What’s A Ball Gag For?
I don’t fully agree with this — there’s a strong sexy visual aspect to a woman in a ball gag, and there’s much to be said in favor of forestalling protests and complaints — but I like the reasoning here:
I am a word slut. This is no great insight for a sexblogger, but I’ve been thinking about this since the other week when TheGirl and I went to look at sex toys. She pointed to a display and asked, in a casual tone, “What do you think of ball gags?”
“Not really interested – I like words.”
…
So, glancing at a ball gag hanging on the wall, the first thing I thought was: huh, why would anyone want to stop a sub from letting their tongue get them into trouble?
Offhand, there are a lot of people (myself included) whose primary method of controlling the world around them (or at least fostering the illusion that I have some sort of control) is through words.
For those sorts of people, a gag of some sort is almost required. Unless you can shut them up, they’ll still believe (even after repeated failures!) that they can still control things as long as they can talk.
Gagging them removes their most effective means of controlling the situation, and makes them feel helpless in a way bondage doesn’t. Of course, it’s all mental — there’s no difference between a spoken safeword and one signled with fingersnaps or whatnot — but there’s a huge mental one.