The Punishment Book

Crashing into Natty

Crashing has a way of putting me in a very Natty mood. And last Wednesday, after a long Mother's Day, a longer ME/CFS Awareness Day, and a trip to the acupuncturist, I crashed. Every noise became too loud. Every light too bright. Television was painful. My cells felt like they were shaking as their vitality drained into oblivion.

All my haughtiness and dominance of the day before melted into dependency and submission. I wanted to be taken care of. Petted. Told what to do, especially as I was too exhausted to figure it out for myself.

Why domestic discipline is not domestic violence

Last week (at least it was last week when I started this post) I read Jessica Wakeman's piece over at The Frisky about her first D/s relationship and was going to write about the similarities/differences with my own first spanking relationship. Except that within the essay was a link (that didn't work but I found eventually) to Amanda Marcotte's post at Pandagon about that article Jessica wrote for Bitch Magazine regarding domestic discipline two years ago featuring, among others, yours truly and my dear friends, Mija and Pablo (see this post for my thoughts on that article). Needless to say it rather distracted me from the post I intended to write.

I'm not sure how I missed Marcotte's post as I was reading Pandagon fairly regularly at the time (and would be now if I was awake more), but it was probably a good thing I did miss it as most likely I would have taken it quite personally ("these people are fucked the fuck up")*. Instead I shrugged off it and its comments as sort of like watching and listening to random people in a bar discuss an event they saw on TV in which you actually played an intimate part. Plus the idea of A. (or Pablo) as an ideologically-motivated pater familias or a misogynistic wife beater made me laugh.

At least, initially I shrugged it off. But...it kept bugging me. As it's been two years since her post, it seemed just a bit late to write a post in response.  However the more I continued to think about it, the more I began to feel that a post addressing why domestic discipline is not domestic violence had a great deal of merit.

Rules of the Lashes

A. finds the darnedest things while websurfing. Like this list of rules from a nineteenth-century American school -- along with the number of lashes delivered should the rule be broken -- in a manifesto about what's wrong with public education.

 "We're going to play a game," he said when he first told me about the table below. "You'll have to memorize each of the rules and number of lashes. And if you get the number of lashes wrong, you will, of course, receive that number of lashes."

He's not kidding either. Once he gets here next week, he's planning a session with these rules, a cane, and me in my school uniform. I can't wait.

Except I don't know which will part of me will win out -- the Lisa Simpson in me or my spankophilia. Indeed that's always my problem when playing a schoolgirl: I can never decide if I want the "A" more or the spanking. However A. assured me this afternoon that there are always plenty of spankings for being a smarty-pants.

I wonder how many lashes Wm A. Chaffin would ascribe to that misdemeanor?

oOo

Rules of the Stokes County School, November 10, 1848 Wm A. Chaffin, Master (click on the table to see it in full)

I think the biggest shocker in this list was the penalty for playing cards. I mean, why the hell is playing cards worse than betting in any other form?

(Cross-posted at Natty's Spanking Blog)

Impish

I'm always sleepy when it's over.Endorphines flood muscles relaxing after tensing through blow after blow. I cuddle with my pillow imagining that it's his chest.

It was just another punishment. And for my customary offense: not going to bed on time. But the circumstances were somewhat ambivalent. I had substantially reduced my melatonin intake Friday night after a weary week under its somnific spell and didn't fall asleep until 6am. When it came time to go to bed on Saturday night upon the conclusion of Saturday Night Live, I didn't really see much point in getting there in a timely fashion. That I got confused about Daylight Savings Time and mistakenly thought I had an extra hour to spare is quite beside the point. I slid beneath the sheets well after 2am but didn't fall asleep until after 3...er, 4am. And since I didn't wake up until after 3pm on Sunday afternoon, it seemed silly to go to bed at 11:30, especially as I didn't even eat dinner until 10:45.

Kinks in my punishment kink: The ghost of abuse

It haunts every stroke, every word of a scolding, every moment anticipating a punishment. Years of being afraid and worse. Sometimes it seems so long ago, I start to wonder if it was really me all that stuff happened to. Sometimes the memories are still hot and raw, so much so that a year or two ago when I tried to write this post, I had to walk away lest it break the pieces I've spent years gluing back together.

While there hasn't been a lot of research on those who engage in What It Is We Do, research regarding BDSM in general suggests that child abuse is not the reason practitioners have the sexual orientation they do, even if those outside our community may think otherwise. In my own case, I started fantasizing about being spanked years before the abuse started and I am convinced that I'm a spanko despite the abuse.

oOo

A bedtime vignette

Well, one of us had to break the silence, and I thought I'd do it with a short little disciplinary vignette.

It was very late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, and I was reading through my email. 

"Time for bed." A. sat next to me on the bed with his tray of tobacco and cigarette papers.

"I know." I nodded and continued reading my email.

Men want to be little boys too

Some of you might remember back to this spring when Bitch magazine had an article about domestic discipline that featured Mija and I. And that I, at least (I haven't talked with Mija so I can't speak for her), complained a bit that the article genderized the practice too much. That it considered a woman disciplining a man as merely "theoretical" when I knew that it was very much practiced (as is DD among lesbian couples).

About a month or so ago I was interviewed again about domestic discipline, and when I asked my interviewer if she was going to look at Femdom disciplinary arrangements, she said no because she couldn't distinguish that from traditional BDSM.

How to describe a long, hard punishment spanking

Chastened.

Repentant.

Broken.

Sore.

I keep wishing I knew how to put into words what a really long, hard punishment spanking feels like. I mean, obviously it hurts. The hairbrush, ping-pong paddle or even his hand stings so much that I whimper and squirm and kick and desperately wish it would end.

And while I might be cheeky and even a little impudent to start off with, by the end I'm usually penitent and chastened. Not to mention meek and obedient. And sore. Very sore.

But I'm also happy. Gratified. Serene.

Vulnerable inside and out

In one of the great posts linked at the first Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy, Greta Christina considers the appeal of punishment.

In a "pure abuse of power" scene, you have control over the victim's body. But in a punishment scene, you have power over their mind as well. You have power over their very sense of self. You don't just have the power to make their body suffer -- you have the power to make their conscience suffer, too. You have the power to make them feel, not just helpless and frightened and hurting, but ashamed...

Because it would make you feel that way inside as well as out. It would make you feel helpless and submissive, small and bent to someone else's will... not just on your skin and in your muscles and genitals, but in your heart.

And I suspect this is why it feels so dangerous, as well as so enticing.

I've often thought that the punishment kink (domestic discipline, WIIWD, etc.) is among the most vulnerable of practices within BDSM, and I love how Christina articulates why that is. It involves a sort of double jeopardy that is lacking in role play, and the potential for danger can make punishment intoxicating for the participants. The penitent's whole being is vulnerable, his or her "very sense of self" as Christina puts it.

Indeed I think that buzz I've mentioned a few times in relation to punishment spanking is really a sort of high that follows surviving a particularly dangerous act -- hence it only occurs with punishment and not with role play or erotic spanking. Two people plunging into the abyss of shame, guilt, and physical pain and finding their way out the other side still intact -- or, rather, even better and closer for the trip through momentary darkness.

Take it all, Bitch

As you might imagine, What It Is We Do can be a bewildering concept for both kinky and vanilla feminists alike. Hell, it's a bewildering concept for us feminists who engage in it, as the epic thread that followed my post from a little over a year ago at the Punishment Book can attest. In her article, "Slap Happy," in this month's issue of Bitch Magazine (Spring, No. 39) author Jessica Wakeman doesn't necessarily provide any answers to make it less bewildering, but she does give the reader plenty to think about.

The Punishment Paradox

In her weekly brunch, Bonnie has asked readers this week a question that I think most of us here on the PB have discussed at one time or another (and for some of us, numerous times) on the soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup. Namely, if we spankos actually enjoy being spanked, can punishment spankings even work? I left a short comment on Bonnie's blog but the more I thought about it, the more I decided I wanted to write more, especially as it coincides with something I've been thinking about for a few months.

This particular question is an interesting one for me as my partner and I switch but I alone get punished for real life transgressions. It's not because he's perfect and I'm not. Far from it (though not too far...::smile::). We are both equally human and fallible. Indeed, we even have a lot of the same bad habits. We both procrastinate. We both markedly underestimate how long a task will take. We can both be slightly impulsive shoppers. We are both extremely competitive (though I'm not sure that's necessarily a fault...)

My punishment book

It was December 2002 and A. was my ambiguously undefined cyber-guy. We had been chatting (and flirting) online for months and finally declared over Yahoo Messenger that we really cared about each other. That we were a couple – you know, in an ambiguously undefined way.

Even more ambiguously undefined was how we'd ever be a couple in a clear and defined way. I was in Oregon. He was in England. I was bedridden. He was on the dole. I was praying just to get on the dole.

One afternoon – at least afternoon on my side of the Atlantic – we were doing the Nick Cohen End of the Year quiz at the Observer website. A. told me not to cheat by looking down at the answers. Which meant, of course, that I totally had to cheat.

"You really need your backside tanned, young lady," A. typed.

"Nuh uh," I replied.

"Hrm...well luckily for you, and your bottom, I am a few thousand miles away."

I grinned at first. But that longing to be together quickly stole my smugness and replaced it with grim silence.

How my sister's dog saved my ass

Tuesday night I was dogsitting for my sister for a few hours when A. called for our daily chat. And in the course of our chat I had to confess that I had gone to bed 40 minutes late. Which was bad, but especially naughty as I had gone to bed that late the night before and gotten off with a warning.

"I think your sister's dog is going to witness a little domestic discipline," A. said. "Better fetch the ping pong paddle." (Which I was surprised he was even bothering with as he said the day before he can never take it seriously as an implement.)

"But," I whined. "I can't do this in front of the dog. She's looking at me."

And she was too. A tan, medium-sized, short-haired dog with big floppy ears sprawled out at the end of the bed who raised her head up and turned it toward me with big dark chocolate eyes.

"Bare bottom, please."

I pouted and pulled down my leggings and underwear. And felt weird as hell as the dog stared at me while I laid down on the bed, paddle in hand.

Domestic Discipline vs. What We Do

Dyke Grrl's explanation in the comments section of the last post regarding why the term "domestic discipline" doesn't work for her reminds me of a conversation A. and I were having a few months back. It was about my bedtime and there were a number of factors complicating what should be a fairly straightforward issue. "I'm just following your lead," A. said finally. "Let me know what you want me to do and I'll do it."

I remember chuckling to myself at the time and thinking you'd never hear that sort of thing on most domestic discipline sites. But then, I've never really considered our disciplinary arrangement "domestic discipline."

The Story-ness and the Remembering

Last week I was proofreading a news story for A. and remembered that I had a post here that I started several months ago but never finished. Now that I have my new laptop and have become a manic blogger again, it's time to dig up it up and finish it, especially as I really enjoyed what I remembered. Or rather, I enjoyed the remembering. The actual event remembered was not so enjoyable while it was happening. Indeed, it was rather painful.

Soap or Lines?

A. has developed this new affinity for including soap in any punishment he delivers over the phone -- much to my consternation (though, thankfully he hasn't been savvy enough to make sure the bar is wet or that I bite down on it, so it basically just gets on my lips, but still...).

When I whined about it this evening, he told me I should just be grateful I wasn't getting lines.

"Uh, I think I'd rather go with the lines," I grumbled while wiping my lips yet again.

Not that I really get to do any picking, but my question for you all would be to ask what you would pick: soap or lines?

A Little More Discipline

So, on my personal blog I told the scary tale of bad bad buggery that made me very sick for a few weeks. For the first couple of those weeks I was too sick to do anything remotely naughty. But after awhile, I found myself feeling very cranky. My inner ten-year old had had just about enough of the whole staying in bed thing. Trouble was, I still wasn't healthy enough to really get out of bed much. Which just made me crankier, and yet, really wanting a spanking.

Most of you are familiar with that feeling of being annoyed by just about everything and wanting to bitch about it all (and maybe even doing so) but when all is said and done, you'd really rather just get a nice, long spanking -- though you'd probably be irritated if it was offered (or told that's what you were getting). 

I was feeling that big time.

Kinks in My Punishment Kink: The Bad Girl

As I return to my punishment kink, I'm running into a problem that's been there since I first started getting spanked as an adult: getting punished. Yes, I know. Getting punished is sorta the point, right? And a part of me really likes the getting punished part -- or at least the before and after. But for another part of me it feels profoundly unhealthy as it heightens my primeval fear of being bad.

Myriad of emotions

Punishments often come with a myriad of emotions. Frustration. Ambivalence. Fear. Intimacy. Love.

Tuesday's punishment for several days of missing my bedtime included all of those. A. had told me the night before he was going to sort me out the next day, and I woke up Tuesday with that familiar mixture of excitement and fear. But also a great deal of ambivalence.

Kinks in My Punishment Kink: The Feminist Question

As I've mentioned a few times both here and on my personal blog, this last year found me struggling a great deal with my punishment kink. Some of the concerns have been lingering beneath the surface since I first started exploring my spanking fetish. Others have developed more recently. In the end, however, it all came down to four little words: but I miss it. There's a certain buzz I get from the profound vulnerability that comes with the punishment kink and the intimacy that vulnerability produces is nothing less than amazing.

I started chipping away at all these issues in one post but eventually realized that, even if I managed to write said post (which kept feeling more and more unwieldly), nobody would ever actually read it because it would be too damn long. ;) So, I finally decided that it would be more manageable to write and read if I broke it up into a series of posts.

The first issue is one that has been a more recent question as the beginning of the year found me connecting with my inner Appalled Feminist.

I hate wooden spoons

The tops of my thighs are quite stingy at the moment. Especially with my sweats rubbing against them. Or rather, with my sweats rubbing against my pajama bottoms rubbing against them.

Wooden spoons really are evil. As are drafty apartments.

Gimme an inch...

So, um, I posted last week about how I've got a bed time now. And that I get a reprieve for Saturday nights.

Well, last night was Saturday night so I knew I could stay up to watch Saturday Night Live provided that I was in bed by midnight. And I sorta watched SNL. I mean, it was on in the background. While I talked on the phone. Until about 12:55 am. And while I was sitting on my bed, I wasn't exactly in bed (whoever knew that prepositions could be so important?). Or even ready for bed. Indeed, I didn't actually make it into bed with the lights out until 1:15 am.

"Right. I have to have a think about your punishment," A. said to me tonight on the phone with that stern, British accent of his.

So tonight I'll be going to bed at 12 am sharp. And wondering about what my punishment is going to be.

Gulp.

Bedtime Blues

For the first time in our four and half year relationship, A. is enforcing a bedtime for me.

Both he and I have generally been night owls, appreciating a certain level of creative energy that comes in the wee hours. Long ago I used to be a morning person, but since my illness has reeked havoc with my circadian rhythm, I've been a I'll-go-to-sleep-whenever-I'm-damn-well-tired-enough-to-and- wake-up-whenever-I-damn-well-wake-up sort of person.

However, since being diagnosed with and beginning treatment for hypothyroidism at the end of August, my circadian rhythm has settled down into some regularity. By midnight I start getting pretty sleepy and if I stay up much later, I'm barely able to drag myself into the bathroom to brush my teeth, floss, pee, etc. And for the next two days I'll be groggy regardless of how late I slept in.

But, well, despite how much sense it makes to go to bed at midnight, I'd never quite make it there before 1 or 2 or even 3 am. I mean, I've been going to bed in the am for years now, so I just don't think about getting ready for bed at, say, 11 pm.

Well, I do now.

Pushing it

Today I got the first disciplinary spanking in almost a year.

Part of the reason it's been so long is because I've been struggling with my punishment kink. I've been meaning to write about my struggles in their messy, raw form but I think by the time I get around to writing about it, I will have some more coherent thoughts.

But mostly it's because I've been struggling with illness, something I mentioned in my last post on this blog in January, that got a lot worse at the end of May when I ended up with blood clots in my lungs and was promptly placed on anticoagulants for the rest of my life. After a chat with the hematologist, A. and I have discovered that there are still spankings to be had while on blood thinners. But our experimenting has just been play. No discipline.

Until today.

Crikey, I've lost my spanko-mojo!

I've been living with some persistent urinary tract infections for several months now. It's baffling the doctors who have both run a CT scan and done a cystoscopy but find nothing to explain the relentless number of bacterial visitors for which I'm now taking antibiotics for the foreseeable future. What really sucks is that it really hurts. Like someone driving a nail through the base of my spine. You know, just above where normally I'd get spanked.

As sparkle mentioned in the last post, we had someone email us recently asking if we all really get spanked. Of course, the answer is yes, for whatever reasons of emotional and sexual expression we might have. But for the first time in my life, I can totally see the world from that emailer's perspective.

Why on earth would I want someone to hit me with a belt or a cane or a hairbrush? Why, why, why would somebody do that? Why would I let them -- nay, seek them out?!

Now, ordinarily when I'm getting spanked, I rarely like it (though, yeah, there are a few exceptions). The appeal is usually the concept. One of the most core, intimate pieces of me is part child mixed in with the intelligent, mature woman. Punishment for real life things is a way of connecting to both of those at the very same time in which a type of fusion is created that is about as close to nuclear fusion we can get on a human level.

Or at least, normally it works like that. Except for the last few weeks, the concept has had no appeal to me.

Not. At. All.

As my boyfriend, A., and I cuddled last night, I said it was like someone has stolen my spanko-mojo.

We both chuckled awkwardly. And sighed. He rubbed my back and cuddled me some more.

But as the night went on, a little tiny bit of that child-part thought again.

"Well, maybe you could make me write lines or something," I said later as we drifted off to sleep.

"Yeah. I could make you wear your school uniform (which I don't really have yet) and write lines..." A. began.

And the appeal of the concept came back a bit.

So, maybe I still have my punishment-mojo...

Grandmas can be dangerous

Lordy my grandma is trying to get me in trouble.

I've been slowly feeling better the last few weeks (I've been pretty sick for the last six months or so - read this or this if you want details). Last week I was feeling really good after I paid a visit to my acupuncturist/massage therapist/Magic Lady (as A. calls her). I walked five blocks home from the bus stop. Did a load of laundry all by myself (haven't done that since April!). Even made a pumpkin pie. My grandma called me up thrilled to hear I was feeling better and has decided to help pay for me to see the Magic Lady every week.

Of course, she also expressed concern that I not over do it too much. I told her not to worry. I was being careful to do a little bit, then sit and rest for a bit, then do a little bit more, then rest a bit more. "Besides," I explain. "A. has already warned me about over doing it and accompanied that with a look so stern it made it all the way across the Atlantic and the continent to Oregon."

She giggled at that.

So, an hour or so ago she calls me up to discuss arrangments for her to pay for the Magic Lady and when she asks me how I'm feeling, I yawn and say something about being a bit tired as I didn't get enough sleep last week. "Now, didn't you get a very stern look warning you not to over do it? Hmm?" I hastily explained that it wasn't because I willfully over did it, just that my brain finally turned on, and I couldn't get it to turn off when I would try and go to sleep.

But in my mind I'm thinking, "geesh, woman, you're going to get me thrashed within an inch of my life!"

Discussion

There are punishment spankings and there are discussion spankings. Last Saturday was a bit of both. The former type, punishment spankings, are fairly self-explanatory. I do something naughty, I get punished with a spanking.

The second type are a bit more difficult to describe. When I asked A. what he would call them, he blurted out “Daddy Spankings.” Why? “Because it’s where I help you figure out what you’re going to do and give you structure.” But, of course, punishment spankings would fall into that category too. Then he joked about them being “Daddy Bush Spankings” because there is an element of pre-emption to them. Yet, we both conceded that it was more than just keeping me from doing something bad. They are more about focusing my mind on the task or tasks ahead. I also find that they give attention to that little girl part of me – the “Natty” part if you will – so that she won’t be trying to distract me from what I need to focus on.

Usually we just refer to them as a discussion about my schedule which, of course, includes time across his knee.

Bible Thumpers against Domestic Discipline

My vanilla blog is part of the Progressive Christian Bloggers Network, a collection of blogs in which moral values influence our political and theological views in a rather left of center way. I love to wander among the various blogs in our blogroll as there is often a lot of great writing (and, yeah, some bad writing too), as well as a growing sense of community among those of us who often feel somewhat isolated in our conservative churches.

One of the blogs that I tend to click on often had a post reviewing some recent articles on sex written by Evangelicals, including an article on Domestic Discipline in which the blogger dismissed it as giving men the right to beat their wives.

I gulped. Sort of tensed up as if I'd been caught doing something naughty.

A Public Service Announcement of sorts

I think we've all assumed that anyone reading this blog would know that when any of us get spanked, it is consensual. We have all explicitly made it known to our partners that we want them to discipline us (though "discipline" is probably defined differently by each of us). Indeed, we have all sought out partners with spanking kinks because we ourselves already had spanking kinks (or fetishes, or whatever word you want to call it).  We *chose* it, it was not imposed on us because our partners thought it was for our own good, or because we really "need" it.

I say this because I had a conversation with a fellow (don't worry, I don't even remember your nick) in a chatroom last night that has left me rather disturbed about the message some readers of this blog may have about the various disciplinary arrangements we six have with our partners.

Wrestling with punishment spankings

While none of us have used a post to specifically link to something else, I read one of the most articulate discussions of punishment spankings within an adult disciplinary relationship that I've ever read over at Patty's blog, A Creative Spanked Wife and thought that it was quite pertinent to our discussions here. What I love about Patty is that she talks about DD as it really is, with all the complex aspects that intertwine when two human beings are trying to define their relationship. This particular post of hers specifically addresses what happens -- or should happen -- when two healthy adults decide to enter into this kind of relationship. That there comes a point where you let go of fantasy and deal with the utter reality of real life.

Wholeness of being

Most people think of spanking exclusively in terms of sexuality. And well, certainly the buttocks are physiologically set up for a great deal of erogenous potential. However, I find that spanking is a core part of me that taps into almost every aspect of who I am, with sexuality being only one part.

A nice spring-like day that ended in a spanking

The weather outside has felt like April the last few weeks. Except less rain. Go figure. It was a bright and sunny day and as my boyfriend and I were both up (he never went to bed, I actually got up early), we decided to go to Multnomah Falls.

Straddling the edge

It's funny how some spankings have more emotional intensity than others. Particularly disciplinary spankings.

A few weeks ago I got spanked because I didn't finish reading the book that was on my schedule last week to finish -- one of those icky evangelical Christian historical fiction novels I'm deconstructing for my thesis.

Chatting with the "Professor"

I had a most amusing chat with a certain "Professor" at spankingchat.com the other night. After the initial "Where are you from, miss?" and "I'm 49 m, and you?" he asked the next most amazingly original question.

"Are you spanked in r/l, miss?"

"Yes."

"By whom?"

"My boyfriend."

"But I sense you crave something more."

Oh yes, I thought. You, oh-so-omniscient wise one, you can be that ever greater "more..." (rolling my eyes).

Letters on a keyboard

It's funny how when I type the letters "s" "p" "a" in succession, my fingers automatically type an "n" next. I had started out writing this introduction with a comment about how intimidating the white space of the screen can be and when I went to write "space," I ended up typing "span" before I stopped and hit the backspace button. And even in typing the second to the last word in that last sentence I had to stop a second to make certain I typed a "c."

That seems like a good way of introducing me and my kink.