The Library of Spanking Fiction: Wellred Weekly


Wellred Weekly
Volume 1, Number 6 : March 23, 2012
 
Articles
Items of interest regarding all things spanking

Let Us Compare Spankologies
by Alef

In 1956, the Canadian poet, novelist and singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen published his first book, a collection of poems entitled Let Us Compare Mythologies. I must admit I have just had a brief glance at the book, but the title has haunted me for years: Comparing mythologies - isn't that what we really do when we get to know each other intimately, when we share beliefs, dreams, hopes, fears, memories, and all the other things that make us who we are?

I have always thought that there must be something like a "spanking mythology" - a collection of beliefs, fantasies, dreams, habits, and feelings that unite us spankos. There is so much we have in common - even silly, small things such as looking up spanking related words in a dictionary. But as I chat with more and more people and read an ever increasing number of spanking stories, I realize that there are also lots of things that separate us - there are many twists and turns the fetish can take, and what is exhilarating to me, may be boring, or even disgusting, to you. So perhaps we should speak of spanking mythologies, or spankologies, if you please.

Some of the things that separate us are clearly matters of culture, experience, and habit. I, for instance, am fascinated by the birch because it was still thought of as the "ultimate punishment" where I grew up, and I have never really cared for girls in school uniforms as there weren't any around. It would be quite interesting to write an essay on how culture helps form our spanking personalities, but that is not my purpose here. I believe that behind the cultural differences, there is a set of deeper and more fundamental attitudes that unite and separate us, and in this article I would like to concentrate on these underlying variables.

Let me say at once that I do not claim to have identified all basic variables of the spanking fetish, and that some of those I do describe are probably more closely correlated than a conscientious scientist would be comfortable with. Still they seem to cover slightly different aspects that may be of interest to spanking enthusiasts.

Allow me one more apology before I begin. I shall be referring a lot to my own feelings and attitudes - not because I think they are of such great interest and importance to others, but simply because I need to exemplify, and I am the only person I know well enough to use as an example. When I tried to reply to my own questions, I realized that my answers differ according to what I have in mind, and that what I prefer in stories or fantasies is not necessarily what I would enjoy in real life. Most others will probably feel the same way.

But let us begin:

1. Are you a spankee, a spanker - or perhaps a switch?
This may seem an easy question, but not for all us. Although as an adult I have only fantasized about giving spankings, I definitely had other fantasies as a boy, and actually getting spanked still turns me on. So on a scale from 0 to 1 where 0 is pure spankee and 1 is pure spanker, I should perhaps put myself down somewhere around 0.7 or 0.8?

If we made a poll, my guess is that female spankos would dominate the left (spankee) part of the scale, while we men would find ourselves predominantly on the right hand side. Is this nature or nurture? I don't know (I don't even know to what extent the question makes sense!), but my feeling is that nurture has a lot to do with it. I believe, e.g., that my own adolescent journey from switch to spanker was to a large extent due to "cultural pressure"; it just seemed so much easier to combine the tough, protective rôle of a young male with the dominant side of myself than with the submissive one, and I suppose many girls feel a pull in the opposite direction. But then we may, of course, ask ourselves to what extent the male and female stereotypes of Western culture are themselves products of nature or nurture?

2. Pain, pleasure or punishment?
Are you turned on primarily by erotic spankings or by punishment spankings? I originally meant to measure this variable along a scale from 0 to 1 just like the previous one, but then it occurred to me that the erotic part really splits into two: erotic love spankings and more hardcore BDSM. So think of an equilateral triangle where the corners are labeled pleasure, pain and punishment, and pick a point inside the triangle to indicate the importance of the three ingredients to your fetish. In the pleasure corner I expect to find those who engage in spanking in a purely fun and/or sensual manner without any real reference to punishment, domination or sadism/masochism, and in the BDSM corner I would put those who use spanking in a BDSM context without a strong emphasis on punishment (I'll return to the distinction between punishment and domination later). Personally, I find myself close to the punishment corner: Pain as such means nothing to me, and even when I play silly spanking games in bed, I need a reason to spank somebody - just swatting a bottom isn't enough. Many will probably find that their disposition varies with mood and circumstance, and this just means that they need to find a point inside the triangle which corresponds to their particular mixture.

3. No sex please, we're spankos
This variable is close to the distinction between erotic and punishment spankings, but from a different perspective. The question is: Do you think of spanking as a part of your "ordinary" sexuality or as a "parallel" sexuality?

Let me use myself as an example. I definitely get sexually aroused by stories and fantasies where women get spanked, but it is the spanking situation itself I find arousing and not the spankee as a sexual object. In fact, most of the kick I get from a spanking story is by identifying with the spankee — what really turns me on is her mixed feeling of guilt, shame, relief, embarrassment, pain, lust, and redemption. I admit that my own stories have a tendency to end in sex, but then the sexual act is an act of forgiveness (both ways) and reconciliation between adults, and not a prolongation of the spanking.

Hence I think of my spanking addiction as a kind of "parallel sexuality" with laws and objectives different from my ordinary sexuality. The two are connected in the sense that a good spanking definitely makes me ready for ordinary sex, but I prefer not to mix the two: a punishment spanking is a punishment spanking and the sex will have to wait till afterwards.

My "parallelism" has certain consequences: I don't usually enjoy spanking pictures, videos, or stories that put a lot of emphasis on "ordinary" sexuality; close-ups on genitals and long and detailed descriptions of sexual secretion are turn-offs for me. But others must see it differently and have a much closer connection between their spanking fetish and the rest of their sexuality; otherwise there simply wouldn't be that many videos and stories for me to dislike! So on a scale from 0 to 1, where 0 is for spanking fully integrated in ordinary sexuality and 1 is for parallel sexualities, I would have to put myself somewhere between 0.9 and 1, I think.

It is tempting to speculate that "parallelism" has to do with the formation of the fetish. I discovered my spanking interest long before I discovered the rest of my sexuality, and that may be why the two never linked up. My guess is that people who discover the fetish at or after puberty are much more likely to integrate spanking with the rest of their sexuality, but this, of course, is just a guess.

4. The balance equation
What purpose does spanking have in a relationship? There seems to be a confusion between two different models which are impossible to combine because the underlying logics are contradictory.

The first kind is typical of D/s-relationships. In these relationships, imbalance is the aim: one part is dominant, the other one is submissive. Occasionally, the submissive part may rebel, but the true goal is not to succeed, but to be put in place; it is primarily a challenge to make the Dom prove that he is worthy of his dominant rôle. Spanking is used to restore the imbalance; it is the Dom's way to prove that he is still in power.

This logic of imbalance is common in general BDSM circles, but I think most spankos are closer to the opposite logic of balance. In these relationships, the parts are in principle equal, but occasionally one of them will stray from the right path and create an imbalance in the relationship. Spanking is seen as a way of restoring the balance - it gives the culprit an opportunity to pay for his or her sins and to start anew with a clean slate.

If you want a graphical illustration, you may think of the situation after the spanking: In the first case, the sub will sit satiated at the Dom's feet grateful to be back in her usual submissive rôle, while in the second case, the partners will grasp hands and move on, both grateful to be back on an equal footing.

Our feelings and desires are not very logical, and it is, of course, possible to yearn for both kinds of relationship according to mood and circumstance. So on a scale from 0 (imbalance) to 1 (balance) where would you put yourself? As dominance in any form is something I find truly abhorrent, I would like to give myself 1.0 on this scale, but due to a little devil within it is probably more honest to put me down at 0.9.

5. What's pain got to do with it?
Spankings hurt, but how important is the pain? For sadists and masochists pain may be the most important ingredient, but what about the rest of us? You may argue that the pain is the punishment, but that is not so obvious - spanking is usually associated with other forms of punishment such as grounding and corner time where embarrassment is much more important than pain, and if spending time in a corner is sufficiently embarrassing to be considered punishment, a trip over the knee with your bottom bared should definitely qualify, even if all you got were a few symbolic swats.

A major problem in many relationships is that we punish each other all the time, and then refuse to admit what we are doing. A related problem is that people say they forgive, and then continue to bear a grudge. Such behavior creates lasting problems - how can you feel forgiven by people who deny that they are punishing you or who say they have forgiven you although they have not? The advantage of spanking is that it is a punishment that can not be overlooked; neither spanker nor spankee can deny that a spanking has taken place, and pain is the proof that the punishment was for real and not just a game. I think this is the main reason why spanking seems so morally satisfactory to us spankos; it is not just punishment, but it is a form of punishment that has to be recognized by everybody involved as the final word - and hence as a new beginning. This part of spanking logic always reminds me of the much more dramatic argument in Oscar Wilde's Ballad of the Reading Gaol:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

On a scale from 0 to 1 where 0 is "pain is only important to prove that the punishment is real" and 1 is "pain is the main objective of a punishment spanking", I would put myself close to 0, say 0.05?

6. The metaphysics of spanking
Why should you or anyone else get spanked? Is it just a sexual kick, or does it connect to other parts of your personality? Although I have been an atheist for as long as I can remember, I tend to think of spankings in religious terms: crime, sin, regret, guilt, punishment, repentance, atonement, forgiveness, redemption, rebirth. To be honest, I don't really think these terms are religious at all, but that they refer to needs and experiences we all have in common and which are forced upon us by a long infancy where we are totally dependent on others. But, of course, not everybody connects these ideas to spanking, and it is definitely possible to be a spanko without seeing any connection between these terms and a sexual fetish.

The final question is: "Do you think your spanking fetish is connected to other parts of your personality such as your conscience, your self-image, your attitude to others?" On a scale from 0 (not at all) to 1 (very much so) I again have to put myself close to 1, perhaps at 0.95.


It's time to quit. As I have already said, there are probably more interesting variables than I have been able to identify, and some of the ones above are probably just different perspectives on the same underlying idea. I would definitely like to hear suggestions for new variables for the next edition of this essay! And let's hope Leonard Cohen forgives me...
 
10 comments:
bendover said...
Another great article and well stated. I was never into BDSM and never will be. No one ties me up no matter how well I know them.

The final question is: "Do you think your spanking fetish is connected to other parts of your personality such as your conscience, your self-image, your attitude to others?"

To me, yes. I see growing up with parents or other guardians as a computer in a way. The computer is the motherboard, while the children are the floppy disks. What we put on those disks is embedded there for the rest of that person's life. I know that all too well.

Medical professionals may try to erase it, but it's always there lying underneath, dormant. Then one day. Like Emeril Lagasse says.... BAM

Once again, great article.

B
23 March 2012 03:27
jools said...
Wow what a wonderfully written, thought provoking article Alef. I am now in the process of psychoanalysing my spanko self and find there are so many seemingly contradictory feelings within my own spankology.

Maybe this could be another variable for you to consider: Does your spanko fetish make perfect sense to you? Does it even have to make perfect sense for you to understand and accept it it? One contradiction for me(and probably many others) is that I hate pain yet I love being spanked.... how can this make the least bit of sense?
23 March 2012 12:00
mati said...
Interesting thesis on spankology, Alef. I would add at least one more variable to your list. Is spanking associated with love as in: „Because I love you, I spank you“ – („Because he/she cares for me he/she spanks me“). Or is it: „Because he hates me, he spanks me (because I hate me, I like to be spanked). Many spankings are not punishment, they are just aggression and I personally find it this way more natural. „I only want the best for you“ is somehow hypocritical when the „best“ is abuse.

To your second point I thought that the concept of „pain“ is not complete. I think that spankees may often be in a condition of emotional pain, which they can’t handle in other ways than to balance it out by a physical equivalence. You see this phenomenon also in other variants: Somebody dies and the widow starts to pull out her hairs or bang her head. There is a story by Alex Birch about this condition in the library: „Despair“.

Before I go to the next point about parallel sexuality, I should state that on a Scale from 0 = Behavioral to 1= spiritual, I would put me on 0.05. I think the connection between spanking and sexuality relies on the same mechanism like the dancing performances of Skinners pigeons: Two stimuli at the same time are likely to be linked together. I agree with you that Spanking (even reading or thinking of spanking) is arousing, but there are so many other things which are arousing beside spanking. Some women are f.e. climaxing when they go jogging and nobody would ever think that jogging is just a foreplay to a following sexual intercourse. You can of course combine it, but I think there is no inherent reason for it and from the thousand stories in the library where men are fantasising about beating every woman in one city like in „Wormspank“ from Nancy Wing I have my doubts that they are similar eager to have sex with every woman. I’m not even sure if spanking belongs naturally to the area of sexuality. Somebody told me a while ago that men get an erection before they are strangled. I would not substitute mortal fear under sexuality either.
24 March 2012 00:06
Janine said...
This was incredibly thought provoking, leading to much self-analysis and questioning. I especially found your discussion of parallelism, finding 'balance', and the triangular pain/pleasure/punishment variables to be most intriguing. Spankos who truly fit into the 'pleasure/erotic' corner of that triangle don't need a 'reason' to spank/be spanked like the 'punishment' corner does to feel satisfaction.

Fascinating material to ponder, reflective of much thought and analysis on your part. Thank you, Alef, for such insight into your own personal spankology as well!
24 March 2012 02:31
islandcarol said...
It is clear you have considered this topic and all it's aspects. I remember reading a biography of Elsbeth Huxley after PBS aired a series on her life in Africa and I came upon perhaps a half a page of text from a journal entry detailing a time when she was twelve years old. After a disagreement he, her father put her over his knee, took down her panties and spanked her. She didn't treat this incident as an event that made her embarrassed or ashamed, but was shocked and furious with him at the indignity of the incident. This was a new view or realization of the emotional scale spankings impacted. and how it affected her sense of justice. I remembered thinking, wondering just how much that humiliating monent changed her. Did it change her life?. There was no analysis, just fury.
Thank you Alef for unwrapping another layer of these complex issues.
24 March 2012 10:14
jefesse said...
What a wonderful article. I especially liked your remarks about parallel sexuality. I think that is an idea that people who don't get this kind of kink have trouble understanding, and I think you expressed it very well.

For me, spanking is a turn-on, and always has been. But it has almost nothing to do with the turn-on I get from vanilla sexuality. And, like you, a lot of my interest comes from empathy with the spankee, even though the spankee is female and I am not.
26 March 2012 00:16
TheEnglishMaster said...
Phew! Brilliant essay - thank you. So much to think about.Your use of scales was helpful, in that it made me think about where I'd place myself in respect to the different variables. I think I'm still trying to figure myself out! But it's important to try to attain clarity, I think, so that we don't go chasing too many impossibilities that just lead to disillusion and unhappiness.
31 March 2012 01:18
barretthunter said...
Very interesting. Thanks, Alef. I would make just one point - that the connection between spanking and the rest of one's nature and beliefs can be positive or negative. It's not uncommon to find people perhaps guiltily attracted to the opposite of what they stand for, work for and try to implement most of the time - whether the person in this case is a proud person spanked or a spanking writer doling out treatment he or she would never contemplate in real life. These would be negative connections. A positive connection would be where the spanking fitted in neatly with one's other attitudes.
2 April 2012 16:24
virginiacherry said...
Thank you for the article. If I may suggest a couple more dimensions if someone expands this article ...

First, like/dislike being spanked. I dislike being spanked, it strips some part of being adult (see islandcarol's comment) and hurts.
Second, want/need to be spanked. I want to be spanked because of the positive effects I see. If not for that I wouldn't be spanked.

8 June 2013 16:50
Kia said...
A very thorough article! This has left me with much to ponder. I tend to enjoy reading analyses of the psychology behind spanking, and this one stands out as excellent.

I might add a variable for the level of intimacy involved in the spanking, with 0 representing a level of detachment (for example, a relationship with a professional disciplinarian engaged solely for this purpose), and 1 representing a high degree of intimacy (as in a committed relationship), with various types of mentoring or teacher/student relationships etc. in between. I would be about a 0.6 on this scale currently, though I've noticed a slow shift toward the 1 end over the years.
14 September 2013 14:40

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