The Punishment Book

Our Wooden Valentine: 5 Years, 201 Posts, 1.6 Million Visitors

 In late 2004, after Paul opened an account for us on Typepad and, after I played with a personal blog and got the hang of it, I wrote to a few friends. These were women I'd met online in the previous decade, but also gotten to know on different levels in real life. We were very different, but had in common a love of writing and a fascination with the use of discipline and punishment in real life relationships. You see, I had an idea -- we could start a group blog (there weren't many then) as a place to discuss the nitty gritty of trying to make a discipline relationships work in our respective "real" worlds.  Because they're such good friends they claimed to be both excited and flattered and were sure it would be great fun.  From the start, I knew we should call it "The Punishment Book."

February 2005, the blog entry officially opening and explaining The Punishment Book read:

Punishment books were records kept by schools and reformatories recording punishments given. Records were kept of who punishments were given to, how much and why each punishment had been given. Most often, though not always, the punishments were corporal.

Though we took our banners from scans of historical punishment books, that history is not what this blog is about. There will be accounts of punishments here, of course. The punishment book dot org is about punishment, especially spanking, being used to correct real life behavior. This is something the authors of this site all have in common, the use of disciplinary punishments in our real lives to some degree or other. Not as role play, although some of us are role players (and in some cases real life can feed role play). Not as foreplay, though some of us are into erotic spanking, but as part of our real lives and relationships. We're all pretty funny (well, I mean, in so far as we amuse each other), but this isn't a game. The issues of discipline and punishment are something seriously important to each of us.

Welcoming Zille: Changes to the PB

A quick look at the right sidebar will tell you the basics -- we've added another author to the PB -- something not done often or lightly.  This puts our number at nine, which the science (and here I use the word science quite wrongly) of numerology says represents the beginning and end of all human experience. 

Great, so no pressure on the new girl.  

Who is this new author?  

::drum roll::

It's Zille Defeu.  (Zille is pronounced as rhyming with "Jill" -- not "silly" or "file".)

Zille has her own website and blog with a lovely "about" page in case you want to get ahead of things.  She will, no doubt, be introducing herself in the coming days.  

Several of us have gotten to know her over the past year and then discovered that, of course, we have mutual friends.  In my case, I started reading Zille's Twitter feed at about the same time she started reading mine.  Tweets turned to emails and some phone calls before we met at Shadow Lane this past September and ended up talking about life, the universe and spanking.  

There's a lot I like about Zille and what she brings to the scene and 'net.  I want to go into some detail here, but keep deleting everything I put down because I don't want to force her hand in what she writes about or when she writes.  I'll stick with teasing -- there's a lot she can say here and I'm excited just thinking about her saying it.   When will be up to her.  So stay tuned.

Most importantly though, welcome Zille.  Nine is a great number and we're very glad to have you here. 

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Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Love Our Lurkers IV

Beloved and community minded Bonnie, over at My Bottom Smarts gives us a chance each year to remember we're not talking to ourselves -- that you're here reading too. And we all know that for every comment to the blog, there are hundreds of visitors who don't comment. We know you're there and it's always good to know there are readers, whether you choose to comment or not.  Yet it's so much more fun to write for a blog where there's lively discussion.

I know this blog has been quiet lately. This is partly due to many of us blogging elsewhere (see the list of our other blogs over to the right). It's also due to the PB blog having become less of a place to discuss the idea of punishment in a relationships and more of a place to record actual punishments received.  (Believe it or not, that we'd record our punishments here never occurred to me when we were first building the blog.)  Since most of us aren't punished very often, there ends up being long gaps between entries. Add to that my neglect in not realizing sooner that postings here were tapering off.

And yet you're still reading here -- even when the PB goes weeks and even months without new entries, our stats tell us that hundreds of people visit every day. So this is what I want to ask of you today -- keeping in mind the style of the blog (that is, this isn't going to suddenly become a place full of pictures of spanked bottoms, lovely though they might be and that we can't write about punishments that aren't happening -- give us some thoughts about what you'd like to find when you come here. What discussions would be useful or interesting?

Thank you in advance for your ideas. And as always, thank you for reading.

Introducing Bridget as Our Birthday Present

Three years ago today the first entries to the PB went up!  Woot!  And to celebrate, a present for our readers and ourselves.

It's my pleasure to introduce a new PB writer today.  She's both thoughtful and delightful and her name is Bridget.  I know my procrastination in getting her added has been long enough that she's already got her introduction written so you have that delight to look forward to -- if you can't wait, the link to her blog is here.  But I'll post a few of my own details about young Bridget just as a teaser.

Bridget is in her 20s, part of a poly family and in a Master / slave relationship.  There have been occasions where I've heard What It Is We Do contrasted with BDSM and specifically the M/s dynamic but from what I've seen we've got a great deal in common, specifically in the area of being held accountable to an external authority.  But anyway, I'm looking forward to Bridget's entries here and everyone's discussion of them.

Happy 2008 and happy birthday to us!

Lurking Out Loud

Hi there.

Yes, we can see you.  Well, sort of anyway.  Our stat counter frequently tells us that there's more than a thousand readers a day here.  Okay, so some of those are hits from people doing a quick look for pictures (sorry folks) and then moving on.  But a lot of you stay and read.  Some of you comment (and we're glad of that), but others don't say anything.

This post is for you.  Because we understand -- we've all lurked too.  It's easy to wonder if your comments would be welcome.  Maybe you disagree with something one of us posted (that's fine, fun even).  We're all used to disagreement.  Or maybe it seems like we just talk to each other and a small circle of friends.  It is true we know each other, but we want to know you too.   

Go on, post a comment.  What about?  Anything.  Maybe a favorite book? 

I'll start.  For me, I think my favorite book of all time is Pride and Prejudice (with Jane Eyre running a close second).  I read it the first time at 12 and remember loving it then.  And every time I've read it since I've found something new to enjoy in the text.  What do I love most about it?  That both Elizabeth and Darcy have to change and develop.  There's something very romantic about that.

Okay, your turn!  And if you're a regular or irregular commenter, go ahead and say hi too!

Many thanks to the amazing Bonnie at My Bottom Smarts for organizing Love Our Lurkers day!

SCAM Artist Alert OR I Feel So Dirty!

A year or so ago "Katie Spades" wrote to the Punishment Book authors telling us how much she liked the PB (including some dreck on us having "inspired" her and her partner) and asked us to link to her as she was starting a career as a spanking model.

Now we never do the "I'll link to you if you link to me" thing but a couple of PB writers liked the blog and said they were following it (that's always our criteria).  So a link to her blog went onto our sidebar (no  need to check, it's gone).

Today one of the other authors sent me this link from the A.S.S. blog.

Apparently Katie's been scamming us all.

(Katie: from the quoted beer.com podcast)
Here was the deal, like I wanted to make money. And to get a name for myself, but I wasn't quite sure how to do it, and I didn't want to go like straight up porn. So I looked around... and I saw the, well it's like this little community, the spanking industry... and for the most part... I mean there are a couple of pretty models... but for the most part there aren't many. So I looked at it as like okay, here is an easy way jump to the top of an industry like that, because I can totally take it over with the way I look. So I decided to do that.

I haven't actually listened to the whole podcast yet --I'm at work-- but I've heard enough.   A friend had pointed me to her "SAVE KATIE" campaign which was raising money to supposedly off-set expenses brought on by an "illness." The interview doesn't seem to mention that, but there's no reason to think that's true either.

As my grandfather would have said, what a piece of work! My sympathies especially go out to the kindhearted folks who were taken in by her "SAVE KATIE" scam to get money out of the community for help during her  supposed "illness."

Feh!

PS: Sending even more love out to the real models in our scene. You're 100X more fun to watch anyway.

We're *First*?

Today when I was checking our stats (yeah, I do it a lot, especially when bored at work), I realized that the PB makes Google's first or second page for the entry "punishment."  Cool, right?

Yeah, guess where we are on the page when if you Google "punished wife"?  Ouch!

Caned wife? Page 5.

Punishment Book?  First entry, page 1.

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And yes, these are generating a number of hits*, thanks for asking.

(*and no, that wasn't an intentional pun.  Double ouch!)

Changes to the PB

Okay, this first bit is just something I wanted to mention in passing.  Even though you're very quiet, we know there are a lot of you here and you come pretty often.  Confession?  There's a stat counter here and so we know about 1200 of you a day land here.  And some of you stay for quite a while (more than two hours) and come back daily to check in on the happenings.  Go ahead, say something!  we know it seems like we just enjoy talking to ourselves, but we really would love to hear your point of view on whatever.  In my case at least, even if you think this is a bit (or a lot) freaky.  We're veterans of usenet... you'll have a hard time offending us, and even if you do we'll probably still answer you.  Go on.  You don't even need to put a real email address (noone@nowhere.org will work). 

So onto the changes.  Smallest first.  The links have been redone reflecting that more of us have scene-related sites and so do our partners.  So there's now a section called "Our Other Sites."  We've added a link to Haron and Abel's new blog, The Spanking Writers, and also one to sparkle's husband's site, Chris' Firehouse.  It's really cool to get our partners' perspectives, sometimes on the same subject or scene being discussed here. 

Big change?  We've added two new (well, new to us) authors to the PB.  They'll be posting their own introductions sometime in the next month or so (we're not big on deadlines), but it's fun to build the anticipation, right?  So here's an introduction to their introductions!

Dyke Grrl, who some us know from our days on soc.sexuality.spanking, has had her own blog about spanking and life, Breathing In & Breathing Out.  If you want to know more about her, you can either go to her blog and read.  Or wait with breathless anticipation here. In any case, we're delighted she wanted to join us!

In the interest of diversity and also because she's witty and a great writer, we've added Iris Bloom who we don't know from our (mostly) beloved newsgroup.  Iris first appeared here in our comments and it was only later that I (see I can almost never keep up the "we" voice for a whole post) realized I knew her partner from years ago adventures at some Shadow Lane parties.  Iris was the author of the BDSM survey (Mija's answers are here) that seems to have become a small meme.  If you want to know more about Iris, well, she has no blog that I know of so you're just going to have to wait until she shows herself.  I know I'm excited!

And so there you are.  Change is good.

FAQ Question 2: So How Can I Make My...

...[husband / wife / boyfriend / girlfriend / partner] decide to [discipline / spank / punish] me?

I'm not sure about the other women posting here, but I get emailed this question a lot.  We've gotten a couple people asking this recently either on this site or by email.  Haron answered it a bit here, writing:

...it's impossible to give advice without knowing more about you, your boyfriend, his preferences and your own. Is he even into spanking, or is he doing it to humour you?

On the whole, it's been my experience that the only way to "get" somebody to do anything is to discuss it with them, endlessly and painstakingly. To explain why it's important to you, and how it would make you happier, and what attracts you about it. I'm not in favour of pestering, but unless you communicate your desires clearly, he won't start punishing you out of the blue.

If you *have* talked about it, and he still won't do it - well. It's a different story.

This is a great answer to this question.  I'm going to write a bit more because, well, why not?

FAQ Question 1: Why the blog?

It's been quiet here lately, for reasons I'll get to later.  But in the quiet, someone asked:

"How exactly did the 6 of you meet, discover your joint interest in spanking and decide to set up this blog?"

What is "The Punishment Book"?

Punishment books were records kept by schools and reformatories recording punishments given. Records were kept of who punishments were given to, how much and why each punishment had been given. Most often, though not always, the punishments were corporal.

Though we took our banners from scans of historical punishment books, that history is not what this blog is about. There will be accounts of punishments here, of course. The punishment book dot org is about punishment, especially spanking, being used to correct real life behavior. This is something the authors of this site all have in common, the use of disciplinary punishments in our real lives to some degree or other. Not as role play, although some of us are role players (and in some cases real life can feed role play). Not as foreplay, though some of us are into erotic spanking, but as part of our real lives and relationships. We're all pretty funny (well, I mean, in so far as we amuse each other), but this isn't a game. The issues of discipline and punishment are something seriously important to each of us.

There's a lot of stuff about domestic discipline out there on the 'net, but not much any of us felt related to our lives, for reasons that will eventually be discussed in some detail somewhere on this site. The blog is our attempt to explain it all.

Oh, and just in passing, each of us have our own opinions, own lives and at least slightly different takes on every issue. Assume each author is only speaking for herself, her own situation and point of view.

We welcome comments on our entries. But please, no personal ads and no spamming.

Oh and we're all taken. At least currently.