The Swedish BDSM club Whipclub, in Stockholm, is being discriminated by their building owner and had to cancel their planned party today.

Whipclub have been locked out by the buildning owner even though Whipclub has a contract and has been using the place before, but the building owner has for some reason decided on their own that the activities are illegal. BDSM and the lifestyle is by no means illegal in Sweden and it has never been tried in court with a ruling saying that it is.

This is the message that was sent out by the organisers of Whipclub, translated from Swedish:

“Hello all members

We have unfortunately been subject to a lockout!

The building owner claims that we are carrying out illegal activities, which we are of course not doing. We have started a judicial process but we don’t have access to the premises until we have an outcome from this process in terms of a ruling. Our landlord wont help us as their decision has been to backup the building owner. We have been in contact with the police in order to investigate if we can get some help from them to gain access to the premises as we have a legal contract, but they cannot do anything without a court ruling. And it is impossible to get hold of a ruling within 24 hours.

We are really sorry for the last minute message and we hope that you will all help us through your networks. Call, send textmessages and inform everyone through facebook

At this moment our hope goes out to our angel Camilla at Eve collection who has to refund all the tickets. We haven’t had the time to ask her before we went public with this information.

We have been trying really hard to find another venue, pub or a restaurant where we could gather and talk through the latest events or just hang out with your friends, but we haven’t been successful in this effort as we wanted to rent the place for just our members due to the short time frame.

We are prepared to fight for the club and we are asking for your support, understanding and help.”

It seems like things are getting harder in Sweden when it comes to alternative sexualities outside the norm of society.

My initial thoughts, which are a no brainer, is that the building owner is using the “illegal activities” excuse to actually pass a moral judgement.

Even if you don’t live in Sweden or never heard of Whipclub, please show them your support – Give them some supporting comments.

And I am asking you all for one big favor, spread the news. Let everyone know about what is going on as discrimination should be stopped where ever it happens.

I will keep you all posted about the events as they unfold.

It’s a sort of real life spin off from the cartoons that depicts tentacle porn, which is basically Japanese girls being impregnated with alien eggs by aliens with large tentacles. The concept is in other words provocative and maybe a bit gut wrenching for the faint hearted.

If you don’t like fish, then you might wanna stay away from this video – If you want to have a view into a very different kink then you should definitely take a look.

We met some wonderful people during our attendance at the BDSM theme day and we have enough material to make a good podcast out of it – Which we will eventually do, so stay tuned…

There’s a lot of things going on all around the world during this day, people get together to have fun and celebrate this day in different ways.

Me and Little Snowpaw are going to get together with a bunch of other people in a nearby town in a park to have a nice picknick with some good food and some wine.

Hold on before you think “Well, wine and cheese – That’s not very BDSM”, I’m not done yet.

I’m actually going to wear my leather pants and my leather shirt, which is my usual stuff that I wear during gatherings. Yes, I know – leather pants and shirt isn’t BDSM in itself.

Who do you think is writing this? I’ve been rambling in certain posts about that it isn’t your leather gear that turns you into a good Dominant, it’s the mindset. But nonetheless, I do love my leather pants, we have a special relationship and I promised to take them out for a nice time today. The leather shirt is a newcomer in our relationship, so she is just tagging along.

Enough about the leather gear and meeting up with fellow kinksters, we are actually going to have some competitions as well. Target practice with a single tail is one of the things we are going to compete in. I believe that this is the thing that actually makes the whole thing into a BDSM-related event.

A while back we posted a poll with some questions about what people were going to do on this glorious day and we got a great response!

Let me just do a quick break down of the results.

We had 136 people voting in this highly scientific poll, we spread the questions so they would cover both Dominants and submissive as well as a few other kinky practices out there.

The most voted for alternative was “I’m gonna push the boundaries of my submissive in celebration of this glorious day” which tells us that most participants in this poll were Dominants. Our second conclusion to this is that most Dominants are control freaks, because who would otherwise plan ahead for two months that they were going to push the boundaries of their submissive? The poll has been online for almost two months and the first answers we got were in this category.

This was followed by “I’m going to obey my Master/Mistress in ways I’ve never done before” as a good second. Now, this one got us a little bit worried because we couldn’t believe our own eyes. We were under the impression that all submissives out there being owned were already doing everything to obey their Masters and Mistresses in unimaginable ways. This answer is a proof that this isn’t the case and we are convinced that you will all get spanked for your lack of ambition – Shame on you all!

“I’m going to spend the whole day in restraints” came in on third place” and we feel sorry for all of you that might end up in this situation because that means that you will have a hard time going to the bathroom or participate in any events where you have to drive in order to get there if  you are the designated driver. But you can try driving with you hands cuffed behind you back, a steering wheel might be good as a sort of improvised ball gag if you try to control the car with your mouth. If you get pulled over by the cops, then you while have a wonderful opportunity to upgrade your restraints – To a straight jacket.

On fourth place we have “I’m gonna spend the whole day training my submissive” which is a really nice thought but it sounds like there are some people out there who are just seeing a good BDSM session as another day at the work. We do know that some submissives are high maintenance and can run down even the most experienced Dominant, but when boredom sets in you need to do something else to get the energy back. Start by harassing your neighbour’s dog or just randomly smack the heads of little children in Walmart or why not steal their candy? That should probably fire up that ol’ mean streak and you might want to change your answer into “I’m gonna push the boundaries of my submissive in celebration of this glorious day” intead.

The answer coming in as a good fifth was “I’m going to watch Oprah Winfrey as I don’t do BDSM“. Yeah right, you could have fooled us! Our only response to this is; Don’t lie to yourself, you are more hardcore than you want to admit to. Watching Oprah Winfrey is a very masochistic habit and we consider this to be one of the edgiest edge play out there. Fucking perverts!

The last answer was answered by one person, “I’m gonna stay in bed with a leather hood on waiting for the darn thing to be over”. This is even more masochistic than watching Oprah. Imagine laying there in bed, consciously tormenting yourself with thought like “when is the darn thing over?” or “Is it over yet?”. Imagine constantly watching the clock, being ready for play with your leather hood on, just waiting for the time to pass by. That is pure and utter evil and it’s not even perverted, it’s unhealthy.

So what is the conclusion that I’m trying to point out with this post?

It’s the International BDSM Day, have fun, spend it together with friends and don’t take yourself too seriously!

Another way is to have a tattoo done that reflects your kink and there are a lot of wonderful BDSM related tattoo designs out there.

The BDSM duck lends itself to some really interesting tattoo designs for people into BDSM and it also tells me that people having this as a nice tattoo can laugh about themselves – It’s eye catching and a bit more obvious than the BDSM emblem itself. The colors are bright, but are also hard to get right when using them in a tattoo. You should also be aware of the fact that colors in tattoos get bleached and that will change the appearance of the tattoo.

The slave heart is a design that I’ve seen many variants of. It can be made as a small one on the ankle or as this one – A more eye catching design above your genitals which makes it possible to conceal it and yet visible to the people who has earned your trust.

The keyhole represents the fact that someone owns and have locked your pounding slave heart. I personally like the design in the picture due to the wings, which is symbols of a free spirit, and ornaments surrounding the heart itself. It is the details in this particular design that makes it special and the placement of the tattoo is well thought out, because the surrounding body lines helps the composition of the tattoo by framing it and building up a symmetry around it.

Another design, which might not be totally reflecting BDSM itself, even though the tattoo belongs to a slave is this one. It’s a butterfly that carries two giant penises which originates from a rose that leads up to your anus and genitals. If you look closely then you’ll notice that the outline of the whole design vaguely forms the shape of a heart. Whether this is intentional or not I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter as it’s a nice addition to the overall concept of the design.

This one is a piece of art as the tattoo comes with a twist; when you’re having sex then you will push your penis into the rose. The rose symbolizes pleasure as well as pain and it is also symbol for love as it in some ways resembles a human heart or female genitals.

Another tattoo design within the world of BDSM that has a more practical usage is the slave barcode. The barcode is based on a concept developed by the website The Slave Register (TSR).

TSR provides a central place for the registration of slaves and submissives. Each registration is assigned a unique Slave Registration Number (“SLRN”), and owned submissives and slaves can display an ownership certificate.

There were basically two important main reasons behind the concept driving the idea of TSR. The most immediate cause was reading S.M. Stirling’s book, “The Domination”, which collected his Draka trilogy into a single volume. Most of Stirling’s work involves alternate histories, and his Draka timeline is set in a world where slavery survived in a British colony in southern Africa, which eventually broke away and became an industrialised imperial power in it’s own right. This timeline has slavery still continuing in the Draka Empire in the 21st century, including domestic slavery in Draka homes throughout Africa, Asia and parts of Europe.

Giving a person a name is a very symbolic event: names are involved in the recording of births, in baptisms and when brides change their surnames after marriage. So giving a person a number provides a way of identifying them – and potentially controlling them – without having to permit them a name, and the individuality that goes with one.

This combination of domestic slavery and the objectifying effects of registration is very appealing to a lot of people that are interested in BDSM and that is why the concept is made real within the consensual Master/slave subculture.

The other reason for starting up TSR was the image of a barcode tattoo which became very common in the media in the 1990s. TSR’s founder saw the first one which was Jana Sterbak’s “Generic Man” in an exhibition at London’s Serpentine Art Gallery in 1996: It shows the back of a man’s shaved head, with a barcode at the top of his neck. There was a lot of debate around that time about CCTV cameras in public spaces and the “Surveillance Society”, so these kinds of themes were appearing in exhibitions.

The concept of TSR seems to be popular, I know some people that have a barcode tattooed in the back of their head and neck and total amount of registered profiles over att TSR is at the moment approximately 172.000 profiles.

Another version of tattoos based on the Master/slave theme is chains in different forms, some of them are more crude while others are more intricate and less obvious. Common places on the body for these tattoos are the ankles or the wrists and the design are usually based on the concept of bracelets or cuffs.

Some of the slave based tattoos are besed on a symbol called the Trinity Knot, also known as the Triquetera.

The triquetra has been found on runestones in Northern Europe and on early Germanic coins. It presumably had pagan religious meaning and it bears a resemblance to the Valknut, a symbol associated with Odin.

Modern Pagans use the triquetra to symbolize a variety of concepts and mythological figures. Neopagan groups who use the triquetra to symbolize their faith generally believe it is originally of Norse and Germanic origins. Due to its presence in insular Celtic art, Celtic Reconstructionist Pagans use the triquetra either to represent one of the various triplicities in their cosmology and theology (such as the tripartite division of the world into the realms of Land, Sea and Sky), or as a symbol of one of the specific triple Goddesses, for example, The Morrígan.

The symbol is also sometimes used by Wiccans and some New Agers to symbolize either the Wiccan triple goddess, the interconnected parts of our existence (Mind, Body, and Soul).

It might be questionable whether the trinity knot should be used in a BDSM context. Personally I don’t see any problem with this as the trinity knot is closely related with the Triskele, which was used as an origin for the BDSM emblem that is widely spread among people within the BDSM community.

The triskelion symbol appears in many early cultures and it’s  a symbol that is associated with progress and competition and it served as a template when Quagmyr created, according to himself, a symbol that was uniquely made for the world of BDSM. His intentions with creating the symbol has been disputed as he, according to some people within the community, tried to claim copyright and charge people for licence fees when they were using his symbol.

According to Quagmyr, the BDSM emblem has no “obvious” symbolism because it was created to be enigmatic. To the vanilla observer who would be put off by BDSM, it is merely a symbol. Thus, be worn as a can worn as a friendly salute, nod, and wink to other BDSMers that we might pass on the sidewalks and in the hallways when we lead our everyday lives.

To the insider, however, the Emblem is full of meaning.

The three divisions represent the various threesomes of BDSM. First of all, the three divisions of BDSM itself: B&D, D&S, and S&M. Secondly, the three-way creed of BDSM behavior: Safe, Sane, and Consensual. Thirdly, the three divisions of our community: Tops, Bottoms, and Switches.

It is this third symbolism that gives meaning to the holes in each unit. Since BDSM is at the very least a play style and at its greatest a love style, the holes represent the incompleteness of any individual within the BDSM context. However “together” and “whole” individuals may be, there remains a void within them that can only be filled by a complimentary other. BDSM cannot be done alone.

The resemblance to a three-way variation on the Yin-Yang symbol is not accidental. As the curved outline of Yin and Yang represent the hazy border between where one ends and the other begins, so do the curved borders here represent the indistinct divisions between B&D, D&S, and S&M.

The metal and metallic color of the medallion represents the chains or irons of BDSM servitude/ownership. The three inner fields are black, representing a celebration of the controlled dark side of  BDSM sexuality.

The curved lines themselves can be seen as a stylized depiction of a lash as it swings, or even an arm in motion to deliver an erotic spanking. The all-embracing circle, of course, represents the overlying unity of it all and the oneness of a community that protects its own.

The BDSM-emblem might look a little bit different when it comes to tattoos, for symbolic or practical reasons. The practical reasons are mostly that some details and colors might not look good in a tattoo, or you might already have a tattoo to which you are adding the BDSM-emblem and then a redesign might be necessary to fit the existing style.

The symbolic reasons might be that you want to add gay rights symbols to the BDSM emblem if that is a part of your personality, values and your sexuality.

In other words; there are a lot of variants of the BDSM emblem that differ themselves to various degrees from the original BDSM-emblem. My personal opinion is that it doesn’t matter if they are diverting from the original design, even if Qiuagmyr is quite strict about the keeping the design of the original emblem intact. The meaning of the BDSM emblem is still there even if you tattoo a diverting design of it on your body and it will without any doubt be recognised by your fellow members of the BDSM community.

Some people claim different rules when it comes to the placement of the BDSM emblem tattoo. One rule, that is not widely recognised is that the BDSM-emblem should be placed higher on the body of the Dominant compared to the body of the submissive – for example on the upper arm of the Dominant and the lower back of the submissive. Personally I don’t see this as a strict rule, it’s more about personal preferences.

Some tattoos might even be used within BDSM as a part of the play itself. Branding is practiced by some people doing BDSM and it means that you are burning the skin with a cast iron template. Some brands are a recognition of ownership in Master/slave relationships. I wouldn’t go as far and write that it is a common practice, but it do exist and is usually sorted under the term mutilation play. Other brands are done by utilising scarification during knife play to carve symbols into the skin.

Marking the submissive can be a part of humiliation play and the most common practice is to use a waterproof marker pen to write on the body of the submissive, which is usually a part of what is commonly known as humiliation play. Different derogatory words while be written onto the skin and sometimes in quite visible spots like the forehead or lower arms. This will make the humiliation continue even if the session has ended as the waterproof ink will sometimes take a couples of days in order to disappear.

Some humiliation play tattoos also exists, but the words are usually then tattooed in spots that can easily be covered up by clothes or hair as they are permanent compared to the waterproof marker pen.

As you might understand by now, there’s a lot of different versions of BDSM tattoos out there and they exists for different reasons reflecting different ideas and different usage. Which one you want to use is up to you.

Be sure to make your design personal, use your creativity, because the tattoo you choose will be a part of you for a long time.

This is a picture of my own tattoos that I have on my right arm, a tiger that I had since before to which I added the BDSM emblem below it. My tattoos are all black and white so it was natural to choose a black version of the emblem itself. I’m also trying to think ahead as my original plan which is to have tattoos I have so far to be a part of a larger design. I will at a later stage have tattoos that cover both arms as sleeves. Once you’ve started to put ink on your body, it’s actually hard to stop.

It’s a video from a Japanese human animal farm and maybe the language barrier adds to my perception of it being strange. It looks like an interesting take on animal/pet play and the participants seem to be enjoying themselves.

We’ve been playing around with different thoughts on how to move forward with the blog. We’ve decided to try out some different directions and one of them is to add community features like personal profiles and personal walls.

It’s basically the same functionality that you’re probably used to from sites like FetLife, Twitter or Facebook.

We’re of course not trying to compete with these giants, we’re just trying to increase the interaction between the people that are visiting the blog.

Another part that we’ve added, besides the wall and the personal profile, is the forum. Feel free to start a thread in the category we’ve added so far: Total Power Exchange.

More will come as we are designing the new features so everything is a bit fluid right now, but feel free to register and play around with the things that we’ve added so far.

I totally agree with this statement, but I believe that it shouldn’t be used as a sort of definition on how much responsibility the Dominant is given by the submissive. If it is used for that reason then it tends to make the concept of responsibility quite one sided. Submission is a gift, but it puts responsibilities on the shoulders of the person that is giving the gift away as well.

Let us take a look at one definition of responsibility:

“Responsibility can be defined as assuming accountability for a task, decision or action. A person is said to be responsible for something when he or she accepts the consequences of something.”

In the book, The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey’s first habit, being proactive is all about taking responsibility. He advises the following:

“Look at the word responsibility – “response-ability” – the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.”

This means that you have to do things right by yourself – Don’t look for reasons outside yourself why things didn’t go your way.

I might sound harsh and maybe even a bit cynical when I am stating this, but let us revert this back to consent.

When you consent to certain activities within BDSM, then you have to have a basic understanding of what they might lead up to or the consequences are if something goes wrong. I’ve heard too many people say “My partner told me it was a safe session and in the end it wasn’t!”

Don’t take the words from another person as a guarantee for your own safety – You have to have an understanding of what you are getting into before you can give a valid consent and sometimes you even have to be able to challenge the knowledge that your partner is exposing during a session, for your own good. Your safety is based on your knowledge and your willingnes to take a responsibility for it.

Your responsibility is to have an understanding, even if you love and trust your partner, because partners are not always aware of the fact that they might be doing things in an unsafe way.

You owe that to yourself and to your partner, before you hand over the control and consent to anything.

If you are under the impression that this post is targeted towards submissives, then you are wrong.

The same goes for all the Dominants out there, you have to take responsibility for your own actions and your own knowledge. As a Dominant you have to make sure that the consent you are given is based on a valid and sane understanding of what you are going to do.

You have to make sure that your partner totally understands the effects and consequences of your actions, just telling your partner what you might do in vague terms is not enough – You have to be absolute sure that they are prepared for what your actions might lead to in terms of emotions, reactions etc.

If they tell you that they are prepared and understand, then double check.

Submission is a gift and Dominance is the ability to nuture that gift – But taking responsibility for your own actions and well being is the best gift you can give your partner, independent of whether you are a Dominant or submissive.

Our first BDSM question has been answered.

Somebody sent us the interesting question above regarding consent, even if we are not totally sure what the issues are being referred to in the question itself – But as always; we’re doing our best to answer it.

I agree with Jay Wiseman on this, if you don’ t have the necessary skills to perform breath play, then it is a dangerous activity – And most people don’t know if they have the necessary skills or not. The other problem is that there are a lot of myths surrounding breath play, “rules” that people recite in forums as if they were scientifically proven truths – But the real truth is that most of them are, in most cases, unsubstantiated claims without any empirical data to back them up at all.

Just an hour ago, Jay Wiseman published an essay on Breath play which is supposed to be a closing argument to the debate that from time to time have been raging around his opinions and statements regarding breath play.

It’s basically straight off the press, the ink has hardly dried, so head over to Jay Wiseman’s website and read it.

Jay Wiseman’s “Closing Argument” On Breath Play

Ask us about our opinion on consent, 24/7 or our love for leather, you can basically ask us anything. We will get opinionated, passionate or just plain old neutral when we answer.

Every now and then we’ll publish the questions and the answers to them in a post.

Who will be the first one to hit us with a really good question?

The music stream is now updated with a bundle of new songs from a variety of electronica artists and the next step is to put old recordings of our live shows into the stream as well.

We’ll also put up a new schedule for our live radio shows as soon as we have established the topics for each show.

You can also tune us in by clicking on the radio icons on the right side of the blog.

UPDATE

If you are running Firefox then you probably have to install a plugin to play the stream in your browser – If you are running on a Mac then you click on the icon on the right side of the blog that corresponds to Itunes. Another alternative is to download Winamp and associate .pls files with it.

Playing the stream through the shoutcast listing seem to chop up the sound for some reason and we don’t know right now if it is on their side or on our side.

Let us know if you bump into any problems

Lee Harrington is a BDSM kinkster and educator that has written a very interesting essay that approaches leather on a philosophical level. Head over to his site and watch the video in which he does a dynamic reading from his new book Sacred Kink: The Eightfold Paths of BDSM and Beyond.

The use of leather pants and similar accessories are sometimes ridiculed in forums. My opinion on this is that  it’s usually done by people who are mostly clueless about the historical origins of certain BDSM expressions. Some people even want to stay unaware of the history as if they are inventing things on their own – In most cases they are just trying to reinvent the wheel as they are totally oblivious to the practical and historical reasons behind the usage of leather.

Lee’s video has some really nice references to the Leather man culture and the old guard. But most important of all – His video puts the usage of leather into a very interesting perspective.

If you are a regular reader of our blog then you might remember that I made a promises a while ago – I promised to put up a nice picture of my wonderful submissive and equally wonderful partner in the crimes of life, Little Snowpaw. I made this promise as a token of our appreciation that goes out to all of you that voted for us over at bondageawards.com this year.

Little hit subspace as soon as she got the hood on for this shoot and it made the photo session a pure joy – Something that I hope is getting through in the image.

A big thanks and a big hug to all of you and here is our picture – Feel free to leave comments what your think about it.

Feel free to use the image for non-commercial purposes and we would appreciate if you give the image proper attribution if you do so.

— Jack Rinella