Schoolgirl spanking stories and sexual politics 5

Many people feel vaguely uneasy about the schoolgirl spanking fantasy, or story or roleplay, even if they’re otherwise okay about bdsm. That includes people who do bdsm. 

Caution: This photo may may not contain actual schoolgirls

Caution: This image may may not contain actual schoolgirls

I think that the reason people often give for that unease is that it eroticises young girls, and shows them having sexual things done to them in ways that would be evil if they happened in reality.

Most real schoolgirls are well under the age of consent in their respective states, and in any case they shouldn’t be hit on by older people even if they have passed the local age of consent. Above all, they shouldn’t be hit, let alone hit on, by men or women who have institutional power over them. 

(When I mention age of consent laws, I’m assuming an age that’s usually 16 or 18. I’m not talking about Islamic and tribal states. There are no age of consent laws in Saudi Arabia, for example, because Islamic sources say that Muhummad, of founding-Islam fame, married a six year old girl when he was in his 50s, and commenced raping her when she was nine. Moreover, Muhummad is supposed to be the perfect human being whose conduct and example cannot be criticised.

So a law against child marriage is a law saying that Muhummad’s example should not be followed, and many powerful Islamic clerics oppose that sort of thing. But that’s a big and horrible topic, and this isn’t the place.) 

However, I don’t think that the age issue is the most serious source of discomfort with the naughty-schoolgirl/bad teacher fantasy. The schoolgirl is usually imagined as over 18, with nothing odd about her being sexually active.

fluffyI think the real issue with schoolgirl spanking fantasies is the non-consensual element. It sounds like a fun, playful fantasy, and yet what gets people (including me) hot is the non-consensual bdsm: the beating, the tying down, the fucking. Strictly and honestly speaking, non-consensual bdsm means rape and torture. The school setting makes it fluffy.

I think that’s the real case against.

[To be continued]

Schoolgirl spanking stories and sexual politics 4

The school spanking fantasy doesn’t, generally, involve actual schoolgirls.

I know a disturbing number of women who want to be spanked by Benedict Cumberbatch.

I know a disturbing number of women who want to be spanked by Benedict Cumberbatch.

I suppose there are real girls who are really still at school who fantasise about being spanked by a particular teacher, or maybe, oh, Niall Horan out of One Direction. So that’s a schoolgirl’s spanking fantasy. But it’s a different thing, really. 

A guy on the train who spends his time looking at the knees of actual schoolgirls, hoping for a flash of knicker, is also something else. If the girls notice him, they’re likely to call him a pedophile.

According to the clinical definition, he probably isn’t. To get an age-related “-phile” attached to him, in clinical terms, he’d have to be exclusively or at least mainly attracted to people that age, when he might actually perve at anything female.

Even if he’s attracted to high school girls in particular, so his primary or exclusive preference is for girls in early to mid pubescence, say 12 to 16, then clinically speaking he should be called a hebephile, not a paedophile.

aqualungOn the other hand, the language has moved on, and it didn’t consult a clinician. If he’s staring at real schoolgirls with, as Jethro Tull put it, “bad intent”, then he’s going to be called a pedophile. 

Whereas the schoolgirl spanking fantasy isn’t about the age of the participants. Well, it is in a way, but it’s not about the girl’s pubescence being fetishised.

Instead, the “schoolgirl” of that fantasy is usually young but clearly post-pubertal. In stories she tends to be somewhere from around 18 to around 24, say.

At 18, most young people have left high school, which illustrates how little the schoolgirl fantasy has to do with the real world. Though to feature a 23 year old schoolgirl, the story usually adds a line somewhere about the school being one that takes in students who left school earlier and are now returning to complete their diploma, or O levels or whatever it might be.

What’s significant isn’t the age of the schoolgirl, but the assumption that the teacher character is older, more experienced and obviously more powerful than the schoolgirl character. The “schoolgirl” is in a situation that’s generally seen as benign – what can be better for you than school? – but in which she’s actually utterly powerless, and subject to painful, humiliating and exciting sexual trials according to the whims of her teachers, and the creativity of the author. 

The fantasy isn’t about age: it’s about power.

(By the way, the “Cindy” that this story is written for and about is in her 30s.)   

Schoolgirl spanking stories and sexual politics 3

One thing about schoolgirl spanking stories is that they stay light while actually going into some quite dark emotional and political territory. It’s odd that this scenario has managed to be mostly understood as a light and playful sexual game. It’s a non-consensual scenario. The behaviour of the institution, and the specific  teacher, in that scenario would be horrific, of course, if it were real.  

The scenario does everything it can to stress the submissive’s powerlessness. She wears a uniform that’s specifically designed to mark her as not free. She’s not an adult, no matter what her age might be. The school uniform marks her out as a child, regardless of her age in the fantasy scenario, or her real age if she’s playing it with another person. She’s someone under the control of adults and subject to a long list of rules, none of which respect her privacy or her dignity.

Good, sturdy desk.

Good, sturdy desk.

She cannot leave the premises, and her contact with the outside world is controlled by the very people who have assumed the right to beat her and fuck her whenever they feel like it.

It’s the only scenario that goes so dark while still being read as a basically happy and fluffy kind of scene.

If you wanted to have a different fantasy scenario in which the submissive is so controlled without her consent, you’d have to go with something like “Kidnapped! Log Cabin in the Woods”, or “Women’s Prison Farm II: Night of the Warden”.  

Which means that we’ll have to look at some of the aspects that people can find troubling (eg the age play element, the non-consent) tomorrow.  

Schoolgirl spanking stories and sexual politics 2

The girl in schoolgirl spanking stories acts a certain kind of sexual naivity. She encounters the teacher’s erect cock when she’s being spanked over his knee, and she’s likely to encounter his cock even more satisfactorily afterwards. But she’s assumed to not know what a penis is, or – if she’s had sexual play with boys – she’s surprised to find the teacher’s cock pointing at, or into, her.

"Uh, it's a ... thermometer."

“Uh, it’s a … thermometer.”

At the same time, it’s clear in most stories that there’s a game being played. Sometimes it’s made clear in the opening lines that the schoolgirl has always fancied that teacher, or the headmaster. Her misbehaviour is an excuse to get him alone and flash her body at him. In the expectation that he’ll respond and take it from there. Once that’s achieved she can relax and “not know” what’s going on.  

There’s often a sequence, early on, in which another girl comes stumbling out of the office, adjusting her clothes and generally being post-coital. She recommends misbehaving, for that particular teacher.

The schoolgirl is the initiator, though she pretends – both parties pretend – that she has no agency and no knowledge and is just doing as she’s told. 

That’s an important part of the scenario’s sexual power, I think. Both parties, but especially the “schoolgirl” are aware of more layers of meaning and power than they play on the surface. 

And maybe this complexity thing is just something I’m into. But I think I’m right about this for more people than just me: complexity is sexy.

 

Schoolgirl spanking stories and sexual politics 1

I’ve been writing a teacher/schoolgirl story for a girl who liked it when I started making one up for her, sort of impromptu. That’s why the written version of this story, on this blog, seems to start at the second episode. The first episode was spoken, not written, and now it’s gone.

But I’d be lying if I said that I chose the teacher/schoolgirl scenario only to amuse a pleasantly depraved woman. The fact is that I’ve always been partial to an adult woman wearing a gymslip and carrying a note that says she’s been late for school again.

So why is it hot?

sgWell, first, the costume and the look is great. The girl’s school uniform, with the little pleated skirt, is one of the classic sexy looks of all time. If the little black cocktail dress is universally agreed to be sexy (and it is), then this should be as well.

It’s the original flappy skirt, one that threatens to blow up at the slightest puff of wind. But it never quite does unless the woman in the skirt wants it to. 

There’s also a kind of misdirection about it, that helps to make it sexy.

That is, a woman in a little black cocktail dress is dressing to be sexy.

Whereas the schoolgirl look is supposed to be about, oh, education and stuff.The sexiness is supposedly accidental. It’s similar to the way the librarian look is sexy.

better librarianThose looks have two messages where the sexy little black cocktail dress has only one. The apparent message of one costume is about physics classes and exams and organised sports, while the other costume’s surface meaning is about getting books into alphabetical and Dewey classification order while telling people to shut up.

The sexy underlying message of the costume subverts the apparently strait-laced surface meaning.

Well, complexity can be sexy, but subversion is always sexy.

I’m going to have to leave it there for today. Back tomorrow.   

A Dubrovnik whore as a metaphor for Balkan politics 2

So a sex worker walks into a bar in Dubrovnik. It’s after mid-night. She’s tired – everything about her body language says she’s tired, though she does the slut walk with real conviction. She’s pretty, in the classic short black skirt that shows her stocking tops. She needs, or at least wants, one more customer for the night. 

There were three men in the bar, not counting the bar staff. I was one of them, and she pretty much ignored me because I was eating. I’d been dragged out on a fishing trip, and I went for the sailing, but I don’t actually like fish. So I was starving when I finally got back. But a man having dinner is not a good bet for a quick pick-up. I was going to want to finish my goulash. 

Or maybe she just has standards. Anyway, she decided in a second’s glance that I wasn’t going to be a customer. She was right. 

That left two guys. They were young, they were fit, and they had haircuts that made me think they were possibly in the military. Or just some kind of gang. Anyway, they noticed the woman, and that she was selling sex, and they were both interested. 

At that point there could easily have been a mostly happy ending. The first one to whip out a credit card or a wodge of cash, and smile at the woman, would get to take her to his room, or to her place if the Hotel Imperial made it hard to take sex workers into your room.

The second guy would miss out, unless they liked two guys/one woman threesomes, but he could ask her if she had a friend and colleague, or just stay up a little later and wave her over when she was leaving.  

But instead things got competitive, politely at first. One guy waved at the other guy, meaning, “You go, because I renounce my claim in a grand gesture of generosity.” 

Now that would mean that the man who was waved at would get the girl, but that he would owe the other fellow, and be revealed as a less grand and generous man. So he waved back, meaning, “No, you go.” 

They kept this going for a while. Then the girl got bored, so she sat between them, giving them a show of leg to remind them that there are better things they could be doing with their time. She got half out of her chair to kiss one guy’s cheek while wiggling her ass at the other, and then turned and kissed the other guy’s cheek. 

croatiaSo the argument resumed, but now there were no more shows of generosity. They both wanted the girl. They shouted at each other, saying presumably insulting and threatening things in Croation or Bosnian or Serbian. Then one of them pushed the other. The other guy pushed back. Then they started throwing punches.

The woman got up and distracted them by leaning forward so they could stare down her blouse. The fight stopped. She made some suggestion, which was also in a language I didn’t understand, but it was probably sensible. (Maybe, “Gentlemen, I’m flattered. I can take you both, at once or serially. If it’s to be serially, why don’t you decide who goes first by flipping a coin?”) 

Anyway, things calmed down a little, because the men sat down, glaring at each other, and they only exchanged insults at a lowish shout. The whore waited patiently. 

taxiwhoreThe guys wound each other up and they stood up again. Once more, they started pushing and throwing punches. At that point the sex worker, who’d wasted over an hour of her time with these two, pulled out her phone and called a taxi. 

She left. But the two guys didn’t even notice. They were still fighting.

I finished my goulash and ordered a rakija, a really good one that’s based on distilled mistletoe. It was nearly two in the morning, now. The bar staff didn’t interrupt the fight, and I couldn’t blame them. It’s like breaking up a dog-fight; the human is likely to get bitten. Anyway, the guys were assholes, and I don’t think anyone else in that room minded if they hurt or injured each other. 

They were still going twenty minutes later. That was my cut-off point. It had been comedy, but I was getting tired and bored. I went to bed. 

No-one of the three got what they wanted. The girl got no money, and wasted over an hour of after midnight time when she plainly needed the sleep. Neither guy got laid. But at least they’d wake up in the morning with lots of new bruises. 

That’s another one of those parable things.

A Dubrovnik whore as a metaphor for Balkan politics 1

I was in Sarajevo on the 100th anniversary of the assassination of the Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand. It’s a disconcerting experience, going past rakija bars at 8 in the morning, and listening to fat men in in their forties, in faded cammo gear, croaking out nationalist songs. That’s because you know that when they were singing those songs just 20 years ago, they were raping and torturing women and murdering men they’d put in cages so they couldn’t fight.

I spent much of the night talking with a woman about what it was like being a little girl in Sarajevo, with Serbs lobbing mortars at you and pouring sniper fire onto your school, when you’re five years old. Apparently it’s not scary at the time. It’s only when you’ve finished running, and you’re safely behind stone or out of range, that you start to feel the fear.

Kids shouldn’t know that sort of thing about fear. No-one should. But she told me this without any anger, which is one of the more amazing things about humanity.

dubAnyway, the next night I was in Dubrovnik, in Croatia. A little after midnight I was on the terrace bar at the Hotel Imperial, looking down over the Adriatic and the old city. The old city of Dubrovnik is a walled Medieval town (see my picture to the left of this text). It’s been very skilfully restored after the Serbs – again – pounded it with shelling for three years.

There was a working girl there, in her mid-twenties, pretty and mostly well dressed. The way her skirt didn’t come down far enough to cover her stocking tops was part of her badge of office, as was her bag, and the walk. She was extremely good-looking, and by local standards I’m sure her rates were high. 

I’m not a potential customer for sex workers, but not because I disapprove of selling sex. I disapprove of the mistreatment of sex workers, which happens most and worst in countries where prostitution is illegal. But in countries where prostitution is legal, and working girls and boys can organise, buy or rent their own premises, and hire their own security, and don’t have to pay off the police and organised crime, I don’t have any ethical objection. It’s about decent working conditions. 

bad girlsBut I can’t imagine having sex with someone who doesn’t know me, and I have no reason to think she particularly, let alone passionately, wants to have sex with me. The idea of a woman putting up with sex with me is completely cock-crinkling. If she’d just as soon not be there then I’d just as soon not be there either, no matter how pretty she might be. 

Anyway, I’ll tell the rest of this story tomorrow. 

Nailed it for the cameras

I read in Fortean Times (“so it must be true”) that a few years back a group of those Philippine Christian worshippers who have themselves nailed to crosses at Easter time were pleased, at first, to see that they’d been joined by a young Japanese man.

Crucifixion season in the Phillippines. More painful than Civil War re-enactments?

Crucifixion season in the Phillippines. As painful as Civil War re-enactments?

He, like them, was dressed in a loincloth, and he had real nine-inch  nails driven through his hands and feet to keep him up there. So they thought he was a Japanese Christian, and he, like them, was there to share an experience with the late Jesus, and thereby acquire some of his holiness.

They wondered a bit, though, about the make-up and the film crew. And they weren’t pleased at all when they discovered that he was a Japanese bondage film star, and he was shooting a porno.

Every action that they took, he took too. The only difference between them was the narrative inside their heads about the meaning of they were doing.

It’s a parable.  

The language of schoolgirl spanking stories 5

In schoolgirl spanking stories the schoolgirl is the star. Everything centres on her sensations and perceptions. We get told what she feels and thinks, and what drives the story and makes it sexy is what she experiences and what she thinks about it, especially her decisions about when to obey and when to be defiant. 

Mirror with cellphone

Mirror with cell with selfie

For example, I haven’t described Cindy at all – who describes themselves in their own thoughts? – but I’ve mentioned that she feels good about her breasts, and I’ll probably mention that she doesn’t feel too insecure about her stomach. But that’s all you’re going to get, unless she finds herself staring at a mirror.

Anyway, there are a couple of other language oddities I could talk about. Like the occasional swerves into the style of 1930s school stories (“Cave!”, cried Miranda, “it’s the beak!”). I’ve avoided that. I might be a traditionalist about this’n’that, but that’s a step too far.

Anyway, so that’s the language of the schoolgirl spanking stories. Tomorrow I’m going to face up to that awkward issue: schoolgirl spanking stories and, oh yes, sexual politics.

The language of schoolgirl spanking stories 4

Another reason that I stay with a male point of view, most of the time, is that most of the women I write about are real people – with the usual changes to protect identities. Most of the incidents I write about really happened. Some of those women read this blog. Some others may later. It feels disrespectful to act as their ventriloquist.

I can say what they did and what they said, but presuming to write their interior monologue, from inside their heads, feels like using them as my sockpuppets

yesssAlso, the truth is that sometimes in bdsm a submissive woman’s thoughts are something like, “oh Jaime, oh I love you, oh harder oh yes that’s good,” and so on.

I know that, and I think I can say it without being too much of a dickhead, because I’ve talked about it, and because my own interior monologue is pretty similar during good bdsm sex.

Though I’m thinking that sort of thing about the woman, not about me. If you don’t think your partner is at least a bit wonderful, why are you having sex with them?

But I don’t want to write a lot of stream-of-consciousness in which women think to themselves what a great dom and what a god-like fuck I am. It would feel kind of awkward to write, and just a bit embarrassing to read.

So there we are. I nearly always write male point of view. Now, schoolgirl spanking stories, on the other hand …