Bonding Through Bondage: The Pros and Cons of Spicing Up Your Love Life

Beautiful young asian woman topless with hands tied by strong rope
Photo: Tony Ward, Copyright 2024

Bonding Through Bondage

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The Pros and Cons of Spicing Up Your Love Life

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For many couples, keeping the spark alive is an important priority, but maintaining that excitement can be challenging. Recently, more couples are exploring unconventional ways to enhance intimacy and connection, and for some, that means delving into the world of bondage. Bondage, an aspect of BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism), can be a powerful tool for partners looking to add novelty and depth to their relationships. But does bondage play actually improve a couple’s sex life, and what are the pros and cons of getting involved in this lifestyle?

Pros of Bondage in Relationships

  1. Increased Communication
    Bondage requires extensive communication, trust, and consent, all crucial factors for a healthy relationship. Partners must discuss boundaries, desires, and safe words, which encourages open dialogue. This transparency can foster emotional closeness, as couples get more comfortable talking about their needs and limits.
  2. Building Trust
    Engaging in bondage means one partner often relinquishes control while the other takes it. This dynamic requires a level of trust that, when respected, can bring partners closer. Successfully navigating these experiences can boost trust, allowing couples to feel more secure and connected.
  3. Heightened Excitement and Passion
    Bondage introduces new sensations and power dynamics that heighten anticipation and thrill. Trying something outside of their usual routines can rejuvenate a couple’s intimacy, creating excitement and rekindling passion that may have dwindled over time.

Cons of Bondage in Relationships

  1. Miscommunication Risks
    Despite the emphasis on clear communication, misunderstandings can happen, especially for couples new to the lifestyle. If boundaries aren’t fully understood or safe words aren’t adhered to, one partner could feel uncomfortable or even unsafe, potentially damaging trust.
  2. Psychological Boundaries
    Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of being restrained or in a submissive role. Pressure from one partner to engage in bondage without genuine interest from the other can lead to resentment, anxiety, or discomfort.
  3. Physical Risks
    Bondage, if not practiced safely, can cause physical harm, particularly if a couple lacks experience or knowledge. Proper equipment, safety training, and clear communication about boundaries are vital to prevent injury.

Does Bondage Really Improve Relationships?

The answer depends on the couple. For some, the thrill, trust, and enhanced communication bring a new level of intimacy and excitement. But for others, it may create stress, discomfort, or even conflict if both partners aren’t on the same page. The key is mutual consent, trust, and open dialogue. For couples who are both curious and committed to trying bondage safely, it can be a unique and fulfilling way to deepen intimacy.

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To access additional photographs from Tony Ward’s Heroines & Vixens series, link here: https://tonywarderotica.com/vixens/

 

Roberts Supreme Court: The Future of Sexual Freedoms

A photo illustration for an article on sexual freedoms for Tony Ward Erotica
Sexual Freedoms. Photo: Tony Ward, Copyright 2024.

The Future of Sexual Freedoms Under the Roberts Supreme Court

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Post-Dobbs and Roe v. Wade

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A Shift in Legal Precedent

The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion for nearly five decades, marks a significant shift in the Court’s approach to sexual freedoms. By returning the power to regulate abortion to the states, the Court has opened the door to a patchwork of laws that vary widely across the country. Some states have swiftly moved to ban or severely restrict abortion, while others have enacted protections, creating a deeply divided nation. This fragmentation not only affects reproductive rights but also signals a broader trend toward states having greater autonomy over sexual freedoms.

Potential Impacts Beyond Abortion Rights

The Dobbs decision has also raised concerns about the potential rollback of other rights related to sexual freedom. Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion, suggested that the Court should reconsider precedents related to contraception and same-sex marriage. Although Chief Justice John Roberts has not explicitly supported such a move, the mere suggestion has caused anxiety among those who fear the erosion of established rights. This signals that other aspects of sexual freedom, previously thought to be secure, could be vulnerable to future challenges.

The Role of the Roberts Court

Under Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court has demonstrated a cautious but deliberate approach to shifting the legal landscape on social issues. While Roberts himself is often seen as a moderate, his leadership has facilitated a more conservative tilt, especially with the recent additions to the Court. This shift suggests that the Court may continue to uphold or even expand state powers in regulating sexual freedoms, potentially revisiting and reinterpreting precedents that impact contraception, LGBTQ+ rights, and privacy issues.

A Future of Uncertainty

As the Court continues to shape the legal framework of sexual freedoms in the post-Dobbs era, Americans are left facing an uncertain future. The direction the Roberts Court takes in upcoming cases will likely determine whether sexual freedoms are further restricted or if a balance can be struck between state regulation and individual rights. What remains clear is that the era of certainty provided by Roe v. Wade has ended, and a new chapter of legal battles and state-by-state variability has begun.

Bob Shell: A Vast Wasteland

Beautiful German woman lying on bed nude with television on
Simone With TV on at Hotel Village, Hamburg Germany. Photo: Tony Ward, Copyright 2024

Text by Bob Shell, Copyright 2024

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A Vast Wasteland

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I grew up in television. My father, Jim Shell, was the news anchor for WSLS TV Channel 10, the NBC affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia, and I used to hang around the TV station as an obnoxious kid.. So it was natural for me to go to work in television after college. In 1971 I worked for WRFT TV Channel 27, in Roanoke, the ABC affiliate. My boss there was Adrian Cronauer, the man Robin Williams portrayed in the film ‘Good Morning Vietnam.’ It was a very small TV station, so everyone did everything. I did newscasts, weather reports, hosted late night horror movies, produced, directed, ran the soundboard, was staff artist and photographer, etc. It was a great learning experience.

Back in those days the man who headed the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, was a fellow with the amazing name of Newton Minnow. I always thought he must have been teased in school for being called Newt Minnow, named for two little aquatic critters.

Anyway, after assuming chairmanship of the FCC, Mr. Minnow watched a lot of TV and famously called TV ‘a vast wasteland.’ In those pre-cable days, the FCC had near absolute control over TV. For example, there was an FCC rule against portraying superstition as factual. This resulted in the cancellation of ‘The Sixth Sense,’ a program I liked, because it portrayed psychic phenomena as true. It always bugged me that this rule wasn’t enforced against TV preachers. The worst I ever saw was Billy James Hargass who performed miracle healings on his program. Don Imus did a wonderful parody with his Billy Sol Hargass character.

When I watch TV today on cable, I ask myself ‘Where is Newt Minnow now that we need him?” TV today has sunk to depths he could never have imagined. But the FCC, by law, has jurisdiction only over broadcast TV and radio, it lacks any authority to regulate cable TV or cable radio. The results are obvious.

One thing the FCC did was regulate the amount of time commercials could take up in programs. When I worked in TV, we never ran more than two commercials in a single commercial break, only two breaks per half hour, and both commercials were thirty seconds in length. Today there are so many commercials in a break that I lose count! This, in my opinion, dilutes the value of them all. And it disrupts the continuity of the program. This is why old TV programs must be reedited to make room for all of the additional commercials, often disrupting the story.

When TV was broadcast-only we watched TV for free. The programming was paid for by the advertisers. Why today do we pay for cable TV and still suffer through commercials? It’s like double-taxation!
I’m an admitted news junkie. I watch NewsNation a lot to stay informed. But I’ve become burned out on repetition of the same commercials ad nauseam.
For example, if I see Jonathan Lawson hyping Colonial Penn life insurance again I may start pulling out my hair. I’ve noted that he says your rates will never increase, but he does not say that your coverage will never decrease!

Or the jewelry company called Pandora. Anyone who knows a bit of Greek mythology knows that Pandora was the first human woman. In Greek, Pandora means ‘All Gifts.’ After Zeus created her, he gave her a beautiful box, but strictly ordered her not to open it. Pandora could not restrain her curiosity and opened the box, releasing all evils upon mankind. Name your company after the person who unleashed all evil? What were they thinking?
I could go on about the stupidity of commercials, but I’ll spare my readers that vitriol. My point is that there are too many commercials, and too many of them are just plain stupid. Advertisers must believe the famous quote variously attributed to P. T. Barnum and F. W. Woolworth; ‘No one ever went bankrupt by underestimating the good taste of the American public.’

Bob Shell: The Loch Ness Monster

AI rendering of Loch Ness Monster mythology
Loch Ness Monster. Rendering by AI.

Text by Bob Shell, Copyright 2024

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Loch Ness Monster

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I like to watch ‘History’s Greatest Mysteries’ on the History Channel. They usually do a pretty good job in their research. But, not so for the program about the Loch Ness Monster. This program was poorly researched. In my original career I was a zoologist. I’ve been interested in cryptids, unknown creatures since the 1960s. In around 1965 I read the seminal book ‘On the Track of Unknown Animals’ by Bernard Heuvelmans. That book really captured my attention, and spurred a lifelong interest in the subject. 

Interestingly, some of the animals in the book that were unknown at the time, some are now known, and some can even be seen in zoos. 

The Loch Ness creature has been of particular interest to cryptozoologists since reports of it go back at least 1,500 years. The ‘dragon’ that Saint George killed may have been one of these animals. 

In the 1960s a researcher named Tim Dinsdale got a 16mm film of an animal swimming rapidly away across the lake. You can clearly see the animal’s big front flippers churning up the water as it swims rapidly across the lake. Later he had a man take a powerboat across the lake to allow comparison. They’re obviously very different. To date Dinsdale’s film is some of the best evidence for an unknown animal in Loch Ness. 

In the early 1970s, as I recall, Dr. Harold ‘Doc’ Edgerton designed special underwater camera equipment and powerful electronic flash equipment to penetrate the murky water of Loch Ness, which is stained by peat. Visibility is limited to a foot or two. 

Now, Doc Edgerton wasn’t just anybody. He was the inventor of electronic flash. And he designed the special flash equipment to penetrate the murky water in his lab at MIT. 

The expedition using Edgerton’s equipment got several amazing photographs. One shows a large rhomboid flipper and the side of a very large animal. Another photo shows the head, neck, and front of the body. The head looks somewhat like a horse’s head. This fits with eyewitness descriptions that say the head looks like a horse’s or sheep’s. 

Why didn’t the TV program show Dinsdale’s film or Edgerton’s photos? Could it be that their researchers are too young to know about them? 

The program did devote time to a Swedish study that sampled water from Loch Ness and analyzed the DNA found there. They found DNA from many species, but also a significant amount of unknown DNA. Certainty they ought to have been able to determine what the unknown DNA was in broad strokes. For example, was it from a mammal, a reptile, a fish? That should have been possible to determine. 

One important point has been missed by every TV report and book I’ve seen on the subject. The Loch Ness creature and those from other large lakes are reported to undulate vertically. Because of the structure of their vertebrae, reptiles and fish undulate horizontally, not vertically. Mammals alone undulate vertically. That’s why fish and the extinct ichthyosaurs have vertical tails, while dolphins and whales have their flukes horizontal. Watch videos of fish and dolphins swimming. Fish move side to side, dolphins up and down. I would argue that what lives in Loch Ness is an unknown mammal that has resulted from convergent evolution to look like a plesiosaur. 

Dr. Heuvelmans also wrote the best books on the great sea serpent. The Loch Ness creature and other similar lake monsters are only found in lakes with connections to oceans. In the case of Loch Ness, the loch is connected to the North Sea by the River Ness, so the creatures could be migratory, like the eels that breed in Loch Ness then migrate to the sea. Animals looking like Nessie have been seen by fishermen around Scotland and the Hebrides. 

Gavin Maxwell, who wrote the great book ‘Ring of Bright Water’ and its sequels, tells of his sighting of an unknown creature while he ran a shark fishery off the island of Soay. This animal rose silently from the water, a horse-like head atop a long, slender neck. The animal stared at him for a few moments with very large eyes, then sank straight down and disappeared. These animals, whatever they may be, seem able to change their buoyancy, to surface or sink without disturbing the surface of the water. 

About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models.  He is serving the 15th year of his sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Facility, Virginia. To read additional articles by Bob Shell, link here: https://tonywarderotica.com/bob-shell-banned-in-boston/

 

Bob Shell: Banned in Boston

Behind the scenes at a porn shoot in LA
Photo: Tony Ward, Copyright 2024

Text by Bob Shell, Copyright 2024

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Banned in Boston

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I got a Publication Disapproval Notification in my nightly mail here at Pocahontas State Penitentiary. I thought it would be about some magazine that shows a nipple or something, which happens a lot, even though bare breasts are shown now on TV late at night. America is growing up – slowly. But, apparently not the Virginia Department of Corrections.
But no, it’s for my book ban in Boston! They’ve banned ‘Heaven and Hell on the Road to Reno!’ These backward people have said my book violates Operating Procedure 803.2 Incoming Publications, Specific Criteria for Publication Disapproval.
Material that emphasizes explicit or graphic depictions or descriptions of sexual acts
1. Actual sexual intercourse (vaginal, anal, or oral) including inanimate object penetration.
2.Secretion or excretion of bodily fluids or substances in the context of sexual activity or arousal.

Yes, the book contains explicit sex scenes. So do many novels. There are dozens in our library here.
My sex scenes are in the context of telling a story, not in isolation, and not as the point of the story. Some were used to emphasize just how evil my villains are. They’re essential to the narrative. This is a detective story with strong erotic components.
The US Supreme Court has held that the work must be judged as a whole, not disapproved just for isolated individual parts.

And they seem to have missed the humor in much of the book.

Effectively, they’re saying my book is obscene. It isn’t, unless the popular Jack Reacher series by Lee Child is, unless the worldwide bestselling series of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ books by E. L. James are, unless the worldwide bestselling ‘Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ and it’s sequels by Stieg Larsen are, unless many of the books by the late Richard Laymon are, unless most of the books by Wilbur Smith are, unless the books by Stuart Woods are, unless the books by Nobel Prize in Literature winner Mario Vargas Llosa are, unless Woody Guthrie’s lone novel is, and I could fill pages with examples, all in our library here, some of which are far more explicit and kinky than anything I’ve written.
Some of these were initially disapproved by the VDOC, but were later approved because of their obvious literary or societal value.

Last August I received a publisher’s proof copy of the book from Amazon without any problems. It was a mess, so I noted the necessary corrections in emails to the publisher. That book was not disapproved.

Forget that the Virginia Constitution says right up front in Article 1 “any citizen may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects.” I may be incarcerated, but I am still a citizen! I think ‘all subjects’ includes a detective story with erotic undertones.
It also says those rights “can never be restrained except by despotic governments.”

I recently read an essay by Margaret Atwood, author of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ Speaking to the Governor of Florida and his sycophantic minions, she said, “Go ahead and ban my book. That will just insure that many more people read it.”
The sad lesson that censors never seem to learn is that censorship never works. It devours itself and the minds of the censors. Censorship is one of this world’s few genuine evils.

They’ve already admitted to me that I have the right to publish anything I want, just apparently not the right to read it after it’s published!

And to the Virginia Department of Corrections, I say, “Grow up! Sex in its infinite variations is part of the human condition. It always has been, it always will be.”

About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models.  He is serving the 15th year of his sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Facility, Virginia. To read additional articles by Bob Shell, link here: https://tonywarderotica.com/bob-shell-frustrated-with-ancient-aliens/