Choosing the words for humiliation

An implement can be put down. A word cannot be taken back, and a badly chosen one goes somewhere that has nothing to do with the evening. This is the practical page about the vocabulary itself rather than about why any of it appeals.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

Everything here is between consenting adults over 18. Why this appeals, and what it is doing psychologically, is on the need for humiliation, which also covers the list of subjects to rule out and the reason safe words are less reliable in this register than anywhere else. This page assumes you have decided to do it and are stuck on the practical question of what is actually said. The gentler vocabulary, meaning what you call the act itself, is on the words you share.

Why words need settling in a way implements do not

You can pick up a cane, take two strokes, decide it is wrong and put it down, and nothing has happened that a fortnight will not fix.

A sentence does not work like that. Once it has been said in a particular voice it exists, and if it landed on something real then the rest of the evening goes on managing it and the following week goes on thinking about it. There is no equivalent of putting it down, which is the whole argument for settling the vocabulary in advance rather than trusting judgement in the moment.

The three lists

Do it out of role, in writing, at a table, with tea and no scene planned for that evening. Both of you contribute. It takes about twenty minutes and it is excruciating for the first five.

The first list is what is wanted. Not themes, actual words and actual sentences. Preferences here are specific and strongly held and often cannot be justified, and two words that look interchangeable from the outside are not interchangeable from the inside. Ask whether there is one she particularly wants to hear, because there usually is, and it is usually the one she is most reluctant to write down.

The second is what is permitted but not needed. Most people skip this middle category, and it is the one that gives the person speaking somewhere to go without improvising.

The third is what is never said under any circumstances. Named items rather than principles. What usually belongs there is set out on the psychology page, and I would go through it item by item rather than waiting to be told.

Then read all three aloud, once, in an ordinary voice. This is the step people leave out and the one that catches the mistakes, because a word on paper and a word in the mouth of somebody you know are different objects. Better to find that out at the kitchen table.

The rule that does most of the work

If you remember one line from this page, this is the one. Nothing about anything they cannot change by tomorrow.

Anything chosen is fair material: being late, being idle, having lied about it, having failed the standard she agreed to, being bent over a chair at forty-three like somebody with no self-control. Choices can be criticised and then improved, and the criticism goes back in the box at the end because it was about a thing that was done.

Anything inherent is not: her body, her age, her intelligence, her accent, her family, an illness, where she came from. A remark about a choice lands on the choice. A remark about a fixed feature lands on the person and stays, and she will still have it in eighteen months, long after the rest of the evening has faded. That one test catches almost everything without either of you having to enumerate every possible sentence in advance.

At the situation, or at the person

Worth having, because it explains why two scenes that look similar feel completely different afterwards.

Humiliation aimed at the situation uses position, ritual and circumstance. She is bent over a dining chair with her hands on the seat. She has to say the number out loud. She has failed a standard she signed up to. The exposure comes from where she is and what is happening, and when the scene ends the situation ends with it.

Humiliation aimed at the person makes a claim about what she is, and claims survive the evening. It can be wonderful and it is what a lot of people are actually after, but it is the version that needs the lists, the rule above and a proper ending, and it is not where I would start with somebody new.

If you want the effect and the risk worries you, run it at the situation first. Position, ritual, waiting and being looked at, all covered at being bared, exposed and inspected, produce a great deal with almost nothing said.

Testing a word cold

A useful trick. Say the word to her in an ordinary voice, at the kitchen table, with no scene running and no build-up, and watch what happens in the first half second before she has time to arrange her face.

Heat means it is the right word. A flinch, a change of subject, a laugh arriving slightly too fast, or a fractional going still means it is not, whatever she says immediately afterwards. Trust the half second. Do it once per word rather than turning it into a game.

Tone does more than vocabulary

Beginners reach for stronger words. What raises the temperature is delivery, and the two adjustments below do more than any amount of escalation.

Cold beats shouted. Something said flatly, at normal volume, as though it were a matter of established fact, is far heavier than the same words delivered at volume. Shouting gives her something to react to and a person to be angry with. Flatness leaves her alone with the content.

Disappointment beats anger. Anger is a state you are in and it will pass, which both of you know. Disappointment is a judgement you have made about her, which is a different thing entirely and lands about four times as hard. Used carelessly it is also the one most likely to do damage, so it belongs late in the list of things you try rather than early.

Names, and the mildest tool that works

Forms of address are the most reliable thing in this register and the safest. Being required to say sir or ma'am, being addressed by surname, being told to answer properly and made to say it again because the first answer was not good enough. Nothing there touches anything inherent, none of it can be misheard as a real opinion about her, and it runs for an hour without anybody inventing a sentence.

The mechanics are on counting and ritual, and the version that runs continuously rather than inside a scene is at protocol and deportment. If you are unsure whether verbal humiliation is for you, start here.

How it goes wrong

Improvising, and finding something true. The commonest and the worst. In the middle of a scene, with the tempo up, a sentence arrives that is not on any list and happens to be accurate about something she is genuinely insecure about. It will not sound like a scripted line to her. It will sound like what you actually think, said at the one moment she cannot argue with it. Stay on the lists.

Escalating because the first thing did not land. If a word produces nothing, the answer is not a harder word. It is usually pace, silence, or position doing too little. Reaching for something stronger mid-scene is how people arrive somewhere neither of them agreed to.

Using something she told you in confidence. Anything disclosed in a serious conversation is off the table permanently, however well it fits the theme. Using it teaches her that private information is scene material, and she will not tell you the next thing.

Letting real irritation in. If you are annoyed about something from that afternoon, do not run verbal humiliation that evening. It is the one part of this where genuine feeling is audible, and she will hear it and file it.

Afterwards, and saying it in your own voice

Verbal work needs a verbal ending. Physical warmth on its own does not do it, because what has to be undone is a set of statements, and statements are undone by other statements.

So say it, in your own ordinary voice with the character entirely gone: none of that was true, none of it is what I think of you, that was the thing we agreed I would do. Somebody who has spent forty minutes being told what she is will take the ending she is given, and silence in that gap gets filled with the wrong material.

Then the ordinary business on aftercare, and a check-in a day or two later, because this register has a longer tail than impact does.

If something lands badly

It happens eventually to anybody who does this for long enough, and the next sixty seconds decide almost everything.

Stop completely. Drop the frame rather than softening it, because a gentler version of the same voice is still the voice. Do not explain the word, do not justify it, and above all do not point out that it was on the agreed list, which is true, irrelevant, and heard as an argument at the worst possible moment. Get her upright, get her covered, be a person she recognises.

Then leave it until the following day, when both of you can think, and treat what you learn as information rather than as a fault. A list amended after something went wrong is a list doing what it was built to do.