Submission, spanking and self-harm

There is a scene in Steven Shainberg’s Secretary where E Edward Grey speaks to Lee, his secretary and submissive, about her history of self-harm. “Is it that sometimes the pain inside has to come to the surface?” he asks her before instructing her to stop doing it. “You will never cut yourself again,” he tells her. “You’re over that now. It’s in the past.”

So instead of self-harming, Lee submits herself to Grey’s command, discovering a world of willing submission and bondage play. The implication is that Lee’s desire to hurt herself and her desire to be punished by Grey are two sides of the same coin. She cures herself of one by fully embracing the other.

I am not sure I accept the link.

I am currently reading Maren Smith’s Holding Hannah in which the protagonist is also a self-harmer. I haven’t finished it yet so I don’t know how the author plans to develop this alongside the book’s BDSM themes but reading it has started me thinking once again about the relationship between self-harm and masochism.

I extensively self-harmed between my mid-teens and mid-twenties. My arms and hands are permanently marked with the small round burn marks and long thin scars which serve as a physical manifestation of the clinical depression I have lived with for the last twenty-five years. I manage my depression now with the help of regular medication and professional therapy a couple of years ago which enabled me to re-think the way I responded to depressive episodes in my life. For a very long time the incapacitating pain of depression was compounded by feelings of guilt that I should be feeling like this in the first place. What do you have to be unhappy about? I would ask myself. I'd badger myself with the things I should be thankful for and how so many people in the world had a much worse time of it than I did. My therapist helped me to break the cycle of adding to my depression by hating myself for daring to have it in the first place. I don’t need to work out why I feel the way I do. I just need to accept that I do and determine where to go from here.

So how does this link in to the other stuff, the kinky spanky BDSM preferences?

That has been a part of my life even longer than the depression has. Certainly from the age of nine I was maintaining a kind of mental scrapbook in which I would store snippets of books and films – like Oliver in the 1968 musical being bent over a table by Fagin his coat tails flipped out of the way for a beating he doesn’t receive, or an episode of Nanny in which three sisters are regularly hit across their palms with a ruler by their stern governess. I would snip and rearrange these images until I had something I liked and replay it again and again in my mind. I wasn’t sexually aware; I just knew it was something that I liked to think about.

As I got older and realised that my obsession was in fact sexual in nature, I naturally assumed I was some kind of freakish pervert. Most of my masturbation fantasies didn’t even involve sex. How weird was that? Then I found out about Sadomasochism. That must be what it is, I thought and, as the world wide web wasn’t around yet, sought out books and magazines full of whips, chains, leather masks and women being restrained in a  variety of unnatural and uncomfortable looking positions.  There was a horrible sense of disappointment when I realised that, no, that wasn’t right either.  I felt like I had I had missed another memo. I was weird even amongst the weirdoes. All I wanted to see was girls having their bottoms spanked.

Interestingly I feel that I have really only come to terms and fully accepted my kink with the last few years which coincides with my acceptance of my clinical depression.

Yet I still remain unconvinced that the two things are connected.

I don’t doubt that the two things often coincide. But then they would. Self harm is not uncommon. Neither is being a bit kinky. The two things are often going to turn up together in the same person. For me, they are just two separate things that make up who I am. Like my vegetarianism or love of Disney movies.

I am not dismissing the idea though. I may have turned forty this year but I am still learning all the time about what it means to be me. In fact, I anticipate it to be a life-long project. I understand – and like – myself better today than at any other point in my life so far. But I am very, very long way indeed from knowing it all. Maybe the dodgy bit of wiring inside my head that sparked the need to self-harm is linked to my fascination with spanking. Regardless of whether they are in fact two sides of the same coin as they were for Lee in Secretary, the most important thing I think is that I continue to accept myself as I am. Emotionally messy, slightly scarred and my own particular level of kinky. It’s all me.

Spanking in the Movies

I mentioned the other week how you really don't get a lot of spankings in mainstream movie. It's not like I expect there to be as much spanking on screen as there is, say, inside my head. That wouldn't leave enough time for all the car chases and robot battles and stuff. Not surprisingly, I tend to be drawn to films where I know there is going to be be some kind of spanking and below are four such films which I've seen (and seen all the way, through, you understand. I'm not just youtube-ing the spanking bits) and my thoughts on them. Turns out my overriding response to spanking in the movies is one of slight disappointment. They're not as satisfying as books, that's for certain.

So here they are in no particular order (well they are in a particular order, I suppose. They're in the order I wanted to talk about them Just not in chronological order or anything.)

McLintock (1963)

John Wayne spanking Maureen O'Hara must be one of cinema's most famous spankings. It's right there on the DVD cover and everything. It was a pretty ungentlemanly spanking though. McLintock pursues his ex throughout the town before wrestling over his lap in front of the whole townsfolk and spanking her with a coal shovel. A coal shovel! Why on earth would you even choose to use that as a spanking implement? It's non-springy, it has a small surface area, it's made of metal for goodness sake. If you were to compile a list of every possible type of object in order of their suitability as a spanking implement (and who knows I may just do that at some point), with razor strops, belts and ping pong paddles at one end and meringues, diamond rings and glass eyes at the other, then a coal shovel would definitely be closer to the rubbish end.

Luckily for McLintock, the spanking has the desired effect and the two of them are happily reconciled at the end of the movie. So, yeah, it worked. But maybe next time you could do it with a bit more finesse, mate.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

Keira Knightley and her extraordinary accent are patients of groundbreaking psychoanalyst Carl Jung. She suffers from hysteria and Jung’s revolutionary new ‘talking therapy’ reveals her intense desire for physical punishment. Jung encourages her to pursue her plans to become a doctor and she encourages Jung to have an affair with her in order that she might have a

better idea of sexuality. Jung hums and haws for a bit because, you know, she is his patient and he is already married and everything but eventually reaches the decision that, yes, he would like to have sex with the pretty girl. Spanking inevitably ensues. The spanking scenes are not particularly engaging though. I think it’s because they are only shown in isolation with no build-up or aftermath. We know that being punished excites her but we’re never really shown what Jung gets out of it. Does he enjoy spanking her or is he doing it in the spirit of scientific enquiry? It’s left pretty unresolved because, being based on a true story, things don’t get all neatly wrapped up but events just sort of go on for a bit and then stop. Like life. The best quote in the film comes from maverick psychoanalyst who counsels Jung when he’s wavering as to whether he should accept his patient’s offer. “I can't understand what you're waiting for. Just take her to some secluded spot and thrash her to within an inch of her life. That's clearly what she wants. How can you deny her such a simple pleasure?”

Blue Hawaii (1961)

Now I’m not going to be rude about Elvis Presley. The man’s the undisputed King, for goodness sake, he influenced everyone in music worth listening to for generations after him. Half of my Christmas Spotify playlist is Elvis Presley because at his most cheesy , he’s still Elvis and

there’s nothing more festive than hearing him croon “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. Still, when all’s said and done, he did make some truly terrible films. Blue Hawaii is one part Hawaii tourist board promotion, one part music video and one part Elvis just phoning his lines in. Although it does come with a nice spanking garnish so that’s a bonus. Bizarrely, the girl who gets taken over the knee by Elvis isn’t even his love interest in the film. She’s a spoilt brat that Elvis needs to take care of as part of his tour guide duties. And by ‘taking care of’ we mean being bent over his lap and spanking soundly, of course.

Jenny Maxwell who was on the receiving end of the spankings said that they were all for real and that the scene took several takes to get right. It’s a fun scene that is only marred by the rest of the film being absolute rubbish. Nice songs though.

Secretary (2002)

This film is a bit of a weird one. Sure, it’s all fun and games to start off with spanking over the desk, and saddles and carrots and arm yoke-things. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lee, secretary and submissive to James Spader’s E Edward Grey (Hey, he’s called Mr Grey like that other suit

wearing dominant. Totally didn’t realise that before) but things getting a bit bleak as the story progresses. Culminating in Lee being instructed to place her hands on his desk and not move until Grey comes back for her. He leaves her for three days while she becomes the focus of her messed-up family’s ministrations and the object of media attention who stand outside the building reporting on her ‘hunger strike’. I think the ending of the film is supposed to reassure us that the couple work everything works out OK for the couple but I didn’t really feel convinced by it. I would like to have seen some evidence that they go on to have the happy BDSM relationship we want them to. A nice over-the knee spanking at the end would have improved the film immensely. Although now I come to think of it, that’s probably true of all films.