Authorities

I have noticed a certain reluctance among people who declare their interest in anything kinky, for explaining or understanding the interest. I can understand that this has to do with a refusal to be regarded as deviant or, even worse, perverse. We know that kinky people are like any people; jealous, petty, evil, loving, nice, caring, cautious, intelligent and generally wonderful.

If you, like me, are blessed and cursed with an enquiring mind, you can't help asking the questions. Why? And how? What's behind it? And that is not confined to kink. Most things pose questions, make you wonder.

I thought I would share a thought that is very personal and maybe an answer to some of the whys of my imagination.

Tying people up, stripping off their clothes, and whipping them have a lot to do with power, the uneven distribution of power. This leads me to think of authorities. We have all been faced with people with power, teachers, parents, coaches, clerks and officials.

Our experiences of people with authority may be varied. Except my parents and a few others I have always been suspicious of authorities, scared of people with power, and especially if they have power over me.

I didn't grow up in a time when those people had the power to deal out the kind of punishments I so happily include in my fantasies. But I have always been aware of being quite powerless before some of those people.

In addition I have a history of disappointments in authorities, of teachers who taught me things I knew were wrong, and who wasn't adult enough to admit it, and the arbitrariness of some of them. I would have loved to have had a good teacher, one I could trust and whom I believed was right, who was able to teach me something of the world, about living in it.

The very thought that one of those people would have been given the power to punish me with, for example, a spanking, is terrifying. I could think of few things as humiliating and abhorrent. There is not even the slightest fascination in it, the idea is really terrible.

So, there is it, a person with a profound distrust for authorities, and a similarly overwhelming dislike for the idea that they should be given any power over her. And yet this person is obsessed with punishments and the unfairness of it all, the very difference in power between people.

Could it be that fantasies are, somehow, fuelled by the unfairness of childhood, the fear of humiliation and that sense of helplessness, and that one way of dealing with it, is to take control over them and approach them in an environment where they can do no harm, any more? To turn it into something good, something you enjoy?

Some people seem to have similar experiences but take another path, they want to be the ruler, the one who punishes and decides. It seems logical. I still struggle with the fact that I tend to go there on another path, let myself be humiliated and punished. I am still not sure why I so want it in my imagination.

Blogging Again?

Long time no see, as they say. My only excuse for not blogging is that sometimes life goes through periods when your mind is occupied with things that make you think that blogging is not the most important thing. I know this is a little dismissive, as if I didn't think blogging was important, or that you, Dear Readers, weren't important. For whatever it is worth, I can tell you that starting blogging has been one of the most important things in my life and that it has helped me a lot with a lot of issues. So I hope you will forgive me for being absent for such a long time and don't feel too dismissed by my arrogance.

If you excuse me some more I am going to be a little academic. I am fascinated by those details in fantasies that seems so important, the ones you focus your mind on. I am sure you have the same. It struck me that they seem crucial and meaningful and that if you focus on them you will understand why they are so prominent.

I even came up with a fancy name for these fantasy elements. I thought they could be called fantasemes, in the same vein as mytheme and that sort of thing. Although I find it useful to think of it as an important element that tend to be similar in different settings, I couldn't think of a definition that was scholarly enough and it all seems to descend into some kind of pseudo academic chaos.

So, let's skip the silliness and focus on what I am talking about. What I mean are those details that you really like, perhaps triggers you, or at least seem crucial in a fantasy. They may be simple things or quite elaborate series of events and only you, yourself, know what they are.

One such detail in my world of fantasies is the taking off of knickers and pulling up of skirts and sitting on chairs and seats. It is shamelessly taken from The Story of O, but that is not a problem, we are inspired all the time by things we see and hear. The important thing is that it triggers something in us, and that we pick up on a detail. This 'fantaseme' of mine occurs in many different settings, it can happen on a bench in a part, on the bus, but most often it happens between a man and a woman seated in a restaurant. He tells her to take her knickers off, pull her skirt up and she does it, trying to cover it up as much as possible. It is this combination of being exposed and touching the world, and at the same time trying to act normally. She knows it, he knows it, and, hopefully, no one else knows is. It is often a symbol of giving yourself to someone, the fact that she does what she is told. It seldom happens if she is already submitted to him, but as a provocation from him, one she accepts and submits to.

Another such detail or 'fantaseme' in my world of fantasies, could be the sliding of knickers down from your hips. I often delve on the details here, the sensation of clothes touching the skin, moving down and away from the body, the baring, the crossing over a boundary, going from clothed to nude. In addition it is important when the knickers slip from your feet. It seems to be another crossing over. Before that you can always pull them up, but by removing them they become unreachable. You seem to accept being bared, being naked. There are some additional details that seem to crop up. If this is done in a semi public place, as a part of the 'fantaseme' above, the knickers can be given to the other person who then, perhaps, takes them and puts them in his pocket or even throws them in a rubbish bin. This is a powerful symbol. It is discarding of clothes, showing that they are not going to be put on again, they are irrelevant and useless, what is required of you is being naked.

I could go on and on and I could also become really, really boring. But I find it interesting to think about those details, those 'fantasemes' and wonder what they say about the fantasy, what they mean and why they are so powerful. I wouldn't mind getting a reaction. Do you have those details? Do you know what they mean? Do you even think of them as important details?

Hello

Hello, Dear Readers. I am back from a loooong holiday. I know I am supposed to be relaxed and refreshed now. The truth is that I am much the same as before. This doesn't mean I didn't have a brilliant holiday, I had, a very lazy one, with lots of reading and just staring into nothingness. Thing is with holidays that they tend to make you more like how you are, so if you are content you feel more content but if you are sad, sometimes, the sadness catch up with you. I think, however, that this is a good thing, that you have time to become more who you are, warts and all.

No new stories, today, I just wanted to say hi and let you know I am still here. I hope you are still there. Take care and be kind to yourselves.

Coincidence?

I know it is a dangerous thing to start looking for coincidences, things that seem to have a hidden meaning or being set in a pattern, in films or book. You tend to find what you want to find, so it is with some trepidation I will now write about something of the kind, which I found quite amusing.

Colin Dexter created the character of Chief Inspector Morse of the Thames Valley Police. His stories and some have been transformed into a very brilliant series of films, or episodes, where Morse is portrayed by the late John Thaw. The brilliant detective has an assistant called Robert Lewis played by Kevin Whately and after the death of Inspector Morse he solves his own murder mysteries in a tv-series that is showing at the moment.

Not long ago the 4th episode of of the 4th series was aired and the title was Falling Darkness. It begins with a gruesome murder of a Professor Ligeia Willard. She has been knocked down and a stake has been driven through her heart. The murder was committed at All Hallows Eve or Halloween.

Some of you may have reacted to the name Ligeia, which is the title of a story by Edgar Allen Poe, the brilliant American horror writer and inventor of the detective story. A coincidence, a reference to the great master? Perhaps? But there is more.

There is an Alec Pickman among the characters and this struck me as interesting. Richard Upton Pickman is a person in some stories by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, another brilliant American horror writer. Pickman is found in the stories Pickman's Model and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.

Coincidence, perhaps? To add to the pattern, there is a Mrs Renfield. She has the same surname as the poor fellow who visits Count Dracula's castle and becomes mad in the novel by Bram Stoker, another writer of horror fiction, Irish this time.

At this time I began to check out the other names in the list of roles. Some of them may be long shots, but I will mention them anyway.

One character is called Victor Clerval and if you know your Mary Shelley, you will know that the mad scientist is called Victor Frankenstein, and to add to it, Henry Clerval is another character in the very same book.

Ursula van Tessel is an unusual name and as it happens, I found a Catriena Ecker van Tessel who is said to be the inspiration for Katrina in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

The list of roles contains a Charlotte Corwin and this is the same surname as one of the judges of the Salem witch trials and the old name of the Salem Township, Warren County, Ohio, USA, was, you have guessed it, Corwin.

Professor Rufus Strickfaden has a very unusual surname, one that he shares with Kenneth Strickfaden, electrician and film set designer who is mostly famous for creating the laboratory of Victor Frankenstein in the 1931 film, directed by James Whale.

Lastly, and this may be the worst of all these long shots, Rowena Trevanion, may be associated with a building, Trevanion, famous for its Gothic architecture.

This could all be in my mind, I know that, or maybe someone with a sense of humour and a knowledge of horror fiction in writing and on screen put these references there for anyone to find.

At least one other person found this interesting.

Frank Frazetta, 1928 – 2010

The Grand Old Master is dead. It is sad, indeed.

I have always been fascinated by the different, the exotic. I read everything I could find about old and forgotten civilisations, about the Aztecs, The Egyptians, Sumerians, Ancient China and that sort of thing. There is a very special thrill I feel when I come across something that awakens this fascination, this sense of awe.

Good Fantasy can do that. (Notice, I use Fantasy with a capital F, meaning the genre (or genres) in art and writing and film.) A good Fantasy story, or picture, evokes that kind of excitement. I don't mind the heroes, the monsters, the beautiful damsels in distress, I love it. But one thing that really gets me hooked is if I get that thrill of the exotic and different.

There is so much mainstream Fantasy that has lost it, that only repeats what has gone before, that are repetitions of old themes. It is nice, beautiful and even exciting at times but it never gives that impression of peeking through to another world.

The undisputed master of Fantasy art was, in my opinion, Frank Frazetta. He had that ability to transport you to strange places, primeval forests or enchanted lands. His heroes weren't necessarily the strongest and his damsels not always the most beautiful but he always had a unique style that gave me that sense of awe.

I guess that is why his style was so widely copied. Some did it through and through, while others picked out details, some did it well others not so well.

Modern Fantasy art owes a lot to Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolists, and, like some of those styles, it is not accepted as Art, generally, but seen as illustrations and poster art. I truly believe there is a lot of powerful imagery and symbols in commercial art, in illustrations and that sort of thing. It is not deliberately put there as in High Art but it is there, all the same, and sometimes in a very rough and unpolished way.

I will stop this rant and just say that it is sad that the one true Master of Fantasy Art has left us.

(Frank Frazetta, 9/2 1928 – 10/5 2010)

What is it About?

I got some really nice and interesting comments on my last blogpost, In Denial?. My initial though with that post was to talk about and perhaps confess to a kind of being short sighted and not really accepting the obvious, that is, that fantasies are sexual (although they are much more than that). The comments, however, raised another issue and that has to do with guilt.

Despite the header for this post, I am not trying to explain what this thing is all about. No, just talk a little about it and perhaps start a discussion with you, Dear Readers.

Since I am not participating in any kind of real life activities concerned with BDSM, Spanking or D/s or that sort of thing (let's call it Kink, just to have a good word for it) I can only talk about what happens in my own mind when I think and fantasise about these things.

I do believe that even if you really are into it, really live it, and experience all of the physical sensations that go with it, there is a lot of fantasising going on, that many real and enjoyable floggings are, a kind of, living out of fantasies. What I am trying to say is that the mind thing is central, even for those of you live it in your real lives. Please, tell me if I am wrong or misunderstand things, which I am bound to do.

For me fantasies are a lot about consent and mutuality. But, and this is the brilliant thing with stories and fantasies, sometimes the consent is outside the story. I can let myself be enslaved in a fantasy, I can let it happen against my own will and I can be subject to, what is really, abuse. Even of the worst kind. My consent is outside the scene that is played out in my head or in my story. I am in full control even if I am helpless in the story.

Although I don't write much about the 'scene' I do love stories where there is consent, stories about love that contains submission and control. In these stories the consent is inside the story. And so is the trust. With the first kind there is no trust, rather the opposite, the other kind is based on it, the very essence of it. Those are really stories about love and friendship and being accepted for who you are with your mind, twisted and warped, as you may feel it is, at times.

To return to the issue of guilt, I think it is more prominent in the first kind of stories, the one that depict some kind of abuse, those where you are raped or enslaved or forced to do things. A story makes things more real, makes it seem as if it has happened in real life, you begin to think of the events and what it looks like, what it smells like and how it feels. I think the guilt is made more more prominent by this almost reality that is in fantasies and stories. How can you desire to be hurt or hurt someone, especially someone or by someone you love or loves you? Why do I find this thought of humiliation so delightful? That sort of thing.

For me there is guilt in the others as well; facing up to the fact that I have these thoughts, is hard, and the thought of living them with someone who wants the same is compelling but frightening. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I don't, that I do prioritise love in the form I have encountered it and the fact that I think my dreams and fantasies would shatter if faced with too much reality. This is really besides the point, only to show how I feel about it.

So, to get back to your comments. Lea talks about the contrast between the desire and the form, that reminds her of bad things, abuse and violence and that sort of thing. I think that is really why I feel guilty too, that it I don't want to promote abuse while I find it immensely exciting to be abused in my fantasies.

Lily said something which I found very beautiful, 'the “beauty” inherent within the acts which involve consent and trust'. For me this opens up a new vista of thoughts, thoughts that have to do with what I truly believe fantasies and my writing are about, a longing for trust and love, the kind that goes to the core of your being. It is too much to go deeper into here and I admit that this paragraph may appear a little cryptic but I do hope I may come back to this later, sometime.

Z said something which I liked, that it is because Kink is immoral that we enjoy it. I agree to a certain point, I do think it is part of the appeal although other emotions are involved as well. There is absolutely something of the joy of breaking the rules, doing what is not allowed there.

I honestly think fantasies about Kink are fantasies about very basic human needs, and that trust is not just a prerequisite for indulging in Kinky activities but really a fundamental driving force behind them. It is the sense of being safe that is at the core of it. But to end this with a disclaimer, this is how I feel about it and I really don't want to try to explain away anyone's experience or take on it, I really don't. I invite you to give your view on these matters and I hope I will come back to it and elaborate on it.

In Denial?

As a comment for my last blogpost, In the Desert, Lily wrote: 'When I first read this, I immediately wanted to respond that if I were there (or if I were continuing the writing) I would be plotting her rescue'. This made me think. The first thing I want to say is that I react in exactly the same way. I find it hard to write cruel stories because I do want people to be happy. On the other hand, what makes a story or a fantasy interesting is the tension, the excitement and passion.

I want the slavery to be gruesome, the whipping to be painful and the undressing quite shocking. It is not that I strive to create a sensation in the reader (although I don't mind), it is what I want to read myself, what I want to write about. Not that I am always true to this, sometimes I get caught up in some conversation or want to write about sweetness and kindness and then there is not much tension.

Leaving my inconsistencies aside, what I wanted to get to was that I can see that I am in denial when it comes to fantasies, and writing about them. The tension in a scene where you are tied to a whipping post, or kneeling in a room where you are going to be caned, lies in the difference between the gruesomeness and terror that is there and the arousal you still feel.

This is no news for you, I know that, and many of you, I gather, have no problems with this. You know and embrace that thrill, that arousal and perhaps even see it as the main ingredient.

When I think of myself I can see that that I have a quite complicated view on this. On the one hand, I know well that the very reason to write and read about dropped knickers and smacked bottoms is because we find it arousing and exciting. Still I struggle a lot with the gruesomeness of it all. I tend to write about the negative side of it or use neutral terms, maybe to emphasise the tension between the outer harshness and the inner excitement. But this is also an expression of my own ambiguity.

I do feel ashamed of feeling excited about stories where women are treated badly by men, stories that contain abuse and cruelty. Still it is what I want, what I get excited about and want to write.

My point is, and this is a very personal point, that I am so caught up in this tension and the guilt I feel for writing about it, that I miss the very obvious. The truth is that when I stand in front of the guests of the manor house, slipping off my last item of clothing, preparing for a truly vicious horsewhip, I feel excited. I have to hide it but the main sensation is delight, although mixed with fear and dread. And it is damned sexy to be tied naked to some tree, having to be rescued by a hero, feeling completely vulnerable and exposed. What I feel when I climb the stairs to the platform of the slave market, to be displayed naked for all prospective buyers is arousal.

You know this. I know that and maybe you will find me unbelievably naïve to have to blog about it, but there is a difference between understanding something intellectually and even accepting it, and really knowing it in your heart and sometimes it is the most obvious that you do your best to deny.

Thank You

Just a short blogpost about politeness. I do appreciate politeness, I really do. I see on some forums and blogs how people take any opportunity to be rude and seem to look for anything they can misconstrue as something they don't like. I don't understand this and I get a little upset when I am being attacked for trying to talk about something nicely.

My point with this post is to say that this never happens here. You are a very nice bunch of people who come here and read and comment. I never have to delete rude comments or nasty opinions. There is no meanness and no anger. I am sure you don't like everything I write and disagree with me quite often and with each other but still you are polite. Thank you, Dear Readers, for that.

Just to let you know. If you sometimes see comments disappear it is almost always because they try to use my blog for selling something. I think I once or twice, during all this time, have had to remove a comment because it was too personal or too rude. Sometimes someone post a comment and then correct it immediately, then I usually remove the first of them. But I don't see this as being rude.

Janice v. Gor

Whenever you talk about a world where men hold women as slaves, a fantasy world that is suitably ancient and exotic, someone will tell you it is Gorean. I find this a bit annoying. I will immediately apologise to the one (see the comments on my last entry) who triggered this, this time. I am not having a go at you, this happens all the time.

So, am I inspired by John Lange, aka John Norman, and his Gor books? Yes, of course. I have read a fair share of them and how could you not be inspired? Everything I see and read and experience inspire me. But my fantasy world is not Gorean, full stop. Unless you mean Gorean in the same sense as USA is Roman because they have an empire or Barbara Cartland is Austen because people marry at the end.

Does it matter? Not really. I just want to make clear that where I go, in my mind, where I have my fantasies play out is not Lange's counter earth, the slave owners in my stories and imagination are not Gorean.

I do find Lange's books fascinating, and inspiring, but only up to a point. And now I am going to rant about what I don't like about his creation.

Life on Gor is highly formalised, at least social relationships. People are organised in castes if they are free and if they are slaves they are property. The main character, Tarl Cabot, is a member of the warrior caste but betrays the code of the warriors and becomes and outcast. Free women on Gor have to have their faces covered and removing the veil from a woman is about the most degrading thing you can do to her, short of enslaving her. It is a world that reminds me more of the Vatican or Medieval Japan than the Wild West or Europe during the Barbarian Invasions.

In addition, Gorean men seem to be scared of women. The relationship between everybody, including free men and owned women, is ritualised and very strict. A slave who speaks in the wrong way or doesn't show enough willingness to serve or in any way doesn't adhere to protocol is severely punished. A slave's life is full of the treatment that is meant to demean her and show her, not just that she is property but also worth nothing. This, to me, speaks of anxiety, not about self confidence and real power.

I can go there, I do occasionally. There is an appeal in this ritualised, formal and very degrading treatment of women. It is strange but part of me wants to be humiliated in fantasies. But I never stay there for long. In my world, my fantasy world, when ruthless men captures women and keep them as slaves, I like to think of them as confident enough to know that a slave is a human, although an owned one, and that there is no need to assert your power during every single second of every single day. The world won't collapse if the owner sits down and laughs with the slave. (If you now want to prove me wrong by finding quotations from the Gor novels where slave owners are friendly with their slaves, please, don't. This is about my overall impression of Gorean society as anxious and regulated rather than wild and relaxed and you are free to disagree.)

Yes, I do have many worlds in my head, some that clash if they would be put side by side. What I am saying is that I do find slave fantasies rather nice but mine are not Gorean, not that often any way, but they are still full of deserts, slave markets, chains, whips, nakedness and ruthlessness.

I can see that this seems superficial and why bother about details? And is there really a difference? I don't know and I will not try to analyse and argue it any further. Call it what you want. But if my world is Gorean, it is as much Hyborian, Barsoomian and of Arabian Nights. I am just tired of the label, as if John Lange is the only one who has imagined how fascinating it can be with a world where slaves are kept for the pleasures of their owners.

That Other Side

Before I write about that other side I will talk about this side, the one that is here, on the blog, the one I usually write about.

In many ways I came to this kind of fantasies as an observer. There are so many damsels in distress out there, in stories and films, and I couldn't help being fascinated by it. Films sometimes depict scenes of abuse, even rape. There are book covers with muscular heroes battling fierce monsters while a scantily clad woman struggles in her bonds, hoping for the hero to succeed.

I have been fascinated by those themes, wondering what it would be like to be chained to the wall, clad in almost nothing and having to rely on some barbarian prince to rescue me. Or being the subject of abuse and horrors from villains and criminals. The crucial point is, of course, that it didn't just scare me, it attracted me. I felt a kind of thrill thinking of those situations.

Being as I am, I had to try to understand why a scene from A Clockwork Orange, where a girl is stripped naked to be raped, only to be rescued by accident by the protagonist of the film, why such a scene gave me this thrill and not just the horror one would expect.

Lots of things pop up, it's about not being responsible, being vulnerable, allowed to be sexual without guilt. But I will not go further down that road, at the moment. What I am trying to say is that it has been a gradual process, from being scared and fascinated to identifying and even trying to find some kind of beauty in being subject to abuse.

On this blog I have tried to explore this side of me, the Yin side. It has been a great relief to accept this side, the side that isn't what you are supposed to be, at least not where I live.

There is another side, however, albeit less dominant. Maybe that is the spot of Yang in the Yin and only goes to show that it is the balance between the sides that matters, not just expecting one to reign supreme.

He is there, of course, in my stories, like a shadow, or rather a dark undefined force. In my very strict division of things, in my fantasies, he tend to be male. I am of course talking about That Other Side now.

I am immensely fascinated by that side too. In my fantasies he takes the form of the arrogant man, the ruler, the conqueror, the one with confidence and power. Sometimes it is a woman, although she tends to be more balanced, more like a real person, balancing a desire to be cruel with a care about the other.

I have done a bit of writing, trying to see things from the other side, allowing myself to be fascinated by that sense of power. What is it like to be cruel and ruthless? What is it like to feel that power and enjoy it for yourself and care little about the other.

I have been reluctant to post any of those scriblings, since they are so completely different and strange compared to what I usually put here.

Sometimes this person is a young man, who discovers that he gets away with spanking his girlfriends. In fact, they like him to do it. He gains in confidence and may discover that he doesn't even have to limit himself to one girlfriend. He finds he can do what he pleases and in this strange, twisted world, the women allow him that, they are as fascinated as I am by his ruthlessness and confidence.

He may be a slaver, a man who deals in women as commodities. He loves women, in his own way, they bring him profit and are generally pleasing for him, as long as they are in chains, belong to him and obedient enough to do his biddings.

I think this slaver comes from my fascination by and love of those strange and exotic lands were women are slaves and can be bought and sold for gold. I am fascinated by being a slave there.

But as it happens, I get this image of the man who is the owner, the slave trader. I wonder what motivates him, why did he become a slaver? Does he have to be this swine, this villain, this evil creature? Isn't it far more interesting if he is a man with a heart, who loves his family, who has friends he cherish and who have loyalties and values? It is just that his world is a man's world, where women are there to please men, for the simple reason that men rule that world. And that there is no contradiction for him to be loyal to his friends and at the same time, completely disregard the wishes of a woman he has put his chains on.

How is it to be that man who actually enjoys spanking a woman, his woman, the woman he loves and cares about? How is it to be the man who feels elated and happy when he uses his power over someone to cause them to suffer, not out of hatred but out of sheer love for that power, being selfish and ruthless enough to admit to himself that he really enjoys it.

As you can see, I do have a lot of thoughts about this and they are, of course, as far removed from reality as my submission fantasies and as close to it as they are. What I mean is that they happen in a world that doesn't exist but are still concerned with real life emotions and thoughts.

A little disclaimer here. Please don't think that this discussion about a more dominant side of my thinking means that I have opinions about those of you who consider yourselves as being dominant. I know there are a lot of other things going on and that you regard trust and care and love as being crucial as much as any submissive person. These are aspects of my mind, thoughts about how people behave and do in fantasies, not a statement about real life people.

Confusing

From time to time someone emails me regarding the blog, something they have read on it or just generally. Most people say really nice things, it seems as if something I have written really has struck a chord, they have connected to something on the blog. Believe me, few things make me happier. What more can you ask for? You write something you like to write and it turns out that someone recognises themselves in it or are really moved by it. That's the best reward, really.

Some of those seem very keen on communicating with me and I am likewise happy doing that. But then something happens. Often, but not always, they lose interest. It is as if the enthusiasm wears off and I am left with unanswered emails. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone writing to me has to commit to a life long cyber friendship. That's not what I meant, these things come and go, that's in their nature. Still I wonder why that happens, why do they stop, why do they just disappear, without a word?

Maybe it is the nature of cyber space, I don't know. But I can't help thinking that it is because I am not what they expected and that they are disappointed when they find that instead of this mysterious, free thinking, bold and sensual person they find a rather boring, dry academic kind of person, someone who is quite prudish and not keen on adventures.

I am like a horror writer who doesn't believe in ghosts (quite common, I believe). I don't believe in uneven relationships and arrogant, authoritarian people really put me off. Power fascinates me and power exchange and uneven distribution of power is interesting, even exciting. But the real me will just walk away from someone who is too arrogant.

Don't get me wrong here. I have nothing against people who want to live in spanking relationships or BDSM-relationships and who are happy submitting to or dominating one another. It is just that it isn't for me. The very reason I dare indulging myself in my fantasies is that I live in a very equal relationship, a relationship where we depend on each other and support each other in equal measures.

Those of you who care to dig deeper may have seen those themes in my stories, that there is a lot about dependence and vulnerability and how to try to accept that this is a part of life and that you may submit to that, open yourself up and try to trust rather than protect yourself.

And I don't pretend to sit here with the key to what my stories are about. They are about so many things and not all of them in perfect harmony. There is a bit of repressed emotions and desires and ambiguity when faced with arrogance. But that is how we are, a mix of thoughts and emotions.

Enough of this rant. I am in so many minds when it comes to the blog. I know it is ok when I write stories but I am not so sure when I rant or just analyse a picture or something similar. I often think that I shouldn't write about me here, that my stories are far more interesting than what I think about them. Believe me, they are.

Merry Christmas

It must be the darkness. The darkest day of the year has just passed and the good thing with that is that we head towards spring and light. I am looking forward to it. But first there is Christmas and ours will be a relaxed and nice one, not too much of visitors and other duties.

I really haven't much to say now. I don't like winters and they are not good for my inspiration. But there will be better times. I just want to wish you a brilliant Christmas (even if you don't celebrate it) and a Happy New Year. You are a patient lot and I do appreciate that. Take care and be nice to yourselves and others.

Who Am I?

If you write, you know, perhaps, what I am talking about, if you don't, it may be hard to explain. Sometimes when you sit down to write you start out with something, often something you don't even know what it is, it may be a sentence, a word, an idea. Then you start writing, a word follow another, you begin to reason, think, associate, try different things. You get carried away and the text itself seems to decide where to go. It is very immersing, very confusing, wonderful in a way, sometimes frightening. Then, when you are ready, you read it and wonder where all that came from. Sometimes you know, sometimes you understand, sometimes you have to realise that you really had that in you but just didn't know it.

I didn't write this for the blog, it just happened but now I decided to put it here anyway.

I am sweet. I am sweet in all senses of the word. My body is small, my limbs slender and delicate. My skin is smooth, my belly is soft and smooth and flat. It curves from my midriff down over my lower belly to the valley between my thighs and in its centre there is my belly button, a sweet but shallow hole.

My hips are narrow but my body still possess the right curves, the roundness that makes it sweet and touchable, not square and hard. My breasts are small and sweet, proud and round. They are like perky animals peeking out, sweet round mounds, crowned with my rosy nipples, small but lovely, sometimes soft as my skin but sometimes hard as small pearls.

My legs are soft and round, my thighs are slender but still with the softness, that roundness that is unmistakably female. Me feet are rosy and untouched and unconfined. They are vulnerable and helpless, still they are what I walk on, what makes me move in the world.

My shoulders are narrow but soft and my arms slender and delicate, my hands are the sweetest things you have seen, with those fingers that can touch with curiosity and gentleness.

My neck is slender and my face is pretty. I have that kind of face that makes you want to protect me, vulnerable and innocent but also curious and alive. My eyes are big and my nose is small. I may even have some freckles, just a hint of them on the back of my nose. My hair is not long not short, auburn or perhaps red, maybe reddish.

I am that kind of person you want to protect, the kind that would seem to break in contact with the harsh world. I am the girl you want to hold and comfort, to keep and protect, because I am so vulnerable.

But those eyes, my eyes, tells you of something else too. They are not just vulnerable and sweet, they are curious and hungry too. They speak of something else, they speak of a kind of desire that is not just innocent and gentle.

I am that kind of girl you don't just want to protect but the kind you want to have, as well. My body is the kind of body you want to touch. I am the kind of person whose clothes you want to rip away and whose body you want to expose and look at, ogle and stare at.

I am like a sweet, wrapped in paper. My clothes are like the paper around the sweet and you can't wait to unwrap it. I am not desirable because I dress in a certain way, it is not the paper that makes you want to eat the sweet, it is what you know is underneath it, what you see peeking through.

I am not beautiful, not perfect in any sense of the word. I am desirable for my sweetness and my youth, for my smooth skin and my soft body, for my sparkling life and for my delicate limbs and my perky breasts.

When you see me, your mind is struck by my innocence, my youth and my sweetness but in the next moment your desire strikes. You start to undress me with you eyes, you start to study my movements, how I swing my hips, how I stand and move my arms. You see my uncertainty and you see my confidence. You see me move, maybe dance. My movements are desirable to you and you think that by touching me you will be touched by that magic I have. The magic you want.

But you don't just want to touch and caress and embrace. No, you want to have. You want to have me and take me. You want to undress me, rip the clothes from my body. You imagine I would protest, say no and despise you but that only makes you want to do it more.

You invent some kind of excuse for doing it. Maybe I deserve it, maybe I need it. Maybe it is your right. But it all comes down to you touching me, having me, taking me.

In your mind I am already in my knickers and you can see for your inner eye how the fabric clings to my bottom. You can imagine my breasts under my top and your hand is already moving towards them and you think how lovely it will be when your fingers touch those mounds.

But you don't just want sweetness for me. You want more. You want to have me and take me despite what I want. You feel helpless and angry with me for being so youthful and sweet. You want to punish me for it.

In your mind you don't just have me, you don't just want to put what you have into me. That would, after all, be too sweet. I may enjoy it. No, you want me to suffer. You want pain for me.

My knickerclad bottom makes you want to spank me. You want to pull those knickers down and smack my bottom. You want to let your hand land on my sweet and innocent bottom – hard. You want to feel your hand smack into the soft skin of my bottom and you want to feel how hard it is for me, how much I suffer. You want to hear me cry and plead. You want to feel the power over me. You want to rule me and you want me to feel your power on my body.

You know a smile from me is a blessing for you, a gift you should cherish. Still you want to punish me for my power over you, the power I have to smile to you or not smile to you. The power I have to just walk you by and be gone. The power I have to make you feel old and lonely.

Those are crimes that are unforgivable. Those are powers someone like me should not be allowed to have. I must be punished for it. I must be whipped and suffer for my youth and my sweetness and my power over you.

You are free. You control your life and you can and should get what you want. You cannot get me. I am free and you cannot get me unless I want to give me to you. That is a crime worthy of punishment, that is a wrong that should be set right.

You want to take possession of me. You want to be the one to decide, how and when I shall take my clothes off, how and when I shall please you with my body. You want to have that power over me and in your mind you want to have that power.

In your mind you capture me, you tie me up and put your collar on me. Someone as sweet as me should not be allowed to go free, should not be allowed to choose for herself. Your power should be asserted. You should take possession of me.

In your mind I am your slave. I kneel naked before you, my body at your disposal. My knees are open, the path to my sex is clear. I am naked and everything is open and exposed and touchable and there for you. I have no say, I have no power and that is how you want it. I am a sweet, lovely body that is there for you, that is yours to do whatever you want with it.

But in your mind, when I am already your captive, your slave, your possession, I am not just a body. I am your willing body. I am your happy slave because I want to be your slave. And if I don't want to be your willing slave you want to persuade me that I am. You want to hold the whip in your hand and I would be just like the horse at the circus, the animal you tell what to do, the animal you whip to submission, the animal that is rewarded if she does what she is told.

But you want more. You want my enthusiasm and my desire. You want me not just to dance for you, wait on you and touch you and satisfy you on command. You want me to want it too, you want me to desire it too, to long for it and be satisfied by it too. In your mind you want to know that you possess that magic, that kind of power that not only overpowers me but also makes me desire it, desire you, the power that makes me happy and satisfied by being your slave.

You want me to resist you so you can defeat me and conquer me. You want to have to whip me to submission. But you also want me to see what a desirable creature you are and you want me to accept your power over me, to love your power over me. You want me to love and desire you to whip me into submission.

What do I want? Do I want that? Perhaps I want a little bit of that, perhaps I want some of that, a fraction of it, a hint of it.

But only if I decide I want it.

Hello

I am back. Hope you have had a nice time while I was away. It is a strange experience coming back from a holiday like this. I am not at all in the mood for everyday life. This will be a short blog post. Anyway, I am glad to be back.

I read a book while on holiday. It's called Sexual Deviation by Anthony Storr and was published in 1964. Kind of interesting to read about the view on those things, 45 years ago.

It is so easy to be superior and laugh at a book like that. Homosexuality is a deviation and is analysed, the author trying to find the reasons for it. I assume you agree with me when I am thinking that the question is the wrong one. Considering the behaviour of our closest relatives, the Bonobos, the question should not be, 'why are some homosexual?' but rather 'why are so many exclusively hetero- and homosexual?'

There was an interesting part about Sadism and Masochism. Thing is with this book that although it was very old fashioned and PC for that time, some of the observations are interesting. There is this thought that being a Masochist you long for being a child again, when you were cared for and had no power over what happened to you. This rings true to some extent.

I know there is a reluctance about explaining or discussing reasons for various kinks within the 'community'. I think that is a little short sighted. I know analysing the reasons, may open up for the thought that there is something wrong with enjoying spanking or being submissive, but not doing it, is burying your head in the sand. I think there are reasons for the way we behave but that doesn't mean it has to be wrong and should be explained away.

I think, at least for me, there is a kind of truth in the idea that being submissive is, partly, longing for being as helpless as a child. Enough analysis now, just wanted to say that although that book was prejudiced and old fashioned I couldn't just dismiss it.

Maybe that is the reason why, in fantasies, the longing for submission is total, maybe that is the reason why I, sometimes, have this desire for being completely and utterly submitted and even degraded and humiliated. Maybe they are signs of that utter helplessness you may experience as a child, a vulnerability that isn't a bad thing, but something you enjoy. Are you with me, still?

When it comes to blogging and writing I feel more and more that I am not so interested in writing yet another spanking story. I have lost my heart for it, at least for the moment. When it comes to fantasies and kink, I feel that I am drawn to more darker sides. And having written that, I become uncertain, because there are lots of more romantic stories in my head too and some about more subtle things.

Anyway, we'll see what will happen. I am a little disappointed, though, that no one commented on the picture in the last post. I think it is very nice. There is a kind of everyday sense to it, just an ordinary person lowering their trousers feeling the touch of a stick, waiting to be whipped. Something about that lack of glamour and stylishness that appeals to me.

Kink?

What does it mean? The word, what does it mean to you and what does it mean to me?

But before I say anything about that I will say sorry for not blogging so much. My mind seem to have been occupied with other things and I have not really known what to blog about. I guess that such is life, but I do feel a little bad if some of you have been waiting for something to appear here.

And I will be disappearing again at the end of this week and won't be able to blog until August. The upside is that I think it is good to stay away from computers at times and I think I need that. I have found sitting by a monitor all day long quite stressful lately. Just to let you know.

So, back to kink. The dictionary speaks of knots or bends in a rope, something that is no longer straight. I suppose it is that meaning that leads to the idea of the sexual perverse. Yes, I use that expression because so does Oxford English Dictionary. Furthermore it mentions homosexuality. I am not saying this to rant about stuffy old lexicographers. It is just that it seems as if the meaning changes and most likely is quite individual.

No one in their right mind would say that being gay is kinky. Not in this day and age. So the focus changes. But what does it mean? Is it kinky to be aroused by push-bikes? I don't know.

I think, for me, there has to be this edge to it, the addition to if being bad. When someone says kink I think of spankings and being tied up, dominance and submission, arrogance and cruelty. (No this is not the time for the discussion whether submission and dominance as such have to be bad...it can be bad and that is enough for me at the moment.)

Kink for me doesn't just mean the 'sexually deviant' (had to put the quotation marks there...smiles) but it means something that is bad and, thus, problematic.

Hope you are with me still. I am not saying people who spank each other for mutual pleasure are bad. I am saying that spankings, originally had a place in a society that oppressed people and that it was used for that purpose. Same with slavery. I am sure you see the pattern, none here would say that slavery is good but still we can find the idea of slave markets, being chained on a podium, put up for sale, to be immensely exciting.

I guess, for you, as for me, the word has taken on a more positive value than it had originally. I think people in general proudly speak of their kink when they embrace their lifestyle.

This brings me to another thing I wanted to write about. I feel, sometimes there is a kind of cosiness about kink, that people who have admitted to themselves they are aroused by things that some others would consider perverse, seem to work hard to normalise their kink. There is, almost, a political, perhaps even personal need to make kink acceptable.

Believe me, I am all for that. I really think that anyone should have the right to indulge their love for push-bikes or whips as long as they don't harm anyone. I agree completely with the politics in it.

The reason why I rant about it here is that I still, after all this time, find it problematic to admit that I do find the idea of being humiliated or whipped arousing. To me it still stands for something bad, something I don't really want happen. I can't just say: 'Hi, I am Janice and I am spanko, I would really like you to smack my bottom'. Simply because I would most likely not want it. It hurts, after all, and I am not that keen on pain.

Had I found it just an expression of my personality, a part of my own sexuality I was truly happy about I wouldn't be blogging. It is the very fact that I have mixed feelings that makes me write. I think.

So, thank you for listening and if I don't blog again this week, see you in August. Take care and be kind to yourself. Embrace your kinks and be proud of who you are. I am trying to do that myself.

Bothersome Thoughts

Sometimes, something gets to me, someone angers me or hurts me and I know I should just let it go but it comes back and won't let go. Most people will just tell me to don't bother and that I shouldn't let people get me down and all that. They are right, of course, but sometimes it doesn't work. For various reasons. You may be constantly reminded or the other person won't leave you alone.

I blogged some time ago about someone making me hurt and angry and I thought I was done with it. But it is returning and now I will use my blog, my space to rant about what happened, give my version of events. I do what I know best, I write about it.

Some time ago I was approached in chat by someone who has been in a part of the blogosphere I have been visiting for some time. I am happy to give everybody a chance. We both have a common friend so I was generally accepting towards this person and, perhaps, a tad too willing to trust him.

I should have known were it was going when he started to go on about how it was important to do it for real, imaginary spankings isn't the same as real ones and that writing only makes it worse. These were his words, not mine. I know this point of view, I have encountered it many times before and most people tend to accept it when I tell them I prefer my way of approaching things and that writing does not at all make things worse.

This was not enough for him. He knew better and even suggested I should pay someone to smack my bottom.

Talking to someone who doesn't at all respect me and my decisions make me, first, annoyed and, then, angry. We all have our lives to lead and we approach them in the way we know best and to assume, without knowing someone, that your own solution is best for others is disrespectful and plain stupid.

I should have stopped there but I didn't. It became worse. In a a moment of madness I told him that I can't have children, that it simply doesn't work. It is not about husband, it is about me. It is true and the madness was in ever mentioning it.

This person then promptly declares that it is because I haven't met him or his brother and then went on to tell me how potent and fertile they were. If that was a joke I may be a person without humour. To me that is exactly the things you don't tell a woman who has divulged to you one of the great pains of her life.

Now, I am telling you. It is no secret now, but still something very sad. And I may be forgiven, I think, for not wanting to laugh.

I gave him another chance, sometimes later, and then we started talking about grammar. You all know what I feel about grammar and how I try to explain my view on it. To cut a long story short. He claimed that English was developed from Latin and I told him he was wrong.

This is one of those things that could easily be checked, to see what the research community think of it. No, he knew about those things. He was a public school boy.

It is strange to spend years in education, studying, among other things, language history. To acquire knowledge about established theories and trends in a subject you come to love and cherish only to be dismissed with the argument that they are educated in a public school.

What gets to me is that when I try to stay on track, to argue my case, to ask what he meant by saying this or that, he changes subject and comes with arguments about completely different things. He is like a sniper, shooting at you from a new place every time, not stopping and standing up for what he has said. This is really frustrating. And when he then turns around and try to laugh it off, suggesting that it is fun to argue about these matters, asking if I know what irony is, I have had enough.

I have been thinking about why I was so angry about a discussion about language history. I can see that it is not my desire to be proven right that is important but it was the way my view was dismissed, laughed at and just avoided that really fired me up. I don't have to be right but I want the one I am talking to, to understand that I do have a view that is worth respect, especially in a subject I have studied for many years.

Given the history of having been hurt by this person I felt that enough was enough and in the end I asked him to bugger off and to do other things off. Yes, I became rude. I said rude things although I did never call him names.

I was rewarded with being called foul mouthed fish wife and other equally insulting things. I was told I was playing the dumb blond. If that is not insulting I don't know what is.

I will end now and thank those who have managed to read my rant this far. I am not looking for support and I don't want to excuse myself. I just want to give my version of events and just tell my story, to get it out, off my chest, to talk. I mean nothing more than that. Thanks for listening.

Pride and Anger

Pride, we all have pride. Just because you have fantasies about being sold as a slave or caned in a humiliating way doesn't mean that you don't have pride. Maybe it is because you have a little too much of that, that you have those fantasies. That could, very well, be true about me.

Growing older means, among other things, you see yourself a little clearer. Never believe you know completely what you are but it slowly becomes just a tad clearer with age. You begin to know what you are good at and what you are not so good at.

I am, for example, useless with complicated plot lines. Maybe that is why I don't like crime fiction and thrillers. It's sad when you sit and watch the great conclusion and don't understand what happened. 'Why was he so angry with the brother of his boss' lover because he had lost some money on the races and was that really a reason to kill the gardener's cousin?'

I am not so good at understanding long written texts, believe it or not. And I am useless with the remote controls of the things in our home.

I am, however, quite good with pictures. I recognise patterns easily and can have a guess at who painted a certain picture because I know their style. Despite the fact that I hate logic I am quite good at it, I have a maths brain but I prefer logic and maths when it is in pictures and not in text.

Another thing I am good at is to pick apart an argument and know what people really said and see the flaws and strength of it.

Back to pride. I am old enough to be proud of my achievements and to defend my position in subject areas I am passionate about. I wouldn't pretend to know anything about quarks or renaissance poetry but I have had a fair bit of education in Linguistics and Ancient History.

In fact, language is one of those things I am passionate about and I have read enough, studied enough, to have come across most of the main areas. I don't pretend to know the field but I have been around enough to know that when I do have an opinion I know it is well thought through. And when I am certain of a fact, I know why.

One problem with Linguistics is that everyone is an expert, everyone knows the language. To some extent that is true, the intuitive knowledge of how to communicate is the very basis for what we research within Linguistics. It doesn't automatically make you an expert on language history or typology or even formal grammar, though.

Mind you, it is not Linguists who pick on grammar and write complaining letters to the Telegraph. No, those are the language police, whose ranks are filled with over confident teachers and those who struggled through the old school only to now get the chance to pick on and bully someone else. Style in language is not the same as grammar.

The other day I found myself chatting online with somebody who I had experience of being quite insensitive and prone to saying quite hurtful things to me. But I had my reasons to give him another chance.

It all ended up in a silly discussion about the history of the English language. What is truth, one may ask? At least there is often an establish theory that is accepted within the research community and when I know what that theory is and agree with it it is hard to stand down when someone just tells you, you are wrong.

When that person tells you he is a public school boy and because of that he 'knows', it feels petty to point to your years of studies at the university. I don't claim that university makes you an authority, not at all. There is a tremendous number of idiots in academia and lots you could be ashamed of. No, it was just very tempting to hit back.

It is quite silly to row about something that is easy to check out – Wikipedia is a good start – and I don't know why I didn't stop it there. It became nasty. I like to stay on target and when I do, I don't like to be dismissed with 'do you know irony'. Bad cop out.

Anyway, this person is now deleted from my contact list and all is well with that. Why do I blog about this? Am I petty and whining? Well, yes, that is what I am. I am angry and hurt and this is my blog. I want to be petty.

Dear Readers, I guess I wanted a sympathetic ear or just wanted to get it off my chest. Thanks for listening. I know you to be very lovely people.

Just some advice for those who may be provoked by this. Don't say I play the dumb blond or call me a foul mouthed fish wife, ever!!