Other Kinds of Pleasures

Vintage leather ad, 1973

One of my favourite fetish images of all times is this ad for a leather BDSM gear company from a Spring 1973 issue of Bound to Please. Bound to Please was a bondage magazine published by company called House of Milan in Los Angeles.  I bought my issue in Ram Books in London, and it's most likely a UK reprint from a later date. 

What I love the most (apart from the mail order catalogue slip) is her absent-minded expression, her in the corner by a very wide wall, and th...

Interview with Stef Dickers, the head of UK Leather & Fetish Archives

Discovering kink history is empowering. It allows us to push the boundaries of shame, to find a community, and accept that we, as kinksters, deserve respect and appreciation. Kink history, and especially LGBTQI+ leather history, is a home when you can’t go home anymore because you’re too much of a perv. Kink history means that you can never be too much of a perv – because there were other talented beautiful precious pervs before you. This is why archiving vintage smut is a very importan...

Alexandra Kacha: putting a dreamy queer lens to kink

We’re used to seeing kink and fetish in a certain visual context: usually something dark and involving dungeons. And while this is an image many of us fall in love with and remain drawn to, it is by no means the only way to look at these precious things. The world of photographer Alexandra Kacha, who documents kinksters, queers, sex workers, and dominatrixes, is different: luminous colours, soft hues, tenderly...

Xana portraits

This was one of the first harnesses I've learned how to tie on myself – Xana from Shibari Study.  It's something I tied often when I just started learning, when I had no one else to tie and I just wanted to remind myself how rope feels. I tied it sometimes the first thing in the morning, still in bed, and this is why I'll always have a lot of love for it – even if I don't always get the tensions right. 

2021-03-08 22:40:24 +0000 UTC View Post

On pleasure, belonging and filth – an introduction

Pleasure is elusive. It is a reverberation, vibrating deep within your body even when it is quiet and still.

I started writing this numerous times, and never seemed to get it right. I would start by rethinking pain, or all of the different ways that BDSM helps us to deal with the fucked-up nature of today’s world — but this is truly not the point. So I have decided to write about pleasure.

Pleasure is that tremor in the thighs.

Pleasure is touching things to understand t...