# Protocol, obedience and the curtsey > Continuous small obedience between adults: forms of address, standing, eyes down, asking permission, the curtsey. What makes protocol work, and where it stops. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/protocol-and-deportment/ - Section: Discipline - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. Nobody expects the small things to be the heavy ones. Then they spend an evening having to ask before they sit down, and find that four hours of tiny compliances gets further in than a formal punishment ever managed. --- ## In short - Protocol is a handful of continuous rules about conduct, in force only at agreed times and in private. - The form of address is the cheapest element and often the strongest. Fix exactly when it starts and stops. - Correction by repetition, the single word "again", gives protocol teeth without anything being struck. - Never in front of other people, and never touching money, food, medication, phones or the ability to leave. This is the quiet half of an arrangement between two consenting adults over 18. Not the evening with a hairbrush in it, but how the four hours before it are conducted. I was slow to take it seriously, and what changed my mind was how much harder people find it. Almost anybody can get through twelve strokes. Considerably fewer can stand at the end of a sofa for an hour and remember to ask every time. ## What protocol actually is A short written set of rules about conduct, in force at agreed times. Every word of that is load-bearing. Short, because protocol inflates faster than anything else in an arrangement. Written, because memory is self-serving on both sides. At agreed times, because protocol that is always on has stopped being something either of you chose and become the weather. Four or five items is plenty, and I would start with two. ## Forms of address, in continuous use Sir, Miss, ma'am, or a first name said a particular way. In a scene the address is one element among several, and that version is covered at [counting and ritual](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/counting-and-ritual/). Used continuously it becomes an obligation attached to every sentence she says all evening, and the fatigue of remembering is most of the effect. Define the switch as an event rather than a mood. Not "in the evenings" but "from the moment the kitchen door shuts until I say goodnight". And remember that a form of address is a costume for the voice. If "sir" makes her laugh every time that is a fit problem rather than a failure of commitment, so use something plainer or drop it and keep the rest. A second group of addresses works on standing rather than rank. Say "madam" in a particular tone to a woman of forty-five and what you have done is reassign her standing. For as long as it is in use she is somebody who can be spoken to that way and is in no position to object, and the effect lives in the gap between that and every other hour of her week. She is forty-five and she signs things. Tonight she is madam, who has been asked a question and has not answered it. It bites hardest on the people whose ordinary standing is highest. A woman who runs a department, and whose opinion in a meeting settles the matter, has spent all week being treated as an authority. Speak to her for one evening as though her standing were provisional and granted by somebody else, and you have removed something she does not notice she is carrying. Several people have described this as the single most effective thing their partner does. It costs nothing and takes one word. The range runs wider than that. "Madam" sits at the domestic end, faintly Edwardian. "Miss", with or without her surname, is crisper and more formal. "Young lady" and "my girl" are the sharpest of the set, and they work the same way "madam" does: said to a grown woman who signs things all week, they mark her standing down for the evening, and the gap between the word and the woman is the whole effect. Agree them by name beforehand, because some women find them demeaning in a way that has nothing to do with play. Surname alone is colder and reads as institutional, an office rather than a home. At the far end is the withdrawal of a name altogether, where she is addressed as "you" and nothing else. I use that one rarely. The other direction counts for as much. Being called by an ordinary first name again, in an ordinary voice, is how a lot of people know the frame has been put away, and some wait the whole evening for it. It belongs with the flatness described under correcting without contempt further down. The voice that says "again" without commentary is the voice that hands her name back at the end without ceremony, and somebody who has spent three hours as madam should have it before the tea. Ask beforehand. This is one of the commonest hard limits I meet, and the asking costs five minutes at a kitchen table. Somebody who wants none of it is in ordinary company, which is the argument at [do I have to call him sir](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/do-i-have-to-call-him-sir/). Sprung cold on the night it can stop an evening dead. There is a difficulty in the asking, though. People are more embarrassed about which particular words work on them than about the acts, so a direct question about a single word gets a shrug. Put a range in front of her and let her sort it, wanted at one end and never at the other. The vocabulary rules are at [choosing the words for humiliation](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/humiliation-words/), and where forms of address sit among the other elements is at [building humiliation into a scene](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/building-humiliation/). What you call the act itself is on [the words you share](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/the-words-you-share/). I misjudged this once, with somebody who had asked for the formal register and meant it. Surname all evening, which she liked, then near the end I said "that will do, madam" without having cleared it. She went quiet, saw the evening out politely, and told me on the Tuesday that the surname had been a costume and the other thing had been a claim about her. She had not known the difference herself until she heard it. I should have asked. ## Standing, sitting, hands and eyes Standing when he comes into the room is the easiest and changes the room fastest, and it reads to her as protocol and to a stranger as ordinary manners. Waiting to be told to sit is a step up, because the interval is unpredictable, and ten seconds is a long time when you are standing behind a chair waiting for a man reading his phone to notice. Hands behind the back, one wrist held in the other hand, is the most useful single item on the list. It changes posture, removes fidgeting, and makes a person feel formal from the inside. It is also the one people slip on most, which makes it a reliable source of correction. Eyes down is the one everybody underestimates. It goes into agreements as an afterthought and turns out to be the hardest thing in them, because not being able to look at someone removes your ability to read them and therefore to manage the situation. Use it in short stretches, and stop it altogether if she is holding a position that is tiring her. ## Asking permission Worth having: asking before she sits, before she leaves the room, before going to bed, before putting the television on. What those share is that they do not matter. The point is the asking, and the answer is almost always yes. A permission occasionally refused has weight. One regularly refused is a rule about her life in a costume. Never on the list, at any intensity: food, drink, medication, money, her phone, contact with anyone, and leaving the house. These are not matters of taste. They are the things that make a person practically dependent, and once they are in the arrangement she cannot easily leave it, which means her consent has stopped meaning anything. The argument in full is at [consent and coercive control](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/consent-and-coercive-control/). The bathroom is the one borderline case. Asking first can work as a formality, provided you both agree before it starts that a real or desperate need overrides the rule, and that going without asking in that case carries no consequence at all. How to run it without harm is on [permission rules](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/permission-protocols/). ## The curtsey Of everything here, this is the item people ask me about, almost always women, and almost always with a good deal of apology attached. The movement first, because a bad curtsey is a fidget and a good one is striking. Weight settles on the back leg, one foot draws behind the other, and the dip comes from the knees rather than from a bend at the waist. Back straight, head inclined, eyes down, hands at the sides or lightly holding a skirt. Shallow rather than deep, slow rather than quick, and silent. Then straighten and stay where you are until told otherwise, because standing there afterwards is half of it. Why it lands so hard takes a moment to unpick. It is deference made physical, which no form of words manages in the same way, and you cannot curtsey ironically, or at least not twice. It is antique, and being asked to do something antique places the whole business outside modern life, where the usual rules about how a professional woman in her forties behaves have been suspended. It is also unmistakably gendered in a way many women find difficult to want and want anyway, which belongs with [shame and arousal](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/shame-and-arousal/). The first one performed in front of another person is disproportionately hard. People describe standing there a long time before their body will do it, then a rush of heat afterwards that has nothing to do with exertion. Practise alone first until the mechanics are automatic, so the only difficulty left on the night is the one you came for. Then there is being told to do it again, which is where the device gets its teeth. One rushed, or shallow, or done with the eyes up, gets a single word in response, and she does it again, and possibly again after that. Nobody has raised their voice, and being made to repeat a small graceful movement until it is right is more humbling than most things that leave marks. Knees, though. A curtsey on a tiled floor with an old knee injury is a bad idea and repetitions multiply it. Put a rug down, and anyone with knee or hip trouble should use a small inclination of the head instead. ## Correcting without contempt The whole method is one word. "Again." Said levelly, with no commentary, and then silence while she does it. No sighing, no explanation of what was wrong, no lecture about standards. The flatness is what makes it work, and contempt in the voice turns formality into an insult that most people did not agree to. Repetition as the consequence is the argument for protocol as a practice in its own right. It gives an arrangement teeth with nothing struck at all, which suits the weeks between sessions and any period where [marks](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/marks-and-bruising/) would be inconvenient. ## Why the small things do more than the big ones A punishment is an event with a start and a finish. Protocol has no edges. By nine o'clock she has performed forty small compliances, none of them difficult alone, and the arrangement has stopped being an idea and become the condition of the room. A single dramatic hour cannot do that. > **The line, and why it is not negotiable.** Rules about how an adult may speak, sit, move and ask are precisely the pattern section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 describes when consent is absent, and no violence is needed for the offence to apply in England and Wales. What keeps this on the right side of that line is not intention, it is escapability. > > > > It must be hers to end at any moment, in one sentence, with no penalty. It must never touch money, food, medication, her phone or her ability to walk out of the house. It runs in private only. See [consent and coercive control](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/consent-and-coercive-control/). ## How this goes wrong Inflation. Two rules become fourteen, because adding one is always easy and nobody ever removes any. With fourteen rules she is in breach constantly and none of it means anything. Nagging in fancy dress, which is the commonest failure I see. If the real complaint is the washing up, have that conversation as two equals, out of role. Doing it in front of other people. Never, not even with friends who broadly know, because it makes her manage two audiences at once and a private thing she chose becomes a performance she cannot leave. The same goes for leakage the other way: an address slipping out at work is a real cost to her standing that no evening is worth, so keep the boundary physical. One room, one time, one signal that ends it. Correcting somebody who is ill, exhausted or upset. Nothing breeds resentment faster. On those days it is off, and the person holding it should say so first. ## What to settle before you start - The list itself, written down, with a maximum number of items agreed in advance. - Exactly when it starts and stops, expressed as an event rather than a mood. - Where it applies, and who else ever sees any of it. The answer to the second is nobody. - What happens on bad days, and who may call one. Both of you, without a reason. - The word that suspends everything instantly. Protocol feels too mild to need one, and it needs one. See [safe words](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/safe-words/). - A review date, monthly at first. See [rules and agreements](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/rules-and-agreements/). ## Variations Weekend protocol. Off all week, on from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon. Easier to sustain than a daily version, and it keeps the ritual quality that everyday protocol wears off. It sits naturally inside [a house rules weekend](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/scenes/house-rules-weekend/). Address only. One rule and nothing else: how she speaks to him while it is on. This suits people who find standing and asking faintly ridiculous, and it is where I would start almost anybody. The card. The protocol written on a card kept somewhere private, set on the table when the arrangement is on and put away when it is off. The object does the announcing, which spares both of you saying it out loud every time. It pairs well with [accountability](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/accountability/). ## Read next - [Permission rules](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/permission-protocols/) - [Rules and agreements](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/rules-and-agreements/) - [Counting, thanking and ritual in a scene](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/counting-and-ritual/) - [Consent and coercive control](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/consent-and-coercive-control/) - [Negotiation](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/negotiation/) ## Sources 1. Serious Crime Act 2015, s.76, controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship. [legislation.gov.uk](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/9/section/76) 2. Home Office, *Controlling or Coercive Behaviour: Statutory Guidance Framework* (2023). > **Not legal advice.** Where this page mentions the law, it is general information written from an England and Wales position unless it says otherwise, and it is not legal advice. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own law. If your own legal position matters, speak to a solicitor. ## Common questions ### What is protocol in a consensual discipline arrangement? A small agreed set of rules between adults about how one of them speaks, stands, moves and asks while the arrangement is switched on. It covers things like a form of address, standing when the other person comes in, hands behind the back, and asking before sitting down. It is continuous rather than dramatic, which is why it reaches people who find set-piece scenes hard to take seriously. ### How do you curtsey properly? Weight settled on the back leg, one foot drawn behind the other, a small controlled dip from the knees rather than a bow from the waist, back straight, eyes down, hands at the sides or lightly holding a skirt. It should be shallow, unhurried and silent. Practise alone first, because the first one done in front of another person is much harder than the movement itself suggests. ### Is it controlling to have rules about how someone speaks and sits? Between adults who both chose it, it is a consensual arrangement. It becomes something else when it stops being escapable: when it applies in front of other people, when it reaches money, food, medication, phones or leaving the house, or when ending it carries a penalty. The Home Office statutory guidance on section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 lists regulating the everyday behaviour of a partner as an example of controlling or coercive behaviour, an offence in England and Wales, and no violence is required for it to apply. ### Why does a form of address affect a grown woman so much? Because the right one reassigns her standing. For as long as it is in use she is somebody who can be spoken to that way and is in no position to object, and the effect comes from the gap between that and the rest of her week, where nobody would attempt it. The women it works on most are usually the ones with the most authority in ordinary life. It is also a common hard limit, so it belongs in the negotiation rather than arriving as a surprise.