We have something very, incredibly special for you, totally free of charge and just for sexy, kinky fun.

You see, my Kitten has been a very bad little pussycat, and she needs to be punished. But I’m not going to do it. You are.

I will be doing a live-tweeted, crowd-sourced BDSM scene, in which I will be letting twitter decide what punishments and discipline I will impart to my sexy little Kitten. I will essentially be handing over my dominance to you – I will merely be a tool at your disposal. There are no set rules, any and all suggestions are welcome and every tweet will be considered. We will perhaps not get time to cover everything asked of us, and as such will be focussing on the more creative suggestions.

The event will begin  today, Sunday 13^th May 2012, at 2pm.

Please tell your kinky friends to find us on twitter and spread the word about this event. There will be pictures and commentary, and Kitten has a very spankable, very punishable backside. Look at what happened the last time she stepped out of line…

Bad little Kitten..

I’m particularly interesting in getting some guys and girls who identify themselves as submissive to punish Kitten, so please make any subs you know aware of this event. It’s going to be a LOT of fun.

It’s a conundrum that many Doms will have experienced, and sometimes this issue is powerful enough to put them of D/s permanently. I’m sure that many potentially great Doms have been lost to the conflict within them, and have wandered back to a life less fulfilling – in part because there isn’t much discussion of a Dominant’s issues in BDSM literature.

This poor Dom is very conflicted.

What Is The Conflict?

So what does the conflict look like? Well, as you might expect, it’s complicated. It’s a grand, spinning, twisting labyrinth of contradictions and paradoxes, but it can be superficially characterised in the following series of questions:

How can I punish so brutally someone I’m supposed to protect? Why do I want to hurt the one I love? If the one I love desires to be punished brutally, and I’m delivering it according to their will, am I really dominating them, or am I their passenger?

And to drill down a little deeper, there’s a temptation in Doms to deliver spankings and punishment sporadically, in an effort to catch their submissive in a moment when they don’t want to receive it, simply so the Dom can prove they are dominant. It is after all very hard to take something by force from someone ready to give it so willingly.

What Causes The Conflict?

Partly to blame for this headspinning problem is what I’ve flippantly come to refer to as “vanilla conditioning.” You see, for the first 18 years or so of our lives we have little or no exposure to kink; it doesn’t even register in our sexual development until we identify the desires within ourselves and encounter likeminded folk. For all that time, we’re subtly encouraged not explore those desires, and as a result it takes a lot of practice to condition that thought process out.

And it’s not easy. It’s very difficult to admit to yourself that you take pleasure in causing pain. In mainstream circles, it sounds outright psychotic. This is one of the hardest obstacles to hurdle, and I’ll explain in a moment how it can be resolved.

It’s not all ‘the vanillas’ fault though. Part of the conflict is biological: as a sadistic Dom, our body is simultaneously rewarding and punishing us for spanking our partners. On the one hand, we have a desire – often sexual in nature – to inflict pain. Our body rewards us with dopamine and endorphins and adrenaline, like sex or eating. Our body is telling us we’re doing something right. On the other hand, our body makes us experience guilt and sorrow and a little shame. It’s telling us we’re doing something wrong even while it’s rewarding us for the very same thing.

How Can I Resolve The Conflict?

This Dom is less conflicted.

As far as the social aspects of this conflict are concerned, there are three main steps towards resolution. The first is to accept we have a desire to spank, discipline, punish and inflict pain. The next is to seek out likeminded souls, people who can make you feel like you’re not alone and can prove to you that others have experienced this problem and resolved it (or at least accepted the contradiction) successfully. (Writer’s note: I have never personally resolved this conflict and suspect I never well. Rather, I fall into the second category – I have accepted the conflict and embraced it, and learned to enjoy it. More on this in a moment.) The third step is the most important, so important that it can leapfrog the first two steps in the right circumstance. It’s to finds a willing, supportive partner. I remember vividly the first time I kissed my Kitten, pulled away, held her hand in both my hands and looked her in the eye, and told her I wanted to hurt her. It was powerfully cathartic; like a valve had been opened and an indistinct pressure released.

The biological impediment is harder to overcome. Some dominant friends of mine have incorporated tantric and meditative elements into their scenes, and it seems to work very effectively for them. It’s certainly worth investigating if you’re really struggling with the polarising nature of BDSM and dominance.

The biological conflict can be chipped away through practice and experimentation. I didn’t personally have a eureka moment in which I suddenly realised that my body was no longer punishing me at the same time as rewarding me, but I believe many do have such epiphanies. As you gain more and more experience, you can unconsciously condition your body to stop influencing you with negative feelings like guilt and shame, and this process can be quickened with affectionate aftercare – which we’ll discuss in very thorough detail soon.

The best advice I can offer any burgeoning Doms reading this is based on my own personal experience, which I touched on a moment ago. It’s this: don’t try too hard to resolve the conflicts. Embrace it. Love the contradiction. It’s part of you. It’s what gives you colour.

I’m well aware I’m not the first to talk about this topic, and many people have talked far more articulately about the naming and categorisation in BDSM than me. In fact, I don’t really consider myself an authority on the different roles involved in spanking and kink, so normally, I would leave this topic well alone because I’m covering old and uncertain ground. But I’m talking about it today because I recently received a series of DMs on Twitter that reminded me how hard and confusing it can be when you’re starting out, and how confusing it can be to find your way through a maze of expected roles and arcane hierarchical jargon.

To paraphrase the stream of messages, a young lady told me that she was married, and had identified a submissive streak within herself, and her partner had no interest in pursuing these desires. Like many of us who’ve been in similar situations, she turned to the internet to give vent to her desires.

She eventually met a man identifying himself as a Dom, and they formed a relationship – also common online. However, she ran into a wall – he wasn’t giving her the emotional support she was craving alongside her craving to explore her submission. When she confronted him on it, he accused her of being a switch rather than a true submissive – whatever the hell a “true submissive” is. She was left even more confused than when she started, since she had run into that fundamental contradiction that all submissives encounter at one stage or another, which is something like this:

How can I be submissive if submission is what I want? If I’m submitting to a Dom, I’m getting what I want, and if I’m getting what I want by my own free will, am I really submissive?

(Incidentally, Doms often face the same problem reversed early on in their exploration of dominance, and can be paraphrased thusly: “my sub wants to submit, and by allowing her to do so – even if it’s by force – I am simply giving them what they want. So am I really dominant?”)

The problem is not the interpretation of dominance or submission. The problem is with the titles themselves and the interpretation of them. With a little experience we begin to learn that the labels we apply to ourselves are not important; it’s the relationship between the participants that’s important. For example, I personally know a professional dominatrix who will occasionally engage in far more “equal” sexual activities, and as such tries to not to label herself at all. On the other hand, I know someone who identifies herself as a “collared sub”, but in all matters apart from sex she is confident, assertive and often more fiery than her dominant partner.

People are swapping sides in BDSM all the time; there are subtle shades of grey between the white of submission and the black of dominance. There are now too many categories and sub-categories to list comprehensively – and believe me, I tried. I just deleted an entire table of all the labels I could think of for BDSM roles; it was too long to go here so I’ll save it for a later post.

But heartbreakingly, the woman who contacted me on twitter closed with the following phrase:

I’m only, in my eyes, an alpha sub. I’m more or less confused as to what it is I’m missing to feel complete in my place.

The words “alpha sub” clunk heavily in my mind; frankly it strikes me as a term designed to describe something that doesn’t need describing, something that defies description, but because it’s a neat little phrase, it’s taken up by those less experienced in BDSM and given gravitas it doesn’t deserve.

Domination and submission are such intensely personal – and therefore inherently subjective – topics that they can’t be categorised or indexed. Yes, we all like to identify with a group, to feel part of a collective, but the word “kinky” adequately covers all of those subdivisions

If you try to assign yourself to a category and try to fit yourself around it, you’re doomed to fail because it can never be as personal as you need it to be. Instead, try not to be defined by a category at all. BDSM labels are like the implements of BDSM themselves: like a metal-tipped flogger, labels should only be wielded by those with the experiences to use them, and can be damaging of they are used casually. My point is this: relax, and don’t be confused by trying to live up to what you imagine the labels entail. The moment you feel confused, you know the label isn’t for you and you’ll quickly learn to disregard the labels until you define yourself and your desires.

I’ve written extensively elsewhere about how I don’t want my perceived “dominance” to define me – I mean, think about it, isn’t it ridiculous to identify yourself by the sexual role you take?

Do you think your lifestyle is healthy?

I assume the author wasn’t talking about whether or not I get my five a day (unless they were reffering to paddle strokes), so to expand; is spanking healthy? Is dominance and submission healthy? Is my life personally – filled as it is with discipline, punishment, masochism, sadism and the exploration of my kinks – a healthy one?

I chose to answer this question because it’s long been on my mind, and it’s about time I tackled it and you tackled it with me.

This is a question we skirt around, gloss over or never consider, but it’s a highly valid question and we all need to stop occasionally and address it, because there’s a chance this kinky lifestyle we lead is not necessarily a healthy one. It’s certainly not “normal”, and while I recognise that something being normal doesn’t necessarily make that thing right, it certainly doesn’t necessarily make it wrong either.

So let’s consider the evidence. For the sake of brevity, I’ve chosen three pros and three cons to compare whether or not a kinky life is a healthy one. Let’s start with the cons.

Kinky Cons

1. Kinky people like us are in the minority.

Most people do not indulge in spanking, or discipline, or the infliction of physical pain for sexual pleasure. Most people don’t explore their darkest desires like we do, so is there a reason for that? Do they know something we don’t? Is there a chance we could all be wrong about this lifestyle?

2. From the outside, BDSM looks misogynistic or unequal

I’m increasingly hearing the misogyny argument from non-kinky people. And I understand it. I can absolutely understand that to someone outside a D/s relationship looking in, it might look sexist in one way or another. For example, a woman wearing a collar and a lead, totally submissive to her master probably looks like an utterly demeaning situation to an outsider. Therefore, are we so in love with our lifestyles that we’re blinkered from the truth – that it isn’t healthy, and that power exchange is inherently unbalanced?

3. Bondage is dangerous

Issues of consent and safety are common ground for critics of the BDSM lifestyle. Bondage is inherently dangerous, as is rough sex and many other activities in which we indulge behind closed doors. Even the lightest restraint carries risk. Is it healthy to seek out this thrilling kind of danger?

Paraphilia Pros

1. We should not bottle our desires

These desires and fantasies we explore shot not be buried. Surely it would be less healthy to recognise these kinky desires but suppress them rather than give them expression?

2. It’s consensual

Largely speaking (but with a few grey areas) our BDSM activities are consensual, between responsible adults who are sound of mind and fully rational. And what’s more, our lifestyles have no impact on anyone unless they choose to have their lives impacted – and that includes both proponents and critics of BDSM. So if it’s sane and consensual, why can’t it be healthy?

3. It’s cathartic and pleasurable

Spanking, for example, is a very neat way for two (or more) people to vent their troubles and concerns. What’s more, while it might be hard for a non-kinkster to understand,  a lot of what we do feels very, very good – better than any kind of ‘vanilla’ sexual activity. So if it makes us feel pleasant and balanced, it can only be healthy.

My Conclusion

So what do I personally think? Is the BDSM lifestyle healthy? And by extension, do we make good role models? The honest answer for me is this: I don’t know, I haven’t reconciled that issue yet, so I’ll answer with another question, if you’ll indulge me. This will sound reckless and irresponsible, but at least it’s honest. The question I respond with when asked if I think my lifestyle is healthy is this: does it matter?

You see, to me it’s very clear. Every day we eat meat, eat chocolate, drink wine, some of us smoke, some of us do little exercise. We know that these things are bad for us, and we choose to do them anyway. And that’s what it comes down to: choice.

We aren’t hurting anyone who doesn’t want to be hurt. We aren’t affecting anyone who doesn’t want to be affected. We are respectful, responsible and intelligent. For the most part, we’re liberal, progressive and understanding. If this life we’ve chosen is in fact unhealthy, then so be it. Yes, we’ve chosen a kinky life. But at least we’ve chosen to have a life at all.

Leather Tawses

This tawse is not very flexible, but with a little flick of the wrist it can be incredibly, satisfyingly mean. It’s simple, effective and affordable. A must-have for seasoned spankers.

Girls get very wet at Easter in the Czech Republic...

Oh what’s that? You’re not familiar with the tradition of spanking at Easter? Well, if you’re a woman and you grew up in the Czech Republic, you are definitely familiar with it, because there, there is a very real tradition of spanking women – and it continues through Moravia, Poland and Slovakia in which women have cold water thrown on them, sometimes in place of and sometimes as well as a spanking… or a whipping.

In the morning of Easter Sunday, women are held by one or more men and whipped by another using a pomlázka or a korbáč , pictured.

A pomlázka.

The justification for the Easter spanking is that a legend suggests a spanking or a whipping will help keep the recipient healthy and beautiful for the entire coming year. We, of course, would tend to agree, because we’re happy with any excuse for a spanking. But as ever, we have a habit of overthinking things.

What are chicks about at Easter? What about rabbits? What do chocolate eggs have to do with anything? And there’s never any justification for a bonnet, is there!?

Well think about this. Easter is now a Christian holiday, based on a pagan fertility ritual. So it’s about sex and Jesus. And what’s Jesus famous for? Flagellation.

Therefore, we’re dedicated to bringing whipping and spanking back to Easter, and we hope you celebrate by putting down your giant Galaxy chocolate Easter egg and reaching for your favourite whip instead.

The results of a pomlázka.

Happy Easter, happy spanking!

You see, when it comes to less mainstream sexual matters, each nation has a different collective sexual identity. Here’s a quick rundown.

All of these stereotypes are exactly that: overgeneralisations based on kernels of truth. “Doing Greek” refers to anal sex, perhaps inspired by the Ancient Greeks propensity for male same-sex relations. De Sade was French, hence France’s affiliation with sadism, Austria’s famous novelist Leopold Sacher-Masoch explains their link with Masochism, Japanese Geisha’s were famously submissive, Nazism has dominant connotations and Holland is famed for its liberalisation of sexuality. But what about Le Vice Anglais? What about spanking?

Is spanking a peculiarly English ‘vice’, and is our reputation as disciplinarian by nature deserved?

While it’s true that not every English man or woman is attracted to spanking, I believe that it is a predominantly English institution. Spanking is an export, like fine tailoring, which was developed here and shipped abroad where it was adapted and improved and is ever evolving.

Consider this. For many centuries, England was a reserved, conservative place. Sex was not openly discussed, and it was the reserve of married couples – and any sexual activity outside marriage was illicit by definition. A throwback from Catholicism caused sex to be purely functional; due to the prohibition of contraception, pregnancy could result from any penetrative sex and since children tend to be expensive, in times of famine sex was purely necessary and sex for pleasure could not be indulged to the extent it would be after the Protestant reformation. Add to this that thanks to the English school system, men and women would not really be introduced until after their most formative years of sexual development, and the result was a psychosexual timebomb.

What we had, then, was a nation unlike any other, in which social factors pressured sexuality to find other, more imaginative outlets. So how did that sexual bottleneck release and manifest itself?

Discipline.

You see, if there’s one thing that has made these Albion shores famous over the centuries, it’s rigid, strict discipline. It was in our schools like it was in no other country. It was in our army. It was in our monasteries. It was in our churches. And it was definitely in our most famous and pervasive force: our Navy.

Le vice Anglais refers specifically to the spanking of the backside, and more broadly to flagellation in general – although I don’t consider whipping and birching to be so specific to England, since those disciplinary methods were common long before the Angles even gave this island its name.

So is spanking truly an English vice? Yes, I think it is.

-Pechorin

You can find Poppy on twitter by clicking this sentence.

You can read me of her work on her blog by clicking this sentence. Trust me, take a look.

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My name as I tell it to you is Poppy St Vincent. I am a thirty something British girl who finds time in her hectic life to write a great deal about spanking and submission. My blog is Poppystvincent.com. I play there a lot.

I am in a relationship with a man, a very assertive man. I have been a bit difficult for most men in my life, I don’t mean to be. I like to be sweet and gentle but often I am not.

I was asked how did I get here, how did I find that I am this sort of girl, and I shall tell you.

The short and obvious answer to this question is that it all began tomorrow. My submission and the spanking of me will be here any moment: I can hear its steps up my garden path, it comes for me and I hope it has brought flowers. Tomorrow I will submit, maybe, if the flowers are pretty enough.

But if you want a more proper response than I will have to start somewhere else…

At first it was the pre-sexual, pre-awareness awakenings.

It was a chapter in a silly novel that all my school friends were reading, none of them seemed to notice the spanking, none of them told me how they had read it several times before throwing the book across the room. None of them described how they watched the book lie there, innocently letting its pages close after the force of the throw, or how they waited and watched before picking it up and replaying the routine.

(I have not yet recovered from this attitude to spanking.)

My first fantasies were just the same. I did not know they were sexual fantasies (I still think that too simplistic a term), I did not know that I was alone in them. My friends dreamed of being kissed; I never was in mine. In mine I was discovered, told off dreadfully and then taken over his knee and spanked until … until… I remember how it felt even now.

My eyes wide open in my room at night, my hands clutching onto the covers, my breath shallow and hurried and none of it made sense to me. I just knew I had to imagine it all over again. It never occurred to me that it meant anything even though it made me cry with the wanting of it.

Spanking, submission, submission, spanking – these words have played with me all my life.

There were the obvious clues. I looked up spanking in the dictionary. I ran upstairs whenever there was a spanking on television. I remember particularly The Flame Trees of Thika when a girl of my age was spanked on the bottom with a hairbrush. I was not turned on, I was more held hostage by the idea of it. It made me want to run. I did run. I don’t think I stopped for many years.

Authority was a dangerous game to play with me. I would not lose. If I thought you would win then I would not let you catch me but I would do everything possible to be disapproved of. I spent my teen years letting myself out of the house at night time and getting on my bike or just running in the dark. At one o’ clock two o’ cock and three o’ clock I would be out and free, because I would not yield to authority.

If you were weak and you met me I would not even bother to disobey you- not worth the effort.

I was never caught. I would never submit. This painful fight lasted for years I think maybe it is stopping only now.

Let me tell you a secret – come close.

I do not want to be spanked.

I do not want to submit.

I will most certainly never be spanked and submission is quite out of the question. I can’t, I won’t and I don’t want to. It will not happen to me.

I have my own house now. I am all grown up but typing this I can feel myself sulk.

I have ripped my life in two on this journey. I have left security, safety and love because gentle, all yielding, free, independent love is not what I need – that is no love at all. I took myself out of a marriage, and out of the understanding of my family because I need something else.

I don’t know quite what I need because of the one and only thing I have learned as I start my life anew.

My whole being is centred around submission, around loving punishment, around a little lack of freedom and all that goes with it. And my whole life has been spent looking for it and fighting it when it came anywhere near me.  Now I must stop.

I am so used to forcing this issue. I am used to saying to a man, “To be in charge you must do this…” or, “I need to be spanked soon.” When he obeys I could tear him apart with my teeth. If you obey me I will destroy you. I am sorry, but I will. My horror at my own authority is such that I will do anything to avoid it.

I have found a man, or been found by him who will not let me design this journey. I don’t want him to spank me but he will. I don’t want to submit to him but I will. I am a difficult woman. But I think he can make me soft as blossom. I think he can.

I hope he can, if he makes me submit. But he won’t. I think I can still win.

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More Poppy:

Poppy on twitter

Poppy’s blog

When over your knee
The sweetest moment is just
Before your hand connects

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Follow her on twitter: @silverdrop
Check out her blog: http://silverdropstoybox.blogspot.com

Spanking.

The first lot of questions that spanking brings up for me is… what kind of spanking? When I think of spanking, I think of hand spanking. However, as I discovered today, other people think of spanking as including implements such as paddles. Depends on you and what you like I guess!

Spanking for me definitely comes under the “punishment” category. Not because it hurts any more than the things I like being hit with, but I guess it is the connotations that go with spanking. I was never spanked when I was younger, possibly because I was a little angel (AHEM), but you still know about it. So for me, if someone spanks me it’s generally because I have bratted, or been bad in some form or another! (Not that I am ever bad ~innocence~)

People always talk about the close connection that you get with spanking someone. Sure, their hand is hitting your backside… yes that is indeed a “connection”. But why should that give you any more of a mental “connection” than someone holding a cane, or a whip? There is the physical distance that someone holding an implement has to keep, however I often find this HEIGHTENS the connection as you have to keep them in your mind and draw on that image for comfort rather than being over their knee and you can clutch onto them.

So, why spanking?

From a purely practical point of view, what is quicker to punish someone with, your hand or to dig round in your toybag for a cane/whip/paddle? By the time you have got your implements, the immediacy of that time has somewhat left… instead it becomes a structured scene. Not that these scenes are not brilliant, but sometimes – those unplanned, giggly, hasty ones are the ones that stick firmly in your mind.

Also, what is cheaper? All those toys from a lovely toy shop, or a hand? So, if you are just beginning your kinky journey, unsure of where it will lead you… spanking is a fun way to start without the scariness of having to go into a shop, or the confusion of “what the hell is THAT”. You know what your hand does, and what it is capable of.

So, to conclude my ramblings on spanking, it is a way of drawing on peoples connotations of punishments, and I, whilst preferring more whippy things, do find that spankings often make me giggly and happy despite the fact they are often there as a punishment. Happy spanking!

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