of her feet, he glances over to see that smile of hers as she Skypes with her eldest brother – then smiles automatically in response, almost against his will, given his mood.

[Steph]: He’s watching The Masters wrap up.

[James]: Ask him if he’s finally gaining some sporting affection for Australia. If not, he should do!

[Steph, still smiling]: He’s in a quiet mood, Jamesy; not a great time for a piss-take, but when he finally tells me what’s on his mind, I’ll surely tease him afterwards for you.

[James]: Goodgood. Must dash, can’t wait to see you next week, it’s been too long.

Taylor, Beth (2013-05-05). Taste: An Aristocratic Femdom Love Story (Kindle Locations 455-464). . Kindle Edition.

Maybe some of the challenge was also that people were written as reacting to Steph’s random dominance, but I had no reason to find her as entrancing as the rest of the characters seemed to. Purely as a study of inter personal relationships and maudlin concepts, it’s not *that* bad. But while I wouldn’t burn this book, I wouldn’t advise you to buy it either. This is not “Twilight” bad, this is in the realm of being bad enough to be ignored but not bad enough to be fair or kind to pick on it.

Category: Short Ebook
Rating: o (1/5)
How I got it: Bought it
TL;DR: Overly creative formatting and characters I couldn’t get into. Scenarios had hints of being hot, but it needs more than a few sexy ideas to be worth it.