Why Do You Whip?

[Evil_Geoff]

Why do _I_ whip?

... Because it makes me happy.

I'm a sadist. And while I prefer if my partner enjoys the sensations I am giving him or her, I don't really care as long as I have consent to do so.

Love, schmove, I want tears and marks and blood and screams. If that's what they want, it's all the better. If not, I'll take what fear and pain that I can inflict, and hope that word of mouth recruits me some more pain sluts.

But that's just me.

 

[JMohegan]

Well, I'm serious about this, really trying to understand this, what we're saying with the whip. So you're saying that it pretty much makes no difference to you which you do? Flog or fuck, it's pretty much the same thing? Her reactions are the same? Yours are the same?

See, I'm interested in things like: why is a whipping erotic but a punch in the stomach not erotic? When does a whipping become a beating? Does she sense different emotions in the whipping and respond differently? Or is a whipping a whipping a whipping? Is a crop the same as a flogger or a slapper or a spanking in what it means?

For me, physical expression in the context of a personal relationship is driven by instinct and mood.

Whipping, in general, "says" that I am feeling confident, energetic, powerful, happy, and aroused.

More specifically, choice of instrument would say something about the type and mixture of pain/pleasure I'm in the mood to inflict.

I can have sex when I'm feeling some negative emotions (melancholy, for example), but I would never pick up a whipping instrument - because I just wouldn't be in the mood for it.

If I am dealing with routine anger or frustration, I'll vent on the raquetball court.

It made me curious: Just what are we trying to communicate when we get the whip out? I know it's something we can't say any other way, and for me I know there's a kind of male rage associated with it that the whip lets me control. It turns my anger into something we can both use and enjoy.

Reading a lot of BDSM, you see tons of story about what people do. You see very few stories discussing what the people feel while they're doing them. In the stuff I write I'm trying to change that, but all I have to go on are my own feelings, and it's just come to my attention that I'm probably not typical.

It doesn't sound to me as if you are all that unusual.

I have spoken to many Top/Dominant types who acknowledge deep-seated anger due to the fact that their mothers mistreated them, or the girls in high school & college wouldn't give them the time of day, or their first wife was a bitch, or women in general make them jump through ridiculous hoops before having sex, etc.

I can't relate to any of those experiences, so I don't share that particular type of anger. But I've heard it expressed often enough that I'd describe "whipping as controlled release of male rage" as far from atypical.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

F
It doesn't sound to me as if you are all that unusual.

I have spoken to many Top/Dominant types who acknowledge deep-seated anger due to the fact that their mothers mistreated them, or the girls in high school & college wouldn't give them the time of day, or their first wife was a bitch, or women in general make them jump through ridiculous hoops before having sex, etc.

I can't relate to any of those experiences, so I don't share that particular type of anger. But I've heard it expressed often enough that I'd describe "whipping as controlled release of male rage" as far from atypical.

Yeah. That says it pretty well: "controlled release of male rage". But my partners seem to love it. It seems to excite them like crazy. I guess it must just be the partners I choose. The ones I work well with respond to that kind of thing, and the ones who don't respond well, I forget about.

I could never be a cold, controlling kind of dom. I'm always very emotional. Is that the exception?

Did anyone mention the whip as extension of their cock? There's that too.

 

[JMohegan]

I could never be a cold, controlling kind of dom. I'm always very emotional. Is that the exception?

Your type may the exception in terms of porn or roleplay, but if you're talking about real life intimacy between actual human beings, I'd say the reverse is true.

Did anyone mention the whip as extension of their cock? There's that too.

Ha Ha Ha! Yes, most definitely - there's "that" as well.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

This is it, the best so far, for me. The whip is as sexual and as dominant as I become -- how I use it depends on a range of things ... someone calls it a "dance." I lead, and the whip "lashes" us together with sensation and endorphins. I live to control and it's never so evident or excitable.

Of course that's romanticized, and speaks of what happens on a "good day," but it's always what I'm trying for.

Great thread idea, Dr. M. Is a whip scene in the next book?
ST

Book after next. (I have to do this stupid vampire book first) Whole chapter I think. I'm fascinated with this, and you people are giving me some great and beautifully expressed answers.

I really think that if you had to pick one act to epitomize the whole of the D/s dynamic, this would have to be it: what's expressed in a whipping - the power exchange, the sensations and the emotions that result, even the balletic aspects of the action, the physicality, how it's done, like Homberg says, with her struggling at first even though she knows it's inevitable and knows she wants the results, the intimacy of the first strokes, the growing emotional push-pull... It's all just so incredibly rich and nuanced. So very much is going on in there! So much more than in fucking.

And I had no way of knowing whether my feelings were typical or not, but I think they're not. I think for most people they're less emotional and more a feeling of exerting control.

But still. This is excellent, and I thank you all.

 

[catalina_francisco]

I could never be a cold, controlling kind of dom. I'm always very emotional. Is that the exception?

I doubt it... I know for us it is a highly emotional experience on many levels. I notice though a lot of people include restraint in their whipping or flogging as noted with the struggling aspect. For us I am rarely restrained, partly because he loves I will remain still and take it, partly because he enjoys uping the anticipation and knowing that there may be struggle within my mind if he has pushed the right buttons on the right day.

Catalina

 

[Thane1234]

It is a show of trust and a bond of acceptance.

The intense sensation, the growing heat of her marks, the gasp and the guttural moan, all these combine and intensify themselves in a symbiotic whirl until she quakes with a mixture of pain, desire and longing.

The sharp intake of breath with each contact and the quiet anticipation of the next is music. The heated flush of the skin casting a soft glow on her exposed form and the vivid marks highlighting her body are beauty to behold.

As caress turns to touch, touch to tap, tap to blow, blow to lash, and on and on, alternating between the softest brush and the sharpest strike in an ever increasing rhythmic dance, she begins to melt into herself and into me.
The culmination of the long awaited crescendo: the final lash causes her to fall within herself to her own personal plane, her own nirvana. The body consuming tremors cause her to shake with the fulfillment of her purpose and desire.

Her final exhausted and satisfied exhalation washes away her fear and reaffirms her trust in me and willing sacrifice to us.

Of course it is also just downright fun

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I doubt it... I know for us it is a highly emotional experience on many levels. I notice though a lot of people include restraint in their whipping or flogging as noted with the struggling aspect. For us I am rarely restrained, partly because he loves I will remain still and take it, partly because he enjoys uping the anticipation and knowing that there may be struggle within my mind if he has pushed the right buttons on the right day.

Catalina

It's funny, because the cold, emotionally distant Dom is such a stock fixture in BDSM literature that I'd expected to find he had more appeal in real life, but warmth, passion and emotion seem to be the overwhelming preference.

 

[catalina_francisco]

It's funny, because the cold, emotionally distant Dom is such a stock fixture in BDSM literature that I'd expected to find he had more appeal in real life, but warmth, passion and emotion seem to be the overwhelming preference.

LOL, well he's Spanish, what do you expect....cold is something he just ain't, though sadistic he can be.

Catalina

 

[Netzach]

If I want to do heated and play with hate and derision and general bad mojo and the men who willingly let me use them for psychic punching bag to a small extent, I use words.

Which scares the ever loving crap out of people who like being whipped, normally.

 

[Homburg]

Anger? Goodness, no. Maybe I'm a wimp, but anger for me belongs on the trail when I bike or, better, under the bar. The iron takes all the anger I have and more, and never needs medical care. That's what it's there for, being heavy and hard to lift, and letting me blow all the rage I can controllable drop onto it.

The whip is there for me to express my intimate needs in a controlled and fantastic fashion. The rythm, the music, the dance, whatever you call it, it's hypnotic in it's play. I would say that you are precisely correct to call whipping Dominance and submission distilled to its' essence. A micrososm of D/s on its' own.

I restrain her, loosely, just enough to remind her where her hands should be, and to offer her something to pull against when the pain hits. She doesn't struggle then, her submission is not tested by simple restraints. They comfort her. They are like a favourite toy for a child. As they secure her, they provide her security and give to her a place. All things crave a place, and that is what the restraints give her.

I begin to touch, lightly, and there is still no resistance. Massage, no resistance. Rub hard, no resistance. I am not testing her limits. I feel her tension though. She knows what is coming and her body hums with tension. No matter how often she is whipped, she never stops anticipating. Her body will always be humming before the act like this.

The first strikes are whisper soft, a kiss of leather on smooth skin. Still no resistance, no struggle, no test. I strike harder, she begins to flinch. Here is the first decision. Do I strike harder now and make it hurt, or build intensity slowly and drive her into subspace before the real pain begins? either way, I will test her submission each time. When the intensity builds, she starts to sway and twist, yelp and whimper. The restraints remind her of where she should be, but it is will that keeps her in place. She could move that hands if she tried at all. she doesn't. Her will keeps her in place, for now. She wants to keep still, and take the pain for herself.

The strikes come faster and harder now. She cries, she yelps, she may even beg for me to stop. Her lovely pale globes turn to angry red, the flesh expressing what she cannot coherently say. I see where the falls land, see where my leather kiss has laid. Here is where her submission is tested. Is her loyalty to me, her submission, strong enough, deep enough to continue to take this? Is her trust in me profound enough?

It is my will that keeps her in place now. Not because my will somehow controls her. My will controls me. It keeps my hand from injuring, from harming, from taking her out of the place she is in. That conscious mind is gone, drowning in sensations, leather and ice and searing flame. My will, my self-control, keeps this act from becoming abuse, from becoming torture by respecting her body's limits.

This moment does not resonate with anger for me. Nor is it cold, though it might look that way to an outsider. My face is grim, my body is poised, my muscles flexing and relaxing, my placement precise. I recall my positions and strikes from Kali and my body falls into ancient Filipino rythms. To onlookers, I am probably cold and perhaps angered. Inside, I am aflame. Her need, my need, they are together in a whole, and we are connected by lash and pain. I in the giving and her in the taking. I could not tell her that I love her more plainly. I could not express it more thoughtfully or carefully. No piece of song or poetry could better portray how careful and precise my love is for this beautiful woman bound before me.

Yes, I romanticise it. Why should I not? I'm not a pure sadist, though I respect those who are. I do not whip for punishment. I do not whip to correct. The only time the flogger comes out is when I wish to express my love in the poetry of pain.

I also whip to beautify. I see no beauty purely in suffering. Burn victims are not beautiful. But I do see beauty in pure concentration, pure emotion, and pure commitment. And I see beauty in submission. Nothing extracts that commitment, concentration, and submission like the cutting whisk of the flog. In that moment, covered in sweat and face twisted in pain, she is more beautiful to me than the day she and I wed. She tells me that she loves me, that she trusts, me, and that she submits to me with every strike.

That is what I need.

 

[Homburg]

And, after writing that, I can tell them I'm going to need some time tonight with my lovely "v".

Dr. Mabeuse, thank you for reminding me of why I do what I do. I haven't been feeling it the past few days for reasons that I have made much ado over elsewhere. Putting that down in text brought me back to my center, and reminded me of what I need.

I thank you, sir. I am more thankful for this than I can express.

 

[callinectes]

My silly post on the first page aside..this is by far one of the most wonderful threads I have read here. Many thanks to all of Dominants who have so beautifully expressed how delivering pain affects him/her. It has been insightful, educational, and touching.

 

[Homburg]

Indeed, it was good. I chose to slake our lusts before the flogging. It is no tth eusual progression, and not of her preference, but I needed the session to be pure of my more animal needs. I wanted to concentrate fully and completely on the kiss and the swing. It was pure and indeed what I was in need of.

I may expound further later. Morning light brings with it contemplation and introspection, and my words are more internal, less realised.

 

[Softouch911]

And I had no way of knowing whether my feelings were typical or not, but I think they're not. I think for most people they're less emotional and more a feeling of exerting control.

Exerting control isn't emotional?

I hope I didn't say anything to encourage that line of thought.

It's a fucking celebration! I read the part about anger and I guess I get that, but it's not me. I don't think I ever feel so good, except perhaps when I find another way to control, but whipping -- for me -- usually is more intense and focused.

Good luck on the scene! I look forward as always.
ST

 

[Luvkitty33]

Anger? Goodness, no. Maybe I'm a wimp, but anger for me belongs on the trail when I bike or, better, under the bar. The iron takes all the anger I have and more, and never needs medical care. That's what it's there for, being heavy and hard to lift, and letting me blow all the rage I can controllable drop onto it.

The whip is there for me to express my intimate needs in a controlled and fantastic fashion. The rythm, the music, the dance, whatever you call it, it's hypnotic in it's play. I would say that you are precisely correct to call whipping Dominance and submission distilled to its' essence. A micrososm of D/s on its' own.

I restrain her, loosely, just enough to remind her where her hands should be, and to offer her something to pull against when the pain hits. She doesn't struggle then, her submission is not tested by simple restraints. They comfort her. They are like a favourite toy for a child. As they secure her, they provide her security and give to her a place. All things crave a place, and that is what the restraints give her.

I begin to touch, lightly, and there is still no resistance. Massage, no resistance. Rub hard, no resistance. I am not testing her limits. I feel her tension though. She knows what is coming and her body hums with tension. No matter how often she is whipped, she never stops anticipating. Her body will always be humming before the act like this.

The first strikes are whisper soft, a kiss of leather on smooth skin. Still no resistance, no struggle, no test. I strike harder, she begins to flinch. Here is the first decision. Do I strike harder now and make it hurt, or build intensity slowly and drive her into subspace before the real pain begins? either way, I will test her submission each time. When the intensity builds, she starts to sway and twist, yelp and whimper. The restraints remind her of where she should be, but it is will that keeps her in place. She could move that hands if she tried at all. she doesn't. Her will keeps her in place, for now. She wants to keep still, and take the pain for herself.

The strikes come faster and harder now. She cries, she yelps, she may even beg for me to stop. Her lovely pale globes turn to angry red, the flesh expressing what she cannot coherently say. I see where the falls land, see where my leather kiss has laid. Here is where her submission is tested. Is her loyalty to me, her submission, strong enough, deep enough to continue to take this? Is her trust in me profound enough?

It is my will that keeps her in place now. Not because my will somehow controls her. My will controls me. It keeps my hand from injuring, from harming, from taking her out of the place she is in. That conscious mind is gone, drowning in sensations, leather and ice and searing flame. My will, my self-control, keeps this act from becoming abuse, from becoming torture by respecting her body's limits.

This moment does not resonate with anger for me. Nor is it cold, though it might look that way to an outsider. My face is grim, my body is poised, my muscles flexing and relaxing, my placement precise. I recall my positions and strikes from Kali and my body falls into ancient Filipino rythms. To onlookers, I am probably cold and perhaps angered. Inside, I am aflame. Her need, my need, they are together in a whole, and we are connected by lash and pain. I in the giving and her in the taking. I could not tell her that I love her more plainly. I could not express it more thoughtfully or carefully. No piece of song or poetry could better portray how careful and precise my love is for this beautiful woman bound before me.

Yes, I romanticise it. Why should I not? I'm not a pure sadist, though I respect those who are. I do not whip for punishment. I do not whip to correct. The only time the flogger comes out is when I wish to express my love in the poetry of pain.

I also whip to beautify. I see no beauty purely in suffering. Burn victims are not beautiful. But I do see beauty in pure concentration, pure emotion, and pure commitment. And I see beauty in submission. Nothing extracts that commitment, concentration, and submission like the cutting whisk of the flog. In that moment, covered in sweat and face twisted in pain, she is more beautiful to me than the day she and I wed. She tells me that she loves me, that she trusts, me, and that she submits to me with every strike.

That is what I need.

My God, you have such a beautiful and exquisite way of expressing yourself!! I always look forward to reading your thoughts. Even though I've never experienced what you just described in this post and have no idea yet if it's something that I will like or even try, you make me want to very much.

 

[Homburg]

My God, you have such a beautiful and exquisite way of expressing yourself!! I always look forward to reading your thoughts. Even though I've never experienced what you just described in this post and have no idea yet if it's something that I will like or even try, you make me want to very much.

I... Well, I thank you very much for your kind words. As I told someone that PM'ed me, these words just flowed. It was no real conscious effort or editing, just typing what I felt, and letting the experience become the expression. I am very pleased that you, and others, have enjoyed it.



And I do suggest trying it. Find a hand you trust, and that can read you, and allow yourself to give in to the sensation. Doe right, you will enjoy it.

 

[Luvkitty33]

I... Well, I thank you very much for your kind words. As I told someone that PM'ed me, these words just flowed. It was no real conscious effort or editing, just typing what I felt, and letting the experience become the expression. I am very pleased that you, and others, have enjoyed it.



And I do suggest trying it. Find a hand you trust, and that can read you, and allow yourself to give in to the sensation. Doe right, you will enjoy it.

The fact the it was pretty obvious to me that it was NOT something you spent a bunch of time editing and rewriting, etc........that it was something that you just FELT inside and let the emotion flow onto the screen is why I think it moved me so much.

As for trying it with someone that I trust.....well, that's the problem. I feel stuck at the moment in what steps to take to make that happen.

 

[SouthernDom]

Doing a kind of general opinion survey, on the emotions and feelings present in both subs and doms when the whip comes out and the whipping starts.

In other words, we know what a kiss means, usually, or a hug, what feelings are being expressed. But what is it that's expressed with a crop or a flogger? What is it you're saying and she's receiving? Can you say?

--Zoot

It feeds a deep-seated emotional need to dispense physical pain to others.

I have been cursed and sometimes praised for being a sadistic bastard.......... nothing could be more truthful.