BDSM-News from Newspapers and magazines worldwide from tom Verhoeven BDSMradio.EU

WHERE WOMEN HUNT MEN: INSIDE DOMINATRIX FOXHUNTS

Source: Ozy.com.

UK – Fifteen men stagger through the English countryside, naked apart from their shoes, paintball masks and groin guards. Their thighs are scraped and bruised from falling, their bottoms striped in red. When a whip cracks behind the men, one of them stumbles and falls. Dominatrix Mistress Medulla stands above her capture. At first he cowers, and then he submissively nods his head. He belongs to her for the rest of the weekend to trample, whip, gag and abuse as she likes — or at least up to the hard limits written on his leather collar.

Human foxhunts are an esoteric fantasy, even for the sexually adventurous BDSM crowd. Many involve corseted dominatrices chasing their prey through woodlands, their submissive quarry eager to be caught. The stalking takes place across the world — recent hunts were held in England, Australia, Florida and California. It’s a niche but growing area of female domination (femdom), where (mostly) men pay for the right to be subservient. But interested parties can’t just show up. To join the hunt, you must fill out an application, come with a recommendation and have an established presence in kink communities like Fetlife. For genuine submissives, working for it is part of the process.

I DON’T LOVE THE IDEA OF A PAINTBALL HITTING MY COCK. BUT BEING UNDER A MISTRESS’ CONTROL SO COMPLETELY — WELL, THAT WOULD BE WORTH IT.

THOMAS, SUBMISSIVE

“The first time we did a slave hunt, we pelted them with eggs,” says Mistress Natalya Sadici, who runs the Order of Indomitus, a Florida-based weekend slave retreat that organizes hunts a few times a year. “The slaves are given a head start on the property — we have five acres for them to run around.” Eggs proved sticky and smelly in the Florida heat, so Sadici and the other mistresses changed the ammo to paintballs launched with a slingshot. Slaves wear protective footwear — there are alligators in Florida — and a collar. Nothing else. And they follow strict rules. “We have a system of how a slave should conduct himself,” Mistress Natalya says. “They don’t speak unless spoken to. We keep them on point the whole weekend.”

The Order of Indomitus was founded in 2010; their hunts began in 2013. Slaves pay $2,200 for a weekend of worship, which includes floggings and sleeping in locked cages (no extra charge). The order has so many applications that they limit the number of participants on the receiving end. Their biggest event involved 12 slaves (a total haul of $26,400, for those of you doing the math). Thomas, a 35-year-old customer service rep from England, who asked that his last name not be used, is considering attending a hunt next year. He finds the idea very exciting — and the beauty of it is that any reservations he has about participating only add to his arousal. “Of course, I’m worried about being hurt and struggling,” he says. “I don’t love the idea of a paintball hitting my cock. But being under a mistress’ control so completely — well, that would be worth it.”

Though every slave hunt is different, I’m told repeatedly that they’re all inspired by Other World Kingdom, a Tolkienesque place that sounds like some perverted fairy tale. But here truth is stranger than fiction. In 1996, a group of dominatrices banded together to establish a micronation in a remote part of the Czech Republic. “You can’t be in the industry and not know of OWK,” says Mistress Ayn, an Atlanta-based dom. “It’s like saying you’re a football fan, but you’ve never heard of John Elway.” The femdoms resided in a 16th-century castle, serviced by male slaves who slept on straw, bowed to every woman they met and lined up for daily lashes. It was a femdom utopia governed by latex goddesses. Financial difficulties forced OWK to disband around 2008, but millennial femdoms keep the beacon alight with modern-day hunts.

For those who can’t attend in person, there’s a Second Life alternative. The avatar-based world has lost followers since its 2003 launch, but BDSMers have found its manufactured spaces perfect for virtual slave hunting. The Dominion, Roawenwood and other groups run hunts where captured slaves submit to every whim of their mistresses. There are enough of them that the blog Second Life Hunt was set up to chronicle the pursuits, the captures, the punishments.

Of course, the real-life version is infinitely more satisfying — but it also remains more elusive, as many doms don’t have the resources or the demand to run a pursuit. “I have never received a request for a scene involving hunting,” says Mistress Selina Raven. The Northern California–based dom is intrigued by the concept, but says it would be a challenge to do professionally — a responsible dominatrix needs to think about venue safety, permissions and medical facilities. Atlanta-based Mistress Ayn scoffs, “The idea of hunting [men] in the woods seems farcical. It’s not part of being a professional dom.” She adds, however, that she’s not an outdoors person. “Getting scratched, dirty and bug-bitten has no appeal to me,” she says. “I like a nice, clean dungeon.”

Bay Area sexologist Dr. Sandra Lindholm doesn’t see slave hunts becoming mainstream for BDSM play. She thinks the sociopolitical implications — such as the African-American slave experience — deter many people. However, as long as hunts are safe and consensual, she doesn’t have a problem with them. “Feeling free to not be in control can be very erotically exciting,” she says. “[Just be sure that ] participants are able to decipher between fantasy and reality.”

For those who fantasize this way, Mistress Natalya Sadici says it’s often a reaction to today’s patriarchal society: “A lot of men find women who embrace their power very attractive.”

See more larger photo’s: www.ozy.com.

‘End of an era’: porn actors lament the loss of legendary San Francisco Armory

It’s a uniquely San Francisco institution: a huge faux castle and studio for the fetish site Kink. But in February, Kink performers will do their final shoot

Source: Theguardian.com.

USA – SAN FRANCISCO – A handful of leather straps, sex toys and other bondage equipment were scattered throughout the mostly empty studios of Kink.com on a recent Thursday. Peter Acworth, founder and CEO of the BDSM porn empire, walked through the dark basement corridors of the San Francisco Armory, recounting how his company used to make as many as 100 films a month.

But in February, Kink actors will do their final shoot at the historic castle-like building that has become a world-famous destination for tourists and porn connoisseurs. As Acworth described Kink’s early days, staff upstairs prepared for a lavish party for Airbnb – the kind of corporate tech event that some fear could take over the Armory once porn is out the door.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Lorelei Lee, a longtime Kink performer. “To lose this in a city that is losing resources for artists and queers and sex workers in such a huge way is sad.”

The Kink.com studio is the latest uniquely San Francisco institution to shutter in the rapidly gentrifying city, which in recent years has become exceedingly unaffordable and culturally homogeneous amid a huge technology boom. Combined with the financial turmoil in the porn industry, Kink’s business model has become unsustainable, leading Acworth to cease all production in the Armory.

Although Kink.com will maintain Armory offices and continue to provide content, some San Francisco performers are lamenting the closure of a porn studio that elevated the profile of fetish entertainment and BDSM and provided stable jobs and a safe workplace for LGBT people and sex workers.

Acworth, who is from the UK, launched the company in 1997 out of a grad school dorm room. In 2006, he purchased the 200,000 sq ft Armory, which is a 1914 reproduction of a medieval castle.

The national landmark became the headquarters for his growing network of BDSM and fetish subscriptions sites, including an interactive live page and a news site, and has housed public tours, shows, workshops and other porn events.

“There are so many of us that have come out of Kink and started out there,” said Arabelle Raphael, who began performing for the site in 2010. “A lot of models went through their own BDSM journeys through the company.”

Kink built its reputation as the rare porn company with a mission statement – to “demystify and celebrate alternative sexualities by providing the most ethical and authentic kinky adult entertainment”. Although it operated much like a mainstream porn business, Kink was rooted in a San Francisco scene that was distinct from the Los Angeles and Las Vegas industries – with more radical content and a more diverse workforce.

“A lot of the Castro was built on the back of porn companies. But one by one, they upped and left

Peter Acworth, founder and CEO of Kink”

Notably, Kink performers do interviews after the shoots to candidly discuss the experience, which has helped break down stigmas associated with BDSM and fetishes and has allowed the company to emphasize the importance of consent in kinky sex.

“Kink, with its shear reach, has done so much to educate people,” said Eric Paul Leue, Kink’s former director of sexual health and advocacy. “That’s a beautiful legacy.”

Still, the company has weathered controversies over the years. Some workers have complained of mistreatment, and Kink last year severed ties with porn star James Deen after multiple women accused him of sexual assault. The website has also repeatedly clashed with state regulators about its scenes without condoms, though Kink and its performers have long maintained that the shoots are safe and that they are facing political attacks from anti-porn groups.

But it was the proliferation of free online content that ultimately made it impossible for Kink to stay afloat in San Francisco, which once had a thriving porn industry centered in the historically gay Castro district.

“A lot of the Castro was built on the back of porn companies. But one by one, they upped and left,” said Acworth. “There’s so much content out there. The human body only has so many orifices and so many limbs you can tie in so many ways.”

In recent years, San Francisco has also lost numerous beloved LGBT bars and a famous strip club that was unionized and run as a worker-run cooperative. Some of the city’s queer events are now dominated by the tech industry, which has a reputation for being prudish, and government crackdowns on sex work have also eliminated jobs.

Lee said she recently left San Francisco because of these dramatic changes. “A lot of these models have lived in San Francisco specifically because they were seeking out the community that was in San Francisco, which is very queer and diverse in terms of body type.”

To some, Kink seemed like one of the few remaining gathering spaces for this crowd.

“It’s been slowly feeling like the death of San Francisco,” said Raphael. “This just feels like the end of an era.”

See more larger photo’s: www.theguardian.com.

Maaya not inspired by Fifty Shades Of Grey: Vikram Bhatt

Source: Thehansindia.com.

INDIA – Filmmaker Vikram Bhatt, who explores the theme of BDSM a variety of erotic practices or role playing involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission in a new web-series titled “Maaya”, says it’s anything but inspired by international film “Fifty Shades of Grey”. In an interview, Bhatt spoke about the reason behind doing the series and why making it as a feature film was not an option he considered.

What prompted you to do a series on BDSM?

I was writing a book on this at first. But, I realised that it needed a visual medium. It’s not as much about BDSM as it is about the internet and the anonymity that it gives. You can be who you want and in that you end up becoming more yourself than you ever were. ‘Maaya’ is about that irony.

Is ‘Maaya’ inspired by “Fifty Shades Of Grey”?

No. Unfortunately, anything that is BDSM is ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. And I see no point in fighting that perception. It’s like saying ‘Dangal’ is ‘Sultan’ because they are about wrestling.

Why did you select Shama Sikandar to play the lead?

I needed someone who was more than willing to surrender to the script, to understand the realm that is BDSM. It’s complex. It’s about surrender and control. She had to be someone who had kept her desires to herself, who felt judged, had a nervous breakdown… She did it marvellously.

Do you think sexually deviant behaviour is now an integral part of our social structure?

I know that the millennials have made it more acceptable, but there will always be the ones who will judge. I believe that whatever is safe, sane and consensual between two adults in the privacy of their bedrooms is not deviant.

Why a web series? Why not a feature film?

‘Maaya’ works best in Hinglish. It cannot be tailor-made to any one particular kind of audience that films tend to do now. Also, ‘Maaya’ would have never gotten past the censors and in this; the censors would have been right because I think ‘Maaya’ is more a private watch than a collective movie-going experience.

See larger photo: www.thehansindia.com.

Study reveals all of the kinky things women enjoy but won’t tell you about

IT turns out women are really into spanking, research shows.

Source: Dailystar.co.uk.

UK – When it comes to sex, everyone has their preferences.

One in three people have a fetish, some like it vanilla and others like a little bit of kink here and there.

Women have often been seen as the vanilla sex type, but a new study shows they’re just as, if not more, kinky than men.

A study called the “Sensual, Erotic, and Sexual Behaiviours of Women” was recently published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour.

The researchers surveyed 1,580 females from all over the world – the US participants made up 80% of participants and the remaining 20% came from Australia, New Zealand, Wales, Ireland, England, India and Scotland among others.

The median age was 34 years old and these participants were asked to categorise a list of 126 sexual behaviours from their favourite to their least favourite.

Not surprisingly, the biggest turn on for a woman was touching – caress, cuddle, massage, tickle (99.62%) – and kissing, licking and sucking came in a close second with 99.56%.

However, in third place with a whopping 95% of the participants saying they enjoyed this was spanking. Yep, spanking.

Then came hair pulling (93.16%), Biting (92.03%) and scratching (90.06%).

Bondage play was high up in the list too with using bondage toys and moderate bondage (meaning you can’t get out on your own but have mobility of your body) at 87.53% and 86.39% respectively.

In what came as no surprise, 86.01% of women said they like to masturbate and 85.63% said they enjoy receiving oral sex – 81.08% also like to give it.

Nearly 80% of women say they like anal and 78% say they like sex with inanimate objects – excluding sex toys. Physical humiliation (face-slapping, begging and crawling) was also high on the list with 77.53% of women who admitted they enjoyed it.

At the very bottom of the list was having sex with a dead person which 0.06% said they would like, as well as sex with a wild animal (0.32%), sex with a domestic animal (4.75%) and prostitution (5.95%).

You can find a selection of the others below:

Light bondage (able to get out if you wanted to) 85.13%

Paddling 84.24%

Hand job (stimulating genitals with hands/fingers) 82.78%

Flogging 81.90%

Ice play 80.06%

Candle wax play 78.61%

Whipping 75.70%

Genital to genital contact: non-penetrative 73.23%

Master/slave fantasy 73.16%

Deprivation (forced chastity, blindfold, bathroom use control, orgasm control, sensory deprivation, etc.) 72.03%

Stringent/extreme bondage (immobilised) 70.70%

Punishment: physical 70.32%

Ingesting semen 69.81%

Stimulating anus with sex toys (beads, butt plug, vibrator, speculum, hooks, etc.) 68.99%

Mammary intercourse (rubbing phallic object or penis between breasts) 67.66%

Breath play, choking, strangling, hanging 66.84%

Wrestling 63.23%

Danger fantasy (abduction, execution, impregnation, interrogation, rape, kidnapping, prison scene) 63.10%

Rimming (stimulating anus with mouth) 62.03%

Worship (kissing, licking, smelling, enjoying a specific body part) 61.20%

Jobs/occupation play (boss/secretary, maid, teacher/student) 60.82%

Stimulating penis with sex toys (cock rings, sheath, etc.) 57.91%

Knife play/razors 56.52%

Ingesting vaginal fluid 56.08%

Vaginal fisting 55.19%

Impact play/percussion play: using blunt or heavy instrument 54.75%

Animal play (pony, kitten, wolf, etc.) 53.92%

Using a strap-on dildo to penetrate anus 50.63%

Medical play (doctor or nurse/patient) 47.22%

Urine play (golden showers/water sports) 45.70%

Genital torture (piercing, stretching, stitching, hooks, dilation, etc.) 44.37%

Foot job (stimulating genitals with feet) 43.54%

Group sex (including orgies, gang bang, bukkake) 39.81%

Blood play 36.58%

Forced cross-dressing 35.51%

Anal torture 32.85%

Engaging in public sex 32.15%

Anal fisting 30.76%

Anonymous sex/sex with strangers 30.25%

Foot torture 27.53%

Passing female vaginal fluid from mouth-to-mouth 26.58%

Snowballing (passing semen from mouth-to-mouth) 26.58%

Acting out sexual fantasy/role play 26.20%

Incest play (fantasy) 25.95%

Swinging (mate swapping) 25.76%

Feces play (brown showers/scat/excrement/enemas) 13.73%

Felching (licking semen out of anus) 11.20%

Using semen or vaginal fluid in mixed-drinks or cooking/baking recipes 8.42%

Age progression (elderly) 8.23%

Sex with corpse (fantasy) 6.84%

See more larger photo’s & video: www.dailystar.co.uk.

Mrs May as a dominatrix? Some Tories buy it, but Europe won’t

Her big speech on Brexit had a superficial firmness and clarity but was constructed from illusions and hollow threats

Source: Theguardian.com.

UK – LONDON – Statecraft is often an exercise in deception – and arguably has to be so. Leaders spend much of the time frantically paddling to keep their heads above the water in swirling seas of uncertainty. This is the truth that they try to disguise from themselves and their publics. Self-respect and voters demand that leaders sound as if they are in command of events.

By this measure – at the level of projecting herself as a woman of robust purpose in charge of her country’s destiny – Theresa May’s big speech on Brexit can be counted a performative success. She has a plan. The delineation of her objectives has silenced those who had started to ridicule her as Mrs Maybe. She threatened to walk away from negotiations if she doesn’t get what she wants: “No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal”. That stimulated the erogenous zones of those parts of the British media that love to hear the slap of firm leadership, especially when the slapping is directed at the chops of johnny foreigner. The rightwing press has rewarded her with the most orgasmic headlines of her time as Tory leader. The adulatory gush about a new “iron lady” at Number 10 compares with the reception enjoyed by Margaret Thatcher in her pomp while conveniently forgetting that it was Mrs T who was instrumental in creating the single market that Mrs M wants to walk away from.

The speech was also a hit in terms of short-term domestic political advantage. The Labour party is dazed, confused and divided about how to respond while a large part of her own party pants with pleasure that they are going to get the hard Brexit they want. It was implicit in her previous statements that Britain will leave the single market, because continued membership is incompatible with ending freedom of movement. We could deduce that because Mrs May has been signalling for some time that control of immigration trumps any other consideration in her Brexit calculations. It could also be inferred that Britain was likely to be out of the customs union as well. The unconfined joy of the hard Brexiters is because she has now been explicit about this in language that leaves no wriggle room for later compromise.

Her speech was commensurately depressing, desperately so, for pro-Europeans in the Tory party. Despite the mounting indications to the contrary, they had been clinging to straws of hope that Mrs May would steer them towards one of the less stark forms of Brexit. Now they know differently. They should be in no doubt that Mrs May is setting course for a hard Brexit, or “clean Brexit” as the prime minister has taken to calling it, adopting the language of the fundamentalists in her party.

Yet for all its superficial firmness and clarity, this was a speech constructed from illusions. The overarching fantasy was that Brexit is a process over which Mrs May has complete control. She does get to decide when to pull the trigger. She has chosen the end of March, this week’s judgment from the supreme court and events in parliament permitting. But from that point on, her fate, and with it Britain’s future, is in the hands of many other actors, some of whose identities are not even known yet. To please her domestic audience, the prime minister presented herself as someone who will be a demander, not a supplicant, at the negotiating table. Once she is actually facing the 27, she can demand all she likes, but ultimately she will only get what they are prepared to concede.

About that, Mrs May was heroically optimistic. She says she wants to preserve “the greatest possible access” to the single market with special privileges for key industries such as car manufacture and financial services; she seeks zero tariffs and frictionless supply chains, along with release from the jurisdiction of the European court of justice; she will pay only a peppercorn contribution to the EU budget while also securing freedom for Britain to strike separate trade deals with other parts of the world. She believes – or hopes to make the rest of us believe – that this can be achieved in the two years which start counting down from the moment she triggers Article 50.

I am tempted to ask: what has the prime minister been smoking?

The EU does not have to talk about a new trade relationship at all, not if they want to be bloody-minded about it, or the atmosphere is poisoned by more boorish remarks by members of the British cabinet comparing continental leaders to Nazi prison camp guards. There is a widespread misperception that Article 50 triggers the start of trade negotiations. It does not. Article 50 has nothing to do with trade. It is about the terms of the divorce: settling the bills and dividing the assets. Mrs May avoided that topic in her speech, perhaps not surprisingly when some in Brussels have been suggesting the commission may ask for up to €60bn. Michel Barnier, the EU’s lead negotiator, has said repeatedly they want the divorce settlement agreed before they will start discussing the future.

“It can never be in the EU’s interests to grant Britain the advantages while releasing it from the obligations”

In place of membership of the single market and the customs union, Mrs May says she will seek a comprehensive free-trade agreement. That will mean negotiating terms sector by sector. I can find no one who knows anything about trade negotiations who thinks this is do-able in 24 months. It took seven years for the EU to negotiate its trade deal with Canada. Mrs May’s speech made the habitual mistake of British politicians when talking about Europe, which is to forget that other countries have interests to protect and other leaders have parliaments to face and voters to answer to. There may or may not be a desire in some parts of the EU to “punish” Britain for leaving. There is certainly no appetite for handing Britain a sweetheart deal that says to everyone that it can be more profitable to quit the club than remain part of it. It can never be in the EU’s interests to grant Britain a continuation of most of the advantages of being a member while releasing it from all the obligations.

The installation of Donald Trump at the White House has made the path to a successful agreement even more difficult. Some British diplomats had hoped that the United States might take the edges off the negotiations with the EU by encouraging the 27 to play nice and keep close to the UK. That notion has been turned to ashes by the arrival of an American president who ridicules the EU as “a vehicle for Germany” and forecasts that the organisation will disintegrate as other members copy Britain’s example.

Mrs May’s answer is that the EU will want to strike a rapid and accommodative deal because their economies would also suffer if there isn’t one. It would be “an act of calamitous self-harm” to wreck their trading relationship with one of the world’s larger economies. She rehearses the familiar tropes about the Germans wanting to be able to sell their cars to Britain and the French their wine. True enough. But what is even truer is that a car-crash Brexit would inflict asymmetrical damage because a lot more of Britain’s economy is dependent on exports to the EU than vice-versa. Threatening to walk away if you don’t get the deal you want is a negotiating tactic that can be effective when bargaining in a souk. It works because the other party knows that you can go elsewhere. It is not such a clever threat when the other side knows that walking away will hurt you a lot more than it will hurt them.

Mrs May probably understands that her hand is nothing like as strong as she pretends it is. This could explain why she attempted to compensate for the weaknesses of her position by menacing the EU with this notion: “If we were excluded from access to the single market, we would be free to change the basis of Britain’s economic model.” That was meant and perceived as a threat to turn Britain into an ultra low-tax, low-regulation magnet for multinationals, sucking jobs and investment out of the EU. Britain as a kind of Singapore-in-the-Atlantic has always been the vision of some of the Brextremists. But it has never been a component of the Toryism that Mrs May has enunciated. It runs entirely contrary to everything else she has been saying about globalisation since she moved into Number 10.

Her other big speech of the week was to the gathering of the financial elite in Davos. There, she delivered a rather powerful critique of business behaviour. She told the assembled plutocrats and potentates that it was time they woke up to the levels of anger about the uneven impacts of globalisation and “heed the underlying feeling that there are some companies, especially those with a global reach, who are playing by a different set of rules to ordinary working people”. That is entirely incompatible with turning Britain into a tax haven-cum-sweatshop for footloose corporations.

I conclude from these hollow threats that they didn’t play all that much poker when the young Theresa was growing up in her reverend father’s vicarage. If she is going to make a success of bluffing, she is going to have to get a lot better at it than this.

See larger photo: www.theguardian.com.