Wedding night theme

wedding spankThis is a meme that turns up quite often in vintage spanking erotica: the wedding night spanking. It’s usually presented as something that’s playful, and a bit silly/sexy. 

At the same time, there’s an element of “teaching the new bride her place” about it that isn’t actually consensual.  In the context, she’s unlikely to have chosen what happens on her wedding night, so it’s more about patriarchy than bdsm. 

Having been serious for two paragraphs, I’m afraid I have to add that for reasons that have nothing to do with sexual politics, I like the tilt and presentation of her bottom, her eyes, and the way the picture hints at bondage by showing the straps of her shoes a little loose, so that t’s easy for the viewer to see her shoes as tied together. (Hmm, there seems to be strips of something black across her wrists as well.) 

His jacket is kind of cool, too. I have one of those, but don’t usually wear it for domming purposes. Maybe I should. 

Appropriation

archie_spanks_veronica_01There are things I could write about this, about how people take corporate-owned images and characters and turn them to their own meanings and uses. And how excellent that is, even when the art-work is amateurish, or the politics of the new meaning is as dodgy as the corporate stuff.

This one has better art than usual, and that’s all I’m going to say, today. 

I’m going to be busy for a few days. There’ll still be a post a day, I hope, but it wouldn’t be very wordy. 

Doctor Who google-whack

http://arkspaddedroom.tumblr.com  Unfortunate, it's neither erotic nor funny, but at least it takes on legendary characters and gives them a new meaning, and I like that.

http://arkspaddedroom.tumblr.com Unfortunately, it’s neither erotic nor funny, but at least it takes on legendary characters and gives them a new meaning. I like that.

worked too many hours today, and now I’m off to dinner. With colleagues. I’d be mildly surprised if I don’t have the fourth glass of wine, which is that vital one too many. 

So I don’t have much time for writing words. Instead, here’s a “Doctor Who spanking cartoon”. I googled the last four words of that last sentence at random, because I’m not feeling very thoughtful. But I knew the internet wouldn’t let me down.

Rule 34 applies. (If it exists, there’s porn of it.)

 

 

This, by the way, is what you get if you Google “mermaid butt-fuck”.

anal mermaid

Right. It’s dinner time.

 

The shame of being a dom 2

From my earliest childhood, my parents taught me that pretty much the worst thing a male person, a boy or man, can do is hit a girl, or woman.

I remember there being a tremendous fuss when I was about five. There was a kids’  baseball game, and an argument between some girl and me about whose turn it was to bat. I can’t remember who was right: probably neither of us. We were just bored.

Anyway, she had height, age and weight on me, so she grabbed the bat and punched me. I took a couple of seconds to review what my parents had told me about the girl-hitting question, and I decided that there had to be an exception in which a boy can honourably punch a girl who’s bigger than him and punched him first. So, after a five-second pause, I hit her back.

Which is how I learned that there are no exceptions to the rule. I was despised by the other boys and girls alike, for having done a contemptible, unmanly, cowardly and nasty thing. And I got lectured by my parents when I got home. So there was the lesson: you don’t hit a girl, and there are no exceptions.

I think it’s basically a good rule, and I’d teach it to any chidden I may have. Including making the “no exceptions” part clear from the start.

It sounds unfair, but it’s not. There’s some statistical evidence that women may assault men nearly as often as men assault women, but the question isn’t which gender is more virtuous. The issue is which gender can do real damage to the other.

dvA man who fights a woman, and gets angry and loses control can put her into hospital just with his fists. In general a woman can’t do much harm, unless she’s had special training or has a weapon. Hospital statistics confirm this. Men put lots of women into hospital, and women put very few men into hospital.

So my advice to any male child learning these rules would be, if a girl hits you, tell her she shouldn’t because you’re not supposed to hit her back. If she persists, leave her and tell a teacher. Schools are supposed to provide a place without violence. If the school thinks that’s a problem and it shouldn’t or can’t be violence-free, then call me, and we’ll show them what a real problem is like.

When you’re an adult, and a woman gets so angry with you that she gets out-of-control violent, leave. There’s nothing good you can achieve by staying. No words you say, no “restraining her”, will have any good effect. If you stay it’s going to escalate, and you’ll get angry too. If you get angry enough you’ll harm her. You won’t forgive yourself for that, and you’ll be in a mess of legal trouble. So: leave. Talk later, like the next morning.

So: yeah, I think my parents’ rule is generally a good one: never hit a woman, and there are no exceptions. 

Trouble is, it made it very difficult to be a dom.

The shame of being a dom 1

I was at a party with a lot of people who could be called queer. There were gays, and lesbians, some transgender people, there were people from the local sex workers’ union (because it was a party; they weren’t working), people wearing nothing but ropes and duct tape, there were perverts like me, there were lots of academic sex researchers, and so on.

I was talking to a woman who worked for the sex workers’ union, and she asked me what my kink was. I figured that because she’d asked me a question like that, and because of the sort of party it was, and because of how hard it is to negotiate the politics of sex work, she’d be aware of all the debates about the sexual politics of bdsm.

In particular, that when women choose to be submissive, they are no less assertive, and no less feminist than dommes, or than women who don’t have any involvement with bdsm. Similarly, male doms can be no less feminist, or feminist-supporting, than submissive men or men who don’t engage with bdsm at all.

I said “no less feminist”: I mean, that’s if they choose to identify with feminism. Most but not all submissives I’ve known do identify themselves as feminists, but I’ve also known submissives who despise feminism, and submissives who see it as politics and Just Don’t Have Any Fucks to Give. But being a feminist and being a submissive are both choices that people can make, and plenty of women and men choose both. 

Old Bum-chin says, "Never hit a submissive. Unless she doesn't do as she's told."

Old Bum-chin says, “Never hit a submissive. Unless she doesn’t do as she’s told.”

So anyway, I was talking to a woman engaged in the politics of sex work, and she asked me my kink. Well, one of the things that bigots say about bdsm is that “it’s just men hitting women”. But I was certain that this woman would know that bdsm practices are much more varied than, er, impact play, and that it’s not about men doing things to women; it can be women doing things to men, or men doing things to other men, or women dominating women, or any multi-partner combination you can think of. 

So I said, in my best Cary Grant voice, “Well, personally, I get off on telling women what to do, and hitting them if they disobey.”

Of course, that’s true, in a way, though it doesn’t represent all the things I like, or the warm and loving context I prefer to have the dark deeds embedded in. But it was a parody answer, with a bit of transgression thrown in, and I thought it was mildly funny.

Anyway, she said, “Eew-ya”, as if I’d said something about putting fluffy kittens into microwaves, and she found someone else to talk to. Now, it could be because she thought my joke wasn’t funny, or it could be because she hates male doms. I think it was a bit of both, but especially the bit about hating male doms. 

Chloe’s game: the 21st and final instalment

"Women's Prison II: Night of the Warden": a searing indictment of today's prison conditions and recidivism rates.

“Women’s Prison II: Night of the Warden”: a searing indictment of today’s prison conditions and recidivism rates.

That became our new life. On some weekends we played Naughty schoolgirl and strict teacher. There were other games, of which Women’s Prison II: Night of the Warden was best. (There was no Women’s Prison I.) 

The thing with role-playing was to keep the format stupid, so there could be nothing of interest in the game itself. We didn’t want to develop a storyline or care about characters. The games freed us to explore darker bdsm territory while maintaining normal life the rest of the time.

Serious play was for the weekends. On weeknights Chloe got spanked or I’d take my belt to her as  for the sensuality of it, before and during sex.

Chloe encouraged me to experiment. I became better at keeping our sexual plays moving, and at seeming to control what happened while making sure that Chloe’s pleasures and preferences were well indulged.

I learned to give commands with apparent conviction, and – within these games – without embarrassment or political guilt. I learned to pause impressively, rather than dithering, when I couldn’t think of what to say or do next. It was acting from the William Shatner school but – like Shatner’s acting – it worked well enough.

Libertines at the altar. (Illustration from "Therese Philosophe", 1748.)

Libertines at the altar. (Illustration from “Therese Philosophe”, 1748.)

I sometimes tried earnest conversation with Chloe about how our play could be defended politically, but she thought that my worries about it were my problem. She was merciless when she encountered sexist men, but she had no interest in ideology or activism. Chloe loathed authoritarianism, irrationalism, hypocrisy, stupidity and wilful ignorance, which meant she was not ideally placed to take much interest in political campaigns, except where they touched on science and got in its way.

I suspect that she mildly enjoyed the idea that her choice of pleasure might annoy the more puritanical kind of feminist, in something of the spirit in which eighteenth century libertines might sneak into a local church and have sex on the altar. In any case she played and helped plan our games with the kind of glee that suggested she was subverting something.

It’s not a game I’ve played for years. I don’t do any role playing any more. But it was worth doing at the time. There’s a hell of lot to be learned from it. 

Report: Me, with guest appearance by my compost bin

I’m cutting down a tree today, because it’s right up against the house and it’ll set the place alight if a forest fire comes this way. It makes Fortress Mortimer indefensible, and it has to go. Two hundred houses got burned down in this area last year, so I’m feeling a little cautious about that kind of thing. 

So I’m up the tree, past the lower branches you can reach with an extension ladder, with a saw, being a lumberjack. (“Is it an electric saw?” “No, it’s an acoustic.”) Thing is, the building regulations were changed since this house was built, and now I couldn’t afford to re-build it.

Since I’m doing all this butch stuff, maybe I should do a domly nude calendar. Me in boots and nothing else, cutting down trees, building things, and waving my goolies at the camera. Or maybe I shouldn’t. What I am doing, is some emotional healing and some practical projects. 

Two weekends ago I built a compost bin, for holding grass clippings and garden waste, so they rot in peace. It looks like this.

I told the neighbours, while I was building it, that it was a pen for Esmerelda, the pig. I think they may have believed me, and that's a worry. Do I look like a man who keeps pigs?

I told the neighbours, while I was building it, that it was a pen for Esmerelda, the pig. I think they may have believed me, and that’s a worry. Do I look like a man who keeps pigs?

Report: Me, with a guest appearance by my cesspit

Gumboot time: the cesspit under the Japanese maple

Gumboot time: the cesspit under the Japanese maple

I said things were going to get emo here, if I didn’t win the woman who was waiting for me while  I was overseas. There’s been a death in her family, a significant one, and though I tried, she didn’t turn to me. So I haven’t won, or won her.

In the end I took the formal step of breaking it off, but that was only because it was already broken. Communication had dropped to occasional quick texts and emails, and some hurried phone calls. She decided to treat grief with work. It was an amicable end but it’s sad because I cared about her and thought we had a chance. But there it is. 

I’m not feeling as sad as I should about her, though. I found that I was mainly grieving again over something that happened back in March. I hadn’t really recovered from losing the woman who was my girl, my slave and my love.

With time and perspective I see that even if she wanted to come back, which is massively unlikely, I’d find it hard to trust her again emotionally. Not as fully and committedly as I had. That is, it’s taken me this long to realise that some of what happened was callous. But people do what they have to do, and the prospect of a new love is ruthless; I know that. Well, I guess it’s a good thing that now I’m only grieving, without yearning for her to come back.

So for a while I’m going to be doing physical jerks – I’m putting up a bar in a pine tree for me to do chin-ups – and working on finishing the probation officer book. And – in case I’ve conveyed the idea that owning wild land is glamorous – I’ve got to pump out the cesspit. It holds about five years of shit and its five years are up.

Yee, as it were, hah.

Schoolgirl spanking stories and sexual politics 12

I had a French maid once. I mean, there was a maid who cleaned the apartment I was staying in, in Paris. The really surprising thing was that she wasn’t required to wear a little black dress with a dinky white apron, and totter about in ankle-breaking heels with a feather duster, saying, “Oo la la.”

Actually she was a reasonably attractive woman who wore flat sensible shoes, with a blue industrial smock and hairnet. She carried a bucket of cleaning stuff and a vacuum cleaner.

First point is: real women aren’t and shouldn’t be obliged by their employers to live up to a sexual stereotype.

Second point is: Fifi the French maid is a fun stereotype – or archetype, if you’re feeling grand – and long may she continue to make woebegone faces when Sir Stephen announces, over and over, forever, “Fifi, je te donnerais une grande fessée.” The stereotype will survive, and people will have fun and orgasms with it, even if real French maids don’t dress that way any more.

Fifi may once have had sisters in the real world, but now she doesn’t. But changes in the real world don’t affect the survival of sexual fantasy figures.

Similarly, it’s long past time to abolish school uniforms. A girl shouldn’t have to wear a flappy pleated skirt and the rest of the outfit as the price of getting an education. The standard school uniforms for both sexes were designed, I suspect, to emphasise powerlessness and the lack of adult status, and therefore to make school students more tractable in classroom settings.

When schools decided to put girls into a short, flappy costume designed to emphasise powerlessness, it’s not really surprising that that costume attracted a certain amount of sexual attention. But there’s no reason why actual girls who go to school should be made to wear the thing.  

There’s evidence that you get better young adult behaviour out of school students if you let them dress like young adults. 

molesIt’s not only girls: boys shouldn’t have to wear grey serge shorts, either, but the boy uniforms are just ugly, rather than being a sexual fetish costume. Yeah, I know that there are people who have a bit of a thing for dressing their lovers, of either sex, in male school uniforms, and I salute their gender-fucking imagination. But it’s less common, so it hasn’t become a sexual stereotype.   

But the girl school uniform is a sexual fetish costume, and parents and school governors know it. So they need to stop forcing girls to wear it if they don’t want to. 

Schoolgirl spanking stories and sexual politics 11

The first rule of sexual politics is that sexual stuff shouldn’t involve non-consenting parties. And especially it shouldn’t involve powerless parties who haven’t consented.

Yeah, that's cool. There's no denying that's cool. But not in front of the actual girls who go to school, ok?

Yeah, that’s cool. There’s no denying that’s cool. But not in front of the actual girls who go to school, ok?

So the public sexualisation of schoolgirls is crap. Being an adolescent is hard enough without being marked publicly, by adults, as “naughty”, “sexy” and “hot”, and so on. Actual schoolgirls should be able to get through their day, and be miserable in their own way, without being dragged into sexual stuff that adults do with each other.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the strict teacher/naughty schoolgirl scenario.

That’s why I spent 21 posts telling the story of one roleplay game, early in my bdsm career, that taught me more about bdsm than I’d learned before. More than I’d learned in one evening before, anyway. It’s hot, and it does allow exploration of darker bdsm themes in the middle of what seems to be a silly, light-hearted game. 

But the wider cultural fetishisation of schoolgirls is a bit unkind to actual girls who go to school. I don’t think “there oughta be a law” outlawing public display of hot adult women wearing school uniform. Laws like that always have more stupid effects than positive ones. 

It’s just that as ethical people, perverts and sluts, we should certainly keep it well away from real, actual girls who are going through (1) adolescence, which is hard, and (2) school, which by and large sucks.

"Please, Captain, not in front of the Klingons."

“Please, Captain, not in front of the Klingons.”