Gloria's Oversexed Mind

Censoring Rammstein

The controversial German band Rammstein is in the news, as Germany rules that the cover of its latest album is too sadomasochistic for public consumption. Rumor is that Switzerland will act next to remove public displays of the album cover.

The album "Liebe ist Für Alle Da" ("Love is For All") by German hard rock group Rammstein - currently at No. 2 on Billboard's European Albums Chart - has been banned from public display in German stores with effect from Nov. 11 on account of its depictions of sadism/masochism, which have been deemed to be harmful to children and young people.

Announcing this ruling, Petra Meier, the deputy president of the Federal Office for the Examination of Media Harmful to Young People, cited the track "Ich tue Dir Weh" ("I Want to Hurt You") as well as the artwork showing guitarist Richard Kruspe with a masked, naked woman on his knees. The Federal Office objected to the fact that the track includes lines such as "Bites, kicks, heavy blows, nails, pincers, blunt saws - Tell me what you want."

The German Federal Office for the Examination of Media Harmful to Young People in Bonn also criticized the single "Pussy," stating that it incites listeners to engage in unprotected sexual intercourse despite the risk of AIDS, although the single was not officially part of the ruling banning the album.

As a result of the ruling, the 11-track Universal album may no longer be advertised or placed on open exhibition in such a way that may be accessed by young people and children under the age of 18 years.

via www.billboard.com

Visit Rammstein's website to see the censored cover.

Buy it on Amazon

Erotographica presents Gilles Berquet

One of my more intensely SM-sensual shows. Thanks, as always, to leigh for compiling these.

If you can't see it here, watch "Erotographica presents Gilles Berquet" on youtube

Cleo Dubois, Part Six: The Predator and his (willing) Prey

I'm delighted to feature the sixth amazing installment in the autobiography of the wondrous Cleo Dubois. Today's photos are, again, marvelous treasures, and Cleo's life-story continues to evolve in astonishing ways. This essay ends with a cliff-hanger that will leave you hungry for the next development. Viva Cleo!

---

CLEO DUBOIS _{is a BDSM Educator, ritualist, creator of the Academy of S/M Arts, and Leather columnist . A versatile sadomasochist whose private interests lay in caring sadism, switching and cross-orientation play, she came out in the San Francisco Leather Scene in the early 80's. Her two popular docu-films, "The Pain Game" and "Tie Me Up," are available on 1 DVD, "The S/M Arts Collection," on her website www.sm-arts.com, where you will also find details about the Erotic Dominance Weekend Intensives for Men and Women. She offers private guided play to individuals and couples in the privacy of her San Francisco area dungeon, as well as office and phone consultations.}

---

The Predator and his (willing) Prey

As the century turned I dug deep into my psyche with my kink-aware therapist. I dredged up old traumas, cleaned house, so to speak, and freed the flames of my creative energy. I decided to make a film that would show the heart of BDSM and I found what I wanted. Creed had signed up to be my willing masochistic bottom at Thunder in the Mountains Leather Conference. We met and connected at first sight: her eyes were so vibrant, her attitude so powerful in her proud desire to serve, and she was beautiful! Our scene blew the roof off Denver’s Hyatt!

I just had to ask her if she’d be in my movie, the one I was definitely going to make, and gave her a year to answer. I had no experience, but I had friends who did: Annie Sprinkle featured in several videos I respected, Neon Weiss who worked with a production company and offered to be my director and Fakir who has a great eye for visual composition. I followed their advice to get a professional crew for sound, camera, and per Annie Sprinkle, a make-up artist too. In my home and dungeon, on a shoestring budget, over one unforgettable weekend, we shot The Pain Game, a queer and passionate endeavor. Everyone shared the vision: capturing the magic of BDSM in real play, safe, hot and connected.

   

   

In 2001 the Pain Game premiered at San Francisco Frameline LGBT festival, soon also screened in Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam… I felt empowered beyond my wildest hopes and very much in demand. Couples of all orientations looking to reignite their erotic connection despite disparity of taste and fetishes found their way to my Academy of SM Arts. I became a BDSM coach.

It was time for me to learn what I was teaching! Not “my way or the highway” but mutual transparency and negotiated agreements. Fakir and I made a weekly date night and honored it.

Fortunately in our San Francisco leathersex community we also got some of our needs met openly with informed consent at semi-public play parties. Black Sheets, the bimonthly pansexual SM sex party for gay and bi-kinksters a friend of ours ran, gave us a hot playground where, after 15 years at odds, safer sex and SM merged in pure raw encounters.

Opening the door to release your inner beast can be quite explosive. I was ready to reclaim a part of my sexuality shut down by the violent rape I survived in my late teens. Fakir could not embrace rough dominance, not his way! The fiery warrior I was deep inside craved to be made to give up erotic control to an aggressive man in whom I had trust and lust.

For years I had had a serious crush on John, our bodyworker. Although he presented as a charming Don Juan with no experience in the Scene, I sensed his appetite for dominance and rough sex. Each visit, he set his massage table up in my quiet little dungeon, where many of my toys grace the walls. That could not have helped but feed his erotic imagination.

A lone wolf whose untamed energy I found irresistible, I pursued him. I wanted him to take me down hard and make me fly. I asked only for a RED safeword. I knew bottoming to him would be a very powerful reclaiming sexual experience. The night John took me home, his inner predator came out full force. He pinned me down, spanked me hard, demanding I remain still and take it for him. He did not think twice about grabbing my hair and fucking my face. My orgasms were his to command. Our torrid dates made me beg for more.

Not from the BDSM community, he was not schooled in aftercare. He did not want to talk about the ritual violence of our sexual encounters. Without support, it was only a few months later he that dismissed me with the click of an email. I was a mess. Fakir stood by me and pointed out that my lone wolf was a coward who scared himself with his own dark side. Still, with all the support I had, it took me a few months to let go of him, my anger and my lust. Stronger, I realized that intimacy does not always come in the hot sex package. I had an extra ordinary loving partner and counted my blessings….

And then, one evening in late October, Alan walked into my dungeon looking for Top training…little did I know he and his wife would really become our family.

--Cleo Dubois

---

I bet you can't wait for December. If you haven't already, read the full series of Cleo's autobiographical essays now:

Part One      Part Two      Part Three      Part Four      Part Five

---

Interested in Fakir’s explorations? Visit his web site for photos, description and video clips of his feature length documentary movie DANCES SACRED & PROFANE and huge photographic art book SPIRIT + FLESH at: http://www.fakir.org/store/index.html

Cleo Dubois Academy of S/M Arts
email: CleoDubois@sm-arts.com
http://www.sm-arts.com
Tel:(650)322-0124

Time is running out to sign up for the next Erotic Dominance Weekend Intensive for Women: Tops and Switches, November 14-15 at the SF Citadel. Dominate with presence and passion, competence and compassion! Hands on playshops with our trained Academy volunteers bottoms, workbook and lots of personal attention from Cleo Dubois, Eve Minax and Selina Raven.

Enrollment is now open for the January 29-31 (2010) Weekend for Dominant Men and those who Switch.

Find out more at  www.sm-arts.com/intensives/women.html

Anyone, Top, bottoms, switches, curious, partnered or not, visiting the San Francisco Bay Area is welcome to contact me for a private consultation or guided play in my San Francisco Peninsula dungeon.

Helpful hint from hedonistic Heloise

Consider the Cuisinart Angled Brush.

Then ask yourself this: can a submissive's pink parts ever be clean enough?

Benefits include an immediate improvement in attitude.

Bonus: the black, dishwasher-safe rubbery handle is delightfully shaped to offer multifunctionality to the truly depraved at heart.

A little femdom humor

From my FB friend, cartoonist Jay Moyes:

The Leather 70s: vintage gay erotica

From a rare French photoset, up for auction on eBay.

Vintage 1970s French Male NUDES

Breaking news on Atlanta Eagle

Officer Harris will be marching in civilian clothes

Eagle's Owner speaks out

I'll be blogging more about this story this week and its significance to BDSMers.  Suffice to say, the Eagle was one of my favorite clubs during the 12 years we lived in Atlanta.  I have all good memories of the bar, its staff, its parties, its fund-raisers and educational events, and especially all the incredible support they've offered the pansexual BDSM community in Atlanta over the years.   I strongly believe that the Atlanta PD went after them because they are a perceived weak link in world of sexual politics. Nobody ever wants to stand up and defend the rights of leather people to congregate -- except for leather people, and even then, it's amazing how empty a room can be when it's about politics instead of play-time. This is the Eagle's time of need and they deserve our support.

Here is a copy of the letter Atlanta Eagle Co-Owner Robby Kelley just wrote to the Atlanta Pride Committee.

To the Atlanta Pride Committee:

As a person who was held on the floor of the Atlanta Eagle, I would like to request that Officer Harris walk in the Pride Parde in her street clothes and not her Atlanta Police uniform. After coming out and saying that APD did nothing wrong, I feel this would be an injustice to our community. As a person taken to jail I find this offensive. Most of you do not know the true horror that we went through that night and that uniform represents all of it.

To see gay men kicked, hit, and searched with no reason is wrong, and to be made to lay face-down in the floor, and have the officers hi-five each other like it's a party is wrong. To have them say "this was fun we should do this to a fag bar every week" is wrong. And having Officer Harris in her uniform saying that it's OK is wrong.

If Officer Harris chooses not to be there in her street clothes, so be it, but that will be something she chooses to do. After being released from jail she was one of the first persons we a saw. She apologized for their actions and then got up and told everyone it was OK. Please.

Robby

Shame on Pride: the Atlanta Eagle debacle

I've been blogging about this story since the Atlanta Eagle was first busted, and recently posted a link to the Eagle lawyer (Dan Grossman)'s version of events, but a call yesterday from Dan got me pretty riled up. After all the initial protests about the police raid on Atlanta's only leather bar, the gay community at large (locally and nationally) has pretty much decided to distance itself from the event.

Grossman pointed me to this opinion piece that appeared in the Southern Voice and it is to my mind a fine example of the kind of snarky drivel that parades as coolness.

I’ll sit this protest out, because deep down I know my behavior at the Eagle on Thursdays was wrong. That’s what made it so much fun. And I believe the APD treated us similarly to straight venues they have raided, albeit with fewer gay slurs. I’m intrigued by the traumatized patrons of a leather bar complaining they were forced to submit to men in uniform for an hour, before being free to go with no arrest or further consequences.

via www.sovo.com

Oh yeah: the guy was doing things that were "wrong" but he won't pay the price: instead the club, which cannot control all the behaviors of all its clientele (any more than any club can police everyone at every moment) is paying...and paying...and may, ultimately, be bankrupted by this bust.   Add up the legal fees and the loss of business -- people are staying away for fear the cops will come back -- and the Eagle may never financially recover.

Even worse than the idea that a leather club isn't worth defending, this blogger doesn't understand the difference between people consenting to rough sex for mutual pleasure and police forcing patrons to lie on broken glass. Figures. It's people like this guy who screw up the leather scene for the rest of us. They get away with whatever they can, get their rocks off and leave a trail of misery behind, never learning a thing about SSC, BDSM, or anything else that every honorable leather person knows and understands. Grrr.

But what bugged Dan Grossman the most is not what one snot-nosed blogger had to say about the event but the startling and depressing reality that despite early support, the gay community (locally and nationally) have backed away from the Eagle raid and seem intent on burying it under the carpet. While rank and file around the country understand the import of cops raiding a gay club, with the shadows and ghosts of Stonewall lurking all OVER this story, in other quarters, it seems that leather people remain an embarrassment to the gay community and are a minority they kinda sorta wish would kinda sorta go away.

Read what Mike Alvear of the HuffPo has to say about how local Atlanta gay activists have abandoned the Eagle in Atlanta Gay Pride Committee Throws Eagle Raid Victims Under the Bus.

The Atlanta Eagle raid according to the Atlanta Eagle

Fresh from my mailbox, a link to a factual account of the gory details presented by attorneys for the Eagle. Read it and scream.

On September 10, 2009, a SWAT-team of Atlanta police officers detained and searched over 60 people without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion of any criminal activity, just because they were patrons at a gay bar called the Atlanta Eagle.

via atlantaeagleraid.com