Grown-up Female Characters in Spanking Films
Rants, Raves and Reviews, Scenology, Shooting Films — By Adele on 12 March, 2006 2:48 pmI love SpankBoss of Spanking Blog. Verily, I do (and not just because he links to me). He writes:
The other day I was looking at a spanking website, written by a man, and it gave me the minor flesh creepies. The topic was the enjoyment the writer got from “improving” young ladies by bringing discipline to their lives. Which is fine and all in a role-playing sense, but this guy seemed to be completely serious. (…) They were described as scatterbrained moppets who couldn’t hope to function without his firm hand, paddle, cane, riding-crop, and so forth. He, of course, derived sexual pleasure from their discipline only as a minor secondary benefit; his true joy (he said) lay in giving them the direction and loving attention they needed to get and keep their lives in order. A bleedin’ humanitarian, that’s wot ‘e is.
Quite.
I have a certain uneasiness about making films where grown 
When it’s a spanking vid, it doesn’t carry the same disclaimer that blinks on and off in my head while I make it. When it’s wrapped, it joins a body of similar vids out there – spanked secretaries, spanked nurses, spanked housekeepers, spanked housewives – creating a certain ethos of incompetent fantasy females, who need a strong male hand just to keep them in the work-force. I can’t get rid of the feeling that the spanking porn tradition of the Incompetent Female may be responsible, to an extent, for producing some of the delusional specimens like the one SpankBoss quotes.
Of course, it would be patronising of me to assume that the majority of porn consumers can’t tell fantasy from reality; of course they can. Which is why I’m not about to hang up my secretarial stockings. Yet, I wish there were more vids with:
a) Incompetent Females disciplined by Competent Females;
b) Incompetent Males disciplined by Competent Females;
c) Incompetent Males disciplined by Competent Males.
Just put me in charge of a newly created Spanking Scenario Department, the Quota Section.
Share on Facebook
Digg This
Bookmark
Stumble
13 Comments
Adele,
Thank you for adding your very relevant perspective to this discussion.
When I wrote my original opinion piece, I wasn’t aiming at you or your work. You obviously understand this is fiction, as do, I imagine, most of your patrons. I have no complaint at all with anyone’s fantasy, nor with you playing them out on video.
My issue is with people who preach that women are inferior and deserve to be punished in real life. It gives me the creeps to think that someone probably believes that foolishness.
Besides, there are so many better reasons to spank us… :D
Thank you for stopping by, Bonnie.
I guess, I have a fair amount of feminist guilt over potentially providing creeps like that with materials that reaffirm their odd notions. Although rationally, I’m sure they’re quite capable of being creepy without any encouragement at all. :)
Pardon me for weighing in on the feminist dimension here, but although male I was raised by a 60′s/70′s feminist mother. She has Alzheimer’s now—but even in possession of her faculties she would still not understand you. What you do on screen raises a lot of feminist alarm bells in my head, yet I see you taking a feminist stance in this blog entry. I like to think the apparent contradiction means that you’re ‘postfeminist’—able, that is, to objectify and depersonalize your body into an icon of female subjugation as long as it suits your purposes and remain in control of the process. (Is this how you understand postfeminism?) On the other hand, I have the kind of concerns you raise in your reply to Bonnie, above. So I’m not sure if the postfeminist formula works here.
Yikes, rereading what I’ve posted I hope I haven’t sounded harsh and judgmental! That wasn’t my intention. Just color me perplexed, that’s all :)
Fess, I’m not sure where your confusion comes from. Is it that because you think feminism necessarily involves anti-porn ideology (or a anti-BDSM ideology, or both)? Sure, Dworkin & Co led a crusade against it, but pro-porn/anti-censorship feminists are really nothing new.
I identify as a feminist, and as such, I claim the right to do with myself (body and mind) just as I please, without an approval from Big Brother (or Big Sister). When I thought it would please me to act out my fantasies in spanking films, I went and started making them. I don’t see it as objectification of my body, but rather as an affirmation of female sexuality (or spankuality). Thus, I don’t see the contradition here. When it’s the model’s fantasy that drives the scene, any subjugation is in the eye of the beholder: it’s as illusory as the idea that the spanker is in control of the scene.
However – and that’s where I feel uneasy – the finished film doesn’t just serve to express my sexuality, and I’m very aware that the aforementioned beholder may actually exist. To this extent, I’m sometimes worried that the conventions of the spanking genre may become a ready breeding ground for creeps of the type cited in the entry up there.
The question is: do I feel the need to restrain the expression of my spankuality just because a number of creeps might take it the wrong way?
Or, if you like, the question could be wider: to what extent are the people who make spanking films responsible for the effects their material has on consumers?
I’ve been wondering about this lately, because it’s been discussed (in a wider porn context) over here on SugarBank . I’m not really *concerned* about it, because I haven’t *actually* seen anything that proved to me that anybody was using spanking films as a relationship manual. But I do wonder.
I’m not sure where postfeminism comes into this.
I’m also not sure whether I’ve addressed your confusion, because I can’t *quite* figure out what you’re so confused about.
Adele,
I completely understand your ambivalence. I often see in my logs that my blog has been visited by individuals from countries that are well known for their poor treatment of women. Perhaps, I hope, these are the more enlightened members of those societies. Then again, perhaps they are not.
Could my words be encouraging some rogue to abuse a non-consenting woman or girl? I recoil at the prospect.
I think my blog is pretty clear about the nature of our spanking relationsip. However, to someone with a limited knowledge of English, those explanations could, I suppose, be lost.
Like you, this possibility is not sufficient to cause me to stop sharing my spanking experiences. On the whole, I believe we do more considerably good than harm. Nevertheless, that sliver of doubt remains.
I suppose the ambiguous nature of this subject makes clear, simple answers elusive. For now, I have something to say and good people who want to hear it. That will have to do.
Thanks for your insightful words.
Adele, thanks so much for the response. I think I need to reflect a bit before resuming this dialogue, but I will try to come up with something honest and worthy of the standard of thoughtfulness you’ve set on this topic.
And besides, I don’t want to get shot down in flames :)
Interesting. I don’t usually get too het up over what the creepazoids think about what we do. But I’d like to comment on my own personal hangup with the Incompetent Female stereotype. I would have a hard time playing a scene where – for example – a secretary was spanked for spilling coffee or a maid was spanked for “missing a spot” cleaning. Trivial offenses and honest mistakes are not valid grounds for punishment. (Unless, of course, it’s an abusive scene, driven by someone sadistic who is only looking for an excuse – but that’s an entirely different scene with an entirely different ethos.) If I’m a secretary I need to have done something very serious to surrender my independence and submit to a spanking. And I agree with the need for more F/M and M/M spanking, but I bristle a bit over female authority figures in F/F scenes unless they’re governesses or teachers.
I’ve never identified as a feminist because I have such negative (read: Dworkinian) associations with the word. I have trouble dissociating it from “antiporn.” But I suppose I am one by your definition and by my clear discomfort with the Incompetent Female thing. It’s just such a loaded term that means different things to different people and I don’t like being lumped in with the few bad apples. I’m an individualist first and foremost.
Niki, great point as to validity of offences. I think you’ve just given me a topic for a future post. :) It’s against my feminist principles to drag women under my definition of feminism, though, so I really wouldn’t go as far as defining you against your will.
(LOL “Oh, please, Miss! Not the definition! Please don’t define me, I’ll be good!”)
Fess, come back whenever you feel like it; I’ll be here. Any flames are unlikely, seeing as I’m a control-freak, and hand-approve all new comments :)
Adele, I’m just a middle aged guy that was raised by a paleofeminist dragon of a mother and I must have all kinds of hangups I haven’t even thought of. I won’t presume to tell you what is or isn’t feminist, that’s for your gender and your generation to define.
Aw, Fess. Keep on reading; we’ll cure you of your hang-ups pronto. (And give you some new ones. LOL)
Thanks, kid, you’re a sweetie :-)