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Books and Movies

O Miss Pearl, “The Everlasting” by Alix E. Harrow [Femdom Book Review]

History of BDSM, Killing Me Softly (2002): The Celluloid Dungeon

Thoughts & Advice on Kink & Fetish

The BDSM Store, BDSM Punishment Generator

Hannah McKnight, I Want to be a Crossdresser

Sex & Relationships

Morgan Destera, And I Scream at the Top of My Lungs “What’s Going On?”

Tantric Sexual Healing, Erotic Intelligence: Can Sexual Practice Increase Wisdom?

Femina Viva, Are we all alone? Is life just one big futile exercise for connection?

Product Reviews

Buzz Vibes, Best Masturbators Australia (2026): Our Top Picks for Every Budget

Safe Lust, b-Vibe Rocker Prostate Plug Tested: Rocking the Spot

Liz X, Heavy-Duty Automation: A Review of the Honey Play Box Warrior Masturbator

Girly Juice, Velora Dune banana-shaped vibrator

Oz Bigdownunder, Orgasm Monster Pro 2 Review

Sex Work

Hellga, Fisty Cuffs

Charlotte Cheshire, Luxury Companionship for Every Body: Finding a Disability-Friendly Independent Escort

Mx Valentina, Bespoke Encounters

Ur Little Secret, PSE Meaning: What Is the Porn Star Experience with an Escort?

Sex Worker Search, Fairphone Sex Work Phone Update

Sandra, In Flight Entertainment

Teena Laurent, On Companionship Without Condition

Milady, What’s in My Kinky Tote Bag?

Mila Dall, Music, neuroscience and the link between sexuality and creativity

Maybe you’ve seen the online reviews and news articles about the “kinky” nature of this film. I’m gonna to mention that, but this is really a jumping off place for discussing my two favorite topics – history and consent.

There will be spoilers for the 2026 movie, but I will try to keep them minimum and based on “kink,” consent, and history.

I had some high sexy hopes for this movie before I watched it on June 23, 2026, because of all of the complaints about how it introduced kink into the story that overwhelmed everything else. I’m not sure what film those reviewers and commenters were discussing but that wasn’t the movie I saw.

I know that I have a high bar for kink given that my colleague, Peter, and I try to put out a new kinky movie discussion video every couple of months. I also know that as someone who lives this life 24/7/365 days a year, my definition of what is and is not kinky is probably not reflective of the mainstream culture. To understand why I don’t see this as a BDSM work, I need to explain some historical context.

The novel and this movie version should be set between 1771 and 1802 in the Yorkshire moors of England. This is not a time period when individual rights are NOT respected for almost anyone, king and landed nobles included. Catherine Earnshaw’s family may be nobles, but most of their wealth is land and the people connected to it. Her father is a drunken a-hole who has gambled which makes them indebted to creditors. You see that in the mess of their large estate as well as the sparse furnishings. When Earnshaw returns one night with a boy in tow, he may not have bought him with money, but everyone there knows that the boy now belongs to the estate and by extension to the Earnshaw family whose daughter, Catherine, renames him Heathcliff (after her dead brother, by the way).

Heathcliff chooses one person in particular to give his loyalty to because of her treatment of him, Catherine. He gets between her and her family, he accompanies her out on the moors, he tries to protect her from his sexual desires as well as seeing displays of others engaged in sex. There relationship isn’t based on a negotiated consent because that would make no sense given that time between someone of such two different social and legal statuses.

There is also strict legal and social differences between men and women during that time. If both people are of the same class, then the men’s rights would be greater than the woman’s. That doesn’t mean that they can’t care about each other. We see that in the barn scene between stablehand, Joseph, and maid, Zillah. Yes, they do have sex while she is wearing a bridle, but from the language and the actions, the maid is in charge and the stablehand cares about her safety. First, he hold up a whip but she shakes her head. When he holds up the bridle she smiles broadly and they place it on it. At this point Heathcliff covers Catherine’s eyes and mouth to keep her from revealing where she (and he) are but also I think in an attempt to protect a lady (which she is) from seeing something so base as intercourse. We still hear what is said which is that Zillah wants it all harder and Joseph agrees but also continuous praises her while doing so and then afterwards. It isn’t simply sex, there is a kink element to it, but I think of the two servants, the maid is in charge while the hand is topping.

Another kink element in the movie is the way that we see Heathcliff treat Isabella once they have a civil marriage ceremony to help him get back at Catherine for her cutting short their affair years after she’s been married. Heathcliff may not be a lord, that is unclear in the movie, but he has money (somehow) and buys the Earnshaw estate. He doesn’t do much with it because he is used to it being rundown and poorly kept. Taking Isabella to that estate he hopes will enrage Catherine enough that she’d demand he attone in some fashion. Isabelle is his partner in this, though she seems fooled a bit into thinking she might keep him for her own. That is difficult to say because once she is removed from the Earnshaw estate, she disappears from the movie.

The scenes of Isabella and Heathcliff get the most attention in the reviews that focus on the kink. I want to call attention to a couple of factors I wasn’t expecting but where clearly there in the film. First, when Heathcliff comes into her room and proposes this scheme to her, he is straight forward about how he will treat her and asks if she wants him to stop. The only word we hear from her after he lays out several times how poorly he will behave and asks for her to tell him to stop, is “No” because she wants to try this. Why? I have no clue. Up until this point, Isabella has acted like a spoiled princesses whose guardian Edger married Catherine. In part, I suspect that marriage was one to please Isabella more than Edger given how free his ward is to treat Cathering of a sort of doll for her to dress up and demand attention from.

The abusive treatment that we see Heathcliff give to Isabella is through the lens of letters that she writes upon his pleas to Catherine. Plead he does because Isabella can read and write and he cannot. He even gets on his knees during these letter writing snippets and she grabs him by the front of his shirt demanding that he “treat her nice” if she does this. The highlight of the “abuse” comes when Catherine’s lady-in-waiting, Nelly, comes to visit. She finds Isabella chained up like a dog and acting like a dog. However, note that Isabella looks only slightly disheveled as though it was done on purpose. She even winks at Nelly at the end of that scene and then we see Heathcliff kneeling again while a letter is written.

How much of what Heathcliff and Isabella do is reflected in these performances we cannot know, because it isn’t about them, it is about Heathcliff wanting Catherine to come back to him.

Nelly has been intercepting the letters as well as playing Edgar and Catherine against each other during this time. Nelly’s family probably had fallen on hard times forcing her to become a lady-in-waiting to Catherine since childhood. When Catherine discovers that Nelly knew that Heathcliff heard only part of the discussion about the marriage with Edgar, she is furious. Nelly’s choices are entirely based on her position; whatever affects Catherine affects her. She would probably end up on the street herself if she allows Catherine to fire her, so she She isn’t a good person for what she does, but these are the historical realities for her decisions.

Catherine really doesn’t an easy choice. She is pregnant with her husband. She is dependent on Edgar’s money and he on her noble family title. In the scenes of the years after the marriage when Heathcliff has been who-knows-where, Catherine has moments of joy and happiness, but also periods of boredom and longing for something more exciting. In a world where her husband had legal and social rights to harm her in a multitude of ways, his gentle and generous nature might be seen as ideal by many women and their families. Is she a masochist? I doubt it based on how we see Heathcliff and Edgar treat her. I think she wants passion and she wants to be able to tease her partner and feel some pushback from him.

Heathcliff has pledged himself and his love to her when they were children after he took a severe beating from her drunken father in her place. His love seemed more drawn from feeling grateful mixed with the ages they were as they discovered sexual feelings. He didn’t tell her more because of their social and legal positions in the beginning and then because he only hears part of her reasoning for accepting Edgar’s marriage proposal and is angry. How much consent did he have in his entire for what he experienced and later felt?

It is a beautifully shot film and very intense but not because of the “kink” in our 21st century BDSM meaning of that term.

If you’ve seen it, I’d love to hear what you thought about it.

At the beginning of 2026, I promised myself that I would finish a rough draft of The Celluloid Dungeon by June 30th. I was one day behind, but I did it.

The manuscript is in pretty rough shape, but it’s all there, no gaps or “find reference” notes. It’s over the maximum word count of 150,000 I set as a limit, and that’s even without the “Master Shots” chapter I had planned on the technical aspects of shooting BDSM for film and video. I think I can trim it down to under the limit, with the ruthless application of “kill your darlings.”

That raises the question of, what next? Earlier this year, I severed ties with the agent who had helped me publish A Lover’s Pinch, by mutual agreement. That leaves me currently agent-less. If I go through the commercial path of publishing, that means the work of finding an agent, the agent finding a publisher, and waiting for the publisher to publish it. To be frank, I am dissatisfied with this process, and if I did do it, there are a few things I would insist on doing differently.

However, conversations with other people who write in this particular sub-field of history have shown me the merits of self-publishing. I would retain full creative control and cut out the middle-man.

I would want The Celluloid Dungeon to be as professional and credible as possible. That means professional indexing, editing, proofreading, page layout, cover design, etc, and all of that costs money. Furthermore, I want the book to have as much visual material as possible (film stills, publicity photos, posters, etc), and in many if not most cases, that would require paying licensing fees. My current financial situation means that paying for all of that out of pocket is a possibility, but I would also consider various forms of crowdfunding.

I am under no delusions that The Celluloid Dungeon will be a blockbuster. It’s a niche interest book for a niche audience. So it might be best to treat it as such, the item of exchange between me and the small readership who will appreciate it.

I discuss the body horror classic Videodrome (1983) with Nicholas Tanek and Mistress Genevieve. Also available on Spotify (behind a paywall).

Killing Me Softly is a 2002 erotic thriller directed by Chen Kaige and starring Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes.

Alice (Graham) lives in London with her sweet but dull boyfriend. After a chance sexual encounter with a mysterious man (Fiennes), she tracks him down and learns he is Adam Tallis, a famous mountaineer who saved the lives of six people in an accident that killed many others. Alice leaves her boyfriend and starts a relationship with Adam.

Killing seems like an experiment in how many red flags a man can have and still be attractive. Adam is brooding, mercurial, controlling and haunted by the accident, in which the woman he loved died. When Alice is mugged on the street, Adam doesn’t just chase the assailant down, he brutally beats him, then immediately proposes marriage to Alice.

Alice and Adam are wed. Their honeymoon involves hiking to a remote cabin in the woods, where Adam combines intercourse with breath play in an elaborate setup using long silk scarves. There’s no build-up to this beyond Adam asking, “Do you trust me?”, nor is there any indication Alice has done anything like this. In theory, Alice could just lean backwards and release the pressure on her throat, but it’s still not treated with the gravity it deserves.

The story moves into a gothic/Bluebeard phase as Alice realizes she knows almost nothing about her new husband, and there are a lot of questions about his past and other women he’s been involved with, including a rape allegation and a possible murder. Alice chases down leads and starts lying to Adam.

This leads to the second bondage scene, in which Adam ties Alice, in her short robe, to their kitchen table and accuses her of having an affair behind his back. The scene’s drama is undercut by the fact that the ropes are so soft and loose that it looks like Alice could just pull her wrists out of them with little effort. It resembles a work of “tasteful” bondage erotica, rather than a real example of domestic partner violence. Adam releases Alice, who later runs off in the night, just in her robe. The police prove useless, and Alice partners with Deborah, Adam’s sister, to find the body of Adam’s former lover.

Deborah reveals herself as Adam’s incestuous lover, who introduced him to silk scarves, bondage and breathplay. Furthermore, she killed any other woman in his life. In an act of psychological splitting, Adam’s negative qualities, i.e. his potential of violence and his kinkiness, are displaced from him and projected onto Deborah.

At least Adam and Alice don’t live happily ever after. They see each other once, years later, but say nothing. Alice’s voiceover explains that she is temperamentally unsuited to life with someone like Adam.

Killing avoids dealing with female masochism, with the question of why women can be attracted to volatile, controlling men. It’s unable, or unwilling, to walk the fine line of a woman being out of control, and liking it. Combined with the overly pretty design, and it’s just lacking the edge of a real erotic thriller.

This movie was released the same year as Secretary, and you could see it as part of the ongoing attempt to domesticate kink for mainstream audiences. It’s a little too soft for the erotic thriller audience, and a little too hard for the audience that liked Secretary.

Peter and TammyJo discuss Pillion (2025) in their new video.

Elust is the only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month.

Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice, or kinky discussions, it’ll be here at Elust.

If you have a post included, please re-post the latest edition on your own blog, ideally with your own unique comments next to each link.

For SEO purposes, non-identical re-posts of Elust are much better for search ranking, and it’s much more appealing for your readers.

Click here to Subscribe to email updates if you’d like to receive Elust as an email once per month.

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Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships

Her Empire, How to Rebuild Intimacy in Long Term Relationships

Tantric Sexual Healing, The Subtle Body as Political Territory: Tantra, Bio-Power, and the Liberation of Sensation

Femina Viva, Spirituality and Sexuality: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Erotic Non Fiction

Morgan Destera, Self Perception and Acceptance

Sex Work

Cassandra Eden, The Mirror of Aphrodite: Confession of a Devotee of Love

Sex Worker Search, Comparison of Online vs Offline Sex Worker Websites

Oz Bigdownunder, Mistress Harriet, Mistress Vanessa Sin, sissy and Oz

Hellga, Group Sessions eg Cuckolding, Stag/Vixen and Voyeurism

Sandra, The Brat Bat

Milady, Ménage à trois in Paris with Sophie

Adam Black, Choosing the right hotel for meeting an escort

State of the World

Fapspins, How Webcam Sites Really Charge You (Tokens, Tips & Real Costs)

Sugarbutch, Twenty Years of Sugarbutch

Product reviews

Liz Black X, Best G-Spot Vibrator? SVibe Axi Review for Beginners or Pros

Buzzvibes, Vibrator Types Explained: Bullet vs Wand vs Suction (Pros & Cons)

Sex Toy DB, Cowgirl Unicorn Review: The Ride-On Sex Machine Is Everything I Hoped For

Books and Movies

History of BDSM, Dominatrixes in video games: The Celluloid Dungeon

Erotic Fiction

Cuckold Stories, [43M] Locked in lace : I am now a sissy cuck to my wife

Sex News

Horny Chat, How to get Stripchat Tokens at no cost ? (2026 methods)