The Spanking Writers

I was party to an interesting debate on Twitter at the start of this week, discussing different methods of communication between kinky friends. I thought it worthy of a brief follow-up here, as I’m curious to hear the perspectives of those who were, at the time, either (a) asleep or (b) concentrating diligently on their work!

I’m of an age where the telephone and (usually hand-written) letters were the only practical communication options as I matured into adulthood. Email first entered my life at work in ’86, and was around when I went to University later that year – but it really was pretty primitive. It wasn’t until the mid-90s that the soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup introduced me to the concept of more ‘social’ interaction – where one could engage with a much wider group.

These days, we’re faced with a plethora of options. Here’s what works – and what doesn’t – for me personally when I need to communicate in writing over a distance:

• Email: still my communication method of choice – especially for anything involving planning, longer exploration of ideas / scene issues, or anything less urgent – as well as for chatting to folks whom I may not (yet?) know that well.
• Text or Twitter DM: for more immediate 1:1 thoughts, hugs, ideas, questions. I use the two mechanisms pretty much interchangeably, doubtless sometimes to the confusion of those on the receiving end, based purely on phone tariffs wherever I may be!
• Twitter (@AbelJenkins): for immediate stuff I want to share – things that have caught my eye or that might raise a smile; kinky thoughts which might appeal to a wider group; generally keeping in touch with my real-life and closer online friends. It’s like a friendly local pub: one can call in whenever one likes and chat with lovely people, but propping up the bar permanently isn’t actually necessary!
• Blogging: well, if you’re reading this, you probably already know… Longer musings on spanking-related topics that interest me and which might interest others.

You’ll notice the absence of some media from the above. Facebook? I’m listed (as much to stop anyone else grabbing my name as anything), but don’t use it. I’d not want to connect using “Abel” with friends’ vanilla FB accounts, and don’t need to stalk their ‘real’ lives anyway; few of my close friends have kinky FB accounts; I don’t (by design) have enough non-kinky friends to merit my own vanilla FB page. And more to the point, I don’t, frankly, need another form of communication to keep in touch and to update.

Fetlife? Informed Consent? Again, I’m listed – but pretty much inactive. I guess I would use them more were I actively hunting for new play partners – but I’m more than happy with the friends I have and the others I’m lucky enough to make from time-to-time via the methods above (and through meeting friends of various friends in person).

I sense from the recent debate on Twitter that this may all be reflective of my age, however, and also of my relative lack of non-kinky friends or family. Younger folks, I’m told, have migrated from email almost entirely towards Facebook; I’ve also debated in the past how there’s much less interaction between members of our friendship circle via blog comments here than there was pre-Twitter.

But I’m curious to understand the wider picture: what works best for others, why, and how do you see this evolving over time? Despite never being at the bleeding edge of technology, I tend not to lag *too* far behind, and it’s fascinating to see how the world’s evolving. Who knows: I may just be missing a trick!

In the past couple of years, a theory’s taken hold that one has to have 10,000 hours of experience in a particular discipline before one can truly become ‘expert’.

If one takes one’s working life, for example, it’s an interesting metric. Say work (for sake of argument) occupies eight hours a day for 175 days per year (after allowing for holidays, courses, illness and the like). That’s 1400 hours per year – or seven years to become an expert. If I think of my own career, that’s probably about right.

So, do I qualify on the spanking front? Let’s try and add up. Writing, first of all…

• 100-odd stories; say five hours writing and editing each: that’s 500 hours
• 1000 or so blog entries: half an hour each? Another 500.

Then real-life spanking play:

• it’s twelve years since I first played for real. Say a scene a week on average since then, say an hour for each: 600 in total.
• perhaps fifteen long roleplays of a couple of days’ duration. Ten hours a day? 300 hours more

And other pervery:

• browsing for and acquiring implements: say an hour for each, in total – about 200.
• reading and commenting on others’ blogs; watching spanking videos; reading books and stories. Half an hour a day for 15 years? Another 2700 hours.
• dreaming and daydreaming: four hours a week for the past decade? 2000 hours.

Yikes: I’m not quite up to 7000 hours in total – some way short of the ‘expert’ status I crave. Maybe I need to focus more: 3000 hours on spanking in the next three years. Near enough, three hours a day. There are going to need to be some very sore bottoms out there…

A couple of years back, one of our annual summer “Best of the kinky rest” selections was an article about “The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine”. This nineteenth-century journal was published by the widower of the famed Mrs Beeton, and its letters column at times degenerated into (or some might say ‘was enlivened by’) lengthy discussions about Victorian corporal punishment.

I’ve since been reading Kathryn Hughes’s magnificent biography, “The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton” – a truly exceptional work. It describes the Victorian era as “a time when middle-class homes could afford to keep a full complement of domestic staff, none of whom would think of answering back”. Indeed:

“One magazine, the Ladies’ Companion, dedicated a regular monthly column to dealing with servants (what to feed them, how much to pay, what to do when they answered back).”

Anyone care to guess their recommendation on the final point? I’m imagining the liberal application of the hairbrush to maids’ bare bottoms for their cheek, with birchings for more serious or regular insolence.

There’s a description of the school that Isabella attended – yes, to my shock, Mrs Beeton had a first name other than “Mrs”:

“The Heidel’s establishment had started as a day school in the late 1830s, providing a rigorous syllabus for the daughters of well-to-do local people. However by 1850 the 40-year-old headmistress Miss Auguste Heidel was actively seeking British girls as boarders for her school, which occupied a series of premises in the picturesque heart of the city…

Isabella probably entered the school in the summer of 1851, when she was fifteen and a half. It is most likely that she was accompanied by her stepsister Jane Dorling who was vitually the same age.”

‘Rigorous’, eh? Who else is imagining cold showers and regular canings?

Then, on to the “Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine” itself – and the corruption of the letters column, or ‘Conversazione’ as it was known:

“The scandal started quietly enough, with a couple of letters that appeared in the spring issues of 1867. A mother wrote to say that she had returned from abroad to find that her daughter had been subjected to a ‘system of torture’ at the hands of her headmistress designed to reduce the waists of her pupils by means of tight lacing.”

The correspondence then “took flight into erotic fantasy. Every month there would be more letters, purporting to be from regular readers, which nudged the debate into distinctly sado-masochistic territory”:

“Just when it looked as if the tight-lacing correspondence was about to die down for good, an even more controversial conversational thread started up in the ‘Conversazione’. This time the subject was that well-known staple of soft porn, the whipping of maidservants and young girls…”

Readers “eagerly sent in accounts of ‘real life’ experiences which grew more preposterous by the month. Correspondents with pseudonyms such as ‘Etoniensis’, ‘A Rejoicer in the Restoration of the Rod’, ‘Miss Birch’ and ‘R.O.D’ told in immense and repetitive detail of ritualised floggings in ladies’ boarding schools and in clergymen’s studies”:

“The virtues of different implements were discussed with relish, as were the elaborate performances of removing clothing and strapping down the victims, the penitent tears and the urgent begging for mercy. Running in parallel was a second stream of letters purporting to be from women who had undergone such punishments and remembered them with gratitude, not to mention an enormous amount of detail.”

Sam Beeton published the material in a two shilling supplement, which “in addition to the letters themselves… carried advertisements for canes, whips and birches, as well as A History of the Rod and Flagellation and the Flagellants by Revd W. Cooper.”

It’s rather as though some respectable modern-day magazine – Tatler, say, or The Lady – suddenly branched out and produced a “spanking special”. And why not, I say? Perhaps we should all try writing in with appropriately inappropriate letters, and see if we can start a trend.

A short additional post today, to draw your attention (if it’s not already been drawn) to a couple of noteworthy things in the spankosphere.

First, Haron’s other blog – “Spanking Model Speaks”, written as her alter ego Adele Haze – has just had a wonderful redesign. The update marks the fifth anniversary of that blog – hey, we’re big on celebrations round here right now! If you’ve not seen it yet, do click over to the site and have a look – although be warned, it’s certainly not safe for work!

And second, we wanted to mention a wonderful post yesterday by Indy – a regular commenter here and a dear friend. “The blogs are all right” builds superbly on my recent post, “Whither the Spankosphere”. It’s thought provoking, excellently-written, and well worth a read. (And thanks to her for her kind words about The Spanking Writers and our readers, henceforth to be known as the “Friends of TSW”!)

A challenge was thrown at me (ever so nicely) in conversation a little while back: “Why don’t you write more about the real-life scenes that you play…?”

It’s an interesting question, and one that’s had me pondering. I love real-life roleplay – in many ways, the thoughts and fantasies I generate and share here so regularly really are a means to an end: if I could play out every scene idea I write up on the blog, I’d be a happy (albeit tired) man.

And I do – lucky man that I am – get to play pretty regularly. So what holds me back from describing the scenes I play with my partners and other friends? When Rebecca came to visit last autumn in the guise of an evacuee, picked up from her local station with her 1940s suitcase, the scene was quite excellent. Likewise the scene in which masonic types conspired to keep a girl – Jessica – out of formal trouble in the courts, if she was sent to one of their number to be whipped her for her offences. Lovely evenings in recent months playing scenes with Eliane and Toby; whackings administered at the always-marvellous Lowewood Academy shortly after the turn of the year; a great recent group roleplay under the guise of St Anne’s School; spankings galore (albeit more informal) at parties with dear friends… All have passed unblogged in the past few months.

So, why don’t I write about them? After all, I love it when others describe scenes I’ve played with them, and it’s something I used to do far more often. It’s just that somehow these days, it somehow seems easier to describe scenarios I’d like to play than those I have just enjoyed.

Partly, it’s time. I travel so much that it’s not always easy to find a moment to stop, reflect, compose my thoughts, in the days immediately following a scene. Writing a too-brief account, or posting it weeks later, would somehow trivialise it.

Partly, it’s the difficulty of transferring the magic of a scene from real-life to the written word. Somehow once I’ve dressed the part, spoken the words, acted out the deeds, the typed version feels a mere shadow of the event itself. For even the most wonderful scene, a blog post can only offer a pale imitation of what actually happened.

Partly, it’s wanting to hear my play partner’s perspectives after the event: I know what I felt during the scene; I’d like to hear her views.

Partly, it’s fear of breaking the magic spell cast by a successful spanking encounter. If we’ve both enjoyed it, yet the person I’ve played with doesn’t like my written account of what we did, it might end up making the memory of a good scene somehow less satisfying. I live in fear of not doing justice to proceedings, of causing offence – and yet, I guess, by not blogging it at all, I may end up doing precisely that.

And partly, I guess, the thought of writing down details of spankings behind closed doors can sometimes make me feel rather shy – especially when it comes to discussing play with my loved ones, as opposed to that with other friends.

Excuses, excuses… but it is a genuine block. I’m determined to try to write more along these lines – but I’m also curious as to what others think. Do my fears ring true? How do others of you with your own blogs overcome said barriers when it comes to writing descriptions of real-life play?

“Go straight to jail! Do not pass ‘go’… and during your sentence, you’ll be ‘privately whipped’.”

But when? Which would be more traumatic:

(a) knowing you’d be punished on admission to the jail

(b) knowing that you’d be punished on a certain, specified date some time into your sentence

(c) not being told the date – merely that it would happen, and could take place at any time of the guards’ choosing during your imprisonment?

Last February, I posted a discussion entitled “Whither the Spankosphere”, in which I noted the number of spanking blogs that appeared to be inactive. For sure, new sites still pop up on a regular basis, but am sensing a general trend and wanted to revisit the debate.

My Google Reader has a category called “Spanking – Friends”, which includes the forty or so people I know in person who have blogs. A check at the weekend showed that, in the nine days since I’d last checked the feeds, less than a third of the bloggers concerned had updated their sites.

That it had been so long since I last looked for updates seems to me to be, in itself, indicative of something of a blogging malaise. Twelve, eighteen months ago, I used to head for the blogs each morning to connect with friends – to see what they were doing, thinking, discussing. Now, for that? It’s straight onto my  Twitter account the moment I sign onto the web. Meanwhile, the discussions and debates that used to happen here with and between our real-life friends are increasingly rare – their, our interaction these days is far more likely to be tweeted (or even, not that I use it personally, via Facebook for friendships that often now span the vanilla and spanking worlds). It’s rather as if the kinky world has migrated.

Where does that leave blogs, particularly the (relatively few) literary blogs such as The Spanking Writers? I still see a place for longer pieces of writing, such as we post here: there’s only so much one can say in 140 characters. As a means of exploring and sharing fantasies and perspectives on our kink, blogging still IMHO remains the best format available.

Twitter, on the other hand, is frankly a far better medium for a community of friends wanting to keep in regular touch than were the comments pages of our and others’ blogs. (And, of course, I’m not denigrating the skill of many tweeters, the fine art of communicating so concisely requiring considerable skill – “excuse me writing you a long letter: I didn’t have time to write you a short one”).

But as people turn to Twitter first, their RSS readers and blog reading relatively neglected, does this trend spell the inevitable death-knell for the blogosphere in the medium term – an inexorable decline in posts, comments, readers? I’d be interested in your views.

I’ve just re-read Emma Jane’s post describing the astonishing experience that she and Catherine went through last Thursday night – and I’m shaking slightly. (Don’t read it if you’re of a nervous disposition. Actually, do. It demands to be read – perhaps the edgiest post you’ll ever find on a kinky blog).

It’s some of the details that really get to me. The image of them kneeling as their captors hooded them from behind. Having their hands bound behind their backs for four hours. The disorientation of staring into bright lights, unable to see their inquisitor. EJ’s repeated recitation of Kipling’s “If…” to help to pull her through.

And then the waterboarding: the climax of the proceedings. My girls were, quite literally, tortured. [No imitation 'water bondage', this: have no doubt that this was the real procedure save only for the context - they were in those surroundings, ultimately, through personal choice, not seeking to avoid disclosing  genuinely significant information to enemy captors].

As ever, writing about things helps me process, understand my own feelings. That’s what this post is about.

By the time they were en route to their doom, I knew a fair amount about what was going to happen to the girls – more, actually, by then, than they did themselves. Being honest, I was scared about what was going to take place, much as they had chosen to do this; irrationally worried – although I knew they would be in no actual danger. Haron, at the end of the telephone for half an hour or more, was wonderful at letting me talk through my feelings and reach a state of surprising calm. And that remained: through a business meeting, through a journey to the station, through my train ride home. Until, that is, I made the mistake of reading the Wikipedia article about waterboarding. I was nearly sick.

At  home, as the clock ticked well past midnight, I couldn’t sleep, knowing some of what they must be going through at the time, far away. And my self-inflicted mental torture? That was in a warm, comfortable house. They were actually facing the reality – and knowing that it was self-inflicted, that they had chosen to do this, would scarcely make it any easier at the time: when the water started pouring, it would be real.  I hadn’t expected to hear from them until the following lunchtime; that texts from each of them, buzzing with the excitement that I hoped they’d derive from what happened, arrived near-simultaneously shortly before 3am was a truly blessed relief.

Now, this stuff really isn’t my personal kink – and not just because of the lack of spanking. In my scene world, limits are discussed, safewords agreed, and the ‘informed consent’ is based on a pretty clear view of what’s involved. That’s not how Thursday worked. Rather, the ‘informed’ part seemed more to be that ‘the people concerned are safe and trustworthy’; the consent, to whatever it was that their tormentors decided to do to them within the agreed timeframe. Not specifying limits, not having a safeword – that formed part of the consent; the lack of their discussion was, therefore, something active not passive.  It took some considerable mental struggle for me to understand this: it’s so alien to my personal play preferences. (And I know, even as I write that, that ‘play’ – or even ‘scene’ – somehow feels too trivial, lightweight a word for this particular event).

The lack of limits? That comes down to trust in those running the scene not to do anything that they know would go beyond that with which you (real you, back in the cold light of day not merely ‘you helped by the  adrenaline of the scene’) would be happy – rather than simply pushing your boundaries very, very hard. The act of stating hard limits almost implies that the individual is explicitly consenting to the things that stay off the list – asking for them, even – and is undermining the very premise of the scene.

The absence of any safeword? I guess I best understand the justification – for the person on the receiving end – as follows: “having a safeword means I can stop the scene at any time; I therefore always retain a degree of power over what’s happening at every point, and sometimes that’s exactly what I don’t want.” It’s more than merely “I’ll be in too deep a headspace to ever use it anyway”. It requires absolute trust and absolute confidence in the top’s knowledge of what’s safe and ability to sense if anything is amiss. It’s the ultimate ceding of control.

This stuff is far outside my own comfort zone, and isn’t how I’d personally choose to play – but I can see why others might. Intellectually, I’m reconciled to it as a framework that works for other people – as it did for Catherine and Emma Jane. Emotionally, the reality of knowing what was done to my girls – particularly, specifically the waterboarding – still makes me shudder  (no matter how hard I try not to, no matter how safe the context, no matter their fundamental consent to the situation which led them there, no matter their reactions to it.).

Ultimately, I admire my girlfriends’ torturers for having the sheer audacity to conceive something like this, for inspiring such trust, and for their skill in running it safely. As for Catherine and Emma Jane: I have the most wonderful girlfriends imaginable.

So, tell me what’d be scarier: you’ve been sentenced to receive a flogging; the number and severity of the strokes has been fixed; there’s no right of appeal of chance of clemency.

Your punishment can be administered by either:

(a) a total stranger

(b) someone you know but dislike;

(c) someone you know and like;

(d) someone you love.

What would be easiest? And what would be the hardest to take?

A couple of days ago a lot of our Twitter contact circle was abuzz with a new, simple game, wherein you sign into a particular application, and it creates a word cloud out of the names of people who interact with you the most, i.e. your “Twitter fans”.

We thought it would be fun to share ours – they’re pretty, and actually quite touching.

Abel’s “fans”:

My “fans”:

Is your name on the list? No? That must be because you never talk to us on Twitter. Please say hello – we only bite every other day.