The Spanking Writers

Categories

• Historical punishments (117)
• In the neighbourhood (302)
• Other stuff (105)
• Perverting reality (1040)
• Real-life spanking (355)
• Spanking accessories (132)
• Spanking stories (29)
• Spanking Writers: News (94)
• SpankingCast: podcast (18)
• Startles (454)

Books

New here?

A free download:

Speaking my language

I’ve reminisced before about flicking through language dictionaries in my teenage years, looking for translations of spanking-related words, and about the joys of Google Translate as a modern-day equivalent.

Now, the other evening I was sitting alongside Emma Jane as she read something (vanilla) in Spanish. Occasionally, she’d use aforementioned Google service to check phrases – and, lo and behold, the darling system has developed the ability to speak!

So, now, not only can you translate – to pick an example – “Please spank me hard, sir”, but it will read out the foreign translation for you. Most usefully, the readings mostly seem to be in a female voice. “I’ve been a very naughty girl, sir. Please don’t spank me? I’ll do anything…” spoken in French? Almost too much to bear.

Please don’t try this in the office – but do let me know of any nice phrases you happen to experiment with!

• 0 Comments

And the reason for your booking…?

An email confirmation of a restaurant booking popped into my inbox, containing all of the details one would expect - venue details, my name, date and time, number of guests, booking reference. And then it added:

Event type : No occasion/general night out

Now, I hadn’t been asked when making the reservation why we were coming along that night. As it happens, it was an entirely vanilla catch-up with a kinky friend. But I can’t help thinking of the shock one could cause by making reservations with some (not unknown) reasons for booking tables. For example:

Event type : Comfort for a girl after a judicial birching.

or maybe a lunchtime booking:

Event type: Distracting a girl prior to a severe caning.

Sadly there’s no ‘special request’ box either: “extra cushions”, for example, for a recently-flogged young lady. Maybe I should fire in a few such booking requests as Abel, rather than using my real name, simply to see if the restaurant notices or reacts in any way? (It would have to be worth a free, sympathetic glass of fizz on the house for one’s dining companion, surely?)

• 0 Comments

The airside hotel

I know a fair few readers here travel pretty regularly for work. Any of you been through Terminal 3 at Heathrow recently?

I have, and was amazed to find that there a small enclave of hotel rooms has appeared recently airside, amidst the executive lounges.

I’m sure they’re meant for travelling business folks with connections at the airport on long-haul trips. Quick nap, shower, back onto the next pampered business-class leg. But I can’t help wondering about alternative uses for the rooms.

Girls who’ve misbehaved on flights, being punished by their fathers? Kinky young ladies being told by their boyfriends that they’re to be tied to a bed and abused on landing in London – as a holiday treat? Honeymooning husbands unable to wait for their final destination, and deflowering their new young brides en route?

Seriously: I wonder if the rooms have lost their kinky virginity yet? Or their sexual equivalent…

• 4 Comments

Farewell to IC

Such a shame to read this morning that Informed Consent, the networking site for UK kinky folks, is to close in February after nearly fifteen years. I’ve had a profile there since 2000, not long after I first played in real-life, and at times it’s been a good way to keep in touch with friends. Huge thanks to those who’ve run the site for maintaining it for so long, and for letting so many people connect there. Whilst the online world has moved on, it feels as though an important part of the country’s kinky infrastructure is disappearing, and that’s sad. And the very name of the site says so much.

I guess it’s FetLife or nothing, now, then. Not a site I like in terms of its design or usability, but one I have good reason to be rather fond of. My profile there is exactly the same as my one on IC, and actually I’m not altogether sure why it’s there: I don’t use the site to contact new people; I rarely read what friends have posted (and some of their profiles are woefully out of date!); I only browse its groups occasionally. But I suppose it’s a mandatory requirement for kinky people to be there, and it is always nice to be linked to like-minded folks.

• 1 Comment

Spanking in the New York Times

A few months back, Sophie Morgan wrote a brilliant newspaper article that explained kink to a vanilla audience in a way that was brave and inspiring. Last week, whilst I was in New York with Emma Jane, the US had its equivalent moment when the New York Times published Jillian Keenan’s quite excellent “Modern Love: Finding the Courage to Reveal a Fetish.”

You may well already have seen the article: it’s been fairly widely mentioned in kinky circles online in recent days. But it’s an important enough article for me to want to share a few snippets that particularly stood out. First, about her (vanilla) boyfriend:

My dilemma was clear: how could I describe my desires to David when I could hardly confess them to myself? Spanking fetishists don’t have a tradition of coming out. The comparisons to child abuse and spousal battery are inevitable, upsetting and often impossible to dispel, so it’s easiest to keep our interest private…

Even popular books and movies link erotic spanking to severe psychological trauma. In “Fifty Shades of Grey,” Christian Grey’s passion for erotic pain is a result of extreme childhood abuse. The 2002 film “Secretary” suggests that the main character’s spanking obsession is merely a preferable alternative to self-mutilation.

So what is a nice girl (who also happens to love being spanked) supposed to think? More pressingly, what is she supposed to say to her brand-new boyfriend?

A later paragraph is one that so many of us will recognise:

My kink developed early. As a child, I pored over any book that mentioned spanking, paddling or thrashing. Tom Sawyer went through many reads, as did – believe it or not – key dictionary entries. (Looking up titillating definitions is so common among developing spankophiles that it’s almost a rite of passage.)..

And then the process of coming to terms with being into things that others may find strange:

But how could I ever express it all – my history, insecurities, secrets and hopes? I’m a writer, so I wrote it down. And as I translated my feelings and memories into these words, I took control of a desire that has controlled me for most of my life. I felt comfortable, confident – even celebratory. For about three days. Then ancient insecurities, as they always do, crept back…

“Coming out of the closet” isn’t the right expression. We’re not in closets that can be left in a single step as the door clicks shut behind. “Coming out of the house” might be better. Or “coming out of the labyrinth.” In our different ways, we all just want honesty and intimacy, right? We’re looking for the people who will love us, even when it’s difficult. Or uncomfortable. Or painful.

As with Sophie, Jillian deserves huge credit for writing so openly and bravely, in a way that can only encourage greater understanding and tolerance of kink amongst the wider community. Marvellous stuff!

• 0 Comments

They said *what*?!

A few comments in my vanilla life have amused me lately; I thought I’d share them!

A friend ordering a banana sundae for lunch, the fruit hidden in the glass cup under mounds of cream, ice cream and brownies. The waitress, as she left it on the table, commenting: “I like the bottom best”. My instinctive reaction, again kept to myself: “Me too…”

Checking out of a hotel. The incredibly pretty receptionist asking: “What’s your room number?” My instinctive reaction, fortunately kept to myself: “If only you’d asked me that last night”…

And then two colleagues – a couple personally as well as professionally – at a work conference. A speaker had just described feedback as “the gift that keeps on helping”. He swatted her playfully and revised the phrase to: “Feedback: the gift that keeps on hurting.” I’d never previously thought they were kinky, but now I’m not so sure…

• 4 Comments

Multiples of one

“Six strokes of the cane.” “Twelve strokes of the tawse”. “Twenty strokes of the birch.”

I’ve fallen into the trap lately of thinking of punishments in terms of multiple strokes. Mentally, as I’m beating a girl, my mind’s on the six, the twelve, the twenty – the total number of whacks she’s to receive.

And I think I’m missing a trick… One batch of (say) a dozen? Or twelve individual punishments, each of one stroke? Each in its own right given prominence, emphasis, time, weight, space. Each and every stroke dreaded, shaming, correcting, hurting.

Does the difference  make sense? I’m rather looking forward to testing my new approach sometime…!

• 0 Comments

In praise of “50 shades”

It’s the fashion in kinky circles to decry E L James’s “Fifty Shades” series. Indeed, I was perhaps the first to review it on a spanking blog, at the very start of May, and I was hardly positive in my observations. It’s badly written and boring. There are concerns about how it portrays kink – a relationship that appears to lack informed consent; an implication that being a top or dom results from past psychological damage. And it’s frustrating that it’s sold so many copies in comparison to better-written, more genuine work such as Sophie Morgan’s highly-recommended “Diary of a Submissive”.

Yet there are real upsides to the “50 Shades” phenomenon, too. Wandering round a branch of W H Smith last week, I was struck by the thought that much of it looked like a kinky porn shop – with entire displays given over to salacious, kink-themed volumes. Now, most of those are badly-written too – but it has to be good that kink is more in the open, with people confident browsing, buying and reading this sort of thing – our sort of thing – in public.

Whilst there’s a sense of a publishing bandwagon, and the quality of many of the books on display is (to put it kindly) variable, some of those flying off the shelves are – like Sophie’s memoir – really good. And they most certainly wouldn’t have troubled the bestseller lists before Ms James’s t