Say It Isn't So

In her comment on Master's mentoring post, Selkie asked if we really had identified our practice with DD as she'd always associated Domestic Discipline "with the fanatical christian sects."

I'd say that the sense of unease that Selkie expresses as she reads us claiming that "Domestic Discipline" label is understandable. Far from it's roots as a particular expression of the spanking subculture; in which spanking is used for discipline with limited or no overt sexual connotation, DD seems to have become a political and cultural ghetto where the residents adamantly defend the boundaries against encroachment from those who don't "measure up."

When we speak to the inclusion of domestic discipline within the overarching context of our BDSM dynamic, we mean what we say. There is a portion of our dynamic that is purely disciplinary; that is intended to create household order; that acknowledges the potential that an otherwise capable and dependable adult person could find some value in relating to another adult around the concept of corporal punishment as a disciplinary tool. For example, very early in the relationship between Master and T, dd was the tool they used to facilitate and promote Master's efforts to stop smoking. T assumed the role of disciplinarian, even as she remained His submissive, and together, they worked out a plan that moved Him closer and closer to an eventual complete cessation of a life-long smoking addiction.

People come into BDSM in a variety of ways, and domestic discipline is, for many, a sort of gateway. That was the case for me. I'd tried for years and years to get my husband (a nice-enough fellow who just saw it all as "sick" and "perverted") to spank me and control me. It was never his thing. Eventually, with the appearance of our very first personal computer, I searched the Internet for "spanking," and came across two sites that changed my life: Vicki Blue's Domestic Discipline, and Robin Wittle's Fondly and Firmly. I, personally, have very little regard for either source of information, and I am inclined to feel the same way about the successor cyber "guru" site -- Taken in Hand. Both of the early sites were dedicated to the theory and practice of domestic discipline. At the Vicki Blue site, the practice of dd was described like this:

"In this household, the loving husband/boyfriend provides firm, consistent authority. He appreciates and encourages the intelligence and accomplishments of his partner while setting up loving boundaries. There is no question that those boundaries will be enforced. How they are enforced depends on his partner. For some, a look is all it takes. For others, the loss of privileges is more effective. Ocassionally a spanking is needed to get the point across and bring her back in line.
In this household the intelligent, accomplished wife/girlfriend provides love and nurturing support and companionship while observing the authority of her partner. She understands that her actions have consequences and accepts her partner's role and guide as mentor, protector and disciplinarian. This is easy for her because she understands that he loves her and cherishes her above all others and that he will only correct her for her benefit.
We aren't talking about BSDM here. We aren't talking about Master/Slave relationships. We aren't talking about humiliation and degradation."

Robin Wittle (who these days writes under the pseudonym, Mr. Fondman) put it like this:

...sometimes, there can be aspects of a woman's thinking and behavior which might be called "womanly devils" or "imps". This condition can afflict even the finest, most wonderful women. Rather than ignore such problems, many women and men agree that discipline and spanking can be the best approach to avoiding the corrosive behavior which would otherwise result...

Now, like Selkie, there were (and are) huge chunks of that foolishness that set my feminist nerves to jangling; but I was a desperate and deprived woman with a powerful orientation to spanking and power-exchange. So, I put my screaming inner feminist into a metaphorical straight jacket and a ball gag, and stuffed her into a metaphorical closet. Armed with these "oh so wise" bits of information, I was able to convince my very unimaginative and vanilla spouse to try spanking. After all, it was about keeping order in the household and creating harmony. Perfectly nice people could spank like this...and besides, there was nothing to be done -- I was possessed of "demons and imps." I honestly didn't care that it was utter nonsense, if it got me what I was craving, then I was willing to go along.

The thing that I think makes it hard for most people to look at our dynamic and see the domestic discipline part of it is that, inside of our bDDSm dynamic, the dd actually works. There are expectations for the way each of us behave, and since we are mature and responsible and intelligent adults who love and care for one another, we all work really hard at living up to those expectations. The need for "punishment" to be administered for infractions of the rules is practically non-existent. Once everyone understands what is expected, the need to spank for disciplinary reasons can and does go entirely away, AND, since Master and I both have orientations toward spanking, we spank because we do -- it doesn't fall into the disciplinary realm more than very, very occasionally.

The thing about most domestic discipline centered dynamics is that the action centers around rules that are supposed to be imposed by and enforced by the HOH (head of household -- a sort of stuffed shirt designation that must have been lifted from the IRS tax code). If the rules don't get followed appropriately, then the HOH is supposed to extract the agreed upon penalty (almost always a spanking). If, for whatever reason, the wife (because it is almost always the wife who suggests, and even insists on this whole set up) breaks one of the rules, and the HOH doesn't spank her like he is supposed to, then he is guilty of a lack of consistency. If, as is the case except in the most egregiously manipulative cases, there is no "real" reason to spank, then the HOH is supposed to administer regular and carefully nuanced "maintenance" spankings. The whole, carefully phrased, precariously balanced construct serves (usually) to keep the nominally "bottom" partner firmly in control while the nominally, "top" partner works really hard to establish and maintain a dynamic that meets her needs; run exactly as she envisions it; and is administered in precisely the way she imagines it is supposed to be. The control almost never leaves the hands of the woman who initiates the whole dynamic. Selkie, you are right in this regard -- DD, practiced like that, would never fly in our household.

Now, it is true, as Selkie points out that there have come to be a plethora of practitioners of something that purports to be domestic discipline under the guise of religiously based or scipturally based justifications. In most cases, this sort of thing is espoused by fundamentalist believers of whatever persuasion: Christian, Jew, Muslim... I don't participate in the myth-driven hysteria that fuels these religions, and so I cannot speak to the thinking or philosophy that drives their particular flavor of DD. I will say that many of these folks adhere to a belief in women as property that is entirely non-consensual, imposed by an outside force, and non-negotiable. As such, I do not believe that this sort of practice can be compared, from an ethical standpoint, to the varieties of BDSM that do pivot, at some very basic level, on consent of the participants. Too, in almost every variety of "faith-based" domestic discipline practice, there is the primary assumption that the practice is for discipline only and should contain no hint of eroticism. Great effort and energy is expended to encourage people to practice in ways that eliminate any scintilla of sexual excitement or hedonistic pleasure from the act of spanking. Craziness! When adult partners engage in the intense intimacy of spanking, there WILL be erotic heat generated. To deny it is simply dishonest -- and patently foolish.

So. Yes. We do practice a form of power-exchange that has some of its roots in the precepts of domestic discipline. We do that in the same context as we practice all the rest of the things we do that might be identified as BDSM. We don't distinguish, saying: "this is one thing, and that is another." We expect each adult in our family to behave as an adult, and we trust one another to be able to know what that looks like. We each have chosen this path to actualize our sexual and erotic connectedness with one another and we do not experience it as shameful, degrading, or humiliating. We do it with intent. We attempt to do it with integrity. There are elements of our relating that are extreme and very serious while others are quite light-hearted and great fun. We don't parse it out into all the various subsets. Perhaps it is simply that we've been doing it for a good long while, but it feels pretty seamless to me.

swan