R is for Riding Crop Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey 018 - a podcast by Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey - A to Z of Sex

Hi everyone! Welcome to the A to Z of Sex. I’m Dr Lori Beth and I am your host. We are working our way through the erotic alphabet one letter at a time. Just a reminder this podcast deals with adult content, so if you don’t have total privacy, you might want to put on your headphones. Today the letter is R and R is for Riding Crop (and other impact toys).
I believe that impact play is the most accessible way to test out the boundary between pleasure and pain. The implements used for impact play can range from a bare hand to a bull whip. One of the earliest depictions of erotic flagellation (whipping or spanking) is in the Etruscan Tomb of the Whipping from the 5th century BC which was named after the images in the tomb.
10 to 25% of the population enjoy engaging in sexual practices that involve a combination of pleasure and pain.
Victorian erotic literature is filled with spanking and flagellation scenes and images abound in Victorian erotic images and art. Many well known people enjoy erotic spankings and often this is not discovered until after death.
Neuroscience doesn’t yet have an adequate explanation as to why erotic pain can be experienced as a pleasure but, writing in Psychology Today, Dr David Linden suggests that the best theory likens this to the pain enjoyed when eating foods with chilli peppers. He points out that people who are born into cultures where these are a large part of the food still reject chilli as babies but at about age 5 they will develop a taste for them. He highlights that rats cannot be trained to choose food with chili peppers in them. So it appears that there is a human predisposition to find certain kinds of pain pleasurable and when this is combined with various life experiences, the result is enjoyment from certain types of pain (like impact play). This then prompts the brain to modify the neural circuits and forge the neural connections between pleasure and pain.
Practically, there are two main types of impact sensation: thud and sting. Some people also talk about thump. If we think about these in terms of music, thud would be at the base end and sting would be at the treble end.
Thud tends to be a deep penetrating sensation. Thud strikes are felt deeper in the body – in the muscles, sometimes the bones rather than in the skin. Marks produced are red, bright pink and deep bruises that often don’t show up until a day or so after the experience. Instruments that produce thud include paddles, the hand, closed fist, feet, heavy floggers (made out of bull hide, buffalo hide for example).
Sting tends to be piercing, stinging, narrow line of pain, felt in the skin primarily. Things that produce sting include bull whips, lashes, cat-o-nine tails, canes, birch rods. Marks can be wheals, bleeding cuts, stripes.
Some instruments can provide a combination of sting and thud. Riding crops fall into this category in my opinion. The end of the crop creates a more thuddy sensation but the hard shaft is very stingy. The hand can bring great thud initially but when used to hit someone quickly, can have a really stinging effect. In my opinion, the most sting is created by switches and canes, followed by whips.
Some people distinguish between thud from a heavy rigid object like a paddle and thump from a heavy flexible object like a sjambok. Sjambok’s are some of the most intense thuds in my opinion with an added quick sting at the end.
People often have a preference for thud or sting. Some people can tolerate lots of sting but cannot manage the softest of floggers. Others can manage thud but find it impossible to take even a light strike with a crop.
Slow warm ups make it possible for a person to gradually accommodate to the pain until endorphins are released and it becomes incredibly pleasurable. The endorphin high from an erotic beating can be likened to runners’ high or even the high from some drugs.
Quick intense beatings with no warm up are often incredibly...

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