Chloe’s game 3

I opened Chloe’s desk drawer. There I found a long and heavy leather strap, three inches wide and nearly five feet long. There was a buckle at one end, but it was too big to have been a belt. Chloe later told me it had been part of an old suitcase.

The drawer also contained a wooden hairbrush and a heavy wooden ruler, and a jar of something that said on the lid that it was Dubbin. I assumed Dubbin must be lubricant, Chloe for the buggering of. Ignorant sod that I was.

Chloe had collected these items from her parent’s home, along with her old school uniform. She’d worn that uniform in earnest just five years earlier. Somehow, in the intervening time, it had turned into a sexual costume. It was a self-mocking costume, like a naughty nurse outfit or a French maid’s costume. But once all the layers of irony had been duly acknowledged, she still looked sexy.  

beltI picked up the belt. I’d only hand spanked Chloe, apart from a couple of occasions I’d used the back of her hairbrush. A strap seemed much more serious.

I folded it and hit my palm experimentally. It gave a slow and heavy impact, more of a thud than a sting. And a satisfying clap.

Chloe winced. I supposed she must have already tested the leather on her leg, to see how it would feel.

I felt, again, that familiar rush of power and sexual energy. “All right, girl.” I coughed. “All right, girl. Stand up.”

Chloe’s game 2

I took this in, astonished, and Chloe met my gaze with embarrassment that was no doubt genuine, though it suited the role she was playing. I knew what role-playing was, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it. We had serious things to talk about, hadn’t we?

Anyway, the closest I’d come to role-playing was as Ostler (one line) in a school production of Henry IV Part I. I was nobody’s actor. And the note was to Mr Mortimer, who seemed a very authoritarian sort of fellow. I wasn’t sure I could do him. I wasn’t authoritarian, back then. I might provide pain, for sexual purposes, but I didn’t give orders.

Where did all this come from? I wondered what would happen if I just said, “Anyway Chloe, so how was your day?” I laughed, briefly, at that thought. Chloe’s face fell.

Not quite like this, but the same general effect.

Not quite like this, but the same general effect.

Christ. I lent down and kissed her forehead and whispered, “No, darling, you’re … I wasn’t laughing at you. Sorry. You’re fine.”

Straightening, I said, “So, Miss Sendak, it seems you’ve been a naughty girl.” I sounded nervous. I might be a fearsome disciplinarian, but I didn’t seem to have the voice for it yet.

Chloe said, “Miss Laforge is mean, and I bet you’re mean too. And I’m not sorry, and I’m not scared of the strap, anyway.”

“Strap?” I forgot to be Mr Mortimer. “What strap?”

“It’s in the drawer.” 

Chloe’s game 1

I was talking about teacher/schoolgirl stories and roleplays. I mentioned that I’d learned how to go deeper and darker, as a dom, than I’d ever been before, by playing that game. It’s a silly scenario, but it did turn out to have more power than I expected.

Here’s the story: (an excerpt from a book I’m trying to sell, as it happens):

 Chloe’s game 1

The message was from Chloe, inviting me to visit. It was odd she hadn’t called my mobile. I supposed she’d wanted to leave a message without talking to me. There was something odd in her tone. She sounded very earnest. She didn’t answer, on either phone, when I called her back.

 So I drove round and warily walked the path to her room. Chloe must have heard my approach, because the door was open for me, despite the cold. She sat, an extraordinary sight, on a wooden chair she must have borrowed from the elderly couple she was renting from.

naughty1She wore a white shirt, top buttons undone, and a tie with bottle green and emerald green stripes. The blazer was green with a shield and a Latin motto; hardship led, as it so often does, to the stars. The skirt was bottle green, pleated, and tiny. I stared stupidly at her.

Chloe said nothing, but passed me an envelope she’d been holding in both hands.

I took it, and she placed her hands on her head, fingers interlaced.

The envelope contained a folded note in Courier font:

Dear Mr Mortimer,

Chloe Sendak, the bearer of this note, has been late for school three times this week despite repeated warnings. She had been caught vandalising school property and stealing from other girls. Worse, she has made up an extremely improper poem about poor “Chalky” Carstairs. I have spoken to Chloe about her misconduct but she responded quite insolently. I have referred her to you because of your reputation for strictness. This girl requires firm corporal punishment on the bare buttocks, though you have my consent to remove her clothing altogether. Please punish Chloe extremely severely, and then keep her in overnight.

Yours faithfully, 

Rowena Laforge

Form teacher, Upper Sixth Girls

 

Rowena Laforge didn’t exist, as far as I knew, but she’d signed her name in spidery green ink.

Schoolgirl spanking stories and sexual politics 9

So I’ve been writing about how the schoolgirl spanking fantasy is darker than we generally think. So if I were a completely politically cool kind of guy, then I wouldn’t play that game, or write it.

But if I find myself in a new relationship, the chances are that after a while I’ll take that girl downtown on a shopping expedition. Shoe shopping with a woman I’m interested in is always a good afternoon, because although I don’t actually care about shoes – the idea that a pair of shoes can be sexy is just mystifying to me – you learn a lot about her and her tastes, and that’s worth it. Then we might go shopping for things with sexual applications.

And if she doesn’t already own the little tartan pleated skirt, then we’ll go and find one and get it fitted. With a blouse. And matching tie. 

canedsg1A little tartan skirt doesn’t take much fitting, but I go to a fetish shop where they know that girls who get bought pleated skirts by men in black are girls who have to raise the back of that skirt and bend over for discipline, followed by the consolations of cock.

The two women who run the place are quite capable of dropping a casual remark about how my girl will really have to behave herself while she’s wearing that skirt.

The girl can either take that as sisterly sympathy and submissives-union solidarity, or be pinkly embarrassed that her secret is out. Both are fun. Awkward fun. One of the best kinds. So I go there to have a girl fitted. They do fantastic corsets, too. 

I haven’t actually done any role-playing for years, so my version of “schoolgirl punishment” is usually related to something in the submissive’s real life, rather than her being late for some imaginary school, or having been cheeky to an imaginary teacher. Instead I’ll deal with things involving money management, or career, or some task I’ve set her.

Whether it’s role-playing or reality, it still brings us to a pretty girl in a little skirt bending over a desk and waiting, hoping I’ll go easy on her, and knowing she’d be disappointed if I did. But reality, discipline that really matters and is intended to change real behaviour, is not just more useful than role-playing games, it’s much hotter.

Still, years ago, when I was first working out how the hell a feminist-supporting guy could be a dom, I did play teacher/schoolgirl scenarios. I discovered that the element of fantasy, the idea that “the person I’m portraying isn’t exactly me”, freed me to take my bdsm practice much further than I ever had before.

I’ll talk about that tomorrow.  

50 Shades, Nine and a Half Weeks, and bdsm exploitation

So there’s a film of 50 Shades of Grey coming out. Not many people on the bdsm world seem to be especially happy about this. Well, based on the trailers, it does look kind of crap.  

The 1980s Mickey Rourke, and Kim Basinger's hair.

The 1980s Mickey Rourke, and Kim Basinger’s amazing acting hair.

I recently saw Nine and a Half Weeks, though, which was made in the 1980s, when Mickey Rourke was a good-looking, promising young actor. If you compare the 1980s film based on a bdsm book with the 2014 film based on a bdsm book, it suggests that there actually has been a tiny bit of progress.

Though it was based on a mildly scandalous bdsm novel, the 9 1/2 Weeks film had no bdsm in it whatsoever. On the other hand, in one of the 50 Shades trailers, Dakota Channing does get tied up, and at one point she has a riding crop waved at her, though it doesn’t actually come into contact with her skin. Maybe they’re saving that for the movie. So at least there’s a miniscule dose of bdsm. But on the evidence so far, the only thing that actually gets tortured is the song Wicked Game.

So there’s progress. From no bdsm at all in the 1980s bdsm film, to a tiny, homeopathic amount of bdsm in the 2014 bdsm film. Actually, unless you thought pouring the contents of your fridge onto Kim Basinger might be sexy, there wasn’t any sex in the 9 1/2 Weeks film either.

Which was a pity in a way, because the book that the film was based on was reasonably competently written. The book, 9 1/2 Weeks, was about bdsm, and it did have a couple of sexy scenes in it. Unlike the movie.

But even the 9 1/2 Weeks book is kind of annoying, because it presents bdsm as a pathology. The dom was fucked up from the beginning (Aspergers plus obsessive-compulsive traits plus psychopathology) and the submissive woman progressively lost the ability to do anything for herself, even brush her own hair. She even had to spend time in psychiatric recuperation after the horror of her actually quite mildly sexy experience.

That is, in the best tradition of the exploitation novels and films of, oh, 1930 to, well, now, the woman character goes off the rails of proper decent normality after a few introductory scenes. The reader or the audience gets treated to the promise (not always actually delivered) of some outre sex scenes, and then at the end the heroine comes back to the straight and narrow world. This is important, so that nobody’s ideas are ever actually challenged.

(Jenny Diski’s first novel, Nothing Natural, was one of those, too.)

Bend over, dollface.

Bend over, dollface.

I gave up on 50 Shades after reading a few excerpts on-line. There were sentences like, “Oh my god, he’s spanking me!” Though I treasure this one: “Pulling off his boxer briefs, his erect penis springs free. Holy cow!” *

Based on the bits I’ve read – supposedly the sex scenes – I’d say it’d have read better if it was entirely in text-speak.

On the other hand, if you figure that bdsm is roughly where homosexuality was in the 1950s in terms of social acceptability, then visibility in crappy exploitation books and films (that promise more exploitation scenes than they deliver) is one of the stages that we’re just going to have to live through.

Still, one day someone will make a decent bdsm date movie, a rom-com with canes and nipple-clips.

 

penis* According to that sentence, Christian Grey’s penis pulled off his boxer briefs for him. I wish I could train my cock to do that for me. I could stand there doing the Charles Atlas pose, or make a paper airplane, while my cock does all the work.

But the thing I really love is that once the penis gets its kit off, she looks at it and thinks, “Holy cow!

Don’t leave us in suspense, woman: what the hell is wrong with that penis?

Schoolgirl spanking stories and sexual politics 8

A submissive woman once told me she spanked her children when they misbehaved. I don’t get shocked all that easily, or I don’t think I do, but I was stunned by that. The flirtation ended there. Hell, if anyone’s going to know that spanking children is abusive, shouldn’t it be us?

hittingThe thing is, corporal punishment is always bad except between consenting adults. I can argue about all sorts of things without getting angry, but people arguing for corporal punishment in schools seriously disgust me and piss me off. Adults terrorising children into making their hands or buttocks available, so that the children are forced to cooperate with their own pain and humiliation have veered some way past creepy and on into actual evil.

It’s hard to believe it’s still legal and actually practised in so many American States. What the actual fuck can those parents be thinking of? 

Anyway, so when we play teacher-schoolgirl, we’re playing with something that exists in the real world, and in the real world it’s kind of horrible.

There’s a related issue with Doms who wear SS uniforms and do “torture” with people who are, at least conceptually, Nazi victims. That doesn’t mean the person chained up in the basement “torture chamber” is necessarily pretending to be Jewish (or homosexual, a Gypsy or a communist), but’s what they’re enacting. There’ve been some serious confrontations in bdsm clubs over that.

I can see that the SS costume is sexy. After all, Hugo Boss designed it that way, so SS men would find it easy to get laid and have lots of Aryan babies.  

ssAlso, a lot of people in English-speaking countries think of Nazis as comedy figures. The uniforms looked good, but at the top was that shouty nutcase with the toothbrush moustache and the leather shorts. So the costume means ultimate evil to lots of people, and to others it means the ludicrous bad guys in Allo Allo and Hogan’s Heroes.

And The Code of the Woosters, where the British Fascist Leader (Oswald Mosley, thinly disguised in the book under the name Sir Roderick Spode) gets heckled by Berties Wooster:

“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a    handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: ‘Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?’ “

So to some people the Nazi imagery is a fantasy thing, while to others it’s a symbol of an evil that killed lots of people. When it came to people dressing in SS uniforms in bdsm clubs I sided with the Jewish people (and lots of others) who objected. It’s not unreasonable to accept that some people will be traumatised by that, and that you don’t want to create a hostile environment to people who have good reasons to have pretty strong emotional reactions to Nazi uniforms. 
But where, and how, do we draw the lines?

School spanking stories and sexual politics 7

Schoolgirl spanking stories aren’t about real schoolgirls, then, or about young women who are actually of school-going age. If that was the point of that fantasy, then it would be a pedophile fantasy, at least in media terms.

Pedants might point out that strictly speaking it’d be a hebephile fantasy (that is, about people who’ve recently passed puberty) and even then it wouldn’t necessarily be hebephile in clinical terms, since that requires a primary or exclusive attraction to that age group. But the clinical definitions aren’t really the point: the point is about ick and squick factor.

But the “schoolgirl” in those stories – even more so in roleplays – is an adult. Even if the story makes her improbably ignorant and inexperienced sexually, she’s not underage. But the stories do stress one thing about the age of the characters, and it’s clear that it’s part of the hotness of the scenario: the schoolgirl is younger than the teacher. She’s physically mature, but he has knowledge and power that she doesn’t have.   

Is that a Sarah Palin doll?

Sarah Palin schoolgirl doll: talk about squick factor…

So there’s definitely an element of age play in the scenario, because the “teacher” may have to play older than he or she is, and the man or woman taking the “schoolgirl” role will generally play it as younger than they really are. They have to if they want to play as sexually naive as the “schoolgirl” character usually is. After all, someone who’s doing bdsm-themed roleplays probably isn’t all that naive. 

In some versions of the naughty schoolgirl scenario, the schoolgirl is “the school slut”, and sets out to seduce the teacher. In that version the real person wearing a little pleated skirt for hotness’s sake is a sexually experienced woman who is playing the role of a younger sexually experienced woman who is playing the role of a virginal girl. Complexity is hot, of course.

It’s the combination of age-related ambiguity and non-consent that makes the schoolgirl spanking scenario edgier than it seems.  

Schoolgirl spanking stories and sexual politics 6

In a schoolgirl spanking story, why does the schoolgirl do as she’s told? Even if she fancies the teacher, or she’s interested in exploring sexually, the story makes it a point that at the moment she’s made to undress she’s usually embarrassed and humiliated, and – even if the story says she enjoys the hand spanking – she’s afraid when the teacher brings out the paddle or the cane.

Bad role-playing costume

Bad role-playing costume

The stories work by having it both ways. The schoolgirl usually attracts the attention of the disciplinarian by being bratty, or lazy, or cheeky: after all, she’s a “naughty schoolgirl” so she’s obliged to. And she hay have set out to attract that attention. So you have an element of choice: the schoolgirl initially takes the lead, and makes the story happen.

But once the teacher is interested, and she’s all a-tremble in his office, she doesn’t have any choice any more.

There may be some dialogue about that. “You – you can’t cane me,” she says. “Oh yes, I can, girl, and I certainly will,” he replies.

He points out that the school has legal powers (maybe it’s a reform school) to use corporal punishment, or that her parents have signed over the right to punish their daughter to the school, or that the schoolgirl herself has signed some long, small-print consent form that she never bothered to read at the time.

Good costiume

Now that’s more like it

She can undress and bend over (and subsequently stay in position to be fucked, and accept fellatio lessons, and so on) or be thrown out of the school.

And that’s no choice because she’s got no money, her parents would only send her somewhere even worse, and she might (if it’s a reform school story) go to prison instead.

There is no choice: it’s a non-consent scenario.