20050305 State-sponsored Mistress

509 State-Sponsored Mistress

(Curtsey)
Dear Madam Rebecca,

You said, "you notice I don't ask for government subsidies to train males into useful people: I take the responsibility and do it Myself." What if such employment were available?

I respectfully ask You to spend ten minutes of Your time listening to the programme at the end of this link (You'll need to fast forward through the first nineteen minutes):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/noscript.shtml?/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/fooc
Now, reverse the roles, make some judicious alterations to Your official work rota, convince the Swiss that Montana is a canton (with a name like Montana You must have the right topography there!) and voilá; a state-sponsored Mistress!

Sorry, but I couldn't resist that one!

Love,

Nancy
(Curtsey)

Dear Nancy,

Sorry, but I would not participate in a state-sponsored anything.

Big Brother does not know what is best for us; he only knows what is best for him. No program is perfect and under any system some get left out in some way. But I believe in power to the people and not in taking care of the people.

Montana was named so because of its mountains but we also have what are called High Plains. The lowest point in Montana is 1,800 feet and the highest is over 14,000 feet. We have mountains here where it is 100 miles between roads; temperatures that have reached as low as -76°F and I have seen them as high as 110°F so it is a state of extremes and I guess I am one of them. But I am a self-sufficient person and so are most others in this state.

I live here because of the freedoms it affords. This was the only state to have no daytime speed limit until the highway patrol discovered they were losing money. Funny thing, though, they cited safety, but what’s even funnier - or sadder really - is that the death toll went down when the speed limit went off and it went back up when they put it back on. Why? Because as I said it was a no daytime speed limit. People drove more in the day time than at night, not near the drunks and not near the black bulls standing in the middle of the road. If you hit a slow moving drunk or a 2,200 pound black bull at 95mph then you have a problem so for our safety, big brother protected us and killed more people and took away a freedom. It's a bad idea to get me started down this road. I could become the picture book Mistress with a big whip if I was a state-sponsored Mistress and the House and the Senate would be really sore for a while!

Madam Rebecca

(Curtsey)
Dear Madam Rebecca,

I think the clip makes Your point. If it hadn't been broadcast on the BBC, I wouldn't have believed it. As it was, I checked the date (even the BBC isn't immune to April 1st. There was an infamous item on Italy's starving farmers following a failure of the spaghetti harvest).

I had a customer who ran a cleaning company in Zurich and now I know why he was so well-off. He bemoaned the state of their economy. Their roads were clogged with juggernauts pounding from one part of the EU to another, filled with goods destined for shops, none of which were ever available inside Switzerland. I used to characterize the town in which I worked at the time as, "It used to be a one-horse town, but the horse died." Nevertheless, to him the local supermarket was a shopping paradise.

I can imagine You sitting shaking Your head in despair as You sat listening. I know I did!

It's Mothering Sunday here in the UK. I don't know if You have anything similar in the US, but I'd like to wish You and all the other Ladies in the group, and especially the Mothers, a great day. May Your families shower You with the love and respect You deserve.

Love,

Nancy
(Curtsey)

(Curtsey)
Dear Madam Rebecca,

There's not much in the UK that's over 1800' and it's such a small and crowded group of islands the roads are never a hundred miles apart, though there are places where one can walk all day without seeing another person. The closest area to me like that is the Northumbrian hills, about an hour's drive away. We're not much ones for temperature extremes either, though I think somewhere broke through 100?F last year. More worryingly, Winter seems to have been abolished. We haven't had a cold one in years and my Wife's rose bushes have been in leaf since January, having last flowered in November.

However, Blake knew whereof he spoke when he wrote of, "England's green and pleasant land." It really is a stunning sight when one is coming in to land at a British airport after a fortnight in the Mediterranean. The country's just so green.

Our roads are simultaneously the most crowded and safest in Europe. The latter isn't hard when one considers that driving's a contact sport in Italy, for example! (I once saw three drivers reversing on autostrada within the space of a mile). As for the congestion, that's only too easy to believe. Speed limits seem to be 1mph more than the slowest articulated lorry. (Sorry: rant imminent!) I do know a policeman who totalled a cow at 60mph on a country lane. Totally totalled.

I see Lewis and Clark passed through Great Falls. I looked it up in my copy of their journals hoping to find something interesting - a description, perhaps - but it was all about the people they met and not much of that, either. They were great explorers, but I think their true spirit of adventure lay in their approach to spelling. I was surprised to see how close You are to Canada. My geographical knowledge of North America is appalling: we were always doing volcanoes and Europe - I could have written an amazing essay on the bistros of the fishing ports of Northern France when I was sixteen (not that it was easy to distract the geography teacher!)

Have fun!

Love,

Nancy
(Curtsey)

Dear Nancy,

Thank you and yes we have one called Mothers Day here later in the year.

Madam Rebecca

Dear Nancy,

We are getting way off topic here but you pique my interest. As I have never been to England I can not comment much about your island nation, but some day I plan to get there as I am fascinated by history; real history, not the 8th grade stuff.

Lewis and Clark stand out in history as great explorers because of what they accomplished. England had some great explorers as well: one group, the name escapes me, tried Africa, but most were killed if I remember and then there was the man who went to Antarctica and lost his ship and his name escapes me right now as well but a very honourable man when his men were concerned. Australia had a similar group that did not make it and McKenzie went across Canada before Lewis and Clark did. But what makes L & C stand out is that they documented everything; collected everything. Lost one man, Sergeant Floyd, to appendicitis, named many of our Western rivers whose names still stand. In the Great Falls area alone they named the Marias River and Smith River; they gave it the name of the Great Falls and described the area very well.

There have been many books written about these famous explorers but there is only one set that is accurate and that is the 12 volume set edited by Gary E. Moulton, University of Nebraska Press. It is an expensive set of journals and one must truly love this kind of history to justify them for their collection. These journals are transcribed from the hand written notes of the explorers and several of the sergeants in the group. They are very redundant, but give slightly different views of the same experience.

There are a few other interesting issues that these explorers were the first to do. It was the first time a Woman (also an Indian) and a black were permitted to vote! It was probably the only time a superior officer was shot by an enlisted man and no charges brought. It provides an unequalled accurate picture of the Indians before they were influenced by the whites and it provides a real picture of habitat and wildlife populations and health before whites influenced them as well. So not only can one learn about the trek but one can also gain an in depth picture of what the country and people were like before whites invaded. And what I learned is that whites get blamed for a lot they did not have influence on.

So anyway, now you know I am a history buff as well.

Madam Rebecca

Greetings, everyone.

Madam Rebecca, I have enjoyed reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose, and have crossed the continental divide five times myself. It is amazing what these men and Woman accomplished. Sacagawea had a very interesting effect on the men. Early in the trip when a boat was swamped it was She Who maintained Her cool and saved the day and possibly the trip. Captain Lewis was certainly a better frontiersman then a businessman. The demise of his life certainly came as a surprise to me. Not at all like 8th grade history.

I believe the Englishman's name which escaped You is Sir Ernest Shackleton of the ship Endurance. It is astonishing that he lost no men on his Antarctic expedition. Shackleton knew men must stay busy or they would falter so the daily routine was a schedule of chores in the middle of nowhere. Another good book is THE ENDURANCE by Caroline Alexander.

Thank You for allowing this submissive to contribute. There is nothing as powerful, or sexier, than the Female mind.

With respect,

Dana

Madame Rebecca may also have meant Sir Robert Falcon Scott, who did NOT make it back from Antarctica, but died a few miles from the South Pole.

One of my personal favourites is the Royal pirate, Sir Francis Drake whose journeys and explorations are shrouded in mystery and intrigue. (Kind of the opposite of Madame Rebecca's admiration of Lewis & Clark's documentation I guess)

In a new book called "The Secret Voyages of Sir Francis Drake" (I think), there is new evidence (ie coins found in what would have been native settlements, etc.) that Drake, fleeing the Spanish, made it up the Pacific Coast as far as the North tip of Vancouver Island. It's incredible to imagine he may have been the first European up in the Pacific NW (by quite a bit -- next I believe was Cook, in 1774) and not got any credit for it.

Oh to go back in time and be a sissy Maiden on an exploring ship ;)

sissyschoolgirlbc

(Curtsey)
Dear Madam Rebecca,

I'm aware that I was off-topic and I thank You for being tolerant. I promise this will be the last off-topic letter, unless I'm responding to specific questions.

Might I recommend to You the Folio Society? They produce high-quality hard-backed books in slip cases and a fair proportion of their publications is history books. For example, I have single-civilization texts covering the Egyptians, Hittites, Persians, Babylonians, Incas, Aztecs, Maya, Vikings, Normans and Celts as well as accounts of exploration from the likes of Captain Cook, Richard Burton and Lewis and Clark. I had a suspicion my Lewis and Clark was abridged, but they've also just published the unexpurgated version of Pepys' Diary.

If You like history You'll love Britain. It's hard to throw a rock without hitting something historic. For example, the company for which I work has an American Chief Executive and one of the first things he said was, "This Company is older than my country." I sometimes pass lorries from the Shore Porters Society, based in Aberdeen and founded in the thirteenth century. North East England isn't considered a heritage hot-spot, but there are two world heritage sites; Hadrian's Wall and the Durham castle and cathedral site, which rivals the Alhambra in Grenada. There are numerous amazing castles and historic houses, including Alnwick castle, which was the setting for the original Harry Potter movie, not to mention that town dear to the hearts of all Americans and the ancestral home of the original George W, Washington CD (County Durham).

I'm as proud as the next sissy of the area in which I live but, just to show I can curb my prejudices, the same could be said of much of Europe. Italy's wonderful and my Wife and I spent a week exploring Valleta in Malta and that's tiny!

Thank You for Your understanding and my next letter will be very much on-topic.

Love,

Nancy
(Curtsey)

Dear members,

Actually it was Shackleton.

First, First Maid Angela Brown has a very good story about a captain’s boy who becomes a sissy.

Madam Rebecca

Dear Nancy,

History is relevant in our topic as well, because it is through the history of petticoat punishment, first used in England, that I first became interested in training males. Travelling the world offers one a much better perspective of life and understanding of why others think or feel the way they do.

For example, I was always impressed with the beautiful artefacts that belonged to the royals displayed in American museums in the US, but having travelled to Germany and seen some of the real things, there is no comparison. People who never leave home have a clouded view of history, people and how life is. What may be considered un-masculine here is not there, which teaches one that it is a perceived idea and not one with any substance. Therefore there is nothing inherently wrong with putting a male in a Maid’s uniform and treating him as a servant even if he is Your husband.

Madam Rebecca

(Curtsey)
Dear Madam Rebecca,

For what it's worth, I agree. I think an appropriate quote is, "The past is a foreign country." I'm appending an extract from another, longer letter I posted yesterday, which might be relevant, too.

Love,

Nancy
(Curtsey)

Recently, I've also been considering some parallels I can see between sissiness and medieval courtly love. Let me explain. In the Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes, he writes of Sir Lancelot, who is required to ride in a cart - which, apparently, was a great and public humiliation - in order to save Queen Guinevere - and he wasn't allowed to explain himself. Later, he captures a Maiden but is unable to have sex with Her, as he is sworn to the Queen. The story seems contrived to modern eyes, but, then again, the average enforced Feminization story is nothing if not contrived and even the true stories of the likes of you [Sissie] and Auburn would be widely disbelieved in the vanilla world, I'd warrant. I've also read a review of an Arthurian romance where a knight stands with downcast eyes while the Lady undresses, safe in the knowledge he wouldn't dare look.

Although this is not sissification, there is a clear theme of Female Domination and male submission to a Female in the midst of rip-roaring tales of traditional manliness and feats of arms.

It seems to me that courtly love has some similarities with a Mistress/submissive male relationship. In both cases there is no possibility of marriage or even sex between the Female and male. The Lady is often married to someone else and She may have several champions, or submissives, vying for Her favours. Obviously, your situation presents a variation on that. Eventually courtly love was banned by the Church as it was felt it represented a real threat to marriage.