The Club - Meeting 409 - Erotic v. Disciplinary Spankings - Distinct or Not?

Everything in the world is about sex, except sex.  Sex is about power. -- Oscar Wilde

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline relationship.  I hope you all had a great week.

 

Our week was such that Anne and I were both commenting this afternoon that we feel totally exhausted and, yet, it’s only the beginning of a three-day weekend here in the U.S.  Getting old does kind of suck.  I’m at that stage where I need a weekend to recover from my weekend.

 

 

Thanks to everyone for the robust discussion around a pretty limited topic, i.e. marking.  There’s definitely a wide range of experiences and preferences out there, from actively avoiding to tolerating to willfully causing.

 

Near the end of last week’s discussion, Alan made this topic suggestion, which I’ve posted in full:

 

“I am going to suggest a topic that really deserves at least one post. For years when we discussed the question of “how many are there are out there” we have treated “erotic spanking” as something outside of DD, discipline and certainly FLR’s of any kind – at the same time acknowledging that spanking was almost certainly going mainstream among many adults.

 

For sure distinctions among the types of spanking are complex and appear to reside in the heads of the couple doing the spanking.

 

But just now I am reading a biography of Socrates. Socrates was certainly and old fart and while he didn’t deserve the hemlock, he was irritating a good deal of the time. And one reason he was irritating was his habit of questioning everything. “How do you know” was his regular refrain.

 

So planning to drink neither the kool aid nor hemlock I ask a question some may find irritating: How do you know when you engage in “erotic spanking” that it isn’t actually disciplinary in nature?

 

Think about it. Spanking as a stereotype and a template is inherently about punishment and discipline. We all learn that as children whether we were spanked or not. And in everyday language we tend to use the word spanking to describe punishment in settings as diverse as sports journalism or politics. My point is that spanking as an act and a concept is understood early as a punishment by most people.

 

Yet we are to believe that as adults it suddenly becomes an erotic pleasure perused for its sensual pleasures or to “role play.” There is a page missing there.

 

I don’t doubt that many adults experiment with spanking as a bedroom game without any disciplinary overtones. But once someone continues to incorporate spanking into their relationship after that experimental phase—they are inevitably using it as discipline at some level, often laughing all the way. The logic and purpose of spanking is just too compelling to argue it is just “erotic.”

 

This also explains why many people report “evolving” from erotic spanking to DD. They didn’t evolve. They just allowed the reality of what they were doing into consciousness. Many “erotic spankers” never do this –and continue to make the distinction between what they do and the much scarier discipline stuff they would never do.

 

So let’s talk about whether people are into spanking or not --because the distinctions we make, between “erotic” spanking and DD – don’t hold up to close scrutiny. They are distinctions without a difference.

 

 

The excerpts I bolded above are the ones that evoked a response in me, though unlike the response of the Athenian citizenry to Socrates, it wasn’t irritation, except maybe a tad at the bit about consciousness and accepting reality.

I was in a hurry when I read Alan’s suggested topic, but I put some initial thoughts out there, which were as follows:

 

“My initial reaction is that the quoted paragraph is kind of a non sequitur. There are obvious overlaps between disciplinary and erotic spankings, and it might be that real life spanking stimulated a desire to simulate disciplinary spankings in an erotic context. But, the desire to simulate a disciplinary spanking doesn't mean that the simulated experience becomes real, let alone that it is inevitable that it becomes so.

 

If this were a Venn diagram, it seems like you're insisting that if there is an "erotic" oval and a "DD" oval the overlap is 100% My view is that just because there is an intersecting oval between Oval Erotic and Oval DD doesn't mean that there is 100% equivalence between the two. The fact that A includes B, and C includes B, doesn't meant that A = C.

 

If anything, based on the anecdotal evidence, I kind of see the argument working in reverse. People may incorporate DD and believe they are doing it for purely non-erotic purposes, but for one or both parties it either becomes erotic or they come to admit there is an erotic element to it.

 

IMO, it's not the case that these are distinctions without a difference. We've discussed here before why many of us believe DD is not some subset of BDSM or DS. I believe that there are important distinctions in intention/motivation and also desired effect/outcome.

 

You also said, "They just allowed the reality of what they were doing into consciousness." I'm always suspicious of any argument that depends on its opponents being oblivious to or incorrect about their "real" motives or desires. Seems like that Freudian view of things has been pretty well debunked. I personally don't like it because the assertion that someone thinks they are acting for one reason but really it's another reason isn't provable one way or another, and taking that position would require me to assert that I really know more about what makes someone tick than they themselves know.”

 

I don’t really have a lot to add to that, but I’ll quickly make a few additional points and then turn it over to the group. 

 

First, Alan said, “This also explains why many people report “evolving” from erotic spanking to DD.”  I’m not sure it’s factually the case that many people report evolving from erotic spanking to DD.  It’s probably the case that many of our readers report that to have been the case, but I don’t think that can or should be taken as an indication that many people who are into erotic spanking evolve, transition, adopt, or experiment with DD.  Obviously there is no real data to turn to, but if you take the position that Alan took in his first paragraph that erotic spanking has gone mainstream, but the also acknowledge that DD seemingly has not, the more plausible conclusion would seem to me to be that very few who experiment with or get into erotic spanking end up doing the same with DD.

 

Second, I can think of all sorts of areas in which something may be seen as a punishment in one context or at one stage in life yet be seen as beneficial at another.  How about, to take a pedestrian example, running?  Many adults run either because they enjoy it or because they think it has beneficial health effects that make it worth any discomfort.  Yet, most student athletes probably experienced it as a punishment.  I think this reflects a few fairly common-sense truths.  First, context matters.  Second, our perceptions of an activity's utility or desirability may evolve over time. Third, our perceptions regarding an activity's utility may come to outweigh our natural aversion to it.  

Third, I do balk at the suggestion that erotic spanking versus disciplinary spanking is a distinction without a difference.  There are obvious differences that we’ve talked about here dozens of times in the motivations of the parties, the agreed-upon purpose, etc.  I don’t the fact that both may share some level of eroticism renders those very substantial distinctions to be without differences.  In one, eroticism is the entire point.  In the other, it’s more of a byproduct or one component, but only one, of the underlying drive or motivation.  Further, as I said in my original comment, I don’t think it follows that because people once experienced or were fascinated by real discipline and they now engage in simulated disciplines means that those simulations of discipline are or will inevitably become real discipline. 

 

Finally, I do take issue with the assertion that people who see a difference between erotic and disciplinary spanking to so because they aren’t conscious of their underlying reality.  To me, it’s really the same as asserting, “You disagree with me about what makes you tick. It can’t be because you know what makes you tick better than I do.  It must be because you lack self-awareness.” Though, I also fell into making that kind of argument a bit myself when I said that some people who are into disciplinary spankings may come to “admit” there is an erotic element in it.

 

I look forward to your responses to Alan’s thought-provoking topic.  For those in the U.S., enjoy your long weekend.