“Family Jewels” is a short, Greenery Press book that focuses on the idea of cock and ball torture. The tagline is “A guide to male genital play and torment”. The book doesn’t focus purely on torment as the book also includes information on cock and ball bondage as well. The book is a softcover book that has black and white pages on the inside. The book has 7 chapters with a total of 123 pages.
The book’s theme is how cock and ball torture. It doesn’t have to be, literally, torture, but the book does focus on the idea of bondage and pain of the male genitals. It’s not all hardcore, and the book does include a lot of softer stuff such as cock rings or just rope bondage as well, but he does include things like placing weights on the testicles or squishing them, so again, just make sure you have the tolerance for that type of stuff before you open it to read it.
This is something we’d never, ever try. I find myself curious about some of it, but even getting the submissive to try a cock ring is a fight I don’t like to have. It’s just not pleasurable for him to have things constricting his penis, and I do respect that (most days). However, it doesn’t stop me from being curious, and this book was (and is!) the perfect way to satiate that curiosity.
The book does include some illustrations, but there’s nothing major. There is, however, enough illustrations of penises to make this book not very public friendly. I read it in public, but it was a bit of a guessing game to know if there’d be a penis illustration on the next page I’d have to cover. The book does include the illustration of the penises as well as some of the CBT toys in use and a picture of the male anatomy as well. It doesn’t include anything else aside from that though.
This book starts off with an introduction from the author explaining why any, in their right mind, would want to do these things to their genitals. It’s well-written, and it really showcases what people go into CBT. The next chapter talks about the basic male anatomy while the chapter after that gets into safety. I really enjoyed the safety chapter as it gives a lot of sound advice for people playing roughly with the male genitals including when to seek immediate help, how far you can push things, and some of the things you don’t even think about when considering playing. (Such as Torsion) It also goes into basic BDSM stuff like safe words. After that, there’s a large, 25 page chapter on all of the toys that goes along with CBT. This includes the scarier toys as well as the more “vanilla” toys such as the cock ring. It mostly describes the toys in this section, but it really doesn’t go into how to safely use them much.
The majority of the book, though, are the Soup to Nuts: CBT Techniques and “Recipes” section. This is basically a large section that runs about 60 pages which is full of food-like recipes – except the recipes are for CBT scenes. Each one has a little title, and it lists the equipment and toys needed for the scene. It then talks about the techniques of using each one of the items in the scene. After that, it goes into a “In Context” which is like a half-story/half-erotica type of thing that it supposed to show you what the scene would be like during use. It is just a story, but it can get a bit erotica-like, so it ends up being a nice mix of the two.
I like the recipe section. I really do. The author did a good job of bringing in a lot of recipes and scenes that vary in intensity and experience. This makes it easy to read through and pick one that seems to suit you best. However, since the techniques and how-to information is stuck within the recipe information, there is really no large “how-to” guide to how to use some of these items. You have to hunt through the recipes section and attempt to find the specific section that talks about the product you want to use. This can get time-consuming as, while the products are described earlier in the chapter, there really isn’t a “this is how you use it” except in the recipes stuff.
Will it teach you really how to do all of this stuff? No, it won’t. Is it a good, helpful, and comprehensive guide that it going to tell you what to expect and what options exist? Yes, that it does. However, as some of the more extreme stuff in here could be very painful or dangerous, I would highly, highly recommend watching scenes or having a real-life person teach you if possible. For some of the basics like rope bondage, cock rings, or even just causing slight pain to the testicles, this book does give you what you need. With what I’ve learned from this book, I feel like I have a better understanding to watch a CBT scene or do a less intense scene, but I do not feel ready at all to do something more intense like hanging weights.
Overall, the book is a good one to look into. After all, it’s not like there are a lot of cock and ball torture guides out there. CBT, for the most part, remains a mystery to a lot of people, and this book helps put some of the mystery out. I feel like it isn’t as helpful as it could have been, but it doesn’t do a bad job of explaining CBT either. I feel like it’s just missing some parts to make it as useful as it could possibly be. However, if you need a guide on CBT, it’s one of the only ones out there, and I do recommend picking it up to read.
