Meeting 513 - A (Spanking) Picture (or Video) is Worth a Thousand Words

“The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.” - Susan Sontag

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly on-line gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship.

 

Once again, before we get started, I would like to thank the female commenters who have recently joined us and to extend an invitation to all others who may be inclined to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We like having you around.

 

I hope you had a good week.  Mine was hectic, continuing the trend of one damn thing after another going wrong.  We have a vacation coming up in a few days, and I’m torn between knowing I desperately need one, on the one hand, and worrying about what the hell could go wrong, on the other.

 

I’m also desperate for motorcycle season to begin, but it’s still pretty cold, and on warm days snow is turning to mud.  Plus, included in that “one damn thing after another” pattern is a couple of nagging age-related physical problems that could put a crimp in this riding season.  

 

 

Oh well. Enough whining.

 

Last week’s topic got fewer comments than I’d hoped.  “Consent” is usually a compelling subject and, in the past, has driven some great conversations.  It’s another example leading me to wonder whether the blog is just running out of gas.  Too early to say, but it does feel like there’s been a big drop in energy lately.

 

But, we did get some thoughtful, insightful comments.  I especially liked this one from Chris H, as I think it accurately describes what can be a long process of a wife gaining more and more confidence and control:

 

“My wife and I are in a light FLR. She doesn’t control everything in our relationship, but she is in charge of home maintenance and how the family schedules operate. She has set certain rules regarding the family schedule and chores that she is 100% committed to spanking me for, when I disobey. I’m also not allowed to have a temper outburst.

 

It took a LONG time for her to embrace this role, over many years of me asking her and praying that she would.

 

So now, when she tells me that I’m going to be spanked for something, I feel like I have zero control over it. I don’t want it, and even if I beg her not to spank me, I feel like I don’t have a choice. Technically I could always refuse, but the consequence of that would be jeopardize the relationship structure I’ve wanted for so long.

 

So in reality, my spankings are non-consensual because I don’t have any acceptable options left other than to accept my punishment - whether I want it or not doesn’t matter.”

 

Alan similarly emphasized the psychological aspects of consent and how our psychological ability to resist may diminish over time, making our feelings about our ability to consent potentially illusory:

 

“I suspect many of us feel we have more “consensual” veto power over getting spanked than we actually do have at the moment of a spanking. In both of my DD relationships, my actual capacity to defy her about a spanking that she really wanted to administer was minimal - maybe none. My ability to defy her is roughly inversely proportional to the number of punishment spankings she has given me.

 

Think about this: once she knows you need spankings, and she has already spanked you for real discipline, she knows she can spank you if she is determined to do so-and her power to do this just increases over time. I have not talked about this directly with my wife. But I remember it coming up with my former GF. She acknowledged that she might not always be able to control me when we were (physically) apart. But she said something like this: “When we are together, I know I can absolutely control your ass, and there is nothing you can do about it. “

 

She was right. The control, of course, is not physical but psychological, and it increases every time you submit to a spanking. I think a part of us wants to believe we can defy her if “I really wanted to." But try it the next time she tells you a punishment spanking is coming. You can delay and even beg, but you can’t really stop it. You can’t stop it because you really don’t want to -and because the price of defying her is not a price you can afford.”

 

For me, I continue to hope that our dynamic evolves in such a way that it feels less and less consensual.  What I need to ponder a bit more is how to take some of these abstract goals—like making the dynamic feel less consensual, or her being more strict, or her taking a stronger and stronger role—and move them along with some concrete actions on her part and mine.  Otherwise, we seem to stay at this frustrating point where we talk about this stuff all the time, and we both seem to share broad goals of where we want things to go, but it never seems to get a lot of real traction. 

 

Onward.

 

Because we are going on vacation next week, and because I’m in for a very busy weekend, this week’s topic is going to be less psychologically dense.

 

 

A few weeks ago, Glenmore suggested this topic:

 

Would you and your wife be open to make a video or audio recording of your spankings? Would you watch / listen to it with her and what might you learn?

 

Al responded with a bit of personal DWC history: 

 

“Back when the DWC was active, Aunt Kay invited the club members to send in videos of wives spanking their husbands for a possible compilation. Obviously public exposure was a big issue - and nothing ever came of the video idea. However, for a while, there were some pics on the DWC site of real life DWC couples in action (we did not participate).

 

When the video idea was suggested, Susan and I actually did one with the camera position carefully positioned not to show my wife's face and I was otk wearing a ski mask. Kay thought it was a fun idea - as if Susan was spanking a burglar in lieu of calling the police. Ultimately, we decided not to submit it out of "an abundance of caution over possible exposure". But - we did have "fun' doing it (in spite of the real pain from the real spanking) and we watched it a few times before finally erasing it (again, didn't want anyone - especially the kids - inadvertently coming across the recording).”

 

We have not made a video or audio recording of a spanking.  But, the idea does have some appeal.  My openness to it probably reflects some personal growth over the time we’ve been doing this, as for a long time I shared Al’s strong concerns about exposure.  In my case, looking back I can say it bordered on paranoia, though I’m sure I would, in fact, have been utterly mortified if we had made such a video and it got out.   

 

 

It’s not mere speculation that being outed would cause an initial panic, as I went through one real-life incident that gave me some insights on how I would react to being involuntarily “outed.”  A few years ago, I was going through my email inbox and saw one whose subject line really got my attention: It consisted of a password I had used on many different websites. 

 

It got worse. It was directed to me, using my real name throughout the email. The sender claimed to have hacked my computer and gotten my passwords, as proven by the email’s subject line. It further claimed to have downloaded my browsing history, and still further claimed to have commandeered the camera on my laptop to record me visiting some very nasty and embarrassing websites.  The sender demanded that I send some amount (a few thousand dollars) in bitcoin, otherwise all this embarrassing information would be sent to everyone in my Contacts app, the contents of which the sender claimed to have copied.

 

 

For several minutes, I went into a full-blown panic at the idea of some very embarrassing stuff going out to all my friends and family, not to mention the various business contacts in my rolodex.  And, my panic was very focused on spanking-related material, since that genre constituted a lot of my “naughty” on-line activity.

 

Finally, my rational brain came to the rescue.  I Googled the general description of the blackmail threat and found it was a fairly popular scam. The reference to one of my real-life passwords, which had given the whole shakedown its credibility, was easily explained. Millions of real usernames and passwords, and the real names they are associated with, are available on the dark web as a result of well-known, large-scale data hacks.

 

Although the whole thing was a scam, it did force me into thinking hard about how I would react if my participation in this thing we do ever became widely known, not just to a bunch of strangers but to those I know and am the closest to.  After the initial panic, my attitude became more, “It is what it is.  I guess I’ll deal with it.”

 

So, today I wouldn’t let an abstract concern about being “outed” by someone getting ahold of a picture or video of me being spanked stop me from doing it.  Also, with modern video editing software, it's fairly easy to obscure the faces of participants.

 

But, setting aside confidentiality risks, why would I want to do it? For me, the biggest reason is I’m genuinely curious about how both she and I look during the act.  As I’ve said in a couple of recent responses to comments about certain drawings or pictures, I’m very drawn to realistic facial expressions in spanking art.  I’m very drawn to pictures that seem to show real fear or anxiety leading up to the spanking, real pain and regret during the spanking and, on the part of the spanker, looks of business-like determination.

 

I would like to see visually the extent to which my wife and I display those sorts of facial expressions during a real-life spanking.  With today's technology, it would even be possible to see one's reactions live and in the moment, though personally I think I would prefer to view it after-the-fact.

Also, knowing my wife possessed that kind of visual evidence of our spanking relationship could reinforce the power hierarchy in a major way.  Even though I trust her unreservedly and don’t believe she would ever use such a video to “out” me or intentionally embarrass me, just knowing she could do so undoubtedly would ramp my feelings of vulnerability and my sense of her potential power over me.

 

Last week, I talked a little bit about the group NXIVM and their motivational method of getting “collateral” from participants, sometimes in the form of embarrassing material that might be released if the participant failed to keep a commitment or meet a goal.  It seems to have been a very effective means of incentivizing the participants’ desired behavior, even if they probably knew the embarrassing material would never be revealed. 

 

A part of me craves the intense feelings that surround the inherent risk of such embarrassing material being out there, in someone else's possession, even if I am confident Anne would never intentionally use it against me and even though I know the risk of someone else obtaining it would be low. 

As for an auditory recording, the prospect of that doesn’t do much for me.  I'm not sure why, given that a spanking overheard as it is happening does give me a strong emotional response, perhaps more than a visually witnessed one.  For example, while I don’t have any real desire to hear a recording of myself being spanked, I do find the thought of someone listening in over the phone while one is happening to be very compelling.

 

How about you? Have you ever recorded a spanking session, whether by video, sound recording, or a photograph?  Did you keep it? If so, who has possession of it? Have either of you shared it with anyone else? Do you ever view or listen to it together? Do you share Al’s concerns about possible exposure, or is the possibility of such disclosure exciting in some way?

 

I hope you have a great week.  FYI, it is very likely we won’t have a post next week.