I like your explanations about your perspective regarding sex and spanking as I feel pretty much the same, but had always difficulties to explain it. Maybe in future I just give the link to your article. I can't see this perspective as an disadvantage, because I'm married to a Vanilla and am quite happy that I can separate both parts. Therefore spanking per se is no adultery for me. It's just not easy to explain this perspective to spanking partners, who have a different view.

When I read an essay, I enjoy a writer who speaks her mind clearly with authority and does not make excuses for who she is and what she believes. I agree, not one should be expected to explain or justify a personal preference or kink. I agree; it just is.

I agree with Carol. I tend to see spankings as a different kind of sex, or a variation of sex at times. The spanking used as foreplay, and the role play spanking. Discipline spankings are altogether different. They should never be on the same page.

I agree also that spanko's will truly understand one person's kink on the subject. The writer points out everything she talks about and clearly shows me, for one, that explaining one's self isn't a necessity in one's personal life. It's who we are in TTWD.

Thanks Alex. I really liked the way you expressed your own nature so clearly, and without needing to conform to other people's expectations. It's a useful reminder that the term "spanko" covers a whole range of different attitudes and practices.

I certainly can see wanting to seperate disciplinary spankings from sex. When I watch a spanking video it annoys me when the top starts rubbing the spankee's bottom or, even worse, doing other sexual things to her. It ruins the disciplinary mood for me. Lesbian tops are some of the worst for that, they start running their fingernails over the spankee's buttocks.

However I can also see spankings leading to sex after the spanking is over but not during.

The question that I have about Alex's article that she never answered was this: Can she have vanilla sex with her top at other times? In other words, can her top and her lover be the same person or do they have to be different people?

A very interesting and well-argued essay. Accepting the premise that we are all different, I can only add my own case to the spanking zoo: I recognize the feeling that "ordinary" sex and spanking are parallel and distinct passions, but in my case spanking can hardly be described as "nonsexual" — it was my main source for masturbation for many years, and the first time I had a girl across my lap, I was so aroused that I ejaculated in my pants (not, I now realize, the best way to impress a woman). Thus "parallelism" doesn't necessarily mean that spanking is seen as nonsexual — it may just as well mean that it is felt to be an alternative and separate source for sexual gratification. This being said, I would like to add that I don't want to reduce spanking to sex — it may also serve to satisfy other and more complicated mental needs.

It's refreshing to read a different point of view from that of the majority and always takes a degree of courage to express a somewhat different stance. It also doesn't surprise me that you got that message in your inbox as many people appear to feel uncomfortable when a different viewpoint to their own is being expressed. There does seem to be a tendency amongst certain spankos to try and inflict their own specific version of their kink, likes or dislikes, upon fellow spankos, whether it be what they find acceptable in spanking fiction or with spanking itself. I think a far healthier attitude is to celebrate our diversity and support each other so thanks for sharing this personal account.

Thanks for explaining your position so clearly. I enjoyed reading it, particularly the kittens metaphor. I like my garden. I like cats. I do NOT like them together, LTRU.

I think that your parallelism is unusual, but to be celebrated. That we are all different is a good thing.

One comment I would make is that we don't really understand what goes on inside us, and the feelings we get from various activities may well be resultant from the same sort of processes within us.

Is football better than sex? Often it is, and it's certainly different. Is religious ecstasy better? Certainly (at least from my experience of both). Are the same sort of things happening inside us when we enjoy these things? Maybe.

Even if that is the case, Alex's position remains sound, as the instinctive turn-off which she says occurs as a result of a smack on the bum during sex comes from the same place within and must be afforded the same weight as the instinctive ramping up of pleasure that others feel under the same circumstances.

Thanks for a nice, clear, concise articulation of what I have heard others say but not be able to explain well. I found myself making the analogy to a loving vanilla who will spank and enjoy it but for whom there really is no sexual feeling. I happen to be very close to one . . ...

Thanks for your honest explanation of how it is for you. To those of us for whom sex and spanking are closely linked, it can be hard to imagine things otherwise - your article gives an enlightening account.

To someone who has never experienced any aspect of spanking, but who would like to understand the mind of a spanko the article opened a closed window. I'm very grateful for the clear picture she has drawn. I think that should the opportunity ever arise I would now have a better idea of why I was testing the waters.

I like it as a form of sexual gratification. I can also have disciplinary, as well as an erotic spanking.

Thank you. It's so hard for some to accept. For me, spanking is just a pain in the butt. But it's needed so fundamentally. It's how I am.

This expresses how I feel about it too. for me I need the catharsis that a good spanking can give.

Alex, your essay and your video and picture collection are all worth studying. Everyone certainly has the right to feel about spanking the way they wish to.
It's one of those things that can take place for a variety of reasons.