Humiliation

I think that humiliation is a severe form of embarrassment and that the boundary between the two is not clear. One girl's embarrassment is another's humiliation. She is embarrassed to show her bare bottom when being spanked, she is humiliated when she breaks down into tears. Her friend is so accustomed to bare bottom spankings that she feels nothing but the pain, but if she cries, then she is embarrassed.

My co-author Margaret Jane and I have examined this in detail in our story "Imagine". Each of us wrote an essay, ostensibly from female and male graduate students respectively, for which the set title was Should a girl be humbled as part of corporal punishment and, if so how? Discuss.

The essays are quite long but they needed to be, to properly examine the various aspects of the question.

Geoffrey Stirling.

I’ve said before that a spanking is like a hamburger in that there’s always a bun involved, and there’s always pain, represented by the meat. (And yes the analogy isn’t perfect as well-done is less red than rare, but still...)
After that, there can be any number of other elements/toppings that vary:
Is it an actual punishment or just play? Pickles?
Onions- tears?
Is it sexual? Cheese?
Role play? Bacon- hamming it up
Is the spankee submissive and accepting or a struggling brat? I don’t know lettuce?
What condiments/implements?
And a key ingredient, at least to me, is embarrassment. I’ve always thought of this as the tomato- because of the red blushing cheeks.

I like lots of tomatoes... turn the embarrassment up to 11, please. Talk about how the spankee is going to get it or has gotten it in front of their friends/family/co-workers, etc... have the spankee stand in front of the spanker and take down their underwear before they go over the knee; have them spread their legs; point out that the spanker can tell that the spankee is aroused, and make sure the spankee knows that it’s been noticed; think of a reason to bare the spankees breasts; corner time; even better witnessed corner time; even better witnessed spanking; invite the witness to come sit over here and get a better view; even invite the witness to feel how hot the bottom is...
None of these things are necessary for a spanking but I really enjoy them in the stories I read.

While in reality I would never humiliate someone intentionally, I have used it as a plot device in my stores. I've shown the spankee humiliation to let the spankee and the reader understand how serious their misbehavior was, at least to the person giving the apanking. I've also used humiliation by the spanker of the spankee to show just what a jerk the spanker is being.

While this is fairly common in fiction, one has to be careful in real life spankings not to go beyond the boundaries.

I have to admit a sense of confusion. I've always thought the two words were interchangable.

So, I looked up the words (I have to admit I think some onlne dictionary definitions are similar to my 2nd grade attempts by defining a word with the same word).

embarrassed: feeling or showing a state of self-conscious confusion and distress

humiliated: make (someone) feel ashamed and foolish by injuring their dignity and self-respect, especially publicly.

So it appears the difference is the size of audience. In reflection, what is strange is that I seem to have a lot of humiliation in my stories. Public nudity, public spankngs, etc.

Can anybody recommend a good example of stories with embarrassment, but without humiliatins?

I have had a role play where i over slept and was late cooking breakfast . I was striped naked spanked and had to cook breakfast wearing an apron only for safety,(popping bacon grease. After breakfast i get spanked again and clean the kitchen before I'm allowed clothes. low risk of being seen but still i risk.

Sounds like the perfect plot for a story here. You should write it.

I don't think humiliation and embarrassment are that far apart and that someone can humiliate themselves. The Cambridge dictionary describes humiliation as "the feeling of being ashamed for yourself...". That feeling can be quite self earned or unfairly given by another. In my mind I find self earned humiliation an important facet of the complex feelings of the spankee in their most likely earned predicament (over the knee). Many stories I have read clearly state the spanked is suddenly humiliated. Wikipedia further describes humiliation as "the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled....". In this context of self earned humiliation, I am a fan. Unwarranted and cruel humiliation inflicted by a third party for sadistic reasons is quite another story. But for the most part, humiliation is a relevant component of a well earned spanking and I like reading about it in that context.

In example, in one of my stories, a young woman applies for a job at a stripper bar where, as part of the entertainment, she is to be bare-assed spanked in a play on stage. As part of the interview, she is embarrassed by getting spanked by the boss in his office, but then to find out if she can handle such action in public, she has to walk down to the bar (to get the boss a drink), fully nude during a peak period, after having been spanked. This was initially humiliating to her, but because of antics and hyjinks typical in my stories, the bar staff walk to the far end of the bar, making her walk through the crowd of patrons milling about. It became more game and thus less humiliating when she finds when she gets to the far end, that the bar staff doubled back, making her walk again through more milling patrons (the bar is oval and centrally located in the room). This continues until she is running and laughing to catch up, and humilation and embarrassment are completely abated. There's much more to it than that but then I'd be telling the entire story.

One point though, is that I never used "embarrassed" or "humiliated" in the story and never thought about the distinction between the two while writing it.

Another point is she fully was aware that she was to get spanked on stage, in public, and therefore her humilation or embarrassment was of her own making. At least I hoped that is how it reads...

That she was a virgin spankee and first time public nudist was just icing on the cake.

In my story, Beneficial Effects of Corporal Punishment (plug), a teenage schoolboy is subjected to appalling pain and humiliation by an overzealous schoolmistress. It is high up in the Most Commented list and top of the Most Viewed stories on my stat’s page. Judging by comments received, the general feeling seems to be that the story is unrealistic but highly enjoyable. This is the Library of Spanking FICTION after all and what I would not necessarily condone in real life I offer to my readers as such. In most of my stories the bullies are made to pay for tormenting their victims (the schoolmistress gets her comeuppance in Part 2 of this one) so the reader can at least feel that justice has prevailed even if the punishment is not always proportionate to the offence.