The Spanking Writers

The ever-enjoyable Photino featured a wonderful harem illustration the other day, wondering whether anyone knew the source:

I spent an enjoyable half hour seeing if I could solve the riddle. I found one Google reference that appeared promising in an article entitled, “Slaves, Sex, and Ascetics in Rasdhan, ca. 1800-1857″, published by the Cambridge University Press in 2004:

The painting in question is ‘Flagellation in the Harem,’ which depicts a severe flogging being meted out to a female member of the household.

But despite my best endeavours, I failed to find further references to said artwork, and £10 seemed a lot to pay to download a copy on the off-chance.

Haron, though, came to the rescue, recognising it as a Photoshopped version of a painting by one of the Orientalist artists. We browsed and discovered “Les almées” by Pierre Louis Bouchard – owned by the Musee d’Orsay in Paris:

The modified version is, quite clearly, an improvement. But it does rather cry out for a caption. So here’s the game -your task is to imagine what the characters might be saying. For example, I reckon the girl wielding the rod might be commenting, “And now for the senior cane”. The punished girl might be thinking, “They say the strokes on the back hurt more.” Or the sultan might be ordering, “Give the girl next to me double.”

Fame and glory to the winner of the competition!

The next of our summer selection of the blog posts we’ve most enjoyed in recent months is this, from the ever-so-dark “News of the Lash” – which publishes news accounts of real-life thrashings from around the world, interspersed with photographs from spanking movies and of “deserving young women, the sort who look like they deserve a good thrashing”. It’s certainly not a site that’s safe for work, or for those who struggle to reconcile their kinky interests with real-world accounts.

But we were fascinated by this story, taken from the News Straits Times, describing the procedure for public canings in Malaysia:

UNCOILING faster than a snake striking, the whip lunges forward, tail singing in the air. Its journey ends with a crack as distinct as lightning, punctuated by a scream so profound it rips the sound barrier. Could this be the syariah whipping that theoretically awaits part-time model Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, sentenced to six lashes for consuming alcohol?

Er… no.

The reality of whipping under syariah is that it is actually rather light. In fact, the term “whipping” is inaccurate, because in Malaysia it is done with a rotan (rattan cane). It is not flogging or flaying, and broken skin is not allowed, says Wahid (not his real name), who metes out 100 strokes every week as a Kajang Prison whipping officer. “Syariah whipping is more like caning naughty schoolboys.”

“In syariah, the punishment is not in the force of the whipping, but to bring shame.” Under the Criminal Procedure Code, caning is physical punishment in the strictest sense and the officer must use as much force as he can muster. So, the power behind an ordinary criminal whipping (in civil law) comes from the wrist, arm, shoulder and the swing. But, for syariah offences, it comes from a fairly limp wrist.

In the syariah whipping administered by the prison authorities, the rotan has the diameter of a little finger and is thinner than the one used for criminal offences, which is as thick as a thumb…

But while a syariah whipping may be milder, it still requires a great deal of discipline and training, says Wahid. “Prison officers are called to execute syariah whippings in Kelantan because we are trained to do it.”

And even though the whipping can be administered by a civilian, Wahid thinks this is not a realistic move. “I think it would be very difficult, unless you practise often. Even (someone) who has witnessed whipping many times wouldn’t be able to do it properly…It would be lacking in skill; in art.”

We went for a stroll in a small Cotswalds town, and walked past a window of an antique shop. And what did we find in the window but this interesting instrument:

I thought it was a walking cane, but Abel pointed out that the shop label actually called it a riding whip. This made it a lot more attractive. Although the stick’s thickness intimidated me at the first glance, Abel pointed out that it tapered towards the end, and so wasn’t that bad. And anyway, it was a very pretty whip, sold freely in an antique shop, and quite cheaply, too. We decided to buy it.

The shop woman offered to wrap it up for us. She struggled to find a piece of paper that contained its full knobbly length, but in the end wrestled it into a suitable cocoon. “Don’t worry about wrapping it too well,” said Abel.

“Oh, no,” said the woman. “I suppose, you’ll want to unwrap it and use it soon enough.”

She couldn’t know how right she was.

We devised a little scenario to help us try out the whip: I was a girl who knew her father wouldn’t like her school report, and so hid it from him when it arrived in the post. Little did I know, the school had actually sent him a copy at work, too.

I decided that the best position to try the whip would be to lie on the bed with some pillows underneath my hips, so I arranged myself with my bottom bared before Abel could get any say in it. He was a good sport, and when he found me lying thus, he launched straight into a short lecture, accentuated by a hand-spanking. This was painful in itself, but I could hardly concentrate on it, knowing that the whip was to come.

I was to get three strokes, which I thought was sensible for a first run of a new toy. And here’s a surprise: I burned like a hot poker. One stroke was bad, the second was harder and more agonising, and the third was worse of all. And Abel didn’t even use very much force. I was glad he didn’t go for a full half-dozen.

In the end, I decided that this was probably a decorative implement as far as I was concerned: I much prefer toys light enough to let me relax into the punishment and get more strokes, to the ones that get the whole scene over with in five seconds flat. It’s pretty, though. I’m glad we have it. And I’m sure we’ll have guests whose pain tolerance allows them to enjoy its many knots and ridges.

Continuing our week of our favourite posts from around the spanking blogosphere comes one from Tina, describing her “masochistic wet dreams”:

I simply cannot help it. When I see some artwork of women being punished, I immediately identify myself with the victim, taking her place. Yes, so strong is this feeling that I feel like I am actually experiencing it in real life. I really become the woman that is being punished!

The rest of the post gallops through various such scenarios, each with the illustration that inspired her – including ‘harem punishments’, ‘whipped in a brothel’, ‘a severe public flogging’ and ‘In the hands of the Inquisition’ (“If I only knew what they want me to confess. I would gladly do it right away to stop the terrible whipping”).

Her description of a ‘prison whipping’ is perhaps our favourite section of the post:

“I have been sent to prison because of false accusations by the woman to the right and her man pays the warden to have me punished regularly. They both come to the prison to oversee the punishments and as you can tell by the look of her face, she is really enjoying my suffering. Often she whispers harder… harder… and naturally, the man whipping me obliges.”

Standing just beyond the security checks as I headed home through Stuttgart airport last week was a very cute young lady, in a neat uniform of short grey skirt and pale blue polo top. She held a sign aloft for all to see – ‘The English Experience’. Every few minutes, lost-looking teenage girls wandered up to her, and were pointed towards the ever-growing group where they made their introductions.

Little, I thought, did they realise the nature of the ‘experience’ that lay ahead of them when they reached our green, pleasant and ever-so-wet lands. For this was to be a little more than the simple language course that they’d envisaged. Their parents had paid out the extortionate fees knowing that their time in England was to be as much about discipline as it would be about language.

The girls would be staying in dorms at a fine public school, deep in some rural valley. There’d be a group meeting that first evening, at which they were introduced to the school’s more senior masters, who had given up their summer holidays to supervise the ‘experience’. The rules for the month ahead would be explained; the strictness of the regime would leave many shocked.

And then the girls who’d been observed sneaking away at the airport to head for the bar or the glass-fronted ‘smoking zone’ would find themselves called to the front, where they’d be lectured, and publicly caned in front of the group.

The following morning, they’d each be called in turn into Housemasterial studies. A folder would be taken out containing reports from their school and parents; a lengthy discussion about their conduct would follow. There’d be tears, and apologies, and vows to do better – even before they’d been told to bend over and touch their toes…

Next up in our annual selection of entries from other blogs we love is this lovely little tale from “Beauty and the birch”, in which nineteen-year old Sally finds herself before the judge:

It is the sentence of this court that you be taken, at a time convenient to the Governors, to the square at St Margaret’s, there to be whipt with birch rods upon your naked breech. Forty lashes! And may God grant you the courage to endure your stripes with patience and humility. Take her away!

There’s a wonderful description of her admission to the gaol, where she waited in vain hope for a reprieve:

The morning of her punishment began like any other at the Bridewell, with the booming of the drum and the pounding of hammers. Sally yawned and brushed aside the straw from her face. Reluctantly she opened her eyes. There, to her instant and overwhelming horror, stood three of the blue-coated beadles, peering down at her where she lay on her palette. “Come with us, missie,” one of the men grunted and took her by the arm, pulling her towards him. “No!!” she cried, but a second pair of hands got hold of her and she was dragged untidily to her feet.

“Stark naked and shivering in front the assembled multitude”, she was tied to the whipping bench, and a detailed account of her flogging follows. Highly recommended!

An amusing episode is described in one gentleman’s memoirs of his school days: *

In 1951, I was sent to Bishop Westcott, Namkum, Ranchi. Westcott was immediately adjacent to the Eastern Command headquarters of the Indian Army, Bihar… I thought it strange that there was barbed-wire all around the school grounds but very soon realised that it was there to keep the boys off army property and not the other way around.

On nights when the moon was in semi-lune mode we would go scrumping for fruit and sweetcorn by the pillow- case full. One night we were caught. We were brought before the headmaster in the morning wondering how he knew who went on the raid as none of us were asked our names by the guards. The Headmaster pointed out that our names were on our pillowcases and that he was going to cane us, not for scrumping, but for stupidity! In future raids we always took someone else’s pillow-case.

And would, presumably, get punished for getting their schoolmates in trouble!

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* Not putting in a link to avoid shocking the people who keep the memoir website by where their visitors come from.

It’s become something of an annual tradition for us to post a summertime selection of entries we loved on other blogs. So we’re pleased to present the first of this year’s selection – further entries will follow throughout the coming week interspersed with our own posts.

We start with an absolute gem from Graham’s “The S Word”, in which she fantasised whilst washing her clothes by hand:

When you’re on your knees with your forearms submerged and scrubbing, it’s not hard to pretend you’re a laundress in my favorite time period — The Past! These clothes aren’t my own, but the garments of the wealthy family I serve. I’ll be held to account for every stain, every smudge and tear, so it’s important I show the utmost diligence and care in my task.

Leaving the clothes out to get drenched in a thunderstorm would have dire consequences:

The head housekeeper was most displeased and reported the girl’s misdeed to the lord and lady immediately. The master of the house wasn’t inclined to trouble himself over such trifles as clothes, but his wife was furious. That was a great inconvenience to the lord. He assured her the offending lass would be swiftly and memorably chastened.

First, he’d summon the stable-boy, to fetch his riding crop. Then he’d call for the girl.

“How many articles were drenched, Anna?” He’d casually ask the housekeeper.

“About thirty, sir.”

“Thirty strokes it is, then.”

Afterwards, instead of seeking solace in her lonely attic, the red-eyed servant would find herself back on her knees, re-washing each piece and trying to ignore the burning welts…

My first spanking went like this.

At first, there were several months of anticipation. I was still living with my parents in Ukraine when I discovered the Internet world of spanking. I made friends, but they were all English-speakers, far away in the States and the UK. They may as well have been living on the moon, for how inaccessible the spanking scene looked to me, a 19-year-old student with no funds of my own.

A friend and regular correspondent Monty invited me to visit him in the summer holidays. I don’t know how I convinced my father to let me go; he knew of my online friendships, but couldn’t fathom what those older, respectable and foreign people could have found interesting about me. (“I love you, darling,” he’d told me, “but teenagers are just not very interesting; it’s a fact.” I resented that at the time; 10 years on I begin to see where he was coming from, though I’m not sure I’m old enough to agree with the sentiment.) Be it as it may, I was allowed to go. Even then it wasn’t just a matter of buying a plane ticket: I needed to apply for a British tourist visa, and wait, and go to an interview, and wait, and wait. Monty had to provide a sheaf of personal information to the visa people, but he didn’t balk at writing on my behalf, and sending in papers that they really had no business looking at. It was a soul-melting bureaucratic hell, but I pushed through it, knowing that on the other side there was a magical prise waiting for me: finally, finally, I was going to get a spanking.

“You don’t have to be spanked if you don’t want to,” Monty told me repeatedly, both online and in person, when finally I walked through the gate in Gatwick. Now I know how responsible and safe he was being, giving me control of the pace of my explorations. At the time, I thought he was insane. Not have a spanking? Not wanting to be spanked? After having craved it, reached for it, fought for it for months? I could barely wait, and might have thrown myself over his lap there in the airport.

We were both sensible, though, and waited until the excitement of the first day of my visit had dampened a little. The following morning he turned into my Uncle Monty, a familiar figure from our chatroom role-play. He sat on the chair, and pulled me over his lap, and it felt so real and natural as though I’d been doing this my whole life. Monty’s lap was the most comfortable place in the world, even when his hand slapped down onto my bottom, stinging quite a bit. I was so happy, I didn’t even dare cry out our kick, because I didn’t want to spoil the perfection of the moment. He let me up eventually, and gave me a hug. I couldn’t keep to the role of a naughty niece: I was grinning like mad, the happiest girl in the world.

There were more spankings that week, of course. I was introduced to implements, and wore a makeshift school uniform, though it hadn’t occurred to me beforehand that people might dress up when they role-played. I was given some spectacular first-timer bruises, even through my knickers, which I was still too shy to take down at any point. I misbehaved a little. I reported about my joy at the message board where Monty and I had met, and felt warmth and support from the more experienced players, all of whom had been there before.

This was all later. My first spanking – that perfect moment of joy – happened exactly 10 years ago, today.

My regularly-recurring waitress fantasies follow a fairly predictable path – a cute girl spills something over smartly-dressed guest, then gets soundly thrashed by her boss / restaurant owner in the back room or after closing time.

Only, the lass in the cafe in Stuttgart earlier in the week was far too cute – all short red hair, blue eyes, cheerful smile and neat, black uniform – to leave to the manager. A stumble, my cake* dropping to the ground… and she’d just have to be up-ended over my lap, right there on the terrace in full view of the other customers and the passing pedestrians, her skirt pulled up and knickers down for a hard hand spanking until her bottom was bright red and she was truly apologetic.

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* It’s OK. If there’s one thing I   remember from my German O Level, it’s that their chocolate milkshakes destroy any calories in their cakes.