(Not So) Silly Monkeys

Brief Notice

Addled by Paddling

Aristasia no longer exists, of course. It often gets termed things like “the lesbian spanking cult of yesteryear <insert gasp in standard YouTube accent>” or “that sapphic otherkin S&M club.” But what role did spanking really play? For many years (starting, as far as I can tell, sometime in the 1980s), Aristasia and related groups did practice corporal punishment.

They gave various reasons for doing so, as well as often conflicting images (at least online) of the role discipline seemed to play in the group. Might’ve been my age, but it was dreadfully hard to get a read on the whole thing.

Isn't Aristasia all about discipline and spanking?

giggle Not really. That aspect has been played up by the Pit mass-media and some Aristasian books, like the delightful Children of the Void have lain emphasis upon it partly because they were selling into the disciplinary niche market - well, they have to sell somehow! It is a part of Aristasian life, but girls who do not find it of interest can easily take part in Aristasia without encountering it at all (providing they are good, of course). Many girls who encountered Aristasia from other directions have found discipline a very exciting and rewarding aspect of Life Theatre. On the other hand those whose only interest in Aristasia is discipline will not make good Aristasians. Aristasia is much more than any one aspect.

From a Q&A about Aristasia posted and archived in 2001.

The above quotation hails from a rather early Aristasian site. It alludes to the group’s practice of corporal punishment as part of the “life theatre” events. Despite the admonition that it wasn’t a major part of Aristasia, moments like the above told me that physical discipline was part of Aristasia in some capacity, though. It had become associated with the group for a reason, something they had never really denied.

Aristasia, you see, was perhaps most famous (initially, at least) for the above-embedded documentary, though. Filmed in the mid-1990s, it is split into three parts on Youtube. I, naturally, suggest only watching it if one is comfortable with scenes of such physical discipline.

The documentary is quite brief and aired on something called the BBC 4, an arcane system of broadcasting video in faraway lands that I, as an American millennial, couldn’t hope to comprehend. It showed once, as far as I know. Regardless, the short documentary eventually made its way to Youtube, under the auspices of Aristasian websites. We watched it as a group in a chatroom together, and there was much discussion once it finally “aired” on Youtube in the 2000s. I included it on this site’s Kinemas page alongside others

If you watch the documentary, you’ll notice that it describes the group’s primary figurehead as Marianne Martindale, disciplinarian first and foremost. Most of the scenes within the program focus on acts of physical punishment. I showed the documentary to an unrelated (enby, actually) individual from the pagan community - they commented that the exercises filmed, at least, seemed mostly an excuse for discipline. And watching it, can you really deny that, at least for what we saw on camera?

Perhaps that was the choice of those doing the filmmaking, and/or perhaps it really was for selling to the "discipline-y" niche. I wasn’t sure, being young and utterly ill-equipped for such a tangle. I couldn’t, I must say, see the merit in marketing Aristasia to such a niche to begin with, either. I found their reasoning for the documentary’s existence peculiar, either way, even after discipline (of any corporal sort) had been ditched by the movement.

This documentary made in 1997 is about an Aristasia that no longer exists - and in a way never really existed. The vast over-emphasis on corporal punishment did not represent the way Aristasia actually was even in Britain at that time, but it was considered necessary in those days to overstress it for publicity purposes (without that "hook" a television documentary would never have been made).

Whether that was a good or a bad decision is a matter of opinion. However, Aristasia as it exists today is largely American based and does not practice corporal punishment.

The ideals of goodness and purity in an all-feminine world, of course remain the same, but it is felt that "discipline" of this type encourages a sleazy interest that has no place in a world of beauty and innocence.

From the description of the Miss Martindale documentary, posted on the Rosemaidens YouTube channel in 2006.

By the point of that (particular copy of) the video being posted, Aristasia had abandoned corporal punishment for the reasons given, and was indeed (as far as I'm aware), mostly Americans like me. Despite this talk of discipline being “overstressed” for marketing, though, as I’ll discuss, the history of Aristasian-adjacency to such activities goes back decades.

For many years, physical discipline was an undeniable part of Aristasia, and even part of Romantia and other offshoot groups, too. We saw it at St. Bride's School in the early eighties, and it shows up in this Sunday Telegraph Article from 1993 after the group had relocated to Oxford. But how did corporal punishment of all things enter the picture, and why?

My Perspective

I just want everyone reading this website to know that I don’t condone actual corporal punishment. Of maids, of schoolgirls, of whoever. I'm sorry, but that's just what I think. I'm not going to mince words about it. You're welcome to disagree. I'm not, I think, kinkshaming, because here, I don't refer to kink.

I'm referring specifically to corporal punishment as punishment, as such. I don’t believe it can be “purifying” or that it even works for providing structure or correcting behavior. Even in children, for heaven's sake.

I could be wrong; I’m not an expert, but the (actual) experts I’ve read seem to agree here. I, like most millennials, experienced the usual amount of corporal punishment as a young child, and I don't think it was life-improving, comforting, or structuring.

Many, many years ago, back before the Aristasians had abandoned corporal punishment, they would talk about structure. Corporal punishment created a world with hard, strong edges, and some maidens needed that, finding it nourishing and comforting.

I don't believe that now, and was confused by the notion at the time. I understand a need for structure, but why bring physical pain into it, when there are plenty of other ways?

Oddly enough, the one and only kind of physical “punishment” I can think of that I do think is pretty much okay? Those silly, silly (consenting) monkeys, where both parties presumably enjoy themselves within certain limitations. In the 1990s, the Aristasians derided sadomasochism and, like I said, called it "silly monkeys," insisting they didn't practice it. Instead, explanations like the above "it provides structure" were given.

There's nothing wrong with consent-based sexual sadomasochism though. It's actually much preferable to actual physical violence as a punishment. And? I get that some people probably find pain enjoyable in a non-sexual, sensual way, too.

And, as long as there’s safe and sane limitations, and all parties consent, there’s nothing wrong with it, whether in a sexual or sensual context, I think. I'm okay with kink (sexual or otherwise); but not with people actually smacking each other around and administering beatings as a form of actual "discipline.”

In what was said to be a roleplay (“life theatre”) context, though, well, everyone seemed to have signed up for it. That, to me, implied both consent and enjoyment, at least in theory. I had trouble seeing how that didn’t qualify as, well silly monkeys (S&M), aside from it apparently being not sexual, and yet there was all this talk of philosophy too…

Miss Martindale, the Aristasian schoolmistress (amongst other roles) who appears in the documentary, had something to say about this, speaking to Miranda Sawyer of The Observer in 1995.

Silly Monkey is the Aristasian euphemism for the Pit- bound perverts who find discipline stimulating. 'If you take the two initials I think you'll understand the people we're referring to,' giggles Miss M, coyly.

But your book refers to physical chastisment as 'thrilling' and 'vibrant'. Someone in Aristasia has been playing Silly Monkeys...

'I can understand people having sexual feelings about discipline,' demurs the lady. 'It's just a cruder manifesta- tion. Sexual, to me, implies something rather fleshy - whereas sensual doesn't. Discipline is most certainly sensual. But if you set out a punishment and say: "This is going to be a really sensual punishment," then it wouldn't work. The sensuality catches you unawares. You suddenly feel melty.'

Do you feel as melty doling blows out as receiving?

'It's not the same. The sensuality you get from giving a punishment is because you're submitting yourself to something that knows better than you do what's appropriate. There was once a girl who'd been really very naughty and I gave her six strokes harder than I've ever managed before. Something higher than me decided that it had to be a very severe punishment.'

We sip our coffees in brief silence.

'Discipline,' concludes Miss Martindale, in her well- modulated tones, 'is not chained to fleshy gross things. It can be an inner feeling, very uplifting. Enlightening.'

From The Observer, an article archived here in two parts (1, 2)

I myself wasn’t interested in much of this. I was young, had a burgeoning, ahem, appreciation for other women, and a fondness for other aspects of Aristasia at the time. Still, I found the discipline aspects dull, though. This was true even when they were framed as sensual rather than sexual. In neither respect did they interest me, really. I wasn’t disturbed by what appeared to be consensual roleplayed interactions - it just didn’t interest me personally. I was quite glad it didn’t feature in my participation in Aristasia.

Who was Miss Martindale?

Miss Martindale spoke centrally for 1990s Aristasia and the Wildfire Club. She held press conferences and appeared at book releases for their discipline-inspired volumes, like the one quoted above. In fact, I was given the impression that she often appeared throughout the British press during that decade. As an American, it’s hard for me to say for sure whether this was accurate or an assumption made from limited information on my part; even back then, we sure had a lot of news clippings about her to pass around, though.

MISS MARIANNE MARTINDALE is an elegant lady who dresses in the style of the 1930s, not just for special occasions, but all the time. Fox-furs and cigarette-holders are her everyday accessories. Real, non-stretch 1950s nylons that crinkle their exquisite fineness at the ankle and behind the knee. "Nobody makes them exactly right in the Pit." So Miss Martindale and her Aristasian girls have started another company to supply traditional stockings.

You may think she is rather unusual, but she does not.

 "Every one I know dresses like this. How else would one dress?" She smiles engagingly. Miss Martindale belongs to an all-female group which believes that things went very wrong in the 1960s. Her friends do not necessarily dress in a glamorous 1930s style. They may choose more modest 1950s attire. They may affect pencil-skirts or wide, circular skirts held out by a dozen petticoats, or just a plain skirt and cardigan which could almost pass as rather conservative late-20th-century dress.

But the point is that these ladies do not belong to the late 20th century. Their hearts and souls are otherwhere engaged.

In 2004, the Wildfire Club had a page called “Who is Marianne Martindale?” to explain in their own terms.

When I found Aristasia online, though, it got reiterated to me over and over that she was, in fact a a persona, not a physical person. I didn’t quite believe it myself, and can only ever see Miss Martindale as the woman pictured in the documentary. Said person (as anyone doing further research will learn) was the “primary” Miss Martindale, and likely the one to create said Aristasian persona. Still, others did act as Miss Martindale; that became clear after a while.

This has been confirmed by several outsiders, though - she wrote a small ladies’ column for The Chap magazine, and was known to appear as different ladies at different events for said magazine. At such instances, it was apparently declared that there were “many Miss Martindales,” and that the one most convenient had been sent. I’m trying to dig up a source for this, and will link it when I find it.

It’s also true that Miss Martindale (the lady shown in the documentary) likely communicated under other personae as well. I’ve absolutely no idea if I ever spoke to said lady in any capacity; I do know that I never interacted directly with a pette using the name “Miss Martindale” online. We spoke of her frequently, her legacy and influence on the movement. Even in its early days, she was not a presence within online Aristasia that I knew. It may well have been a matter of me just not being as deeply-involved, however.

It is not this site’s purview to dig into the current personal lives of personages involved in this movement, so there won’t be a discussion of “where she is now” and such, which particular online (and prior) personae were likely to have been her, and so on.

Instead, let’s return to the question at hand - what role did discipline play in Aristasia? Why?

Was it spiritual or religious?

In the earliest iteration of this page, I mentioned that I heavily doubted the disciplinary aspect of Aristasia had been present in their spiritual system from the beginning. I said that I believed it was introduced via the emulation of British boarding school life at St. Bride’s, because I hadn’t seen evidence of it in Lux Madriana, Rhennes, or earlier spiritually-structured groups.

This wasn’t true. Hopefully you can forgive my oversight, since the material I’m referencing here wasn’t digitized during my time in Aristasia. I have recently received clippings from Madrian publications courtesy Miss Starry of @Tellurian-in-Aristasia demonstrating that yes, even in the years prior to the opening of the school, whips were mentioned, so to speak. These occur within those past life accounts that the Rhennish and Madrian groups were so fond of publishing, describing, in this case, Madrian temples and the students who studied there 12,000 years ago.

The Ranya, you notice, has seen you, and so the three of you curtsey and are greeted with a sign signifying a blessing. Ags you walk on, you hear her say, "Well, Maia” my child, I do not wish for a student who does not pay attention to the words of her Ranya. So it seems then that you must speak with Mistress Sally. In not paving attention to my words, you are not only being disrespectful to me, but to the whole line of Ranyas that stretch back in time, and upwards to Heaven. For I teach you now as a representative of the Holy line of Ranvas, not as myself. I have had to discipline you once on this subject already this week. Obviously you have not listened to Mistress Sally either. Well, you will speak again with her now. Fetch me the cane- no, I will take the Sally. Now, come over my knee.”

You feel very sorry for her, but you know that she deserves it - just as you had that morning. All the other children of the class are very ashamed, but they are not so afraid of pain as the modern age. A little discipline, they know, is good, and although the maid just about to be spanked with a Sally is being punished in a manner in which children often are, despite the fact that the maid is to marry in the summer, they know that for a childish offence she deserves it.

The Madrian Literature Circle’s Temples of the World Part One, published in 1980

A footnote provides more context:

Mistress Sally is the usual familiar term used to describe any kind of willow branch used to keep discipline, from the little switch which stings intensely and stops in a minute, to the great Rod which is used only by a Priestess. A Sally is a bunch of willow twigs tied together

The Madrian Literature Circle’s Temples of the World Part One, published in 1980

The above couldn’t be more clear, could it? Strip away the temples and beautiful image of a peaceful ancient matriarchal community, and you’ve got this same notion of a schoolgirl about to be whipped by a schoolmistress of sorts, for misbehavior. The switch may be a super-special ceremonial one, but it’s still just that, isn’t it? This also isn’t any kind of abstract spiritual penitence, exactly, but a direct punishment for an immediate, in-the-moment indiscretion by the girl in question.

The thing is, whether or not it was part of the group beforehand, it definitely got turned up louder around the time St. Bride’s School opened.

Prior to the mid-twentieth century, physical discipline was a common part of British education, religious or secular. One might expect to actually be paddled by a teacher as a youngster, if one misbehaved. Seems odd to us millennial Americans, but it’s true. Media reports about St. Bride’s did mention it on occasion (“canings,” for example), but it was portrayed as St. Bride’s attempts to create that “British schoolgirl” feeling amongst visitors.

This was amongst the reasons in the (all too brief) interview between the BBC’s “Assume Nothing” Podcast and the (former, of course) headmistress of St. Bride’s School in 2022. She does mention her (earlier) spiritual experiences with the Madrians. Her discussion of St. Bride’s School and the discipline there doesn’t sound as if she saw the canings, etc, as religious purgative activity or anything of that sort, though.

The woman interviewed later (described as the “maid” at St. Bride’s) speaks of a religious ceremony involving physical punishment that occurred in a secret attic room. She then continues, though, speaking of the rest of her treatment at the house. None of her treatment can be justified with spirituality, but it did sound as if there were attempts to do just that.

The show’s host alluded to the Golden Chain of Being. This chain, a metaphor-but-not, connected all of reality, from the Highest of High, (Déa, Mother-God) to the lowliest of serving-girls, with power, wisdom, etc, flowing downwards through it.

When I was involved two decades later this regularly appeared in the lore and mythos surrounding Aristasia Pura, but taken as a serious metaphysical truth to be which one adhered, regardless of any awful implications. We did a ton of mental gymnastics to justify it, too, or at least some girls seemed to. Often, later, the term “Golden Thread” got used. It was rather reduced to “some maids just need to be told what to do” by the BBC,” but the Clear Recital (the scriptures used by these groups), paint a more complex (though not much better) picture…

Let the brother obey the sister, and the younger sister obey the elder. Let the child obey the mother and the husband obey the wife. Let the wife obey the lady of the household. Let the lady of the household give obedience to the priestess; let the priestess give obedience unto Me. Let the maid obey the mistress, let the pupil obey the ranya. Thus shall all things be in harmony and harmony be in all things.

Fear not the way of obedience, for in that way art thou wholly secure. Let thy mistress direct thee and thou shalt be led unto the perfect garden of Avala.

Ye rest in the hands of a mistress that ruleth in ðamë is to rest in Mine own hands, and I shall enfold you in the hand of love and keep you in a gentle safe-keeping. But she that followeth not the path of obedience resteth in the hands of the passions, whose wild winds blow this way and that, who giveth obedience to the demons of the wind that lead her not into safety, but toss her upon the storm. They raise her up only to throw her down and take delight in her anguish. The way of obedience is a safe harbour and a well-made vessel that shall bear the soul unto the nether shore.

A golden chain of love doth link each maid with her mistress, from the humblest of them that love Me unto the very Janyati of Heaven; a golden chain from the summit of the mountain unto the deepest depth. And it shall lift up each soul to the golden land of Avala, and to the yet more beauteous lands beyond.

A maid rule by authority of ðamë and yet obeyeth not; if ðamë be broken and her heart be turned to ice, let her be made the least among the children and be the servant of those she has wrongly ruled. Let her feel the chastening willow-rod and feel also the love of her mistress until her heart be melted.

But they that rule not by authority of ðamë, whose dominion floweth not from the love of My Mother, truly the gates of their empire shall be shattered, even as the gates of Hell.

From pages 62-63 of the Eastminster Critical Edition of the Clear Recital. Please note that the Aristasian version, unlike this one, contained no references to males.

Multiple sources (of note, Critical Apparatus to the Eastminster Library Edition of the Clear Recital, on pages 334, and several other places) describe St. Bride’s School itself as (at least a claimed or attempted) secular affair, too. It was meant to attract women of all religions, or none at all. That doesn’t mean that spiritual aspects of the disciplinary practices weren’t occurring outside of the auspices of the school, though, amongst permanent residents. We know they did, and now I know that this fixation on physical punishment goes back further than St. Bride’s School.

In the later years, during my own involvement, I saw only a few attempts to spiritualize the discipline aspect of Aristasia. This may well have been due to my involvement just prior to Bridgehead and the abandonment of physical punishment, of course. There was some talk of the spiritual necessity of structure, though, and the heavy implication that any form of discipline would be part of that naturally.

Back then I made excuses for this. Now, I won’t. This is not to say that I believe physical pain has no place in spirituality; that’s not my right to say, after all. It is a part of many traditions, many of which are quite old. While it isn’t anything I’m about to involve myself in, I do respect that some people engage in pain for their religions, but only hope they’re doing it safely and consensually.

Discipline, to Structure and Bond?

Reiterated over and over, however, was the notion that discipline (physical or otherwise) provides a lifestyle with firm, yet soft edges, often lacking in today’s world of baggy pants and drinking Coca Cola straight from the bottle or whatever criticism Miss Martindale penned in The Chap.

"Part of what we're doing in Aristasia is giving girls a place in a hierarchy and a place in our hearts as well. Those things that are lost in the Pit.”

Being able to trust and being able to love without being rejected. Anyone who enters deeply into Aristasia finds that they can trust it will be forever. If the girl decides -as has happened at various times - that she wants to go back to the Pit, then she does so and that's that. But if she doesn't, then she knows it will be for always and that's an important contrast when everything is so impermanent and fragmented in the Pit."

"So how is that created?"

"Well," Miss Martindale continues in the assured, well modulated tones of someone who understands exactly what she's talking about, "it's partly created through love and affection and the fact you're given so much time and so on. But it's also created through discipline and the bond that's created through trusting the person who's disciplining you. It creates a sort of magical connection. Nearly all the girls who come to us feel very strongly how drab everything is in the Pit. They discover in Aristasia a whole world that deals with everything from traditional philosophy to how you ought to do your eyes. It covers so much it's often difficult to know what to focus on in an interview. And it's all very fascinating. But, fundamentally, it is a hierarchy; it is about genuine discipline, not 'dominating'. Mainstream journalists do tend to get very interested in the picturesque side of what we're doing, so we do tend to end up as these funny little people doing something odd. And we are doing much, much more.”

A man named Roy Turner, purview unknown by me, interviewed Marianne Martindale, who had this to say about the role of discipline in Aristasia back in the mid-1990s.

There is also, as you can surely read in the above, the sense of spanking for bonding, out of love. The notion of that connection between disciplinarian and subject likely intends to echo the Golden Chain of Thamë mentioned in the scripture quoted earlier.

I’ve made clear my own stance on that earlier in this article, regardless - I do not find it a healthy perspective, and was relieved when it was abandoned. I am accepting of sexual or sensual S&M games and such - but not that kind of usage of pain for actual behavior modification. I don't judge people as long as they're not harming each other.

Was it abusive?

This section is quite graphic, and has quotations from news articles about legal proceedings that involved physical abuse occurring in the 1980s. Be mindful of that before reading.

A person whose name I won't mention has objected multiple times to my usage of the term roleplay on this site. She said, to quote, "the beatings were very much real." This wasn't something I wanted to believe when I heard it, but it seems to have been true. This is supported by news accounts, which is why I am saying it.

Yes, some Aristasian-adjacent and precursor groups did engage in physical discipline that pressed the boundaries of consent, and was what I’d, personally, consider abusive. And yes, there are accounts (which I find believable) of situations where, to quote the unnamed individual, "the beatings were real."

If you have listened to the final episode of the BBC podcast about St Bride’s School, for example, you will have heard a woman’s firsthand account of living within such a group (specifically St. Bride’s School for (Adult) Girls). This story is quite horrifying and involves terrible physical and emotional abuse at the hands of the headmistress of St. Bride’s, a woman known at the time as Miss Scarlett.

While I have many, many criticisms of that podcast itself, the story told by this woman rings true to me. I realize the podcast featured a lot of edits, likely for privacy. Still, I’ve known many abuse survivors in my lifetime. I don’t believe that she is lying. There was a rather well-publicized court case where the headmistress was convicted after administering corporal punishment to a maid at St. Bride’s.

Despite this, information about it didn’t show up online until long after I’d left Aristasian spaces entirely. This sort of thing would’ve given me pause had I seen it prior to any kind of Aristasian involvement. Prior to the 2010s, though, the world (and Internet) seemed to have a shorter memory for “small” stories such as that, though. News articles and such weren’t always digitized, and those that were made vague references to the conviction at St. Bride’s School.

Back when I was involved in Aristasia, the court case, and the entire debacle surrounding it, was shrouded in mystery. A lot of us girls seemed to assume it was just another incident of The Straights freaking out about “obscene” queer sexual practices, and perhaps hadn’t even involved a lack of consent at all. Weirder things have happened. There was little talk of it, anyways.

Tabloids (and actual news articles, which are still quite scant) about the case weren’t digitized for a while. Once they were, I felt incredibly betrayed by the revelation that such things had allegedly happened, yet remained unrevealed by those who did know about them. When, recently, it became apparent that, quite possibly, the true nature of these events had been kept from girls like me, I positively fumed.

Despite my lack of interest in paddling, I had (previously) seen Miss Martindale as (mostly) a stylish dominatrix (alongside Aristasia). What news reports I was exposed to presented Aristasian discipline as a rich, sensual and (most importantly) consensual affair. There were hints of cruelty in some of the fiction - but I wrote that off as, well, fiction. When she “vanished” as a persona within Aristasia, I actually missed the stylishness, at least, a bit. And now? I feel as if they’d been pulling the wool over my eyes. It really completely changed the way I saw the movement’s trajectory.

WELTS and bruises were found on the buttocks and thighs of a pupil of a school run by a group called The Silver Sisters in Burtonport, Co. Donegal, after she was chastised by the principal, Dungloe Court heard yesterday.

The court was told that St. Bride's School was run along Victorian lines and that the pupil, Ms. *REDACTED BY WEBSITE*, who was 21 at the time, was stripped and lashed with a birch for breaking the school rules.

Ms. Maria da Colwyn, the principal, was given a two-months suspended jail sentence by Justice Liam McMenamin for assaulting Ms. *REDACTED BY WEBSITE* on November 7, 1989. Describing it as a case of "irrational behaviour", he also fined the defendant £100, commenting that this would get back some of the legal aid Ms. da Colwyn had received. Neither the defendant nor the complainant was in court.

The court heard that Ms. *REDACTED BY WEBSITE*, who went back to England with her father after the incident, fled to the local garda station for sanctuary after being birched by the defendant.

She was subjected to degrading behaviour, her underclothes were stripped off and she was lashed with a birch by the principal, Supt. Eamon Courtney said. She had to bite her lips to avoid screaming.

A ban-garda who examined her found welts, bruising and discolouration on her thighs and buttocks.

Ms. *REDACTED BY WEBSITE* alleged that this was the third beating she had received and that in previous punishments she was hit on the top of the thighs with a cane. After being beaten she lay quivering on the bed, she told gardai.

Supt. Courtney said that at St. Bride's School even minor breaches of the rules, such as spilling ink, resulted in birching. Ms. *REDACTED BY WEBSITE* had been at the school for over a year and while she knew there were certain rules, the chastisement was never spelt out to her, he said.

He added that the fees for the school, as advertised in the English tabloids, were £95 per week and that eight to ten pupils attended it at a time.

Mr. Patrick Sweeney, the defendant's solicitor, said that within the community at St. Bride's, corporal punishment was used, and the defendant did not feel she was breaking any laws.

Justice McMenamin said he would deal with the case in the same way as he would deal with an incident of this type in an ordinary national school.

"Silver Sisters Pupil Stripped and Birched," Irish Independent, Wednesday, February 13, 1991, page 13 referring to Marianne Martindale (here Ms. da Colwyn)'s court proceedings in the 1990s.

At the same time, it did not fit at all with my experiences of Aristasia in the 2000s. I still have no idea what to make of that, except perhaps to conclude that it resulted from a different temperament amongst the leadership and group as a whole. If not, I really don’t know. I was decidedly not present (nor born yet) for such events. The 1980s are terribly beyond me. Anything I can say on this will be, de facto, based on the accounts of other people (even if they were aired by the BBC). I, of course, admit this entirely.

Please note that, as much as was possible, I've excised the victim's name from these (text) quotations to hinder search engines. After deliberation, I didn't alter the original copies, which are already available elsewhere in .png as well.

Was it a kink?

Fast forward a bit to the mid-1990s, though - Aristasia was often referred to as a group of “kinky” lesbians, though they resisted being called such. This question really just begs another question: what is a kink, even? I’m hardly an expert.

When the Aristasians said that their affection for discipline wasn’t kinky, they primarily meant that it wasn’t sexual. This gets alluded to in a quite telling statement from Miss Martindale to The Independent in 1995. She talks about discipline as an important and, more importantly, enjoyable, part of Aristasian life at the time.

”We live in a country called Aristasia. It's a feminine version of the Greek Aristos, meaning the best. Actually, it's a house near Epping Forest, ha ha ha." Miss Martindale delivers a finely controlled peal of silvery laughs. The press conference starts looking slightly uncomfortable. "Between three and six of us live there at a time. It is the embassy for the entire world of Aristasia, ha ha ha.”

The "perfect world" is a collection of six or seven Aristasian "houses" across the country, all similarly inhabited by "mistresses", "maidservants" and "girls"; all with schoolrooms, uniforms, lessons, and most importantly, discipline. "But we have no Silly Monkeys. Now you know what I'm talking about, Miss Millard," says Miss Martindale sternly. "Silly Monkeys. Think of the initials, ha ha ha. No, none of that. We live in an aesthetic world, a sensuous world, an artistic world. Not a sexual world."

Rosie Millard’s article on her interview with Miss Martindale in March of 1995 for The Independent.

I would argue that kinks aren’t always sexual, however, and those dreadful silly monkeys aren’t just a sexual thing, though. One can be a masochist (or perhaps a sadist, even) on an entirely non-sexual level. Perhaps this isn’t (or, at least wasn’t) discussed much (until recently), but it does seem that many people enjoy such play for wholly sensual reasons.

Someone unrelated to this once mentioned that, when it came to masochistic impulses, they felt that a sound spanking could be enjoyable much like a too-spicy meal. Neither was sexual, naturally, but both had an appeal to this person (I guess) for similar reasons. I don’t know for sure if the Aristasians felt similarly at times, but Miss Martindale’s statements seem to suggest that, she, at least, wanted that. Other Aristasians (whom I won’t cite given they were private conversations) have echoed this notion of discipline as sensual, rather than sexual.

Still, it’s pain; and if one is enjoying it (safely and consensually, we’d hope) - it qualifies as S&M, or, in Miss Martindale’s terms, “Silly Monkeys.” That’s just how I see it. And I have no qualms about it, I suppose. It just isn’t for me.

Even as early as 1999 (roughly the time I discovered Aristasia), there were efforts to downplay the discipline aspect of Aristasia, though it was still present. I was told that many of the books about Aristasian life had a (non-sexual) discipline focus for mere financial purposes, for example, as did the, uh, ahem, above-advertised 1-900 ran by the group. I hardly bought that excuse, even as a teenager.

Still, stuff like that pictured above could hardly make it less clear - someone, at least, was meant to find this arousing. Who? Other Aristasians? Customers, to bring in cash? I’m unsure, but as I alluded to before, financial motivations were often mentioned. At the same time that this was happening, of course, Avenbridge School operated in London, an Aristasian-themed school for grown-ups. It was a small affair, but did include physical discipline. All material circulating about it warned that discipline was not the primary focus.

Entering Avenbridge is like entering any other girls' school. Given the initial premiss of "roleplay" everything that takes place in the School is perfectly genuine. Lessons are real, work is real. Homework is set and expected to be completed. Discipline is administered, but the School is certainly not a mere excuse for discipline. Indeed, some weeks there may be no physical punishment at all; though a girl may bring a "note from her mother" if discipline is specially required.

From a 2004 webpage advertising Avenbridge School events in London.

Strangely, pages like this one both imply that extra discipline could be arranged and that discipline as a focus was frowned upon. Either way, I could hardly see it as anything other than a (consensual and possibly just sensual rather than sexual) kink at the time. It was deeply integrated into the concept of Aristasian “life theatre.”

People seemed to have signed up for it, and to enjoy it. It didn’t seem to be a prerequisite for Aristasia, but it was certainly meant to draw people in. Once more, I was not there in person, and have nothing to go on but what I read and discussed with others, but it seemed that way.

Oh, and one last thing. I’ve not been asked this too much, thankfully, but to clear away a couple questions I did get: I was never asked nor pressured to receive discipline in any of my Aristasian personae online. This may perhaps be because I am speaking of online interactions, but it wasn’t part of my experience.

Similarly, I was never pressured into any sexual banter or roleplay, either. While some of the fiction offerings on the sites featured ladies being spanked, my teenaged self yawned at those. None of them were aware I was underaged. They likely would have blocked me had they known, hinting at as much.

Today, still, people are treating Aristasia’s interest in corporal punishment as if it had been solely a kinky, consensual thing, completely ignoring the abuse documented in the court case and other controversies. On Reddit, someone with an otherkin fetish seemed particularly sparked by the idea. To me, this is tasteless, but given Aristasia’s aggressive whitewashing of their past in the 2000s and the subsequent burial of information about the court case itself, not unexpected.

Now though, when things like the BBC podcast with the victim's testimony are out there, it’s downright gross. Yet people continue to find these things (as they were practiced) arousing, or at least fascinating enough to emulate in their own games. One particularly thoughtless example of this? An Etsy shop called English Vice Canes is selling “Aristasia Disciplinary Canes” made to order for about $90. The shop proudly declares that the cane is made to Regina Snow’s stipulations from The Feminine Disciplinary Manual. So things go, I guess.

Abandoning “Discipline”

I don’t remember when exactly “discipline-yness” (as the Aristasians quirkily referred to it) was made verboten in the community.

The Discipline Question, a discussion of it on Heartbook (a sort of internal social network), was my frame of reference for it. Having found the post again, the archive suggests it happened in the very early 2010s. I’m judging from the time the forum was archived and doing a bit of math on the timestamps. Strangely, it feels like it happened much earlier than that to me, perhaps because discipline was already on the way out long before then.

I do remember some discipline post-Bridgehead in the later part of our time in Virtualia (Second Life), but that took the form of a girl writing lines in private and scanning them to send in. Allegedly (and I don’t remember seeing this) there were detentions held as part of Sai Thamë Lay College’s procedures, too. I don’t know - it could’ve been a private thing. I never saw anyone’s avatar bend over a desk, though, if you catch my drift. I guess that’s expected given that it’s a virtual world where you can’t feel anything, of course.

Discipline of the sort depicted in earlier, 1990s Aristasian materials simply did not feature. The core group, when they did announce it was no more, seemed to agree.

If it is a change of direction it is a very old one! Aristasia hasn't been associated with corporal discipline for over a decade. Discipline was prominent for a few years while Miss Martindale was in charge of publicity. And even then it was much more prominent in publicity than it was in reality.

A New Aristasia? from A Chapel of Our Mother God, archived June 2012.

So, excising it officially didn’t seem all that strange. It was quite a welcome relief for those who didn’t enjoy paddling, never had, and wanted to simply sip the virtual tea, hear tales of Aristasia Pura, and their spirituality. The leadership said that discipline was no longer part of Aristasia, and arguably never had been.

I was fine with the first part of that statement, of course, but the second seemed a bit disingenuous given the group’s obvious history. At the time, I was just glad to have it gone. The usual “it was only for financial reasons” excuse got trotted out, if I remember right, as did the idea of discipline as a longstanding Aristasian recruitment error.

This may be a weird analogy, but: if you have a plant in your garden that is attracting swarms of wasps, you might cut that plant down: not because it is a Bad Plant, but because you don’t want your garden infested with wasps.

If we have a running Academy again (which at the time of writing we don’t) I am sure girls who break the rules may occasionally receive a disciplinary assignment. Corporal discipline doesn’t arise online in any case. In on-the-ground settings it is not important. It has never been very important (except to outland media). It is quite possible to keep order without it, and in view of the wasp problem, much better!

Petite Sorcière, replying on Heartbook

The wasp plant argument made some sense to me as a participant at the time. If one has a superfluous plant in one’s garden that attracts wasps or other dangerous pests, cutting it down might be a good idea. This doesn’t mean that the plant itself is bad, wrong, or evil - merely that there is no place for it in one’s garden.

The core membership had concluded that “discipline-yness” (ie, the spanking and such) functioned as one such plant. It, they said, attracted bad sorts who didn’t truly embody the values Aristasia sought. Discipline itself might be a way people expressed themselves at times, and it might not be bad, wrong, or evil, but it was problematic for Aristasia-in-Telluria itself.

Someone in Aristasia compared the discipline aspect to just such a plant, and argued that getting rid of it would get rid of a lot of problems. Even a minor historical inclusion of discipline in Aristasia (by this point) attracted some folks who definitely were there for kink purposes and expected things like sexualized roleplay.

Here is an experience of my own. A certain person who was active in Aristasia-in-Virtualia for over two years suddenly said to me (when she was on the point of leaving in disappointment) “But don’t you get a s*xual thrill from physical discipline?”

I thought at first she was being rude. But she was serious. I said “Of course not.” – and in any case, what physical discipline? She had been around for two years and how much physical discipline had she encountered or even heard about? Precisely none. But this really is obsessive. These people have a really active fantasy life.

This particular girl was one who had never really understood Aristasia, and we often privately asked ourselves “Why on earth has she attached herself to US?” Well weren’t we naive? It was the old wasp-trap of “s*xual disicipline” of course – even though the whole thing was going on purely in her imagination.

There have been others who understood more than she did, but still have ended up unveiling an unhealthy obsession that was lurking under the surface. Big wasps little wasps, wasps that look like honey-bees until they start to sting.

Sushuri-chei, replying on Heartbook

By making it clear that discipline, particularly sexualized sorts, was no longer part of Aristasia (and arguably either shouldn’t have been, or was only ever superfluous to begin with), this was meant to be avoided.

At the time, this made sense to me, personally, but I’d never particularly liked the discipline aspect of Aristasia, anyways. As a sensual or sexual kink, it didn’t interest me as much as things like Raihiralan and intermorphs. As a plot device in fiction (see Children of the Void and other bits of 1990s Aristasian fiction), it was dreadfully dull. Even if it did titillate some, I never quite understood how it might function as a positive recruitment angle for a group like Aristasia.

Miss Martindale very consciously used the "discipline angle" as a publicity tool. If you look at those old documentaries, you can see very clearly that she is getting the media's attention by playing up the discipline (rather shamelessly) and then using the platform to talk about the very things we talk about today – Love, Innocence, Elegance, and so forth. That is what she is talking about all the time.

She believed that discipline could play a part in being a path to these things. She believed that girls who seek out discipline are really looking for true Order and Goodness.

A New Aristasia? from A Chapel of Our Mother God, archived June 2012.

Miss Martindale had argued at one point that BDSM aficionados deeply craved goodness, though they sought it in a perhaps misguided fashion. They thus made good Aristasians in the end, or something to that effect. This wasn’t a new argument, and I remember hearing it as early as 2002, but it didn’t make sense to me.

Without the “paddling” (and such), though, I couldn’t see any of the average BDSM folks showing much interest in Aristasia, at least at the time. Perhaps that’s an unfair stereotype, but I doubt one could “bait-and-switch” someone into becoming an Aristasian by whacking them with some spanking lore then piling on the philosophy. That might be why it didn’t work for recruitment.

People coming to Aristasia when it was billed as lesbian BDSM spanking were… expecting lesbian BDSM spanking. And there were quite a few of them over the years, who showed up as onlookers, or tried to participate, admittedly. Many online materials, long past the Wildfire Club’s publishing era, played up this angle. Videos about Aristasia got tagged with “spanking” and such regardless of what they contained, even when posted by the core membership.

This was true even in the mid-2000s up until around the time of Operation Bridgehead. Plenty of kinksters probably clicked around, saw us chattering about whether Puran mammals all laid eggs and about how great it would be to share a lay-college, and left, I expect.

I’ve ranted a couple times about how YouTubers with a purposeful sped-up voice and “funny” music overlays want to portray Aristasia as a sex cult in the more common sense of the term. That’s easier to understand, after all, and easier to parody, write about, and swallow as a story. Even back when Aristasia existed, though, people wanted to believe that there was, frankly, all kinds of lesbian cybersex going on behind the scenes (that they could potentially reach) when there really wasn’t. Back then, this wasn’t too big of a leap given the branding.

When outlanders characterized Aristasia as "S/M roleplay", Aristasians believed they were simply exhibiting deliberate ill-will and defaming us. No doubt many were. But what we didn't realize at that time was the extent that discipline of the sort Miss Martindale publicized really does mean that, or something like it, to the vast majority of Tellurians – whether they love it or hate it. We just hugely underestimated the corruption of their culture.

Having learnt this lesson – as I say, the hard way – we are now fully aware that discipline – in the sense of corporal punishment – is absolutely counterproductive in a Tellurian environment. It attracts girls we really don't want to attract and puts off girls who really need the innocence and goodness that Aristasia has to offer. And it does that because those girls know what modern Tellurians are far better than we did; and know that "discipline", in Telluria, tends to create an environment that is the exact opposite of what they need.

So we absolutely do not practise spanking and have not done so for a very long time. The only recent change is that we now realize that we need to be even more explicit about the fact that the "discipline side" of Aristasia is long gone.

I am using "discipline" here in the sense of corporal punishment etc. Of course, in the broader sense of harmony and order, of everything in life from purity of morals to neatness of dress, we still believe in discipline. In the sense of striving each to be the very best and finest we can be, we still believe in discipline. But we do not believe that should be achieved through spanking, which far too often seems to inspire in people the very opposite of purity and goodness.

A New Aristasia? from A Chapel of Our Mother God, archived June 2012.

In one comment on the post about discipline’s death in Aristasia, a girl asks something to the effect of, “If an authority figure tells you that discipline-yness isn’t permitted, what’s the disciplined response? Nod and say yes, pout and say no, or stomp off and leave?” Some people did choose the “I’m leaving” option. As one might expect, a small schism ensued following the abandonment of physical discipline as an aspect of Aristasia.

Often, the people who complained about Operation Bridgehead itself framed it as “Aristasia has changed and become too postmodern,” and did not mention the discipline aspect. They, rather, focused on other things, like the growing obsession with cuteness over elegance at the time, and the move towards online rather than offline communities. I also know that many of these girls were very perturbed with the growing obsession with Japan.

Nevertheless, discipline was the elephant in the room for a lot of conversations about Bridgehead’s aftermath, how it had changed the movement, and how things ought move forward, and with whom. Along with the general trend of rejecting “discipline-yness” in Aristasia, I also began to see a stronger push towards desexualizing the entire movement from within. Those who were leaving often did so because they found this more off-putting than the absence of paddling.

For a while, there were two Aristasias. One was made up of past participants who left and wanted to recreate the (somewhat) sexual environment they’d imagined the movement to have been, preserving the older material reflecting it. The other was the original movement in its most recent, rarefied form, with most of the same core participants.

From the first group, you had things like Rhonda in Aristasia, a particularly and blatantly sexual spanking story taking place in Aristasian auspices. It was written by Miss Easter Carncaster, and uploaded to the Internet Archive as a Word file. On the other, you had the core group’s Aristasia-Central site, which said “Aristasia is based on Amity: love, gentleness and kindness within a loving feminine sanctuary,” spoke of the importance of being “kawaii,” and didn’t have a stitch to say about paddling or arousal.

Many discipline-friendly participants tried to archive older materials as part of the Aristasian Preservation Project, which would acquire the enviable “Aristasia.net” domain name. This was part of the chain of events that would cause the core group to create Chelouranya in the end, a total rebranding of Aristasia as a concept.

Others were more blatant about their disgust with the lack of paddling in late-aughts Aristasia. I recall people posting videos where they narrated how horrible it was that, for example, the Aristasians had stopped selling books like Children of the Void and The District Governess (which feature discipline quite heavily, but are now available online).

One video in particular that a saw (I can’t find it now - it may be gone) featured a British fellow comparing their simply no longer selling the books to book-burning and censorship. Never you mind that the Aristasians were the ones who wrote them originally, and that an author may do what she wants with her own work, of course - lust must be satisfied, I suppose? Grim.

A brief attempted revival of the mixed-gender Romantia groups followed in the early 2010s. You can read more about it on the second about Romantia, of course. This was clearly men looking to bring about a sort of kink scene centered around vintage aesthetics and the concept of life theatre. Really, there was nothing particularly wrong with that - after all, we’re all able to freely make our own sexual choices. An Edwardian spanking club sounds just fine, were it not for their haranguing of the Aristasians for daring to cease paddling each other.

Many men found Aristasia interesting for other reasons, too, though - "philosophical" ones. The early 2010s were a time of growth within the neoreactionary movement. In retrospect, there was some significant overlap that likely went well over my head at the time. One friend quipped that the Romantia revival seemed driven by “boners and racism,” and this might’ve been true. I definitely did not feel safe as a woman within their spaces, given how overtly-sexual they became.

I remember one particular conversation on a message board or newsgroup which I’ve been unable to dig up again. In it, a man argued that in Romantia proper, the “district governesses” exist to spank wayward maids whilst their masters watch, so that it’s not as potentially-prurient as the men spanking the maids themselves.

I suppose that would be a tolerable story to sell on Kindle Unlimited’s “spicy” section, if you’re into that sort of thing. I wasn’t, and it bothered me how insistent they were that the Aristasians were traitors for “abandoning” such ideas. There was fanfic on Yahoo Newsgroups about Aristasia Pura having become a horrible dystopia where spanking had been outlawed, as well as other fiction just sexualizing Miss Martindale herself and Aristasia as much as possible.

One might argue that since the Aristasians themselves had eroticized discipline within Aristasia, at least early on, that they somehow deserved or at very least should have expected this. From my perspective, though, the Aristasians had every right to draw a boundary here, and to be repulsed by those who flagrantly crossed it or mocked them for drawing it.

Whether Aristasia was a healthy environment (it wasn’t) or cult-like (it often was, especially precursor groups and on-the-ground communes) makes no difference. It’s clear that the people attempting to preserve and revive the “paddling” aspect of Aristasia during this time didn’t know how far some of Aristasia’s IRL abuses went. I’m not criticizing them for having been taken in with the concept. When it came to sexualizing Aristasia itself, they ought to have taken no for an answer.

This page is (probably) subject to some updates in the future, though major sections I've had planned have been added. The site map and updates section both keep track of material as it is posted on the site. Thanks for taking time to read this page, despite its disturbing focus.