Tell me more about … BALL TORTURE

Ball Torture (BT) refers to a range of techniques to cause sensation, discomfort and pain in the male testicles and scrotum. Common examples are squeezing with hands, slapping and beating with hands and other objects, crushing using various vice-like devices and applying pressure with bindings, straps and weights are favorite techniques. Often found in conjunction with cock torture (CT), thus CBT.

What’s the Thrill?

As most men know, the balls are highly sensitive, particularly to pressure. Most men find handling, stroking and squeezing gently is a pleasurable sensation in itself, and the boundary between strong sensation and outright pain seems particularly malleable here. For many people there is also the thrill that the balls are regarded as probably the most delicate and vulnerable part of the male anatomy and using them in SM games requires great trust and carries a particularly intense charge.

Anatomy

The scrotum is a loose, flexible bag of skin that contains the testicles (the ‘balls’), two bean-shaped organs of fibrous material covering soft gland tissue in which sperm is produced. Plentiful pressure-sensitive nerves in the testicles account for their extreme sensitivity to blows or squeezing. A ridge on the outside of each testicle, known as the epidermis, extends up to form a lump on top and contains tubules that transfer sperm. Attached to the top, next to the epidermis, is the spermatic cord, an elastic tissue that connects the testicles to the rest of the body and contains the vas deferens, the duct between the epidermis and the penis. Since sperm production requires a lower temperature than the normal body temperature, the testicles usually hang outside the body, but the spermatic cord can draw them up into the body when cold. The scrotum also contains some fluid.

What to Use

Hands are the obvious weapons: precisely controllable and always available. Slap (gently), punch (more gently), or flick with finger backs, and carefully squeeze with the fingers. Get the balls in the bottom of the scrotum, then twist the scrotum around above them to prevent them slipping out of your fingers.

Probably the second most popular items are ball bondage toys. Cords, ropes, laces and bandages can all be wrapped in various ways around the balls to stretch the scrotal skin, force balls apart or together and put pressure on individual balls. A classic basic tie is a loop around the base of both cock and balls, a loop around the neck of the scrotum and then a loop between the balls to force them apart. Leather and fetish shops usually have a range of (usually leather, sometimes rubber or neoprene) toys with various arrangements of straps purpose made for ball bondage, for example:

• Cock and ball straps and dividers anchor the balls in place round the root of the scrotum and cock and pass around the scrotum vertically to separate the balls.
• Ball stretchers are straps of various sizes that go around the top of the scrotum horizontally, forcing the balls down into the stretched sac. Alternatives are bandages, ropes or leather thongs which can be gradually wrapped round to increase the pressure. Just a modest strap around the top of the scrotum will have the additional effect of trapping the balls and preventing them slipping out of range.
• Parachutes are parachute-shaped devices with a hole in the middle for the scrotum to pass through, with the parachute itself resting on top of the balls. Ball weights are then hung from chains below the parachute. Weights can also be hung from arrangements of chain or rope. Be very careful with weights: some men can work up to hanging quite large weights from their balls, but there is some danger to the practice. Weights of 500g-1.5kg (1-3 lbs) should be enough to give sensation and be safe.

As well as weights, light objects that move can be hung from balls. A London top has experimented with dangling a spherical jumping toy from Toys R Us in a string bag attached to ball bindings or parachute.

Crushing the balls can be achieved with various clamps or bondage equipment like cling film (saran wrap) or elastic bandages (Ace bandages). DeBlase says he has read “of an American Indian torture that involved soaking a piece of rawhide and then sewing it up to tightly encase a victim’s scrotum. As it dries, it shrinks, increasing pressure” (1993:17). He also speculates about experimenting with an inflatable blood pressure cuff, and suggests putting gravel inside the elastic bandages to add abrasion to the repertoire of ball techniques.

Toys for beating need to be fairly light and delicate. An ordinary pencil is quite adequate, especially for rapid light strokes on a well-secured ball. Some people use a small, soft cat o’nine tails called a ball whip. One source of hard objects suitable to the task is music shops: try bell-beaters designed for playing hand-held cowbells, or mallets topped with dense rubber balls of the sort used to play glockenspiels and chime bars!

Other specialist techniques could be applied to the balls. See elastrators, electricity, play piercing, shaving.