THE DISCIPLINED FEMINIST

What's a Little DD Between Friends?

2011-04-25T09:52:00.004-06:00

I recently received a question in my inbox from a reader asking if domestic discipline (DD) could work in a platonic relationship.

This reader's partner wasn't interested in DD, and she felt trapped and discouraged at the prospect of having to choose between staying with a partner that she loved and accepting that her deepest desire would go unfulfilled, versus leaving her partner and fulfilling her deep longing for DD. Her particular question was whether it would work if she stayed in her marriage and also engaged in DD with a close friend in a non sexual, platonic way.

I suspect many of us have experienced something similar, finding ourselves in a serious relationship with a partner who isn't interested in DD and fearing that we have to give up our longing for DD if we want to continue the relationship. It's a heartbreaking situation to be in. (It's also a big reason why I agreed to write the books on how to get your partner to spank you. )

As I've discussed in prior articles, I continue to believe that we all have, deep down inside, a primitive urge to act out biological sex roles -- which means that I feel strongly that almost any partner could likely be "triggered" to participate consensually in a DD relationship if the subject is approached appropriately.

For this article, however, I'm going to put that theory aside, and focus instead on the reader's original question and the issues related to it: Is DD outside of marriage an act of infidelity? Is it even possible to have a satisfying DD relationship outside of marriage? Can two close friends engage in DD and get the same powerful, intimate results as a committed sexual couple would?

To clarify, we're not talking for our purposes here about a simple, one-time spanking (the equivalent of a one-night stand). Whether or not visiting a professional dominatrix, disciplinarian, prostitute or even a good friend for an occasional spanking constitutes cheating on your spouse is a separate question (but I believe the short answer to that question is yes). We're talking here about entering into an ongoing, intimate DD relationship in which one person is consensually subject to ongoing discipline by a trusted other.

As those who have read my prior articles know, I believe that much of the deep attraction of DD for many of us is that DD is, first and foremost, a powerful, ritual method of connecting one person's inner feminine to another person's inner masculine (in whatever gender configuration). That primal feminine-masculine connection is, by its very nature, fundamentally sexual.

We are sexual creatures and whatever other civilized things we've been up to over the past several millennia, the fact remains that Mother Nature intended for us to reproduce, and to motivate us to do so, we have powerful, primal urges that are awakened through the sex act -- an act which, for the purposes of conception, virtually forces us into primal archetypal gender roles (the male giving, the female receiving). Whatever position one uses, whatever progressive sex roles one brings to the party, whatever high tech methods are used in the lab, the fact remains that to get pregnant, a man must ejaculate sperm (give) and a woman must take it in (receive it).

The primal masculine-feminine connection means that one of the biggest benefits to a successful DD relationship is that DD literally "hot wires" our circuits by creating a direct connection between two people's primal sexual selves. In receiving a spanking, the spankee experiences the undiluted feminine energy of submission. In giving a spanking, the spanker experiences the undiluted masculine power of domination. The spark is struck, the fuse is lit, and bang... a sexual explosion ensues, whether it's acted on or not.

I suspect that this direct connection between primal masculine and primal feminine is so innate to the power of DD that, if DD is even a little bit rewarding for those involved, that primal sexual connection is going to be forged regardless of whether the participants are romantically or platonically involved. If the two people involved weren't sexually attracted and romantically involved when they started with DD, it seems likely -- I would suggest even inevitable -- that they would become involved once things got underway.

All of which means that it might inherent in the nature of DD that it simply can't be -- or at least can't remain-- platonic. And that entering into a DD relationship with a non-sexual friend outside of a relationship, however well intentioned, is the proverbial disaster waiting to happen. The spark to the powder keg of sexual energy that, once released, burns out of control, destroying the "vanilla" relationship that it was originally designed to protect.

Perhaps there are exceptions -- cases of two people who have managed to create a long term successful DD relationship without sexual entanglement. But I'd be skeptical. It seems that in such a case, perhaps the relationship WOULD be sexual but perhaps not acted upon (which would make it, perhaps, emotional infidelity, if one believes in such a thing?). Or, most likely, the full power of DD isn't being truly explored within the platonic DD relationship.

Looking at that second option more closely, much of the benefit of DD seems to be that it's an incredibly powerful way to create intimacy between two people. If the ground rules going in are that the relationship must stay platonic, then almost by definition, all of our "cylinders" won't fire (to continue our automotive analogy). The platonic pair might get some of the catharsis and physical release of spanking, but they'd lose, I suspect, the mutual journey into and out of the liminal space of guilt, pain, punishment and forgiveness that is likely only possible with total surrender and the complete dissolving of boundaries and inhibitions. And this total surrender is almost certainly going to be precluded if, by definition, both partners are holding something back to avoid sexual involvement or surrender.

All of which is why I believe that the answer is, no, it is likely not possible to have a truly satisfying long term DD relationship outside of a romantic/sexual committed partnership. And that any truly rich and successful DD relationship, regardless of the intentions of those involved, will likely become more intimate and more satisfying (and thus more necessary) than your primary relationship, and so would likely jeopardize the existence of that primary relationship.

So we come full circle, back to what I believe is good news: that the basic masculine/feminine connection (again, in whatever gender configuration) is so primal precisely because it lives in all of us, however deeply buried. I continue to believe that the most reliable way to create DD in our lives is to build a deeply intimate, trusting, long term relationship with a partner. The more intimate and trusting that relationship is, the more likely it is that the reluctant partner will have the courage and love to dig deep inside and find their own primal sexual spark. And at the very least, the more likely they are to want to help us to express our deepest desires.

These are the benefits and long-term rewards of fidelity.

When It's His Idea

2011-01-08T01:39:00.004-07:00

Jan 2011

Dear Readers,

Yes, I'm still here -- and the good news is that my batteries are a bit recharged and I've been working on the next book. I didn't want to mention it until I was fairly sure it would happen, since, like many creative people, I'm never quite sure if a project is going to make it all the way to completion until, well, it's almost all the way to completion.

In the meantime, I appreciate everyone's patience and encouragement during my hiatus from the blog. After two books, I think I was DD'd out for awhile. But writing the book -- a collaboration with my partner articulating more of his point of view than mine -- has given me more food for thought. So I hope to share some of those thoughts with all of you in the months to come. Bear with me if the articles come slowly, however -- I am, as you have surely noticed by now, not a Constant Blogger by any means.

Meanwhile, I'm publishing a letter I received below, along with my reply. Perhaps you all might weigh in with your thoughts for Kathy as well.

Happy 2011,
Viv

____________________________

FROM KATHY, in response to the blog post "When I'm Angry":

Viv,

I recently met a man who is interested in DD and has been trying to teach me about it and show me why it is a good way to manage a relationship. I'm not completely convinced yet, and one of the big reasons I'm not convinced is exactly because of this issue you described. So I sent him your blog entry, told him about my concerns and asked for his opinion. His e-mail response to me was as follows:

That is an excellent description of the issue. The best way I know to handle it is SERIOUSLY.

--Go into High Protocol … Ask permission to speak …
--Kneel, take lil' Master {his penis} out … lick him … suck him
--Then tell me what I did and how it made you feel.

I can't guarantee anything,but I'm pretty sure that:

--you will have my full attention
--that I will not get pissed off at you
--that I will not think you are out-of-line
--& I won't think you're being disrespectful

There's a good chance I won't do it again.

So seriously.....what do you think? I would love to let him know what someone else thinks of his idea. I told him that if I was all that angry, I wouldn't be able to do those things. If I was able to do those things, I wouldn't be very angry and I wouldn't NEED his apology all that much.

His follow-up response to THAT was:

"Keep in mind that D/s is all about Control, DD is about Self Control.
I think you can learn Self Control..."

As a woman who has a lot more experience in a DD relationship, what is your take on his comments?

MY REPLY:

Dear Kathy,

I'm sorry for the delay in responding to your email -- real life, as it often does, interfered!

I've read your comment several times in an effort to formulate a response, as this is clearly very important to you and your partner. Your situation is also more unusual, as most of the time in my experience, it's the woman asking her partner for a DD relationship rather than the other way around. (At least that's true of the ones who normally write to me!)

I must admit that my first response is a strong caution for you. I'm not at all sure that DD will have the power to elevate, transform and enlighten when the woman doesn't come to the relationship predisposed to the idea. I'll have to give that question some thought - perhaps in a future article.

Making a DD relationship work is hard work. Very hard work. I've yearned for a DD relationship with a man since I was very, very young, and still, I find submitting to discipline and his authority one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life and I fail most of the time. (This is why my books are about asking for spankings, not maintaining successful long term DD relationships -- which I'm still working on as well.) The idea of a woman entering into a DD relationship without being inherently aroused and excited by it feels dubious at best and unsafe at worst.

I'm assuming that your partner is asking for spanking or other discipline to be incorporated into the dynamic? (There are couples who practice DD without spanking.) Being spanked -- hit, in essence -- by your partner is an extremely emotionally volatile situation even when you want it and have initiated the request for it. Experiencing that trauma without having a built-in attraction to it seems likely to lead to anger and shame on your part, and guilt on his part.

Your situation also brings up an interesting question: the foundation of why most people in the DD world don't consider it abuse is that the woman is consenting to it, and in most cases, has asked for and initiated the relationship. If you spank or otherwise discipline a partner who wants to be spanked or disciplined,, even though she may protest at the time, there's an implied consent there. If you spank a partner who doesn't want it and hasn't asked for it in any sense, does that cross the line? I don't have a clear answer, but it's worth thinking about.

I suspect your partner is encouraging you to try this because he himself understands and has experienced the transformative power of DD -- but, again, he's experienced it because he is already primed to want such a relationship. And while I do think it's possible to create a situation in which the submissive partner learns to appreciate the power of DD, it's a difficult road to travel.

So I would ask you one simple question: Are you considering this solely for his benefit, or somewhere, deep inside, is there even a tiny flicker of sexual interest/arousal/excitement at the idea of having that kind of relationship with your partner? Because even a flicker can be fanned and suggests that once you and your partner experiment, you may find it ignites in a flame. If not, it's still possible, but my suggestion would be to tread very, very (very) slowly.

This isn't to say that the foundation of DD has to be sexual. There are certainly couples out there who engage in DD and who claim, at least, that neither of them is aroused by it. Personally, I'm skeptical, given the potent sexual archetypes that are invoked by DD, but I think what they may be communicating is that the act of spanking doesn't inherently arouse them. Fair enough. But it certainly helps if there's at least an interest in your loins for such activities -- it helps get over the rough spots if there's a sexual charge to motivate you.

You haven't mentioned whether or not you've experimented with dom/sub behavior in the bedroom -- if so, did you like it? That's at least some indication that you might like to take it into your regular life with him. If not, that seems like a safe place to start. No, it's not the same as DD, as I'm sure your partner is well aware, but it's a safe, non-threatening, loving place to experiment with some basic tests about how you'd feel being ordered around, spanked, dominated, etc.

Your partner's suggestion for what to do when you're angry, while well meaning and probably exciting for him and possibly successful in the past with women who were already pre-disposed towards such a relationship, seems like it's going way too far, too fast.Your assessment that such a request/requirement from him when you're angry is likely to fail seems pretty much spot on. Perhaps, if you really want to try this, you might consider what YOU would want to do in such a situation and start from there, rather than starting with what he wants you to do (which is a fun idea, but not terribly realistic even for those of us who really really want to submit).

I certainly don't mean to discourage either of you -- only to caution you both to go very slowly and to pay utmost attention to your inner cautions as you feel your way through this. And I hope your partner is loving enough to be able to respect your need to go much more slowly than perhaps he'd like to.

I hope this gives both of you some food for thought. One other thing I'd mention is that your partner's willingness/ability to talk through your concerns with you is a good sign -- a heartbreaking number of people have the fantasy that DD will work without conversations just like the one you two are having right now. You're ahead of the game in that respect, for sure.

Warmest,
Viv

Still here!

2010-05-14T22:12:00.006-06:00

Hi all,

I realized the other day how long it's been since I posted a new article, and wanted to reassure those who have emailed that I'm still here and haven't in any way abandoned The Disciplined Feminist.

I try to post only when I have something that I feel genuinely merits your time, and I think spending so much time on the two books last year tapped me for a bit. But I will return as soon as I have more insights to share, and in the meantime, I always read and respond to comments.

I am also considering an offer to write a third book in the trilogy, but am not quite sure what that book would be just yet. If you have any ideas for what you'd like to see addressed in a third volume, please don't hesitate to email your suggestions!

Warmest,
Viv

Barack and Michelle

2009-10-02T01:13:00.004-06:00

A new article is on the way, but meanwhile I was struck by this photo of President Obama and Michelle for obvious reasons. (you can view the original on the White House site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/photogallery/In-Europe/)

A political colleague of mine and I recently had a discussion as to whether or not President Obama is vulnerable to the temptations of the many women available to him. My (male) colleague pointed out to me that our president has the look of a man who is getting everything he needs at home. This photo suggests interesting possibilities in that area.

Of course, the specific framing of the photograph probably says more about the photographer's leanings than it does about the Obamas.

(And by the way, this speculation is purely in respectful and good fun and in no way implies any insider information on the relationship of the First Couple!)

How to Give a Spanking: Advice from the Receiving End

2009-08-04T12:40:00.006-06:00

... the companion book to How to Get the Spanking You Want.

Finally finished, whew!

This book is written for our partners. I wrote it because I felt there was a need for some "how to" spanking material written from the point of view of those who want the spankings -- after all, who is in a better position (!) to say what works and doesn't work when it comes to spankings than the people being spanked, right?

Now that I've fulfilled my two-book contract with Variant, things will be getting back to normal around here and I'm looking forward to continuing to explore archetypes, sex roles and power as we've done at The Disciplined Feminist for the past three (almost four!) years.

I want also to take a quick moment to thank all of you who have emailed to express support and appreciation for these books, as well as all those who contributed to the research for the books, both recently and over the past 23 years that I've worked with these issues. The e-book experience has been a very rewarding one -- I may even write another one if I think of another topic! (suggestions, anyone?)

I'd like to encourage anyone who has read either book to contribute suggestions, ideas and thoughts about how to make them better. It's always been my intention that both of the books be a positive resource for the DD (domestic discipline) and spanking communities.

As I wrote How to Give a Spanking, I realized there was one section of the book that felt like it ought to be a Disciplined Feminist post. So I've included it below, slightly adapted to the blog...

Awakening the Spanker Within

2009-08-04T11:50:00.002-06:00

This article is adapted from How to Give a Spanking: Advice from the Receiving End

If you took an intro sociology or psychology class in high school or college, you may be familiar with the concept of the “lizard brain.” The lizard brain is the original human brain – the one we had before we evolved to be the tool-making, book-writing, skyscraper-building, computer-using creatures we are today. The lizard brain contains all of our most basic impulses and instincts. It’s the keeper of our sex drive, our “fight or flight” instinct in the face of a threat (which manifests as that “adrenaline rush” we get when we narrowly avoid a car accident, for example), and other primal behaviors that enabled us to survive in the dangerous conditions of the prehistoric “caveman” era.

Because the world we live in now is considerably safer for most of us (certainly for those of us reading this book), and because we now tend to rely on our intellect and other higher brain functions to deal with stress, we are often unaware of the presence of our lizard brain in our everyday lives. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. After all, we still have that adrenaline rush, and we certainly still have a sex drive and a mating instinct.

That lizard brain also gives us a primitive instinct for aggression, a vital response to a life-or-death situation in which, say, we’re hunting a woolly mammoth or fighting off the neighboring clan who’s trying to raid our village for food.

Our lizard brain aggression is what makes us ball up our fists and want to hit something when we’re really frustrated, what makes little kids stamp their feet when they don’t get their way, what makes a hard workout session or a game of racquetball satisfying.

Both men and women have this lizard brain aggressive impulse, although biology has seen to it that it tends to be more prominent in men. A peek back at caveman times will tell us why this is so.

Back in prehistoric eras, before the advent of day care, nannies and stay-at-home dads, the sex roles were clear. Men were responsible for hunting the food, a dangerous occupation that required superior size and strength and aggression. And women, due to our unique ability to give birth to and nurse babies, stayed in the cave and took care of the kids and prepared the food, which required less aggression and more nurturing and compassion.

In our politically-correct culture, many of us would like to think that those aggressive lizard brain masculine impulses have vanished, but the reality is, they haven’t.

To give you some perspective on why there hasn’t been time to evolve too much beyond our caveman instincts, consider this: If the entire history of the world were measured as a year, then human beings in their most primitive form only appeared on the last day of that year at one second before midnight. That means that all of our prehistory and history, relative to the history of the planet, has only taken one second out of one year to happen. Everything from discovering fire to inventing the silicon chip, from primitive cave paintings to MTV, happened after 11:59.59 p.m. on December 31st of our “year.”

What’s more, all of our civilized, politically correct habits and ideas regarding sex roles that most of us grew up with aren’t even a fraction of a tick on that same clock. For most of that less-than-one second, we have been under the primary influence of our primal instincts, which are essentially to survive and to reproduce.

But don't take my word for it. Noted sociobiologist Leonard Shlain is just one of many authorities who concur: “Contemporary men and women are living relics of bygone days. In the short span of years that we have existed as a distinct species, insufficient time has elapsed to depart radically from the physiological and behavioral patterns we employed to respond to the conditions we found ourselves in at the dawn of our species.” (Sex, Time & Power, pp.14-15)

In plain language, this means that we may dress, talk and act like civilized men and women (most of the time), but fundamentally, we are still creatures of instinct. All of us, no matter how evolved or enlightened, carry within us the urges of primitive humans – and the sharply divided, primal sex roles that were necessary to our species’ initial survival.

What does all this mean for you and your partner, in terms of spanking?

It means that, male or female (but particularly male), we have inside you an aggressive urge, whether you realize it or not, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, whether we are peace-loving and politically correct or not. Our aggressive urge is there and it’s real and it’s not going away for at least another two or three million years – so we may as well make friends with it.

Our modern society has done a great deal to shame men (and women!) out of acknowledging this natural aggressive tendency. In a well-meaning effort to “cure” men of the desire to do violence, we have told men that this innate impulse towards physical aggression is at best socially unacceptable and at worst, evil.

The only acceptable way in which most modern men (and occasionally women) are allowed to show physical aggression is on the sports field, and even then, there is often a sense that this form of activity is a lesser activity that is not worthy of, say, a businessman or a man who’s more intellectually inclined (hence the pejorative term, “dumb jock.”) And then, of course, there’s the problem that many men simply don’t enjoy or have the time or opportunity to participate regularly in aggressive sports.

This shaming of men (and women!) into believing that physical aggression of any sort of violence is unacceptable and evil means that if you are a man, you may have a great deal of internal resistance to the idea of spanking your partner. After all, those who have worked tirelessly to fight domestic violence and rape have told men that hitting a woman under any circumstances is wrong. Period.

I’m going to suggest to you here, however, that even if you deeply believe in non-violence and non-aggression, even if you are a passionate advocate for domestic violence prevention, even if you have never before acknowledged this aggressive instinct hidden deep in your lizard brain, that you still have that instinct in there, waiting to be explored.

And further, I’m going to suggest that if you have never acknowledged this natural, important and very human part of yourself that longs to do violence, you are probably feeling a great deal more stress and anxiety in your everyday life than you need to feel, if only because you have cut yourself off from what may be one of the most effective stress relievers Mother Nature ever gave us – the ability to discharge frustrations by using physical force.

What’s more, as a man, you have almost certainly felt this aggression with regard to your partner. Again, even if you’d rather not admit it to yourself or to her.

Every man who has ever lived in an intimate relationship with a woman has been frustrated with her at times (and she with him, but that’s another book!). Every man has within him the instinctive desire to express that frustration through aggression, just as his lizard brain tells him to. (“Get mad, use club…”) Therefore, I would suggest, every man has within him, somewhere, the desire to spank his partner.

That’s a sweeping statement, I know, and perhaps an idea that feels alien and even frightening if you haven’t acknowledged or considered it before.

But before you recoil in horror at your inner caveman, remember the context here: this is very, very good news indeed for your partner and your relationship, because it means you have within you the natural ability to give her exactly what she wants most.

It’s true that, for some people, the lizard brain aggressive impulse may be buried so deeply they are never able to uncover it. But just the fact that you’re reading this blog (or this article, if your partner has handed it to you!) suggests that you are not one of those men. That you recognize on some level that you are capable of spanking your partner because of that lizard brain aggressive impulse. And by recognizing that it’s there, and by having a partner who is actively encouraging (begging?) you to express that part of yourself, you have the amazing and wonderful opportunity to uncover and experience this powerful and perhaps previously-taboo part of your psyche.

To help matters along even more, physical violence generated by the lizard brain releases endorphins, the same chemicals that are released during sex. This is why workouts can give you a “high,” as can playing contact sports or even doing an aggressive business deal.

What does this mean in terms of spanking your partner? That just tapping into your lizard brain aggression will probably tap into your lizard brain sex impulses, too. In short, you, as a man, are hard-wired to find spanking sexually exciting, even if you’ve never done it before and don’t think you’d enjoy it.

A few words of caution here:

Tapping into your lizard brain aggressive impulses doesn’t mean you get to go around whacking your partner whenever you feel like it, just because it’s your instinct.

It probably shouldn’t go without saying that as satisfying and primal as spanking can be for you as well as for her, you will still need to exercise good judgment and restraint when spanking your partner. That means safe and responsible spanking, not coming home from a bad day at work and whacking your partner just to take our your frustrations. Spanking is a great way to get your aggressive instincts out, but it’s not a free-for-all to abuse your partner in the name of reclaiming your inner caveman.

Second, depending on how strongly you’ve been culturally conditioned to see all violence as unacceptable, you may find it takes some work on your part to get in touch with your lizard brain aggression. If you try spanking your partner and it leaves you cold, don’t give up, thinking you must not have that impulse. You're human, so you do. You may need to do some work on your own, separate from your partner, to give yourself permission to acknowledge and accept your aggressive instincts. And it may take some time for those impulses to show up strongly enough for you to find spanking enjoyable and satisfying.

And finally, you may find that once you do tap into your lizard brain aggression, you have a lot more of it waiting to be used than you realized – or that can be comfortably expended on spanking your partner.

After a lifetime of repressing your aggressive tendencies, you may find yourself having difficulty controlling the aggression once you give it license to show itself. You might, for example, find yourself getting grouchy and snapping at people when you used to think of yourself as mild-mannered and easy-going. Or you might find yourself having impulses to put your fist through a wall or drag race someone out on the freeway.

For many men, feeling aggression creeping into places where it’s unwanted feels frightening and dangerous. Their impulse is to stuff the aggression back down again where it can’t make trouble.
The problem with this is, of course, that putting the lid back on the pressure cooker doesn’t get rid of the pressure. It just makes the pot explode all over the kitchen. Bottling up your aggressive impulses is no safer than letting them run unchecked and ungoverned.

Instead, if you find that you are having trouble controlling your aggressive impulses within acceptable bounds just with spanking activities, you will need to take responsibility for giving yourself other healthy outlets for your aggression. You might try martial arts or racquetball. You could buy a punching bag and hang it in the garage, or take up long-distance running. (note that all of this has the additional benefit of getting you into better shape and healthier, too!).

The important thing to remember is that aggression is a natural part of who you are, and it deserves to be valued and acknowledged as a part of who you are. Spanking is a terrific way to honor this forgotten but ever-present part of our psyches.

reprinted from: "How to Give a Spanking: Advice from the Receiving End," (c) 2009 Variant Books. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Spanking Artemis: DD & the Virgin Goddess

2009-06-07T20:01:00.005-06:00

"Before the inner feminine can safely emerge within the unconscious, she needs a strong, discerning masculine partner, who can maintain the boundaries, create a sacred space where feelings can emerge and be listened to. The intuitive wisdom that arises from the body, the creative matrix, needs a focused masculine that can release the creativity of the soul." -- Marion Woodman, Dancing in the Flames

Very few concepts in archetype and myth seem to be more misunderstood than the concept of virginity.

Recently, I've come to see that this concept as it's classically used in mythology may be one of the keys to unraveling the paradox that is DD (domestic discipline) and the related concept of feminine submission and power. The concept of virginity as it's classically defined may also be one of the key concepts required for making DD relationships work long-term.

In our modern society, a virgin is widely interpreted to be a woman who has never had sex. For example, when most people hear archetypal goddess figures like the Greek moon goddess Artemis described as a virgin goddess, they assume that means that Artemis rejected sex and the company of men.

Those of you familiar with archetypal studies know, of course, that the term "virgin" in Jungian psychology means something quite different and much richer and more intriguing than a intact hymen. Loosely translated, "virgin" in the mythological sense means "complete unto oneself."

A virgin goddess, therefore, is, generally speaking, interpreted to be a model for femininity that does not require the presence or energy of a separate, external individual, male or female, to make her whole. A virgin in this more classical sense is, by herself, a complete, whole, healthy and integrated individual - whether she's had sex or not.

Many years ago, when I first considered the idea of the virgin goddess as a model for healthy womanhood, I admit I was more than a little skeptical. Being a virgin "complete unto oneself" and needing no one else, seemed lonely and sad - the very embodiment of the "I hate men and I don't need anyone's help" hardened "feminist" who ultimately turns into the old lady living in the house on the corner with all the cats because she never found her true love and pretends stoically that she likes living alone. Sounded pretty pathetic to me. More like sour grapes than true psychological growth.

And indeed, our culture seems to reinforce the idea that a woman being "complete unto herself" is not a good goal to strive for.

One of the most prevalent (and perhaps dangerous) examples of this dismissal of the virgin archetype is in the movie Jerry Maguire, where, in the most famous scene, the Tom Cruise character famously tells his love interest that "you complete me." Cue big music swell and requisite screen kiss and roll credits -- we're left with the clear message: to be a complete person requires finding an external "someone else" to live happily ever after with -- which in turn suggests fairly explicitly that no one, male or female, can be complete without another person.

This speech, by itself, suggests that the concept of the virgin goddess (or god) is socially unacceptable in our culture -- something to be avoided and "fixed," not something to strive for.

Jerry Maguire is, of course, only one particularly explicit example of a widespread cultural expectation that we need someone outside of ourselves to "complete" us or our lives won't be worth living. Many of the most powerful illustrations of this cultural expectation come from fairy tales. Virtually every well-known fairytale ends with the princess marrying the prince and living "happily ever after."

Feminists rightly criticize these fairy tales for putting forward the idea that a woman needs a man to be complete -- and indeed, as these stories are popularly interpreted in our culture, they do seem to send the message that if we want to "live happily ever after," we better get busy and find us a prince (or princess). Otherwise, well, our future as the old lady with the cats awaits...

I believe that a big part of the reason why building a DD relationship is so challenging is precisely because women in particular often come to the relationship expecting that the other person, through assuming the dominant role in a DD relationship, will "complete us."

Many of us want the "strong, discerning masculine partner" referenced in the introductory quote to come from our real-life partner, rather than from our own psyches. As submissive woman, many of us plan to act out the one-dimensional feminine energy of submission, and expect our partners to act out the one-dimensional masculine role of dominance. Together, we complete each other (or so goes our brilliant plan!).

Of course, everyone who falls into this trap, male or female, has their own reasons for wanting an external person to provide the other half of the masculine/feminine dynamic. I'm certainly no exception.

For me, I suspect the appeal of the "Jerry Maguire"/happy-ever-after model is, at least in part, that it feels like a way to avoid facing my fear of being seen as overly masculine. Pushing my masculine impulses off onto my partner by asking him to dominate me in such a dramatic way seemed like a clever way to avoid admitting how afraid I was of exploring those masculine impulses, and thereby becoming too much of a "man" (by that, read sexually undesirable/repulsive to my partner).

But of course, what we really do when we put the responsibility for expressing our masculine side onto a partner is avoid responsibility for exploring our own psyches. In my case, I was asking someone else to express a part of myself that I've been afraid to express and explore on my own -- an act of cowardice, avoidance and entitlement that almost destroyed the relationship.

Asking someone else to do what I wasn't willing to do myself is never a recipe for a healthy dynamic between two people. And ultimately, I resented my own attempts to squelch a vital part of myself, and my partner resented being asked to carry a burden that he should never have been asked to carry.

The reality is that we are wrong to expect someone external to ourselves-- no matter how much he loves us-- to balance our internal psychic scales by providing masculine energy that we need to provide for ourselves. By dishonoring the "virgin goddess," we dishonor the relationship -- and more importantly, we dishonor ourselves.

Women aren't the only ones subject to this potential pitfall. We have probably all seen or experienced examples of hyper-alpha males who want to dominate women largely to avoid facing their own insecurities about exploring their inner feminine natures (read so-called "weaknesses"). These are the men that seem like perfect DD partners at first because they take to it so naturally, and only later are revealed to be the ones who abuse the power that we give them.

By expecting another person to provide the masculine (or feminine) energy in our lives, we risk dooming ourselves and the relationship to being fundamentally unsatisfying and incomplete, and potentially driving away our partner with unrealistic expectations and demands that no one outside of ourselves can or should be expected to fill.

By relying on an external person to articulate our inner masculine (or feminine) we are looking for psychological wholeness and integration outside of ourselves -- which is the very definition of co-dependence and dysfunction. We are walking around half a person, completely reliant on someone else to provide what we need to provide for ourselves to feel completed, healthy and whole. And feeling angry, resentful and betrayed when our partner isn't able to do for us what we ought to be doing for ourselves.

I suspect that for a DD relationship to really thrive and become the rich, archetypally fulfilling experience that many of us sense on a gut level it can be, both parties must release their expectation that the other person will fill in the missing piece of their psyche and "balance" their internal psyches with external actions.

Getting (or giving) a good spanking is a powerful, spiritual experience -- but if it's our way of getting our partner to express our inner masculine (feminine) for us and avoiding our responsibility to find this balance internally, it's fundamentally dysfunctional no matter how good it feels in the moment.

I suggest, therefore, that a healthy, sustainable DD relationship requires that women who long for submission with their mates may also need to actively work on exploring their masculine side (ideally outside of the relationship in a career or a hobby -- see "Going to Extremes"). And equally, that men who truly seek to explore the spiritual power of fulfilling their masculine side in a relationship with a submissive woman may find they're more able to get in touch with their true, healthy masculine by exploring their feminine side as well (again, perhaps outside of the relationship through volunteer work or other nurturing activities).

And so we come back to the idea of the virgin goddess, fairy tales and Jerry Maguire. I would suggest, then, that these stories are great models for teaching us how to become "complete" -- if we read them differently from the way popular culture often suggests that we read them.

Jungian mythological interpretation tells us that every character in a fairytale is a part of ourselves. (See Iron John, Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth, the writing of Marion Woodman and Bruno Bettelheim, to name some famous examples of this very powerful approach.)

This more self-contained way of interpreting fairy tales suggests that the union of male and female that happens at the end of stories like Cinderella and and Jerry Maguire (which is, of course, a contemporary fairy tale) isn't about an external male hero coming to rescue and "complete" the female. It's dangerous, misleading and dis-empowering to read these stories literally.

Instead, the true healing power of these stories lies in reading them as examples of how the woman (or man) whose various parts are represented in the story might go about finding the internal balance and union of the masculine and feminine parts of their psyche.

When Jerry Maguire and Cinderella are both read this way, they become very healthy models of psychological integration. The male/female characters do in fact "complete" each other in the sense that, just as in the opening quote, our internal feminine requires a healthy internal masculine to be completed and vice a versa.

Our mission as "DD women" then, is to become virgin goddesses by finding our inner Prince Charming and honoring him by "marrying" him (read: integrate him into our psyches), before we attempt to partner with another person in the real world.

Using this model, the dynamic of a DD relationship becomes far more complex than it initially seems when we envision it in our child-like fantasies. Instead of seeing the relationship simplistically as a scale in which she stands on one side as the feminine and he stands on the other side as the masculine, a fully realized DD relationship may require each person to balance their internal masculine and feminine on their own first -- resulting in two balanced people coming together to create a second, richer and more complex kind of secondary balance -- a masculine/feminine balancing a masculine/feminine in whatever combination works for each unique relationship.

In short, I suspect that a long-term healthy DD relationship (and more broadly, perhaps any relationship) requires that a woman (or man) recognize the importance of becoming a virgin goddess (or god) -- complete unto herself (or himself) balancing and honoring her/his own internal masculine and feminine, before stepping into this complex and emotionally fragile dynamic with another person.

New book: How to Get the Spanking You Want

2009-05-20T14:08:00.015-06:00

...asking for it, getting it & making it better.... the first e-book by Vivian....

Here's how it all happened...

Several months ago, I was contacted by the people over at Variant Books, (they're a brand-new e-book imprint from a publishing company). Apparently, they're fans of The Disciplined Feminist and asked me if I'd consider writing a book for them.

At first, I thought the idea was crazy. I do enjoy writing about the subject of DD and spanking, but had never really considered doing an e-book about it -- and wasn't even sure I had anything "bookworthy" to say that I hadn't said already here on the blog.

Then I gave some thought to my life history on this subject, much of which I haven't shared with readers of the blog since it didn't directly relate to the articles I've posted.

But when I actually thought back, I realized I'd spent over 23 years (yikes!) negotiating my way through various types of spanking and DD relationships -- at all ages and life stages and with partners at all ages and life stages. I've spent the last ten years of my "real life" doing professional-level academic research on the psychology of gender roles and archetypes for various books, films, academic studies and other projects. Add in the three years during this blog where, largely because of that research and because of the particularly challenging relationship I have with my current partner I've questioned many of the assumptions that I and others have made about this very unique lifestyle we've chosen, and I started to think maybe I did have something valuable to say.

Plus, given the post-election lull and my strong desire not to have do anything that requires leaving my little mountain hideaway, and my current ambivalence about jumping back into the political fray, and the issue that we've discussing on the blog about the importance of career-related work that's separate from my partner, I thought, why not give the book idea a whirl?

I also thought about the emails I get virtually every week from people asking me for spanking advice. And since many of you know first-hand how slow I am at answering emails (largely because my email time is so limited and my little dial-up connection is so slow), I thought perhaps writing this book would be a great way to answer some of those emails in a more complete and accessible way.

So when asked me for book topic suggestions, I immediately thought of "How to Get the Spanking You Want." Of all the emails I get asking for advice, well over half of them are from women (and some men) who want their husband or boyfriend to spank them, but don't know how to ask, and this question seems to pop up a lot on spanking and DD forums, too.

What's more, when I did a search online for the best advice out there for people who want their partners to spank them, I was actually pretty horrified at what I found. A lot of it seemed pretty flaky, and even worse, dangerous and likely to backfire on the unsuspecting sub who tries it!

Well, when all was said and done, we wound up with a contract for a two-book series. So...

I'm happy to announce the upcoming release of "How to Get the Spanking You Want: The Complete Guide to Asking for it, Getting It & Making It Better," and the companion guide, "How to Give a Spanking: (sub title still under construction)".

"How to Get the Spanking You Want" is available now, and "How to Give a Spanking" will be available June 30. You can get more information and a copy of "How to Give a Spanking" at www.VariantBooks.com/get_spanking.html. (7/3/09: Vivian's updated note: For those of you who have emailed me, I'm a bit behind in turning in the manuscript for the second book, but am working on it and will have it available end of July latest -- and probably earlier than that!)

At any rate, I'm actually very happy with the way the project is turning out. I hope when all is said and done it will be a valuable resource for anyone looking for information on how to initiate a conversation about spanking with a partner.

Stay tuned here for all the latest updates on this strange new venture!

Warmest,
Viv

PS -- And for those of you who are wondering, the answer is, no, that's not me on the cover... :-)

UPDATE June 7, 2009:

You can read an excerpt of "How to Get the Spanking You Want" at Uncle Agony, All Things Spanking, Spankoz, and a reader review of the book at Brambleberry Blush blog.

The Courage to Submit: An Unlikely Role Model

2009-04-27T21:59:00.005-06:00

Okay, after several articles exploring all the serious psychology behind DD (domestic discipline) it seems time to lighten things up a bit.

Note that this article will make much more sense if you first CLICK HERE to view the video that inspired it.

Of course, I enjoyed this clip immensely. For starters, it's a rare example of the sort of thing we women who are DD-inclined spend a lot of time fantasizing about: a real-life example of a young, attractive woman being spanked by a nurturing but stern older man.

But beyond the erotic power of this video being about a real person in a real disciplinary situation, this video caught my attention in another, even more compelling, way. The more I watched it, the more I realized that Nancy, the "star" of the video, was in many ways, the person I aspire to be both in life and in DD/disciplinary situations.

For starters, Nancy is attractive and very feminine. She is, we learn, a beauty queen -- Miss Booneville 2008. By definition, an archetype of femininity. That her excuse for her repeated lateness to school involves being a "lady" who needs extra time to get ready further reinforces this archetype. I'm reminded of John F. Kennedy's remark about Jackie's lateness to a social event: "Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself. She takes longer than we do, but then again, she looks better than we do when she's finished." Powerful iconic images of femininity are invoked here. This is a young woman who, consciously or not, taps into many women's most deeply-cherished images of what it means to be female.

Nancy's dilemma re: the extra inconvenience of being female is mirrored sympathetically by Principal Halter, who sympathizes with a smile that "he's spent half of his life waiting for women to get ready." Relieved, Nancy believes she's going to avoid a punishment because she has used her feminine wiles to charm her would-be disciplinarian. This is fantasy fulfillment, too, of course -- we often long for our disciplinarian to understand and forgive us our transgression because we are so charming, rather than holding us accountable.

But deep down, most of us also realize that if we were to be forgiven without punishment, a big part of us would feel let down, unsafe, incomplete. Justice must be done for us to feel balanced. Nancy herself acknowledges with a small smile that even though half the student body is female, presumably with the same necessity to get ready that she has, "they're not late." She is admitting here her need for justice and fairness. In an indirect way, she is asking to be punished and admitting that she deserves it.

It's clear that Nancy is nervous about what's to come, of course. Her body language and nervous smiles and winces make it fairly clear that she knows she's not going to get out of being punished. And yet when Principal Halter offers her the choice of a paddling or a half day's detention, she keeps her cool. Instead of flinching, panicking or begging for mercy, she does something that I, at least, found surprisingly courageous and adventurous for a 16-year old teenage beauty queen facing what is apparently her first paddling. She asks to see the paddle.

How brave, how empowered this is! How inspirational, really, for Nancy to keep her cool in this most embarrassing situation enough to have the presence of mind to inspect the implement of her humiliation before making her decision. This is real-life girl power in action. It's clear that Principal Halter is also taken aback and perhaps even impressed by her chutzpah. His smile as he tells her to "have at it" and indicates the paddle on his desk seems to reflect at least a little admiration.

But Nancy doesn't just "see" the paddle. She picks it up and tests its weight, obviously imagining how it will feel on her bottom. Then she experimentally swings it in a mock swat. In picking up the paddle and swinging it, she becomes an active, rather than a passive, participant in her punishment. In this moment, she empowers herself and shifts from victim to willing partner in her punishment.

"Wow," she says as she holds the paddle, "I actually have your paddle in my hands." she jokes, with apparent genuine delight. Despite the seriousness of the situation, she finds humor and the self-confidence to see the fun of the situation. As Principal Halter laughs, she is able to share a moment of companionship with her "executioner." To take matters further, she is even able to come up with a pun: "This is disciplinary action," she says as she swings the paddle. Here is a girl who can laugh as she faces the chopping block - a modern heroine in the spirit of Mary of Scots telling her executioner that she hopes he has good aim.

While still holding the paddle, Nancy announces that she will take the three swats and the half day of detention to "get it over with." That she does this while still holding the paddle feels especially empowered -- she makes her decision while holding the symbol of that decision -- claiming, in a sense, her pain. And notice the confidence with which she makes that choice. She never, not once, tries to negotiate for more leniency or plead her way out of her punishment.

In addition, I was struck by the clear, confident way in which she says potentially embarrassing words like "paddle" or "three licks." She doesn't seem to feel there's anything shameful and degrading about discussing this subject. Instead, the whole attitude surrounding being paddled feels matter-of-fact and respectful.

This is perhaps an issue unique to me, but even after years of discussing these things with my partner and writing about them on the blog, I still have difficulty saying words like "paddle," "discipline," "punishment" and "swats" out loud, feeling that somehow in doing so, I am debasing myself. This reluctance is a source of frustration to both myself and my partner, because it's difficult to have an actual, adult conversation about what I need and want without an awful lot of hesitation and stuttering and vague euphemisms. But here is a 16-year old girl who can say these words without hesitation or apparent shame. (Later on, she adds with equal confidence that she'll just have to "take her punishment.")

Having been told that she has until Friday to decide for sure whether she'll choose the paddle or a full day of detention, Nancy smiles and genuinely, even happily says, "thank you" to the principal for offering her the choice as to how she wants to be disciplined. There doesn't seem to be any irony or petulance in her thank you. She seems genuinely grateful and appreciative of his time and energy in meting out punishment. And she seems more relaxed and confident on her way out the door than she did on her way in -- despite the fact that she's facing a certain punishment.

Friday comes, and Nancy is back along with about six other students to receive her paddling. Although she smiles nervously upon entering the office and it's clear she's scared, she is consistently courageous and in charge of her own decision to take the swats. Even when Principal Halter gives her another chance to get out of it, she doesn't back out, although the look on her face suggests clearly that she's scared. And indeed, she does express doubt as to the wisdom of her decision.

Nancy is the only girl to have selected a paddling instead of day-long detention. Waiting outside the principal's office along with the boys for her turn to be paddled, she is now in a situation where she will be pressured to act as courageously as the boys who are in for the same punishment. To get over her fear, she seems to find strength in her femininity. In an alternate take from the same documentary (CLICK HERE TO SEE IT), she offers comfort and support to a boy also waiting to be paddled -- putting her own fears aside to offer nurturing to him.

When Principal Halter opens the door and asks her if she's ready, she pauses a moment to gather her courage and silently enters the office -- the picture of courage in the face of doubt, fear and impending pain and embarrassment. Nancy maintains her dignity and self-respect in a situation in which one might expect anyone, much less a 16-year old girl who's never been paddled before, to fall apart completely.

Once Nancy enters the principal's office, we don't see what happens, but we get to hear the swats being administered. Although the swats sound pretty severe, other than a small "ouch," she takes her punishment bravely and apparently obediently.

Walking out of the office after her paddling, Nancy even manages a small smile for the camera. I can't help but feel that while this is partly to cover her embarrassment, there's also an element here of pride in her having overcome her fears and going through with the paddling -- one of the few kids in the clip with the courage to do so.

Although we do see her rubbing her bottom as she walks away, Nancy tells the interviewer that the paddling wasn't as bad as she thought it would be She has discovered that the fear of the unknown is worse than the actual object of fear itself.

Most importantly, throughout the clip, it seems clear to me that Nancy in no way associates submitting to justly-earned punishment with a loss of self-respect or self-worth. In fact, it seems the opposite is true -- in submitting to discipline with dignity and courage, she has affirmed her self-worth and her identity as someone who can survive an embarrassing or painful situation and come out stronger on the other side.

Nancy is, for me, the model of how to take a punishment and come out the other side a stronger, better, more attractive and feminine person than she was before. Her example is one that I would like to keep in mind and emulate in similar situations in my own life -- both literally when facing a spanking, and throughout my life when facing difficult or embarrassing situations.

PS -- By the way, it probably shouldn't go without saying that Principal Halter does a terrific job in his role as disciplinarian. He's kind, sympathetic and nurturing -- but it's also clear from the get-go that there's no way he's going to let her out of her punishment or give her less than he feels she's got coming. And while this could be a very humiliating experience for Nancy, he consistently shows her with respect by including her as a partner in her own punishment rather than treating her like a passive victim. His matter-of-fact approach to inflicting the paddling, I suspect, does much to contribute to Nancy's ability to come out of the experience more empowered than when she went in.

SPECIAL NOTE: If anyone out there has the capacity to download and save the file for this video so I can link to it internally on this blog rather than relying on Photobucket to keep the link up, I'd appreciate it. I know there are programs out there that can do this, but they're too large for my little dial-up connection to download!

Going to Extremes: An Alternative Perspective on Women, DD & Work

2009-04-24T23:12:00.011-06:00

Several months back, I wrote an article suggesting the not-uncontroversial opinion that women who desire to explore their feminine side may be better off avoiding male-dominated activities and career fields. ("Does DD Work at Work?") If we don't want men in the "blood hut," the argument goes, maybe we should stay away from the dragon hunt. The article suggests that, generally speaking, a woman participating in male-dominated activities may be asking for trouble in a relationship, because doing so violates male-female archetypes and gender roles to the point where a relationship -- particularly a traditional DD (domestic discipline) relationship is impossible to sustain.

What follows is a radically contradictory perspective on the whole "women on the dragon hunt" issue. (As a woman, I categorically reserve the right to change my mind...)

For the last few months, I've been inviting myself along on the dragon hunt by participating in intense martial arts training. I've done this in an effort to explore further my growing theory, touched on in the last article, that to be soft and feminine, a woman may be need to first create a foundation of strength. ("If DD Is the Glue, Do the Parts Really Fit Revisited") Though the article in question was specifically about financial strength, I've often found that to test a theory, it's good to start by taking it literally. So off I went to "get strong" in the most literal sense of the word.

Getting strong literally and physically was new to me. While I have in the past engaged in intense, hyper-masculine mental activity by working as a political consultant, doing anything physically intense with my body has been radically new territory for me.

I've always been the sort of person who felt that gyms and exercise of any kind were the work of the devil and I wanted no part of it. Furthermore, I have always seen those physical activities as unfeminine and therefore not something I wanted to engage in. (I actually still believe this, but read on for why engaging in unfeminine activities might be the easiest way to get feminine.)

"Getting strong" in the literal sense, then, has involved spending the past four months engaging in serious, hard-core daily weight training and aerobic conditioning, along with daily martial arts training emphasizing intense, real-world boxing and streetfighting techniques.

The martial arts training I've been doing is heavy on the hand-to-hand combat. Most of the people I've been training with are men in their 20s who train seriously for martial arts competitions. To hold my own in this environment (and I'm proud to say that I am holding my own and more) requires pushing myself to new levels of physical and emotional toughness far beyond what I've ever done before. This extreme level of "playing with the boys" requires getting (literally) dirty and sweaty and doing lots of very "unfeminine" things in a very unfeminine, unforgiving environment. In short, it's participating in the dragon hunt on a very primal level.

Recently, I've noticed that the more I push myself to express the masculine part of my nature during training -- ie, the physical and emotional strength required to keep up with the men, the need to "play hurt" and not show any weakness, etc. -- the more feminine, submissive and sensual I feel when I'm finished.

When I'm paired with a sparring partner who challenges me to tap deeply into that masculine power, I leave feeling strong and energized, but also with an intense desire/need to express the DD/submissive side of my personality. I feel very similar to the way I feel after a particularly effective spanking.

On the other hand, when I train with a weaker (usually female) partner who does not physically or emotionally challenge me to dig into my inner masculine, I leave the training session feeling weak, frustrated, angry and vulnerable in an unpleasant way -- exactly the way I feel when a spanking doesn't "work."

In short, the more I allow my inner masculine to express itself freely and without judgment or reservation, the more I seem to be able to tap into my inner feminine and my desire to be soft, vulnerable and submissive. This reaction at first seemed paradoxical to me -- but given that virtually everything about DD seems to be in one way or the other paradoxical, I figured I must be onto something.

I'm now wondering if I've been doing it all backwards when it comes to the struggle to balance my desire to be feminine and to experience the benefits of DD with my partner in private vs. my need to be independent and assertive in my career.

A bit of backstory, for those just tuning in: As most of you know by now, I also work in politics as a communications strategist. Politics, like martial arts training, is an intense, testosterone-driven environment, albeit the less literal and more metaphorical kind. My DD partner also works with me as a political consultant, and as a result, I'm constantly feeling the need to hold back my masculine, aggressive tendencies in an effort to balance my desire to be feminine in the relationship with the need to play hard-ball with the political boys.

What winds up happening, though, is that I get trapped in what's essentially a watered-down version of both. Perhaps a bit like Hillary during her campaign, I feel caught in the worst of both -- unable to be soft and feminine for fear of being eaten alive by political colleagues, and unable to be as aggressive as I feel I need to be for fear of damaging my private relationship with my partner. So instead, I'm perpetually trapped in the androgynous blank pantsuit that is neither male nor female, and thus disappointing and frustrating to both.

But given my recent experiences playing hard with the boys at martial arts, I wonder now if the answer to balancing these two conflicting needs/desires is to push to the extreme in one area in order to create a corresponding need to express the other -- to push more towards the dominant/masculine in the appropriate areas of my life in order to create the opposite, submissive/feminine impulse in my private life.

Those of you who have experienced DD firsthand know, of course, that the DD lifestyle is inherently an extreme expression of archetypes and gender roles. By its very nature, DD calls for an exaggerated expression of dominance and submission far beyond what's considered culturally acceptable or "normal" in current Western culture. But to use the analogy of a scale, an extreme weight on one side requires an extreme weight on the other to balance it. Without equal "extremeness" on either side, the scales aren't balanced, the center cannot hold -- the relationship falters. Perhaps.

Of course, there are some couples for whom DD seems to work as a long-term dynamic without an extreme expression of masculine energy on her part to balance the scales. But for those of us women who continue to struggle to find a way to be comfortable in a DD relationship without feeling correspondingly unbalanced and powerless -- and I know from your comments that there are many of us out there -- finding a safe outlet for our inner masculine away from the relationship may be part of the solution.

Perhaps the answer for those of us who struggle to submit in private is to find ways to go to the other extreme outside of the relationship. For some of us, that might be through our careers, if we work in hyper-aggressive, male-dominated fields. For others, it might mean exploring the limits of physical strength, as in martial arts training or other physically demanding sports like soccer or basketball in which it's appropriate to give our masculine energy free rein. For others, it might mean aggressive "Code Pink"-style involvement in activist politics -- confronting opponents at rallies, in debates, etc. It could mean building a house with Habitat for Humanity or learning how to repair a car engine. And there are no doubt still other examples.

This balancing of extremes theory would not be inconsistent with the best thinking on archetypes and gender roles. Many of you are probably already thinking about how Carl Jung, the father of archetypes as a model for personality, suggested that becoming a healthy individual requires the balancing of these conflicting internal masculine and feminine archetypes. And many of you have commented on prior posts about the need for this balance.

It would make sense, then, from a Jungian perspective, that an extreme expression of the inner masculine would motivate the need for an extreme expression of the inner feminine. Perhaps that's why my initial attempts at DD quickly went awry (as apparently do so many other women's similar attempts) -- they created in me an extreme desire to express my inner masculine, which I quickly squelched for fear of being unfeminine, which created an imbalance that toppled the whole dynamic.

Perhaps the surge of rebellion that many women who participate in the DD experience isn't a rejection of DD as a lifestyle, but merely our inner masculine demanding balance.

And perhaps the situation is then made even worse when we assume that we need to find that balance within the relationship, instead of outside of it.

Men, of course, are often way ahead of women in this regard. The dominant,
successful alpha male who sees a dominatrix in private (separately from his work life) is so common as to be a cliche. But the aggressive, achievement-oriented career woman who allows herself to submit in her personal life -- well, the struggle to get there is what this blog's all about.

On a personal note, this new information brings up provocative questions about my own situation with regard to my partner and my political career:

If I hadn't held back and second-guessed with regard to the political work, if I had allowed myself to play as hard as I do during the martial arts training, would I have experienced the same corresponding desire to be soft and feminine that I experience now? Or would the addition of my partner into the mix change the dynamic so much that I wouldn't have been able to let my inner masculine out to play as aggressively as I can when he's not involved?

Would it even be possible to play that hard with my partner without turning him off by the masculinity I'd be demonstrating? Could a man engage with a woman in combat, masculine to masculine -- and still be able to respond to her as a feminine woman when the battle is over? Or does the expression of a woman's inner masculine have to, by definition, be separate from any interaction with her partner?

These questions I don't yet have good answers for, but of course, this whole Disciplined Feminist experiment is a work-in-progress...

If DD Is The Glue Do the Parts Really Fit -- Revisited

2009-03-06T12:32:00.013-07:00

Thank you to all of you who have emailed and posted comments during the past few months!

In the (relative) peace following the election cycle, I took the winter off to work on a new art series and a new book on strategic political communication, and with all that going on, didn't realize until recently that I hadn't posted a new article since October!

Part of the delay has been a preoccupation with other projects. Part of it has been that I try only to post when I have something to share that might be of interest, and I haven't felt like I had any insights relevant to The Disciplined Feminist for quite awhile. Now perhaps I do.

After a year spent trying with mixed success to live together in a more traditional arrangement, my partner has moved back to the city to pursue career opportunities available to him there, and I'm still out here in my beautiful mountain hideaway working on my various projects. Our DD relationship is suspended indefinitely while we try to work on the larger issues that need resolving between us. I still have hopes that we will be able to get past our current difficulties, but the future between us remains uncertain.

And while I don't believe that DD is responsible for the problems between us, neither do I believe, as I once did, that DD is the solution to those problems. That's not to say that I don't believe DD is a powerful and effective lifestyle choice. Only that I'm starting to realize that, at least for my partner and myself, it's not the "fix" that makes things better. It's the reward that comes from having made things better in other ways.

In a prior article, written during the time when DD was working so well for us, I wrote that I believed that DD could serve as a way of building trust and communication between two people when all else has failed. (see "If DD Is the Glue, Do the Parts Really Fit?", Jan 07).

Given the experiences of the past year, however, I'm no longer convinced it's true that DD can "save" a troubled relationship -- at least not long-term.

Recent experiences have largely convinced me that for DD to work, it must be built on an existing foundation of love, trust and mutual respect. I now suspect that as wonderful as DD is as a lifestyle, it can't create love, trust and mutual respect if those things aren't already present in the relationship. DD can help, perhaps, to resolve minor day to day glitches in communication, adjust minor power imbalances and bring increased intimacy to a relationship already based on love and trust, but it can't fix the larger problems that lurk beneath the surface.

In short, I now suspect that while DD can be the icing on the relationship cake -- the tool that smooths over the rough spots and takes a good relationship to a whole new and richer level -- it can't be the "glue" that holds the relationship together, as I once thought.

In retrospect, it's easy to see the error in my earlier cause & effect reasoning. Just as scientists often draw false conclusions by failing to adequately screen for external causes in their results, I look back to when things were going so well between my partner and me and see that what made everything click into place for us was not DD, but a series of events that occurred just before we started our DD relationship. I mistakenly believed that it was the DD that made everything work for us. It was actually the series of circumstances beforehand that made the relationship work -- which in turn allowed DD to work.

When I first moved out to my beautiful mountain retreat, it was largely because my relationship with my partner had fallen apart. Indeed, we were in much the same situation we're in now -- hurting, angry, barely able to sustain a conversation without one or the other of us getting angry and upset and hanging up the phone. Wondering how on earth to untangle the complex web of professional, financial, emotional and psychological ties that bound us together, so that we could go our separate ways without ruining each other's futures -- but still loving each other so much that neither of us was willing to end it completely.

So I left to give both of us some much-needed space. And in leaving, I pursued my professional path and he pursued his. As a result of this estrangement and separation, we became financially independent from one another. After being dependent on him to create professional opportunities that paid the bills, I got my confidence back that I could take care of myself and create those opportunities without his help. He, in turn, felt less pressure to create opportunities for me, and thus more able to focus on the emotional, nurturing, erotic parts of our relationship. We fell back in love -- more so than we'd ever been before. We talked about marriage, about sharing a home. I once again brought up the subject of DD. He agreed. Paradise ensued. (I started the blog to share my new-found wisdom about how to have the perfect relationship.) I felt like the luckiest woman in the world.

And then we decided to take the DD part of our relationship one step further. We both longed for an even more traditional, archetypal dynamic between us and wanted to make that happen.

Our arrangement was that I'd quit my political career and work on the more feminine pursuit of art, ceding the alpha power position entirely to him. I'd be the arty feminine domestic goddess who was able to pursue my artistic passions without the pressure of having to make money at it. He'd be out in the world, fighting the dragons, affirming his own archetype of provider and protector. It would be bliss -- the recipe for a perfect relationship.

Let's be clear here -- working for a living is not something I have ever enjoyed. Even when I enjoy the work itself, I deeply dislike the pressure of having to do that work to pay the bills. As such, I have always fantasized about having a successful man swoop me up, carry me away to his castle and take care of all the money issues for me while I did whatever I wanted to with my life. It's the Cinderella fantasy. (And I don't for one moment believe I'm the only "modern" woman who still entertains it!)

So we moved in together and I bowed out of one of the most interesting and dynamic election cycles in our history to focus full-time on my new art career and on being a nurturing caretaker to an alpha male. He worked around the clock, paid the bills and slew (slayed?) the dragons.

During that year, my art career took off -- I had solo solo shows in major venues, reviews of my work in prestigious arts publications, won national competitions. In short, I had all the success I could have dreamed of in my first year as a serious artist.

But art doesn't pay the bills. For all my success, the more I worked to build my art career, the more financially dependent on him I became. The more dependent I became, the more resentful both of us were at the power imbalance. I resented not having a dollar to call my own. He resented that I wasn't contributing financially. Not to mention that the more financially dependent I was on him, the less able he was to pursue his own career aspirations.

Things deteriorated between us very quickly, until we were back to the way things were before we started DD -- on the brink of falling apart. This time, he's the one who moved away -- back to the city to focus on his career. I stayed up here in the mountains, not sure what to do. Things got so bad and so scary between us that in the last few months, I've woken up to the reality that I need a way to take care of myself financially in case everything falls apart and I'm left with no way to pay the bills.

So I've started working on my political career again, in addition to my art. And as I create new financial opportunities that will once again make me financially independent, things are getting better between my partner and me again, albeit very slowly. He calls me again just to say hi, I send him sexy emails. We're back to the point where I'm once again dreaming of a future with him, and a revival of us DD relationship. Not there yet, but I have hope again.

Way back when, when we started DD, I assumed that it was the DD that made everything so magical between us. But looking back, I wonder now if perhaps my analysis skipped a step.

It seems that what makes our relationship work isn't DD per se, but rather our individual financial independence, which in turn makes each of us feel safe and confident enough with ourselves to be able to engage in a healthy DD relationship. In short, if he's paying the bills, neither of us is happy, and DD along with everything else falls apart. If we're both doing our share to contribute, both of us are happy with each other -- the relationship -- and DD -- works.

I had hoped that the traditional female role of nurturing my mate and creating a home would be sufficient contribution to the relationship to compensate for not bringing in any money. Perhaps for some people, it's enough. It may be that I myself don't really, in my heart of hearts, value traditional feminine labor enough to believe it's enough of a contribution to offset not making money. Or perhaps my partner doesn't value it enough, either. What I do know is that if I don't have my own money, our relationship doesn't work. If I have my own money, it does.

Oddly enough, the conditions required for a traditional dominant-submissive power dynamic between us seem to be that I break archetypal tradition and pay my own way. I'm not sure how to reconcile my experiential reality with my belief that relationships do better when traditional sex roles and archetypes are honored. It seems that in order to have a traditional relationship, I have to take on some un-traditional sex roles. A paradox.

But then again, everything else about DD is a paradox -- why shouldn't this be?

What a Woman Wants

2008-10-26T12:30:00.015-06:00

There is an ancient Arthurian myth which seeks to answer the question in the title of this post -- what does a woman want. (To read the full text of the story, click here.)

The summary of the myth is that in order to save his life, a knight must within a year's time give a wisewoman the answer to the question, what does a woman want? The knight searches far and wide and asks everyone he meets for the answer. Ultimately, the answer he comes up with for the wisewoman is that what a woman wants above all is Sovereignty. In the myth, this answer is correct, the knight's life is spared and the wisewoman turns into a beautiful young woman whom he marries.

It's worth noting that this legend dates back to at least the 13th century. Even during an era when women were essentially property with no rights at all, the popular culture of storytelling acknowledged that sovereignty was a primary need in a woman's life.

Since myth is generally seen as roadmap into our personal consciousness, the general consensus is that the sovereignty in the story refers not to institutional or governmental power, but to personal sovereignty. That what a woman wants most of all is the right to make her own decisions, feel her own feelings and create her own life out of her own heart's desire. This is Virginia Woolf's Room of Her Own, dated 500 years earlier.

But what if part of a woman's heart's desire is to submit to another? What if she wants the sovereignty of the story, but also wants the comfort, security and feminine experience of submission?

As I've struggled over the past few months with the problems my partner and I are having incorporating domestic discipline (DD) into our relationship, I have thought often about this particular myth and what it means in my own life. My primary need for sovereignty is a big stumbling block for me in making DD work, as it clearly is for many, if not most, modern women drawn to the DD lifestyle.

I've written at length in prior posts about how many in our culture are still children functioning as adults, and I wonder if the issue of sovereignty vs. submission goes right to the heart of this cultural problem.

We live in a culture which, too often, encourages us to think in terms of having it all -- of being entitled to it all (whatever "it" is) without pointing out that there's a price to pay for everything we get. Corporations and Madison Avenue tell us we "deserve" a new car, we've "earned" an iPhone, we're "entitled" to premium cable service. They don't tell us that the price for these things is environmental devastation, war, exploitation of third world countries and, closer to home, stress, overwork, estrangement from our families and credit card debt.

The corporate culture, with its profit-at-all-costs imperative, promotes this attitude of have-in-all entitlement, of course, to sell product -- and in the true spirit of corporate America, they do it without regard to the societal chaos it causes.

As a result, we don't seem willing to accept that we can't have it all. We expect that we can have the super-charged career, raise a family and still have time for personal development and recreation. We expect that we can be parents without having to take on the responsibilities and sacrifices required to do so responsibly ("why should I have to stop going to the movies just because I have a screaming four year old"). We want the career opportunity, but resent being asked to work overtime or give above and beyond to impress those above us on the ladder ("Can you believe my boss actually asked me to work late on this project? Geesh."). And on and on it goes.

So as I struggle with my desire to have both sovereignty and submission -- or perhaps better put, my stubborn and steadfast refusal to give up any of my personal sovereignty to get something that I say I want so much -- I wonder if my insistence on having both is an example of me being a member of our entitlement culture. I wonder if I'm being the willful, immature six-year-old who doesn't understand that she can't have everything she sees at the toy store and ice cream on the way home, too.

On the other hand, if the language of myth is to be believed, sovereignty isn't so much a desire as it is a requirement for human fulfillment. And if other myths, equally old and powerful, are to be believed, a woman's desire to submit is a requirement for female fulfillment (see "Feminism: The Power of Giving Way"). Is it possible that to be a fulfilled woman requires two apparently contradictory and incompatible things -- sovereignty and submission. And that our attempts to reconcile two apparently irreconcilable conditions is what's driving women in our culture slowly into depression, dysfunction and despair?

I know it's doing that to me in spades. In my struggle to have everything I feel I need, I am caught between the proverbial irresistible force and immovable object, between two imperatives equally strong, neither of which I feel I can be a complete person without. Is it really possible to genuinely submit to another while still maintaining my right to make decisions about my own life? Do I really have to choose between being feminine and being a complete human being, and is it even possible for a woman to be one without the other?

As is often the case, however, the answer may lie in the question. Perhaps my sovereignty lies in making the choice to submit, rather than having that choice forced upon me. And perhaps losing part of my sovereignty is a necessary consequence of the choice I've made to submit in the first place. A difficult and terrible choice, but a choice nonetheless. And a choice that's been hard-won over the past few decades by those who have fought courageously for women's rights.

After all, unlike during other eras, no one is forcing me into DD. For that matter, no one is forcing me into a relationship. If I really want pure sovereignty over my life, I could choose to live alone and be accountable to no one -- a choice that women in the past didn't have when they were forced to marry, forced to stay at home, and forced to submit to their husbands and fathers.

The reaction to this forced femininity/submission in the '70s was equally un-empowered. Despite popular perceptions to the contrary, '70s and '80s feminism was no better at giving women choices. It denied women sovereignty as much as the old ways did.

Modern feminism forced women by virtue of popular pressure to act like men, to work in jobs as to do, to look like men and wear their clothes, to reject traditional roles of mother, wife and lover of men, to eshew the trappings of submission and domesticity.

This forced "liberation" is no more sovereign than the original enslavement of women. We're still enslaved, we've just switched masters. I have no more sovereignity following the angry, dogmatic prescripts of contemporary "feminism" than I would have back in the '60s vaccuming in my heels and pearls in a TV sitcom. To put it another way, being a house slave or being a field slave makes little difference -- you're still a slave.

It's true, I think, that what women really want is sovereignty, and we still don't have it, we're still by and large miserable and confused about what it means to be a woman, and still struggling to make our relationships with men -- DD or not -- be what we feel intuitively they should and could be.

Is it possible that all of our struggle is because we don't realize that our power is in having gained the right to choose to surrender and the right to choose to pay the price that such surrender requires?

It's a reality that any relationship -- DD or no -- requires a certain amount of surrender and loss of sovereignty. We can't be in a relationship with someone and not give up the right to make every decision and do everything our way. That DD is a bit farther along on the spectrum than most modern relationships means that the issue of sovereignty -- the amount of surrender required -- is more extreme, and thus issue becomes more prevalent, the cost more apparent. The choice more clear.

As usual, I don't have the answers. And don't claim to. But it's something to consider -- that the right to choose to give away one's sovereignty may in and of itself be a sovereign act.

NOTE: I recently received an email asking for help with regard to the subject of rules. I've tried to answer, but the email bounced back. Please email me back with a valid email address and I'll do my best to help! -Viv

Does DD Work at Work?

2008-06-16T22:38:00.006-06:00

I hope those of you who have been following the torrid, melodramatic story of my partner's and my experiences with DD (Domestic Discipline) will forgive if I diverge from the main storyline of how we're doing overall and follow a tangent in this article. I realize I'm leaving off the main narrative at a particularly messy point, but quite frankly I have no idea how we're doing overall and thus I don't have anything new or useful to add on the larger issue just now anyway. Rest assured the moment I acquire any wisdom on the larger issues from the last post, I will share it post hence! Meanwhile...

This article addresses instead a topic that's tangentially related to my partner's and my issues: the question of whether or not DD is effective and appropriate in a professional, as opposed to a personal, relationship.

To give some background on my own experiences, my partner and I met as professional colleagues in the political arena -- we both are both high-level political consultants and have worked together in various capacities for almost 10 years in what is arguably one of the most stressful, challenging and ego-bruising environments imaginable. We became romantically involved about halfway through that 10 years.

Extending the DD element of our relationship into our professional lives seemed a natural fit -- something that would make work spicier and more fun for both of us. After all, he's got more political experience than I do and has been a mentor and teacher to me over the years in our mutual work. And he's a natural alpha male at work -- always the leader regardless of the situation. (And of course, discipline at work fueled a lot of old fantasies about stern headmasters and desks...)

But looking back on the troubles we've had over the past year and especially the past few months, I wonder if mixing work and DD wasn't one of the biggest mistakes we've made. Taking the submissive role at home in a sexually-charged male-female dynamic is very different from taking the submissive role in a professional environment -- particularly one as dominated by male energy (meaning aggressive, masculine) and power-driven as politics.

Here's why.

I'm willing to go out on a not very shaky limb here and say that I am good at what I do. (So is he, by the way.) There are skills that we have that virtually no one else on the Democratic side has, and we're well compensated as a result. But to be good at what we do requires a certain dynamic that seems inherently opposed to the dynamic required for DD to work.

The problem with incorporating DD into our professional relationship is that being good at my part of what we do requires a certain amount of, shall we say, Hillary Clinton energy. That is to say, the emphasizing of my more masculine self. To do the work I need to do the way it needs done often requires me to be ruthless, bossy, stubborn and sometimes downright nasty. (I am a big Hillary supporter, by the way, lest anyone take offense. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have those qualities in spades. Believe me, she does. Particularly when on one is looking...)

The reality is that politics at any level is high stakes. You only get one shot at winning and there are very few do-overs. Not to mention that if we want to keep getting work, we have to win. All of which means that if we're at work and I think I'm right and he's wrong, I have a professional obligation to stick to my guns and not back down just because I might get "punished" for it. Careers are at stake -- both ours and the candidate's -- and our clients pay us to be right, regardless of what it does to our personal relationship.

This past campaign was particularly contentious (we lost when we should have won, by the way, which is no coincidence, I think -- our candidate and the country paid the price for our mistake). My partner and I have always had disagreements over strategy, but this is the first time we had them in a context where we also had a DD relationship.

Suddenly, my digging in and not submitting when he insisted he was right became a betrayal of our DD pact. I wasn't being professionally aggressive; I was being disobedient. I wasn't being a hard-core strategist in the trenches fighting for our candidate and doing whatever it takes to win; I was being disrespectful to my mate. He got angry; I got confused and resentful and felt like I was being asked to play with my hands tied behind my back. I felt I wasn't able to do my job without compromising my relationship and couldn't have a good relationship without compromising my job performance.

The "obvious" answer here would be to say, yes, good point. Keep DD out of the workplace. Women should be allowed to interact with men as equals in their professions, however submissive they choose to be at home. But I'm not convinced that's the true answer.

I must say here that (and please don't send me hate mail for the following. I'm just going to delete it anyway...) this is one of the many reasons that I'm not entirely convinced that women belong in the professional world at all, particularly in such masculine-energy professions as politics.

I've written a bit in the past about the need to reclaim our natural archetypal roles in our culture and about how out-of-balance our culture is because we've bought into the "feminist" idea that to have power, women need to act like men (and to be "good guys," men need to act like women). (see "Feminism: The Power of Giving Way")

I (and others -- I'm not making this stuff up out of whole cloth, you know...) have also written about how the male archetypal role includes, first and foremost, taking care of his family by going out everyday and slaying the dragon and bringing it home. In our world, winning a political campaign is about as close to slaying a dragon as a man can get. Other examples are, of course, making a big business deal, launching a new company, winning a sporting event, etc.

As good as it sounds to say that women should be allowed to pursue any professional they choose, I'm not convinced that we women are doing ourselves and the men in our lives a favor by demanding the right to go along on the dragon hunt. It doesn't leave much territory for men to claim for themselves and that doesn't seem any more fair than a man inviting himself into the Blood Hut.

More importantly, going along on the dragon hunt requires sublimating our more natural feminine tendencies. There's not a lot of room for emotions and feelings on a dragon hunt. It's about logic, it's about brutality, it's about conquest. It's where men's archetypal energies are given full rein -- and have every right to be given full rein without them having to stop and soothe our worried brows.

Alternatively, if we go along on the dragon hunt, we could choose to suppress our feminine natures and become as hard and ruthless and brutal as the men are. This is the 70s model of feminism -- suit up and play hard, just like a man would. And a lot of us have done just that. Certainly, that's what I do when I put on the Man Suit to become hard and ruthless in my political work. And the world rewards me for it, just as it rewarded (to some extent) Hillary for doing it. But I believe it's ultimately too high a price for a woman to pay.

I'm not saying I have definitive answers here and I realize I'm treading on dangerous ground when it comes to advocating that women maybe shouldn't have equal access to every profession.

I'm tempted to say that the answer is that we should respect men enough to let them go on the dragon hunt alone, and respect ourselves as women enough to recognize that our power lies elsewhere, far from the dragon cave.

But... what does that mean for a woman who does want to pursue say, politics? How does a woman keep her femininity intact and still excel at her chosen profession? Is it possible? Should it be possible? Or is my even asking the question just more of our culture's collective refusal to grow up and acknowledge that we can't have everything we want just because we want it?

I'm trying to officially "retire" from politics, but even after only a few months, I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it dreadfully -- the rush, the pressure, the thrill of the hunt. I just don't know how to reconcile my desire to hunt the dragon with my deeper need to reclaim my feminine energy and respect a man's right to go on the hunt solo - or even if those things are reconcilable. Is the desire to play hard-ball politics just a product of cultural conditioning (a la Hillary and others) that says that's the role I should aspire to and I'm not being empowered if I don't? Or is it my inner masculine genuinely demanding to be acknowledged?

I don't know.

On Men & Violence

2008-04-08T21:02:00.017-06:00

In my last post, I wrote about a new and fierce resistance that has suddenly cropped up in my willingness to honor our DD covenant. In the intervening time since I last published, this resistance has grown progressively stronger. Despite having experienced first-hand the benefits of DD, many of which I've tried to chronicle here, I am quite simply suddenly terrified of being disciplined, spanked or otherwise.

Since mutual consent must be at the heart of the DD experience, that part of our relationship has been suspended for the past two months (longer actually). This suspension is by unspoken agreement -- my partner, to his credit, senses he's stepping onto volatile and uncertain ground in trying to discipline a terrified and resistant woman. And at the moment, he definitely does not have my consent, much as I wish otherwise.

Tensions in any relationship tend, as we all know, to build up if not dealt with. And now, deprived of the only way we've ever found to work through tensions, we've been fighting more and more -- and the fights are getting uglier and uglier. In fact, we're almost back to where we were when we started this whole DD thing a year or so back -- distant, angry, unable to communicate with each other and utterly unable to trust enough to make the first move on either side.

And so it was that one day last week, we lay in bed trying not to have another blow-up over yet another thing. After about ten minutes of arguing, I had asked him if we could please stop for the night, as I was tired and emotionally drained and to upset to hear what he was saying anyway. I wanted to read my book and calm down for the night, not spend it railing at the man I supposedly love. Rightly or wrongly, my partner chose to ignore this request, and summarily grabbed the book out of my hands and struck me repeatedly across the shoulders with it. (I will skip the awful scene that ensued.)

The following morning, I woke up still upset from what I perceived as a gross violation of our covenant (which included, specifically, that random, non-ritualized violence and particularly above-the-waist violence of any kind was strictly off limits). My bad mood and his resulted in another argument, this one ending up with him dumping a glass of water over my head while I was still in bed and then subjecting me to a tirade of verbal abuse while turning on the cold water when I tried to take a shower.

(NOTE: He, of course, has his own version of these events in which I am more the villain of the piece, but since this is my blog, well, heck, I get to tell the story my way. )

My first instinct, quite honestly, was to get the heck out of there, away from him, to sort things out and figure out how to end the relationship once and for all. There is DD and the honoring of traditional archetypes in a relationship, I reasoned, and then there are demeaning, abusive and violent tendencies which infringe on my self-respect, dignity and right to be safe in my own home. In my opinion, he clearly crossed all of the above boundaries.

His actions over the past week are to me, violations of a sacred trust that couples must enter into when starting a DD relationship. His behavior was, by virtually every contemporary cultural and psychological standard, abusive, inappropriate and unacceptable. And while my partner has apologized, sort of, for the "book incident," he has yet to do so for anything else. If anything, our arguments are continuing to escalate, and each of us continues to dig in our heels about the rightness (righteousness?) of our respective actions.

And here is where the story would end, were this a regular feminist blog. Supportive and indignant readers would write in with hotline numbers and words of encouragement about how to reclaim my sense of power by getting out of an abusive relationship, and I would head for the nearest bookstore or library to load up on books about "Healing from Domestic Abuse." My partner would be relegated forever to the ranks of "abusive men in my past" and there would be -- could be -- no quarter given by myself, my friends or the feminist community for his actions.

But the reality is, as reality often is, a bit more complicated -- especially when you're in a DD relationship and especially when you work as actively with primal archetypal energies as my partner and I do.

A few posts ago, I wrote about the theory that female energy is inherently submissive ("Feminism: The Power of Giving Way"). In this article, I argue passionately that we as women need to be courageous enough to honor our own internal archetypes of submission and "taking in" in a culture that does not allow women to be who they truly are.

But if I'm going to argue that fundamental to the core of feminism is submission than I have to acknowledge that fundamental to the core of masculinity is domination. In modern society, this domination is most often expressed in cut-throat business deals and killer racquetball games at the club. But underneath all of that civilized veneer is the reality that, at its most primal heart, domination is still about one thing -- violence and brute force.

Men are by their very nature beings who express themselves physically (especially when it comes to strong emotions). That's why they play rough, physical sports. That's why they punch each other on the arm when they're happy. That's why, failing all else, they yell obscenities at the TV when their team is losing. These aren't stereotypes -- they're expressions of archetype.

Just as it would take more than a few social movements to "cure" women of the desire to be taken care of and conquered, it would take more than a few "Iron John" workshops to eliminate in men the instinct to clobber over the head anything that feels like a threat to them. We may not like this, but as with many things in our lives, not liking it doesn't make it any less true.

Women, for the most part, don't resort to violence when they're angry. Lacking the physical strength of men, women have learned over time to settle disagreements with the "talking cure." But men, however, dressed up and civilized we may pretend, are still men. Their first instinct when angry, if the men in my life who speak frankly about this are to be believed, is to hit something -- or someone. Again, we may not want to admit this, but that doesn't make it less true.

Now add to the mix a culture that, in its completely necessary and understandable need to stop an epidemic of violence against women, has labeled any and all acts of violence by men not committed while playing a sport as unacceptable. Throw in a generation of Phil Donahue, Alan Alda and Bill Cosby, and you get disaster waiting to happen.

When a generation of women finds their fundamental archetypal energy suppressed, we pull inward to deal with our pain, taking it out on ourselves as is part of the feminine psyche -- with depression, eating disorders, chronic fatigue syndrome, burn out, etc.

When a generation of men finds their fundamental archetypal energy suppressed, they will deal with it as their nature demands -- by striking out, by hitting things, by hitting people. And so paradoxically, despite perhaps the most concentrated and vigorous attempts by women's groups, psychologists, etc. to reduce domestic violence, here it is on the rise again. Surprise, surprise.

But the Victorians could have told us -- what we suppress is driven underground -- and resurfaces in ever more destructive ways.

DD is, of course, meant to be a harmless, safe (and even sexy and fun) discharge of this destructive energy. What better way to avoid incidents like the ones I've described above than to give a man permission to spank a woman to tears when he is angry with her? To tell him that, yes, you ARE at heart a physical, violent being and I -- as a loving woman who wants a strong, honest, whole man -- am giving you the greatest gift in my power to give --permission to express and honor those allegedly "shameful" tendencies in a safe, mutually consensual way (added bonus that these "shameful" tendencies are a huge turn-on...).

To add to the personal narrative here, it must be said that my relationship with my partner has been under a great deal of strain recently. We've just started living together for the first time. He is, for the first time, 1000 miles away from his children and misses them desperately. He is in a key leadership role on a hotly-contested congressional campaign that's getting national attention -- and at the very moment he most needs my help, I tell him that I'm sorry but I can't take the stress of politics anymore and I'm retiring to become a working artist and would he please be supportive of that even though I'm committing arguably the worst sin I can commit in a man's world -- abandoning him on the battlefield when he needs me the most, but hey, don't be mad, honey, okay? More than enough pressure to drive anyone to extreme acts, to be fair.

There are, of course, men who are not driven to violence as my partner clearly is in times of extreme stress -- men who have their violent tendencies much more firmly in hand. But at least for myself (and I stress FOR MYSELF), I can't help but wonder if the price I pay for having the kind of man I want in my life -- someone who is deeply in touch with his primitive instincts and his raw sexuality, someone with an innate "alpha" ability to command others, someone who triggers all my archetypal female desires and instincts -- is that that same man hovers more closely on the knife's edge of real violence than a more "civilized" man would.

Perhaps, at least for us, DD works so well precisely because we walk along that knife's edge -- and collapses in on its own repressed energy when we suppress it, as we've been doing for the past few months due to my resistance.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that had I not been resistant over the past two months, the incidents of random violence would not have occurred. Does this make what he did my fault? Absolutely not. Does that make what he did acceptable? Absolutely not. Am I owed a sincere apology for his having violated my person as he did? I believe so. And do I owe him an apology for having deserted him on the battlefield, when he counted on my support, thus triggering his most primitive responses? I believe that, too. But these, to me, are the easy questions to answer.

The harder questions are the ones we mostly don't ask. If I claim the right to be a woman in times of distress (read emotional, illogical, even hysterical at times, though I hate to use the word), than what right do I have to deny him the right to be a man at those same times under those same pressures? Have we drawn the lines of unacceptable behavior in a relationship so strictly and unforgivingly that we haven't left room for men to be men without accusing them of abusive (hence unforgivable) behavior? Is it perhaps time to revise our "one strike and you're out" approach to domestic violence, acknowledging that however well-intentioned, it actually makes things worse by increasing the pressure in all the wrong places?

I don't know the answers to these questions. What I do know is that modern feminist thought would make this a clear case, and for me at least, this is one case that isn't at all clear.

PS -- Thanks to those of you who've emailed in the last little while. I'm behind on responding, but will try to reply as soon as possible. Also, there's an article in the current issue of "Bitch" magazine written by Jessica Wakeman about domestic discipline. I haven't read it yet, so I don't know how accurate it is or what Jessica's ultimate take on DD is, but my partner and I were interviewed for it awhile ago and she seemed genuinely interested in learning about our weird ways... (For those who are interested in that sort of thing, my pseudonym in the article is apparently "Greta.")

Resistance, Blame and Responsibility

2008-02-07T20:24:00.000-07:00

The scene: I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner, banging pots and pans around. My ever-observant partner asks what's the matter. I don't actually know, mind you, but I decide that whatever it is, it's his fault. So I let him have it -- a long list of whiny, bitchy grievances that I have a bad feeling I'm half-making up as I go along.

My tirade has the, apparently, desired effect. My partner starts to get angry, then, to his credit, does what I've asked him to do. He stops and instead says, "Go get the paddle."

Many women in DD (domestic discipline) relationships will recognize this moment as the single most challenging one in creating a DD lifestyle. I'm angry, I'm sure I'm right. I am Woman, hear me roar and there's no way in hell I'm getting the paddle. I turn my back on him and walk out.

My partner, being either very foolish or very brave depending on one's point of view, follows me. "It's not an optional thing," he reminds me. I say nothing. "That ring's supposed to mean something," he adds, pointing to the silver band that I wear as a symbol of my consent to a DD lifestyle. (see "Ritual and a Little Help with Long-Distance DD").

It only takes a split second -- I'm barely aware of my thought process or my actions. But before I realize what I'm doing, the ring that I've fought so hard for the right to wear, the ring that symbolizes the hard work, trust, tears and heartaches that have gone into creating this fragile thing called a DD relationship, is off my hand and tossed onto the counter.

There is a beat of stunned silence on both of our parts. Neither of us can quite believe I've done what I just did. Taking the ring off is something I've promised -- sworn -- never, ever to do in the heat of an argument. Only upon thoughtful reflection and discussion is that supposed to be on option. I have violated the most sacred trust of our relationship.

Even in my anger, I'm sick to my stomach. As my partner leaves the room, I'm convinced that he's leaving for good. I want to go back inside and tell him I didn't mean it, but the truth is, in that moment, I did, and I can't, in all honesty, take it back. I don't feel ready, willing or able to submit to a spanking now, even if the cost of not submitting is the end of the relationship.

It's over.

But he doesn't leave. And hours later, when I'm exhausted and on the way to bed, we finally talk. Sort of. It takes hours -- tears, yelling, awful things we probably both wish we hadn't said -- before we actually "talk." We are acting out the very scenario that DD is supposed to prevent -- hurting one another in anger.

Finally, I confess to the truth. I've taken the ring off because I feel I don't have the right to wear it. Because in the heat of the moment, I virtually ALWAYS say no. Despite the fact that I'm the one who lobbied for this arrangement, when push comes to shove, in the most critical moment, I seem to always fail. My well-meaning, if misguided, "feminist" imperative gains the upper hand and determines that submission is not an option, no way, no how.

I cry and admit that while I wish I hadn't taken the ring off, I can't wear it. If I can't hold up my end of the bargain (pun intended) and submit to his authority when it matters most, when I'm angry and we're about to have a terrible fight, then I have no business wearing a ring that promises otherwise. To do so makes me a fraud, a liar, a hypocrite -- not to be trusted with the sacred responsibility of a DD relationship.

He listens patiently. Hugs me and tells me he loves me.

And then he puts the ring back on my finger and tells me to go get the paddle.

Surprised and confused, I ask him if maybe he hasn't understood what I've said -- that I can't be trusted to submit, that there's no point in continuing with DD.

He smiles, takes me back in his arms, and points something out that I had never considered before.

That losing one's nerve when facing a punishment isn't an indication of a lack of trustworthiness. It's a normal human reaction to the reality of paying for one's misdeeds. Children, he points out, struggle desperately against even the mildest punishments (he has a daughter from a prior marriage who howls and fights when given corner time as though she were being skewered!). He reminds me that resisting a spanking is part of the process of coming to terms with our angry, terrified inner child who desperately needs boundaries, but hates the idea of submitting to them. And that this resistance has nothing to do with whether or not I'm "worthy" to wear the ring.

He expects me to resist, he tells me. The spankings he gives me hurt -- a lot. They are meant to hurt, to be a deterrent -- and I am meant to be afraid of them. That's the point of discipline -- to create a negative consequence that makes us think twice about acting out.

The ring, he points out, is a symbol of my larger commitment to our chosen lifestyle. It is not a promise to be 100% submissive all of the time, no matter what. No one could do that, he tells me, and certainly not someone who is angry and afraid of a spanking.

I had never thought of this issue in quite this way before. That submission isn't a constant thing, but a moment-to-moment, fluctuating dynamic that is more or less possible depending on state of mind. The key is to make it right eventually -- if not in the moment, then later.

As a side note, he also pointed out that since we're living together for the first time, "it's different now. It's more real." And that the reality of more in-the-moment consequences is bound to up the stakes and the pressure on the relationship, making resistance on my part even more inevitable.

The second lesson from this experience didn't occur to me until a few days later. In the days following this incident, I reflected on how much responsibility women in DD relationships often take on in terms of making those relationships work.

More often than not, it's the woman who initiates a DD relationship. I suspect this is as it should be, given the need to have a woman's full consent before whacking her with a paddle. But being the initiator of a DD relationship can mean that a woman feels a disproportionate amount of pressure to be perfect in her submission in order to prove to her partner (and herself) that the lifestyle is a positive experience for both parties. After all, it's hard enough sometimes to convince a man to administer discipline without us kicking and screaming and making him feel like an abusive bastard for trying to do so.

So when things go wrong -- as they inevitably will -- we blame ourselves for being less than perfect. When we resist discipline -- as we inevitably will -- we can wind up feeling like failures at best and untrustworthy hypocrites at worst. This was our idea, we reason, and so we feel we have no right to do anything other than fully consent 100% of the time.

But my partner's very wise words made me realize this is an unfair burden that I was putting on myself and on the relationship. Just because DD was my idea doesn't mean I'm always going to be "good" at it all of the time. In fact, most of the time, I probably won't be "good" at it at all, because if true disciplinary spankings are given properly, they are painful and unpleasant experiences that our instinct makes us want to avoid in the moment, even when our higher functions tell us the benefits are worth the pain. And if we're sure we don't deserve a spanking, our inherent sense of justice makes us even more likely to resist.

This lack of perfect submission isn't an indication that I'm not fit to take part in a DD relationship, but rather it's a healthy, natural, appropriate expression of my free will and separateness as a person. To submit 100% all of the time with no resistance and without questioning the fairness of the punishment would make me a doormat, a person with no capacity for self-preservation or independent thought.

I am fortunate to have a partner who is able to see that my resistance is normal and appropriate, who doesn't hold it against me when I am not able to submit to punishment in the moment.

I'm also fortunate to have a partner who doesn't let my in-the-moment resistance get me off the hook for the spanking I have coming. I am grateful that he is able to honor our agreement even when I can't. To me, this is how a DD relationship (or any relationship) should work. That when one partner stumbles and can't hold up his or her share of the burden, the other steps in and takes it from them.

Spanking given (with extra swats for having said no and for taking the ring off), peace restored, ring back on my finger.

Lesson learned.

PS -- As most of you have noticed, I tend to post new articles much less frequently than many blogs do. This is partly because of my schedule (I work in Democratic politics, so this year is particularly hectic), and partially because I don't post unless I feel I have something worth posting about. To that end, if any of you would like me to email you when a new article is posted, please let me know and I'll be happy to do so.

Feminism: The Power of Giving Way

2007-11-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

A wrap-up of my project sooner than expected means getting back to the blog sooner than expected. Thanks again... deeply... for hanging in and expressing concern about the diminishing frequency of posts.

As an inaugural to Phase II of the blog, below you will find the article that I had always intended as the intro to the blog, laying out some principles of male/female energy that I believe underlie not just DD, but male/female relationships as a whole. Perhaps it will serve as a helpful reference point for a deeper understanding of the issues we all grapple with in regards to power in relationships and a furtherance of the very cool dialogue all of you have been adding to over the past year.

This article is a bit long and involved, which is why I've been putting off writing it. What follows is essentially a quick summary of a decade's worth of work on this subject -- radically simplified. Unfortunately, even simplified, the concepts required are fairly complex in places, so to do any sort of even basic justice to the idea requires a bit more length than is ideal for a blog.

Some of you will hopefully find it useful.

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From time to time, I am asked by various writers, researchers and filmmakers to talk with them about how I reconcile my feminist views with my preference for a DD lifestyle. Understandably, this seems like a paradox to most people (even many in the DD world -- hence the title of and reason for The Disciplined Feminist in the first place!).

The interviewers are invariably surprised when I tell them that I don't see any contradiction between feminism and assuming a submissive role in a relationship with a man. They are momentarily confused, but then (ah ha!) they hit on the Big Explanation that Makes It All Make Sense To Them. They suggest that DD is consistent with feminism because I'm exercising my feminist imperative by "choosing" this way of viewing male/female relationships. (ie, we all have the Right to Choose, which is what makes us feminists).

Most people do see feminism as a choice issue above all else. Whether it's something as inflammatory as abortion or the more garden-variety choices of whether or not to marry, have children or pursue a career (or going further back in history, the right to vote), we seem to have defined feminism as the power to choose one's own destiny. A woman is either a feminist or not (your choice), depending on... well, what choices we make. We then advertise our feminism to the world with, again, our choices.

I would submit, however, that fundamentally, a true understanding of feminism at its deepest level has little or nothing to do with choice. While the ability to shape our destinies is a nice byproduct of a more egalitarian society, it is not and should not be confused with feminism.

Putting aside any contemporary, political definitions of feminism (are there any other kind, I wonder?), I suggest that feminism, at its core, is fundamentally about reclaiming the value and worth of being female. The word "feminine" forms the root of the word and thus -- as most linguists and anthropologists would agree -- the root of the concept.

To be a feminist is to insist that the mere act of being female -- of being feminine -- is a sacred experience. To be a feminist is to reclaim the power that contemporary Western culture has stripped away from women beginning in the pre-Christian era right up to the present extremist right wing religious movement in America. It is to say that feminine power, the feminine experience, is as worthy of honor and expression as the masculine experience.

To be a feminist is to claim the sacred right to be female.

All very well. But what does that mean? What is the sacred right to be female and what does it mean, then, to be feminine?

ARCHETYPES 101

(apologies to those of you who already know this stuff)

As part of my personal journey, I've spent close to a decade now studying Jungian psychology, with an emphasis on archetypes and a special emphasis on the "heroine's journey" as it reveals itself in myth, fairy tale and contemporary storytelling. For those of you not familiar with all that stuff, that's a long, semi-fancy way of saying I'm interested in how human beings, collectively and at their deepest levels, experience what it means to be a woman. (If anyone is interested in exploring these issues and wants a recommended reading list, let me know and I'd be happy to recommend books that have been helpful to me along the way.)

As any of you who have studied archetypes and myth know, this is an extremely rich and complex subject, and by invoking it here, I run the risk of oversimplifying something that deserves a far more comprehensive explanation and treatment than is possible in a blog article. This is intended as a starting point for discussion, not a definitive or exhaustive examination of feminism and archetype (which is a life's work!). So please don't write and tell me that "it's more complicated than that." Yes, it is. But at the same time, it's also simpler, too.

Archetypal myth work is based on the premise that the reason story has been fundamental to all human civilizations since the beginning of time (even back to cave paintings and stories by the fire before written language) is that story is humankind's way of passing on our collective experiences to the next generation and articulate our deepest, most profound experiences.

This type of work is based on the idea -- supported by 2000+ years of history and anthropology -- that the same themes and patterns of story emerge across all cultures, language barriers and time periods, and that this pattern is the key to understanding our deepest, most authentic selves.

THE HERO'S JOURNEY

Joseph Campbell is one of the most famous in this field -- he posited that all men must go through a set sequence of life challenges, what he called "the hero's journey," to become complete, integrated human beings.

As many, many have pointed out since Campbell (including Campbell himself), the male journey and the female journey are fundamentally, clearly different. If one looks at the earliest, pre-Christian myths available to us, there is a startlingly clear and distinct difference between stories in which a man goes on a quest or journey and a woman goes on a quest or journey.

When a man goes on a journey, he generally (and this is, again, very simplified) leaves the home of his father with a specific mission in mind (to get the Grail, to slay the dragon). On his way, he encounters physical obstacles and must prove his character, his bravery and his worth in order to secure the prize and return home to claim his rightful place in the kingdom. The way in which the hero proves his worth is outwardly-directed. He fights, he climbs, he struggles through walls of thorns or battles raging rivers. He breaks through things, breaks down things, thrusts outward with his lance or his spear or his fists. Only once he has overcome all physical obstacles in his path through the use of force does he earn the right to return home and become king.

To become integrated, a man on his hero's journey must extend himself outward into the world. This is why calling someone a "man of action" is one of the highest compliments you can pay a man and why being a "self-made man" is one of our society's highest goals.

This "hero's journey" is manifested in our culture most obviously by a man's quest for professional success, athletic prowess or sexual conquest. Making the deal, scoring the goal, bedding the woman are all outwardly-directed acts designed to elevate status and prove to the world (and more importantly, himself) that he's fit to be king. (Side note: This is also why a smart woman knows that any man worth having will put his work before his family -- and a smart woman wouldn't ask him to be any other way)

Most people are familiar with the hero's journey. Hollywood's been making money off it for years -- it's the standard structure of most mainstream action/adventure movies ("Die Hard," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Dirty Harry," and of course, "Star Wars" which was overtly based on Campbell's work), as well as spy, western and detective novels and comic books.

THE HEROINE'S JOURNEY

Because Western culture has elevated the masculine as superior to the feminine, most people aren't as familiar with the heroine's journey. (There are movies about the female journey, but they tend to be indie films.)

Our patriarchal culture has done a lousy job of educating us on what these feminine-centered myths are (but a really good job of supressing them!), so I'm going to take up a bit of space to tell one of the most famous -- the Descent of the Goddess is the grandmama of all heroine's journey myths and for the record, it pre-dates Christianity and patriarchal power structures, so it was not written to "keep woman in her place" as many later fairy tales were.

For those of you interested in this sort of thing, it's worth pointing out that the other big famous heroine's journey myth is the legend of Persephone and Demeter, but the Descent of the Goddess came first and many believe it forms the basis for the Persephone/Demeter myth.

THE DESCENT OF THE GODDESS

So then, a brief retelling of the Descent of the Goddess (again, apologies to those of you who already know this!):

Inanna is the Queen of the Overworld, where things aren't going very well for her. For a variety of reasons (depending on the version of the story), she is motivated to visit her twin sister, Erishkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, who is grieving inconsolably from a broken heart.

To honor her sister, Inanna puts on her finest robes and presents herself at the entrance to the Underworld. However, to gain entry, she must pass through seven gates. At each gate, Inanna is required to remove one article of her fine clothing -- her crown, her robe, her shoes, etc. When she finally gains entrance to the Underworld, she is completely naked.

Even then, her sister Erishkigal won't see her and is offended at Inanna's presumption at intruding on Erishkigal's domain. Erishkigal orders Inanna hung by her hands and whipped until the skin falls from her bones and she is just a skeleton. There Inanna's body hangs for three days and and nights, dead.

Inanna's best female friend in the Overworld becomes worried when Inanna fails to return from her journey. The friend goes everywhere asking for help to rescue Inanna, but the only one who agrees to help is the God of the Sea. The Sea God fashions two sexless creatures of clay and animates them. The two clay creatures go down to the Underworld and present themselves to Erishkigal. Erishkigal is in such deep grief that all she can do is weep in her dark cave.

The two clay figures do not speak to Erishkigal. They merely witness her pain and hear her cries -- but this is key because everyone else has been too frightened of her to get anywhere near her. She's been crying alone in the dark for ages.

Just having a witness to validate and acknowledge her pain is so healing to Erishkigal that she is able to function again. In gratitude, she asks the two clay creatures what she can do to repay them, and they ask that she can restore Inanna's life and allow her to return to the Overworld.

Erishkigal complies. Inanna's body and life are restored to her, Erkshigal's broken heart is mended, the two sisters have a loving reunion, and Inanna returns to the Overworld a stronger and more complete individual to preside over a peaceful and just kingdom. In short, she lives happily ever after.

HOW ALL THIS RELATES TO FEMINISM

Contained in the story of Inanna is, many would argue, the essence of what feminism really means. Our journey as women is different. It is not to find ourselves by expressing outward into the world by force or penetration, but by surrendering inwards, and giving up false power (ie, Inanna's fine robes, our attempts to act like men) to find a more authentic power (ie, connection with our true selves). Being strident, bitchy, overly assertive or masculine are the contemporary "robes" that we must be willing to be stripped of if we're going to find our true feminine selves.

Analyzing the lessons of the heroine's journey contained in the Descent of the Goddess is a life's work (and many have made it just that), but for our purposes, the thing to notice here is that the way in which Inanna -- ie, the feminine -- seeks wisdom and wholeness is exactly opposite from the way a hero would (remembering that we're taking Descent of the Goddess as representative of feminine mythology). The solution to the hero's problems is to go forth and conquer; the solution to the heroine's problems is to go below and submit.

Inanna does not find power by going on a hero's journey; she finds power by claiming the right to undertake her own unique feminine journey. And she finds it by yielding rather than attacking. Instead of fighting her way through the gates or defeating those who would hang and beat her as a hero would, Inanna submits completely and without protest to the indignity and pain of the experience. This is the only way in for her.

Inanna returns to the physical world a healthy, empowered, complete woman. She does this not by fighting, but by submitting, by going without struggle into the depths of herself and surrendering her pride, her modesty and her physical power. Then -- and only then -- is she allowed access to her truer nature and her true pain. Had she struggled, she would have been denied entrance to the Underworld and by extension, denied knowledge of connection with her true Self and the opportunity to heal her broken heart.

The power that comes with yielding is not a weaker or inferior form of power, but rather a different one (albeit one that's threatening and alien to our war and aggressive-centered culture). Inanna is not weak. She is a queen -- a real one, not a false one who rules by trying to be a king. The fact that feminism has been sold to contemporary women as requiring us to act like men is a cruel, abusive and confusing lie that does more to DIS-honor the feminine spirit than the honor it (how much honor can there be in claiming that to be worthwhile, you must reject and act in direct opposition to your truest self?).

THE PART ABOUT SEX

There are those who suggest that myths are not a valid enough basis for claiming that female energy is inherently submissive resist this idea at all costs. This resistance is understandable, given that the idea that feminine energy is about yielding can seem very frightening to those of us raised to believe that equal means masculine, and given the reality that there are plenty of predators lurking to take advantage of any yielding we do.

However, any doubt that female energy is primarily inwardly directed and yielding seems quickly dispelled when we look at something much closer to home and completely outside the scope of cultural manipulation, etc.-- sex.

The most basic place to find contemporary, non-mythological evidence of the difference between the heroine's journey and the hero's journey is in the sex act. The male's role in the sex act is to act outwardly. His penis protrudes out -- literally -- into the world. To consummate the act, he penetrates into the woman -- an act of aggression and force.

The female's role in the sex act is, of course, opposite of the male's (hence yin/yang and other concepts of balance). Our sex organs are internal, not external. No matter how "feminist" (in the misunderstood way of using the term) a woman is, to consummate the sex act, we must submit to being penetrated, entered -- acted upon -- by our "hero." Yes, there are other ways to find sexual pleasure, but it all still comes down the basic, biologically hard-wired Sex Act: a man takes action and a woman submits.

It is no accident that particularly in goddess-centered spirituality (but also in the mystic texts of mainstream religions like Christianity, Buddhism and Judaism), the sex act is considered a sacred ritual for connecting with God. A male and female joined in intercourse is our most profound symbol of unity, wholeness and the elevation of the human spirit. And it is inescapably an act which cannot take place unless the female submits to penetration by the male.

In short, to find the sacred, each must play our part. The male must act and the female must submit. Put another way, the male must give and the female must receive for the spark of life to be ignited.

There is no real "choice" here. If you want to have sex -- arguably the most basic and primal expression of gender -- and you are a woman, submission and yielding of physical control is required. And if you want to have good sex, I'd argue that a yielding of psychological control is required, too. If you want to find true completion in a relationship or within yourself, that same yielding of physical and psychological control is equally required, albeit in more subtle and complex ways.

So, too, is "choice" an illusion when it comes to defining feminism. We don't have a choice as to how our archetypal selves feel and act or what they require to feel whole. 2000+ years of history and our basic biological makeup tells us who we are at our most primal levels and no amount of kicking and screaming and post-modern protest is going to change that -- at least not in our lifetimes. Archetypes and inner truths don't care about the Pill or the ERA or wage parity. They care about the deepest, truest parts of our nature that strength back to before recorded history.

A woman's journey is inward, a man' s journey is outward. A man's journey to wholeness requires outward action; a woman's journey to wholeness requires "taking in," absorbing or yielding.

We can choose not to go on the journey, of course, or we can choose to go on the wrong one, and in that sense, there is always choice. But to truly claim our power as women -- to truly be "feminist" -- requires an act of surrender akin to stripping off our pretensions (right down to the skin on our bones) and allowing ourselves to submit completely to the wisdom of our subconscious.

HOW DD RELATES TO ALL THIS

DD is, of course, a fundamental, deeply ritualized and externalized re-enactment of the heroine's journey, of this sacred joining of in and out, force and submission. By allowing our bodies to be stripped and beaten, our wills to be humbled and our tears to flow in the presence of a loving witness, we are literally re-creating the Descent of the Goddess with each punishment. I would argue that this is why the experience is so deeply psychologically resonant, for women in particular, but men also (that's another article).

Those who are disturbed by this construct of male/female power have, over the years, done much to rationalize why it just ain't so. They insist that men and women aren't so different and women certainly don't have to submit to be self-actualized. But just because we're not comfortable with a truth doesn't make it less true.

Can the heroine's journey, the act of yielding, go wrong? Be abused? Absolutely. Just as the hero can get eaten by the dragon, so too can the heroine be taken advantage of and exploited in her act of submission. But just because there are dragons out there that eat heroes doesn't make the hero's journey any less valid or necessary to spiritual fulfillment. And just because there are those out there who would (and have) sought to use the yielding power of the feminine to debase, subjugate and abuse women doesn't make those truths less valuable, less sacred, or less true.

Going through the motions in the real world, we are all Inanna, struggling to find our way without the benefit of a transcendant journey of descent into the depths of who we really are. And deep in all of our hearts, weeping alone in her cave, is our own private Erishkigal, waiting for us to come and heal her broken heart.

THE TRUE POWER OF THE FEMININE

The power of the yielding submissive feminine is in the dignity of Jackie Kennedy walking behind her husband's casket, the compassion and courage of Princess Diana holding the hand of an AIDS victim or the eloquence of Maya Angelou sharing her story of rising above her abusive childhood.

The power of the feminine is not confined to women. Martin Luther King and Gandhi knew the power of yielding and used it to change the world by fighting violent discrimination with non-violent resistence. Jesus knew it when he went willingly to the cross and submitted quietly to the violence of his tormenters (and for that matter, Mary knew it when she let him go).

Any time anyone, male or female, chooses to nurture instead of attack or forgive instead of seeking revenge, it is the power of the true Feminine changing the world.

My deepest wish for all of us this holiday season is that we open ourselves to the power of these ancient truths and that we all take a moment to find gratitude for the blessing of our awareness of the sacred power of DD to help us find our way to our own Underworlds and discover for ourselves the awesome power of true Feminism, and that once there, we glory in our true Selves and celebrate our differences. (And if we are blessed to have found a companion to help us get there, so much the better.)

Happy Holidays,

Viv

Update and Some Good Questions

2007-11-02T22:47:00.000-06:00

Thank you so much to all of you who wrote saying, "Hey, where the heck are you? Are you okay?" and other sorts of things.

The answer is that, yes, I'm still here, and I'm very much okay. However, I'm in the homestretch of wrapping up a big contract (I work in politics and sometimes things get very hectic). As a result, there hasn't been as much time as I'd like for things like updating the blog. I'm working hard to clear my schedule and get back to my mountain retreat for at least awhile, and should be able to do so by the end of December -- at which time, I will probably start to have a great deal to write about as my partner and I have decided to try living together as a DD couple. This will be our first opportunity to really dig in and explore the relationship dynamics of DD on a day to day basis and I'm looking forward to sharing that experience with all of you, if you all can hang in there long enough!

In the meantime, I received a very thoughtful email from a new reader that I thought perhaps would be of interest to some of you. I'm sharing it with her consent, in the hopes that some of you might have responses to her questions. I myself have many responses, as many of her questions go right to the heart of the reason I started The Disciplined Feminist in the first place. However, I'd rather not let her email languish in my inbox until I have an opportunity respond, so perhaps some of you can begin the dialogue?

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Hi

I started reading your blog about DD and it really is fascinating. I am 34 and contemplating the whole DD thing but haven't told hubby yet until I am sure it is a path I really want to take.

The adult/child idea is very interesting. I do not think I am an emotional adult and have spent years pretending to be one, which is why DD appeals to some part of my inner-child. I think perhaps you really do have something there - it makes a lot of sense from a psychological viewpoint. It is often women who are strong, feminist and intelligent with a moral conscience and well developed sense of 'justice' who want to seek "punishment" or consequences for their misbehaviour. Most probably due to the strong feelings of guilt associated with doing what they know to be "the wrong thing" and the hope that in being punished their guilt will be washed away. However, I suspect it is also the "strong moral conscience and well developed sense of justice" that stands in the way of really embracing the principles of the DD lifestyle.

DD seems to have just enough of 'whatever it is that is missing from the modern relationship' to get the average, sensible, reasonably intelligent, emotionally-starved modern woman interested, and yet also has just enough inconsistencies, double standards and patriarchal overtones to give that same woman an uncomfortable gut feeling that there is something 'not-quite-right' about it too. At least that is how I am feeling about it, and the reason I am struggling and asking complete strangers questions!

One question I have is, do you think that maybe what makes the whole DD power struggle and double standards an issue is that it goes against fairness, equality and all the feminist teachings that most Generation X women have grown up with?

Also - I came across an interesting fact, did you know that the most common form of medication prescribed in the traditional marriage/Early baby boomer generation was VALIUM? Perhaps that makes being submissive easier?????

I find there are two main aspects of DD that I find difficult to process, the first is FAIRNESS, and what to do when I am angry with something HE has done - I could see myself in your comments about "When I am Angry".
The second is that I have children, mostly girls, and I look at what DD "teaches" and whether it is what I would want my girls to learn - do I want my girls to grow up to be submissive women who hand over the reigns of their life, their happiness, their emotional well being to a man ? The truth is, if they find a man who is worthy, respectable, strong, honest and displays all the positive masculine values and holds his own behaviour to a very high moral standard, then perhaps that would be ok, if it made her happy. BUT how likely is that to happen these days??? The finding a man with those traits I mean? (Even "Dr Phil" had several affairs in his first marriage! and I wouldn't want to be Robyn would you?) So honestly, I think my girls, with that teaching, would get eaten alive in a modern world.

Still, I am a 34 year old woman with a Masters Degree in Education, seven children and a husband who is a far cry from an "Alpha-male". I grew up with a weak father and a matriarch for a mother, so I could just be trying to go to the other extreme!

Goodness human beings are complicated! Really what we all want is to be HAPPY!

Adult vs Child

2007-09-04T21:47:00.000-06:00

Apologies for the delay in posting this month's (August) article. I deeply appreciate those of you who comment and participate when I can't to keep our discussion going -- and I especially appreciate those of you who emailed me to make sure I was okay and that my slightly longer than usual absence wasn't indicative of any personal crisis. (It isn't. Just new job, long hours, high stress, etc.)

Several of you wrote comments in response to the prior article that included your thoughts on whether or not women who engaged in DD were adults. This an intriguing issue and it seems worth exploring a bit further.

In interest of stirring up a bit of controversy up front to make things interesting (!), my short response to this is that, no, I do not believe that women (myself included) who engage in DD are adults.

As I've written before in other posts, I believe DD to be, at its heart, a reaction to a deeply felt need for boundaries and accountability that is often absent in our culture, most notably as the result of so-called "progressive" parenting ("DD as a Reaction to Me-Generation Parenting") that emphasizes individual expression and personal freedom over boundaries and consequences. I've also mentioned in prior articles that DD seen in this light is an extremely healthy way for our infinitely-creative psyches to get what's missing in our lives in a way that feels safe, fair and straightforward. (see just about every entry!)

(DD does, of course, have other archetypal origins, and some day I'm actually going to write the article that explores those...)

My underlying theory here is that DD is first and foremost a re-parenting process -- a method of gifting our inner child with the experiences of being held accountable to rules and boundaries. That means that the role of the submissive partner in a DD relationship is at its core that of the externalized inner child. Spanking, scolding, corner time, grounding -- all experiences that are, of course, strongly associated with childhood rather than adulthood.

Being able to safely give up our adult selves to experience this powerful cycle of guilt, justice and forgiveness is, I believe, at the heart of what makes DD so appealing to many women. It's also what separates true DD (real punishments for real misbehaviors) for S&M sex play or disciplinary fantasies). I believe the need for some of us to have it "be real" to be effective is our strongest clue that something developmentally significant -- essential even -- is going on for us.

I believe that to fully understand and benefit from the DD experience requires us to let go of the illusion that women who have a strong need to DD are adults. We are not. If we were, we would already have progressed through the developmental stage that DD fulfills a need for.

Our society has systematically done away with most of the primitive tribal rituals that used to help people transition from childhood to adulthood -- mostly ritual pain experiences that are now viewed as barbaric but serve a critical developmental function of helping us to make the transition to adulthood. As a result, we have an entire culture of people, male and female, who live as adults, are legally considered adults, and have adult bodies and responsibilities, but who fundamentally do not have the emotional maturity and capacity of a fully grown being.

For all kinds of reasons, including social conditioning and weak parenting, they/we are lacking the internalized "strong parent" that is required for the child to become an independent, emotionally self-supporting, confident individual.

Some might be offended at the idea that women who crave DD are child-like. I hope those of you who are feeling a bit offended might re-think any perceptions our society has instilled in us that children are stupid or simple. Children are, in reality, vibrant, creative beings who actively seek out what they need to strive and grow into healthy adults. And women who seek out the loving solution of DD as a way to become healthy adults are demonstrating a striking amount of courage, creativity and resiliency that many others in our culture with similar needs (and that's probably most of us) don't demonstrate.

Most readers will probably agree that DD is one of the most elegant, simple and effective ways of meeting our unmet developmental needs -- of literally turning those of us who look like and live like adults into actual functioning adults by allowing us to turn back the clock to childhood to get the type of discipline and structure we need to complete our journey.

As I experience DD in my real life -- along with that empowering feeling of taking such literal and simple responsibility for my actions -- I can feel myself filling that long-unmet need. I'm literally growing up before my own eyes.

Becoming a real adult instead of a pretend one.

"Maintenance" vs Discipline: A Question of Conscience

2007-07-02T13:03:00.000-06:00

Most of the spankings in our relationship in the past few months have been "maintenance" spankings -- meaning, spankings that aren't motivated by any particular misbehavior but are intended rather as a general attitude adjustment or stress reliever.

I suspect that the emphasis on maintenance spankings in our relationship is largely because my partner and I are still struggling with the Big Problem we have with regard to DD (Domestic Discipline): I rarely misbehave in a way that, to me at least, is unambiguously my fault. (see "When I'm Angry").

I virtually always believe that my behavior is either not inappropriate at all, or if it is inappropriate, is a response to something nefarious and egregious that he did first, and thus my misdeed is at the very least, equal to his and therefore justifiable -- and therefore shouldn't merit a one-sided discipline. (and no, there's no way in h*ll I'd even consider spanking him. That would, I believe, completely ruin the archetypal male/female energy of DD and undermine his role as an authority figure much the same way that a child spanking a parent would).

At any rate, the reason that I generally receive maintenance spankings is most likely that they're safer than disciplinary ones because they don't require a judgement about fault or blame and can be given "just because."

Our habit, therefore, has become to ignore anything that would require an actual, specific disciplinary response and focus on periodic, general-purpose maintenance spankings instead.

This is, of course, a problem in a DD relationship, as there's a reason that it's called "Domestic Discipline" and not "Domestic 'Just Because'".

In addition to the problem of the Perfect Paddle, I suspect that the emphasis on maintenance spankings is equally responsible for the disappearance of all those wonderful empowered feelings I used to get from DD that have been noticeably absent since my return to my partner's city.

The disciplinary "bad girl" component of a spanking, for me, is crucial to the overall experience. I need to feel the knot in my stomach (and nervous tingling elsewhere) that tells me that I've done wrong and now I need to pay. I need to feel the embarrassment and humility of knowing that I've "got it coming" for a specific mistake I've made, that what's to come is not a favor or a way of helping me relieve stress (not directly anyway), but a fair consequence for an error that I've made.

And I need the security of knowing that when things go wrong in the relationship, there are specific, concrete consequences rather than the vague, silent tension that exists when there is no specific discipline given. And in the moment, I need my disciplinarian to be stern, distant and without visible compassion, not loving and supportive (that comes after).

Feeling guilty, then punished or disciplined, and then subsequently cleansed and forgiven, is so much a part of the cathartic, transformative experience of DD for me that without it, it's pretty much just theater. Perhaps minimally satisfying in the moment for its sexual subtext, but without any lasting psychological or relationship benefits.

This cycle of guilt/discipline/forgiveness is one of the many elements that separates DD from more deliberately erotic and sexual forms of pleasure/pain play, and puts it closer to the cathartic ritual pain practiced by many religious movements throughout the ages (starting well before the Catholic monks) as well as traditional parent/child punishments.

As human beings, most of us have consciences -- and a desire to cleanse them periodically. Unfortunately, our culture has precious few outlets for clearing one's conscience. The Catholic Church has the Rite of Confession, but most of us, of course, aren't Catholic. For most of us, unless we receive a speeding ticket, a library fine or a reprimand or other disciplinary action at work, there are very few healthy mechanisms in contemporary culture for expunging adult guilt for a transgression (and precious few mechanisms for kids either, thanks to so-called "progressive parenting" -- see "DD as a Reaction to Me Generation Parenting")

Much of the power of DD -- whether we realize it consciously or not -- comes in its ability to formalize and provide a safe, contained way of cleansing our consciences for wrongs that we've done to ourselves and those around us. To remove the element of guilt/punishment/forgiveness from the DD experience by giving too many spankings "just because" risks removing the basic psychological element that makes DD "work."

That's not to say, of course, that there isn't a place for role playing, erotic spanking and other non-disciplinary activities -- of course there is and those things can be a lot of fun, but at their core, they generally (though not always) lack the psychological element of conscience-cleansing that's inherent to DD. As an example, my "Perfect Paddle" was indeed perfect -- for sex play and fantasy, but not for discipline. (and has accordingly been shelved by mutual agreement between my partner and myself)

The difference between DD and these more sexually-oriented activities is that DD speaks directly to the very real, very human need to pay for one's crimes. And I suspect the growing appeal of DD has much to do with the lack of socially-acceptable ways for adults to pay for our transgressions, in a culture where anything goes and too many people seem to believe they have the "right" to treat anyone any way they please without consequences. (If you want to experience this lack of personal responsibility directly, just try asking someone to put their dog on a leash or not park their SUV in a compact spot and see the reaction you get.)

Deep down, the wiser, better part of us knows we don't have the "right" to behave badly just because we're adults, whether we push that knowledge away, cover it up with aggression and bravado, or acknowledge it. Those of us who recognize our need for DD are fortunate to be at least a little bit more in touch with our social and personal consciences than many of those around us -- which gives us a better-than-average shot at being better, more decent human beings than we would otherwise be.

Whether or not DD is ultimately a viable lifestyle option remains to be seen -- the surge of interest in this lifestyle seems the beginning of a social experiment in human behavior, sex roles and power in relationships. Time will tell whether or not the Big Problem of how to deal with the dominant partner's transgressions will be DD's undoing.

But divorcing DD from its fundamental role as a mechanism for regularly and safely experiencing the cycle of transgression, justice and forgiveness is doing the lifestyle and the people who take great personal risks to practice it a grave disservice.

If there is an answer to DD's Big Problem, it lies somewhere beyond removing one of the primary elements that make DD such a potentially healthy relationship choice.

The Perfect Paddle

2007-07-01T20:06:00.000-06:00

After much consideration, I have arrived back in the same city as my partner (though not yet in the same household, we're not quite ready for that) with the intention of staying through the summer to see how things develop between us, both in Domestic Discipline (DD) and in the rest of our relationship.

As is par for the course with us, getting back into the rhythm of DD is not without its bumps and hiccups -- though this time, I'm happy to say not because of any reluctance of his part or mine. On the contrary, he's embraced the DD lifestyle with a consistency and enthusiasm heretofore unseen in our relationship.

A week or so before I left, I happened to find a paddle at the local thrift store. It was one of those paddles that's clearly not a cheese board or a game paddle, but a bona-fide spanking paddle meant for the infliction of corporal punishment.

The paddle looked to be perfect and my heart gave a bit of a flutter when I picked it up. It's just thin enough to sting, not thud (stinging being my sensation of preference), wide enough and long enough to fully cover the area in need of correction, with a good solid grip suited for a man's hand. It's made out of hardwood, so despite its thinness, it's not likely to break at an inopportune moment.

The first time I was asked to "Go get the paddle," I presented it proudly, imagining how much richer our DD experience was about to become.

And as soon as I felt it on my backside, I knew I was right. We'd found the Perfect Paddle.

By "perfect," I mean that it felt just right. And by "just right, " I mean that it hurt exactly as much as I imagine in my head that a spanking will hurt, and it hurt in exactly the way that I imagine a spanking will hurt. For the first time, my real-life spanking experience matched almost exactly the spankings of my fantasies.

Spurred on by my enthusiasm, my partner has subsequently used said Paddle of Perfection on a regular basis in an effort to get our relationship back on track.

It's failing miserably.

The Perfect Paddle feels "perfect" and "just right" in imagination and application. But it fails in every really important way. It leaves no marks or bruises. The pain stops as soon as the spanking stops. There is no day after (or as before, week after) soreness to remind me of the session. Heck, there's barely even a "minute after" -- two minutes after the spanking (before corner time's even started), it's as though the spanking never happened.

I expect it's different for everyone, but for me at least, the psychological benefits of a spanking come largely in its aftereffects. Every time I see the bruises or sit down and feel the twinge of pain and ache on my backside, I get a little jolt of that miraculous DD-juice -- self-confidence, personal power, a wonderful feeling of being loved and cared about by my partner. I go a week or so -- minimum -- on a spanking like that and still feel empowered, loved and a bit like I'm walking on air. But without those aftereffects, the power of DD, at least for me, is nonexistent.

And yet.... that paddle feels so perfect....

It's an interesting lesson for me on the difference between sexual fantasy and reality. Fantasy is wonderful, but it's rarely the key to personal growth.

The spanking of my fantasies, so long craved and searched for, carries little to no power in real life. And the thicker, "thuddier" paddle that wields such power on my psyche in real life rarely appears in my fantasies.

I expect a lot of things are like that, especially in the DD and D/s world. The perfect DD partner of our fantasies might well be completely ineffective and disappointing in real life and the guy you'd never think knew his way around a paddle might be the most effective disciplinarian we'll ever meet. And of course, I've had any number of D/s scenarios that seemed wildly exciting in my head turn into a big snore when tried out in the real world.

The Case of the Perfect Paddle is a valuable lesson in remembering that DD, when practiced between two living, breathing people, is about reality, not fantasy.

And it's an even better reminder that DD is a living, fluid thing, and that there are dangers in clinging too much to how we imagine it ought to go. In having overly specific or rigid expectations of how DD "ought" to work, we may miss out on experiences and nuances that are richer and more valuable to us than the scenarios in our imaginations.

And so it's with a heavy heart that I will request, humbly, that my partner set aside the Perfect Paddle (except for in future potential play situations, which we haven't yet explored) and once again take up the dreaded thicker paddle that strikes fear in my heart, but creates those lovely bruises, aches and pains that seem to hold the key to my better and higher Self.

But maybe I'll wait until I've had just one more spanking with it... :-)

Hamlet Needs a Spanking: DD and Indecision

2007-06-06T22:28:00.000-06:00

When I was in high school, I was fortunate to have one of those wonderful teachers who genuinely loved and understood Shakespeare and knew how to get her students to love and understand it as well.

As a result of her teaching, I'm one of the those fortunate few who laughs at all the right places during Shakespearian plays not because the person next to me does, but because I actually get the jokes -- a gift I'm forever grateful for.

The tragedies were my favorite and I was fascinated at the idea of the fatal flaw that undoes the classic hero. I understood about Othello's jealousy and Macbeth's ambition, but when my teacher suggested that indecision was Hamlet's fatal flaw, I was stumped.

How in the heck could indecision rank up there with jealousy and ambition as something that could wreck your life?

I don't know where that teacher is now, but if I did, I'd email her and say, "Oh, I get it now." No wonder Hamlet's the most famous of Shakespeare's tragic heroes. I'd take jealousy or ambition over indecision any day.

After yet another long separation, I spent the last two weeks with my partner. Predictably, despite all our problems and my doubts about the future of our relationship, all it took was about five seconds in the same room with him and I fell in love all over again (and predictably, suffered total amnesia about all of our problems). And all it took was one "welcome back" spanking for me to remember why I'm going through all this trouble to keep this relationship in the first place. We may suck as a contemporary couple, but we kick *ss on the DD front when we're doing it right.

But it's becoming more and more clear to me that, at least for us, this long distance thing isn't going to work. I suspect a couple has to be much further down the road with DD, and have a much more solid foundation of trust and good communication, for long-distance DD to work. And as regular readers know, we've got anything but that.

So I'm now faced with the decision: to stay where I am, snug in my little mountain hideaway, safely distant from the everyday dramas of a relationship that may not work out but without the possibility of using DD to make things better, or do I go back and try to work through that murky pit of past trouble that I wrote about in a prior post.

And that's where I began to realize the perils of indecision, because of course, every time I decide one way, I realize what I'll be giving up and so I swing the other way. I've been doing that for weeks now, if not months. It's driving him crazy, and honestly, it's driving me crazy, too. (too bad spankings don't make me more decisive)

As I was shifting back and forth (and back and forth) again this afternoon, trying to figure out what to do, I realized with abrupt clarity how many of my decisions are motivated by a need to avoid pain. And in the next instant, I realized another reason why DD is such a potentially healing and powerful force in my life.

The trigger that causes me to swing one way or the other on this decision and other major life decisions comes when the excitement of the positive parts of the decision momentarily give way to the mourning for whatever it is I'll be losing. And that pain is so scary that I immediately swing the other way to make it go away. Which is does, for a little while, until the relief of having reclaimed what I had lost goes away and the pain of the loss on the other side seeps through. Then it's back the other way I go. (For those of you who are wondering, this will eventually lead back to DD.)

Looking back, I'm realizing only now how much of my life has been mismanaged out of a desperate desire to avoid pain -- irresponsible spending ("I have to have it now!"), quitting school - twice ("School is boring."), walking away from worthwhile projects and professional opportunities ("This is taking way too long and I hate getting up early."). But the end result of avoiding short-term pain is suffering far greater long-term pain -- be it too much credit card debt or unfulfilled educational or career goals.

And that's where DD comes in. (See, I told you I'd get back to the topic.)

DD is all about experiencing short-term pain to avoid long-term pain. Spankings and other discipline hurt now, but they keep things from building up, both personally and in the relationship, that will hurt a lot more for a lot longer if they're not dealt with.

And predictably, even though I know this to be true, I dread discipline of any kind, and when the time comes to accept it, I'll do whatever it takes to stall and avoid it. (My partner, to his credit, is beginning to figure out that he's not doing me any favors by allowing me to get away with these tactics.)

To have the life I want, I have to learn to let go of things, to make sacrifices for long-term goals, to do all the things that, in short, grown ups know how to do, but that I was never taught as a child because no one ever discplined me when I got lazy, put things off or quit when the going got tough.

I believe that, whatever the problems in our relationship, DD will help me to learn those things. Often, I think I focus too much on whether or not DD is helping the relationship, and I forget how much it's helping me.

Tonight, I'm pretty sure it's time to go home -- largely because I want to be the person that I am when DD is in my life, and I can't have that where I am now. Tomorrow, I may feel differently. But DD is teaching me that the ultimate decision needs to be based on what I want overall in my life, not on avoiding the inevitable short-term pain that comes with picking one option over another.

Boundaries: Finding the "Sweet Spot"

2007-05-04T22:20:00.000-06:00

I received an email from a regular reader today who was having trouble posting comments to this blog. He emailed me (and I hope I'm not violating any confidences here!) that he'd tried unsuccessfully to post in the past and when his comments failed to appear, he thought perhaps I'd rejected them because he was male and didn't want men's opinions on the blog.

For the record, this is not the case! In fact, just the opposite is true. I see a serious lack of the male perspective in online DD material, and would love to have much more input from the male/dominant point of view.

In light of this unfortunate misunderstanding, I've revised the email policy posted in the sidebar.

My reason for the initial "no emails from men" policy has been that I tend to have a serious problem enforcing personal boundaries. Particularly in the areas of sex and relationships, I tend to ignore those helpful instincts that tell me when a situation is unsafe or unhealthy until it's far too late to safely extricate myself from it.

It's only recently that I've begun to realize I have not only the power, but also the obligation, to keep myself safe by enforcing personal boundaries -- hence the prior "no email from men" policy (and the trouble in my current relationship...). But erring on the side of overcompensating isn't healthy, either -- hence the correction to the policy. So provided I don't become inundated with strangers emailing to ask me what color underwear I prefer, I'm happy to accept emails from any and all.

But the whole incident got me thinking about something very related to DD: boundaries.

As I've explored a bit in the past (see"When I'm Angry"), the biggest weakness of DD seems to be that the dominant partner has the ability to enforce personal boundaries and the submissive partner doesn't. And in many cases, the dominant partner also claims (largely erroneously) the right to decide what the acceptable boundaries are not just for himself, but for his partner as well.

Like many women passionately committed to living a DD lifestyle, I've done back flips trying to rationalize why either A. this isn't the case, or failing that, B. this isn't a problem.

Putting aside for a moment the possibility of discipline going both ways a la the Spencer Plan (the subject for another post), the flat out truth is here is very simple:

A. it is the case and B, it is a problem. At least for me.

The issue of boundaries is, unfortunately, fundamental to why my current DD relationship seems to be imploding at lightning speed.

As long as I don't enforce my boundaries, we're blissfully happy. When I do call attention to something in the relationship that violates my sense of self, he gets angry. If I press the point, I risk discipline. And because I know that there is always the possibility that I will be disciplined for defending my boundaries, my need to protect myself keeps me (rightly) from being able to submit fully to his discipline.

Fundamentally, while I completely trust that he won't abuse his power during the actual disciplinary process, I don't trust his judgement when it comes to determining who's at fault for an "incident" -- me, him or both of us. And trusting the judgement of one's disciplinarian is so fundamental to the feeling of safety and love that healthy DD creates that the experience doesn't hold up long-term without it.

Interestingly enough, I was fully aware of this weakness (minefield? powder keg?) in our relationship before I even suggested DD. In fact, it's one of the reasons I suggested it in the first place. I decided that if I was going to have to back down most of the time anyway to keep the peace, I may as well fill the emotional need I had for DD in the process and turn a negative into a positive.

Wanting my partner so much, and wanting DD so much, I naively thought that the benefits would be so overwhelming that they would make up for this deficit in our core relationship, and that in a sense, we'd both get what we wanted. He'd get to be "right" most of the time, and I'd get the safety and security of DD.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

There is no benefit, DD or otherwise, that is powerful enough to make up for a lack of respect or a diminishment of self. If there were, there would never have been a women's movement (or a civil rights movement or an organized labor movement). Women would have been happy to be cossetted, protected and cared for in exchange for putting up with being talked down to, excluded and dehumanized.

But it doesn't work that way. The innate human need for self respect is too powerful.

Am I then suggesting that DD is, after all, inherently abusive and sexist?

Absolutely not!

I continue to believe that, when it's in the context of a healthy, mutually respectful relationship, DD speaks to a basic, archetypal need in those who seek it -- first, to fulfill unmet childhood and developmental needs, (see "DD as a Reaction to Me Generation Parenting") and second, to balance the male/female archetypal energies that our culture has twisted beyond recognition. (I really need to get around to finishing that post...)

But because there are no external forces checking the behavior of the dominant in a DD relationship, the only check on the system that prevents abuse is self-control, an internal responsibility on his part and a willingness to admit freely when he's wrong. Lose any of those and the relationship -- and the woman specifically -- are in dangerous territory.

As Ollie wrote so beautifully in his comment on "When I'm Angry," (and I'm paraphrasing here), power corrupts. And in a situation where one human being has ultimate say over right and wrong, few of us, male or female, could resist the temptation to avoid taking responsibility for our mistakes.

This is all too human an impulse. In fact, I think it's safe to say that most women attracted to DD are attracted precisely because we recognize our urge to avoid responsibility and want to be forced to accept it.

I imagine myself with a paddle in my hand, and while I'd like to think I'd be fair, truthfully, I doubt it. If I were that good a disciplinarian, if my judgement were that sound, if I were that emotionally balanced, I likely wouldn't have such strong need for an external disciplinarian, and my interest in spanking and discipline would likely revert to a strictly sexual one.

Fundamentally, then, the issue of boundaries goes back to the prior post -- it seems that for a traditional non-reciprocal DD relationship to work, the trust has to be firmly established prior to the introduction of DD. The respect of boundaries has to go both ways -- and his way is harder, because he has to do it of his own free will. Otherwise, there's simply too much temptation to abuse the privilege of power.

Perhaps the ongoing attempts by myself and others to negotiate a successful DD relationship can be compared to finding that "sweet spot" during a spanking -- it hurts in all the right -- and none of the wrong -- places.

When DD's Not Enough

2007-04-23T20:54:00.000-06:00

Regular readers have no doubt noticed a sharp decline in the frequency at which new articles appear on this blog. My apologies.

The truth is, I haven't written because I've been reluctant to face what's most on my mind these days with regard to Domestic Discipline (DD).

A few months back, I wrote a post questioning whether a relationship is real if the only thing holding it together is DD. ("If DD is the glue, do the parts really fit?")

At the time, I concluded that the answer was yes, because for a relationship to thrive, what was required was trust and communication, and something, be it DD or a more traditional method, has to provide a framework for that trust and communication or the relationship won't survive.

I'm no longer at all sure of that position.

Back in March, Bonnie posed the question on "My Bottom Smarts" as to whether you'd leave a relationship if the other person wasn't interested in DD. But it's the opposite question that's on my mind now. Do I stay in a relationship that seems to be fundamentally unhealthy for both parties just to keep DD in my life?

As many of you know, my partner and I spend most of our time apart. This isn't for professional reasons, as with many couples. Rather it's because after six years of being together, when our relationship became so difficult and painful we couldn't be in the same room together without hurting each other, I left. And he agreed that I should leave.

I moved 800 miles away to get some time to think things through and start over. Ironically, once I did leave, the pressure was off, and we had the time and space to find each other again -- largely through an exploration of DD -- both through extended phone and email conservations about our expectations from a DD relationship, and then during the extended times we've been together in the last year.

As with many couples, things improved rapidly for us when DD became part of our lives. Almost overnight it seemed, we went from tears, fighting, accusations and anger to intimacy, love, communication and talk of marriage and life commitment.

But now, our separation is more extended than it has been in the past and since for us at least, DD does not seem to work when we're not physically together, things have fallen apart again in a serious way. Once again, it's hard to believe we're the same two people who were so close last time we were together. I feel as though he's a stranger most of the time, and I don't seem to be able to find back the wonderful person with whom I have such a unique and powerful bond. And I suspect he feels the same way.

When my partner and I added DD to our relationship this time around (we'd tried it before, but that's another article!), we realized we had a lot of clearing the air work to do. To accomplish this, we did the traditional "clearing the slate" ritual -- an extended, intense disciplinary session meant to expunge the hurts and betrayals of the past and start us on a new, healthier path together.

This ritual was helpful, to some extent. That level of ritual pain is powerful and it can't help but be cleansing in many ways. But the reality is that one afternoon of DD, no matter how intense and emotional, isn't going to erase years of mistrust, hurt, anger and miscommunication. That's not realistic, but more the stuff of romantic DD fantasy. Also significant is that the slate clearing was about me making up for what I did. We have yet to find an effective, DD-themed mechanism for making up for what he did -- one of the potential flaws of a traditional DD relationship. (see "When I'm Angry")

No matter how many spankings are given or how much time is spent in the corner, at some point in a relationship, you have to sit down across the table from the other person and talk with them about what's going on between you. And that's where the problem is, at least for us.

The truth is that neither my partner nor I are particularly good at communicating with each other about our feelings. (except where DD is concerned) When we talk about the issues in our past, I get emotional; he withdraws. I get more emotional because he withdraws; he withdraws even more. And so it goes.

And as a result, nothing really gets resolved between us. This lack of closure and resolution is why DD is such a welcome change for us. No leaving things to simmer and fester -- a spanking clears the air and gets us back on the right track.

But spankings now don't seem to help us with things in the past. And for us, there is a lot of pain in the past. Big Pain. Not "don't leave the toilet seat up" kind of pain, but big, Lifetime Movie of the Week pain. A sticky, seemingly bottomless pit of mistrust, anger and hurt that I'm not sure can be cleared up with any method, DD or otherwise.

My new answer then, to whether a relationship is legitimate if the only thing holding it together is DD is, sadly, probably not.

It may be that for DD to work as it's intended, it has to start from a place of trust and communication, rather than standing in as a substitute for those things. It may be that trying to use DD to rescue a relationship full of pain and anger and miscommunication is like putting a band-aid on an infected wound. It covers it up, but it doesn't make the wound go away.

And so I've been contemplating the possibility that's breaking my heart: That this wonderful, beautiful relationship that feels so right, so complete and so safe in so many ways (in many ways beyond DD) may not be the right one after all.

And with that, of course, comes the fear that I may never find anyone else again who understands this need in me as completely as my current partner does. I may find someone else willing to spank me, sure. Easy enough. But as we all know, DD is much, much more than that. Will I be able to find someone else with such a solid grasp of the psychology involved on both sides of a DD relationship? Who understands why living this way is so important to me and what my life experience was that made it so? Who comes to DD with such exquisite sensititivity and respect for my personhood? Doubtful. But possible.

Even more than the obvious heartbreak of losing my partner and all the wonderful parts of our relationship when it's working, it's devastating for me to think of forever losing a chance at being the person that I am when DD is working. The sense of empowerment and confidence. The feeling of finding my truest feminine self in a way that I haven't found anywhere else. To give that up terrifies me and keeps me hanging in, trying to make this work long past the point where I probably should have realized it's not going to.

If he asked me to marry him today, would I say yes, despite the ongoing problems, despite that murky tar pit of Big Pain in our past? Probably -- almost certainly -- yes. And that scares me even more. That I want and need DD in my life so much, and that I'm so afraid this is my only chance at having it, that I'd be willing to make a lifelong commitment to a relationship that's so fundamentally flawed just to keep it. Yikes.

The Spirituality of Corner Time

2007-03-24T23:29:00.000-06:00

Ah well... the good part about being separated from my partner (again!) is that I have lots of opportunity to consider what I miss most about DD (Domestic Discipline) when we're not together.

I miss the spankings, of course, as I've written about in prior posts ("Why Spanking Matters"). But interestingly, perhaps even more than spankings, I miss the corner time that follows the spankings.

In our relationship, mandatory corner time follows every spanking. Depending on how much time we have, the seriousness of the offense and my attitude preceding it, corner time generally lasts at least 20 minutes, sometimes an hour, and occasionally longer for a more serious misbehavior.

Corner time is meant as discipline, of course, and it is certainly that. It's embarrassing, particularly since I'm required to "serve my time" with my newly-spanked bottom exposed. It's occasionally frustrating, if I haven't yet had a chance to tell my partner my side of the misbehavior I'm being disciplined for. It's occasionally painful -- depending on the severity of the spanking I've just received.

And yet, despite these unpleasantries, corner time is one of my favorite parts of DD.

Imagine having someone you love tell you, for the next half hour (or more!), your only responsibility is to Be. You have nowhere to go, nothing to do, no emails to answer, no obligations of any kind except to be still and present with yourself and your breath.

A lot of people pay a lot of money to take courses and attend retreats on meditation, yoga and other relaxation techniques. I know, because I used to be one of them. To relieve my stress and quiet my mind and just give myself permission to Be, I've tried yoga, meditation, chanting, deep breathing, mantras, affirmations, prayer, you name it. Some of these worked better than others for me and, of course, all of them can be deeply effective methods for connecting with that calm, still, sacred part deep inside of all of us.

But for me, none of them have the meditative, calming, centering effect that corner time does.

I suspect a big part of the reason corner time works so well to calm, center and relax me is that it's mandatory. All of the other techniques -- meditation, yoga, etc. -- are voluntary. I can stop whenever I want to. And because I have an extremely short attention span and because I have have a very hard time not fidgeting or moving around, I generally stop way before traditional methods like meditation have a chance to work.

But with corner time, I can't "stop." I'm there till my partner tells me I can go, period. (Why? See "Why Do I Obey.") So I can't bail out when I get restless or bored or fidgety. I have to stay and see it through.

There's a certain pattern to corner time, at least for me. And that pattern is virtually identical to the pattern commonly associated with traditional meditation (when it's working). Both are a psychological journey with several stages, from stress to peace.

When I'm first sent to the corner, I'm all good intentions. I stand obediently still, focused largely on the sore bottom I've been sent to the corner with. But it doesn't take long for the fidgeting to set in. I shift weight from one foot to the other. I move my hands from front to back and to the front again. I rock my head back and forth. My eyes shift this way and that. (Should my partner discipline me for excessive fidgeting in the corner? Good question. Perhaps. Would that get me where I need to go faster, or is the fidgeting a necessary part of the process?)

And although my partner always gives me specific instructions as to what I'm to think about during corner time, my thoughts wander everywhere. From the spanking I just got to what I did to deserve it to what I want for dinner to the emails I have to answer to... etc, etc, etc. "Monkey Mind," the Zen teachers call it, climbing out of the corner and roaming everywhere but where it's supposed to be.

But sooner or later, all these random thoughts subside. My breathing slows down. I stop fidgeting. Things get very quiet in my head and heart. I find myself resting my forehead against the corner, taking deep, slow breaths and relaxing my shoulders, my abdomen and my neck (all the places I carry my stress). Time slows down and I lose all sense of how long I've been there. All that matters is my breath and the peace I feel inside.

20 minutes is about the minimum amount of time for me to get to this place and stay there long enough to feel the benefits. As with meditation, though, the longer I stay, the more I feel the benefits (up to a point, I suppose, though I haven't found that point yet). By the time my partner says my corner time is up, I feel like I've just had a really good yoga session. He tells me that when I come to him from the corner, I look especially beautiful and relaxed. And that's how I feel, too.

Corner time for me works particularly well following a spanking because the intense, sharp, external energy of a spanking is a perfect contrast to the peaceful, internalized, calming energy of corner time. For me, the contrast is what brings the transformation. Being taken to an emotional high by the spanking, and then allowed, slowly, to come back down into the peace of corner time is a profound spiritual experience. Corner time without the spanking preceding it doesn't carry the same transformative power.

I've read a lot of comments from women in DD relationships that express their resistance to corner time. Usually the reason given is that it's boring or that they'd get impatient and restless if they had to spend more than a few minutes there. And yes, it's certainly not as glamorous or dramatic or even sexual as a spanking is. The power of corner time is more subtle and nuanced, and it's buried deep in the hidden, personal stillness of our hearts.

We live in a culture that doesn't value stillness, patience or the virtue of just Being. But like many things tossed aside by the frenetic, media-driven culture we live in, stillness is necessary to keep us in balance.

We've all met people who can't stand to live in silence. Who turn the TV on as soon as they get home, take their iPods on a hike rather than just listening to the quiet sounds of nature, or blast their car radio everywhere they go. Or what about those among us who can't live in stillness? They multi-task -- doing two things at once all the time. Reading while they eat, cleaning the kitchen while they're on the phone, heck, even listening to language tapes while they sleep!

Somewhere along the way, we've been taught to fear silence and stillness. Perhaps because it's in the silence and stillness that the truth of our emotions and our authentic selves come out, and some of those emotions are difficult, painful and uncomfortable to face and some parts of our authentic selves may not be parts we want to acknowledge. Easier to drown our feelings and our authenticity out with constant noise and movement.

Easier, but not, ultimately, healthier.

The good news is that as practitioners of DD, we're way ahead of most of the rest of the world (with the possible exception of those Zen teachers...). We've already experienced the amazing benefits of expressing our deepest needs rather than suppressing them. We're learning the joys of living our lives in harmony with who we really are, even when the rest of society doesn't understand or approve of our authentic selves. We're much less likely to fear our inner voice, and thus much less likely to drown it out inner voice out with constant motion and noise. Therefore, in theory at least, we're much more open and available to the peaceful, stress-relieving benefits that corner time can bring to our lives.

So I'd encourage those of you who haven't done so yet to give corner time a chance to work its meditative magic. Yes, those first five or ten minutes can be difficult, but like any meditative practice, there's a payoff if you hang in there long enough. And you might come to find, as I have, that it brings a new level of spirituality and empowerment to your relationship and to your life as a whole.

The Little Voice -- Emotional Awareness and DD

2007-03-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago, I was happily working away on a project one afternoon, when a little voice inside my head said, "You need a spanking."

This message from my subconscious was unexpected and I stopped to consider the possibility. I didn't feel as though I needed a spanking. On the contrary, I felt relaxed, reasonably centered and confident -- all the qualities that come from having been recently spanked (although I hadn't been) rather than from needing one.

But the voice was insistent. Throughout the day, it popped up in the most unlikely places, always with the same message, "You need a spanking."

Sure enough, the next day, I started to feel just a tiny bit edgy. And that night, my partner and I had one of those all-too-familiar conversations that end in tension and tears. "You need a spanking," my partner said afterwards.

So was that voice in my head from the prior day an indication that my partner has learned to communicate telepathically? No (though that'd be really useful!), but the experience did show me yet another benefit of living a DD (Domestic Discipline) lifestyle -- an increased awareness of my inner emotional state.

About a year ago, I started charting my fertility using the Fertility Awareness Method, a method of natural birth control based on learning how to read my body's indicators to determine whether or not I'm fertile. (check out this link for a really great software program that helps track fertility) .

In charting the various physical changes throughout my cycle, I've been amazed at my growing ability to sense even the tiniest shifts in my body as they relate to my fertility. Things so small that I hadn't noticed them before, that are clear indicators as to whether sex is safe or not on the day.

Similarly, as my partner and I get more into the rhythm of DD, I'm noticing a corresponding sensitivity to my psychological states as well. Tiny little shifts of mood or flickers of tension that I wasn't aware of before we started DD.

These tiny little mood shifts are the sparks that, in the past, went unnoticed until they exploded into full-blown arguments and fights between my partner and me. Usually he would notice that something was wrong before I did, as I began to become brittle and bitchy without realizing it. Then of course, he would respond to my brittleness with bristliness of his own, and I would respond to his response (accusing him of starting it), and so on until there we were, hurling insults and ad hominems at one another and ruining our relationship in the process.

One of the many gifts of DD is this ability to catch and deal with these emotional fluctuations before they do any damage.

But of course, reaping the benefits of this gift of emotional sensitivity requires being willing to take the appropriate steps to stop the impending "bitchy spell" before it escalates. And herein lies the challenge, of course.

Either myself or my partner has to step up and give the needed discipline at the first signs of a mood shift. But of course, if my partner notices the mood shift, that means I've already crossed the line and demonstrated inappropriate and/or disrespectful behavior -- behavior that's destructive to the relationship

The best scenario for using DD to maintain peace and harmony in the relationship is for me to recognize the warning signs before they affect my behavior, and then step up and ask for a discipline session -- turning the interior "you need a spanking" into a verbalized "I need a spanking."

Now as most of you know from experience, having your partner tell you that you need a spanking is vastly different from asking for one. However "comfortable" we are accepting discipline imposed by our partners, those familiar demons of embarrassment and rejection re-appear in full force at the prospect of asking for it ourselves.

But, of course, in addition to being a tool for building a stable relationship, DD is also (perhaps even foremost) a tool for personal growth. It's a way to build self-discipline, boundaries and self-esteem we didn't build earlier in life (see "DD as a Reaction to "Me" Generation Parenting").

The little voice in our head that tells us it's time for a spanking is a valuable opportunity to learn to take responsibility for our own emotional well-being, rather than remaining reliant on someone else to manage our psychology for us.

Having the courage and maturity to ask for discipline when we need it is a valuable opportunity to develop our own internal parent -- the same internal parent who's telling us we need the spanking even when we don't think we do. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that virtually everyone who's attracted to DD (and just about all the people who aren't as well) has an internal parent that isn't strong enough to get the job done without external help.

Recognizing a need and stepping up to proactively ask for help in addressing it is a major step on the road to becoming a healthy, integrated human being. It's a difference -- perhaps the difference -- between being a child and being an adult.

And that's perhaps the greatest gift of of the "little voice" -- the opportunity to take another step on the road to personal empowerment by exercising personal responsibility and developing a stronger, more reliable and trustworthy internal parent.

Ritual (and a little help with long-distance DD)

2007-02-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

Most couples engaged in a Domestic Discipline (DD) lifestyle are well aware of the power of ritual to create psychological change -- whether we consciously label it as such or not.

For many of us, it is the ritual aspect of discipline that holds much of the emotional power of DD. Maybe it's that particular phrase our partner uses to let us know that we've crossed a line and earned a spanking, or maybe it's the position we're required to assume, or how we reconnect once the discipline is done. Whatever the specifics, practicing DD generally includes repeated meaningful words and actions that evoke feelings of safety, love and connectedness for both partners.

For me, the importance of ritual in a DD relationship is one of the most positive aspects of this lifestyle, and a much-needed counterbalance to the unfortunate lack of ritual in our secular, "rational" Western culture.

For the most part, Western society has eschewed ritual on the grounds that it's irrational, backwards and meaningless. Young girls, for example, no longer have an established, culturally-accepted way to acknowledge their first menstruation as a transition into womanhood and as a result, often grow up feeling shameful and secret about their bodies and their femininity. And young men, denied even the physical demarcation of menstruation, have virtually no societal benchmarks or rituals to acknowledge their passage into manhood -- leading to a culture in which the majority of young men spend most of their lives unsure of whether they're adults or not.

What few true rituals we have left in our culture -- marriage, graduation, funerals -- commemorate only a handful of public events in our lives, leaving the smaller, more personal, and often ultimately more significant passages we go through unacknowledged and undervalued.

There's good reason why ritual has been an important part of virtually every culture since the beginning of civilization (ours notwithstanding). And there's a reason that spirituality and religion are founded almost entirely on the mindful practice of ritual. A culture without respect for ritual pays the price sooner or later.

Whatever we realize it or not, human beings need ritual if we're to grow into healthy, integrated adults. Ritual helps us to come to terms with our shortcomings and to celebrate our triumphs. And more than that, ritual creates a structure that helps us to make sense of the dizzying cacophony of random experiences we live through day-by-day. It gives the little things we do meaning and purpose by putting them the context of our larger life's journey.

Fortunately for us, DD is all about ritual (impromptu parking lot spankings not withstanding). The rituals of domestic discipline help us to incorporate the lessons we learn in our everyday lives into our deeper selves so we can become healthier people.

Our DD rituals also create a safe, mutually-understood mechanism by which we can connect with the deeper parts of ourselves that are normally less accessible to us.

For me, the ritual aspect of DD is what allows me to submit to the discipline that I've consented to (but don't always want in the moment). When my partner says, "go get the paddle," the familiarity of those words -- the same ones every time -- acts as a Pavlovian trigger, shifting my psychology from rebellion into submission more quickly and gracefully than if he used different words every time.

And the more those words pass between us, and the more we step through the increasingly-familiar dance of discipline, the more the practice and the benefits of discipline become engraved in our minds (our neutral networks, if you take the scientific approach). Ritual, at its core, is meaningful habit.

But most significantly, the ritual of discipline is a deeply spiritual process that helps us to to realize the effects of our actions on others and their actions on us. Discipline is a ritualizing of the universal emotional journey from anger (disconnection with humanity) to repentance (acknowledging our own humanity) to reconciliation (reconnection with humanity).

In my experience, when it's done well, Domestic Discipline is an experience in finding the divine spark inside myself that allows me to forgive myself and others for being human. Being reminded that my actions affect others in turn reminds me that I am connected to others.

The rules of DD mirror those of life -- when I hurt others, I am hurt, but when I love others, I am loved.

How Ritual Works

For many years, I misunderstood the nature of ritual, and mostly did it backwards. I thought ritual was something you were supposed to do when you were ready for it, and not before.

To use a small example, after one of my favorite cats died, I planned to scatter the ashes, but I kept putting it off. I felt like I couldn't scatter the ashes until I was ready to say goodbye. But a wise friend pointed out to me that I would likely never be ready to say goodbye unless I completed the ritual of scattering the ashes. If I waited to scatter them until I was ready, I'd probably have dead-cat ashes on my dresser for the rest of my life.

So although I didn't feel ready to say goodbye to my best kitty friend, I took my friend's advice and did the ash scattering ritual. Afterwards, I was surprised to find that I was able to say goodbye. The thing I thought I couldn't do until I was able to let go is actually what enabled me to let go. I'd been approaching the whole process of ritual backwards.

DD rituals work the same way. We step through them not because we're already ready, willing and able to accept discipline, but to help us get ready and accept it more humbly, gracefully and spiritually. If we waited until we were ready before bringing our partner the proverbial paddle, most of us would never submit, and we'd lose the powerful and amazing benefits of that submission. And our partners discipline us not because they've already forgiven us for what we've done, but as a way to help them on their own journey of mercy and understanding.

Our Commitment Ritual

The benefits of ritual are particularly on my mind just now, because after three beautiful weeks with my partner, we're again in different parts of the country for another month-long separation.

The day of my departure, we spent the afternoon at the beach. During that time, we talked about the challenges we still have in building and strengthening our DD relationship.

I talked about the fears I have that he doesn't take this crazy lifestyle seriously and is just humoring my "kink." I also shared again how hard it is to hold onto the connection we have when we're apart. He talked about his struggle with how to handle the times when I resist discipline, and how those incidents fuel his continued fears that I could revoke my consent, and then turn around in a moment of anger and accuse him of being abusive.

These are huge issues, of course, and I confessed that I despaired of ever truly resolving them. That's when he suggested that perhaps we needed a ceremony, a ritual, in which we both stated our commitment to a DD lifestyle, and said the things the other needed to hear in a formal pledge.

There wasn't much time to set it up, since I was leaving in a few hours. But another thing I've learned over the years is that simple rituals are often much more effective than elaborately planned and scripted ones, the latter of which often take so much concentration and choreography that there's no time to be in the moment.

So off we went to the local tourist shop, where we bought a simple $5 silver ring (for me, since he doesn't wear jewelry). Holding hands, we walked to a beautiful bench overlooking the ocean, and discussed what kinds of things we each needed to hear from the other to feel safer and more confident in our relationship.

As we sat side-by-side on the bench, I handed him the ring, promising that it symbolized my consent, commitment and submission to his discipline. I promised that the consent I was giving was true, no matter what I said or did in the heat of the moment. I also promised that to help him tell the difference, if I truly wanted to revoke my consent, I'd do it in a calm, rational, non-disciplinary moment. Finally, I explicitly pledged that I would not betray our trust by turning on him and accusing him of abuse for administering discipline, but to trust and talk through situations when I'm angry or when things go wrong.

As he put the ring on my finger, he promised to always strive to discipline with love, although he reminded me there would often be anger and disappointment, too. He reiterated his serious commitment to a DD relationship, and his willingness to do the hard work of building it. He reminded me that we are connected and that the energy between us is present, even when we're apart and it's harder to feel that connection.

We kissed, then held each other for a moment. We hadn't said anything that we hadn't said many times before, but this time, we said the words more formally and with the strength of our solemn word behind them.

A few hours later, it was time for me to leave. But this simple, impromptu ritual has had a surprising power. The presence of the ring, a physical reminder of our commitment and my consent, on my finger made the separation easier (the ritual pre-departure spanking helped, too, of course). And now that we're apart again, having something tangible to see and touch when my fears come up has been very stabilizing. I can touch the ring no matter where I am or what I'm doing and instantly invoke the power of the ritual and the special bond we share together.

The acid test of the ceremony came a few days later when our tempers flared during a phonecall (about not being together!) and I shifted into my habitual bitchy attitude, complete with the petulant hang-up. He called back a few minutes later, as he almost always does. Normally, I either pick up the phone with a nasty attitude or don't answer it all, knowing that he's almost certainly calling back to discipline me (and knowing full well he can't do much if I say no, given he's 1000 miles away).

But this time, almost without thinking about it, I felt the ring on my finger, remembered the promise of consent that I gave. My word means a lot to me, and I realized that simple promise on the beach had weight -- weight enough to cause me to pick up the phone respectfully, prepared for the consequences of my disrespect. It wasn't a perfect interaction -- if it had been, I wouldn't have hung up the phone or been disrespectful in the first place, but it was a lot more better than it had been in prior instances.

In sum, I'm deeply grateful for the presence of the rituals of DD in my life, and for a partner who recognizes the value and power of them. I feel extremely fortunate to have access to such a powerful way of reconnecting with the transformative power of ritual.

I would love to hear about any rituals or ceremonies that you've used in your DD relationships to overcome relationship issues, solidify bonds or make the experience more emotionally and spiritually meaningful. Along with comments, please feel free to contribute to the discussion your rituals of preparation, discipline, reconnection or commitment. (long comments are fine!)

The Virtues of a Sore Bottom

2007-01-25T13:20:00.001-07:00

After an extended separation and a rocky reunion, my partner and I seem to be back in the Domestic Discipline (DD) groove. Translation: peaceful relationship, great sex and a sore bottom -- my first in three very long months.

After the last few posts focusing on the dangers, pitfalls and setbacks that can happen with a DD lifestyle, this seems like be a good time to revisit the reasons why we put ourselves through the complicated and occasionally comical process of developing a solid DD relationship in the first place.

Those of us who are already in (relatively) successful DD relationships are well aware, of course, of the benefits of this lifestyle. And part of the fun complexity of DD is that the benefits are different depending on which side of the paddle you're on.

For the most part, our partners benefit from DD indirectly. (I'm assuming here a traditional one-way DD relationship in which the dominant partner disciplines the submissive partner. ) Our partners benefit not so much from the discipline itself, but more from the effect that the discipline has on us and on the relationship.

But our partners don't get the privilege of experiencing the visceral, dramatic attitude shift that we get when we're properly disciplined. It amazes me how radically the presence of a sore bottom affects not just my relationship with my partner, but my entire outlook on life.

A sore bottom is a gift (that keeps on giving...?). It's a precious gift from my partner that demonstrates the love and commitment he has for our relationship, and for helping me to grow and become healthier human beings . Every time I feel the after-effects of a spanking, I am reminded that I am loved, cherished and important to my partner, and that he demonstrates this in part by taking the time to spank me.

A sore bottom also gives me a delicious sexual charge that helps to keep my relationship with my partner romantic and excitin. Since the majority, if not all, women come to DD out of an interest in erotic spanking, even (and perhaps especially) a disciplinary spanking has erotic overtones (after all, aren't most of our fantasies about disciplinary spankings?). A sore bottom is a little reminder of that sexual energy. Feeling that soreness makes me desire my partner more, which in turn makes me more sexually responsive to him, which in turn makes for better sex for both of us.

Perhaps the most intriguing benefit of having a sore bottom is that when I have one, I feel more feminine and submissive, and more confident and capable -- all at the same time. For me, this is the most fascinating and powerful part of DD -- its paradoxical ability to empower me through the experience of submission.

A submissive reaction to DD is, of course, something of a given. The experience of being spanked (i.e., physically and psychologically dominated) by my partner encourages my submissive side to come to the surface. And when I have a sore bottom, I can feel myself striving to act more respectful, loving and nurturing towards not only my partner, but towards the other people in my life. And because a spanking is also an effective stress reliever, a thorough spanking causes me to radiate a feeling of calm, peaceful energy. I am slower to anger and quicker to forgive. In short, I am softer.

My partner also tells me that I'm particularly beautiful after a spanking, and I feel that way, too. Perhaps it's a self-fulfilling prophecy -- because I feel more beautiful, relaxed and nurturing, I radiate that inner beauty to others. After a spanking, I'm also aware of feeling more physically graceful. My body posture and movements become more fluid and elegant. I tend to select softer, more feminine clothing. I walk and speak more softly. I walk more softly. And I laugh and smile more easily after a spanking. In short, I am more feminine.

But the most intriguing part of a sore bottom to me is that when I am well and regularly spanked for my misbehavior, I experience a significantly enhanced feeling of self-confidence and personal power. With a sore bottom, I feel as though I can do things that I previously didn't feel capable of doing. My head is clear and I seem to make better life decisions. And I am told by my partner (and others who don't know the cause) that I have a particular aura of confidence when I've been recently disciplined. In short, I am more powerful.

And here then, in the experience of a sore bottom, is the missing element of feminism -- that true feminine power is rooted in softness. True feminism isn't about borrowing male power and trying to make it fit. It's also not about disowning and repressing our softer, more nurturing qualities as signs of weakness.

For years, feminism has carried the message that to be an empowered woman, we have to act like a man. To be strong, we have to do his job (and do it the way he does it), wear his clothes (a skirt doesn't fully feminize a power suit) and play by his rules ("there's no crying in baseball!"). But the implication of that approach is that as women, we have no strength of our own and that the only way to get power is to imitate men. And that viewpoint strikes me as profoundly dis-empowering and anti-feminist.

The paradox of DD and of feminism is that the more in touch with our authentic feminine nature we are, the more empowered and capable we become in our careers, relationships and in the world in general. We can go out in the world and be leaders if we choose to, but we can do so as women, not as pretend-men. True feminine power -- the deepest, more primal essence of being female -- is the ability to find strength in our softness, not in spite of it.

The Burdens of Being a Disciplinarian

2007-01-23T23:17:00.000-07:00

Wow. If there's one thing my partner and I are spectacularly good at, it's messing up our Domestic Discipline (DD) relationship in every way we can possibly find.

The good news is that after a prolonged absence, we're finally in the same house again, albeit only for a few weeks. The bad news is that getting back into the disciplinary groove is a lot harder than I'd anticipated.

I had this romantic vision of our reunion: falling into his waiting arms, submitting to a serious, much-needed and well-deserved "slate clearing" spanking, and floating away on a cloud of connubial bliss.

The problem is -- well, there are several, but the problem for this post is -- in all my imaginings, I forgot how much his spankings hurt.

So after several spanking-free months, when the first well-deserved swat landed, my instinctive reaction was, "OW! Stop that!" I promptly got up and indignantly protested this unexpectedly harsh assault on my person. When he ordered me back in position, my verbatim response was, "Like hell. Back off."

Now I suspect I know what you're thinking. It's likely the same thing I was thinking. His job in this moment was to take charge of the situation -- with force if necessary -- and resume the spanking -- with extra discipline added for my disobedience.

I need to add here this is the first time this particular situation has come up for us. We've had other occasions of me refusing discipline, but they've always been on the phone, never in person. Candidly, I used to think I was above that sort of behavior. I'd read posts from other women saying they resisted, moved out of position or put their hands back to block a swat, and I'd smugly think to myself, I would never do that. I'm disciplined (!) enough to take what's coming to me regardless of how much it hurts. But I have been humbled. Turns out I'm not above it at all.

Ultimately, I did manage to return, albeit not terribly submissively, to take the rest of my spanking, do my corner time, and proffer my apology. But I felt pretty crappy about how the whole thing went down on both sides. Whether he was or not, I was worried during the spanking that he was holding back and feeling uncomfortable. And I came away frustrated and unsettled, having missed out on the cathartic, mind-clearing, bonding aftereffects of discipline that I so needed and wanted. Instead of feeling close and loving, we spent an awkward, tense night dancing around each other's unspoken issues and pretending we didn't have a big problem to resolve. So much for connubial bliss.

The next day, when we talked about what went wrong, my partner admitted that while he was totally down for disciplining a willing woman, he had some serious concerns about disciplining an unwilling one. The lines of consent and non-consent suddenly became unclear, and that was very scary for him. As he put it, "If I spank you when you say no, am I an abuser? Is that assault?"

He'd expressed these concerns in the past, but I admit that since it never seriously occurred to me that this situation would come up, I hadn't made a serious effort to discuss it with him the way I should have.

This is another lesson, of course, in the importance of communication, even about things that seem far-fetched or unlikely at the time. If we'd communicated more thoroughly about his concerns beforehand, we might have had a shot at saving the situation from turning into a trust issue on both sides.

The larger concern that this brings up for me is a realization is that I -- and I suspect most submissives -- don't spend enough time considering the very real risks that the dominant partner takes in assuming the role of disciplinarian. I know for me, it's a constant struggle to remember to check in with my partner about how he's doing emotionally with regard to DD issues.

This lack of attention to the dominant's emotional state is likely because the majority of those who write about DD tend to be women, and women tend to be on the receiving end of discipline. We tend to spend a lot of time thinking about our issues, our perspective, yes, our vision of how perfect we wish our not-perfect partner could be. Also, since women (and likely submissives as a group?) tend to be more introspective than men, we're more likely to be more motivated than our partners to analyze and communicate our thoughts and feelings about DD.

In my perfect world, of course, my partner is all-knowing, all-strong, all-confident. He is the Indiana Jones of the DD world, spanking first, asking questions later, making heroic decisions with no hesitation or fear. This mythical view of our partner is a sacred cow for most of us, because let's face it, the idea of a disciplinarian who has serious doubts or insecurities is a bit of a buzz-kill for that "strong, handsome and totally in control" partner we all fantasize about.

But the dangers for the dominant partner are very real, and to have a fully realized, honest DD relationship, the dangers for both sides need to be constantly guarded against.

Some of the risks he takes:

1. Legal liability. This is the big one, and it likely worries your partner more than you realize, especially if this is his first DD relationship. All it takes is one particularly nasty argument and all of a sudden, he's being reported to the authorities as an abusive spouse. And you've got the bruises to prove it.

This may sound far-fetched, and I keep telling my partner it would never happen, but in a culture with our rabid, zero-tolerance, ask no questions approach to domestic violence, it's a huge risk for any man to take. If the relationship turns sour and we want revenge, we have the power to send him to prison, ruin his career and reputation, humiliate him in front of his friends and family, and get the state to revoke custody of his children.

Yes, I know we're all sure this would never happen, but HE can never be 100% sure, and the truth is, neither can we -- because no one can be 100% sure of anything when it comes to intimate relationships. After all, consider that virtually all relationships start out full of love and the promise of trust, and then consider how many of them end vindictively in divorce court, or worse, violence. None of those couples thought it would end that way, either, but it does. All the time.

2. Emotional trauma. My partner is a decent, feeling, caring human being, and I'm assuming yours is, too. (If not, you probably shouldn't be in any kind of relationship with him, much less a relationship requiring the trust and control that DD does.) Decent, feeling, caring human beings aren't naturally inclined to want to hurt the people they love. Yes, of course our partner understands that we want and need those hard spankings -- he wouldn't give them to us if he didn't. But that doesn't mean it's always easy to spank us when we're sobbing in pain and remorse, or to ignore our pleas for mercy. Inflicting pain on another human being always carries an emotional price, no matter how consensual that pain is. And when it's not clearly consensual, that emotional price skyrockets.

3. Mental energy. Being an effective disciplinarian is hard work. (Just ask any good parent.) To discipline responsibly requires being focused, making good judgements, and staying present in the moment, constantly judging the level and appropriateness of the timing and degree of discipline being meted out. Disciplining another human being is a huge, stressful, often exhausting responsibility.

And since most of us demand consistency in our discipline, this requires a whole new level of alertness in keeping track of what our misbehavior is, how he disciplined for it last time, etc. Not to mention the effort required to respond to our misbehavior with appropriate discipline (and ideally some level of enthusiasm) even if he's sick, tired, distracted, in the middle of a big project at work, or just really looking forward to watching the game on TV. As hard it is sometimes to accept discipline, his job is much harder than ours is.

4. Isolation. Yes, of course, DD is a powerful bonding experience on both sides, and in many ways, brings us closer to our partners than we could ever be in a more egalitarian relationship. But being a disciplinarian means being a leader, and being a leader is a lonely place to be. For a start, DD is likely not the sort of experience he can generally share with his buddies (especially if, like my partner, his buddies are his colleagues in the progressive political world), so he often has nowhere to turn for advice, a sounding board or just to share his experiences with others in his situation.

He is also denied many of the benefits that we as submissives enjoy as a result of being disciplined. He has no structured outlet for his negative emotions. He has no formal way of clearing his conscience when he feels bad about something. He has no one to be accountable to for his missteps. We get the luxury of regressing and abdicating responsibility sometimes, particularly during our discipline. But he has to be an adult virtually all of the time -- an adult that lives up to our shining ideal of what an adult should be. Yes, being adored and deferred to has its benefits, but that doesn't make the loneliness of leadership any less difficult.

Fortunately for me, my partner and I are pretty good about understanding that DD, like any relationship, is a work in progress. We talked about my need to know that discipline is inevitable regardless of my feelings on the subject, and about his fears of being accused of abuse if he spanks me after I've said no.

The issues we have didn't disappear. In fact, I suspect they'll come up again and again as we struggle through this. But the key to a healthy DD lifestyle seems to lie in the willingness to accept each other's imperfections, to expect things to go wrong, and to be willing to live with the reality of how DD works in a real relationship, rather than expecting everything to go like it does in our daydreams. After all, perfection is what we have those lovely masturbatory fantasies for, right?

Private vs. Secret

2007-01-20T20:19:00.000-07:00

In bed with the flu this past week, I spent more time reading than I did writing, and had a chance to catch up on some blogs I'd been bookmarking. Among them is the blog many of you are likely familiar with, Breathing In, Breathing Out, which examines the role that Domestic Discipline (DD) can play in healing the after-effects of childhood abuse (sexual and otherwise).

I was particularly struck by the author's latest post, "Spanking vs. Abuse," in which she struggles to draw a distinction between "secret" and "private" with regard to her DD lifestyle, and to come to terms with how keeping the secret of DD fits in with the need to stop keeping the abusive secrets of her past.

I understand her dilemma. I also have a lot of history with secrets. They were the family speciality. Secrets about incest, abuse, affairs, alcoholism, financial scandals and white collar crime dot my family tree like sour apples rotting on the branches.

I learned how to keep secrets at a very early age -- about things that were happening to me and about things that were happening around me and everything in between.

As a child, I kept these secrets partly because I was told to and out of fear of the consequences if I didn't. But mostly, I kept them out of shame. If people found out who I "really" was, what kind of family I "really" came from, at the very least, they would stop liking me. And at worst, I'd be forcibly taken from my home and blamed by my parents for tearing the family apart and "making people think badly of us."

I've worked very hard during the last ten years to be divest myself of the role of family secret-keeper, and I've largely done it. And having worked so hard to be secret-free, the last thing I wanted to do was add a new one to my closet, or to create another significant emotional bond in which secrecy plays such a major part.

But of course, secrecy is inherent in a DD relationship. We all know far too well that it's not the kind of thing a woman can safely talk to friends, family, or for the most part, even a therapist about without risking some seriously negative reactions -- particularly in feminist/progressive circles.

The writer of the "Breathing In Breathing Out" blog suggests the answer lies in making the distinction between "private" and "secret." That perhaps DD is something that's private, but not secret.

I am struck by her way of thinking on this issue. Of course, as she herself acknowledges, it's not quite that simple.

The dictionary definitions of "private" and "secret" are virtually identical, but I would argue that "secret" often contains an element of shame that "private" does not. We may keep something private for all kinds of reasons, but most of the time, we keep something secret out of fear and shame of what others would think if they knew. To take that another step, then, one might say that we keep something private voluntarily, but we keep something secret due to social coercion -- the cost of telling is so high that it's virtually not a choice at all. Privacy is voluntary; secrecy is not.

At best, DD is a mix of privacy and secrecy. I say "at best" because for most women who practice DD (particularly feminists) the ever-present the fear of the reactions of our friends, colleagues and family makes our choice for us -- what would they think of us if they knew we submitted to spankings, corner time and other discipline by our partner for our misbehaviors?

To be clear, I don't have a need to spill the graphic details of my partner's and my DD lifestyle to our friends, family and colleagues (or for the matter, the world of cyberspace) any more than I want to gratuitously share the details of my sex or financial life or anything else that's traditionally kept "private." But I do have a problem living constantly on my guard that I might slip and say or do something that would reveal that I live this lifestyle at all and in any way.

So in spite of my best efforts, I find myself in a similar (but thankfully not identical) situation to my childhood. Keeping a secret not voluntarily, but out of fear and shame. And though without question the benefits of DD in my life are worth the price of secrecy, I still chafe at having to cover something up against my will. Again.

I write this on the day Hillary Clinton announced that she's forming an exploratory committee in preparation for a presidential bid. And I idly wonder, what if... just what if... she and Bill have a DD relationship? What she tolerates Bill's affairs primarily because the discipline she gets from being with him is what allows her to reach her goals and that's worth a little flexibility on the monogamy issue? (It likely would be to me, especially if it's Bill holding the paddle...)

What if our image of Hillary taking the oath of office were superimposed with an image of Hillary, business skirt pulled up, bottom bared and red, sobbing as she stands in the corner following a spanking from Bill for having spoken to him disrespectfully?

I'd like to think that if that (hypothetical) truth came out, we'd admire Hillary as much or perhaps more than we do already, because we'd see that she had the courage to acknowledge her deepest, most difficult-to-face needs and ask for them from her partner in the name of becoming a more complete human being.

But the truth is, of course, that virtually no one would see it that way. Her career would be over in less time that it would take to Fox News to report the story. An entire life's work, her dignity, self-respect and credibility erased with the spilling of one secret.

And so shame becomes bound up with the good, positive, life-affirming parts of DD and I find myself again in the position of childhood -- if people knew who I "really" was, what "really" went on behind the closed doors of my home, they wouldn't like me anymore. (Ironic, BTW, given that the very community that would condemn me the most is the progressive community, which prides itself on being tolerant of divergent lifestyles.)

As so often happens, I don't have a ready answer here. But I suspect the "private" vs "secret" distinction is the best solution so far -- to focus as much as possible on DD as a private matter between two consenting adults, and place less importance on the secret/shame aspect that's foisted on us by a culture that isn't broad-minded enough to recognize the benefits.

If DD is the glue, do the parts really fit?

2007-01-10T03:14:00.000-07:00

I wrote in an earlier post about the challenges my partner and I are having with long distance Domestic Discipline (DD), (see "Why Spanking Matters"). The short summary is that for us at least, DD doesn't seem to work when we're apart.

The problem is that without it, we're back to where we were before we started DD in the first place. That is, tears, anger, accusations, eroding communication and intimacy. A gulf between us that's as wide as ever it was. I can hardly believe we're the same two people who, only a month ago, were as close as I can imagine being with another human being.

The situation so upsetting for both of us that last night, after yet another tearful and angry encounter via phone, he suggested that perhaps we should consider not communicating at all when we're apart because it goes so poorly without DD to help us negotiate our differences.

The good news is that we'll be back together again in a few days. And I have every confidence that -- after a much-needed disciplinary session and reconciliation -- we'll find that loving, intimate place back again.

All of which brings up another nagging question in my head:

Is it really a good relationship if the only thing holding it together is DD? Put another way, if the relationship collapses so dramatically without DD, is it worth saving?

I think the answer is yes, because I think any healthy relationship is defined largely by how well individual boundaries are negotiated and enforced.

A genuine, intimate relationship requires boundaries in order to endure. In most non-DD relationships, those boundaries are much less clearly defined than they are in a DD relationship, but the boundaries are there nonetheless. They're negotiated over time, through communication and trial and error. He learns not to talk to her first thing in the morning because she's grouchy. She learns that he gets angry when she makes social plans without consulting him. Etc. etc.

If one partner violates the other's boundary, an argument and hurt feelings generally result. If it happens frequently, trust is impaired. Too many violations and the relationship is over.

The relationships that last are the ones where the boundaries are solid enough to provide safety, yet permeable enough to allow intimacy. In other words, just like good fences make good neighbors, good boundaries make good relationships. Remove the boundaries and you remove the safety net for building trust and intimacy. The container in which the relationship is held isn't strong enough to sustain the love and trust that goes inside it.

At its heart, DD is fundamentally nothing more than a more formalized and externalized system of setting and enforcing boundaries -- a container in which a relationship can grow and thrive. It's also, I believe, a safer and healthier container than most couples have the benefit of.

In a traditional relationship, it's generally a case of "cross my boundary and I will passively-aggressively punish you for the rest of our time together," or more likely, "cross my boundary and I'll leave you for someone who respects my boundaries." But in DD, it's "cross my boundary and you will be disciplined, firmly but fairly, and then we'll let it go and get on with our lives together."

So is it a "real" relationship if it's held together with DD?

I'd say absolutely.

A clear, mutually agreed-upon system of maintaining healthy boundaries while enhancing intimacy isn't the glue that holds an otherwise unhealthy relationship together -- it's the way in which a relationship stays healthy in the first place.

In other words, without a strong container, even the most loving relationship will fall apart.

When I'm Angry

2007-01-08T18:56:00.000-07:00

It's the thing none of us wants to talk about, but it's always there, at least for progressively-minded couples.

If he is angry with something I've done, I am disciplined, and if the discipline is sufficient, I come to see the error of my ways and am able to apologize. All is peaceful and well. This is the best of DD, when it's working as it's meant to.

But if I am angry with something he's done... well, what then?

I believe passionately in the power of DD to save and strengthen a relationship. But every once in awhile, this issue of me expressing my anger comes up. And it scares me, because it seems like the Achilles heel of the DD power structure.

The common response to this dilemma is to say that a woman in a DD relationship can and should express disagreement respectfully. But I'm not talking about whether or not to buy a new toaster oven. I'm talking about a situation in which he has done or said something that I find genuinely hurtful or disrespectful to me, and I feel the need to express my hurt and anger to him and receive an apology in return.

Ideally, he'd realize his mistake and apologize of his own volition, but much as I'd like him to be, he's not perfect. Sometimes he genuinely doesn't see that what he's done is hurtful, even after I've tried to express it to him.

What then?

In the interest of preserving the overall benefits of our DD lifestyle, I can and have tried to let it go and accept that he's not going to apologize for his behavior. A sacrifice in service of the greater good. But the problem with sacrifice, of course, is that too much of it leads to resentment and hostility. I'm not really letting my anger and hurt go, I'm just repressing it. And sooner or later all those little hurts and slights that I've repressed in the name of love and harmony will explode into a problem that could destroy our entire relationship.

As far as I can tell, there is no mechanism within the rules of DD for handling this situation. The rules by which feminine anger is allowed to be expressed feel unequal and unfair to me.

Consider:

If he's angry with me, he gets to spank me. A clear, specific, and (I imagine) fairly emotionally satisfying experience for him. He can also scold or lecture me in a tone that clearly says, I am angry with you for what you have done. And by the rules of DD, my role is to listen quietly, accept my discipline, consider his position, and apologize. Which, by the way, let's be clear: I have NO problem doing if I've done something disrespectful or hurtful to him. I am grateful for the clean, fair and contained way that DD provides of alleviating guilt and hurt feelings.

But if I'm angry with him, I have no such acceptable outlet. A woman in a DD relationship agrees to be respectful at all times, regardless of her partner's behavior and her feelings about that behavior. If I raise my voice or evince what he calls a "bad attitude" or otherwise indicate in my tone that I'm unhappy, I risk being disciplined for disrespect. Yes, I can go in the backyard and pound on the wall or throw the recycling around or otherwise express my anger indirectly, but that's a world away from the privilege of being allowed to express my anger physically and verbally directly to him.

This part of DD feels grossly unfair and emotionally dangerous. The problem is that I'm not sure how to remedy it without compromising the DD relationship as a whole. And the benefits of DD overall are so great that I don't want to lose them because of a few instances in which I feel unable to express my feelings. But that said, it is an issue. And one that I fear will only get more serious as time goes by.

The good news in all this is that when DD is working for us, there are significantly fewer instances in which I get angry at my partner. Not because I'm cowed into accepting bad behavior, but because we both treat each other more lovingly and respectfully, and so the little hurts and slights don't 't occur nearly as often as they did before we started DD.

But nobody's perfect. No matter how much we love each other and how well DD works for us, there will always be times when something he does hurts or angers me. That's the nature of an emotionally intimate relationship. So the issue is there, brewing beneath the surface, waiting to erupt and tear us apart despite our best efforts to love each other.

I wish I had the answer to this problem. The truth is, I don't have a clue how to resolve it. But I put it out there because I think that I, like many feminist women in DD relationships, often turn a blind eye to this problem precisely because it seems unsolvable and is therefore too frightening to face directly.

Why Spanking Matters

2007-01-07T02:58:00.000-07:00

After experiencing such positive changes in our relationship through the use of Domestic Discipline (DD), my partner and I now find ourselves having to spend an extended time apart. And despite heroic and exhausting attempts on both sides at long distance discipline, our relationship is once again falling apart. And fast.

We've tried corner time (without the spanking beforehand), mouth soaping, scolding, essay writing and, yes, even self-spanking with him on the phone directing me. But none of it's working. I try. I do my best to participate fully in the discipline he gives me, but the truth is that all I'm doing is going through the motions.

Don't get me wrong. I love and respect him as much as ever. Couldn't imagine being with anyone else, even though I'm not doing a good job of showing it recently. But my ability to communciate those feelings to him is slipping away again, just like it did before we tried DD.

I think it's the lack of spanking.

Without the spanking part (self-spanking does not have the same effect at all), DD loses its power for me. It's like trying to dance with my shoelaces tied together or make love with my legs crossed. It's like applauding without the performance. It's like running a victory lap without the race. It's like... well, for me at least, it's impossible.

My partner is frustrated. He's articulated to me that, "If this DD stuff is so powerful, it ought to last while we're apart." I'm frustrated, because I feel like he's judging the benefits DD has on our relationship without the presence of the key element that makes it work for me.

I've never administered a spanking, but I suspect it's very different to give one than it is to receive one. I think there's probably some catharsis in spanking someone when you're angry at them, but it's probably mitigated a lot by having to stay in control and discipline responsibly. It's a person you're hitting after all, not a pinata -- you can't just wale away until you're not angry anymore.

I suspect the benefit of a spanking for the person giving it lies largely the effect the spanking has on the person receiving it, in that the person receiving the spanking becomes calmer, more loving and more reasonable. And from the point of view of the disciplinarian, well, discipline is discipline, right? I imagine (and this is conjecture on my part) that my partner feels like I ought to be responding to whatever discipline he gives me like I respond to a spanking. Or at least responding.

But that's like saying that all sexual activity should make me orgasm, or all jokes should make me laugh.

All discipline is not created equal. Spanking creates a primal, visceral response in me that nothing else does and without it, all those wonerful feelings of trust, love and safety that DD can bring disappear almost entirely for me.

For me, DD just doesn't work without spankings. I want it to, very much, but it doesn't. And given the heavy emphasis on spanking (primarily by women) on virtually all of the DD blogs and forums, I suspect I'm not alone in this.

But why? What separates spanking from other forms of discipline? It's not the most painful -- I'd rather take a serious spanking than a mouth soaping any day. It's not even the most embarrassing -- for a lot of us, bare-bottom corner time trumps spanking for embarrassment.

1. Spanking is physical contact with my partner. There have been lots of times in pre-DD days when my partner and I were arguing, and a little voice in my head said, 'You know, if he were to just hug me right now, I'd feel better able to see his point of view.' But that's not a realistic possibility in the middle of an argument. People generally don't want to hug someone when they're angry with them.

Spanking, however, is a very physically intimate act that doesn't require my partner to put aside his genuine feelings of anger to initiate. Like a hug, when he spanks me, I feel loved, cared for, appreciated and important. Connected. And it's all within the context of the emotions we're both feeling. Neither one of us has to set aside our genuine reactions to participate in a spanking.

2. Spanking is mind-clearing. It's the only discipline that is intense and instant enough to clear my mind of its endless chatter about why I'm right and he's wrong and yadda yadda -- all the stuff that gets in the way of two people working things out in a loving way. Yes, I think mouth soaping is more painful, but it's a slow burn that gives me way too much time to think. When a spanking is appropriately severe, it takes me immediately out of the moment, out of my emotional reaction, out of myself. It's a time-out from the whole world, in fact, which allows me to re-approach the situation and make room for his point of view alongside my own.

3. Spanking is sexual. Women in DD relationships, me included, spend a lot of time denying the presence of a sexual component in disciplinary spanking, but don't believe it for a second.

Yes, there is a difference between an erotic spanking and a disciplinary one, but there's no getting around the reality that both have strong sexual energy associated. We can rationalize all we want that our getting wet and aroused during a spanking is only because we are feeling our man's dominance, etc. and not because of the spanking (it's telling that that particular theory was put forward by a man, not a woman). But I call bullsh*t. Come on, most of us have been masturbating to spanking fantasies all our lives, so let's not pretend otherwise.

First of all, the buttocks are an erogenous zone. Particularly if he spanks in the "sit spot" (or "sweet spot," as it's commonly called), that yummy sexual jolt goes straight to just the right place. Second, women in DD relationships are usually spanked while naked, or at least with our bottoms -- and all the relevant sex parts -- exposed. We're also bent over and submissive -- in the same posture as we would be for rear-penetration sex, which most men (and many women) find highly erotic.

This is all good news, by the way. We spend so much time worrying about whether or not DD is really just kink in disguise, but on the level of, "if it works, who cares why," so what? Even if it is just a fetish (which I don't think is the case), what better way to defuse a conflict than by igniting a powerful current of sexual energy between partners?

4. Spanking is cathartic. It's the only discipline I know of that makes me cry, and especially for women, crying is an important release of tension and other intense emotions. A disciplinary session without spanking leaves me tense, irritable and still overwhelmed with all the swirling feelings that I had that caused the misbehavior in the first place (it should be said here that the majority of discipline I receive is for what my partner calls "expressing anger inappropriately"). If I have a safe way to cry those emotions out without having to defend my point of view at the same time, I can come back to the discussion in a more reasoned frame of mind.

5. Spanking is primal. Virtually every other disciplinary technique relies on higher brain functions to work. (Mouth soaping being the exception, but as discussed, it has other drawbacks). Corner time, writing lines, etc. work because they force me into a meditative state and/or because they're boring or tedious. But a dislike of boredom is a higher brain function, not a primitive response. If anything, for our primitive brain, boredom is good because it means no one's trying to kill and eat you.

But spanking is the immediate, shocking infliction of physical pain and it goes right to the center of that primitive "lizard brain" we have that responds only to intense, rudimentary stimuli. It bypasses all our reasoning skills and fancy higher function and goes straight to our nervous system.

Spanking is the equivalent of the lead dog in a pack nipping another dog that's gotten out of line -- like sex, it pushes intinctual buttons and sends signals that resonate with the core of our inner being. And because spanking reaches deeper than our conscious thought or civilized behavior can go, it has the power to evoke profound change in our attitudes and behavior.

So there is the dilemma. It doesn't seem likely that my partner and I will be together again anytime soon, as professional obligations keep us apart. But without spanking, the DD doesn't work, and without DD, the relationship doesn't work.

What I can't quite decide is whether ineffective discipline is better for the relationship than none at all. I'm tempted to suggest to him that we simply put a moratorium on DD until we're together again, given that it's not working anyway and is likely doing nothing but undermining his faith in the idea as a whole. But on the other hand, maybe it's better to go through the motions rather than abandon it altogether. After all, it's not completely ineffective. Just mostly.

I'm thinking that we need to spend less less thinking up creative (but ineffective) long distance discipline and more time figuring out how to spend more time in the same room with me bent over the bed and him holding the paddle.

DD and Personal Responsibility

2007-01-04T00:35:00.000-07:00

When my partner and I first started Domestic Discipline (DD), we decided that we'd confine our disciplinary activities to things that affected the relationship only. That meant I could be disciplined for things like disrespect, failure to communicate/withholding, dishonesty and other behaviors that directly hurt the relationship.

We decided that it would not be appropriate to discipline for things that I, as an adult, could and should take personal responsibility for. For example, I tend to eat too much junk food (someday I'll start a blog just for people addicted to Dr. Pepper...), stay up too late and put off unpleasant tasks until the last minute.

Using DD to enforce issues of personal responsibility seemed to cross a line into a place that would make me less of an adult, less empowered and less independent -- all things that, as a progressive DD couple, we very much did not intend to do. DD was intended as a way to defuse conflicts in our relationship, not to relieve me of adult responsibilities and make my partner responsible for things I ought to be able to do on my own.

We were also concerned that using DD to enforce individual responsibility would be too much of a logistical and time burden for my partner. He leads an extremely busy life and figuring out how to incorporate consistent DD into our lives for relationship issues was already challenging enough without giving him the burden of micromanaging my personal life for me. Not only would that level of expectation likely cause the whole system cave in on itself, but I was also afraid it would lead to resentment on his part for being expected to supervise and police my actions on a constant basis.

Finally, we were concerned that using DD over to deal with issues like eating, sleeping and work habits would move our relationship from an adult partnership into a parent/child dynamic. Asking my partner to take responsibility for my personal habits would force him into the role of a father, which seemed like a big mistake. (and was likely to cause resentment and other complications that would negate the benefits of DD)

The problem, however, is that the line between a "relationship" issue and a "personal" issue isn't quite as black and white as we'd originally thought.

For example, if I'm grouchy and disrespectful with him in the morning because I stayed up too late the night before, does he discipline me for being disrespectful or for staying up late? And what if the reason I stayed up too late was because I drank too much Dr. Pepper (did I mention how yummy it is over vanilla bean ice cream?) and couldn't get to sleep. Does he discipline me for the misbehavior or the cause of the misbehavior? If it's for the cause of the misbehavior, how far back should he go to determine the cause?

My instinct is to say that he should discipline me for the misbehavior, and discuss with me the possible causes of it and how I might fix them (or require me to think about the causes during corner time). But this quickly strays pretty far out of "partner" land and into "parent" land. Once he's started making issues of personal responsibility part of my discipline in any way, we're already halfway to his disciplining me for those habits.

And there are those who have made the convincing argument that destructive personal habits are relationship issues because they are inherently damaging to the relationship, not just the individual with the habit.

A partner with unhealthy eating habits risks developing health problems, which could significantly affect the relationship. She likely has less energy to devote to her every day life, which means less energy to devote to the relationship. One could therefore argue that it's disrespectful to the relationship not to eat healthy foods.

Or to take the bedtime example, a partner who stays up so late that she's a wreck at work the next morning risks getting fired, which would certainly hurt the relationship in all kinds of ways.

Another reasonable way of approaching whether or not to discipline for personal responsibility issues is to apply the principle that disrespect in any form should be disciplined.

If we're out in socially and I'm disrespectful to our friends, our waitress or anyone else, I know without a doubt that I will earn myself a correction for my misbehavior, even though it doesn't specifically involve disrespecting my partner.

So if disrespecting others is a punishable offense, what about disrespecting myself through bad habits like eating junk food and not getting enough sleep? Surely I'm not less worthy of respect than our waitress at the restaurant, so logically, I should be disciplined for behavior that is disrespectful of myself.

But of course, now we're back to the concerns about disciplining for things I should take personal responsibility for... and the circle begins all over again!

I'd love to report that we've found the solution to this little logic tangle, but, as with the DD relationship as a whole, it's still a work-in-progress.

I suspect, however, ultimately, that it's actually far less important that we resolve this issue than that we continue talking about it. DD, like most relationships, can likely survive anything except lack of good communication.

Why Do I Obey?

2007-01-03T00:06:00.000-07:00

There's a scene in the musical "Oh Calcutta" in which two errant young women are taken to a disciplinarian to be caned. One girl is tied up and forced into position, the other bends over of her own free will. The disciplinarian refuses to cane the bound girl, saying that a caning must be received voluntarily to be effective. Non-consensual discipline is meaningless. He releases the bound girl and canes the one who submits of her own free will.

I think a lot about the issue of obedience and consent, particularly when I'm doing corner time. There's not much to do in the corner but reflect, and the topic of discipline is naturally uppermost in my mind during that time.

As I stand in the corner, occasionally for as long as an hour, I have lots of time to reflect on what keeps me there. I believe the reasons that I stay are what separates adult discipline from childhood discipline, and Domestic Discipline (DD) from abuse.

A woman in a DD relationship is definitionally there by consent (non-consensual DD would be another name for abuse). Perhaps more importantly, the woman is almost always the initiator of a DD relationship in that she asks for discipline from her partner.

Childhood discipline, on the other hand, does not require consent. Little kids have no choice but to submit to discipline (which is why punishments that may be appropriate for consenting adults, such as a severe spanking, are generally abusive or excessive to use on children). Parents are bigger and stronger than their children, as well as being the principle authority figures in their lives. When it comes right down to it, a child who refuses discipline can be physically and psychologically overpowered and forced to accept it regardless of their feelings in the matter.

But I am not a child; I am a grown woman. And what keeps me in the corner is not fear, helplessness or an inability to resist. I obey of my own free will, even when it's inconvenient, painful and/or embarrassing to do so.

So if the reasons I obey are different from those of a child, what are they?

1. Psychological imperative. I've written at some length about our inner psychological imperative for discipline in the article "DD as a Reaction to Me Generation Parenting." Those of us who have asked for the DD lifestyle recognize in ourselves a deep, urgent and unmet need for this type of structure, often due to a lack of discipline in our early lives. As much as we may not like or want the discipline in the moment, our primal need for it outweighs the discomfort or inconvenience of accepting it. The subconscious is a pretty powerful voice, and it's telling us in no uncertain terms that we need this and we need it now, whether we like it or not. I obey because the adult in me knows that the child in me needs to learn boundaries, and as a responsible and loving parent to my Inner Child, I want what's best for her.

2. Emotional intimacy. As my relationship with my partner becomes increasingly intimate as a result of practicing DD, I accept discipline because of a desire for the payoff that comes with obedience. On an immediate level, the powerful emotional connection we experience immediately following a correction is deeply emotionally satisfying in a way that very few other experiences are. On a larger scale, our relationship is exponentially more loving and rewarding when DD is working than when it's not. I obey because I want the emotional payoff that comes with submitting to my partner's discipline.

3. Respect for my partner. I also stay in the corner out of respect and love for my partner. Any man willing to enter into a DD relationship is taking a terrible risk. There's the obvious risk of being reported to the authorities as an abusive mate by an angry and vindictive partner. But perhaps more significant (and likely) is the personal psychological risk that the disciplinarian in a DD relationship assumes. It's an awesome responsibility to discipline another human being (adult or child). Whether he admits it to you or not, it can be scary to be the one holding the paddle. Refusing to accept the discipline that I have specifically asked for would undermine his feeling of safety and trust about our arrangement. It would also be profoundly unappreciative of his genuine efforts to give me something that I want and need. Accepting discipline shows my partner that I am clearly consensual in this and that he is safe, emotionally and legally, in giving it to me.

5. Justice. I stay in the corner because it feels fair and right for me to do so. I did the crime, I do the time, and I do it in a way that I've agreed to, that feels contained, safe and loving. I believe that human beings have a built-in sense of justice, and too often in our lives, there are no clear, structured ways in which we can pay for our mistakes. As a result, we often carry guilt over our misdeeds around with us that becomes far out of proportion to the original crime. But in our relationship, if I do something wrong, I am disciplined for it, and I'd much, much rather submit to a clearly defined consequence than beat myself up over my mistake for days, weeks, months (even years) afterward. Submitting to discipline satisfies my very human need for forgiveness and atonement.

6. Personal empowerment. It's the paradox of DD -- that submitting to discipline ultimately puts me more in touch with my own personal power. At the core, I obey because I know that DD makes me stronger, more effective, more confident, more productive. In short, a better person. The difference in what I'm able to accomplish in my career and in working for the causes I believe in with and without DD is so dramatic that my only regret is that I wasn't ready to live this way sooner. Without DD, I'd lose a most of my access to a part of myself that I cherish beyond all else -- my personal power. At the heart of it, I stay in the corner because I am a better person and the world is a better place if I do.

When Things Go Wrong

2007-01-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

I remember vividly the first time I ever tried a full-blown discipline scenario as an adult (disclaimer: not with my current partner, but a different, ill-fated, mercifully short-lived relationship) . The candles were lit. He was wearing black. I was wearing nothing. It was all very Anne Rice.

I knelt before him, ready for punishment. He reached for me.... and with a CRACK, the small stool he was sitting on collapsed beneath him. My strong, confident, in-control disciplinarian collapsed with it, in a very un-intimidating heap on the bedroom floor.

What could we do but laugh?

Of course, that experience wasn't really Domestic Discipline (DD). More like kinda lame, overblown, amateur-hour BDSM. But I did learn a valuable lesson from that brief, unsuccessful experience.

Things are going to go wrong.

Sometimes a little wrong, sometimes a lot wrong. But wrong they will go, at full speed, and especially at the beginning when you and your partner are first working all this out.

I wish there were more posted about the mishaps inherent in a DD relationship. To read the forums and blogs, you'd think every discipline session always goes perfectly, minus the occasional reference to an unfair punishment or a broken paddle.

DD relationships are complex, multi-tentacled, unwieldy beasts, particularly at the start when both sides are just working their way through the ropes of what works and what doesn't. And I'm going to hazard a guess that DD relationships between progressive couples are more complicated and fraught with mishaps than those between more traditional couples because progressive women have a lot more opinions about what's right and wrong in a relationship than conservative women do.

Though (ideally!) I submit to discipline from my partner without argument or resistance, regardless of whether I agree or disagree that I deserve it, our overall arrangement is much more collaborative. We spend a lot of time talking about what works, what doesn't, what's fair or unfair, what the consequences of a particular misbehavior should be (again, not in the moment, but after and in general). Discipline is always a work in progress in our household.

Fortunately, we haven't had a chair collapse under us (yet), but we've had plenty of other things go wrong. Most of the time these are small mishaps, usually due to a previously unrecognized gap in communication or an experiment that didn't turn out quite the way it was supposed to.

Our most recent mishap happened just today.

We spend a lot of time apart, so we're always looking for creative ways for him to discipline me long-distance, and the old-fashioned mouth soaping seemed like a fine idea.* Unfortunately, we way underestimated the severity of this particular form of correction.

During an especially stressful day, my partner and I had an argument which culminated in me yelling "F*ck you" at him and hanging up the phone. As angry as I was, I regretted it (almost) immediately and knew I was in for it when we spoke again. As was appropriate, I promptly received the consequence of a severe spanking and an hour of corner time, 30 minutes of which was to be spent with a bar of soap in my mouth.

Turns out, spending 30 minutes with a bar of soap in my mouth is really uncomfortable. (Go figure.) So uncomfortable in fact that I gave in to temptation and removed the soap before the 30 minutes was up. My partner and I have agreed that refusing to take discipline is one of the most serious misbehaviors in that it undermines the entire structure of a DD relationship. So as a result my my removing the soap without permission, we agreed that I would repeat repeat the soap and corner time portion of the punishment for an entire week -- seven successive nights.

I lasted three days. 30 minutes of mouth soaping is uncomfortable, but bearable. Three nights in a row of 30 minutes of mouth soaping is far more painful than the most severe spanking I've ever received. By the third day, (yesterday) I had blisters in my mouth and couldn't eat or drink without extreme agony. Still can't, today, almost 24 hours after my last soap encounter. Although this correction seemed like a good idea at the time, it was a definite disciplinary misfire. Though discipline is supposed to hurt, it seemed clear that we'd inadvertently crossed the line into something more extreme than DD.

Since adding DD to our relationship was my idea initially, I feel a lot of pressure to be perfectly accepting of my punishments so I can prove to him how serious I am about living this lifestyle. I was therefore tempted to be the martyr and "take what was coming to me," as it were, without complaint.

Thankfully, my higher brain functions were insistent that this punishment was too extreme, and so when the time came for day four, I explained the situation to my partner and asked for an alternative correction. We worked through it and he adjusted the consequences.

(It's important to note here that I didn't call up and say, I'm not doing it and that's that, which would have been disprespectful and would have damaged the integrity of a DD relationship. Instead, I explained the situation and requested an adjustment. And because our relationship is based on safe, sane limits and trust, we were able to work out something less extreme and more appropriate without compromising his authority or hurting the relationship.)

Fixing problems doesn't always go quite so smoothly.

Oddly enough, the worst mishap we've had to date came from the smallest correction I've ever received -- five minutes of corner time. When I argued with him about it, he escalated it to ten minutes. I did the time, but even after corner time, I was still confused as to why I'd been given a correction.

It was a small thing, so I let it go, which was a big mistake. (Tip: Mention everything, even the small things.) It festered a bit, and the next time I got a little annoyed with him, I brought it back up and accused him of being "cruel and abusive" for not making it clear to me why I was being disciplined.

Now "abusive" is not the sort of word one should throw around lightly in any relationship, and certainly not the context of DD, where arguably a man's greatest (and most legitimate) fear is that the woman is going to turn on him, run to the nearest police station with her bruises and stories of "beatings" and other bizarre activities, and have him arrested for domestic violence. And in the context of DD, ten minutes of corner time is certainly not abusive by any stretch, no matter what the reason.

I spoke carelessly and without thinking, and as a result, caused a pretty serious breach of trust early on in our DD relationship. It took awhile for us to get back on track after that. He stopped disciplining me altogether due to an understandable fear that if I called ten minutes of corner time abusive, it wasn't safe to impose any discipline at all. Our relationship took a nosedive in terms of trust, communication and intimacy.

Eventually we worked through that, too. (With the help of a serious disciplinary session which left me feeling much, much sorrier than I already was for having broken our trust so carelessly.)

Of course, we've also had our share of broken paddles and other even funnier things.

Our only attempt at long distance spanking with him directing me over the phone dissolved into helpless giggles as he repeated over and over, "Concentrate on the force." Try as I might to stay in a contrite and submissive frame of mind, I just couldn't get the image of Luke Skywalker getting spanked by Obi Wan out of my head.

And of course...

the cell phone call that comes in during a spanking that has to be answered, leading to some creative uses of the mute button.

the corner time that I've served when I wasn't even in trouble because I misunderstood the elaborate Alias-style code we have for when he needs to discipline me over the phone with his coworkers in earshot.

and yes, several broken paddles.

The point is, things are going to go wrong. It's part of the deal when two people work out any kind of relationship, particularly one as complex and emotional as DD. If you expect things to be perfect and get mad when they're not, there's no way the relationship as a whole will work, much less the DD part of it. This is complicated, serious stuff and it takes practice. But if you expect mishaps, allow for them and use them as opportunities to clear up miscommunications, they can become fond, loving memories that bring you closer together.

*Please note that many people have written of the potential health hazards of mouth soaping as a punishment and I agree that this is not a safe practice. I understand the appeal of soap as a classic form of discipline, but just 'cuz my partner and I are silly enough to use it doesn't mean you should. If you do choose to use soap as a disciplinary measure, at least use a plant-based, non-toxic soap (which is better for the environment anyway) and for god's sake, limit its use to the most extreme infractions only. Oh, and don't sue me if you develop a weird soap allergy or any other complications, because I warned you not to try it. If we tried everything we read about on the internet, we'd all be dead by now.

DD as a Reaction to "Me" Generation Parenting

2007-01-01T12:29:00.000-07:00

I suspect the number of couples who engage in Domestic Discipline (DD) is higher than even the most generous estimates suppose. And I also suspect that the number of couples who would engage in DD if it were more socially acceptable is even higher.

Why?

For those who come to DD from a Biblical/right wing perspective, the answers are obvious -- they've grown up in a culture that puts women below men, and a culture that already relies heavily on traditional childrearing and discipline methods. Plus the Religious Right seems to be doing a pretty heavy push to encourage couples into the DD lifestyle.

It seems reasonable, however, that the appeal of DD for progressively-oriented couples is significantly different. I believe the upsurge in interest in Domestic Discipline in feminist circles is a reaction to the permissive parenting of the '60s and '70s.

Most of us who consider ourselves progressive/feminist, myself included, were raised by parents who were products of the "Me" Generation. Unlike their parents, whose childrearing methods came from the Victorian sensibilities of "spare the rod, spoil the child" and "children should be seen and not heard."

Me Generation parents formed their attitudes about child development, marriage and parenting during the ultra-liberal '60s and '70s. Most of our mothers were teenagers and young women when feminism hit its peak, and most of our fathers were teenagers and young men at a time when men were being encouraged to be more nurturing and explore their feminine side.

The social upheavals of the '60s and '70s were followed by the self-help movement of the '80s. As a result, our parents have been bombarded by a deluge of growth and child-rearing advice unlike that available to any generation prior. And most of this advice was written by parents who were products of the same ultra-permissive '60s and '70s.

The result? A strong emphasis on flexibility, negotiation, nurturing and freedom in child rearing. Parents were advised that setting limits on a child's behavior was damaging, that it would obstruct natural personality and social development, and so children were reasoned with instead of disciplined. Instead of being authority figures, Me Generation parents strove to bond with their children as buddies and "best friends." (For example, my parents actually told me, if you want to try pot, have some of ours. At least you'll know it's the good stuff...)

The trend away from Victorian-era parenting wasn't all bad, of course. After all, a strong case can be made that our grandparents' parenting style was overly harsh and did indeed stifle individuality and personal growth. Many parents of the '60s and '70s wanted something better for their children than they had and parented more liberally with a genuine desire to raise healthy children.

But let's be honest here. Not everyone was coming from such an altruistic parenting perspective.

There's a reason our parents' generation was called the Me Generation. Women were experiencing freedoms in the workplace and the world in general that were unheard of for prior generations. And everywhere, people were being told, "Do your own thing." Parenting, well, that's a drag, man.

And the reality is that "liberal" parenting IS easier, less time consuming and just plain less trouble than setting firm limits and enforcing them. Me Generation parents got lazy and used politics and popular psychology as an excuse to be absent, neglectful parents. ('Cuz hey, if you ground your errant teenager, you have to stay home with them while they're grounded, and that's too inconvenient.) "Liberal" parenting too often became a sugar-coated way of justifying lazy parenting.

And of course, this generation has taken many of these attitudes even further. Most of us who have spent any time around parents and their young children have seen the explosion of bad behavior, bratting and other destructive results of all this supposed enlightened and sensitive parenting. For example, I know of at least one parent who prides herself on being a progressive, caring parent, but whose five-year old daughter still isn't toilet trained because the effort required by her mother to help her daughter through this enormously challenging situation is, in her words, "too inconvenient."

To make matters more complicated, I suspect that many parents with out-of-control children feel hampered in their ability to impose limits by the social pressures around them that continue to suggest that any limits or discipline are abusive.

The big problem with all this is that children need limits. (So do adults, and we'll get there in a moment.) Childhood is where we're supposed to learn self-discipline, anger management, respect, a work ethic and other basic life skills required to become a healthy adult. Those limits are not learned through permissive parenting, but through the rules, discipline and examples set by our parents.

But most of us have been raised by parents who for various reasons, did not give us the limits we needed to become self-disciplined, productive adults. So now we have a generation of adults who don't understand the importance or meaning of boundaries and responsibility.

The lucky ones among us realize this deficiency and clutch at any tool we can find to give us the remedial lessons in being an adult that we didn't get as children -- self-help books, retreats, workshops, perpetual therapy, gurus, whatever.

The unlucky ones don't realize they're deficient in a basic life skill and make our lives a living hell by acting entitled, rude, codependent and any number of other unpleasant things as a result of believing the rules don't apply to them and they should get what they want when they want it. In short, like spoiled children who weren't taught boundaries. I know, because before DD, I was one of them.

Our society is reaping the consequences of three decades of lazy parenting.

The surge of interest in DD is a natural outgrowth of a generation searching for boundaries, discipline and security. Basic psychological theory tells us that what we didn't get as children, we continue to seek as adults.

It couldn't be more straightforward -- I want discipline because I had none growing up and without it, I'm quite frankly lost. Left to my own devices, my work habits suck, my self-discipline is next to zero. My abillity to act courteously when I'm upset is non-existent. Given a choice between doing something I don't want to do that has a long-term benefit and watching "Buffy" DVDs, I'm gonna hang with the Scoobies and worry about the future tomorrow. In other words, most of the time, I act like a child allowed to watch videos instead of doing my homework and chores.

These are lessons I was supposed to learn in childhood and didn't. But just because I didn't learn them then doesn't mean my developmental imperative is gone. I have a deep hunger inside for those lessons, even as I don't want to learn them. And as an adult, it's difficult to find ways to learn those kinds of lessons that satisfy that primal, desperate need unfulfilled in childhood.

But DD does satisfy that need and teach those critical lessons in a safe, private, loving way. Through DD, I'm able to go back and learn what I was supposed to learn as a child and a teenager. When I speak or act disprespectfully, I am spanked and put in the corner. When I blow off my responsibilities to go shopping with my friends, I might find myself grounded for two weeks. That is what should happen as a result of these childish and irresponsible behaviors and it's good and right to learn those lessons -- better late than never.

DD is no different in theory or process from the widely-accepted theory of the damaged Inner Child we all carry around within us. We've largely accepted the need to give that Inner Child the hugs, kisses, encouragement and love we missed in childhood. Yet for some reason, we still find it shocking or abhorrent to give that same child the discipline and boundaries he/she was also missing in childhood. But boundaries and discipline are as important as hugs and kisses, and a child can't grow up healthy without a balance of both.

Further, we've come to understand that to give our Inner Child the love and nurturance he/she needs, we have to speak to that child, ie, that part of us, in the language of the child. Simple declarations of love, stuffed animals, soothing baths and soft blankets are all tools for connecting to our Inner Child in a way that he/she can understand. Similarly, DD gives our Inner Child boundaries in a way he/she can understand.

For example, I know a writer who once attempted to discipline himself into writing by donating to the Republican Party every time he blew off a writing session. Putting aside that I'd rather take a spanking any day than donate a single penny to the Neo-Cons, this method ultimately failed because it failed to speak to his scared and undisciplined Inner Child in a way that the Inner Child could understand. Children don't understand political affiliations and campaign contributions. They understand spankings, corner time and loss of privileges/freedom. These resonate deeply for a child -- and for our Inner Child -- on a basic, primal level. (And yes, if you don't believe spanking is an appropriate punishment for misbehavior, it's possible to live a DD lifestyle without it -- although I can't say I recommend it.)

Of course, it's possible to go too far and discipline a child excessively. That's when discipline turns to abuse. And yes, it's possible for DD to go too far as well. But we're talking about when discipline of both varieties works. When it's from a loving, reasoned, balanced placed -- when a parent responsibly sets limits and disciplines from love and not anger.

And remember that a lack of discipline is as abusive as too much of it -- sending a child into the world without the tools to take care of him or herself is dangerous, cruel and negligent parenting.

I know that having the discipline in my life that I missed as a child satisfies a deep, intense hole in my soul. I finally feel as though I'm able to go back and make up for what I didn't have. The lack of discipline that's been ruining my life and keeping me from accomplishing what I need to accomplish is finally being corrected. For the first time, I feel like I have real hope of becoming the person I want to be. Of living up to my potential.

A woman posting on one of the DD forums recently wrote that she'd accomplished more in her professional life in four years living with DD than she had in the 30 years prior.

If that's not feminism, I don't know what is.

PS -- Some of you may be asking why, if all this is true, are women far more likely to want to be disciplined than men? After all, men have the same permissive parenting backgrounds and women, and little boys need boundaries as much as girls do. There are some interesting answers to this -- stay tuned for an article on this subject!

The Virtues of Practicing Humility

2006-12-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

One of the chief benefits of submitting to Domestic Discipline (DD) is its ability to teach in a safe, private and loving way, lessons that make life in the "outside" world easier to handle.

In my case, I have a particularly difficult time dealing with situations in which I feel talked down to and put in a position I feel is beneath my abilities, skills and age. Now everyone, to some extent, has problems in this situation, but I tend to have an extreme emotional reaction way beyond reasonable irritation. In the past, my responses have ranged from yelling insults at the other person off to to bursting into tears to quitting a job I needed on the spot, and any number of other things that are, at best, immature and self-destructive, and at worst, abusive.

In short, I have a problem, I realize, with humility.

Since beginning domestic discipline with my partner, however, I find that the real world's lessons in humility are a bit easier to take than they used to be. I find I'm becoming more able to apply the lessons of humility I learn through the corrections I receive at home to my outside life. And as a result, I believe my life and my emotional health are improving.

Domestic discipline is largely about teaching and learning humility. Baring my bottom and bending over for the paddle is humbling. Standing in the corner with my pants down and my reddened bottom on display is humbling. Thanking my partner for my discipline on my knees is humbling.

But no matter how humbilng, fundamentally, these experiences are safe. I know he won't do anything that is dangerous, abusive or traumatic. I know that we're operating in a system with clearly agreed-upon boundaries. I know that as humbling as my discipline is, I am loved, respected and valued -- perhaps now more than ever because I am demonstrating to him on a regular basis that I am serious about improving our relationship and becoming a better person.

The key is that, in a safe, controlled situation, I am able to practice humility and learn that not only is it not as awful as I always thought it would be, but being humbled is actually empowering. That's the paradox of Domestic Discipline that critics and outsiders fail to see, and perhaps the biggest surprise so far about living a DD lifestyle.

Unfortunately, the Ring Wing/Christian perspective too often uses Domestic Discipline as a tool to keep women from claiming their power, as a reason why they should remain "beneath" men. But I believe that true Domestic Discipline is all about helping a woman to own her true power.

Although I often dislike receiving corrections, when I rise from them (quite literally, as my partner and I have a closing ritual which involves him lifting me back onto my feet), I feel stronger, more capable, more...whole. I respect myself for being willing to take responsibliity for my mistakes instead of defending them, denying them or covering them up. I feel proud of myself for having taken my discipline well (assuming I have, which doesn't always happen). I feel a sense of relief that I've paid honestly and fairly for my mistake. And, at least for now, I still feel a sense of surprise and pride that I was able to conduct myself reasonably well in a humbling situation.

Of course, the consequences of mistakes in real life are, unfortunately, generally not quite as safe and clear-cut as they are in Domestic Discipline, but DD allows me the constant opportunity practice accepting consequences and being humbled by my imperfections in a low-risk situation. And I'm able to take the confidence I build at home and apply it to situations that aren't as safe or as clear-cut.

A few weeks ago, I'd messed up fairly badly in my professional life. Normally, I would have dealt with the situation by either coming up with an elaborate excuse (both for myself and for my colleagues) about why I haven't really screwed up and it wasn't my fault. I would have lived in constant shame over what I had done and it would have become a low-grade stressor of unresolved guilt and feelings of inadequacy. And a small part of me would have lost some respect for my colleagues for having been gullible enough to let me "get away" with my cover-up.

This time, however, I realized that the feelings I was having about stepping up and taking responsiblity for my mistake professionally were much the same as those I had about taking a correction at home -- nervousness, guilt, shame, embarrassment, fear. And it occured to me that if I could take a spanking for a mistake, I could certainly handle whatever repercussions I'd face in the real world -- likely not nearly as embarrassing as a spanking is!

So I took a breath, braced myself and faced up to what I had done. I acknowledged responsibility, took the pain and embarrassment that came from having messed up. I humbled myself by letting myself be imperfect. And I survived. More than survived, actually. Instead of those nagging feelings of repressed guilt and shame, I felt free and clean. And strong, because now I knew I could survive a mistake without having to cover it up. And instead of feeling contempt for colleagues whom I had manipulated, I felt that I could (eventually!) look them in the eye again.

For me, these experiences are powerful proof that, despite what detractors might claim, Domestic Discipline does not demean a woman. It empowers her, makes her stronger, more powerful, more effective.

Even the greatest leaders (perhaps especially the greatest leaders) among us know the value of humility as a tool for strengthening character. Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel both developed much of the strength and wisdom that allowed them to become spiritual and political leaders of their countries during years spent in prison, being humbled day after day after day by the indignities of incarceration, extended "corner time," if you will. Learning to be humble and maintain one's self-respect at the same time seems so central to the idea of spiritual and moral character that it may be a prerequisite for developing inner strength.

The problem is that in today's culture, it's very difficult for an intelligent, empowered, feminist woman to find safe ways of experiencing humility that don't compromise her professional or social standing. Domestic Discipline provides a loving, safe, consistent and private means of experiencing and practicing the humility required for success in life. And taking some spankings and corner time seem a small price to pay for the opportunity to live a fully empowered, self-realized life.

DD vs. Abuse -- A Comparison

2006-12-29T00:01:00.001-07:00

Abuse is nonconsensual. Domestic Discipline (DD) is consensual.

Abuse comes from a place of rage and emotional sickness. DD comes from a place of love and respect.

Abuse is about cutting off communication between two people. DD requires constant communication between partners.

Abuse is about lack of self-control on the part of the abuser. DD requires a high-degree of emotional control on the part of the disciplinarian.

Abuse is initiated by the abuser and women do not ask to be abused. DD is almost always initiated by the woman, who requests this lifestyle from her partner as something she wants and needs.

Abuse has no limits and is therefore life-threatening and dangerous. DD has defined well-defined and negotiated limits that keep both parties safe at all times.

Abuse can occur anywhere, anytime on any part of a woman's body with any weapon. DD occurs in private, and corporal discipline is confined to safe areas of the body with safe, traditional disciplinary implements only.

After an abusive episode, a woman feels terrified, exhausted and worthless. After a DD disciplinary session, a woman generally feels safe, relaxed, loving and empowered.

Abusers put on a "nice" face in public, but are cruel in private. Men in DD relationships are good men in public and in private and strive to treat their partners and others with respect at all times.

Women in abusive relationships are afraid of their abusers. Women in DD relationships are not afraid of their partners.

Women in abusive relationships are taught that they are worthless. Women in DD relationships are taught they they are precious, worth loving and important.

Women in abusive relationships "obey" their partners out of fear of abuse. Women in DD relationships "obey" their partners out of a genuine love and respect.

Women in abusive relationships suffer from low self-esteem and lack of confidence. Women in DD relationships seem to experience an unusually high level of self-esteem and confidence.

Abusers will not stop the abuse if it causes trauma. Men in DD relationships will immediately stop any discipline if there is evidence of traumatic reaction.

Women in abusive relationships become increasingly more helpless. Women in DD relationships usually become increasingly empowered.

Abuse flourishes ONLY in the absence of love, trust and respect, while DD is a choice that can only be made out of love, trust and mutual respect.

Humiliation vs. Humility

2006-12-25T22:27:00.000-07:00

A prominent, self-proclaimed Domestic Discipline (DD) "expert" has recently published a book in which he claims that humiliation is an essential element of DD. (*see link at end of this article)

And while it's true that this expert has a lot of value to say about DD, his view on humilation in DD is dangerous, abusive and ignorant. It's also a fundamental misunderstanding of what DD is about.

LDD is about humilty, not humiliation. This same "expert" claims the difference between the two words is just "semantic." Well, okay... given that "semantic" means, er... what a word means, that would be about the most accurate thing he's said on this subject so far. Humiliation and humility mean different things. One is appropriate to DD, the other is not.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines "humiliate" as: "to lower the pride, dignity, or self-respect of." (from: www.Dictionary.com)

But DD is not and should never be about lowering a woman's pride, dignity or self-respect. As soon as DD becomes about any of those things, it's no longer DD, but an abusive relationship. If a woman (or a man) is in a relationship in which she feels humiliated in ANY way, this is not healthy, this is not empowered, and this is most certainly not DD.

Some would argue that DD is about lowering a woman's pride, but there is a fundamental difference between false pride or arrogance, and pride. DD is often about stripping away a woman's false pride, or arrogance, which is unhealthy and usually covers up insecurities that can't be addressed until the false pride is removed.

But pride, true pride in who we are, is essential to our dignity as human beings, and learning to make choices we're proud of and to act in ways we can be proud of is one of the most powerful benefits of DD for a woman. Those of us who practice DD from a feminist, progressive standpoint -- and I think a case can be made that this is the only healthy way in which it can be practiced -- know firsthand that when DD works, it creates a heightened sense of power, self-respect and pride in one's choices.

When I submit to discipline for my misbehavior, I am proud. I'm proud of having stepped up and taken responsiblity for my actions. I'm proud of having been vulernable and soft enough to accept change and to learn lessons that help me become a better, more productive, empowered human being. And I'm proud of being able to work through an issue with my partner in a safe, sane and loving way that benefits our relationship (and therefore my life as a whole).

Yes, submitting to discipline is embarrassing, especially for a grown woman, "embarrass" meaning primarily "to cause to feel self-conscious" (www.dictionary.com) Being spanked and put in a corner, being "grounded" or made to write lines definitely causes me to feel self-conscious -- of my misbehavior and the consequences of it.

And that's the point ofLDD -- to provide a safe, sane way of processing through our natural, healthy guilt at our misbehaviors with a loving partner who wants to help us to grow as human beings. Intentionally doing anything to a woman that erodes her self-respect is never healthy or appropriate, particularly when the very purpose of discipline is to teach us greater self-respect.

Humiliation is an abuse of power. A good teacher, parent, mentor or professor might teach an errant (or arrogant) student lessons in humility, but show me a teacher, parent, mentor or professor who relies on humiliation to teach his lessons and I'll show you a man in authority abusing his power for the sake of his own ego -- a man who should be summarily removed from power.

DD is not about humiliation. Abuse is about humiliation. DD is about humility -- or the state of being humble, defined as "not arrogant or prideful." (www.dictionary.com). Humility is a good thing. Humility is a lack of arrogance, an empathy with our fellow man, and an acknowledgement of our fallibility as human beings. Humility is about learning to treat those around us respectfully, to honor their boundaries, and to pay a just and reasonable price for our mistakes. Humility is about not believing that we are too good to pay for our mistakes. Humility is about understanding that we are not above or better than any of our fellow human beings, and that it is therefore never appropriate to disrespect, hurt or offend another.

DD teaches us humility by providing a safe framework for learning these lessons -- the same lessons taught by enlightened spiritual leaders throughout the world.

Virtually every true spiritual tradition (meaning not manipulative cults or extremist distortions of established religious traditions) sets forth the practice of humility as a cornerstone of enlightenment and spiritual awakening. To my knowledge, there are no legitimate spiritual traditions that suggests that humiliation is the way to spiritual growth.

The blog in question can be found at http://lovingdd.blogspot.com. The article on "Humiliation" appears not on blog, but in his book "Advanced Loving DD," and can be accessed by clicking on the link to purchase the book and reading the first chapter.

Word of warning: As I said earlier, there is much good in the thoughts and writings on the "Loving DD" blog. It's definitely worth reading and I personally have found many useful insights there (I found his posts on male/female energies to be particularly insightful). That said, there are some warning flags that bear considering when reading his blog -- please read my article "Cautions about the Loving DD Blog" for more details.

Cautions about the Loving DD Blog

2006-12-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

One of the more comprehensive sources available online regarding Domestic Discipline (DD) is the blog "LovingDD" (http://lovingdd.blogspot.com). The author, who goes by the unfortunate psuedonym of "Mr. Loving DD," has a lot of helpful insights into this topic and I would recommend reading his material. (Speaking for myself, I've found his posts on male/female energies to be particularly insightful).

That said, there are some warning flags that bear considering when reading his blog and since posting to his site requires me to reveal what I consider to be inapppropriate personal details, I thought I'd share them here in hopes that they will help anyone interested in learning about DD.

1. He refuses to provide any details or information about his background and experience with DD or his relationship status. While, unfortunately, anonymity is an unfortunate necessity when posting on this topic, anyone who claims to be an expert on a subject has, I believe, an ethical responsibility to divulge enough information about his experience and background to justify taking him as a credible source (especially in an area as controversial and potentially volatile and sensitive as DD). If he's really an expert, he should have no problem posting a bio detailing the source of his expertise. And if he's just a normal person who believes he has something useful to share (like me), that's great -- but he still has an obligation to disclose his background to so that people can evaluate his material in the context of his experiences.

2. He's written literally hundreds of pages on DD and discipline (and self-published two bookson the subject), but we never hear one word from his partner. Perhaps this is because he doesn't have one and is merely speculating and engaging in wishful thinking without any "field experience" to back it up? Hard to say, but without her perspective, it's a bit hard to take his more extreme positions seriously. (How about a post on how SHE feels about the difference between humiliation and humility?)

3. He frequently encourages the women who post on his site to call him "Mr." and "Sir," and has started a somewhat bizarre trend in which women debase themselves to him as part of their "discipline."

4. He has recently begun requiring women who wish to comment on his articles to his site to post the intimate details of their discipline. While this type of behavior might be appropriate and titillating on a BDSM site, it seems to me to be far from what DD is meant to be, and a bit of a case of "power corrupts." Perhaps this is just overzealousness or simple human error. On the other hand, perhaps it's 's urther evidence that the author of this site does not have real life experience in a DD relationship and is instead a latent abuser who needs to get his "fix" by dominating the women who read his blog. Since he's created an environment in which he doesn't allow anyone (least of all women) to question his material, I suspect he's getting a little out of control with his own issues of dominance and submission. That's often what happens when someone in a position of power is allowed to do his thing without criticism or feedback.

5. He routinely encourages and approves of discipline that, at least to me, seems to cross the line from discipline into abuse. Some examples:

Approving a post in which a woman's punishment for poor housecleaning was to lick the furniture clean.
Approving multiple posts which encourage public nudity and humiliation as a disciplinary tool. (example: doing naked corner time in the presence of friends, family and strangers).
Writing an entire chapter in his new book, "Advanced Loving DD," on why humiliation is an essential part of DD. (see the article on this blog regarding this issue, "Humiliation vs. Humility")

The point is, please read his posts with a bit of caution and do not consider the "Loving DD" blog to be the ultimate authority on what DD is and should be. Please use common sense and good judgement when evaluating the advice of anyone, particularly someone whose background and credentials are being deliberately concealed.

Is DD really just domestic violence?

2006-12-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

Domestic Discipline (DD) is not the same as domestic violence. DD -- true DD -- is not abusive. I know. Because I have lived both.

I married my first boyfriend when I was 19. Early in our dating life, clumsily and full of shame, I confessed to him my need for domestic discipline, a need I'd been aware of since I was a small child. Back then, before the internet, I wasn't aware of the actual concept of DD, so the best I could do was to articulate a need to be spanked and generally be sexually dominated.

Later that night, while we were having sex, he hit me -- square in the face, hard enough to cause a momentary loss of consciousness.

I can still remember what that moment felt like, and the conflicting emotions it brought up for me. The shock, the anger, the pain. And then the confusion -- after all, hadn't I asked for this? Wasn't he giving me just what I had confessed to him that I wanted?

No, of course not. Anyone who has practiced genuine DD for even a short time knows that there is no simliarity at all between the consentual, loving and respectful application of discipline and the brutal randomness and cruelty of domestic violence.

I know because I have lived both.

I should have cut off my relationship with my husband-to-be right immediately after he hit me. At the very least, I should have pointed out -- assertively -- that being hit in the face was NOT what I was asking for. But I said nothing.

The reason I said nothing, looking back, was because although I knew that kind of abuse wasn't what I wanted, I was so ashamed of what I DID want that I lacked the courage to clarify or stand up for myself. I was only 19 after all, and back then, I figured I must be such a terrible person for wanting a relationship in which I was physically disciplined that I deserved whatever I got in exchange. So I told myself that I was grateful and fortunate to have man who would so eagerly give me "what I wanted."

I also believed, in my ignorance and naivete, that submitting to domestic discipline meant submitting to whatever the man in the relationship wanted to do to me, whether I agreed with it or not. In a DD relationship, a woman consents to being disciplined and the limits to that discipline are safe, sane and mutually-agreed upon. In true LDD, a woman would never be afraid of articulating her needs and experiences to her partner.

But I didn't know any of that. And so I married this man who hit me so hard I blacked out. I'll never know for sure whether the violent, abusive behavior that followed was something that would have happened anyway, or something that he allowed himself to inflict on me without restrain because he believed I'd "asked" for it.

Regardless...

I know what it's like to be beaten with a wire coat hanger until blood runs down my back.I know what it's like to be thrown down a flight of stairs.

I know what it's like to locked out of the house, naked, on a freezing winter night, crouching in the bushes, crying and pleading to be let back in before the neighbors saw me.

I know what it's like to wear long-sleeved shirts and high collars to cover cuts and bruises.I know what it's like to have the police arrive at the door and telling them that "everything's fine.

I know what it's like to have my friends and family tell me I'm so lucky to have "such a great husband," because he puts on his most charming, gallant face when he's around others.

I know what it's like to lock him out of the house and watch him take two hours to take the door off the hinges with his car keys, knowing the pain and terror that await when he finally gets back inside.

I know what it's like to want to leave, and to be told that I am worthless and that "no one else will ever love you."

I know what it's like to try to leave and to arrive at the motel only to find my credit cards have all been reported as "stolen."

I know what it's like to have my beautiful, innocent cats murdered in a fit of revenge for my trying to leave him.

And I know what it's like to finally leave, to finally say, this is enough and I deserve better.

I know because I lived through it Not once, but twice, because the man who "rescued" me from my abusive husband turned out to be abusive as well.

So when I say that DD is not domestic violence, I am not theorizing, quoting from a book or engaging in denial and wishful thinking. I say DD is not domestic violence because I have lived both and know from experience that they are not the same thing in any way.

When I am beaten by an abusive man, and collapse weeping, terrified, in a corner, afraid for my life, that's abuse. When I submit, willingly, to a firm, but fair spanking by a man I love and trust, because we have mutually agreed that this is the consequence for a behavior we both agree is hurtful to me, him or others, this is Loving Domestic Discipline. When an abusive man stands over me, bleeding and terrified in a corner, and tells me that I'm worthless, that's abuse. When I rise from my discipline feeling more empowered, safe, free and whole than I was before I received it, and step into the loving, forgiving arms of a man whom I know would never betray my trust, that's Loving Domestic Discipline.

But the sad truth is that, like any relationship, a DD relationship can turn abusive. I say "turn" rather than "be" because once a relationship becomes abusive, it is definitionally not DD.

One of the reasons for this blog is that I see a disturbing trend on the more popular DD blogs and forums toward encouraging abusive behavior towards women in the name of DD. This is frightening to me, and also sad, because it's not at all what DD is meant to be, and I'm concerned that the misuse and misunderstanding of DD will scare away women who would otherwise find fulfillment in this type of relationship.

The man I am with now has taken heroic actions protect women whom he knew were being abused. None of the things I list about would be in any way acceptable to him. The man I'm with now actively works to help strengthen organizations that protect abused women and children from violent men. The man I'm with now is a big part of why I now understand that no woman deserves to be beaten or humiliated. And the man I'm with now practices DD with me only after many, many (many!) hours of discussion in which he gently, patiently, respectfully helped me to articulate my needs and wishes in this area.

Any woman can find herself in an abusive relationship. But making a DD relationship work requires both parties to possess a great deal of self-confidence and self-respect. The first time my current partner and I tried it, I wasn't strong enough, healed enough, or empowered enough to handle it -- and it failed miserably.

Early in my current relationship, I was still too fearful and traumatized from my past abusive relationships to separate the two things in my head. My partner would try to do what I asked for -- he'd try to discipline me -- and I'd freak out. My emotions were all over the map -- fear, anger, "righteous" indignation. He'd spank me and I'd terrified and sobbing, pleading for him to stop, that I didn't really want it after all and it was a mistake. Or more often than not, I'd talk my way out of the spanking because I was too afraid to take it.

Fortunately, my partner was perceptive enough to recognize the difference between the sobs and cries of remorse that come with a true disciplinary experience from the terror of a woman not ready for that type of experience. Being a healthy, non-abusive man, he stopped what he was doing immediately - another thing that an abuser would never do.

We both realized our relationship wasn't mature enough yet for DD, and so we put it on hold while we worked on the basics of love, trust and respect. This is probably the biggest difference between DD and abuse:

LDD is a choice made out of love, trust and mutual respect, whereas abuse flourishes ONLY in the absence of love, trust and respect.

I wasn't yet healthy enough to enter into that kind of emotionally mature, intimate relationship with another human being. It took years -- five of them, to be exact -- of personal growth work, of learning to validate myself as a worthwhile human being, of healing past traumas and of getting the abusive ghosts of my abusers out of my head before we could try again. And I've learned along the way that the stronger I get, the more "whole" I become. the more rewarding our DD relationship becomes.

This is another crucial difference between abuse and DD -- abuse only "works" on a woman who is so beaten down and lacking in self-respect that she doesn't believe she deserves better. If a woman is in what she believes to be an DD relationship, and feels during her discipline that she is being punished for being worthless, inferior or inadequate, this is not DD. This is abuse. And the longer an abusive relationship continues, the fewer options a woman has for empowering herself enough to escape.

DD, on the other hand, isn't possible unless both parties come to the relationship reasonably healthy and emotionally sound. A woman in a true LDD relationship experiences her discipline as just, healthy and healing. And, at least for me, the more my partner and I practice DD, the more empowered I feel, both in and out of the relationship, and the stronger and more capable I become, thus giving me many more options in life than I had before.

* For more on the difference between DD and abuse, see Abuse vs. DD -- A Comparison.