Combatting Clenching

To Dearest Lizbeth

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Experienced disciplinarians are familiar with the behavior known as clenching. The person being spanked, caned, or paddled seeks to press his or her buttocks close together in a vain attempt to avoid the pain that is inevitably coming. The dominant finds clenching annoying because it may affect the accuracy of the cane or brush stroke. What's more, the attempt to diminish the impact of the blow is a clear sign of resistance.

There are many ways to deal with this offense—for resistance of any kind must be dealt with firmly by any disciplinarian. The most traditional, and the one preferred especially by teachers and mothers with naughty girls and boys—of whatever age—across their laps is to adjust the number of strokes that will be given. Each time the buttocks are clenched, the naughty one is told that that stroke did not count.

Some prefer to stamp out the resistance by stronger penalties. "Every time you clench that naughty bottom," one woman says, "you will get two more strokes added to your punishment." If the sub who clenches is receiving a spanking, the proper response may be to warn him or her that further clenching will see the punishment stepped up to a caning, or if it is already a caning, then a larger and more severe cane will be used.

Others resort to the scary practice of warning the punishee that any clenching will not only mean the stroke does not count but that the count will return to one and thus the entire punishment will recommence. Some subs have trouble avoiding clenching as a natural reaction and this threat will put them horribly on edge because clever dominatrixes may stop after the penultimate stroke and wait, knowing that a nervous sub may clench, say after stroke 49 of an intended 50-stroke spanking, and thus earn another 50 spanks.

There are yet other imaginative ways to address this problem. Some clenching occurs because the girl or boy is afraid that the person punishing their buttocks is intending to aim between the crack and strike the pudendum or the scrotal sac. Thus they try to close the gap between their legs in a vain effort to avoid such hurtful contact. No disciplinarian who knows how to impose proper punishment would ever strike those parts without intending to do so and one would hope that they would proceed very very carefully because permanent injury is so possible an outcome.

But to take advantage of that fear, the disciplinarian might instruct the punishee to open his or her legs and then proceed to rub an ointment such as oil of wintergreen between the legs, including the man's scrotal sac or the woman's labia. This substance will produce a burning sensation that will not permit the recipient to keep his or her legs closed or to clench. Another similar tactic is to administer a disciplinary enema before punishment. The punishee is required to retain the enema and will focus entirely on controlling his or her anal opening.

I also know some mistresses who have devised a nice solution to the clenching problem. When they punish, they have the submissive stand in a set place where there are straps to fasten the feet into place at the appropriate distance so that it will not be possible for the man or woman so strapped in to move their feet or try to clench.

The most definitive technique probably is use of a leg spreader. The mistress attaches a bar by straps to each calf and positions it between the legs so that clenching or closing the legs is completely impossible. This technique also is quite helpful in applying the pain-pleasure type of discipline that finds the use of a martinet on the bottom, with an occasional strand hitting between the legs, alternated with teasing of the parts between the legs with a feather.

But the classic means of both preventing and stopping clenching during discipline is use of the process of figging. This practice, which was first used with performing animals, consists of insertion of a peeled ginger root rod into the anal opening. The oils will begin slowly to affect the inner lining of the anus and prevent the subject from clenching his or her buttocks. Optimally, the ginger is carved into the shape of a buttplug.

Some writers have mentioned an even more severe practice they have labeled double figging, in which a ginger root is sculpted to fit into the vaginal opening as well as touch the clitoris. This results in exceedingly strong stimulation in both a woman's orifices and will cause some agony as well as prevent her from closing her legs during punishment.

The mere threat of figging also inspires good behavior. Some headmistresses were known for figging all pupils who were to undergo punishment so that there would be no possibility of clenching disturbing the administration of the discipline. In these schools, teachers would prepare the misbehaving pupil to see the headmistress by making the pupil lower her panties or his shorts and bend over, spreading the cheeks, so that the teacher might insert the humiliating and soon-to-be-painful fig.

The last method to be discussed here is merely a delay in punishment each time a punishee offends the disciplinarian by clenching. One young stepmother told her new stepson that she insisted on always "parting the cheeks" when punishing him. She would instruct him to spread his legs and keep them apart. Whenever he disobeyed her instructions, she calmly told him that the stroke of the cane she had just administered would not count. She reported that this improved his attention to her orders.

The imaginative disciplinarian thus has quite a few methods with which to combat clenching. Indeed, this brief survey indicates how much thought and cogitation has characterized the disciplinary regime over many years.