Spanking (Page 159)

It’s difficult to sort out the real “history” of enforced chastity and marital spanking. You may wonder why I use both in the same sentence. The fact is, both represent surrender of specific powers from one partner to the other. The chastity folks like to believe there is a centuries-long tradition dating back to the Crusades. According to them, women were put in chastity belts to protect the purity of the bloodline while the husband was off fighting infidels.

This was shown to be myth over a century ago. During Victorian times museums displayed medieval female chastity belts. A few decades later, they were quietly removed from display. Even though personal hygiene was questionable in medieval times, any barrier put over a woman’s vagina would be an invitation for horrible infections and disease. The idea of a knight going off for years at a time to do battle leaving his wife safely locked in a metal chastity device is romantic and impossible.

The actual genesis of chastity devices dates back to Victorian times. In Europe, principally England, a belief took hold that male masturbation caused insanity. As a result, chastity devices were invented and manufactured. Male residents of insane asylums were often locked into these cruel devices.

Many families believed that adolescent boys needed protection from themselves. These poor boys were also locked in devices designed to prevent masturbation. Apparently, at some point the boy was unlocked and allowed access to his penis. There are no authoritative examples of female chastity devices until much later.

The US Patent Office has thousands of applications for chastity equipment. Most, as you might expect were designed for use on males. There were some for females as well. In the 1990s I met the manufacturer of Access Denied Chastity Belts. These chastity belts were very well designed and manufactured out of top-grade stainless steel. They made a male model and a female model. 25% of their sales were female models sold to women. The women who bought them said they wanted these devices to protect them when they went out. These women had a serious fear of being raped.

The male model was sold to guys who wanted to be locked up. Like today, many had no keyholder but still wanted no access to their sex organs. Some had keyholders and the belts were used the same way chastity devices are used now. Access Denied went out of business when it’s owner died suddenly at a young age. There are still full chastity belts available. They are made in Europe.

My takeaway is that the true purpose of chastity devices, the male ones anyway, was always to prevent masturbation. Originally it was used in order to promote mental health; more recently, as part of a sexual power exchange.

Every so often I hear that the use of male chastity devices is growing enormously. Some people quote staggering numbers. One blogger actually claimed that one out of every six heterosexual males bought a chastity device. Given that the planet has about 6 billion inhabitants with 3 billion being male, and let’s say, 2 billion being heterosexual, that means over 300 million men currently have chastity devices. That’s more than the total population of the United States.

Obviously that number is completely idiotic. Since we don’t have any billionaire chastity device makers, and in fact, most are very small businessmen, it’s safer to assume that the number of men wearing or owning chastity devices is considerably less than 100,000. Clearly, our practice is not a popular hobby.

That doesn’t mean that the practice of enforced male chastity isn’t a profound experience to people who do it. It certainly is for Mrs. Lion and I. It’s given a completely new shape to our sex lives. By its very nature, male chastity, converts what some people think is a spontaneous activity into one that is planned and controlled by a single member of the relationship. Based on people I’ve talked to, the vast majority of those who practice this do it over short periods of time, like a weekend. The rest of the time sexual activity is mutually decided on.

That brings me to the second piece of power exchange: spanking. This practice has a long history of use as a means of discipline for both adults and children. Over time, it’s had varying degrees of popularity. When people think of marital spanking, they typically consider that the wife is disciplined by her husband. I doubt if husband-spanking has any real level of awareness in the general population. In fact, women controlling a marriage is a popular form of humor.

There are religious sects that practice male domination with wives being spanked when they need to be punished. The term “Domestic Discipline” traditionally applies to marriages where the husband spanks his wife when she fails to live up to his expectations or obey his orders. This is almost always religiously based where the church provides permission quoting various biblical passages to justify this activity. I don’t think you could consider this truly consensual.

The only examples of husbands being spanked by their wives that I can find comes from a consensual agreement between the partners that she will use corporal punishment to enforce her leadership. I don’t like using the term domestic discipline to describe this since it has the bad smell of non-consensual domestic beatings. I prefer to call this a Female Led Relationship with Discipline (FLRD).

Unlike the religiously based spankings, FLRD is in agreement between the partners. The man, me for example, explicitly asks his wife to take charge and punish him for failing to do what he’s supposed to do. Some couples spell out the sort of things this covers; we don’t. If you read this blog regularly, you know that I get serious spankings from Mrs. Lion.

There’s a third flavor of corporal punishment. It’s called the Spencer Spanking System. It’s pretty easy to find information about how this works, but much more difficult to verify its provenance. Regardless of its origin, which is supposed to be created by a certain Mrs. Spencer, this system features mutual spanking as a way of maintaining domestic tranquility.

The idea is that the couple agree on what offenses need to be punished. It’s almost a contract. Each partner consents to accept corporal punishment if they break any of those agreed rules. The “system” is very specific about how punishment is to be administered. Apparently, women are only to get hand spankings. They are to be naked and over their husbands lap to receive them. Men, on the other hand are to receive “whippings”. I take this to mean strapping or paddling.

The punishments are to be performed in silence. Both partners agree that once the punishment is complete, there are no hard feelings or repercussions of any kind. There is no evidence that this ever caught on. I think it would be extremely difficult to manage. I also think it’s largely unnecessary.

The kind of FLRD that Mrs. Lion and I have won’t work for most couples. It’s been extremely difficult to implement effectively. We both have had long learning curves to become effective in our respective roles. In a way that’s really good. In order for us to both benefit, we have to integrate not only the authority model but also the idea of concrete retribution into our marriage. Almost out of sheer luck, we found a path that lets us do exactly that. We started out with trivial offenses and largely ineffective spankings.

The trivial offenses are very easy to commit and therefore offer very frequent opportunities for me to get spanked. Over time, the spankings became much stricter and more effective. I learned to accept more painful spankings. Even though the offenses were easy to commit in the beginning, without trying, I pretty nearly stopped committing them. The punishment actually corrected my behavior. Since the spankings were far more severe, it was a good thing I needed them less often.

All this comes together with the concept that one partner in our marriage gets most of the control. Mrs. Lion has absolute control over when I get to ejaculate. I think you’ll agree that sex is probably a male’s favorite activity. I have absolutely no control over when I get to enjoy it. Odd as it may sound, I learned to like it this way. I don’t want the control back, ever.

Similarly, I’ve given Mrs. Lion the ability to set any kind of boundary she wants on my life, create rules I must follow, and punish me if I don’t meet her expectations. She has chosen spanking as her preferred punishment. I have learned to bare my bottom and get into position whenever she wishes.

This can seem very one sided and unfair. Actually, it isn’t. Mrs. Lion is very aware of how much control she has. She wants me to be happy. She uses her power wisely and with my best interest in mind. That doesn’t mean I’m always delighted to lie across the bed and suffer a long, painful spanking. Often I’m not. But I do know that she has a good reason for doing it and that ultimately I will be happier because of our power exchange.