I've never been one to spend time analyzing why I'm a spanko. I just know that I am, I love it, and it's made my life better, and I don't really care where it came from. But I do wonder sometimes why I have such strong preferences, and such intense dislikes/aversions to certain aspects/ancillary activities in TTWD.
Recently on FetLife, several of us were on a campaign of sorts to "free" a woman who had been grounded from FL by her top. We wrote impassioned notes to the top, no dice. Someone suggested that we come up with a "free Piper" song. The top said that if someone did, he just might consider reducing her sentence. So I immediately did that, doing a parody of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."
Piper Piper come and play,
Piper Piper what'd you say?
JC won't let you come out,
Why's he being such a lout?
And so on. Then another woman wrote another parody, and took it a step farther: she recorded it and put it on FL. I figured if she could do it, I could too, so I recorded mine. Then yet another woman recorded herself doing an interpretive "free Piper" dance.
None of this worked, by the way. She's still off FL until Sunday. Can't say we didn't try.
Anyway, while all this silliness was going on, I caught myself in judgmental, pissy mode, thinking, "WTF is up with this grounding business? I wouldn't allow that! I'm a grown woman, dammit!" I get the same hostile reaction when I hear about bedtimes, or writing lines, or mouth soaping. It's not so much that these things sound unappealing to me -- they actually make me feel angry. "How fucking childish! How can anyone allow themselves to be treated like a child??"
And then, just as I'm up my own ass with my righteous indignation, I laugh. Yeah, right, Erica. Because being over a man's knee getting spanked is SO grown-up.
Yes, the hypocrisy didn't escape me. So what's up with that? Why do I accept spanking, but eschew so many of its adjuncts?
I think it's my own personal connection with these adjuncts. My mother was big on all of them.
When I was little, my mother shoved soap in my mouth when I parroted swear words I'd heard. She actually made me write lines a couple of times. And she was big on rules, restrictions and creative punishments.
My bedtime was rigidly enforced, to the point that if I went to bed 10 minutes late one night, I had to go to bed 10 minutes earlier the next. Same thing with TV. Two hours a day, and not one minute more. If I wanted to watch something that took up more time, I had to borrow the time from another day.
If I misbehaved, she took beloved things away. No TV. Cancelled plans. No dessert, or even no dinner. Once, she wouldn't let me read for a week. Considering I spent nearly every waking minute with my nose in a book at that time, that was torture.
And I felt intense rage at all this. My mantra was "I can't wait until I'm old enough to make my own decisions. No one will ever impose restrictions on me ever again."
Of course, that was silly. Life is full of restrictions and rules. But I am mistress of my personal life. No one tells me when to get up or go to bed, how much TV I can watch, how much time I can spend on the Internet or what sites I can go to. Those are hard limits, because they seriously piss me off. As it turns out, with good reason.
For those who had these dynamics in their scene relationships, I wonder how they feel about them. They may moan and complain, but are they secretly turned on by these restrictions and punishments, just as I am by spanking? We all have our triggers. I know I love having my hair fisted, but others say that's a hard limit. I guess this is why the "hard limit" discussion is so important. Because one bottom's ecstasy is another's torment.
Thoughts? How many of you use these adjuncts in your spanking play? (Don't worry, I'm not condemning. I'm curious.)