Question for our American members.

Of course, it's equally possible for a spanko-dominant wife to employ her husband's own leather belt on his bare bottom, especially since an initial step in exposing the posterior of someone wearing a belt would be at least unbuckling and loosening it--quickly pulling it free from the loops in the pants would be a natural process after that, and to a person accustomed to being strapped with a belt, that sliding sound could be highly unnerving.

These days, males having their own hairbrushes (due to longer masculine hair styles being popular) and females wearing their own leather belts (due to pants being acceptable feminine clothing) means that a husband/boyfriend could be spanked with his own brush and a wife/girlfriend with her own belt, although the traditional associations still seemingly do linger among spankophiles.

One key advantage of a hairbrush is that it generally can be left out in the open in various rooms of a house, as a reminder/symbol of its owner's disciplinary authority, without appearing to be particularly out of place from the perspective of visitors. A leather belt laying on the coffee table in the living room, however, might raise some eyebrows even on the part of 'vanilla' guests...

--C.K.

Brosse6
Certainly in the 1970s the polished wooden back of a upmarket mason pearson ladies hairbrush was a very commonly used spanking implement in British families.

In two words.....
No
Yes.

Referring back to the post on the different meanings of "fanny" in American and British English, also like to point out that Americans use the words "tail" and "ass" to mean both the buttocks and having sexual intercourse. The phrase is "getting a piece of tail" (or ass). Does not refer to anal intercourse which would at least make sense, but regular fucking!

A traditional Limey culinary delicacy that is sold in supermarkets mainly around South Wales and South-West England, and which raises American eyebrows is, "Mr Brain's Faggots", which are in fact meatballs in gravy and come in a six pack.

Google "Mr Brain's Faggots" if you have not heard of them.

How well they would sell in San Francisco I have no idea?

Brosse6
A traditional Limey culinary delicacy that is sold in supermarkets mainly around South Wales and South-West England, and which raises American eyebrows is, "Mr Brain's Faggots", which are in fact meatballs in gravy and come in a six pack.

Google "Mr Brain's Faggots" if you have not heard of them.

How well they would sell in San Francisco I have no idea?
============================
I've not heard of them, perhaps because I live in the north of England. But I googled them and they are real and apparently sold in Sainsbury's. Faggots was a common term for meatballs when I was a kid in the 1970s but doesn't seem to be used anymore. A faggot could be also something that put on a fire to help it burn better. Never heard it used for that for ages.

A fag could be a cigarette in the 70s; never heard that use for ages. Or a kind of pupil that prefects at public (UK exclusive private boarding school) schools used as a servant to do jobs, such as cleaning shoes, ironing shirts or toasting muffins and they could cane whenever they felt like it. Sometimes a prefect had a personal fag allocated to them for jobs and to cane if said jobs were not done completely to satisfaction. As I just went to a ordinary state school I have only read about this in novels and stories.

Of course from watching American tv and films I (especially old 1970s police dramas like Kojak) I know what faggots and fag mean in America.

Brosse6
I once had a German girlfriend who referred to her butt as her Popo. She wanted a lot of attention paid to her Popo.

@markuk - The Brits I know in France who smoke still call a cigarette a "fag" and they range from their 30s to 80s.

I don't know for certain but I believe the old fagging system in places like Eton and Harrow no longer happens, or if it does it is not the same brutal Master-Slave relationship it once was.

One explanation for faggot as meaning homosexual was that in the Middle Ages when witches were burned at the stake gay men were used as kindling, tied up and set afire at the foot of the stake to "make a flame foul enough to burn a witch in."
No idea whether this has a basis in actual scholarship or not.

It appears the origin of the word fag for homosexual is unknown, but is first recorded in the US around 1914. It was used to describe old women in 16th C England.

When the term is used for British cigarettes it is believe to come from its original meaning of a bound collection of sticks that you light.