Push-button spanking

From the February 14, 1898 edition of the New York Times:

I always though spanking chairs were for sitting on while turning a miscreant over your knee -- or bending them over to spank. And talk about lazy-ass wardens. Can't even spank their naughty charges themselves!

Though I must admit, I do want to know what ever happened to this spanking chair.

Kindergarten was the first time I had ever heard of spankings at the push of a button. My teacher, Mrs. W. always threatened us with time in her mysterious, unseen spanking machine. Except she was so sweet her threats only made me slightly concerned rather than fearful. And very, very curious. Oddly enough, I always imagined it being similar to the above spanking chair, except inside a machine that looked like a hollowed-out R2-D2/over-sized vacuum cleaner.

Will be posting the first part of my newest VibeReview Fantasy tomorrow, which will be of particular interest for fans of debporn*. I say first part because the short fantasy I usually write to go with my review became a bona-fide story after spending months in my subconscious. So I'll post the story first and then the review the next day (or two...ish).

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*The old FAQ for the soc.sexuality.spanking Usenet group defines debporn as "a particular type of story post featuring severe, family setting discipline and/or humiliation including very raw anal/crotch spankings. May or may not include sex. Very intense." Based on the stories of Debbie Ann.

Not as perverted as it used to be

Don't ya love news stories that state the obvious? "Kinky sex is on the rise," is the headline at ABC News. The line following lists several fetishes and then asks, "is it the Internet?" Um, need you ask? And as always there are a few things that are mostly right but the language seems a bit awkward.

But today, according to sex-perts, couples are looking for more intensity in sex lives, and interest in sado-masochism appears to be rising.

"After the pain threshold is crossed, they describe a type of ecstasy called 'flying," Dunlap found in his research. "It is no longer painful and gives an entirely sexual as well as psychological, transcendent place. Flying is bigger than any drug."

I've heard of "sub space" but "flying?" Have any of you heard it called "flying?"

I also wonder how it works for vanillas -- er, teleiophiles (ya learn something everyday!) -- when they use sex manuals suggesting BDSM to "spice up" their relationships. Spanking and bondage have been the core of my sexual fantasies before I even understood what sex was. It comes as natural to me as breathing. But does adding some handcuffs and a paddle really "spice up" a relationship for people who don't breath it?

The article was a nice reminder, however, that being a pervert isn't as perverted as it used to be.

Front page spanking: Bankers Flogged

Oh how those tarts at CNN tease us.

Personally, I'm thinking it's time to get all French Revolution on those bankers' asses. And maybe throw in a few Republican senators for good measure.

Front Page Spanking: Divine Discipline

Back before tabloids focused on celebrities that nobody has heard of, they focused on the important stories like...nuns whipping boys. This front page of the Mirror from August 16, 1939 isn't very readable, but it's nice to know that while war was about to break out in Europe, the Mirror had its priorities in order.

So what sort of whipping was this? I mean, surely nuns whipping boys couldn't have been so unusual in 1939 that a run-of-the-mill thrashing merited front-page status.

I like to imagine a stern French nun with a martinet and a smart-assed early adolescent. Our impertinent boy tried to lead a revolt against mandatory Mass attendance but was deserted by his classmates to face alone the wrath of Sister Mathilde. She took down his short pants and applied that martinet with such brutality that it left his classmates fearful of ever misbehaving again. Perhaps the boy's mother was shocked at the horde of angry welts left on her son's bottom and thighs while his father thought the old nun was well within her rights to maintain order. Soon the community was divided over whether Sister Mathilde had acted appropriately or gone beyond common decency until one of the largest tabloids in the country was asking its readers to judge...

Just a thought.

Front page spanking: Birching and branding

Several weeks ago A. and I were perusing old front pages of the Mirror (a British tabloid for those of you outside the UK), and we found a few that headlined a topic we -- and I imagine a few of you -- find of great interest.

This front page is from June 21, 1938. I can't really make out the story (alas, they were not much bigger than thumbnails of the front page), but that headline certainly has a lot of scope for the imagination -- both the birching AND the branding. Though I can't say any of my fantasies have combined the two...at least not yet.

Sorry to make this a short post, but I've been gobsmacked this last week. And watching the Republican Convention last night only made it worse. Good gawd Mitt Romney is a repellent individual. "A man-shaped polymer casing of a spiritual vacuum" in the words of Jon Stewart some months back. Sounds about right. (And no, I'm not a big Barack Obama fan either.)

Another reason to leave spanking for grown-ups only

A new study finds that minorities -- including Special Education students -- get paddled the most at school. My brother has Down Syndrome and the thought that any of his teachers would spank him or any of his classmates is abhorrent, as well as completely unreal.

And despite what spanking stories would have you believe, the study shows boys are three times more likely to get paddled than girls. But then, fictional school-girl spankings are so much better than real ones.

Nothing more British

The current Max Mosley case in Britain has brought with it a lot of attention to the BDSM community, including this interesting piece in the BBC Magazine. I thought it did a decent job of explaining BDSM to those not familiar with how it works, or are only familiar with lurid cases when it doesn't (or funny cases, as it may be -- hat tip to Tom). I think my only real criticism of the piece is that I have no idea how they managed to leave out of a discussion regarding how much spanking is part of British culture without mentioning that the French actually called it "le vice Anglais" -- the English vice.

For whatever other derelictions the piece had, the comments more than made up for. My favorite is from a James Rigby of Wickford, Essex who states, "There's nothing more British than a right royal spanking followed by a nice cup of tea. It helped build the Empire."

Quite.

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Update: Pandora has a thoughtful post about the Mosley case, as well as the disturbing legislation targeting kinky sex in the UK. Nikki also talks about the case and how Northern Spanking got -- wrongly -- implicated with disastrous results for the owners of NS. You can help them out by becoming a member of Northern Spanking, giving you a warm fuzzy feeling both in your heart and down south.

Caned for...reading about the 1948 defenestration of Jan Masaryk in Prague?

So I was just getting caught up on reading my Robert Fisk, probably the single greatest English-speaking journalist writing about the Middle East, when I came to his article from earlier today. It began with this rather brutal anecdote.

When I was at school, I was once beaten by a prefect for reading a book on Czech history at a football match...back in 1960, screaming "Come on, Sutton!" at a bunch of grunting, muddied idiots in blue, black and white shirts was deemed more important than the 1948 defenestration of Jan Masaryk in Prague. A prefect later lashed me with a cane on the orders of a spectacularly cruel housemaster whose unwillingness to prevent the most vicious beatings almost equalled his love of soccer and rugby football.

Lordy, not only did you risk being unpopular at public school as a nerd, but apparently you also risked getting beaten!

Spanking fetish aside, I have to say I'm glad my rather strong nerdy tendencies in high school only cost me momentary embarrassement from time to time.

"Spank his ass raw"

Every now and then you're going about your normal life when some spanking reference practically grabs you and smacks you in the face.

Such was the case Friday as I was sitting in the waiting area of the acupuncture clinic next door reading the woeful tale of our police chief caught in a Bill O'Reiley-esque sexual harassment scandal (with a little bit of big hair and long-standing black-on-white racial undertones thrown in) in the Portland Tribune.

A mentor of [police chief] Foxworth's and a longtime community activist in Northeast Portland...read the tort claim Wednesday afternoon. He said he felt sick...

"...If it is true, if Derrick was so stupid as to write all this nasty stuff down in an e-mail, I want to bring him over here right this second so I can spank his ass raw."

Now I haven't read the sordid emails, but perhaps that might not be the best disciplinary procedure in this case.

Visions of grandeur

Forgot to mention that during our weekly read together of the Observer this morning, I noticed in the story about David Cameron, the wanna be Tory leader, this little gem.

According to interviews yesterday, Cameron is a man who wouldn't smack his children - two-year-old Nancy is sent to stand in the corner instead...

Granted, I don't know too many two-year olds who would actually stay in the corner if made to stand there.

And while I'm not a big fan of smacking kids myself, the image of, say, being the PM's daughter and standing in the corner at 10 Downing Street is rather hot...