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Punishment vs. None

November 27th, 2007 Comments off

There’s a thread on bondage.com about spanking for punishment vs. spanking for fun and the responses sort of amazed me. There was more than one person who responded almost offended because people punish their submissives. And more than one person said they (or their respective submissive) are too old to be punished. That just struck me as bizarre.

People of all ages are punished all the time for any number of reasons. The government punishes you when you break the law, even for something as small as a turn signal being out. Your job punishes you if you don’t perform to their standards. Significant others punish you for hurting their feelings or going against the unwritten rules of relationship behavior. Everyone punishes someone for one reason or another. Even if it’s something small and insignificant. Even if the punishment goes unnoticed. It’s still usually there.

I’m not too old to be punished. When I step out of line by anyone’s standards I expect to be punished. While I wouldn’t allow some stranger off the street take a whip to my backside for accidentally stepping on his toe (unless Master ordered me to, of course), I would still expect to get a heated retort or something of the sort. Whether we acknowledge it or not, that’s one of our many ways of punishing people we don’t know. By being mean or rude to them when they’ve wronged us somehow.

For example, once, recently, when strolling through an unnamed chain store I unwittingly wandered into the same space another patron wanted to occupy. Before I could say, “”Excuse me. I’m sorry,” which is my way, he opened his eyes wide and sarcastically said, ““OH, I’m sorry! Was I in your way?”” To punish me for getting in the way he was sarcastic. To punish him for being sarcastic, I withheld my apology. Read more…