Punishment

What is punishment?

Punishment is the agreed consequence for behavior that was forbidden in advance. In BDSM a punishment belongs to discipline and so assumes a rule that existed before the offense. Outside the bedroom the word means something sterner: a measure imposed by a competent authority after a criminal act.

Why the word punishment grates in a bedroom

Because it drags in three things, none of which is present there.

The Dutch encyclopedia entry Straf sums the concept up like this: a sanction where the punished individual is deliberately made to undergo an unpleasant experience, by someone who has the power and the authority to do so. The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal says the same in other words: a measure to requite a forbidden act, usually meant to deter the offender and others.

So that holds an offense, an authority, and an unwilling recipient. Between two adults who agree on something, none of the three is there: no forbidden act, no authority, and someone who asked for it themselves. That is why people trip over it in conversation. They hear the courtroom word and think of something happening to them.

What happens in practice is therefore something else. Two people make a rule together, agree a consequence to go with it, and afterward say out loud that it is done. That last part is the whole difference from the word in the law: here something is closed off, not requited.

What the law calls a punishment, and what that gives away

Seven things, and none of them touches the body.

Article 9 of the Criminal Code lists exhaustively what a punishment can be in the Netherlands. Four principal penalties: imprisonment, detention, community service, and a fine. And three additional ones: disqualification from certain rights, forfeiture, and publication of the court’s ruling.

Look at what that list is made of. Freedom gone, time gone, money gone, rights gone, possessions gone, and once, shame. Deprivation, then, and once, exposure. Nowhere a blow: corporal punishment has not been a punishment in the Netherlands for almost two centuries.

That is a fair mirror of what works in a D/s bond. A privilege that does not happen for a week, a quarter of an hour of corner time, a task that costs time. It is the same list, and the image of the blow comes from the word.

Why people ask for a punishment

Because an agreement only feels real once something is attached to it.

What draws people is rarely the act, but the fact that it has an end. An agreement without a consequence keeps hanging over the table for days; with a consequence it is over at an agreed moment.

• For the one who gets the punishment, a vague expectation turns into something you can meet, and so something you can be done with.
• For the one handing it out, the need to act angry falls away: the consequence was already set, so there is only something to carry out.
• For the two of you together, the simmering afterward disappears. The irritation gets a form and with it an end time.

The reason is where it goes wrong. For a problem that was never named, a punishment is a detour. And it only keeps looking like a punishment as long as the recipient finds nothing to enjoy in it; the moment that tips, it has become a funishment.

Where the Dutch word straf comes from

From a verb no one knows the origin of.

The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands is unusually short about it: origin unknown. The verb straffen appears in writing from the start of the fifteenth century; the noun comes along much later, straffe in 1542 in Dasypodius, derived from the verb and not the other way round. So Dutch knew the act for well over a hundred years before it made a thing of it.

And there is a second straf, which almost no one connects with the first. The WNT lists the adjective separately and writes that its oldest meanings must have been “taut, stiff, rigid.” The word from straffe wind, a stiff wind. It notes that the noun probably influenced that meaning later. Two words that grew toward each other, one severity and the other tension.

Misconceptions about punishment

“Punishment means hitting.” The image comes from the word, not from the practice. The law too no longer knows any physical punishment. Hitting with a stated punitive aim is called corporal punishment and is one form among a handful of others.

“Anyone who gets a punishment did something wrong.” Only if the rule was already there. If it wasn’t, something was made up after the fact, and then the punishment is an outburst with a tidy word in front of it.

“Punishment and discipline are the same.” Discipline is the whole structure of rules, habits, and consequences. A punishment is one part of it, and usually not the most important.

What I see myself

I’m Victor. Gigolo, more than twenty-five years in this work, and a psychotherapist by training. The word punishment comes up in my conversations more often than the act does, and that is my main observation right there: people want the ritual, not the retribution.

That word weighs heavily on women who say it out loud for the first time. They think they are asking for something about their own mistake, when they are asking for structure. As soon as we call it something else, an agreement, a ritual, something falls away that never had to be there.

What you can do yourself

• Name the rule first, the consequence only after. Anyone who starts the other way round is imposing something instead of following through on it.
• Wait until you are no longer irritated. Anger turns an agreement into an outburst, and that cannot be undone.
• Choose a form from the deprivation list. Time, a privilege, a task. Before you think of anything physical. The law does the same, and not for nothing.
• Put a closing line on it that you both know, and stick to it. Without a closing line a punishment runs on into the rest of the evening.
• Test the word against the situation. If nothing was broken, “punishment” is the wrong name and it goes by its own: a ritual, a game, or a maintenance punishment.
• Ask afterward what stayed with you. That is aftercare and it yields more than asking whether it hurt.

More reading on punishment

Within this glossary discipline gives the frame, funishment the tipping point, and corporal punishment the form with a blow in it. How such a correction feels from the inside is in my piece on the power of discipline and positions.

Beyond this site, the WNT sets the two words straf side by side, and article 9 of the Criminal Code lists in seven lines what a punishment may be in the Netherlands.

Where this fits on this site

Curious how such an agreement works within a single evening without anything having to change at home? That is very doable. What we settle beforehand and where it stops is on the BDSM date page. Corrective taps are part of my repertoire; humiliation is not, not even when it is asked for under this heading.

Sources

• straf. Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, via the Integrated Language Bank of the Dutch Language Institute, consulted 5 August 2026. The historical standard dictionary of Dutch. Provides three entries. STRAF (I) noun (f.): “A measure or treatment to requite a forbidden act or an omission, usually with the aim of deterring the offender or others from similar acts or omissions,” so requital and deterrence, with a forbidden act as the condition. STRAF (II) adjective, adverb: “The oldest meanings of straf must be ‘taut, stiff, rigid’,” with the note that STRAF (I) probably influenced that meaning later. The third entry is the form treated under STRAFFEN.
• Criminal Code, article 9. Dutch legislation via wetten.overheid.nl, version consulted in force from 1 January 2026. Primary legal text; the article’s anchor was checked in the retrieved page. Provides the exhaustive list of punishments: as principal penalties imprisonment, detention, community service, and a fine, and as additional penalties disqualification from certain rights, forfeiture, and publication of the court’s ruling. That none of those seven concerns the body, and the comparison with the forms that work in a D/s bond, is my inference; the article deals solely with criminal law.
• straf / straffen. M. Philippa, F. Debrabandere, A. Quak, T. Schoonheim & N. van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (2003–2009), via the Etymologiebank of the Dutch Language Institute. The standard etymological reference for Dutch. Used here for the noun, where maintenance punishment uses the verb: straffe “requital measure for an offense” is recorded in 1542 in Dasypodius, is a derivation of the verb straffen and not the other way round, and the nouns in the related languages are likewise younger than the verb. The dictionary notes explicitly at straffen “origin unknown.”
• Straf. Dutch-language Wikipedia, consulted 5 August 2026. The only Dutch-language encyclopedia entry on the concept; used here only for the generally accepted description. Provides the definition of a punishment as a sanction where the punished individual is deliberately made to undergo an unpleasant experience by a person or authority that has the power and competence to do so, and the legal description as a measure imposed by a government to requite a criminal act. The behavior-analytic definition on that same entry is deliberately not used here; that one sits at funishment.

Related terms

A punishment never stands alone: a rule comes before it and a closing after.

• Discipline. The structure this is one brick of.
• Funishment. What is left once the recipient enjoys it.
• Corporal punishment. The physical form, which Dutch law has not known for almost two centuries.
• Maintenance punishment. The same name without an offense, and why that grates.
• Rules. What has to be there first, or there is nothing to punish.
• Corner time. Time instead of pain, and the most-used form.
• Pain play. The same acts without a cause, where the pain is the goal rather than the consequence.