The functions of a gag

What a gag tries to achieve is one or more of the following:

1. disable communication
2. enforce silence
3. mark the wearer as submissive
4. disable the use of teeth to grab or handle objects
5. punishment or humiliation

The fourth function is often forgotten, but it is rather important. For example, someone who is bound with rope or tape and gagged with a simple cleave gag, may be able to open a drawer in the kitchen and pick up a knife from it with her mouth, then wedge it in somewhere and use it to cut through her ties.

Functions #3 and #5 may go hand-in-hand. Some gags are specifically designed to be uncomfortable and unflattering. Other gags look rather nice though, but they do not hide their purpose of gagging a person. So my take is that you can have function #3 without function #5.

The gag "invented" for the story The Return of the Paramour aims at functions #1 through #4, but specifically not #5. The ball insert (3) deep in the mouth keeps the tongue down and blocks intelligible speech; the mouthpiece (4) and the valve system (2a, 2b & 2c) are to seal the mouth/nose cavity and enforce silence; the plastic cover (1) serves to make it impossible to do use lips (let alone teeth) to pick up anything; and while it would be easy to design the cover (10) so that the gag would look like a smog mask (or flu mask), it intentionally uses a substantially different design (so that people will recognize it for what is is: a gag).

Illustration from the (fake) patent draft of the "voilette" gag.

There are ways to block intelligible speech without silencing a person; many common gags used in the BDSM scene fall in this category. There are ways to silence a person without fully blocking speech; shock collars would fall in this category.

The ubiquitous ballgag does not score well on either functions #1 or #2, but excels in fulfilling function #3; only the bigger ones would do well on function #4.