making a sound

Graham wrote recently about pride and stoicism:

Tears, wails, wriggling: These are the classic elements of spanking fantasies. It’s all part of the wretched humiliating fun. No one writes a story about a girl who was spanked, and lay there quietly, the end. Cause it’s boring. I don’t want to be boring!

Then again, I’m not going to manufacture whimpers either, and I’m not sure I’m prepared to just be thrashed to the breaking point for the amusement of others.

Quite a few bloggers have been thinking recently about competitiveness, and this links back to my thoughts after playing with the famously-hardcore, and very quiet, Caroline Grey. Graham's post has led to an interesting discussion in which several spankees have admitted being very quiet when they first started playing - "terrified to make a noise that was not 100% authentically wrung from my deepest soul", as Zille says succinctly - which has made me wonder if it's a general pattern.

So interesting do I find this, I left a lengthy comment on Graham's blog:

Mostly, though, I'm vocally responsive to spanking the same way I am with sex. It's partly to increase my own enjoyment, partly to communicate with my partner (how can they tell what you like and what you don't if you don't respond?), and partly to enhance their enjoyment because of the whole feedback loop thing. When I'm pleasuring myself, I rarely make a sound. Sometimes a small moan will escape me at the final moment, but often I stay quiet. That doesn't mean quiet is my "real" response; it means it's my solitary response. Vocal responses are part of the communication and intimacy of sex, and how you ensure you get what you want. I started being vocally responsive during sex before I started being vocally responsive during spanking, but over the years I've got louder in both. If nothing else, screaming enhances my enjoyment - a true but inexplicable fact; I'm far more likely to come if I can let myself lose control and be as loud as I like.

I used to pride myself on my stoicism and endurance, and not do I often find private play harder than I expect these days, but it can be hard to stay quiet if I try. And some silence games can lead to me feeling terribly hard-done-by and resentful, which is clearly not the point. Is it merely a question of habit? Is my pure masochism, the straightforward delight in pain sensations, becoming more complex as I get older? Or do I just find being noisy more interesting, and there's no reason to be ashamed of that?

I do understand the anxiety on not wanting to artificially produce responses. It's fine for a film, but if you do that in private you're sort of missing the point - it would feel akin to faking an orgasm, unfair to you and your top. It's a concern of mine, as I've found myself being a bit more performative in private since I've started spanking modelling, more aware of my posture and how I'm expressing myself. It's hard to know if that's just increased self-awareness (I'm not acting, but I do tend to be aware of the impression my responses are giving) and actually a good thing, because I can be more consciously expressive with my body language and vocal responses, and better non-verbal communication in scene is good. Or whether it's a bad thing because that awareness stops me 'letting go' completely, and I shouldn't try to retain control over my responses, because that's not the point of submission.

Even when I'm performing, I'm still being me: if I wasn't expressing some part of my true self when I make films or play in public, I wouldn't get anything out of it. It's interesting trying to work out the limits of one's conscious actions, especially in the context of submission. As a 'door-knocker sub', I want to give accurate feedback during scene, I don't want to wholly be ruled by what my play partner wants to hear. But as a sub, with my Doms, whom I adore and trust absolutely, I don't want there to be any artifice between us, and I want to be able to let go and put myself into their hands completely.

When you get down to it, being the spankee in a spanking video rarely involves genuine submission. If your private submission starts to mirror your spankee performance, it's easy to feel like you're not really submitting. But our modes of expression are social and habitual; as we develop relationships with someone, we learn to speak the best language to communicate with them. Vocal responsiveness is useful to video because it's stimulating to the viewer, but it's useful in scene because it helps the sub communicate with their Dom.

As far as I'm concerned, being loud and being brave aren't mutually exclusive. While the challenge of staying quiet can be hot, the effort of will involved in being silent can also prevent me from relaxing properly into the scene - just as the fear that I'm being 'artificial' can prevent me from making as much noise as I might like! Which suggests that, like most things, it depends on mood, context, and the expectations of both partners. I've definitely got louder since I first started playing, and I like it that way. But it's hard to know whether this change is triggered by my experiences acting in spanking films, or whether its just the result of being more comfortable and confident during play.