Scene from Fifty Shades of Grey
Tea and Spanking: a sex-positive, kink-positive, tea-positive place

Anger (and other deadly sins…)

When it comes to sinning, I reckon I’m halfway there. Of the seven deadly sins (made famous by Dante’s Divine Comedy and that movie with – spoiler! – Brad Pitt’s wife’s head in a box), there are three that I regularly indulge in, three that I don’t and one that I’m not really sure about. Pride? Do I do that? Is that even a sin, do we think? (“Hey, you got your degree, you should be really proud of yourself.” “Thanks, I am.” “SINNER!”)

There’s quite a bit of weird shit in Dante’s books, to be fair

Gluttony, lust and sloth are all key motivators in my life. The importance of each of these things switches around depending on the time of day (and time of month, come to think of it) but generally if you need someone who is an expert in eating too much, having sex (sometimes even with other people) and twatting about on the internet for hours on end to no productive purpose, well then I am your woman. (Slothfulness is so much easier these days than in Dante’s time. They probably didn’t even have Cracked.com in the fourteenth century.)

On the other hand, envy, avarice and anger aren’t really my thing at all. Maybe all the snacking and web browsing and wanking distracts me from furiously coveting my neighbour’s possessions and trying to achieve my dream of diving into massive piles of wealth like Scrooge McDuck. Sloth and avarice aren’t really compatible bedfellows, anyway.

I do occasionally get angry. Not necessarily about the right things, mind. I feel like I am always banging on about my depression here, but as I am sure many of you know, ‘sadness’ isn’t the only emotion associated with depression. Most of the time, depression robs you of feeling any emotion at all. Sometimes, however, it can make you feel angry for no good reason. I was flicking through one of those free magazines you get at the supermarket a few weeks ago and every single thing in it made me ridiculously bloody furious. All these products are stupid! All this food looks horrible! None of it should exist! Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Puddles? Fuck the fuck off.

Becoming incandescent with rage about the existence of a confectionery product is not something that guides to ‘Living with Depression’ necessarily warn you about.

Usually, though my anger levels never really rise feeling a bit miffed. Any disgruntlement usually passes pretty quickly.

Anger is a common theme in spanky romance books, of course. Romantic heroes and heroines usually have a lot of issues and misunderstandings and conflict to work through before they can reach their happily ever afters so it’s no wonder that tempers can get a bit frayed along the way.

It’s an interesting subject to tackle because as any responsible adherent to a BDSM or Domestic Discipline lifestyle knows, anger and spanking really shouldn’t mix. It’s perfectly fine to punish but if you go around hitting people in anger then that’s when things can get awkward. It’s the sort of thing that is embroidered onto a sampler and hung on the walls of BDSM clubs.

Or would be. If I were in charge of a BDSM club.

Although anger isn’t a good mix with spanking scenarios, there are of course other sins available. And some of them fit very well indeed. Well maybe not gluttony – that sort of thing can lead to indigestion. And slothfulness isn’t a terribly good fit either. There needs to be a certain amount of effort expended in a good spanking.

Lust, on the other hand? There’s a sin which fits with spanking very nicely indeed.

Fifty Shades of Grey managed to combine spanking with a whole bunch of sins that Dante had never even thought of.
Appallingly bad film-making for one.