Flogger

What is a flogger?

A flogger (in Dutch strokenzweep, though nearly everyone in the scene says flogger) is an impact tool with two or more supple tails on a handle, usually leather. The material, the thickness and the shape of the ends decide how the blow sounds and how hard it lands. Usable ones have tails of thirty to sixty centimeters.

How a flogger spreads its blow

Across many tails at once, and that is where the whole difference sits.

The encyclopedia splits the two families cleanly. A whip has exactly one long tail on a handle, a scourge or flogger has two or more. Those tails can be leather, but also rubber, rope, shoelaces or small chains. What the blow does, according to that same source, depends on the material, the thickness and the shape of the ends.

Impact is often split into stingy and thuddy. The encyclopedia describes stingy tools, like a rattan cane, as a sharp, fast, burning sensation that stays mostly on the skin, and thuddy tools, like a wooden paddle, as something that reaches deeper into the tissue. The heavier the tool, the more thuddy it is. A flogger does not sit fixed in one spot on that scale. A light suede flogger falls on the thuddy side, and a heavy one of hard leather with knotted ends can bite quite a bit.

Why people choose a flogger

Because with the same tool you can start very small and build up later. The tails drag across the skin on a short swing, and force only comes into it once the swing grows. If you want to spread the blow over a broad area instead of drawing a stripe, you choose a flogger.

Material and weight decide how hard a flogger lands, not the shape of the tool. So it is not gentle by default.

What to watch out for

Stay off the bones. The encyclopedia recommends carefully avoiding the tailbone and the hip bones with any impact. With a flogger that is harder than it sounds, because the ends fan out further than where you aim.

Pick the length to match your experience. The longer the tails, the more practice you need to land the tool where you mean to. And run a new flogger through your hand once. Knots, hard edges and metal fittings at the ends change the tool completely, even when it looks soft.

On a BDSM date I like to use a flogger to build up slowly, from dragging across the skin to real blows.

Sources

• Zweep. Wikipedia. Provides the distinction between a whip with exactly one tail and a scourge or flogger with two or more, the materials leather, rubber, rope, shoelaces and small chains, the tail length of thirty to sixty centimeters on usable ones, the finding that material, thickness and the shape of the ends decide the sound and the hardness, and the rule that longer tails ask for more practice.
• Erotic spanking. Wikipedia. Provides the distinction between stingy and thuddy impact with the rattan cane and the wooden paddle as examples, the rule that a heavier tool feels more thuddy, and the recommendation to avoid the tailbone and the hip bones.

Related terms

• Bullwhip. The opposite within the same family: one tail, all the force on a single point.
• Cat o’ nine tails. A scourge with nine knotted cords, built to damage rather than to warm up.
• Birch rod. The other tool with many ends at once, only made of twigs.
• Spanking. The practice a flogger gets picked up for most, with the zones you stay off.
• Bruising. What a heavy flogger leaves behind in the days after.
• Martinet. The lightest relative: the same principle with thinner and much shorter tails.
• Warm-up. The one phase where a flogger strokes more than it strikes.
• Paddle. The tool that keeps the blow on a single flat surface instead of spreading it across tails.
• Single tail. The opposite of the flogger: everything on one point instead of smeared across tails.
• Slapper. The other leather tool that works on loose layers, but flat instead of in tails.
• Impact play is the family the flogger is the most-reached-for tool of.
• Strokenzweep is the same tool under its Dutch name, a word that appears in none of the dictionaries.
• Whip. The umbrella name the flogger is one of the four main types under.