Public Disgrace
Remember about two weeks ago, when I mentioned the new public bondage site, coming from our kinky friends at Kink.com?
Well, Public Disgrace is now live, and looks to be living up to (some of) its promises.
About half the pictures in the sample galleries are close-in shots of hardcore bondage sex in what look to be protected, semi-outdoor spaces. To be honest, those aren’t terribly interesting to me, because I have a harder time with suspension of disbelief, and so there isn’t a lot of newness there. To me it’s “just porn”, with (by 21st century standards) no particularly transgressive edge.
On the other hand, I find the soft-core “pure” public bondage shots to be more interesting, because they seem to occur in genuinely public settings, complete with interested onlookers:
I will confess I find the branding for this new site a little confusing. If the goal is, to use their words, “unique street scenes of erotic humiliation”, what’s disgraceful about that? If the fantasy of a woman in chains is that she has to do what you make her do, I get that she may be embarrassed or humiliated by the public exposure, but I don’t see any disgrace in it; to me, disgrace connotes an aspect of guilt or sin or wrongdoing or bad behavior, and one of the essential transactions at the core of BDSM is that the submissive is liberated of responsibility for the things he or she is “made” to do. Hence, no disgrace. Unless the disgrace is supposed to be in the eye of the beholder, the putative onlooker shouting “that’s disgraceful!” or getting violent, like this guy?
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=2457
While I like the concept, I just can’t support it. I like my porn like I like my sex, safe, sane, and consensual. The onlookers give me a feeling that some of them didn’t consent to seeing something like this.
Kink.com did a great video awhile back where there was a public scene in a bar. This clearly went all the way into “public display” without making me wonder if some child walked around the corner while they were filming this. Having a party on one of their outdoor sets and doing this would be great. Filming it on the streets of a city just makes me not want to do business with them.
Ken, I think you may be being more credulous than is really appropriate here. There are lots of ways to create the illusion of public porn without much risk of the sort of worries you’re sharing; I wrote about some of them in the comments to the first post I made about this site.
Of course neither one of us can know for sure without being there when these shoots are being made. But I know Kink.com’s good reputation so I’m pretty comfortable giving them the benefit of the doubt until I hear different.
In clicking through the links, I noticed a shot of a girl fixed to a fence beside a railroad track. This could add a whole new exciting element to the annual Mooning Amtrak
(http://www.eros...moon/) gathering…
Princess Donna has done similar shoots before, once with Wired Pussy in New York. They had a big behind the scenes about that shoot. It showed that they applied for and got a permit to film non-nude scenes in public. A couple of cameras running to capture the whole scene, not just what would be published. Donna was visibly worried at times because of children being in the area, forcing them to move or hold off on certain aspects. Keep in mind that during this, the model was fully clothed, and no one was touching her. Donna was still worried and concerned that the children would be exposed to something they shouldn’t. So for that, I respect them.
That being said, I still don’t like this. I enjoy public play when it’s done under someone’s nose without their knowledge. Blatantly showing everyone just screams attention whore to me, and I’m just not attracted to someone who needs that kind of attention.
Well, I think in Europe they have a sport called “dogging” which involves having sex in public, both watching it and doing it, and public sexual bondage seems to me to be a variant on it, with the added risk that the bound woman could easily be mistaken for a real damsel in real distress.
I think that there’s an additional sexual element to it, however, that it feeds into the “slavegirl” bondage fantasy in that because of the girl’s social status she can be taken around naked and bound in public … because she is a slave, no one will rescue her, her special slave status means she must appear naked and helpless before all.
That “slavegirl” fantasy element might be responsible for the appeal of public bondage imagery that is actually in semi-private settings, most especially places like bars and parties, which otherwise doesn’t seem all that “public.”
That said, I find myself in agreement that actual public bondage may well be coming up against a hard limit in that it does seem like it’s imposing your sexual fantasies on others who’ve neither consented to nor have any known interest in public sexual bondage. Children seem to me to be a side issue: of course they should not be exposed to such imagery, but even adults probably have a right not to have to step over a woman bound hand and foot and being fucked on the sidewalk on their way to the grocery store, however much kinky fun that might be for some of us.
In any event, I was pleased to find here an honest discussion of the ethics of public sexual bondage by people who might actually like it. Kudoes.
I have noticed that in major cities where BDSM leather shops abide, that on occasion a dominatrix will bring her collared slave inside on a leash.
Though it’s public, I don’t feel imposed on in the least. In fact, I kinda feel like I’ve given my implied consent to participate as voyeur by my mere presence in the establishment.
Maybe that’s just me…
it’s not just you Whiplash.
nobody forces anybody to look. if they find it disgusting they are free to look the other side.
for example from my humble point of view clothes serve two purposes. keeping us warm at winter and enhancing the natural beauty of the body.
so if I’m not feeling cold and I enjoy displaying my body why should I use clothes? just so you can look at me without seeing me?
censorship is a waste of resources and a limit to our freedom. like any limits to our freedom it shouldn’t be legal so… if I want my slave to be nude in public…
why does anybody has to come and say it’s wrong just because they don’t like it?