The Club - Meeting 434 - What Got You Going, Spanking or Authority?

“The argument that 'boys will be boys' actually carries the profoundly anti-male implication that we should expect bad behavior from boys and men.” -Jackson Katz

 

Hello all. Welcome back to The Disciplinary Couple’s Club.  Our weekly on-line gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, a Domestic Discipline or Female Led Relationship.

 

I hope you all had a great week.  Ours was, frankly, so-so at best.  Anne’s hand injury is turning out to be more complicated, and possibly longer-lasting, than her doctor originally thought.  I guess such is life, though it’s frustrating. For her more than me, for sure.  Though, I can kind of feel things slipping a bit during this period in which even the threat of real discipline isn’t very realistic.  But, as I said, such is life and we’ll just have to see how it goes.

 

Despite not having an actual topic, we managed to generate a few good discussion points last week.

 

A carry-over from the prior week was whether women really are increasingly empowered in our society and what the implications might be for F/m DD relationships.  J and TG made a couple of points that I’ll repost here (lightly edited) in case others who shared my break-taking last week want to discuss them further:

 

J: I wonder if, say, female empowerment might lead to F/M DD being normalised? Maybe it would result in men complaining about having received it being regarded (by say their peers or the public) as having received their just desserts (assuming that people believed they actually did what their wives spanked them for)?

 

TG: I think it’s only in the last fifty or so years that we’ve started to see real change. I think overall women trend slightly more intelligent and more stable than men, as evidenced for example by the shift in stats on college degrees awarded. As technology has developed, superior physical strength has become progressively less important, leveling the playing field. We now see more women in positions of power in business and politics. More highly qualified women in fields such as law and medicine. My own opinion is that this trend will continue and within the next century the developed world will become far more matriarchal. How this might impact F/m DD, I can’t imagine, it might increase it as women become more dominant or the opposite as their status becomes more ingrained and they feel less need for outward expressions of control.

 

I think it’s incontestable that young women are thriving these days, while young men are flailing.  What the implications of that are for F/m DD and FLR relationships, I agree with TG that it could go either way.  Many men seek out DD relationships because they are firmly in control outside the home, and they feel a need to give up some of that control at home. As women gain more power outside the home, will they have a similar reaction and want to exercise less control at home?  Very possibly.

 

On the other hand, women can be very practical and seem less susceptible to swinging from one extreme to another.  Maybe, once they’ve tasted more power in the workplace, they’ll see the advantages of using it at home as well?

 

Then, there is the fact that men do, in fact, seem to be flailing, which is something that might distinguish a more matriarchal society from its patriarchal predecessor.  Maybe women who have tasted power and control may feel more justified in using it at home for the simple reason that the men there seem to have more need for being controlled.

 

I thought about this a little more in the context of some of the assertions that we may be hardwired genetically for spanking and discipline. Alan has suggested many times that we have a “spanking gene.”  I admit, I’ve been a skeptic. I’ve thought about it more recently, however, and I can get on board with it if, instead of a spanking gene, it was posited as an adaptation favoring those whose behavior is subject to discipline and correction, including but not limited to spanking.  It’s not hard to come up with a retrospective explanation for our spanking and discipline interest that centers on how obeying authority and allowing bad impulses to be externally corrected could have been adaptive in our hunter-gatherer days.  Especially given that back then banishment from society for violating the harmony of the group could be a quick death sentence, conformity to external rules and discipline definitely could be an adaptive trait.

 

I thought of this in relation to GH recounting a Latin textbook with a reference to corporal punishment among the ancient Romans and also his comments about how young men are flailing.  It does seem that corporal punishment has been nearly ubiquitous across time and geography, which lends some support to Alan’s “spanking gene” theory.  But, it also would seem to have some implications for those who are the most adamantly opposed to non-adult corporal punishment. What happens when one of the historical tools for triggering an adaptive trait is removed? Not a few parents probably got a taste of it when stuck at home with their kids during the pandemic.

 

If corporal punishment and receptiveness to physical discipline and imposed behavioral change really is adaptive, then is banning and banishing it really a good idea?  Have we put anything equally adaptive in its place?  If so, how is it that depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behaviors in kids, particularly our boys, are at an all time high? Food for thought.

 

 There was also a bit of discussion last week about “spanking in anger.”

 

TB: Like many I am more committed than my wife - she will never spank ‘in anger’ which can sometimes mean that punishments are delayed and that (the very occasional) arguments drag on before we finally resolve, calm down and she will then deal with the transgression. My point to her is that if she could deal with the issue earlier and ideally before it mutates into a full ‘dispute’, then we would avoid any arguments & lead a happier and calmer life. She still has reservations about spanking when emotions are still running high, whereas I am convinced that taking action early / immediately would break the cycle.

 

KOJ: My wife did spank when she was irritated about my behavior, and she spanked hard. But I never felt she was out of control, and she never needed to apologize for anything done while irritated (which is a better description than "anger," in my mind). If she couldn't spank immediately, she would threaten a spanking to curb my behavior in the moment, and/or promise a spanking later.  These strategies did stop conflict in its tracks, reducing its length and the resentment that typically follows.

 

T: I’m the opposite of above. I wish my wife would spank when she was angry with me. I feel it would resolve the problem immediately and nip it in the bud. I also feel the spanking would be harsher and would hit home internally. I agree with J, that I want that immediate punishment to avoid hurt feeling and resentment.

 

 

As I said in response to TB, I’m perpetually on the fence on this one. Spanking while angry probably would be a good thing for Anne.  In general, one of the advantages women get out of F/m DD is being able to “express themselves” concretely and in unmistakably clear terms, and doing so in the moment is probably very empowering. 

 

On the other hand, the efficacy of spanking in anger may depend a lot on whether *both* our emotions are running high. When I'm convinced I'm right and my own emotions are running high, I may not be that open to getting the message she is trying to convey.  It seems to take a while for me to cool off and see her perspective. Also, while I don't have any problem in principle with spanking in anger, the whole calm, "business-like" demeanor also really works for me.

 

Though, my receptivity or lack thereof may not always be entitled to much weight.  I had a similar thought in mind when I highlighted K’s comments regarding his wife’s post-orgasm use of a rubber strap.  It’s hard to conceive of anything more “real” in terms of punishment, and perhaps that needs to be on the table even if it were to cause me to “man up” and internally resist it in the moment.  As K said:

 

[T]he fact that she has in her arsenal the ability to punish me in ways I'm GENUINELY afraid of, that I REALLY don't like, and that I go out of my way to avoid, has definitely changed the dynamics of our relationship (for the better). I feel truly that she's in charge, not merely that we're playing a game, and that reality permeates our day-to-day life. I find it comforting, and very, very sexy. (On the rare occasions when she severely punishes me, there's NOTHING sexy about it, especially after she has me climax, but the memory if it reinforces a relationship that I find very sexually fulfilling, if that makes sense).

 

There's something essentially different in knowing that I'm subject to being punished "for real" by the woman I cherish.

 

So, some great discussions were had during a “no topic” week.  One of the threads between GH and I suggested a topic for this week.  We talked a bit about how we both had a thing for older women when we were growing up, particularly older female authority figures, including teachers.   

 

It had extended from a discussion about whether we would have been open to DD in our younger days, or whether male egos and insecurity would have gotten in the way.  I noted:

 

I really am puzzled by how I would have reacted to DD in my 20s. I'm not sure that I would have been attracted to it if offered or demanded by a woman who was my peer in age or younger. But, had it come from an older woman, I think it's more than likely I would have gone for it. I knew even back then that I had a thing for older women, though I didn't quite get at the time that what I was attracted to wasn't based on age but, rather, on the confidence and power differential that the age brought with it. And, looking back again, even the girls I got crushes on in high school and college tended to be much more confident than average. So, I think the tendency was probably there all along, but it was about confidence and power and not about spanking, which wasn't at all on my radar at that time.

 

Many, probably most, of the commenters here have said they had a “thing” for spanking from a fairly early age.  My question for the group is, with the benefit of hindsight, to what extent was that about the spanking, and to what extent was it about the power differential, i.e. about being subject to a powerful female’s authority?  Was it clearly about one or the other, or was it both?  Has the mix changed over time?

 

As I’ve said, I seem to be an exception here in that I did not have an early interest in spanking and none as an adult until I was in my late 30s.  Looking back, however, I suspect I had a thing for strong women long before I had articulated that clearly in my own mind.

 

 

I’ve said for a long time that I had a thing for older women when I was younger.  As I’ve gotten older and felt that shift a little, I’ve begun to suspect it was never about age per se. Rather, it was an attraction to confidence and power, and the plain fact was that some older women had that confidence while few women my own age did.  I got crushes on teachers, professors, and strong female business executives because those were the ones most likely to openly display power or authority.  I also suspect that the power was accompanied by the kind of sexual energy that is confidence's  natural byproduct.

When I discovered The Disciplinary Wives Club, the stories that hit me the hardest were those that involved very stark displays of authority, including those where the disciplinary relationship was either imposed by the woman originally or enthusiastically and strictly applied after she met her husband’s request to give it a try. 

 

While a hard disciplinary spanking was the concrete expression of that authority, the authority held the real emotional force for me.  It’s confirmed by the fact that, while the combination of authority and spanking has the most emotional impact on me, an open display of authority without the spanking still gives me butterflies in my stomach, while a spanking outside the power dynamics of a disciplinary relationship does little if anything for me.

 

How about you?  What’s your primary driver – the spanking or the authority and power behind it? Or, is it impossible to separate the two?

 

I hope you have a great week.  I’ll leave you with this meme I found recently. It has nothing to do with anything, but it made me laugh my ass off.