Fraternity Alpha Series, Chapter Two: Birthday Parties

Apparently Cody’s repeat customers could ask for some additional services, since they were demonstrably not law enforcement, could be relied upon to keep appointments and knew how to behave. There still wouldn’t be any sex as such. Make do and mend.

In the postal mailed instructions, Cody suggested that Amy read up on fraternity hazing, preferably under a private browser window. It was like having homework, only more fun.

Hazing was about making people feel mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment or ridicule. Those were obviously very bad things. Except as consensual kinks. Only legitimate authorities were allowed to do bad things to people for reasons that societies agreed were a positive good. For instance: punishing prisoners or training people in the military. Otherwise, threats of pain and embarrassment were tools for scaring people into behaving.

The fraternity paddle was a far more loaded symbol than Amy had realized. And yes, a paddle could be a piece of wood and a symbol freighted with dark history at the same time. The “peculiar institution” had borrowed the sailor’s barrel stave—which required less skill and did less damage than a bullwhip—and refined it. From there, the paddle had spread throughout US society and was still used to punish school kids in the more retrograde states.

Other parts of the world had their own favorite historical tools of discipline, like the cane in the UK (replacing the birch) and the martinet in France. Amy was glad that she was finding all of this...