I just wanted to send my dearest and most sincere thanks to all of you who attended the Femina Potens benefit on March 19th that was organized by the amazing crew at Tied Up Events.

It was such an incredible experience getting to connect with all of you, have tons of sexy fun with chocolate, nibbles, wine and the amazing talent of JM Darling to capture it all.  Devoted fans, art lovers, amazing burlesque performances by N and I was even able to share some of my dirty girl performance art with all of you.  We had gorgeous women, dapper men, delicious androgyny and intelligent open minded kinky people gathered to support an artistic vision.

This vision to provide a space for dialogue and exploration around the intersection of sex, art and gender is realized at Femina Potens Art Gallery in San Francisco.  This nonprofit arts organization is approaching its 10 year anniversary and we have your support to thank for allowing us to keep the doors open to the community in which we serve.  A community that seeks an alternative, a community of sex workers, women, feminists, kinksters, trans folk, gender queers, sexual outlaws, pornographic pioneers, artists, visionaries, and activists.

We are in communication with spaces in NYC to start East Coast curation as well and we plan on holding further events and benefits with Tied Up Events.  We will keep all of you up to speed on our upcoming events and hope to see you in the future.

With all of my love, heart, kisses and orgasms,

Madison Young

Read what AlwaysArousedGirl had to say about the Erotic Bondage class we did in Las Vegas recently:

“Why do we tie people up?” asked Twisted Monk while in the process of wrapping an ecstatic young woman named Willow in hemp and dangling her from a portable suspension frame.

Without even a second of hesitation the entire class responded with the kind of enthusiastic unison that would make preachers weep: “Because it’s fun!”

Generally I consider rope better suited for binding tomato plants instead of breasts (or arms, legs, thighs, cocks or any of the other body parts that ended up roped during the class), but after An Evening of Sensual Bondage I began to see the remarkable draw this material has on its practitioners.

“Rope is an extension of the body,” Monk said, demonstrating on Willow the single simple knot necessary for what he calls “improvisational” bondage. “When you’re in bondage, you’re literally wrapped up in another person’s desire. They’ve taken the time to encase you.”

Audience members nodded, rapt. They clearly understood the pleasure of experiencing that kind of desire. Many of the attendees already possessed mad rope skills when they entered Las Vegas’s Erotic Heritage Museum for nearly three hours of hands-on instruction. They came prepared with bags overflowing with neatly stowed equipment; they never stopped tying (and untying) their partners throughout Monk’s demonstrations. Others were rank amateurs, including one man who runs an area zip-line tour operation and another who wandered in while exploring the museum. Each student left with new rope, new ideas, new friends and new inspiration.

And, I’d imagine, a great deal of enthusiasm for whatever sexy activities they were planning later that night. No matter how difficult the tie or uncomfortable the position—ankle bound to wrist; full body weight laid across a wiggly, escaping woman; rope-braided hair attached to feet—the bottoms’ blissed-out smiles and the tops’ satisfied grins showed their extreme pleasure.

If you’ve never had a chance to tie or be tied, consider giving it a try. Why?

Because it’s fun.

This post first appeared at Carnal Nation

Dangerous Lilly wrote about her experiences with Twisted Monk’s Sensual Bondage class that we recently hosted at Fontana’s in New York City:

One of the things that I did during my NYC trip was attend a “sensual rope bondage” class given by Twisted Monk, purveyor of fine bondage ropes. My prior experience with rope was pretty damn inconsequential. Basically I have reviewed two mass-market bondage ropes (which, now that I have been spoiled, I don’t want to use) and two books on how to tie people up. At that time I was researching it all so that it could be used on me by my then-dominant or by me on a potential submissive guy I was getting to know. Obviously, neither panned out in the end and my items have languished in my kinky bag.

But even with those two books, I wouldn’t have been able to do much. For one, my spatial imagination isn’t very good – trying to figure out the knots and ties via words and pictures wasn’t always easy. So I went looking for instructional videos online and found the series that Monk has up on his site. Huge huge learning difference. Recently when Tess and Diva announced that they would be  bringing Monk to NY for a class, I signed up right away – and I was not disappointed!

Shibari is what I had been previously learning about, but I didn’t quite “get it”. It seemed complicated and unnecessary to me. Time consuming and more about precision and patience than anything else. But Monk’s class was different – catering right to my train of thought.

You can read the rest of her post (nsfw) on her blog.