Cruelty at Sea

This will probably be the last post of 2011—but there will be much more new things to come in the new year! 

I was reading a post on the Under the Lash blog (because it’s a private blog I am not giving a link out of respect for the owner) that described a British sea captain who was despised by his officers and crew—and even by a colonial governor—for his “cruelty” in exercising his authority to flog his men:

He was notorious at Auckland, and the governor disapproved of his cruelty to his crew.  So Loring did not flog when in port there.  Every now and again, when sentences of punishment accumulated, he would go out to sea for a cruise of three or four days, in the Hauraki Gulf, to work off the arrears of flogging in “pace and comfort”.

I quote this for two reasons:  Think of it from the perspective of each party, the captain and the crew!  Can you imagine having the authority to sentence men to flogging, but letting the number of men with sentences accumulate and then—at your whim—set your ship to sail just for the purpose of disciplining their strong backs?  Just order a grating rigged and call a half dozen men every day to writhe in agony under your unquestioned authority!

And the crew:  They never have a choice on when the ship is going to leave port.  The men with floggings hanging over them dreaded the order to set sail, knowing that it was to get the ship out of port just to carry out punishments.  The anticipation itself must have been a form of agony—knowing that you can’t escape punishment, but having to wait for possibly weeks for the day to set sail, and then once at sea being forced to watch as whips whistle down across bare backs, the flogged men bleeding and screaming under the lash, until your name is called to step forward, strip off your shirt, and answer for your crime.

I like to add a touch of my own cruelty to this scenario:  If I were the captain, I would ensure that three or four malefactors would each be sentenced for more than one offense, and require them to take the flogging for each transgression separately.  This way, they would get to experience the lash, watch other men endure it, and then wait for the next assembly where they would be seized up again.  Each such offender would be flogged every day we were out at sea.  Imagine the fear in each man’s eyes when the lieutenant calls out his name to have his still-raw back helplessly exposed to another round of lawfully harsh military punishment.

On that note:  Happy Holidays from WhippingDudes!

WhippingDudes: 1 Year

December 1 marked the 1-year anniversary of the WhippingDudes Blog!  We have seen over 185,000 hits since the start of this blog, an average of over 500 hits per day—far more than I would ever have imagined possible for a blog as focused this.

In that year we have had great discussions, which wouldn’t be possible without the outstanding reader comments we get, and some interesting poll results (you can see all of the poll results at the bottom of the blog’s homepage).  We have also set up a back up site (due to having the blog taken down for a few days).

In celebration of the 1-year anniversary of this effort—and the demand from readers—we have set up a community on the back-up site to allow people to chat with each other live and to make general posts that everyone can see without having to sort through comments to individual posts.

Thank you for your continued support over the past year and look for exciting things to come in the next!

WhippingDudes Community

First of all, I would like to apologize to everyone for my neglect of the blog for the past few months.  Juggling work, wedding plans, and my honeymoon, something had to give and the blog was it.  But now I’m back!  I will try to update with a new post at least once a week. 

I am very happy to announce the WhippingDudes Community on the other sites.  You can find it on the right hand side of the screen under “Community” at WhippingDudes.iteratus.net.  In order to use it, you will need to register with the Stribe social networking site, but once you do that, you will be able to interact with others interested in the manly pursuit of bare back flogging.

You will still be able to post comments to individual articles on both the Blogspot and WhippingDudes.iteratus.net sits, but this enhancement will allow you to find new comments much easier without having to wade through all of the posts to find the most recent comments (although there is a feature on both sites that allow you to see the most recent 10 or so comments posted anywhere on the site).

I hope you enjoy the feature and will consider writing blog posts at WhippingDudes.  You can gain access to write posts by registering and account at WhippingDudes.iteratus.net and then sending me an email at WhippingDudes@yahoo.com to tell me you want to be a contributor (just put WhippingDudes Contributor in the subject line) and I will grant you the necessary access.

Thanks for your loyalty!

Buddy

Public Flogging

There has been some discussion on the County Farm post about flogging in lieu of incarceration.  I was going to just post a comment in response, but it has been so long since I’ve made a post, I decided to go ahead and write one now.

Richie and Mike are in agreement that blood has to be drawn if a flogging is to be an option available to prisoners.  But Mike believes that permanent scarring is unacceptable.  I don’t see how you can get blood without at least the risk of scarring.  But I don’t like the thought of blood being part of this for a couple of reasons:  1) It is barbaric. This isn’t the Middle Ages.  We shouldn’t be looking for bloodsport (unless it’s cagefighting).  2) The danger to the person’s health.  Even with medical technologies, there is the chance of infection, and barring that the trauma itself from loss of blood could kill someone (we simply don’t want that or the whole exercise becomes pointless).  3) If we want the public to accept this as an alternative to costly confinement, we need to meet them halfway with regard to sensibilities.  Watching a man take pain is one thing, but watching blood splatter as the skin of his back repeatedly broken is something few would want to see.

The drawing of blood would turn people away from it--not the felons, mind you, but the public.  I think a part of this idea needs to be the public administration of the punishment:  Seize the men up in the town square and flog them so any citizen can watch—and see how a tough-guy thug takes the unforgiving lash on his bare back.

This is why I recommend that we go with the prison strap for the public administration of punishment.  There would be no blood and the beating would be something the criminal would never forget.  I have taken a dozen—a mere dozen—laid on hard with a prison strap and I can tell you that that will focus your mind—not just with pain, but with fear.  It definitely takes balls to step up for that a second time.

Additionally, there needs to be a severity difference for misdemeanors and felonies.  For misdemeanors, some standard number of lashes per offense category--let's say 50 for a class A, and 12 for a Class C. 

For felons, it would be 50 lashes for each year he would have to serve behind bars if there were no parole.  We could max it out at 100 per session, so that felons would find their backs exposed several times, to get it through their heads that those kinds of crimes are not acceptable.

Of course, there will always be crimes for which people need to be locked away.  Violent offenders need to be taken off the street for public safety.  But if flogging is good enough to prevent incarceration, it could be an administrative punishment for offenses to the rules of incarceration.

Even Time magazine has broached this subject recently (in June 2011), pointing out the cost savings to society of this alternative—and traditional—form of punishment.  The bottom line is:  If we re-introduce this traditional punishment, both as an alternative to incarceration, as well as a way of inducing compliance in those that we must lock up, society would be better served.  We would have the knowledge that we are saving tons of money on a corrupt prison-industrial complex, while at the same time returning people to productive lives without long stints of confinement which hinder employment prospects and actually create a cycle of crime.

County Farm

There have been a couple of articles in the news recently that I thought would be fun to combine into a story.  First, in April the well-respected publication, The Economist, published a blog-analysis in which flogging was proposed as a way to save money in the criminal justice system.  It was argued—as we have on this blog—that it is cheaper and more humane to flog someone for a transgression than to lock them up for long periods of time, hurting them and their families through the loss of jobs and the stigma attached to being an imprisoned convict. 

Then, just the other day, a pool-piece appeared on an experiment in the state of Georgia, USA, where ex-cons are offered farm labor jobs to try to make up for the shortage due to new immigration laws that crack down on the use of illegal migrant farm workers.  The ex-cons are required, as part of their probation, to work, but they can refuse work that they feel is unsuitable—and most find quickly that farm labor is unsuitable for them.

Migrant farm workers work long, literally back-breaking, hours in the very harsh working conditions of farms across the United States.  They do this because they can be easily exploited by farm owners due to their undocumented status.  Their low wages keep the price of produce low, because, as you can see from the article, the work is terrible and no one else will do it. 

Obviously, for legal and moral reasons, forced labor—slave labor—is unacceptable.  But punishment labor is not.  Prisoners should not be forced to work for the profit of private enterprise, however, so County Farms could be established for short-term incarceration of those that just need to be taught a lesson that the lash alone will not.  For those that need discipline beyond what the whip will teach, a few weeks sweating in the sun, with the ever-present threat of harsh flogging—and even just the occasional random application of the strap on the skin of a bare back--as motivation could do the trick.  It would give some revenue to the county in which the person offended—helping them “pay back society” for their crimes--and it could just be a fun spectator event for those that want to sit in bleachers and watch men sweat in the sun (for which admission could be charged).

How would you like to see these young guys sweating on a Georgia County Farm, with Sergeant Stern motivating them with the lash?

Poll: Faces of Pain

We have a new poll out!  This time we want to know how important it is to see a man’s face while taking the lash on his back.  How important is this to you?  Do you just want to watch the whip bounce off his skin, or do you want to see his reactions to the touch of the cat?  Do you want to watch the fear on his face as he anticipates the next stroke, or would you just rather watch his muscular back flex and stiffen as we waits for more pain?

You can only choose one in the poll, but tell us the details behind your vote in the comments!

Would you rather watch this:

Or just this:

Pix from Starship Troopers

100,000 Hits!

Hey, everyone!  We hit the 100,000 views milestone.  When I started this blog I thought it would take years to have that many views.  But judging by the success of this blog and the popularity of our YouTube videos (when they were available), flogging is a popular and under-represented theme.

This is the premier blog for flogging!  Please tell your friends about it—even if you’re not sure they are into this.  People don’t know that they like flogging until they discover it.  Just look at how popular the flogging in Star Ship Troopers is (if you can judge by the number of hits the pirated uploads on YouTube get).

We also have a FaceBook page, so join us there. 

New Poll: Would You Watch….

There has been some interesting discussion on the idea of flogging women.  Most people who visit and participate in this blog are very much into watching men take the lash.  We have even had a question before on whether women should be flogged, but would you want to watch it?  Cast your vote and give us the reasons for it in the comments!

New Poll: Bodies Under the Lash

Weigh in on our latest poll!  Which male body type looks best writhing under the lash?  Do you want to see skinny swimmers, athletic jocks, muscular men, or hairy bears?  More than one answer is allowed!

Fiction: Morning Lash

Sorry it has been some time since I posted.  Been really busy with other projects, but just knew I had to get something up on the blog!  I thought I would try my hand again at some fiction.  I hope you like it.  I am always looking for feedback on making it better—so don’t hold back!

The Warden likes to have the sounds of discipline accompany his morning coffee.  At 8 am every day, the Colonel steps out onto his office balcony which overlooks the small courtyard enclosed within the three-story stockade complex.  Here he sits alone or accompanied by visiting officers, drinking coffee and watching the strict drama of military punishments being inflicted.

This courtyard is for his private use.  His standing orders are to have small detachments of men perform exercises, military drills, or carry out punishments in this space while the sun shines down into it.  Summer time leads to long days of constant clamor from the sweating men below his office window.  As a newly promoted Colonel, he takes his duty to command this punishment barracks seriously, and makes the lives of the inmates as unpleasant as possible.  This small courtyard is a way for him to ensure that his orders are carried out.

The first event of every morning is a flogging.  After two hours of forced exercise, a contingent of 18 soldier-guards, commanded by a presiding officer, marches a prisoner to the permanent whipping frame in the yard.  The shirtless detainee is firmly secured to the overhead bar, his arms spread wide and off his heels—only his toes and the balls of his bare feet allowed to touch the black paving stones.

The Warden had ordered the bricks of the yard painted black to ensure each day’s blazing heat would build up and be felt on the constantly bare feet of the prisoners toiling there.  One of his first orders upon taking command was to order that the offenders remain barefoot at all times, as a sign of their subservience and disgrace.  This isn’t meant to act as a deterrent to escape attempts, as the men are often forced to run for long miles on those naked feet, which hardens the soles; it’s just another torment for the men to endure during their sentences.

Upon arrival in the courtyard, the Sergeant orders the detachment of guards into three ranks to witness the punishment and calls his two Corporals forward to carry out the physical part of the sentence.  Once at the whipping frame the Corporals strip off their uniform tunics, exposing their tight black tank tops and tanned skin covering shoulders and arms perfectly defined by daily directed forced exercise.  Their muscular chests are already wet from the morning heat; sweat forms a glistening film over the military-unit tattoos on the round of their shoulders.  In place and ready, the men wait for the Warden.

The nervous prisoner’s body is covered with sweat, streaming from his armpits, down his back and chest, dripping from his face.  He had been flogged seven times by summary judgment during his two years as a conscripted soldier, before being sentenced by Court Martial for stealing.  The military judge ordered him flogged 75 lashes each week as part of his nine months of incarceration.  But the additional disciplinary floggings for infractions to the strict rules of prison life were just as hard and came at least every three days.  Dozens of times during his imprisonment, Prisoner had been seized up and helpless in this manner; while he was by now accustomed to the situation, he had never grown accustomed to the pain:  Each flogging was a whole new adventure in suffering. 

The Colonel has a standing order that the last two floggings of any prisoner’s sentence will be taken together as a reminder of to the man of his time in the stockade, and incentive to help him remember that military discipline is better observed in the ranks than unmercifully enforced behind bars.

The two young guard Corporals, wearing fingerless black gloves to help keep a firm grip on the whip handles, spread their boots wide for balance in preparation to begin their duty of flogging the secured offender; they continue to wait in disciplined silence for an order. 

            The Colonel appears on the balcony with a visiting Major, surveying the scene and nods to the presiding Lieutenant.  For this muster, the prison strap had been ordered to carry out the final sentence; the flogging that marks the completion of an offender’s time in the stockade and his return to military duties—that very day.  He can once again look forward to being called “soldier” instead of “prisoner”.

Lieutenant calmly orders the formal beginning of punishment by flatly saying, “Lay on!”

            At the Sergeant’s count of “One,” the Corporal to the left of the prisoner lays on the first stroke: A hard lash that lands on the Prisoner’s right shoulder and angles down to his left.  The loud smack of the strap’s first lash against the exposed skin reverberates off the courtyard walls.  The Prisoner responds by trying to stifle a scream, which makes it come out as high-pitch closed-mouth yelp.  He throws his head back in an unsuccessful attempt to adjust to the pain, just in time for the second stoke to send a burning sting across this left shoulder. 

The opposite guard, to the inmate’s right, in obedience to the Sergeant’s slow count, aims his stroke as an exact mirror of the first, striking the man’s left shoulder and travelling down to his right.  The two lashes leave a perfect X of two wide, dry red lines, which stand in stark contrast to the Prisoner’s tan sweaty skin.

           Like the dozens of sessions before it, the Prisoner knows this flogging is a PUNISHMENT for his crime; after only two lashes he feels the throbbing of the wide stripes which cross slightly above the exact center of his back.

On the third stroke, the strap lands horizontally across his middle back and the end wraps slightly around his side, outlining a perfectly straight, nearly black welt across his right lat muscle.  The corporal on his right places the fourth lash directly on top of the one he had given before, ripping another involuntary yelp from the man enduring the ordeal.

Poll: Take It, Inflict It, Or Just Watch?

Our latest poll is out and we can’t wait to hear what you think!  Are you one of those men who just can’t get enough of the painful pleasure of the lash on your back?  Or are you a man that enjoys testing another man’s limits by applying leather to exposed flesh?  Or are you a voyeur? 

I know that it can all depend on mood, so all three probably actually apply to everyone at some point, so dig deep and answer truthfully.  Overall, do you like to TAKE IT, do you like to INFLICT IT, or do you JUST LIKE TO WATCH?

If you have a more nuanced answer than these three categories allow, please cast your vote and feel free to explain your position to us in the comments!

Rate WhippingDudes!

WhippingDudes has been added to the list of male blogs at Best Male Blogs!  I hope you will take the time to rate this site so that more people can become aware of it.  You can click the link to the left on the left sideboard and it will take you to the page to rate it.  Please be kind!  

Welcome!

We have had quite a spike in readership this past weekend.  In fact, Sunday was the first day with over 1,000 hits!  I doubt that all of these hits are due to our regular readers, so I am happy to welcome all of our new fans. I hope you will make yourself at home and read through—and comment on—all of the previous posts.  We have had some really good discussions.

I wonder if maybe the blog suddenly became available on search engines or was linked to by some other source that has a lot of traffic.  The stats only show that they came from Google, so I don’t know what people were searching on.  I would appreciate anyone who is new to this blog letting me know how you found it.  I want to spread the word far and wide and any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Also, everyoneshould check out our WhippingDudes Videos page found on this blog’s back up site (I encourage you to bookmark the backup site because the blogger site was temporarily deleted once—but then miraculously came back).  We will be migrating this blog completely over to the backup URL at some point, so feel free to make a user account over there—you can make comments on any of our posts either on the blogspot site or on the backup site.

Oh! And don’t forget to Like us on Facebook!

Flogging Cures!

I found this interesting article, Whipping therapy cures depression and suicide crises, when doing some Google searches on my favorite topic.

As a person who has exposed his back to the lash on many occasions, some of them on film, I can attest to the calming effects of a good flogging.  Because of this, I have to applaud this inspired study and the courage of the doctors that decided to test it as an application to cure addiction and prevent suicide.

While the article describes the floggings as taking place on the buttocks, from experience I can tell you that a man who exposes his back feels more like a man when he walks away from a whipping, with a renewed balance.

What are your thoughts on this?

CENSORED! (again)

So, this past weekend we were censored on two different fronts.  The two YouTube videos that had been up for several months were both pulled down by YouTube management and our account on their site was terminated for “violations of community standards”.  When I appealed the deletion of my video, they rejected the appeal stating that it was sexual in nature and reviewed the other video and cancelled the entire channel (and suspended my account).

If you go on to YouTube, you can find that people have posted entire segments of the Chained Heroes: Corporal Punishment DVD; these posting are of copyrighted material (which the people that posted them to YouTube undoubtedly do not own) and show nothing more or less than what we had published: shirtless men being whipped.  So, it’s not the censorship itself which bothers me (I understood when I made my postings that it was their space and they had the right to do it), it is the inconsistency of their application of their policies:  I actually own the copyrights to my material (since it is original material I created) and I show things not at all unlike other posted videos that have been up for months or years and have received tens or hundreds of thousands of views.

Worse than that, this very blog was deleted for a day (Saturday, March 20).  I was given no advance (or even after-the-fact) notice of the deletion or the reason for it, I had to discover it for myself by trying to login to view the blog’s stats. I could only conclude that there was a connection between the YouTube decision to delete my material and the Blogger decision to do the same.  I was relieved that I had backed up the site on my alternate host site only a few days ago, and therefore only lost one post and a few user comments.  I noticed when I returned from my Saturday excursion that the blog was back up on Sunday morning with all material intact. 

I want to keep the blog at the Blogspot address because of the ease with which people can find it (due to Google directories, etc), but I ask all of our fans to bookmark the WhippingDudes archive (alternate host) address in case this happens again.    Thank you for your continued support.

Flogging Competition

Sorry it has been so long since my last post.  I have been working on some deadline-driven projects and just haven’t had the time to sit down and write about my favorite sport:  flogging.  I am glad to see that the comments continue to stream in and that there are people all over the world as passionate about the lash as I am.

                            

Over the past few weeks, when I have been able to think about it, my mind has been turning to the idea that flogging is an extreme sport, not (always) a bedroom activity:  It is a competition with oneself and there is a bit of pride to be had in being able to show the world how much you can take. 

But could we actually make it into an objective competition between men?  Competitive Flogging!  In order to be objective, we would need a system scoring, as if it were some sort of spectator event like wrestling or gymnastics.  Would it be a team sport, with a Prisoner and Inflictor competing against other teams or would it be a competition between the Prisoner and Inflictor?  In either case, we would have to work out a scoring system to ensure that it is at least somewhat objective (of course there should be room for the subjective like style and fitness—a “did-he-look-good-doing-it?” kind of thing).

What are your thoughts?  How could we turn this into a competition?  What would be the categories for scoring?  Would there be a category for welt-development? How about number of lashes before crying out?  Would we measure the speed of the whip as it was laid on?

Judging by the picture, how would you say this guy took it?

The Gauntlet

Virtually all of our discussions on this blog have been about flogging a man as he is tied helpless.  But what about another form of flogging, one in which the man must take an active part?  I am speaking of course, of the gauntlet.  I had read about it in stories of how they used it on ships to punish thieves.  I have seen a few movies that depicted its use—or tried to (I can’t recall the names of the movies because the scenes themselves were so unmemorable).  The reason I found them so lacking was that the prisoner actually “ran” the gauntlet: he was free to get through it as fast as he could. 

However, there is a scene in the movie Barry Lyndon (the punishment scene starts at about 3:45), where a Prussian soldier is walked slowly through a gauntlet of his peers, and each hits his back hard with a switch (some of them look to be small tree branches), while the officer in charge slowly rides behind one of the ranks to ensure that each soldier does his duty and lays on with a will. 

This scene always sparked my imagination.  I have been flogged with a cat and a quirt and a strap, but always tied up.  Passive.  I couldn’t move, all I could do is wait for the next blow.  Imagine the terror a soldier felt as he slowly walked the gauntlet (with a corporal marching in front with a bayonet pointed at his chest to ensure he didn’t run).  Being tied up and having to take it is one thing, but having to march straight into a punishment—seeing all the pain that awaits you—must be the height of psychological agony. 

I especially liked the way the narrator set up the scene:  “Life in the Prussian service was considerably worse than the English.  The life that the private soldier led was a frightful one.  Punishment was incessant, and every officer had the right to inflict it”.  How do I become a officer in the Prussian Army?

Links Page!

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before!  We need a links page as a place to store all of the great places that we find on the net that satisfy our burning desire to watch men writhe under the lash.  So, I have created one.   You can find it on WhippingDudes Links.

Many thanks to the readers who posted links in their comments!  Keep them coming!

Thank You!

I want to thank everyone for their continued readership and participation.  I’m sorry I haven’t posted much this past week, but I am trying to close out a few projects that have deadlines.  I should be done in the next  few days and back to normal on the blog posts.  In the meantime, I encourage everyone to continue the dialogue on the various posts, and to pay particular attention to the fantasy writings on the “Inspiration for Writing” post—there are some awesome scenes there!  Don’t forget about the page of fantasy that I wrote:  End of Sentence.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the blog!

Poll: Indoors or Outdoors?

Cast your vote now in our latest poll.  Should a flogging be carried out indoors or outdoors?  Please feel free to post the reasons for your vote in the comments section of this post!

Inspiration For Writing

With the fantasy nature of many of the recent comments on the “Laying on The Lashes” post (Feb 8), I thought it would be fun to see just how far everyone can go in describing the perfect flogging.  I encourage anyone interested to write a few paragraphs describing what they want to see in a flogging.  These can be from any perspective—the man being punished, the person wielding the whip, an officer supervising to ensure punishment is performed to specifications, or a description of the whole scene from an impartial observer..

Taking some of the images/concepts already posted on the comments, I have been working on a short story, an excerpt of which I have posted to a page on this blog.  You can read “End of Sentence” by clicking the hyperlink, or the link above the visitor counter.

I am curious to see what you think of my fiction writing.

WhippingDudes Video Available

Good news!  I found an easy way to make my first video, “Shirtless Muscle Dude Gets Whipped”, available for you to watch.  After YouTube pulled it for “inappropriate content”, no one has been able to see it.  Because censorship is also possible on this blog (although unlikely), I have created a back up site for it, which I update periodically to ensure the content is safe.  On the backup site, I have uploaded the original video and it is now available for your pleasure.

Please continue to use the Blogger site for your comments—I want to keep this as the main site.  But be sure to bookmark the new site just in case the Blogger one is ever pulled.  You can find the site at whippingdudes.iteratus.net.

Poll: Only Men Under the Lash?

Anonymous points out on the Men Under The Lash post (Dec 27, 2010) that only flogging men is sexist.  It is true that flogging is applied to both women and men in some countries.  But from what we have seen of the comments on this blog, most people only talk about men taking the lash.  Obviously, this must be an issue of cultural acceptance (and possibly due to the influence of Hollywood, as Anonymous points out in his/her comment).  So, I have created a new poll.  Please view and cast your vote:  should only men be seized up for flogging, or should women also endure the touch of the whip?

Laying On The Lashes

We have had several comments touching on the other side of the flogging coin:  How the “Inflictor” feels while doing it.  Some people have noted here and on the WhippingDudes YouTube channel comments that it is hard to find someone who is willing to put leather to flesh.  Based on these comments, it is easy to conclude that there are more people willing—and desiring—to expose their backs to the lash than there are people willing to strike the blows.  Why is that?

Richie has challenged the readers of this blog to begin that discussion.  At first, I thought a poll would be a good place to start, but it is hard to formulate a poll without a better understanding of what goes through a person’s mind while they are whipping a man’s bare back.

It is easy to understand the physical challenge of endurance flogging from the receiving end, but what about the emotional endurance of the Inflictor who is creating the pain?  Most people would rather feel pain themselves than watch someone else suffer, which makes it hard for them to willingly inflict it.  So, obviously, both sides have to man-up for the session:  Both have to be physically and emotionally prepared for the ordeal. 

It is possible that a Prisoner can react violently and genuinely hate the flogging, and indicate that through his grunts and screams, but that doesn’t mean the session should end before the punishment is complete (otherwise why do it at all?).  This is where the challenge for the Inflictor comes in:  He must remain unmoved and merciless in the application of the whip; he must lay each and every lash on with full force, regardless of how the Prisoner reacts.  What goes through an Inflictor’s mind when he sees a bare back, welted and sweating from dozens of hard lashes, needing dozens more to complete the punishment?

If the Prisoner is brave enough to step up for a flogging, the Inflictor has to be brave enough to see it through to the end.  Does it take a stronger will to inflict the punishment than it does to endure it?  How does a man find the will to flog another man? Would an Inflictor exposing his own back to the lash help him to understand what is needed, or would that just make it harder for him to lay it on another man’s helpless back?  

Flogging & Crime’s Costs to Society

Gary of Milwaukee points out in a comment to the “Empires Built With The Lash” post (Jan 31) that some states used judicial flogging up until as late as the 1950’s.  When the American Republic was founded, flogging was not considered cruel and unusual punishment because it had been in constructive employment and socially accepted for millennia.  Further, Anonymous makes a comment to the same post regarding flogging’s uses as a deterrent:  “In many cases, the pain and humiliation of being trussed up, stripped, and lashed with a whip did the job nicely.”

I mention these two comments together because they raise an important issue, which we have touched upon on this blog before:  Returning to the practice of flogging as a form of punishment for civilian crimes.

Crime, by definition, is a burden to the functioning of civil society.  Long periods of incarceration have proven to be ineffective as deterrent, as evidenced by high recidivism, anecdotally due to a lack of gainful employment options post-incarceration (due to the stigma of being an “ex-con” or the loss of critical skills during confinement).  In addition to the direct social costs of criminal activity, society’s solution (incarceration) itself has proven to be a heavy burden.  Governments must divert scarce resources from important uses such as education and infrastructure and use them to construct and maintain detention facilities.  Warehousing people whose actions have already had a measurable impact on society (economic or otherwise) is a second hit to law abiding citizens, who must pay for the incarceration of criminals and receive diminished services and higher taxes in return.

I am not saying that flogging would end the need for prisons because there are very violent people who must be locked away for the good of all society.  But some offenses, such as criminal vandalism, drunk driving, and domestic violence, which often result in short periods (weeks or months) of incarceration, would better be served by seizing the men up and flogging them in front of their fellow citizens, as both punishment for their past offenses, a deterrent to further crimes, and as an example to others who believe the law does not apply to them.

Painful humiliation could do the trick—and even be a source of revenue for localities that charge a nominal fee for public admission to watch criminals take the lash.

People Don’t Know They Like To Watch Flogging

Our latest poll, “Strip It Off Or Rip It Off?”, is creating a lot of excitement on the blog (if we can measure excitement by the number of reader comments).  I’d like to thank everyone who has felt the need to make comments—audience participation is an important part of this blog.  All of the enthusiasm for the topic of how a man removes his shirt before flogging got me to thinking about what a friend said to me a few weeks ago.  After reading the blog, he said “you’re doing a public service”.

People don’t always know what they don’t know.  I think flogging as entertainment is one of those things:  Many people like it but don’t realize they like it. Most people don’t experience the intense rush that many of us on this blog get when we watch a man endure punishment.  We knew from a young age that watching floggings got our blood flowing, but for most people the pleasure of watching is created with the scene itself and becomes a passing fancy.  Like the scene where Casper Van Dien is flogged in “Starship Troopers”—they enjoy it during the scene, but forget it once the scene has changed away from a shirtless young man taking the lash on his bare back.

But that just means they don’t understand that flogging is a spectator sport.  They therefore need to be introduced to the idea of watching it for the pleasure of it:  The athleticism of the participants and the physical and mental endurance it requires.

So, I ask everyone to forward the URL for this blog to at least five friends to do your part in this public service.  We need to raise awareness and build the community so that more people will get involved by participating in this blog—maybe some will start filming their own floggings and uploading them to YouTube for all of us to enjoy.

Poll: Strip It Off or Rip It Off?

We have posted a new poll!  Many people have said that the dramatic element of shirt-removal is an important part of a flogging scene.  Which do you prefer?  Do you want to watch a man obediently remove his own shirt before submitting to a flogging, or should the shirt be ripped off his back after he’s tied up?  Cast your vote!

(The results of the previous poll have been moved to the bottom of the page, so you can see the results below).

Empires Built With The Lash

I was talking with a friend the other day about our WhippingDudes videos and explained how one of them was deleted by YouTube management due to containing “inappropriate” material.  He couldn’t understand how this non-sexual activity could be inappropriate when, as he put it, our country was built by whipping men’s backs. 

                               

Both of us being military veterans, I instinctively understood the historical context of what he meant, and so I thought I should make it a topic for the blog.  Many people will jump to the obvious reference to slavery, on which the Southern economy in the United States was based, but there is also the military aspect, which is what my friend was referring to.  

The American system of military discipline derived from how the British treated their soldiers.  Most of the American officers had served in the British Army before joining the War for Independence.  Their comfort level with, and application of, the lash was as strong as the British.  The British Empire sought to keep subject populations in control by using the force of their military, and their officers kept control of their soldiers through fear of the lash. And so it was with American officers.

After the founding, military flogging remained in force for decades.  Even Louis and Clark, who were military officers, resorted to flogging their soldiers during their extraordinary exploration of the vast and wondrous American interior (although the flogging is a rarely included—or noticed—footnote).

Using just these two obvious examples of the British Empire and the United States, we can show that flogging was an accepted foundation for military discipline, and those militaries, in-turn, were used to possess and exploit the resources and populations of conquered lands.  As time went on, societies developed, and subject populations became citizens, with a voice in their own governance.

But we cannot—and should not—forget the bloody backs of the men on which these civilizations were founded:  The men who labored, sweated, fought, and who unwillingly endured the lash for the profits of others.

Putting on a Good Show

We are really starting to get the conversation going here on WhippingDudes Flogging Blog!  I appreciate everyone’s willingness to open up and share their views on and experiences under the lash.  This is a topic that has had me itching for most of my life and I am glad to find others have the same fascination.  I am especially grateful to those that express their personal understandings of the touch of the whip to their bare backs.  The comments are ranging all over the blog—being made on older posts—so to help you find them, I have added a feature to the left-hand side of the screen (just under the poll) which shows the most recent 15 user comments.

Toughpaul writes about taking the whip stoically, in silence, to prove his personal endurance.  I congratulate him on his achievement.  For me, as I have stated before, I find that I strip off my shirt for the fear.  I crave the lash, but I do fear the pain.  Once I have been securely tied and there is nothing I can do to stop the punishment, I always wonder “why am I doing this?”  It doesn’t matter to me so much if I cry out, I take it as I take it (of course, the more I am flogged the more lashes I can take without crying out). 

The answer to why I do this is twofold:
1.  I want to experience the fear and helplessness that military and judicial prisoners felt when they were flogged for their offenses; to know what it is like to be the object of official punishment which cannot—and will not—end until the sentence is complete, no matter how painful.  Once I have agreed to it, I’m stuck—which creates the helplessness.  In short, the courage to willingly face that which countless men were forced to endure throughout the centuries.
2.  To put on a good show.  Through my years of watching movies that contained floggings, I have come to desire certain elements in flogging scenes, but I rarely find them.  I want to create the perfect flogging scene for me.

The perfect scene for me will not be the perfect scene for other people.  Some want to watch a man stoically take the lash and others want to watch the reactions on his face.  Some want to see a man tied to an outdoor post and others want to watch a prisoner writhe against interior prison bars.  I like all those ideas:  A variety of scenes is needed to create a good collection and I am working on creating that variety (that’s why in my scenes I wear different pants and we use different whips).  I also want to watch a variety of men endure the whip, so it can’t just be me up there.  I encourage everyone to film their flogging sessions and post them to YouTube—we can bring endurance flogging into the mainstream by force of numbers!

If you haven’t already voted, make sure to cast your ballot on this week’s poll before it closes!

WhippingDudes Poll

I have added poll feature on the blog so that people can vote on various aspects of flogging.  I will post a new survey every week.  I will gladly take suggestions for questions to post (remember to include possible answers).  Please participate in this week’s poll (“Which is the best whip to be laid across a shirtless back?”).  You can check multiple responses.

Flogging: A Guilty Pleasure

For many of us, telling people about our fondness for flogging is like coming out of some closet:  It’s not something you would talk about in polite society because we fear they will find it shocking.  Many comments prove that people are very careful when trying to find that first friend to share this with.  But times change.  Twenty years ago, cage fighting was unheard of as a legitimate sport—but now it’s mainstream.  Because of this social attitude shift toward casual violence, I believe the time is ripe to turn endurance flogging into a mainstream topic of conversation.

Because of my goal of making this mainstream, I tried to steer the blog way from what I felt was an integral, but not essential, element:  the “sexual” nature of flogging.  But it is obvious that there is a strong element of sensuality to this topic that just cannot be ignored.  I have to thank Toughpaul for being the first to openly broach this subject.  Because I want to turn flogging mainstream, we have to understand what makes us like it so that we can make others come to understand—and enjoy—it, too.  Therefore, I encourage everyone to make comments about any aspect of flogging that appeals to you—even if you have to delve briefly into the red-light district to do it.  We have all experienced enough self-censorship on this topic, let’s make this a place where you don’t have to worry about that. 

Nothing is off the table on this blog.  As long as comments pertain to the very broad topic of whips applied to shirtless male backs, they are all welcome (and it doesn’t really matter which posting you choose to attach your comment).  If I have to eventually mark this blog as for adults, I am willing to do that.  (What are your thoughts on that, BTW?)  This blog can become (and is becoming) a place where we can share the experiences we have had (or the fantasies we indulge in), and express the intense personal desire we have to pursue floggings (either to actively participate or just to watch). 

As I look back on this part of my life, I was always afraid to share my desire for flogging with anyone, for fear of them labeling me a freak (probably because I recognized that they would recognize the erotic nature of it).  For me, it was always the punishment aspect that made me seek out movies that involved flogging—that power that an officer or warden had over a prisoner to enforce discipline.  As time marched on, I wanted to experience and understand the fear and powerlessness that grips a prisoner as he endures punishment.  It almost seemed like it would be easier to explain a BDSM fetish than that—and would be more socially acceptable.  But I know better now.  So!  Let’s get it out in the open.

Shirtless Backs Ache For The Lash

Have you ever seen a shirtless young man running, throwing a Frisbee, or engaged in some other physical activity, and thought to yourself, “He has a back that just aches for the lash”, or “I’d like to see him writhing at the end of a whip”, or “I wonder how many lashes his back could take before he screams”?

Whenever I see a shirtless young man, my mind instantly goes to how he would look being whipped—and how he would take it.  Like OKLASH said in his comment to the Jan 12 post, “The ancients observed that a muscled male back was built for the whip…”, and the back of a fit young man simply cries out for welts from well-applied leather.  Young men cannot resist the desire to test themselves—that’s why so many play sports.  What drives them isn’t just competition with other men; it’s an internal desire to push themselves beyond their established limits—to create new higher ones.  Which is why they are perfectly suited for the whip.

If you’re reading this blog, you probably have seen the WhippingDudes videos I have posted to YouTube.  That means you have watched me, Buddy Olive:  Seized up and shirtless, writhing under the lash.  When I review those videos, I keep thinking about how to make my body better for the next session—I want to make the most visually appealing videos I can while pushing my own limits of pain and fear endurance.  My desire to show my audience a fit and muscular man taking the whip is what keeps me motivated to workout at the gym.  I still have a long way to go to satisfy myself in that regard, but I don’t think I will ever really be satisfied—which is a good thing.

For the most part, I have been disappointed with the flogging videos I can find—when I can find one.  The back-only flogging videos I have found all contain nudity or feature a fat dude (naked), tied up and being whipped by some sad dominatrix.  Not exactly an image to summon up the blood.  The notable exception is the “Chained Muscle” series, especially their “Corporal Punishment” DVD.  Muscular and/or lean-athletic backs are exactly what I want to see take the whip—and those videos did provide that, but I always thought that the men took it too passively.  Sure, I like to watch a man endue his punishment, but there didn’t seem to be too much “action”, by which I mean the videos didn’t provide a sense of dreaded anticipation in the prisoner—it’s almost like they took it with a resigned sigh instead of a genuine scream.

When I set out to film my floggings, I wanted to create something that people would watch again and again, finding pleasure in the variety in the different clips (different whips, different number of lashes, different setting, etc), and gaining an appreciation for the willful and authentic suffering of a man who strips off his shirt to endure the test of the lash.

Flogging The Blog: Comments

We have had some really good comments over the past few days, and they have been spread around the blog, attached to various posts.  I am glad that there are so many people as passionate about flogging as a topic as I am—and are feeling increasingly comfortable in posting comments.   I would like to point out a couple specifically:

Congratulations to OKLASH for his comment yesterday on the “Flogging As Entertainment” post (Jan 12).  He paints quite an image, not only of the scene of a muscular back under the lash, but of what a man endures—and why—when he strips off his shirt.  Well done!

Curious One also made well-thought out comments on the “Video Inspirations” post (Jan 18) concerning elements of my most recent video, Soldier’s Punishment: Flogging.  I am grateful for his rating of at 4.5 out of 5 stars.  He points out some of the weaknesses of the video, such as the script having the Prisoner pronounce “punishment completed” (because only an official overseeing the punishment has that authority) and the technical aspect that the green screen didn’t zoom when the camera zoomed in on the Prisoner’s back after punishment.  The problems with the green screen effects I had noticed during editing, but I didn’t want to waste the video and not publish it for some cosmetic problems—it was a good hard flogging and deserved to be shown (and seems to be very popular on YouTube). 

I have had comments both ways concerning the background used. Some liked the "dramatic" effect of the brick wall, while others have said that they liked the "erotic" (their word) black background found in my previous two videos. I am actually greatly encouraged by the differences of opinion coming from the audience on this matter:  While it does mean that I won't please everyone all the time, it does open up the opportunity to create a variety over time.  I have other backgrounds in mind—including truly outdoor scenes—so rest assured that your patience will be rewarded.

Video Inspirations

I left the post from Jan 13 at the top of the blog through the long weekend (Monday was the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday in the US) to see if we could get more of a conversation going—and it worked:  We have a few new people beginning to make comments.  I ask everyone to go back and check out the comments on the earlier posts to see if there are new ones you might have missed.

I especially encourage everyone to read Richie’s comment on the January 10^th post, “Discipline of the Lash”.  It is a powerful and detailed piece, and raises the important issue of the whip being used for behavior-modification.   I’m sure many of the regular readers will find something to remark upon—and I encourage you to get involved and post a comment!

I would like to thank everyone who has made comments on various aesthetic issues with the videos I have uploaded.  I have received some interesting input through the comments sections of this blog and the WhippingDudes YouTube channel, and through private messages and emails.  I really do appreciate the feedback—and have been working to incorporate those suggestions that I think will enhance viewer experience.  For example, on the latest video “Soldier’s Punishment:  Flogging”, we had the Prisoner count the strokes as they were laid on—this was not actually suggested as so much demonstrated by newlatigazos on one of his now-defunct videos.  We liked that element, so we used it—to popular effect.

I have received a few suggestions to have the whip laid on from both sides.  However, we are not yet able to film the whip coming from the right-hand side.  My Inflictor, being right-handed, doesn’t have the control for a hard left-handed application and doesn’t feel comfortable with the accuracy of a back-handed use with the right.  Until I can find a left-handed Inflictor, we are going to have to stick with a right-handed flogging from the left.   We do want to incorporate this aspect, but we just don’t have what we feel we need to pull it off yet.

Also, there have been several requests for what I call “dramatic” elements prior to the flogging, such as the reading of the sentence, the prisoner stripping off his shirt (or having the shirt ripped off), the prisoner being tied up, etc.  Because we are doing this for fun, and the current non-mainstream nature of this sport, we are concerned with how this might be viewed amongst our professional peers (if they should somehow happen across our videos), so we are proceeding with an abundance of caution and are careful not to have our faces filmed.  Some of these features (which are part of my long-term vision and would greatly like to incorporate) are incompatible with those concerns—for the moment.  Rest assured, though, that I am working on finding a way to incorporate as many of these dramatic elements as possible into future videos, while maintaining the anonymity of the actors.  Stay tuned!

The Lure of the Lash

I have noticed that I have been referred to several times as “the author of this blog” or “site owner”, which tells me that I haven’t done a very good job of using my name.  I am not ashamed of what I am doing here, so I did post my name in the very first entry, but have neglected to do so in any others—I will mention it every so often from now on.  I am your humble moderator, Buddy Olive.  Please feel free to contact me via email at whippingdudes@yahoo.com.  I get a lot of spam to that account, so let’s have the readers of this blog us a code for the subject line:  write TAKE THE LASH in all caps. ;)

In a response to a comment made by Richie to the “Flogging As Entertainment” post (January 12), I asked readers to ask themselves this question—and respond with a comment:  "What draws you to flogging?"  Mark, a new member, wrote a fantastic response to the same post, so I encourage anyone who has a real interest in this to go back and read it.

I knew from a very young age that this excited me beyond words, but I always felt that I had to keep this interest to myself.  I was especially struck by how much I am in agreement with Mark’s succinct observation:

“I used to find it almost terrifying if a flogging came on the TV and my parents were there - I somehow thought they would sense I longed for it. I used to even forget to breathe and then suddenly have to fight hard not to take a huge intake of breath. REALLY intense interest which has never gone away. “

Since I have always thought of this as an endurance test—and indeed an often unwelcome form of punishment that is nonetheless enjoyable to watch—I have always felt that nudity was inappropriate and unnecessary for a flogging.  Mark is spot on with this:

                                                                                                                             

“A guy needs to test his mettle - or pay the price - with his back, bared from the shoulders to the waist. Nothing else need be naked. Just the bit that is going to be flogged, caned, lashed, belted or otherwise "tested". In other words, just his back.”

Thanks to the internet, we can now create a community—right here—of people who understand this very natural desire to test ourselves and watch others get tested.  But it still remains an “underground” pursuit.  Mark closed his comment by noting that he had joined the WhippingDudes FaceBook page, but felt that, since friends and family can see everything he does there, he had to remove his posts to the page.  I understand his concern and agree that FaceBook is probably not the best place to enhance this community, but I wanted to create a page there so that anyone who uses Facebook that likes flogging as a sport can more easily find this blog.

Flogging As Entertainment

I was excited to read that an Anonymous contributor was inspired by my YouTube videos to endure a flogging for himself for the first time; he noted on a comment to the Jan 1 post that, “…man it hurt but I will definitely do again!”  I believe this is evidence to support what I have understood through intuition for a long time:  Flogging is something many people enjoy—they either just don’t consciously know they like it or are afraid to acknowledge it (even to themselves).  I have always believed that most people just liked to watch floggings (mostly due to the extreme nature of this challenge and peoples’ natural voyeuristic tendencies), but this indicates that with the right inspiration, many people will jump to the challenge of an experience under the lash!

Further evidence that flogging is more generally accepted than most would expect comes from a movie review I read years ago about Starship Troopers when it first came out (I can’t find a link-reference to the article, so you’ll just have to take my word).  The author of the article said that the young-adult audience, which had been somewhat rowdy up to that point, went silent during the flogging scene.  He was particularly struck by the fact that this was the only part of the movie in which that happened.  Of course, Casper Van Dien is a good-looking muscular actor, and watching him tied up shirtless for a flogging is enough to give anyone pause.

As we continue to build this community and to spread awareness of this extreme challenge, I thought it would be appropriate to create a WhippingDudes FaceBook page.  Please visit and “Like” it—and recommend it to friends.

Discipline of the Lash

Before I begin this post about flogging as a form of discipline, I would first like to thank everyone who participates in this blog by commenting, reading, and forwarding it.  For a long time, I thought I was alone in my quest to explore all facets of flogging, but through this—and the success of my YouTube videos—I have found that is not true.  We are a community, even if we didn’t realize it before.  And I am very proud to be someone who is helping to lead this community—and flogging—into the mainstream.

Mike had posted a statement: “Severe whipping is what we male animals need” to the Jan 1 post.  Richie responded to it in a comment to the Jan 3 post, asking, “…it would be cool to understand the psychological reasoning behind the statement itself. Is it because violence is the only thing men truly understand and discipline?”

Since I am not a psychologist, I can’t really delve into what drives a statement like Mike’s, but nonetheless tend to agree with it.  I think we can all agree that young men need discipline.  Discipline can come from inside or outside the person.  A young man without discipline will either become rowdy or lazy—neither is beneficial to society.  And constructive discipline easily breaks down in uncontrolled crowds.  Therefore, the application of discipline is in order when dealing with groups of young men, such as in a military or prison setting.

The threat of punishment must be backed up with the application of it.  The question is:  to what degree?  And that must take into account the circumstances.  Many military officers, especially in the British military, had a zeal for applying the lash to the backs of their men, believing that their soldiers/sailors were merely drunkards or brutes understanding nothing but severe pain.  And Southern sheriffs in the United States have traditionally used the strap ruthlessly to keep their prisoners working hard on chain gangs. 

So, from an idealistic perspective, given that soldiers on the march before an enemy often need to have their resolve stiffened and that prisoners working at hard labor will shirk whenever possible, the lash seems to be an adequate—and appropriate solution:   An officer can’t have his men languishing in confinement when there is fighting to do (flogging gets the punishment out of the way quickly), and a prisoner laboring at public works will not be motivated by the threat of additional incarceration (solitary or not), but will jump at the thought of another application of the strap.

Flogging Authority

In a comment to the Dec 23 post, “Military Flogging—Humiliation?”, Richie asks “…was there some kind of hand book detailing punishment? Who decided how many lashes were to be inflicted, and what kind of whip was to be used?”

The answer depends on which Army/Navy you’re dealing with.  It is my understanding that in the Eastern European armies of the 17^th-19^th Centuries, all officers had the unquestioned right to order the punishment of any enlisted man.  I believe in the British Army/Navy, that “right” was reserved for the officer in command of the unit, so subordinate officers had to “bring charges” for the commanding offer to adjudicate.

In British history, the Articles of War were the basis of the law authorizing flogging—but the upper limit of a dozen lashes prescribed for many offenses was rarely adhered to at sea or on campaign (and officers guilty of ordering violations of these limits were never prosecuted).  I remember reading that George III of England had once declared that the maximum a man could receive was 1,000 lashes!

In War and Peace, Tolstoy describes the flogging of a Russian deserter during the Napoleonic Invasion.  The offender was ordered to walk a gauntlet comprised of 8,000 men.  After the deserter had received somewhere around 1,200 lashes he collapsed and could not be revived.  He was taken to the hospital and took nine months to recover.  Once he was declared fit for duty, his officers reassembled the gauntlet and forced him to begin walking it again—he reportedly died with the first stroke.

For the most part, even if there were protections for offenders as to the upper limits, the soldiers were often not aware of them and accepted that the officers had the right and authority to punish as harshly as they desired.  The only choice a man had was to strip off his shirt and endure the punishment as best he could.

Flogging As A Challenge

Richie thought he had pushed me too far in his comment to the “Severe But Safe” post yesterday.  Not so.  We are a small enough community already without me blocking users.  This is the only place on the internet that I have found that lets like-minded people talk rationally about flogging without spiraling down into BDSM.  I want every opinion about flogging expressed.  People get very excited about this subject, and I understand why.  As point-in-fact, by expressing his concerns, Richie gave me a great opportunity to explain my position in deeper detail.  I appreciate his—and everyone’s—involvement here.

Richie also posed a question: “how about you telling us why or how you decided on taking up the whip across your bare back as a challenge.”   Answer:  I have always been fascinated by flogging.  Even from my youngest memories, I remember watching the Mutiny on the Bounty flogging (the old one with Brando) and being affected by it.  I wanted to watch more!  There have been some truly outstanding flogging scenes in movies, such as “Starship Troopers” and the flogging scene in 1994’s “The Bounty”, where Liam Neeson shows what was probably the most accurate dramatic reaction to a realistically brutal flogging in the Eighteenth Century Royal Navy.  But most flogging scenes fall very short.  I know what I want to see, but I haven’t yet seen it, so I am trying to create it with my videos.

Flogging as a punishment means putting someone under the lash who is unwilling to endure it.  But we punish people by incarceration all the time—and I would say that no one wants to endure that, either.  It is easy for someone to say, “bring back flogging” (those that say that probably want it more for the entertainment value than the retributive nature of the punishment—but that’s OK since voyeurism is a very deep part of the American psyche).  But to say that, it is important to understand what the “offender” will actually endure.  I cannot yet say that I am a proponent of bringing back flogging, but with each passing personal experience with the whip, I am beginning to believe that it could go a long way to easing overcrowding (especially for petty offenses, like minor parole violations) and would be a serious deterrent if some young gang member were humiliated by being unable to take it and devolves into screaming and begging for mercy—other gang members will think twice about facing that sort of humiliation themselves.  And by ensuring no scarring, he would be deprived of the “cred” that would come from permanent stripes on his back.

I have wanted to understand not only the physical pain associated with a punishment flogging, but also the psychological aspect of it:  The fear and desperation of awaiting that next stroke—after the overwhelmingly painful one you just felt—and not being sure you can endure it.  And knowing the only way for it to end is for the last stroke to be applied to your bare skin.

In having done this, I have come to understand that flogging doesn’t just have to be used as a punishment:  For those that are willing, it can be viewed as a test of courage (or manhood, if you like).  The problem I had, until recently, was finding someone who could—and would—lay it on hard, but at the same time ensures that no damage would be done.  When I finally did, this gave me the best of both worlds:  A painful test which is worthy of being called a "flogging" and the knowledge that it would be done safely.  Once that combination had been found, I wanted to give the world something that I had always wanted myself:  to watch a brave man expose his back to the lash!

Now that I have some experience with several different instruments on my back, my personal challenge is to see how much I dare to take with the different kinds of whips—it’s a personal test that I hope is enjoyable for others to watch.