el tercer ojo

Congratulations Fiona!

My lovely friend, Fiona Locke, found out this past week that her book Over the Knee, first printed in Fall of 2006, has sold out its original 9000 copies and is being reprinted!

As I mentioned above and in this Punishment Book entry, Fiona is a friend.  But even if I didn't know her, I would love this book.  Reading the story of Angie, the book's heroine and her adventures took me back to my bookstore haunting memories of college when I bought all kinds of books (mostly Blue Moon) on dominance and submission in the hope of finding spanking scenes.   My favorite of these  is / was  a collection of short stories called  The Reckoning.  Had  Fiona's book existed then, it would have become my favorite.

This isn't intended as a book review, but Fiona's book isn't about dominance and submission (not that they aren't fun to read about too) but rather it's about corporal punishment -- spanking for role play and "real" and a blurring of the two.  In short, it's all about my kink.

The book also represents a for fun labor of love between Fiona and her readers.  The white-pantied bottom on the cover of the book is her own, the headless spanker is her real-life partner.  (I have it on authority from the photographer than much spanking was needed for the color to look right in the picture.) Not to give something away here (okay, I'm going to give something away, but I have permission) but in the course of the novel, a website called English Vice gets mentioned.  The fictional site is all about spanking outdoors, frequently in famous places.  Here's a situation where fact and fiction merge because Fiona and her partner registered the domain and created the site. 

And so here's my contribution to Fiona's venture.  Paul took a picture of me getting spanked with a red leather Shadow Lane paddle by a friend underneath the Hollywood Sign (because what location in Los Angeles could be more iconic?) and its posted there (yes, I'm Luna).  It's not a great picture -- we literally only had a minute to get the pictures snapped.  The hike up had taken longer than we expected and the light was going -- plus there were joggers coming by every few minutes.  But still, there they are. 

Note that the picture is also rather humorous from a perspective issue.  The woman spanking me is basically the same height as me, but looks like a hobbit (or I look like an amazon).  The angle of the camera was apparently just right to create a rather funny shot.

The photos of me aside, the pictures on the site are great fun.  I especially like the rather spooky White Sands shots. 

Academic Fetish: Dirt and Imperial Leather

Wife and servant are the same, but only differ in the name. - Lady Chudleigh

I've literally been meaning to write about this book for years -- like since I first read it in a seminar in 1997.  Although I've read lots of pretty kinky literature in classes, including Venus in Furs, this is one of the most interesting books on fetishes I've ever read.   It's called Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest by academic Anne McClintock. 

What makes this book such a delight to the fetish reader?  Not its prose, which isn't as hard to get through as Foucault, but is definitely of the post-modern, post-colonial critical style.  This isn't meant as a complaint by the way, but more by way of a warning that you probably won't want to buy this for pleasure reading unless you tend to read academic texts more generally.

There's a lot of good stuff in the book on issues of race and fetish as well as images of imperialism in 19th century popular culture.  But it's Chapter 3: Race, Cross Dressing and the Cult of Domesticity that makes for the most amazing reading.   It's an account of the secret marriage of upper class, Cambridge graduate and barrister, Arthur Munby and serving woman Hannah Cullwick whom he met on the street.  They had a secret romance and marriage (facts Arthur only revealed to his family a few weeks before his death) based, in part, on Munby's fetishization of their class differences and her status as his "slave" (she wore a leather wrist band to denote her status as "owned" by him and a locked chain around her neck for which only he had the key as further proof of her bondage to him).  He was especially fond of seeing her during and after she had labored -- "in her dirt" (see image on the right) as he called it.  Both Munby and Cullwick kept diaries of their experiences / relationship, which makes for detailed knowledge of their relationship. 

This fetishizing of class and Cullwick's servant status was immortalized by Munby who took contrasting photographs  of Hannah dressed as a fine lady (her secret status by marriage) when they traveled together, as a serving woman and as a slave.

Cullwick was stunning as a model (I wish I could find more of the shots of her on-line).  She posed for Munby cross-dressed as a boy, as a laborer and even as a gentleman of his own class.   Their private games were of her slavery.  She addressed him as "Massa," knelt at his feet, licked his boots and washed his feet (again, we know this from their diaries which he donated to Cambridge though sadly the accounts of her "training" were removed).

One of the things I found quite striking as an account of fetishizing work was this passage:

...she would arrange to theatrically scrub the front doorsteps on her knees as Munby sauntered down the street, languidly swinging his cane... Cullwick visited Munby frequently "in her dirt" after a grueling day's work, her clothes dank and filthy, her face deliberately blackened with boot polish, her hands red and raw; only to pose later that same evening freshly dressed as an upper-class lady in finery.  They spent happy hours mulling over the ordeals of her workload, ritualistically counting and recounting the incredible number of boots she cleaned. (page 137)

With material like Munby's photographs and diaries both left to work from, it's not surprising that there are a number of books discussing the couple's history.  What I like about Imperial Leather is McClintock's enlightened discussion of S/M in relation to the couple.  She sees both its theater and the realities of power as distributed between the two people in this relationship.   This means that unlike other works, Imperial Leather reads Cullwick not as a victim, but as an actor in her own slavery. 

As McClintock writes (paraphrasing Foucault):

To argue that in S/M "whoever is the 'master' has the power and whoever is the slave has not," is to read theater for reality; it is to play the world forward.  The economy of S/M, however is the economy of conversion: master to slave, adult to baby, power to submission, man to woman, pain to pleasure, human to animal and back again.... S/M is a theater of transformation; it "plays the world backward."

I wish I had time to write more about this, but will happily return to discussion of it should anyone be interested.  And, maybe, even if no one but me is.

Maybe this explains it.

I was going to write something deeply introspective explaining why I've never really seen myself as someone who's likely to have children, but I've just taken this little quiz to find out what book I am and, rather unexpectedly, it's explained everything.

You're Lolita!
by Vladimir Nabokov
Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are obsessed with sex. What really tantalizes you is that which deviates from societal standards in every way, though you admit that this probably isn't the best and you're not sure what causes this desire. Nonetheless, you've done some pretty nefarious things in your life, and probably gotten caught for them. The names have been changed, but the problems are real. Please stay away from children.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

That pretty much sums it up. Or not. Any questions? (Oh and if you take the quiz, tell me what book you are please! After all, I've shown you mine.)