Shitty still from “Forsaking All Others” (1934), one of a few pre-Code movies in which Clark Gable spanks Joan Crawford for being a bad girl. Scott came to San Francisco a couple times a year on business. Though his evenings in the City were booked solid with dinners and drinks with colleagues, he would always find a night to fake food poisoning and call me, or some other girl, for an hour or two of spanking. He was less a hobbyist than an indulger, a guy who didn’t have the cashflow or the interest in regular transactional sex, but liked to treat himself every so often—as some people do with professional massages or prix fixe meals—to OTK with a girl-next-door type who didn’t cry.
This essay made me think of how often bdsm is commodified AS therapy. Couples therapy to be exact. In some ways I don't mind the lifestyle being more mainstream and """""acceptable""""" (it's calming to wear my Owner's collar or my fetish gear in public and feel amazing without anyone who doesn't recognize it observing it as anything other than an alternative fashion, and I like that people are learning about the lifestyle easier; personally I think being while socially practicing kink is a small minority, being kinky is almost definitely a majority, and people don't know about us until they learn about us) but shitty toys and gear flooding the market with the promise to spice up the bedroom and fix your marriage reminds me that my silver lining is very thin compared to the size of the shit storm)
This essay made me think of how often bdsm is commodified AS therapy. Couples therapy to be exact. In some ways I don't mind the lifestyle being more mainstream and """""acceptable""""" (it's calming to wear my Owner's collar or my fetish gear in public and feel amazing without anyone who doesn't recognize it observing it as anything other than an alternative fashion, and I like that people are learning about the lifestyle easier; personally I think being while socially practicing kink is a small minority, being kinky is almost definitely a majority, and people don't know about us until they learn about us) but shitty toys and gear flooding the market with the promise to spice up the bedroom and fix your marriage reminds me that my silver lining is very thin compared to the size of the shit storm)