Collar

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Collar

The traditional collar is a neck band, normally in leather, metal or rubber. Collars can vary widely - from the decorative to the purely function and although often removable, some are a permanent fixture. It is normally chosen, designed or even crafted by the Dominant partner.

In BDSM the wearing of a collar generally signifies that the wearer is a submissive. Many submissives and slaves wear a collar to denote their status and commitment. It can be used to represent the relationship in much the same way a wedding band does, especially if the submissive is owned. Some subs wear a "symbolic collar", often a bracelet or ankle chain, which is more subdued than the traditional collar and can pass in vanilla situations. It is not uncommon for a sub to have several collars for special occasions.

There was once a tradition that wearing a collar with an open padlock indicated that one was seeking a partner, a closed lock indicated that one was in a relationship. This symbolism is less common after 1995 or so.

Detail of a collar buckle

It is important to remember that the punk rock and goth scenes have also adopted collars as a purely fashion item, so one cannot assume that all people wearing collars are into D/s or BDSM.

Collars are also used in bondage, although care must be taken as there is always the risk that the submissive might develop breathing problems and therefore should not be left alone whilst bound. Most collars have D-ring attachments so the neck can be either bound to another part of the body or to a fixed object. A collar can also incorporate additional straps and buckles to form a head harness. The effectiveness of using a collar in a bondage scene should not be underestimated, as well as being very effective in holding the submissive immobile it also reinforces the victims sense of helplessness and loss of control.

Collars are often used in role-playing games involving humiliation because they have connotations of control and pet-like or animalistic status, especially when worn with a leash. They may also be useful during play as a physical tethering restraint.

History: IRON COLLARS

Originally, collars for slaves where not made of leather but of metal, mostly iron. They were either used seperate, or as part of a set of metal restraints, including fetters and/or manacles. In Roman times seperate iron collard were often used to identify slaves by way of an inscription with his name or/and that of his owner, sometimes even giving instructions for their return:

I am Asellus, a slave of Praeiectus an official of the prefect of the grain harvest. I have gone outdoors, beyond the walls. Hold me fast, because I have run away. Return me to the barber's shop near the temple of Flora. (CIL 15.7172)

Collars were also used in the 18th century to identify slaves in Britain (even though the legality of slavery on English soil, at least, was hotly disputed during this period), in France uptill the ninetenth century for convicts, and to some extent in American plantation slavery. In the well-known tv-film Roots (1977), after the roman of Alexander Haley, the new black slave Kunta Kinte after being sold is taken away while wearing an iron collar, connected to a long slavechain to keep him under controll.

Frontview of a modern heavy iron slavecollar, connected witrh a padlock to a set of slavechains
Sideview of the same iron slavecollar locked on


Iron collars could weight several kilos, They usual existed of two thick bands in the form of semicircles, connected by a hinge on one end, and, after placing the collar around the neck of the victim, simply welded or rivited together at the other end. Only in modern times padlocks or inserted locks came into use.

Iron collars have three advantages above other kind of shackles: 1. The neck is much smaller than the head, so escape by just slipping out (a risk not totally absent with manacles and fetters) was totally impossible. 2. As the neck is one of the most sensitive part of the body, if the collar is connected to a lead-chain the victim will be more easy maneagable than othrwise, especially because serious resistance very quickly will make him gasping. 3. For that reason also the psychological aspect of a collar in case of slaves is much stronger, as a collar leaps at the eye immediately, and controll by the neck reminds the victim to dogs and other non-human beings. That this regularly was intended, is clear from the fact that in Roman triumphal processions the male prisoners of war, who all where to be sold as slaves later, often had to wear heavy iron collars, their beaten leaders sometimes in addition chained extra by the neck to the carriage of the victorious general, thus forced to stumble behind.

The intended psychological effect of this becomes also evident when looking at the special attention sometimes paid in the past to the the collaring as such, that often for a greater impact was stiled like a kind of ritual and public spectacle. This was the case with galley-slaves in France, who marched chained together from several prisons in the country southwards to the bagnos in Toulon. They often had to wait months till the socalled 'Chain' had arrived and it became their turn. Being connected to the Chain by becoming collared with a solid iron neckring mut have been a very intimidating experience for the future slaves, reducing them to just a number (that indeed was branded in their upper arm).

Foucault describes the making of such a chain-gang in his book 'Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison':

"It began with a scaffold ritual: the fixing of iron collars and chains in the courtyard of Bicêtre prison. The convict's neck was thrown back upon a block; but this time the art of the executioner was to strike without crushing the head - an inverted skill that knew how not to deliver the death blow. The courtyard of Bicêtre displays its instruments of torture: several rows of chains with their iron-collars. The head-warders, who serve as temporary blacksmiths, arrange the block and hammer. The prisoners are sitting on the ground, coupled at random by the waist; the chains they must carry, each weighing eight pounds, rest heavily on their knees. The operator inspects them, measuring heads and adapting the enormous inch-thick collars. It takes three men to rivet an iron-collar; the first holds up the block, the second holds the two branches of the iron-collar together and, with his outstretched arms, secures the patient's head; the third strikes with repeated blows and flattens the bolt under his huge hammer. Each blow shakes the head and the body".

The psychological impact of being chained together by the neckcollars like a coffle afterwards, often used for transporting slaves, was even greater. Some of those kind of gang-chains are still can be seen in archaelogical museums (For example, the well-preserved iron coffle or "chain for six slaves" on display in the Manchester Museum from the 1st century BC.)

A few years ago at Cardiff University an Iron Age gang-chain with five connected collars, digget out in Wales, was reused in a graduate course to find things out, as described in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology 2004:

The experimental archaeology of shackling students together made quite clear to the participants what it meant to be linked all the time by the neck at a very short distance (the seperate chains between the collars measuring less than one meter) to others similarly ensnared, unable to escape your fate. The five victims involved totally surrendered their individual identity, made to shuffle forward as one, thus loosing selfhood and becoming a corporate entity. Their heads were necessarily bowed to one and the same position, despite significant variations in their overall height or even length of leg, as the connecting chains were to short to reckon with individual differences in stature. The head of the tallest 'slave' all the time was forced inexorably by his collar downwards, the shortest on the contrary was continually panting for breath, as he was dragged more or less forward by his neckring, that thanks to his taller gang-fellows was pushing upwards against his head continually. Especially walking in accidented grounds was very difficult, as one step to slow or to quick made the whole gang stumble, and once one of the chained lost his balance, either his colar would nearly choke him, or he would take the others down too. As one of the pictures, sometimes they had to hold of their own chains no to loose their equilibrium - a more intense sense of bondage for a slave is not easily imaginable.

It is likely that these historical precedents led to the association of slavery with collars in subcultures like Old Guard leather and in BDSM fiction, such as the Story of O and the Gor series.

See Also


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