These photos come from the 2009 archives at RealSpankings.com. I don’t know what Monica did to get herself strapped to a spanking bench for an extremely thorough punishment with canes, paddles, and a leather strap, but I’m pretty confident she never did it a second time!
In 1929 Margaret Livingston appeared in the movie The Office Scandal. Plot summaries I’ve seen don’t indicate why she’s being menaced with a whip in this scene:
Here at Spanking Blog I have tended to make light of hazing scenarios, whether fraternal or sororal, because they often work so well as a fantasy framework. But it’s perhaps worth pausing once in a while to emphasize that outside our fantasy context, hazing is just a fancy word for bullying. And bullying can have the most tragic consequences.
I was surprised that the story illustrated by the above artwork took such a strong line against hazing, considering that it appeared in the November 1934 issue of Cosmopolitan. My historical education, such as it has been, made me think that hazing was broadly considered harmless in that era. And perhaps that was, indeed, the mainstream thrust of opinion. But this story goes another way. In Autumn Idyl, our hero arrives at a California university with what we would now call post-traumatic stress from a family history of fatal mob violence against his father. The escalating hazing condoned at his institution — all of it completely non-consensual, not fraternity rushing he volunteered for, just ritual violence directed at freshmen in general — eventually pushes him past a psychological limit, triggering his commission of a violent act of self-defense that nonetheless gets him expelled.
In the spanking fetish, we often associate “toys” with implements of pain, always mindful that the line between pain and pleasure is frequently fuzzy. Likewise, pain and punishment are associated concepts. But pain is not the only possible punishment! Pleasure, too, can serve, especially when mechanically stimulated and not under the control of the recipient. That’s why many kinds of vibrators — although most often understood as implements of pleasure rather than pain — are frequently to be found in your more well-stocked and interesting BDSM toyboxes. A really good vibrator can take someone from begging for orgasm to begging for OH GOD PLEASE MASTER MAKE IT STOP in sixty seconds flat.
And that’s where, if you’re a certain flavor of cruel, the fun is just beginning. Because modern batteries, you know, last longer — a whole lot longer! — than sixty seconds. And good old-fashioned retro plug-it-into-the-wall mains current lasts effectively forever. Longer, certainly, than your average submissive can beg for mercy!
The nice long battery life of a modern vibrator also enables all kinds of kinky predicament scenarios. Most public exhibition or public humiliation scenes hinge at least in part on the submissive not making too much of a fuss, in the (perhaps vain) hope of not drawing undue attention. Butterfly vibrators that apply constant (or even constantly variable, with some of the clever modern programmable types) stimulus directly to her clitoris are going to make that kind of games a lot more challenging. So, too, with the “bondage and/or a vibrator under your clothes, now you have to carry out your normal daily duties without anybody catching on” games. It is impossible — and yet one must make the attempt!
Sometimes the inexorable and unstoppable nature of a pleasurable punishment is the entirety of the imposition. It may well be enough, especially if care is taken to get the cruel little details right. This image suggests, without making matters quite explicit, that surgical tape has been used to spread the pleasure-victim’s labia and precisely position a bullet vibe where it will do absolutely the most good. Her tight panties help keep everything in line while leaving just a smidgeon to our imagination. Are her hands pinioned behind that car seat, or is she just very obedient?
Although it’s demonstrated in the image at the top of this post, I’ve yet to discuss the fun to be had by administering pain and pleasure at the same time. Many a submissive has been deliberately “programmed” to become sexually aroused at the mere sight of a paddle, through the judicious application of pleasure while being spanked. And it’s a quick road to sensory overload, if you like that sort of thing, as who does not?
Image credits, top to bottom: The cheerful submissive enjoying vibration with her rough slut-paddle spanking is by Bones, aka BigBonesArt. The hentai-styled woman struggling with her arms bound above her head and a butterfly vibe buzzing in her pussy is by Kiritomo Koroha. The underdressed woman on the subway platform having a public wank with her butterfly vibrator is by Kiken Shisou. The professionally dressed woman trying to deliver a classroom lecture while having repeated vibrator orgasms is by Gossa-Tei. The girl having helpless forced orgasms in the back of a spacious automobile is by Kamitora. And the line of bound women with well-spanked red bottoms and double vibrators in their pussies and asses is artwork from Eudetenis.
After posting the Gargoyle Press magazine advertisement the other day, I grew curious to see what information could be found about the “curious and absorbing volumes on strange amatory customs and practices” issued by that publisher. Available information seems far from complete, but I was able to turn up a few titles published, roughly speaking, in that pre-war decade:
Saddler, Jean, A Fascinating Tyrant, Gargoyle Press, 1930. 10 illustrations by Terry Van Rees.
Meusal, Walter J., Painful Pleasures, Gargoyle Press, 1931. 18 illustrations by Francis Heuber.
Anonymous, The Strap Returns: new notes on flagellation, Gargoyle Press, 1933. Illustrations by Vladimir Alexandre Karenin.
Meusal, Walter J., Invitation to the Dance: a miscellany of stories, experiences, letters, articles, on Corporal Punishment, critically assessed and indulgently considered, Gargoyle Press, 1935. Illustrations by E. Remsen. Alternative title: Dance of Pain.
Paddock, Raymond, Smart education, or, The Miracle of Three Months, Gargoyle Press, 1940.
Gargoyle Press seems to have survived at least in name into the 1970s, judging by numerous stroke books published under that imprint. I don’t have any insight, though, into whether there was any continuity of business, or whether the stroke book publishers of the 1960s and 1970s merely “borrowed” a defunct but well-remembered erotic books brand name to sell more dirty paperbacks. Anyway, this post is about the titles that might have been advertised in the illustrated booklet advertised in 1935. Specifically, here’s what I could learn about The Strap Returns, from various online sources, even though I could not turn up any complete scan or digital copy of the text. (I hope to research the other titles in future posts.)
The Strap Returns appears to have consisted, in the words of its own editor/compiler as reported by one bibliographer, of “letters, excerpts, and articles selected by the editor from a huge quantity of clippings, translations, and the like.” The famous flagellation book The Whip And The Rod contains a passage describing The Strap Returns as “that amusing and interesting collection of anecdotes of material dealing with modern aspects of flagellation”, adding that it contains “many opinions in favor of corporal punishment”.
Although I could learn little more than the above about the textual content of The Strap Returns, we are fortunate to have high-quality scans of the frontispiece and all of the artwork, from the careful collector at the Paris Olympia Press blog. I leave you with his generous scannings-and-sharings:
My sourcing is a bit uncertain on this drawing of a woman being caned on her knees. Apparently it was the cover art for a “vintage Hungarian literary classic on the subject of BDSM” published originally in 1908 in Budapest, but as seen here from a 1973 reprint by the “Juno Book Club” (Juno Buch Club) in Germany: