OK, so I didn't really address spanking in that last post. I kind of got caught up in the self-revelation thing.
I haven't really had much that's new in mind in the area of spanking. I'm still seeing personalities and bottoms that are just crying out for it, of course. It's the day-to-day stuff of my existence - my obsession.
I saw a mother and daughter... I assume they were mother and daughter because they had a family resemblance. One looked to be 40-ish and the other 20-ish. And they both had great butts. The "mom" had theses tight, soft jeans on and the "daughter" had on short gym shorts - the kind with the soft form-fitting material that automatically makes you think how little it would protect a bottom from a properly delivered spank. That vision does my heart good. I don't necessarilly advocate the spanking of offspring (more on that later), but as a spanko, you just have to wonder what happened to the daughter when she got in trouble. You also have to wonder if the mom ever got into trouble with her husband...
Then there's the even more unrealistic fantasy world I live in. For example, there's the time that Hulk Hogan (see the show "Hogan Knows Best") came to me with an interesting problem. "I'm going to have to spank my daughter, Brooke, but I don't want to send her to the hospital. Can you show me how to do it properly? I heard you were the man to see." And of course I said, "Sure, Mr. Hogan, have a seat. Of course you've come to the right place. It ain't going to be cheap, but I think you'll find my instruction is worth it."
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Changes...
Woah! July 8 was my last published post. Well, I don't really have an excuse, but I do have a couple of reasons and I'll try not to let them interfere in the future.
Reason one is that I just changed jobs recently and that's always an adjustment. There's a change in the type of stress you go through along with a scheduling change that's inevitable. Additionally, because I had to turn in my router when ending my last job, I don't have as much Internet time as I'm used to.
So that brings me back to changes... and spirituality and spanking. What's going on, on those fronts?
Spirituality. I'm discovering that my calling is to do spiritual guidance or spiritual leadership. That's what drew me into life coaching. That's what my involvement in music and writing have always been about - presenting a story in a visual or auditory format that enlightens, inspires and teaches. Life coaching is a way to reach people one on one. I feel in my soul that there's more I'm meant to do as well.
I should be a leader in a place of worship. That's the vision I see before me. Having had a wonderful experience leading a discussion at a local BDSM spirituality group, there has been churning in my heart. I keep thinking that these people, our people, are true, pure seekers. Yet we don't really have a "place" in the world to go. Some of us, I'm sure, go to Church, Temple, Synagogue, etc. but are any of us able to be our full selves in those places without judgment? Doubtful.
Where do you go when you don't really fit in? We need a place to go to practice whatever it is we're going to practice spiritually without judgment and in a supportive environment. The establishment of a spiritual center is one of the first major steps in the "legitimization" of a community of people. WE need to have our own businesses, our own schools, and our own places of worship. I'm not advocating separation from whatever is considered mainstream or vanilla, but we do need to recognize that we have a right to be who we are and to fellowship together.
Change is coming. I think it's unavoidable. Just as it was (and is) with our homosexual brothers and sisters, acceptance increases over time. It's just a question of whether we want to be the drivers of that acceptance (and I mean self-acceptance as well as societal) or we want to just ride its coat tails.
I feel called to be a driver. It's scary, yes, but exciting. And I would be less than the loving human being that I truly want to be if I didn't follow my calling.
Reason one is that I just changed jobs recently and that's always an adjustment. There's a change in the type of stress you go through along with a scheduling change that's inevitable. Additionally, because I had to turn in my router when ending my last job, I don't have as much Internet time as I'm used to.
So that brings me back to changes... and spirituality and spanking. What's going on, on those fronts?
Spirituality. I'm discovering that my calling is to do spiritual guidance or spiritual leadership. That's what drew me into life coaching. That's what my involvement in music and writing have always been about - presenting a story in a visual or auditory format that enlightens, inspires and teaches. Life coaching is a way to reach people one on one. I feel in my soul that there's more I'm meant to do as well.
I should be a leader in a place of worship. That's the vision I see before me. Having had a wonderful experience leading a discussion at a local BDSM spirituality group, there has been churning in my heart. I keep thinking that these people, our people, are true, pure seekers. Yet we don't really have a "place" in the world to go. Some of us, I'm sure, go to Church, Temple, Synagogue, etc. but are any of us able to be our full selves in those places without judgment? Doubtful.
Where do you go when you don't really fit in? We need a place to go to practice whatever it is we're going to practice spiritually without judgment and in a supportive environment. The establishment of a spiritual center is one of the first major steps in the "legitimization" of a community of people. WE need to have our own businesses, our own schools, and our own places of worship. I'm not advocating separation from whatever is considered mainstream or vanilla, but we do need to recognize that we have a right to be who we are and to fellowship together.
Change is coming. I think it's unavoidable. Just as it was (and is) with our homosexual brothers and sisters, acceptance increases over time. It's just a question of whether we want to be the drivers of that acceptance (and I mean self-acceptance as well as societal) or we want to just ride its coat tails.
I feel called to be a driver. It's scary, yes, but exciting. And I would be less than the loving human being that I truly want to be if I didn't follow my calling.
Friday, July 08, 2005
Separation of Church and State
I know this doesn't relate directly to spanking or to spirituality, but if you'll bear with me I'll steer us in that direction as I tend to do with just about everything - it all leads back to philosophy and/or corporal punishment.
I heard a news article on my public radio station this morning that talked about a controversial challenge by a Muslim woman to court rooms not having copies of the Koran available for swearing on. The story related how she had appeared in a certain courtroom and according to the account by the judge, was asked to put her left hand on the Bible to swear in. She asked if she could put her hand on the Koran instead. The judge told her that he didn't have any Korans available, but she could take the other legal option, which was to simply affirm that she would be telling the truth on the stand. She took the latter option and a few weeks later she, along with other Islamic devotees, brought in a stack of Korans so that the option would be available in future should the need arise.
The judge's viewpoint on this was that the 228 year old state law that applies, refers to "Holy Scriptures" and at that time in our country's history, there could be no other religious text to which they could have referred. However, the point of view of a Greensboro group promoting interfaith relations is that in our pluralistic society, there are many versions of "Holy Scriptures" and they all should be represented.
While I want to really applaud the efforts of the interfaith group, I have to say that they and the producers of the story and the judge are all missing a major point. That point being "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... " And this law among several other North Carolina laws violates this constitutional amendment. Yet there was no mention even considering that angle. Am I missing something here? There wasn't even a mention of an opinion on the part of the ACLU. Strange...
Anyway, let's bring this back to our favorite subjects. Let me first make a confession. Although I'm whole-heartedly liberal now (some would say radical), I used to be a Christian conservative back in high school. By that I mean that I swallowed whole the recent (meaning the last couple of centuries) and current interpretations that many Christians have of the Bible. I believed that only men and women should marry, and only in pairs. I believed in patriarchy and that in a marriage the husband should always have the final word. I believed in this literal, whole-cloth, exclusionary interpretation of the Bible for two basic reasons that I believe are a lot more universal than Christian conservatives will ever admit to.
Reason one is that I liked the logical simplicity of it. Here we had a set of rules to live by that most of the country if not the world, could agree was moral. I thought that even considering that Jews and Muslims did not believe in the Christ-as-Savior part of it, they at least shared the basic rules and morality. It was a solid, logical system with clear rules. No mysticism or anything difficult to penetrate. No soul searching really required.
The second reason was sexual. I saw in the presentation of framework of patriarchy, an opportunity to be in charge of a woman, or women. This, of course, meant that there was the possibility that I could spank or otherwise corporally punish a woman, at least potentially. This idea just felt really good. It gave me sexual security and a feeling of manliness that I had often been otherwise missing.
As I look back on it now, it's really startling to realize how vehemently I held on to and defended those beliefs in the face of otherwise overwhelming intellectual evidence, simply because it made me emotionally uncomfortable to do otherwise. I think this is the case with many many conservatives. I think there are a lot of conservative men who want to dominate women and a lot of women who want to be dominated, but the only way they can justify those feelings for themselves or others is to put that decision in the hands of God.
So, of course they're going to quote you chapter and verse about the man being the head of the household and about man lying down with another man being abomination to God. And of course you don't hear a lot of quoting about love being the greatest law (including love your enemy as yourself) and turning the other cheek and everything being permissible if not necessarilly beneficial and faith being the basis of whether something is a sin or not. I'm not going to even touch the one where Jesus says to give all your possessions away.
Think about this the next time you hear a conservative talking fondly about the times when women stayed at home to raise the kids and the time they got severely spanked or belted after receiving a paddling at school and how they turned out just fine. It's no coincidence that conservative language and culture is laced with images of dominance and submission and it's no mystery why they hate us in the BDSM community.
I heard a news article on my public radio station this morning that talked about a controversial challenge by a Muslim woman to court rooms not having copies of the Koran available for swearing on. The story related how she had appeared in a certain courtroom and according to the account by the judge, was asked to put her left hand on the Bible to swear in. She asked if she could put her hand on the Koran instead. The judge told her that he didn't have any Korans available, but she could take the other legal option, which was to simply affirm that she would be telling the truth on the stand. She took the latter option and a few weeks later she, along with other Islamic devotees, brought in a stack of Korans so that the option would be available in future should the need arise.
The judge's viewpoint on this was that the 228 year old state law that applies, refers to "Holy Scriptures" and at that time in our country's history, there could be no other religious text to which they could have referred. However, the point of view of a Greensboro group promoting interfaith relations is that in our pluralistic society, there are many versions of "Holy Scriptures" and they all should be represented.
While I want to really applaud the efforts of the interfaith group, I have to say that they and the producers of the story and the judge are all missing a major point. That point being "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... " And this law among several other North Carolina laws violates this constitutional amendment. Yet there was no mention even considering that angle. Am I missing something here? There wasn't even a mention of an opinion on the part of the ACLU. Strange...
Anyway, let's bring this back to our favorite subjects. Let me first make a confession. Although I'm whole-heartedly liberal now (some would say radical), I used to be a Christian conservative back in high school. By that I mean that I swallowed whole the recent (meaning the last couple of centuries) and current interpretations that many Christians have of the Bible. I believed that only men and women should marry, and only in pairs. I believed in patriarchy and that in a marriage the husband should always have the final word. I believed in this literal, whole-cloth, exclusionary interpretation of the Bible for two basic reasons that I believe are a lot more universal than Christian conservatives will ever admit to.
Reason one is that I liked the logical simplicity of it. Here we had a set of rules to live by that most of the country if not the world, could agree was moral. I thought that even considering that Jews and Muslims did not believe in the Christ-as-Savior part of it, they at least shared the basic rules and morality. It was a solid, logical system with clear rules. No mysticism or anything difficult to penetrate. No soul searching really required.
The second reason was sexual. I saw in the presentation of framework of patriarchy, an opportunity to be in charge of a woman, or women. This, of course, meant that there was the possibility that I could spank or otherwise corporally punish a woman, at least potentially. This idea just felt really good. It gave me sexual security and a feeling of manliness that I had often been otherwise missing.
As I look back on it now, it's really startling to realize how vehemently I held on to and defended those beliefs in the face of otherwise overwhelming intellectual evidence, simply because it made me emotionally uncomfortable to do otherwise. I think this is the case with many many conservatives. I think there are a lot of conservative men who want to dominate women and a lot of women who want to be dominated, but the only way they can justify those feelings for themselves or others is to put that decision in the hands of God.
So, of course they're going to quote you chapter and verse about the man being the head of the household and about man lying down with another man being abomination to God. And of course you don't hear a lot of quoting about love being the greatest law (including love your enemy as yourself) and turning the other cheek and everything being permissible if not necessarilly beneficial and faith being the basis of whether something is a sin or not. I'm not going to even touch the one where Jesus says to give all your possessions away.
Think about this the next time you hear a conservative talking fondly about the times when women stayed at home to raise the kids and the time they got severely spanked or belted after receiving a paddling at school and how they turned out just fine. It's no coincidence that conservative language and culture is laced with images of dominance and submission and it's no mystery why they hate us in the BDSM community.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Fresh Starts
This year, and in particular the last couple of months, has meant a significant number of fresh starts for me.
One in particular was that I turned 40. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I realize the arbitrary nature of choosing a birthday as a benchmark or choosing a year number ending in zero, it does feel like a new beginning. As I had been told by a number of friends and family over the age of 40, this age does feel a lot more comfortable. I'm much more comfortable with who I am than I've ever been. Aside from a predictable desire to have somewhat of a leaner, stronger body, I really like myself a lot and it feels good.
A strong part of that transformation in my self-acceptance and self-image is related to both my spirituality and my coming to terms with who I am as a disciplinarian. What I'd like to do in this blog is to explore intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually my experiences, internal and external, with these areas of my life.
If I take correctly the spirit of "blogging", hopefully I will not be the only person to benefit from the exploration.
One in particular was that I turned 40. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I realize the arbitrary nature of choosing a birthday as a benchmark or choosing a year number ending in zero, it does feel like a new beginning. As I had been told by a number of friends and family over the age of 40, this age does feel a lot more comfortable. I'm much more comfortable with who I am than I've ever been. Aside from a predictable desire to have somewhat of a leaner, stronger body, I really like myself a lot and it feels good.
A strong part of that transformation in my self-acceptance and self-image is related to both my spirituality and my coming to terms with who I am as a disciplinarian. What I'd like to do in this blog is to explore intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually my experiences, internal and external, with these areas of my life.
If I take correctly the spirit of "blogging", hopefully I will not be the only person to benefit from the exploration.
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