Saturday, March 25, 2023

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.

 


 

166 comments:

  1. Just to clarify, while I've included an actual topic this week, feel free to talk about anything that was raised last week, including the comments I copied into this post.

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  2. I was used to maternal authority from my mother but I didn't know I was attracted to it until my wife started expressing it as part of our DD. Spanking itself has never been an attraction. I tolerated it ... because I saw it work.
    My wife also found power over me an attraction. Again, it wasn't the spanking itself but my obedience to accept it and the positive results in changed behavior. Like Dan has mentioned with Anne, when my wife ordered my pants down and over her knee, my immediate obedience sometimes took her breath away.
    KOJ

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    1. KOJ, your comments are close to my experience, with the exception of having been used to maternal authority. Mine was pretty sketchy in that area, and I suspect her erratic parenting is one of the reasons I became interested as an adult in being subject to stricter, more regular rules imposed by someone else.

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  3. At the moment both. Spanking in itself is joyous, spanked by someone you love extraordinarily brilliant and that happening when you have willingly given authority to that someone is, based on the rare number of times it has happened to me, a life-afirming peak (and something I still hope moves from rare to normal in my life very soon).

    On the bigger question of the rise of Maternity all I will say is that whilst their is no guarentee for the future it is coming and I for one hope the female gender get it 99% right and that improves the world for my daughter exponentially, and as such that will be about twice as right as paternity has managed over my lifetime. The 1%? Well you know what that should be LOL.

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    1. Unfortunately, I suspect that world run by women probably wouldn't look all that different than a world run by men.

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    2. BTW, finally got my reply. "Let's give it a try" isn't the greatest endorsement ever but it's a yes and progress. I am now in a female led DD marriage and I couldn't be more pleased. Been a long 6 years since I first ventured on here but I'm sure happy I did.

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    3. Well, you're right, it's not exactly brimming over with enthusiasm. ;-) But, you have to start somewhere, right?

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    4. Indeed, and as I'll probably need to reign in my excitement her reserved approach to enthusiasm will be a great leveller LOL.

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    5. Indeed, a Top jumping up and down in excitement would be kind of an odd look, right?

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    6. Oh yes understand that but a little bit of "I hope you know what your have let yourself in for" would have been the cherry on the very nice cake. Won't lie had resigned myself to no (and part of me struggles to understand how she has agreed with her having not asked any clarification questions in the last 3-4 weeks) but I'm looking no gift horses in the mouth. Cheers GLM

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    7. Oh yes understand that but a little bit of "I hope you know what your have let yourself in for" would have been the cherry on the very nice cake. Won't lie had resigned myself to no (and part of me struggles to understand how she has agreed with her having not asked any clarification questions in the last 3-4 weeks) but I'm looking no gift horses in the mouth. Cheers GLM

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    8. Yeah, that definitely would have been a good line to use on you.

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  4. For me, it's more about the spanking than the authority. However, the female authority can significantly raise my excitement level.

    I think I would have more willingly submitted to female authority to get spanked. And probably that would have been helpful when I was in my twenties.

    Also, while it wasn't the question this time, I think you might ask participants in a later post whether the woman initiated the relationship or they did. I'd be interested in the ratio.

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    1. I'm fine with people weighing in on that question here, or I can raise it in a future post though probably not as it's own topic. When I've raised it in the past--including in actual polls back when Blogger had a poll widget--the ratio was overwhelmingly tilted toward the men initiating. In the 10+ years I've been doing this blog, the number of men and women saying the wife initiated has been trivially small.

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    2. I suspected you already had statistics on that!

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    3. If I had to guess, it would be that maybe 1 in a hundred involves the woman initiating. And, even in instances where the woman did, it usually seems to be a complicated picture with the couple doing some dominance role play that the man had some role in initiating.

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  5. It is the power of a beautiful woman over me that excites me. It cannot be confused with anything.
    Once I struggled with it, but then I gave up and now I'm much better.

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    1. For me, when it comes to the power of spanking, the woman need not be beautiful. The exercise of power is alluring, whatever the woman looks like. In fact, I like F/M spanking pictures in which the woman is plain or maybe even somewhat unattractive. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s that if you were to submit to a woman not because she is beautiful but for the sole reason that she has authority over you, the raw power of her dominance is heightened.

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  6. After being converted to a full submissive, I realize I need an authoritative figure leading my life. I needed the direction, accountability and correction. Bare ass spanking proved to be the means to keep me in line and properly behaved. After several years living in a 24/7, FLR with two different Dominant women, I understand I could not live without both the authority and the spanking to back it up.

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    1. Thanks, SC. I suspect my need for authority may not be as strong or pervasive as yours, but it's definitely part of my psychological makeup. Though, so is a very strong anti-authoritarian streak. So, it's a complicated mix.

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    2. I was also a rebel, taking huge risks, especially on fast motorcycles, which I rode for 60 years. I gave finally gave it up a few years ago, because my sweetie worried about me every time I got on the bike.That was pretty legit, and truth be told, I never could really rein it in, despite my best intentions. I wanted to reward her for taking on the dominant role and spanking me hard and often. I don't think I would have ever considered giving up motorcycles were it not for her, but I did it because I really do respect her and want her to be happy and not worried. She has shown her appreciation, and now, occasionally uses the cane. I have never been happier.

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    3. Where motorcycles are concerned, our trajectories depart. I got my first when I was 11 and rode them continuously through high school and part of college. My first few years with Anne was the only period after 11 years-old that I didn't have one. When, after grad school, I announced my intention to get another, we had a huge fight about it. I ultimately ignored her, bought one, and increased my life insurance coverage. I've never once regretted it. I'll stop riding if and when I detect that my reaction time has dropped into the danger zone. But, I did a multi-state trip last year with a guy was 72, and he did fine, so I hope to have a couple of decades left.

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    4. Dan, we aren’t really that different about motorcycles. I ignored many a women’s well intended advice, and always had at least one road bike since I was 15. My decision to quit came when I was 74. The reason for pointing it out was to explain about something I did for a woman to make her happy. You are married to a gal that doesn’t seem to have a problem with motorcycles ~ you are indeed a lucky man! Enjoy the ride ~ and spankings, as long as you can.

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    5. Oh, she definitely had a big problem with them in the beginning. She's gotten used to it over the years. The fight when I announced I was going to get one after we got married was before we started DD, but I'm not sure the outcome would have been different later. There are a lot of hobbies and interests that are peripheral to me, but motorcycles are different. No motorcycles and no books would probably be the two absolute deal-killers for me.

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    6. Sometimes I struggle when we stray too far from DD as a topic, but motorcycles should be a clear exception. They are just THAT important! I love (eat, breathe, sleep...) motorcycles. Always have, always will!

      -ZM

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    7. I think of the time in college and grad school that I didn't have one as "the Lost Years."

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  7. For us it’s a combination but mostly the spanking. Once Dev says I’m going to receive one I worry a lot. The process is painful but when it’s over the slate is clean and all is good again. She used a long handled spoon yesterday. It was brutal ! I still have the marks and sore today. JR

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    1. Sorry to hear that, though if it's mostly the spanking you want, I guess you're getting it!

      Mine has never used a spoon. I'm not sure we even own one that's big enough to do the job.

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  8. Dan writes: “What’s your primary driver – the spanking or the authority and power behind it? Or, is it impossible to separate the two?”

    There appear to be several different takes on this. I suspect how one answer is linked to the type and tenure of the DD relationship. For many, I believe that spanking is symbiotically intertwined with some kind of corporal punishment, especially earlier in a relationship.
    For spankos, spanking becomes the validation or authentication that a woman possesses and is willing and able to exercise her authority. So, authority (especially the authority to discipline) is the engine, and spanking confirms that the engine is operating.

    However, this has changed moderately as our relationship grows and she has repeatedly demonstrated her readiness to spank when necessary (by her judgment). That has made the threat or even the mild suggestion that a spanking could be brewing often enough to affect my behavior and attitude so that she doesn’t need to spank me.

    This can become very subtle, even nuanced. For example, driving to a small party last weekend, she told me “ I don’t want you to drink more than two glasses of wine and I want us to be out of there not later than midnight. Do you understand”? That was all, but with it was the implied threat (promise) that if I didn’t make every effort to make that happen, she would consider it “ disobedience.”
    Much earlier in our relationship, she probably would have spanked me before the party or after, and the threat of punishment wouldn’t have been subtle at all.
    There are still times I think she should probably have spanked me when she didn’t, but now there are many more times she doesn’t need to spank me because I know she will if I disobey or misbehave. This hasn’t entirely removed my need for real spankings, but it often satisfies that need by demonstrating her authority.
    Alan

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    1. "So, authority (especially the authority to discipline) is the engine, and spanking confirms that the engine is operating." For me, I think that's right. Though, some other commenters seem to clearly have the spanking itself front and center in driving their need.

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    2. Alan: “For spankos, spanking becomes the validation or authentication that a woman possesses and is willing and able to exercise her authority. So, authority (especially the authority to discipline) is the engine, and spanking confirms that the engine is operating.”

      Alan, I think that is true. But that still leaves the question why non-spanking discipline isn’t adequate for most of us guys who are into DD. My wife sometimes uses the kinds of non-spanking punishments traditionally used to discipline adolescents who are considered too old to spank. I can attest that they are somewhat effective. It is certainly humbling to be grounded or confined to my room, and consequences like that demonstrate disciplinary authority just as clearly as a spanking. But there is something primal about corporal punishment, especially spanking, that goes emotionally deeper than anything else, don’t you think?
      GH

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    3. GH, Alan obviously will answer for himself. For me, I do agree there is something about corporal punishment that seems to scratch an itch that other forms of discipline do not, for most of us. That seems to be true even for someone like me who ties a lot of his attraction to DD to the accountability and "boundaries" aspects. There are alternative punishments that probably would be as punitive and coercive, or nearly so, and might bring about the same kind of behavior correction. But, they don't seem to serve quite the same need.

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    4. GH writes: “But there is something primal about corporal punishment, especially spanking, that goes emotionally deeper than anything else, don’t you think?”
      I do agree for myself.
      For some, spankings are necessary to make the exercise of authority real and effective as a discipline. Similarly, adult spanking is erotic for many. I am in that group; corporal punishment is almost exclusively the only kind of discipline that can modify my behavior. A former Girl friend once spoke to the deep emotiveness of spanking when she told me, “Alan, spanking you is more intimate than sex.”. And as she well knew, it was much more effective than any other discipline in controlling my behavior.
      But apparently, there are others who need the authority but can take or leave the spanking—and who do respond to non-spanking punishments. A one-time poster on this blog (Danielle) talked about how she could “eroticize” non-spanking punishments with her husband by simply emphasizing her authority to, for example, order chores or forbid certain behavior.
      So as a generalization, we might say that a female exercising authority is a necessary condition while spanking is a contingent condition, contingent on the particular make-up of the male under discipline
      Alan

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    5. Dan writes: “For me, I think that's right. ( the primacy of exercised authority) Though, some other commenters seem to clearly have the spanking itself front and center in driving their need.”

      For a long time, I agreed with the primacy of spanking, but eventually, the clarity brought about by experience has produced the epiphany G.H. notes below. The exercise of female authority, especially accompanied by dialogue, actually moves the train and makes a spanking the powerful experience it can be. One thing that makes so many of the spanking tube videos blah is the lack of emotional connection and exercise of real authority so rarely present in them
      Alan

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    6. I agree re: spankingtube. Every once in a while I've seen one that wasn't blah, but it's rare.

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  9. Dan writes: “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.”

    A heritable adaption for sure, and certainly many genes are involved, probably scores, if not more. The sources of the adaption are more speculated about than documented. Still, a recent PUB MED article discusses a study arguing asymmetrical relationships are a mating strategy that leads to more children and more sex regardless of whether the dominant is female or male. In other words, seeking female authority in a sexual relationship could have attracted some females (despite today’s cultural norms dominated by the patriarchy). That, in turn, led to more progeny, hence wider replication of the genes of people attracted to such relationships, hence an adaption that seems likely to have been around a long time. It seems likely that males will continue to drive the F/M version of the relationship. But what may change in succeeding generations is the comfort and even enthusiasm of women to assume the disciplinarian role as it is much more an extension of the world of power and influence they are becoming more and more part of.

    I want to be careful to underscore I am not predicting more natural “female tops.” It could happen, but culture and biology might limit it to some unknown degree. Nonetheless, a woman, powerful in the external world and in a committed long-term relationship, is likely to find it much easier, if not natural, to be willing to fulfill her husband’s disciplinary needs needs
    Alan

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    1. That sounds like an interesting article, and it's definitely an interesting proposition that seeking female authority is kind of a way of putting the odds in your favor because it might attract some more dominant females while not necessarily closing off mating opportunities with non-dominant females.

      I can see how being submissive to a hierarchy, i.e. not bucking the established order, could be adaptive for both sexes and would account for why in both sexes there seems to be way more natural followers than natural leaders. Ostracism for breaking that social norm, and for engaging in antisocial--i.e., anti-hiearchy, anti-established order--conduct definitely would have been a quick way to stop transgressive tendencies from spreading. And, to the extent the established order discouraged taking stupid risks, exhibiting disrespect for authority, and violating agreed-upon norms, being submissive to discipline for doing those things absolutely could be an adaptive behavior that ended up being reflected in gene selection.

      Which takes me back to the question I alluded to. If a primary way society enforced submissiveness to authority was via corporal punishment, and if such submissiveness and conformity to authority were, in fact, adaptive, then is it, in fact, a good thing that we have pretty much eliminated corporal punishment as once very widely practiced?

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    2. Dan writes: “If a primary way society enforced submissiveness to authority was via corporal punishment, and if such submissiveness and conformity to authority were, in fact, adaptive, then is it, in fact, a good thing that we have pretty much eliminated corporal punishment as once very widely practiced.”

      This question is ultimately answered as we go deeper into the non-spanking era ( for children). I think the real danger and potential harm to children from spanking is not the physical punishment (unless it was cruel and sadistic). And consensuality which we all value does not exist unless two adults are involved. The much greater danger is the emotional harm an immature mind can experience from being beaten by an adult. And the early awakening of sexual feelings that apparently accompanies exposure to spanking seems much better delayed into later maturity.

      Maybe the biggest problem is that our studies (which are not perfect) indicate that some children are emotionally harmed by spanking while others are not. But there is no way a priori to know who will or won’t be harmed. Spanking and the spanking fetish can be a great gift for an adult in so many ways, But I think spanking is better left as an adult consensual experience.

      Alan

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    3. Thanks, Alan. I don't consider myself pro- or anti-spanking in children. It was probably over-used in the past, and it certainly can be abusive but I don't think it always was or is. I do think that if it's been near ubiquitous and, as you say, there may have been genes selected for it indicating it has some adaptive function, it becomes an interesting question whether societies are on the right track in eliminating it. Particularly given that in the 20 or 30 years in which it has been in decline rates of depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior have skyrocketed. That last point is one--among many--reasons I question many of the studies. If spanking was leading to depression, anxiety and objectively worse performance on certain educational and earnings measures, then why as it has been eliminated have all those things gotten worse, not better, particularly for the population most subject to it, i.e. underaged boys? The simple answer is, of course, that the world is a very complicated place and that just as spanking was declining things like the internet and social media were coming on. But, that also should make us question whether the studies are actually something that should be relied upon in setting policy or educating the public.

      When some of the meta-studies in this area made headlines, I looked into some some of the studies. Some of the bigger potential problems I saw are:

      - Lumping all corporal punishment forms together, such that a few swats with an open hand was treated exactly like hitting someone with a 2x4. If the study equates swats with a hand with conduct that would be criminal child abuse even in states that allow corporal punishment, that's a big problem in terms of getting anything informative from the results. It also likely indicates a bias among the study's creators that was incorporated into its structure, i.e. they basically assumed implicitly that all forms of corporal punishment are abusive, so why try to separate them out?

      - Relatedly, most of the measured negative correlations between corporal punishment and things like educational achievement, earnings, and future psychological problems were pretty small and could easily be accounted for by the fact that studies included practices that would violate criminal laws.

      - None of the studies I saw seemed to try to account for the "chicken and the egg" problem. In other words, assume a study subject was spanked and scored worse on certain educational and earnings criteria in adulthood as concerned to a non-spanked participant. How do we know that the same factors that led to lower adult performance in the higher education or in the workplace--possibly things like insubordination, laziness, refusal to take direction, uncooperative behavior with peers--weren't exactly the reason they were spanked? This comes up with siblings all the time. One gets spanked more than the other for a simple reason . . . they behaved worse. If your theory about a spanking gene is correct, then it stands to reason that the bad behavior as a child that doesn't get corrected leads to bad behavior as an adult and that in some forms--like increased risk taking--that maladaptive behavior results in those genes not being spread as far.

      - Most of the studies don't seem to account very well, if at all, for differences in educational quality and social support. Let's say we had two subjects, one spanked and one not. The spanked child goes on to earn less and be more maladjusted than the unspanked child. What if I now added that the spanked child grew up in rural Mississippi and the unspanked one grew up in an affluent school district in Connecticut. The spanking status is still correlated with future outcomes, but under those circumstances is it likely to be at all meaningful in explaining the differential performance?

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    4. Sorry, I felt the need to add something. Here is why I think an unbiased, clear-eyed discussion is needed: We as a society seem to be failing our teenagers badly. Particularly boys. Major depression and anxiety-related disorders have skyrocketed, as have teenage suicides. Boys academic performance is down on a variety of objective measures. We need to start figuring out why all this bad stuff is happening, and we can't just adopt or dismiss certain theories because they better fit our preconceived notions and social biases. If power hierarchies and/or corporal punishment has, in fact, been selected for in our genes because there are adaptive benefits, we need to make sure we are replacing them with something equally beneficial as we eliminate them wholesale. Given what has taken place with teenage mental and emotional health over the last few years, we need to make sure the changes we make to how kids are raised are actually *correct* and not just politically correct. We certainly seem to be failing boys, and we need to make sure we are identifying the right problem before imposing a set of solutions.

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    5. Dan,
      My stated reservations about spanking children notwithstanding, I strongly agree with you that most, if not all, of the spanking research, has serious flaws in addition, in many cases, to ideological biases.

      We lack a well-designed study, perhaps a “natural experiment” that compares two states roughly of equal SES variables over a generation or more to compare social pathology differences, if any. Lacking that, a smaller study that controlled for SES might work as well, but both would require an extended observation period. We have neither in the studies done so far, so the best of them is suggestive but hardly conclusive.
      However, I would be careful about attributing the apparently increasing emotional and behavioral pathology of younger generations to any single cause (s). Some of the frightening numbers showing almost epidemic rates of anxiety and depression in children are due to our improved ability to recognize and diagnose these problems—many of which were hidden or ignored in earlier generations.

      But beyond that, our children are now living in a world that evolution never prepared us for, and that –This “evolutionary mismatch” compounded by the astronomical rate of change we are living through, one that is broadly dysfunctional for many. Alvin Toffler (Future Shock) wrote about this more than a half-century ago, and the rate of change – cultural, technological, and social –has only accelerated since then.
      I am opposed to spanking children, but spanking or non-spanking children are unlikely to have much of an overall macro effect on our broader world.

      Alan

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    6. Just an addendum about males generally and boys in particular: The rate of change for young men has been particularly challenging for them as a category. Their role in society and vis-a-vis women has changed dramatically just in my lifetime. Their historical advantages have almost disappeared as brawn is increasingly trumped by brains in the economy and professions. Moreover, girls seem to be adapting much more comfortably to the changes brought by post-industrial culture. Many young males are understandably conflicted by the rapid role changes ( as are many of their parents) The college experience rescues some of them, but not all who experience college benefit from the experience, The overall impact for young males is a time of crisis -which hopefully many will transcend as we encounter the “ brave new world.” The challenge for older adults is to help as many of them make that transition as possible.
      Alan

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    7. Alan,

      "I am opposed to spanking children, but spanking or non-spanking children are unlikely to have much of an overall macro effect on our broader world."

      I *think* you're right about the like effect or lack thereof, though I don't know for sure. Unfortunately, I wish some of the people citing the flawed studies were as circumspect as you and I in drawing conclusions, since many *are* citing those studies as proof that spanking is a great evil that needs to be eradicated.

      I suspect there will never be a very good study in this area. I can think of various designs, but most of them would have pretty big ethical issues and/or be hugely expensive. I also suspect there are just too many variables to control for.

      "Their historical advantages have almost disappeared as brawn is increasingly trumped by brains in the economy and professions."

      I sort of agree, though I think it's not so much that men's historical roles have disappeared (though to some extent they have), but that society stopped valuing them. We still need plenty of roles than men are either uniquely adapted to or uniquely gravitate to. We have a desperate shortage of the kind of trained trades and crafts that men used to fill, but everyone got sold on the social prestige and value of four-year degrees. I think that maybe the pandemic and geopolitical fights with China shook that up a little. We saw the downside risk of outsourcing the actual making of things to other countries. When labor markets tightened, employers started actually focusing some attention on credentials creep and the stupidity of requiring higher levels of education for jobs that didn't require them.

      Though, sociologically, we've definitely taken some hits. It will be interesting to see what happens when the pendulum inevitably swings back a bit. There has to be some midpoint that makes a place for masculinity without labeling so much of it "toxic."

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    8. Dan said: “It will be interesting to see what happens when the pendulum inevitably swings back a bit. There has to be some midpoint that makes a place for masculinity without labeling so much of it "toxic."

      I would not label traditional masculine traits as toxic but instead as dysfunctional and obsolete in an increasingly female-centered high-tech post-industrial era.

      That this is the problem it has become is rooted in the rate of accelerating change we are experiencing. Evolutionary processes in pre-industrial times would have gradually produced adaptions to accommodate what is, in effect, a new environment.

      Males that didn’t adapt would simply not pass on their genes. Something like this might be happening now, as the existence of groups like the incels illustrate. But in earlier times, the changes would be slow and small, spread over dozens or even hundreds of generations. We do that in one or two generations, and the stresses are growing, particularly for males.
      Alan

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    9. I agree that tech may be kind of a game changer where human evolution is concerned, with societal change vastly outpacing the usual pace of genetic adaptations. Though, one could probably say the same thing about the Industrial Revolution itself.

      I don't see the incels though as a great example of dysfunctional masculinity. Many of them seem to be involuntarily celibate precisely because they aren't very masculine. They're more like whiny little boys.

      I do think there is an issue with lumping in female-centered together with high-tech, given the abysmal rates of female participation in STEM, particularly and in the tech industry. In general women have made huge strides in academic degrees conferred, including advanced degrees. But, that's definitely not the case in STEM and particularly in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering.

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    10. I see “toxic masculinity” as a subversion of masculine traits that are positive in themselves. For example, I don’t think anyone would argue that it is toxic for a man to be strong and courageous and willing to defend his loved ones. But that masculine ideal can become toxic when it is purely performative. Thus, when men think they have to strut their stuff and behave in an unnecessarily pugilistic way to show how strong and brave they are, that’s “toxic masculinity.”
      GH

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    11. GH, agreed. It can work the same way in either direction, magnifying a positive trait until it becomes negative or toxic. It's great for a man to be sensitive, cooperative, affectionate, etc. But, there is some line where it becomes kind of simpering and submissive to the point that many women are totally turned off by it. Similarly, masculine qualities can be very attractive but, pushed to an extreme or used to put on a performance, they become toxic.

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  10. “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?”

    It’s impossible for me to separate the two. Let me put it this way: I am excited by disciplinary spanking as a primal and sexually charged expression of one person’s power over another, but spanking that doesn’t express real power doesn’t do much for me.

    The power of my parents to discipline me when I was a kid was probably the purest expression of a power imbalance I have ever had, but I didn’t think of my parents’ authority over me as an expression of power. It was too natural to be seen as a power imbalance. However, being spanked in front of, or within hearing of, my sisters was extremely embarrassing to me. And because of sibling rivalry with my sisters, I imagined that they enjoyed my plight when I got in trouble, so there was a power dynamic to their enjoyment of my embarrassment (at least in my mind). That power imbalance was even clearer on occasions when my sisters had power to get me in trouble by “telling on me” or to increase my embarrassment by blabbing to girlfriends if I had been or was going to be spanked. I don’t know whether my sisters were conscious of having power over me, but I imagined that they were.

    On two occasions when I was in elementary school, I witnessed boys being spanked by women teachers in front of the class. That affected me deeply. The idea of being spanked by a woman who was not one’s mother made me conscious of spanking as an expression of power that was different than natural parental authority. Not only did the teachers spank those boys, they did it in front of girls in the class. Observing the amusement, maybe even excitement, of the girls on those occasions made me feel that witnesses to a spanking have power over the person being spanked. It was like my situation of being spanked in front of my sisters, except that it would be 10x worse in front of classmates. I thought I would die of embarrassment if that happened to me, but I fantasized about it. I had a schoolboy crush on one of those teachers, which was heightened by the witnessed spanking, but it was a crush henceforth tinged by fear.

    When I was a teenager, I got spanked by a girl cousin who was the same age as me as the result of losing a bet. My siblings and I were pretty close to our cousins, so there was something like sibling rivalry between this cousin and me. I didn’t feel sexual attraction to her. She wasn’t pretty and she was bossy. We were intensely competitive, and when we played games we tended to be sore losers and insufferable winners. That’s what inspired me to challenge her to a bet where the winner would get, not only to gloat, but to spank the loser. To my surprise, she accepted. I’m not sure whether I wanted to win or to lose, but I lost. She didn’t spank me hard, but according to the terms of the bet, it was on the bare bottom, so I was extremely embarrassed and she was utterly gleeful and triumphant. That incident contributed to my sense that spanking and power are inextricably intertwined. Also that I found it exciting to be the loser of the power struggle.
    GH

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    1. I just had an epiphany because of this topic. Why do I crave maternal style discipline from my wife? Not the dominatrix’s whip, but the hairbrush or paddle of the mother. It’s not because I have some deep, dark, Freudian feeling about my mother. It has to do with power and authority. Because a child is totally dependent on the parents, and the parents have a social duty to educate the child, the relationship between parent and child involves the most one-sided power imbalance most of us will never know. That power, however, is so natural and so socially pervasive that we don’t even think of it as power. But when my wife takes up the maternal hairbrush to discipline me like my mother once did, I am acutely aware of her power precisely because she ISN’T my mother, and an element of radical inequality is injected into a relationship that is, according to social convention, supposed to be based on equality.
      GH

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    2. That's a good point that DD both invokes maternal power but is also distinguished from it.

      You might be surprised at how often I have mini-epiphanies myself when writing posts. It happened this week with the observation that I always thought I had a thing for older women but that it was probably more that they were the ones with the power authority while girls/women my own age had not learned to use it yet and were, if anything, kind of insipid.

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    3. "I am excited by disciplinary spanking as a primal and sexually charged expression of one person’s power over another, but spanking that doesn’t express real power doesn’t do much for me."

      "This comes pretty close to summarizing elegantly my dynamic. However, being spanked in front of, or within hearing of, my sisters was extremely embarrassing to me. And because of sibling rivalry with my sisters, I imagined that they enjoyed my plight when I got in trouble, so there was a power dynamic to their enjoyment of my embarrassment (at least in my mind)."

      I suspect that many, many siblings do enjoy the plight of another sibling getting spanked. Let's face it, there's a lot of competition and a "frenemy" dynamic among many siblings. If you were to ask your sisters about it today, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they admitted that they did, in fact, enjoy it.

      "The idea of being spanked by a woman who was not one’s mother made me conscious of spanking as an expression of power that was different than natural parental authority." I think for me, parental disciplinary power and teacher disciplinary power were almost inextricably intertwined. Getting spanked at school almost always resulted in a note being sent up, and often a confirming call being placed, to the parents, which pretty much guaranteed a second spanking at home.

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    4. "I am acutely aware of her power precisely because she ISN’T my mother ..."
      GH, this is it for me, exactly. She spanked like my mother but she was my wife. I was subject to my wife's motherly authority. This seemed so right, more so even than my mother's authority. This woman who chose to love me and have sex with me took on the authority to train me, control me, punish me almost exactly as my mother had. I have never felt anything so intimate as making love with the woman who a few hours before had me begging over her knee.
      KOJ

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    5. Dan: " I think for me, parental disciplinary power and teacher disciplinary power were almost inextricably intertwined. Getting spanked at school almost always resulted in a note being sent up, and often a confirming call being placed, to the parents, which pretty much guaranteed a second spanking at home.”

      I agree, Dan. Where I grew up in the province of Ontario, the Education Act explicitly linked teachers’ disciplinary authority to that of parents. The act said that teachers act “in loco parentis” (in the parents’ place), and they were therefore empowered to discipline students in any way “a kind, judicious parent would.” Thus, the two spankings I witnessed in elementary school were within the spirit of the law. (I believe that law is still on the books, but it has now been overridden by a wider ban on corporal punishment). My parents also had a punished-at-school-spanked-at-home rule, as I think most parents back then did. Incidentally, I never got spanked at school, but I had my hands strapped twice, once by a male teacher and once by a female teacher. The two experiences affected me differently because of the teachers’ genders. In the case of the male teacher, it just hurt. But with the woman teacher, I felt more of a sense of shame for having disappointed her, and it embarrassed me that she could see the expression on my face while she strapped me. Though I would have been more embarrassed if she had bent me over for a spanking, there is another kind of intimacy in the face-to-face aspect of hand strapping. I was also thinking of the spanking I would get at home later, and I imagined she could guess the consequence that awaited me at home.
      GH

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    6. Dan: “I suspect that many, many siblings do enjoy the plight of another sibling getting spanked. Let's face it, there's a lot of competition and a "frenemy" dynamic among many siblings. If you were to ask your sisters about it today, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they admitted that they did, in fact, enjoy it.”

      You could be right, Dan. But I am too embarrassed to ask my sisters that question because I fear they might guess that spanking is still a significant part of my life today.
      GH

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    7. "My parents also had a punished-at-school-spanked-at-home rule, as I think most parents back then did." Mine did too but, like you, I never got an actual spanking at school. One of my sisters did, however. I remember she once destroyed the note she was supposed to bring home, but the teacher followed up with a call to my parents. She then lied to them about whether she'd gotten spanked at school. Definitely not a good series of events for her . . .

      Hand strapping definitely was not a thing in any of the schools I went to. Here in the US, I think that may have been more of a Catholic school thing.

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    8. "I am too embarrassed to ask my sisters that question because I fear they might guess that spanking is still a significant part of my life today."

      I have a relatively good relationship with my siblings, yet they are in the familial camp that I don't want to know about our DD lifestyle, even if I have become more open with a few others. I don't know why, but close family knowing still bothers me a lot.

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    9. Wow, lots of good stuff in your comment, GH.

      "I am excited by disciplinary spanking as a primal and sexually charged expression of one person’s power over another, but spanking that doesn’t express real power doesn’t do much for me." - perfectly put

      "That power imbalance was even clearer on occasions when my sisters had power to get me in trouble by 'telling on me' or to increase my embarrassment by blabbing to girlfriends if I had been or was going to be spanked. I don’t know whether my sisters were conscious of having power over me, but I imagined that they were... Not only did the teachers spank those boys, they did it in front of girls in the class. Observing the amusement, maybe even excitement, of the girls on those occasions made me feel that witnesses to a spanking have power over the person being spanked." - And this just made me realize just what it is that makes the whole "witness" thing so powerful to me; the witness(es) have power of the person being spanked, so it is just a further manifestation of power exchange. Thank you for that excellent insight.

      Also, your whole "bet" scenario really resonated with me. I also am very excited at all bets or anything involving risk, but especially when the forfeit is something like a spanking. I have wondered why it is that I fantasize about things like this, since normally spanking is pretty powerless to me in the absence of a real reason and also legitimate authority being exercised. But you provided some real insight: "Also that I found it exciting to be the loser of the power struggle."

      This is really making me rethink some things.

      -ZM

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    10. ZM: “Also, your whole "bet" scenario really resonated with me. I also am very excited at all bets or anything involving risk, but especially when the forfeit is something like a spanking. I have wondered why it is that I fantasize about things like this, since normally spanking is pretty powerless to me in the absence of a real reason and also legitimate authority being exercised. But you provided some real insight: "Also that I found it exciting to be the loser of the power struggle."

      ZM, there was a backstory to that bet with my cousin Lynn. It took place in her family’s big old farmhouse. I was there for a couple of weeks to help bring in the hay. The house had an honest to God woodshed off the kitchen, with a paddle hanging on a hook by the door. Because I was a budding spanko, I had compared notes about family discipline with Lynn and her brother. I knew that my aunt, a sharp tongued woman I slightly feared, was the disciplinarian and that spankings were given in the woodshed with that paddle on the bare bottom. I had never been present when my cousins got spanked, but I was sure conscious of that woodshed. I was also never certain whether, as a nephew, I was at risk of being spanked myself. Thus, spanking was always on my mind in that house. An incident from the previous summer had also affected me. At that time, another cousin Bill and I were both staying there to help with the hay. My uncle sent Lynn into the house to tell Bill and me that he wanted to get started early on the hay. Lynn barged into the room I shared with Bill without knocking. I had just finished getting dressed, but Bill was naked. One might have expected Lynn to avert her eyes and withdraw in embarrassment. But when Bill crouched behind the bed to hide from her, Lynn barged further into the room, intending to go around the bed to get a better look, laughing at Bill’s embarrassment. I had to physically block her path and push her out the door to prevent further intrusion on Bill’s privacy. I felt sorry for Bill because, being naturally shy, he was mortified, as I would have been in his place. But I also began to fantasize about it. I think I developed a CFNM kink on top of a spanking kink because of that. I wasn’t yet fully conscious of the concept of D/s, but I was vaguely aware that Lynn’s aggressive enjoyment of Bill’s embarrassment exerted a kind of power over him, and that excited me for reasons I didn’t understand. So jump ahead a year. Lynn and I are alone in the house on a hot afternoon, playing crokinole in the kitchen near that woodshed. Because of an intense rivalry between us (a cousin version of sibling rivalry), we are both seriously invested in winning. After each game the winner would gloat. I hated the way she gloated when she won, but I did the same thing to her when I won. So those games were a real power struggle. All of that led me to challenging her to a bet that the winner could give the loser a “real” spanking. In our families, “real” meant on the bare bottom. Because of the incident with Bill the previous summer, I suspected she would love to see me humiliated by having to bare myself for a spanking from her. But would she risk the possible humiliation of having to submit to me that way? To my surprise, she accepted the terms of the bet without hesitation. Maybe she was a budding spanko like me and was also turned on by power dynamics. Losing the bet was extremely embarrassing, but also arousing, all the more so because of the way she gloated and looked at me so aggressively as I had to pull down my pants and underwear to go over her knee. One might think that a spanking because of a bet isn’t “real” like a disciplinary spanking is, but believe me, that spanking was real because of the circumstances.
      GH

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    11. GH wrote: “ I am too embarrassed to ask my sisters that question because I fear they might guess that spanking is still a significant part of my life today.”

      I really understand this and would be deeply embarrassed if my sister knew my wife spanked me (although my sister would be amused). But if there is a way for you to find out if either sister is active in spanking, .it would be extremely interesting.

      Here is why I say that. Evidence suggests that some combination of genes predisposes a person to spanking interest, with the environment determining whether the gene is activated.
      . Our full siblings share 50 percent of our genes. Presumably, this means there is one chance in two that the “spanko gene” was inherited by one of your sisters and one in 4 chances they both inherited the genetic makeup that predisposed to spanking.

      What makes the question even more intriguing is the plausible theory, widely discussed, that girls who see boys spanked to whom they harbor some resentment ( in other words, most sisters) are most likely to become female tops in a spanking relationship, given the correct genetic make-up.

      In short, one of both of your sisters might be spankos, and finding out would be invaluable.

      Alan

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    12. Alan, I think my sisters would also be amused if they knew my wife spanks me, and I would find it intolerably embarrassing if they found out. And yet I have read stories about wives spanking their husbands either in front of or within hearing of family members, and the fantasy of it excites me.
      I have three sisters. Two of them have dominant personalities, and I can imagine them finding it amusing to spank a man. My youngest sister doesn’t seem dominant at all.

      My intuition is that you are right that we have some innate tendency to eroticize spanking that gets activated by environmental factors. Has there been actual research to back up the theory that girls who witness rival brothers being spanked are more likely to grow up to be women spankers? It seems intuitively plausible. Does the research say anything about the effect on the brothers? One problem with the theory, however, is that male bottoms seem to greatly outnumber female tops. If it is true that boys have been more frequently spanked than girls, should there not be greater equilibrium between male bottoms and female tops?

      Assuming that you are right that there is something like a “spanking gene”, it is possible that a large number of other personality traits could influence whether the person becomes a top or a bottom. I can imagine, for example, that introversion versus extroversion might play a role, with the extrovert being more likely to top. Or a person with a heightened sense of conscientiousness might feel that they deserve to be punished for failures. This is all speculative, but it is interesting to think about.
      GH

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    13. Hi GH,
      “Has there been actual research to back up the theory that girls who witness rival brothers being spanked are more likely to grow up to be women spankers? It seems intuitively plausible.”
      ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      As far as I know, the evidence for it is all anecdotal, some at least coming from women claiming the experience. The best anecdotal evidence now extant that I am aware of is a letter from one of Aunt Kay’s correspondents in the “ Real People Section” Given the apparent scarcity of “natural top,” I would expect most frequently, a woman would respond more positively to her husbands needs, rather than simply emerge as a top. But I am conjecturing.
      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      “Assuming that you are right that there is something like a “spanking gene”, it is possible that a large number of other personality traits could influence whether the person becomes a top or a bottom.”
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      Absolutely there could be. The environment is apparently crucial in determining that, although biology and culture are probably also important.
      If my sister was dominant and otherwise fit the criterion-- and I wanted to know her attitude about spanking-- I would say something fairly innocuous to her like, “ I think your ( husband) deserves a good spanking like I used to get.” Then watch her tell. That will reveal all you want to know.
      Alan

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    14. "This woman who chose to love me and have sex with me took on the authority to train me, control me, punish me almost exactly as my mother had. I have never felt anything so intimate as making love with the woman who a few hours before had me begging over her knee."

      KOJ, I feel a similar way. Receiving a painful spanking from my wife and then making love to her brings very notable feelings of vulnerability, but also intimacy, as if everything were in her hands.

      J

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    15. Hi GH,
      "One problem with the theory, however, is that male bottoms seem to greatly outnumber female tops. If it is true that boys have been more frequently spanked than girls, should there not be greater equilibrium between male bottoms and female tops?" - I have no idea about that theory, since this it the first time I have heard it. However, let's say for a moment that it is true. Sure, boys have been more freqently spanked than girls, but maybe a small percentage of those cases were witnessed by their sisters, and then some of those sisters might not have had any real rivalry with their brothers. And then on top of that, it seems almost universal that the "bottom" motivation is quite a bit higher than the "top" motivation, so even for those girls that might have witnessed a spanking of their rival brother, many may not have ever "discovered" adult spanking, or it might simply have not been a big deal for them.

      What would be interesting, maybe we have covered it here, is the percentage of males who are interested in being spanked, vs the percentage of females. This is difficult to get good data for, however, because societal influences still try to push males towards being dominant, and never submissive.

      -ZM

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    16. ZM, I just Googled “Are spanking fantasies more common among men or women” and found this in an article citing a sex survey done in Canada.

      “The desire to mix pleasure and pain was a little less popular, but still common, with 44% of men and 24% of women reporting fantasies about spanking or whipping someone else during sex, and 36% of women and 29% of men reporting fantasies about being spanked or whipped.”

      That survey concerns fantasies about spanking of whipping as a sexual activity, so it is difficult how closely those statistics map onto an interest in real disciplinary spanking. One interesting point is that the gap between the percentage of men fantasizing about being spanked (29 %) and women fantasizing about spanking someone (24 %) is smaller than I thought. That confirms Dan’s intuition that women aren’t really all that reluctant to spank men, especially if you consider that some of our wives agree to discipline us for practical reasons, even though they don’t have a sexual interest in spanking. Still, would-be women spankees appear to be the “luckiest” group because they are outnumbered by the number of would-be male spankers.
      GH

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    17. I assume that would be a pretty fair overlap of the people that reported a fantasy about being spanked and those fantacising about spanking others.

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    18. GH, I see those statistics, where the number of people who fantasize about giving or receiving is pretty high, and they are hard to reconcile with statistics for things like Pornhub searches, where spanking never cracks even the top-20. I wonder whether the gap may be a result of that fact that there are not very many Pornhub videos with spanking, which may cause people not to search it there, which may further mean that while many people fantasize about spanking, there is a big gap between those fantasizing about it and the number of those who go on to actually try it. Perhaps it's kind of like women and non-consensual sex -- it's a very common fantasy but not one they have any interest in actually acting out.

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  11. When and where I grew up, the boys were much greater risk-takers than the girls and so we were more likely to get into trouble, since we were lousy at avoiding getting caught. It seems as if boys were being punished constantly by parents, teachers, coaches, ministers, aunts and uncles, and even neighbors and shopkeepers (the guy who owned the five and dime was notorious for spanking shoplifters before he even called our parents -- which sometimes he would "forget" to do if we took a particularly hard spanking from him).
    Girls were often witnesses, looking on with a wry smile. So it wasn't that young women were in positions of power as much as young men being in positions of weakness. When my wife was given an in -- I suggested that she deal with me the way my mother had -- something just clicked for her. It was like she was awakened to a power she had always had but did not realize it.
    She had recently begun a career as our kids became more independent, so she was already feeling empowered. I really think her taking up the hairbrush helped her energe from her previous shyness and fully become who she was meant to be: a powerful, smart, funny woman who was ready for the responsibility of training her husband.
    KOJ

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    1. I"t seems as if boys were being punished constantly by parents, teachers, coaches, ministers, aunts and uncles, and even neighbors and shopkeepers." It sounds like I'm close to a generation younger than you, but this was pretty much my experience, too.

      "I really think her taking up the hairbrush helped her emerge from her previous shyness and fully become who she was meant to be: a powerful, smart, funny woman who was ready for the responsibility of training her husband." While I don't think mine has taken up her power with quite as much enthusiasm as you describe your wife doing, this still definitely describes my wife's journey as well, especially after the last year after she left her career.

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  12. tend toward the spanking gene idea. I was fantasizing about spanking - both M/f and F/m - in my teens before I had any idea that adult spanking was a thing. I also didn’t grow up in a spanking environment. Later on this interest extended to a more general DS interest but it is only in the last twenty some years that it has morphed into DD. There was a brief reference in one of the comments last week to giving a disciplinary spanking to a woman. I’ve mentioned in a previous discussion that there was an occasion a couple of years ago when my wife had had shoulder surgery, that she had some help spanking me. In fact, that person was someone who I had had an occasional D/s relationship with for some time and there had been a couple of occasions when she asked for real discipline, which I had provided. I draw a distinction between spanking and any other form of hitting. I can’t imagine hitting a woman in any other way but spanking, and then only when she is clear that she wants to be spanked, that does not give me a problem. I sometimes wonder if I would be able to do that if I were not more often on the receiving end myself. It is obviously not the same woman (I don’t spank my wife) but i think that in a general sense being prepared to receive is a crucial factor in being able to hand it out. I have a suspicion that I would find it very uncomfortable to spank a woman if I were not also being spanked by a woman. I’m not sure I can justify that logically, but emotionally it’s how I feel. Oh, and I have never owned a motor bike, my taste is more towards European roadsters. TG

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    1. TG: “I can’t imagine hitting a woman in any other way but spanking, and then only when she is clear that she wants to be spanked, that does not give me a problem. I sometimes wonder if I would be able to do that if I were not more often on the receiving end myself. It is obviously not the same woman (I don’t spank my wife) but i think that in a general sense being prepared to receive is a crucial factor in being able to hand it out. I have a suspicion that I would find it very uncomfortable to spank a woman if I were not also being spanked by a woman. I’m not sure I can justify that logically, but emotionally it’s how I feel.”

      TG, that is exactly how I feel about it. Well put! That’s why I was able to spank that woman when she asked me to.
      GH

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    2. "I’m not sure I can justify that logically, but emotionally it’s how I feel. Oh, and I have never owned a motor bike, my taste is more towards European roadsters."

      I get the gap between logical and emotional reactions to spanking a woman, though for me it works in reverse. Logically, I totally accept that there is a contextual difference between spanking and other forms of hitting and that consent makes all the difference. Yet, despite what my rationality tells me, I still have the gut-level aversion.

      The tastes for motorcycles and European roadsters definitely aren't mutually exclusive. While I haven't bought a roadster, I've thought about it several times, probably a Boxster. Though, practically, we live in a region where the season for top-down driving is pretty short, so I've also spent a lot of time craving a yellow Cayman.

      Delete
  13. Dan, I’ve always been attracted to older women. The maternal aspect is huge for me. My wife is a few years older than I am. I also had a crush on one of my school grade teachers. She always wore the long dresses. Growing up in a religious household, dresses or skirts were the norm in school and at church. I feel they became somewhat of a power symbol. Mom usually spanked in her dress after work or school. I’m definitely attracted to the authority side but I’m a true spanko from a young age. I do agree that it’s hard wired in some. I look at some of the stronger women in the church or school and was memorized by their power. I remember at one point getting into trouble just to get spanked. This was right about puberty age. I remember a spanking from my wife one day. We arrived home and she was in a dress and pantyhose. She rarely wears pantyhose. The spanking hurt, but I was so turned on by her authority and dress at the time. It brought me back to my childhood. What I needed at that time was a no nonsense spanking to adjust my attitude. I think for me the power, authority, and spankings go hand in hand. To this day when I see an older attractive women in a skirt or dress with pantyhose, I wonder if she is strict or firm. I’m turned on by her beauty. I must admit though at work, throughout my career, I despise authority. I do not like being told what to do and how to accomplish it. I’m also happy that this stage of my career, I’m rarely told what to do and accomplish all my tasks without higher ups meddling. I never feared my Mother, who loved us tremendously, even though she spanked hard and long. My wife was the opposite, she feared her Mother and the paddlings and did almost everything to avoid them and her at times.
    T

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    1. While I don't react strongly to any kind of clothing, my taste probably goes a bit in the opposite direction from yours. I'm kind of into more "manly" dress for women, like jeans and a tailored, form fitting sports coat.

      "I must admit though at work, throughout my career, I despise authority. I do not like being told what to do and how to accomplish it." Same here. It's something I really can't explain -- I get off on authority at home (though, really, only in retrospect and not at the time it is happening) but hated it at work.

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    2. "I must admit though at work, throughout my career, I despise authority. I do not like being told what to do and how to accomplish it. I’m also happy that this stage of my career, I’m rarely told what to do and accomplish all my tasks without higher ups meddling." - Me too, 100%... Also, exactly what Dan said about the paradox of getting of on authority at home (except when face to face with it), but hating it at work.

      -ZM

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  14. For me, everything around this has changed a lot over the years. In my childhood years, I think I had a morbid fascination with spankings, especially at school, but really in most situations. Any mention of someone getting a spanking would get my immediate full attention.

    During my teenage years, I "discovered" sexual spanking and femdom, and that was all-consuming. Also, during my teenage and early 20's, I had a thing for women in their 30's, and yes, they were all supremely confident and put together. My interest in spanking never wavered, but I became less and less enthralled with traditional femdom type attire and practices, much preferring pictures depicting normally dressed women spanking guys. Even in this, quite often I gravitated towards things where the women were older than the men, probably because it gave it kind of a maternal feel.

    When I discovered the DWC, that was huge for me, because suddenly I realized that this is what I was really into, real wives using real spankings to punish their husbands for real offenses. As I have gotten older, the ages of women that catch my eye has not increased with my age. I still like (too much) looking at women in their 20's, because they are just so fun and energetic and of course still have great bodies. But I can't really picture them in a DD or even femdom scenario, since they lack seriousness and credibility. So probably still the perfect all-around age for women is the 30's, where they are still young and very attractive, yet much more mature and grown-up. If I were to come up with some fantasy scenario around DD that my wife wasn't starring in, then probably the fictional person would be in her 30's.

    And now that I actually have a DD relationship (with a totally amazing wife) and I am actually at least sometimes getting the hard spankings that I spent my whole life dreaming of, I am much less into spanking itself, and almost completely focused on the authority. I think the way Dan said it was pretty true for me as well: "...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."

    -ZM



    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?

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    1. Oops, I copied and pasted the question of the week, and then never even got to it, leaving it hanging on the end. I would say the primary driver is the authority and power, and not the spanking. However, interestingly, I would also say that probably it is largely the link to spanking or threat of physical punishment that makes authority somehow exciting to me. So authority in non-sexual relationships is much less powerful for me than is authority with some sexual context around it.

      -ZM

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    2. "If I were to come up with some fantasy scenario around DD that my wife wasn't starring in, then probably the fictional person would be in her 30's."

      Mine probably would be no less than the 30s. But, more likely in her 40s. I still see that as a more powerful decade for many women.

      I don't think I ever went through a stage of being turned on by the whole Femdom image. I think my kink in this area has always needed to be grounded in something resembling reality. Femdom always seemed like role-play.

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    3. Dan, I think I define the term “femdom” differently than you. If by “femdom image” you mean leather clad dominatrices servicing guys who are into BDSM, I’m not into that either. To me the term just means “female dominance”, so I consider the kind of wife led DD you discuss in your blog to be a sub-category of femdom. I don’t like extremely demeaning stories or images of guys being made to grovel and lick the woman’s boots or being caged and led around on a leash, etc., but I’m not sure whether my desire to submit to discipline from my wife is entirely distinct from BDSM on a deep psychological level. Even within the realm of DD, my tastes are weirdly specific. For example, I have a fetish for hairbrushes, paddles, and straps, whereas canes leave me cold. But I think I must be psychologically similar to a guy who wants his wife to use a cane for discipline.
      GH

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    4. GH, I was, in fact, talking primarily about the whole leather and chains dominatrix thing.

      We've spent hours on here over the years trying to figure out what box various kinks go in, and I doubt we'll ever come to any satisfying definition. My mental model for the discussion is a Venn diagram with a whole bunch of adjacent kinks, some of which overlap each other in various respects.

      I don't see wife led DD as a sub-category of Femdom, though I think they are adjacent kinks that overlap in some respects but not in others, including important ones. I think the emphasis on real punishments for real offenses doesn't have much of a presence in Femdom, while the whole role-playing, "scene" thing in Femdom turns off some of us who are into DD, because for many DD has a focus on realism that Femdom doesn't. I More importantly, I think they differ pretty dramatically in the goals. For many, DD includes a "performance improvement" or "behavior correction" component that Femdom really doesn't.

      I don't, btw, deny that both are erotic and have a lot of sexual energy associated with them. But, I think Femdom has that sexual component as *the* goal. It's kind of *all* about the sexual charge in a way that DD isn't, because DD has those other non-sexual goals.

      I also think they are pretty distinct from the women's perspectives. It seems like many wives who agree to DD are actively turned off by the whole "whips and chains" thing.

      So, again, I'm not saying there are major overlaps between these various lifestyles that involve either the reality or the pretense of some kind of power exchange or power hierarchy. But, I think there are important differences, too.

      Regarding the tastes for one tool or another, I agree that difference in preferences probably doesn't reflect very distinct psychological drives and probably is more about what you've been exposed to and in what context. Canes don't exactly leave me cold, but they don't do as much for me as, say, a paddle, belt or strap. Probably because canes weren't any part of the corporal punishment culture I grew up around. Though, I'm not sure how to explain hairbrushes. I definitely have a thing for the iconic heavy ebony brush, but I don't recall hairbrushes being a disciplinary thing in any of the households I grew up around. And, it's definitely hairbrushes -- the bath brush is definitely my wife's "go to" instrument these days, but for me the image of bath brush is nowhere near as powerful as a hairbrush.

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    5. Dan, I don’t disagree with anything you said. You and I find ourselves in a similar place, though we approached it from different directions. I was a spanko from an early age, so I asked for FLR/DD for erotic reasons. You were not initially a spanko, but you asked for spanking discipline for the sake of discipline. Now we both find ourselves in DD relationships in which our wives discipline us for their own practical reasons. You have discovered that DD is erotic as well as practical. I have discovered that DD can be real and practical as well as erotic. We also agree that real discipline is paradoxically more erotic than fake scenarios done for purely erotic reasons. We both crave DD with a maternal aspect, and we aren’t interested in the leather clad dominatrix vibe. Moreover, as you said, neither of our wives are interested in playing femdom games or dressing up. They only spank us for real. I think you would agree with all that.

      Where I differ from you is that I believe role playing could potentially be powerful under the right circumstances with a woman who was into it. Maybe that is because I fantasize more than you do. I like that my wife spanks me for real. But if she was a spanko like me, I can imagine some intense explorations of fantasies. For example, if she played the role of a workplace disciplinarian or a teacher and we both got into character, I believe that could be powerful…and realistic if not exactly real. I sense that you wouldn’t be interested in role playing scenes from your fantasies because you can’t imagine them being realistic enough to feel “real”. I can. Moreover, I think role playing fantasies could be an interesting form of self exploration. But I understand why role playing doesn’t interest you… or my wife for that matter.

      I would add that although my wife only disciplines me for real, we do to some extent embroider the act with imaginative extensions. Nobody knows that my wife spanks me. But during a spanking, she might say, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, a grown man needing to be spanked? What would people think if they could see you now?” When she says stuff like that, I imagine people actually knowing I am being spanked. That deepens my sense of shame, though it is only in my head. Also, my wife sometimes threatens to let people know she spanks me if I misbehave in company. I don’t think she would ever do that, so that is a kind of role playing on her part, but does it ever have a real effect on me!
      GH

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    6. GH, I do agree with almost everything in your first paragraph. My one quibble might be with: "You have discovered that DD is erotic as well as practical." I always knew DD was powerfully erotic for me. My physical reaction the first time I read the DWC website was . . . pronounced and prolonged. I think it took me a while to gain insight into *why* it was erotic for me (and I still am mostly speculating) and to work through in my own mind some of the complex interplay of motivations and the likely reasons for them. Honestly, hanging out here on a weekly basis, talking to thoughtful people, has helped me to articulate the drives better, but I always understood and accepted that DD caused a strong erotic reaction in me.

      "Where I differ from you is that I believe role playing could potentially be powerful under the right circumstances with a woman who was into it. Maybe that is because I fantasize more than you do." I don't doubt at all that role-playing can be powerful. I'd also be surprised if you fantasize more than I do (I obviously have no way of knowing), though we might fantasize about different things. I would say that for me fantasies related to DD probably involve things like witnesses, third-party participation, etc., and many of those aren't that amenable to role play.

      But, role play was problematic for us in one respect. There actually was a very short period in which our spanking activities were *all* role play. After I saw a segment on adult spanking on HBO's Real Sex series, there were a couple of months in which we role-played around her "punishing" me for bad behavior. The problem was, the spankings were more or less fake, while the bad behavior was either real or related to real things I was doing. Anne concluded, rightly, that she was pretend punishing me for real bad behavior and doing so as part of sex play, thereby reinforcing the bad behavior. She was right.

      Another reason I draw a distinction between DD and Femdom/BDSM/role play, etc., is we've had commenters here from time to time insinuate that the accountability and behavior-correction facets of DD are really just "pretending," i.e. it's something akin to role-play when what is "really" going on is just sex and eroticism.

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    7. Dan, it was presumptuous of me to say I fantasize more than you do. I apologize. The reason I said that is that your blog seems grounded in reality, whereas I used to write some flamboyant spanking fantasies on spanking story boards. Also, I sometimes feel guilty that I still fantasize about fictional spanking scenarios, when I should be content with the discipline I get from my wife. So my feeling that you might not fantasize as much as I was intended as self criticism, not criticism of you.

      I totally get your reason for drawing a distinction between DD and femdom role play. I must confess that I used to be one of those people who believed that DD was reducible to sophisticated role play. At the time I wasn’t yet being disciplined by my own wife. I fantasized about DD, but as far as real life DD was concerned, I was an outsider looking in. It was arrogant and narrow minded of me to think that my limited experience gave me insight into other people’s relationships.
      GH

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    8. I definitely didn't take it as criticism, so no apology needed.

      I have tried to keep the blog grounded in reality, mainly because people here seem to value the blog for allowing people in these relationships to exchange real information that may be helpful or give them insights. Though, it's always iffy trying to figure out who is legit and who isn't. Even when I strongly suspect a woman is pretending to be a man or vice versa, or that someone's comments are just fantasy, I'm pretty slow to cut them off. And, usually they blow their own cover anyway.

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    9. Regarding roleplaying, I made the mistake of considering some of my wife's apparently idle threats to be a form of roleplaying. One of her favorites when we were out in public was, "Straighten up right now or I'll spank you right here." Then one evening at a party she made good on her "idle" threat, as I have previously related here, taking me upstairs to an empty bedroom and using her hairbrush on my bare bottom. Going back downstairs to face those folks who very likely heard me being spanked was the most embarrassing moment of my life. I learned that my wife does not play, and from that time on I took every threat as if she meant it -- because she might!
      KOJ

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    10. Holy mackerel, KOJ! My wife makes threats like that, but I have always considered it to be analogous to role playing because I assume she would never do it. Maybe I have to rethink that! I’m not sure I could stand that much embarrassment, even though I fantasize about scenes like that. I should add that I have never tested whether it is an idle threat because I always behave as though the threat is real. Maybe it is real! Either way, I have no intention of finding out. Lol. Out of curiosity, assuming it was at someone else’s house, did your wife ask the host where best to take you for a spanking? Oh man, how embarrassing that would be? And how did other guests react? Did you get teased, or did people pretend not to have noticed?
      GH

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    11. I had a similar reaction, GH. I guess one should try to pretty clear about whether *both* parties are doing role-play, or otherwise risk some impromptu "reality testing," huh?

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    12. Dan:”I would say that for me fantasies related to DD probably involve things like witnesses, third-party participation, etc., and many of those aren't that amenable to role play.”

      I fantasize about those things too. They are theoretically amenable to role play. You would just need to find a willing third party to role play it. Also, I sometimes role play it in my own head. In other words, when my wife spanks me, I imagine how much more embarrassing it would be if there were guests in the house who could hear. Imagination isn’t reality, but it can go some way towards simulating the mental state the reality would produce, don’t you think?

      Here’s another thing that seems like partial role play: usually my wife spanks me in the bedroom. But sometimes she spanks me in the living room, and when she does that, I feel more exposed and vulnerable, just because she’s doing it in a public part of the house, even though we are alone. I’m wondering now what goes on in my wife’s mind when she varies the routine and spanks me outside the bedroom. Could it be that she is role playing public discipline in her mind? Now I am also wondering whether she sometimes threatens to spank me in public because some part of her is tempted to make a public display of her authority.
      GH

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    13. "They are theoretically amenable to role play. You would just need to find a willing third party to role play it." If they would do that, I'd just ask them to witness a real one! LOL.

      Your scenario involving being spanked outside the bedroom is similar to something I wrote about here a few months ago, when Anne suddenly directed me *not* to close the shades in our bedroom before a spanking -- something she has done 2 or 3 times since then. I don't know whether that's an example of partial role play, but it feels at least a little like KOJ's example that warns us to be careful that one person's role play or fantasy might suddenly become the other party's reality.

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    14. Yes, Dan, Anne instructing you not to close the blinds is exactly the kind of thing I mean! Renée has done that too. Where we live, that doesn’t really make the spanking public, but it FEELS public. Renée has also kept the window open a couple of times, which feels even more public, though I don’t think anyone would be close enough to hear.

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    15. In our case, I'm not really sure how public it is. We have at least two houses behind us that theoretically could see into the bedroom. I think it is unlikely that they could see far enough into the interior of the bedroom to see what was going on, but I really don't know.

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    16. GH,
      My wife did consult with the hostess beforehand, though she never told me what was said. The crowd reacted very little when we came downstairs. I kept my eyes on the floor, so I don't know if there were "knowing looks," and I am glad not to know who realized what happened and who did not. There was music playing quietly in the background and of course a lot of conversations going on, but it was pretty obvious that at least some partygoers heard the unmistakeable rhythmic sound of my wife's hairbrush, not to mention my grunts and gasps. I am still friends and acquaintances of many at that party, and no one has brought it up, thank God.
      KOJ

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    17. KOJ, your experience has my speculative imagination running wild. If your wife was comfortable asking the hostess for a place to spank you, she must have a pretty close relationship with her. Maybe your wife had previously confided in her about DD. If there was music playing and the buzz of conversations, and if the room where you were spanked was on another floor, other guests might not have heard. If your wife used a fairly small hairbrush, such as would fit easily in her purse, the smacking sound wouldn’t really be that loud because of the small surface area. It would, of course, have sounded like gunshots to you because of your fear of detection, even if it was relatively quiet. Also, am I correct to surmise that the spanking was pretty brief? Under those circumstances, she wouldn’t have to draw it out to have a big effect on you, and even if the pop pop of the hairbrush was faintly audible, most people would probably not have caught on if the spanking was brief. So it is far from certain that other guests were aware of your ordeal, unless the hostess told people. Had they actually listened to you being spanked, I think some smart ass would have joked about it. There’s always one in every crowd. There’s probably a spanko or two in every crowd as well. If I had been among the guests, I would probably have pretended not to have heard in the moment because of sympathetic embarrassment, but I would have been unable to stop myself from approaching you discreetly later on, knowing that you were a kindred spirit.
      GH

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    18. My wife carried an oversized hairbrush in an oversized purse. She always spanked full force, never less than 50 and this was more.. Nor was I able to stay quiet. I was convinced then as I am now that many if not most partygoers heard.
      KOJ

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    19. KOJ, it strikes me that if your wife went with you to a party with an oversized hairbrush in an oversized purse, she may have had some prior intention, or temptation, to reveal her disciplinary authority over you to friends. Maybe she had already talked to some of them. I’m curious what you could have done to merit immediate punishment under such humiliating circumstances. Did you behave like a real jerk at the party, or did your wife find some excuse to use that hairbrush. And when she took you upstairs to spank you, did she do it discreetly, or did other people hear her speak to you in a manner that revealed you were in trouble. I can picture you going back downstairs with downcast eyes, too embarrassed to meet the eyes of people who might have overheard. That’s how I would have been too. But I would love to know what it was like for your wife to return to the party. Did she meet knowing smiles with a smile? Did she feel empowered? You say that nobody ever spoke of the incident to you. Well, I would bet that some of the women there questioned your wife about it.
      I don’t think my wife would ever spank me outside the privacy of our home, although she has made the threat. I keep a journal in which I write about intimate aspects of our FLR, including spankings and other discipline. I sometimes worry about the embarrassment of that journal falling into someone else’s hands. I once asked my wife whether it would embarrass HER if someone read my journal. She told me there is nothing in my journal that would embarrass her because she isn’t the one who gets spanked. Your wife must feel the same way.
      GH

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  15. My husband exerts what I would call gentle authority. He definitely is in charge in our marriage. He controls the finances because I am a spender, and he calls me on my bratty behavior and tells me to behave. But he doesn't punish. And I am not a bit happy about that. I need both authority and spanking.
    Spanking without authority is just foreplay. We do that, and it's fun but not real.
    I want and need to be really punished for real misbehavior by an authority figure. I have thought about finding a disciplinarian, but that man would have no authority over me so that wouldn't work either.
    For me, authority and punishment are inextricably linked.
    And yes, I probably do have some "daddy issues."
    Cynthia Ellen

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    1. Speaking of daddy issues, I would say that in our culture it's much more acceptable for a woman to have daddy issues than for a man to have mommy issues. My girlfriends and I talk about our daddy issues all the time, and we're only half-joking.
      These parent issues seem to fall into two categories: the adult child who did not have a good parent figure of the opposite gender and seeks a better "parent" in a lover. And the adult child who had a great parent figure of the opposite gender and wants to replicate it in a lover. Either way, the adult child has issues with needing a lover to be a parent.
      My dad loved me but never ever disciplined me. I was his little princess and could get away with anything. It was up to my mom to rein me in. Now I seek a man to do what my daddy didn't!
      What about you guys?
      Cynthia Ellen


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    2. I think it may be more acceptable *among women.* I'm not sure whether men feel the same way. I have a good friend who is into the "daddy-little girl" dynamic. Because she is a friend, I try not to be judgmental, but I admit I find the whole thing kind of off-putting. I know if a grown woman ever called "daddy," I would find it creepy in the same I find it creepy that Mike Pence calls his wife "mother."

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    3. Dan, do you remember the song “Love Her Madly” by The Doors? There is a line in the song that I found a little creepy back in the day: “Don’t you love her madly/ Wanna be her daddy?” I remember thinking I wouldn’t want to be any girl’s daddy, but I think I can now understand what Cynthia Ellen wants.
      Cynthia Ellen, I think you are right that it is more accepted for women to have daddy issues than for men to have mommy issues. That conditioning starts early in life. Think about the different emotional resonance of the terms “daddy’s little princess” and “mama’s boy.” The former has no negative connotation because it affirms the girl’s femininity, whereas “mama’s boy” implies that the mother has emasculated her son through overly soft treatment.
      I have a question for you, Cynthia Ellen. I noticed at a spanko website I used to frequent that women bottoms often look down on male bottoms because they are attracted to the kind of “real man” who would only want to be dominant. How do you feel about that? I find it interesting that you are here at a website dedicated to wife led DD. Is that because you think men like us who want to be spanked by our wives are kindred spirits?
      GH

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    4. I do know that song and I've always liked it, though apparently not enough to have actually heard that line. It's an interesting line, because it's coming from the guy's perspective, and it's followed two lines later by, "Don't ya love her as she's walking out the door?" So, it seems potentially to be about a controlling man wanting to play daddy to an independent woman who is having none of it, leaving him loving her as she's walkin' out the door.

      I do think "mama's boy" has negative connotations, but so does daddy's little princess. I see the latter as conjuring images of a woman who is kind of entitled, kind of immature, spoiled, probably a little helpless and dependent. It's also interesting how culturally driven some of the "mama's boy" thing is. I'm thinking about all the scenes in Scorsese movies with these strong, Alpha mobsters showing devotion and strong feelings for their mothers. It also comes in a lot of degrees. One of my daughters is dating a guy who clearly is pretty devoted to his mother, and behind his back we do tease about him being a "mama's boy." But, we mean it affectionately.

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    5. GH,
      Yes, all spankees are kindred spirits, regardless of gender. DD spankees are even more kindred.
      If I could find a blog of women that spoke intelligently about DD, I would join it. I have looked at some message boards, which can have some serious discussions but too much "give him more blowjobs so he will spank you more." This blog is unique in seriously addressing DD issues? Isn't it? What else would you have me read?
      Cynthia Ellen

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    6. And no way do I look down on any of you! You are all "real men" with the same need I have -- to be corporally punished -- and it helps me to hear how others have dealt with reluctant spankers, inconsistent spankers, etc.
      Cynthia Ellen

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    7. I think the best of the best DD blogs from the perspective of a female "bottom" is The Taming of the Shrew at https://ashrewtamed.blogspot.com. Unfortunately, the author (who has become a good friend of mine), got too busy with life and no longer updates it.

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    8. Thank you for saying that, Cynthia Ellen. Your respect means a lot. I think the women I knew who didn’t respect men who wanted to be spanked weren’t into real life DD but were interested in acting out their M/F fantasies. I used to write collaborative spanking fantasies with women on a spanking story board. The women there all wanted to collaborate on M/F spanking stories, and I was pleased to do that. Incidentally, those were fantasies about DD. I occasionally suggested doing an F/M story. That’s when a few women advised me that I should forget about F/M spanking because “women don’t respect submissive guys.” Anyway, please don’t think I would have you go somewhere else. I can’t think of any other blog that focuses as directly on DD as this one, so I can’t recommend anything else.
      GH

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    9. Just because I wouldn't date a spankee man (submissive, bottom, whatever) doesn't mean I don't respect you'all. You make good husbands!
      Cynthia Ellen

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    10. Dan,
      That shrew tamed blog is now by invitation only!
      Cynthia Ellen

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    11. Cynthia Ellen, you could try Finding Strength in my Submission (https://ourmarriageanddomesticdiscipline.wordpress.com/). The blogger discusses issues in her M/f DD situation. There's also Submissive and Disciplined (https://wellspankedwife.tumblr.com/). Neither of these has the same general discussion of DD as this blog, but they are oriented to M/f DD relationships.

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    12. Cynthia Ellen, I'd echo GH above... stay right here, I like hearing from you and you are definitely kin!

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    13. Not that I'm encouraging you, Cynthia Ellen, to stop commenting here. I agree with Mark. That would be a travesty!

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  16. Hi Dan and Club Members - lots of interesting conversations here the last few weeks.
    The fantasy of DWC-style spanking is what really appealed to me, a real spanking for bad behavior. Ideally, I fantasized about my wife spanking me regularly, and that necessarily implied a certain amount of authority as well - "to keep me in line" - and which certainly would make the fantasy more realistic since there needed to a reason for the spanking. Eventually, of course, my fantasy did come true - and I became a regularly spanked husband - both to keep me in line on a preventative basis as well as address behavioral and attitudinal issues as they occurred.

    I recall that preventative maintenance spankings were a topic one week. These have been a part of our DD lifestyle since the beginning. They are not as severe as a punishment spanking but they are all "real spankings" - at least 100 whacks hard enough to elicit lots of vocal response from me, as well as a reddened behind (my wife believes that if it's worth doing....) . For us, we both believe that maintenance spankings maintain an atmosphere of maternal-style disciplinary authority in the home, as well as maintaining the habit of spanking in the home. (I've read many accounts over the years on various forums of couples enthusiastically embracing the DWC lifestyle, but then gradually letting it lapse because too long a time would go without an actual spanking, and then it would start to feel awkward for the wife to mandate a spanking. --al

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    1. We are in a period of regular spanking (call it maintenance if you will), and I really makes a difference on my wife's preparedness to exert her authority and to spank for cause. Without it, DD becomes increasingly further from her mind and eventually doesn't happen. We are closer as a couple when she does exert her authority regularly.

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    2. Mark and al, we don't do maintenance, but I do get that it could be very beneficial in building a disciplinary habit or keeping it going.

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  17. Earlier in the comments, I noted the commonly held observation that it is almost always the man who asks for this lifestyle. I agree completely - from what I have read on spanking forums over the last 25 years or so. However, what I have also noted is that most wives who do agree to give it a try quickly overcome any hesitation and soon become very effective disciplinarians, and come to honestly appreciate the benefits of the DWC lifestyle. It even seems that far from being an unfortunate chore, a good number of wives find that they enjoy spanking their husbands - just for the joy of spanking. Mine certainly does - and she figured that out at the very beginning. --al

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    1. Hi al. Good to see you again!

      I totally agree. I was talking off-line with someone a couple of days ago about the supposed difficult in finding a woman who is into this lifestyle. Finding one may be hard, but it doesn't seem that hard to make one; plenty of vanilla women seem to adopt it very readily.

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    2. Even if they don't appreciate spanking for its own sake, A lot of women wisely find joy and satisfaction in all aspects of life, and that attitude extends to chores, including discipline.

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    3. >supposed difficulty in finding a woman who is into this lifestyle<
      I strongly suspect that more wives than one might think would probably be willing to give F/M DD a try if their husband asked, especially if the were over 35 (maybe 40 - men and women generally start to get a lot more comfortable in their skin as they get past their youth). Most women is probably too strong, but certainly a significant number. I corresponded once with a man who claimed that both his wives had happily spanked him, as well as two different girl friends in between - just because he asked (with some explanation undoubtedly). He had problems staying in relationships but not because of the spanking.

      The issue is the fear of rejection - understandably based on the potential cost of rejection. If the wife does happen to think the idea is really repulsive for whatever reason, there could be some long lasting ramifications to the marriage (or, at best, the husband is left feeling rejected and very foolish). For most, approaching the wife about the lifestyle while minimizing the risk of rejection does require some planning - moving in sideways, so to speak. Still, I suspect the odds of the wife accepting and enjoying the role of a DWC wife are significantly higher than most would think (just that risk of rejection to deal with). --al

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    4. I'd be pretty comfortable saying "most women," because that seems to be supported by most of the men here. I know there are some, including ZM, who have had wives reject the idea. But, over the 10 years of comments here, the number of men saying they asked and were rejected could be counted on one hand with fingers left over.

      Of course, those who comment here probably are those for whom initiating things did work out.

      You're probably right that the results may be age-dependent. I can think of one female commenter, Danielle, who initially did reject her husband's FLR kink, but several years later reconsidered and came to embrace it with real gusto.

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    5. Also, I know this may sound a little harsh, but if a wife rejected me over asking for such a thing, I'd have to ask myself some questions about the relationship. Note I said if she rejected "me." It would be totally understandable if a wife weren't interested and rejected the invitation to be in a DWC or FLR relationship. But, rejecting the proposal is much different than rejecting the person making it.

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    6. Dan wrote: “if a wife rejected me over asking for such a thing, I'd have to ask myself some questions about the relationship.”

      I might even go further than that, but it’s not a situation I have faced. But I do believe that a wife ( or husband) who rejects the sexuality of a hard-core spanko is playing a dangerous game with their relationship and, at a minimum, is foreclosing on a rich part of that relationship neither of them will ever experience.

      I would not be judgmental about a spouse who tries and fails to fulfill their spouse’s need, nor would I be critical toward one who needs time to adjust to ideas that may be new or even threatening to them. But a spouse who simply rejects the needs of another or worse, deprecates them for their needs —is a spouse that maybe needs a different relationship.
      Alan

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    7. Alan, I can't go quite as far as that last paragraph. Say you had one spouse who wants something like DD, but the other spouse was a victim of domestic violence or witnessed it in their home growing up. Maybe a male spouse saw a domineering father assault the mother and, rationally or not, equates all hitting of a woman with violence. There are going to be situations in which someone equates any kind of hitting with violence or experiences it as such, regardless of consent and regardless of whether others wouldn't have that reaction. But, you're right that in such a situation, depending on the strength of the respective needs, there might be a mismatch such that a different relationship is in order. I've always believed that if Anne had rejected my request to try DD (not deprecated it or me, but simply said no thanks), I would have gone on and we would have had a good relationship. DD is one part of my relationship and one part of my desires for a marital relationship, but only a part. I also recognize that for others the need may be so compelling that they absolutely must have a spouse who is willing to fulfill it.

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    8. Conversely, I wonder how many men have fantasized about being spanked husbands (whether "regular DWC-F/M DD" or as part of an FLR relationship, or as part of a more comprehensive BDSM sub lifestyle) - and how many would actually ask their wife to at least try it if they were guaranteed their wife would accept and wouldn't think less of them for asking. This is obviously a hypothetical question, but I still would be curious to know. For many years, I had the impression from what I have read on forums and in web articles over the years, that playing the part of an F/M sub (whether only spanking or more comprehensive) was a relatively common male fantasy. However, I've also read Dan's reports on his surprisingly low numbers here on what is arguably the current leading forum for F/M DD - DWC-style spanking life style discussion. Thoughts? --al

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    9. Al, I really don't know. The blog numbers are low given the overall population. But, who knows how many men are interested but are looking at other stuff like Tumblrs, SpankingTube, etc.? Also, let's face it - the discussions here can get pretty lengthy and, if I may say so, intellectual. Maybe viewing spanking pics on Tumblr is more appealing to many?

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    10. My gut feeling, based on online discussions with people from spanko websites, is that there are many people, both male and female, whose desire for DD is frustrated by the unwillingness of their partner to get into it. If the numbers on Dan’s blog are relatively low, that is probably because Dan has created an environment that is more amenable to down to earth discussions of real life DD than to sensational fantasy. At most spanko websites, you encounter supposedly true stories that are too over the top to believe. Not so here. That leads me to believe that when it comes to DD, fantasizers greatly outnumber real life participants. I also imagine that erotic play spanking is way more common than true DD, much to the frustration of people like Cynthia Ellen.
      GH

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    11. GH, when it comes to F/m-DD, I do wonder whether it's really unwillingness of the partner, or unwillingness of the interested partner to bring it up. Again, I know there is bias built into the blog because its participants are self-selected for mostly people in actual DD relationships, yet the tales of people asking and being rejected are so few and far between that I can't help but wonder how many people are truly asking.

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    12. Dan, I used to frequent an FLR website called “She Makes the Rules”. I think it is behind a paywall now. The premise of the site was that the women running the site would dispense advice to men about how to get their wives interested in FLR. A couple of the women there pushed this idea of “kink free FLR”, meaning that husbands should serve their wives and accept their leadership, but they shouldn’t expect their wives to spank them because that was seen as “servicing the husband’s kink.” So it would seem that some women, even women who explicitly want to wear the pants in their relationships, do refuse their men’s request for corporal punishment.
      GH

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    13. I vaguely remember that website. I wonder how well their advice was taken? Kink-free FLR sounds about as appealing as decaffeinated coffee or dairy-free ice cream.

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    14. Worse than decaffeinated coffee, Dan. Every guy there wanted DD to be accepted as an element of FLR. But the women were promoting an ideal of FLR that said that a husband who is serious about submitting to his wife must be willing to renounce his own desires. I made an unpopular counter argument that a successful D/s marriage would have to make allowance for the needs and desires of both partners, just like a regular marriage does. I think you can theoretically have F/m DD without FLR, you can have FLR with DD, or you can have FLR without DD, but the only way any of those models will work is if there is some balancing of the needs and desires of both partners. Ironically, some of the women telling us married men how our wife led marriages should work were single, presumably because they couldn’t find appropriately selfless partners. That suggests a question to me: in successful marriages that combine FLR and DD, is it more likely that DD led to FLR or that FLR led to DD. I can’t prove it, but I would bet that the husband’s need for DD is generally the primary impetus. The wife then takes up the hairbrush out of sort of maternal desire to care for her husband and nurture the relationship. Then the wife may discover she enjoys exercising power in ways that go beyond DD.
      GH

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    15. "Ironically, some of the women telling us married men how our wife led marriages should work were single, presumably because they couldn’t find appropriately selfless partners."

      Shocker.

      I absolutely agree with your view that ultimately these relationships work only if *both* parties are having their needs met. One reason I've always been opposed to importing BDSM concepts like "topping from the bottom" into DD and FLR is that they discourage open communication about what each party needs and about what is working and what is not. I'm sure completely one-sided relationships exist and can work, but they're in some kind of Femdomy thing at that point and has pretty much zero in common with the kind of real-world relationships we're talking about here.

      Your question of what comes first the DD or the FLR is, I think, another way of stating this week's topic. For me, it's complicated. On the surface, my interest in DD came first, and we've increasingly experimented with FLR over time. But, as I said in the post, I've started to suspect that things like my attraction to older women were really expressions of a long-standing attraction to authority. So, you could say that I wanted an FLR for a very long time but didn't really know it.

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    16. Interesting discussion DD/FLR - the chicken or the egg.... My interest was always DD and our DWC-style marriage never really evolved into an FLR. We were basically a modern partnership style marriage before DD, and that has continued to present day - with the exception of her having disciplinary authority to address my behavioral and attitudinal issues (via paddle, strap, and switch). However, there is obviously some element of FLR in any ongoing F/M DD (DWC-style) marriage/relationship - just by virtue of the fact that we have agreed our wives can paddle our bare ass when we misbehave. I have certainly come to see and respect my wife's position on issues much more quickly over the years, and whatever vestiges of "control" that I believed that I might have been entitled to as a her husband have been gradually relinquished. This might have happened anyway as matter of growing older together, but I have no doubt at all that the DD contributed to it. --al

      (We picked up this lifestyle in 2002 and were members of the DWC back when it was an actual "club" with a private online forum where admission required a phone call with Aunt Kay in which she spoke with both husband and wife. So, I still tend to refer to a F/M DD marriage as DWC).

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    17. Forgot to sign the last comment. --al

      >Interesting discussion DD/FLR - the chicken or the egg.<

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    18. I am really, really bad with dates. Whatever the opposite of a savant is -- that's me. And, I haven't been able to find anything documenting when exactly we started. But, I know it was at least by 2004. It really bums me out that I didn't try to reach out to Aunt Kay and Jerry at that time. Left to my own devices, I probably would have though I can't say that for sure. I was so self-conscious about it then that I might not have wanted to give out a phone number. I'm pretty sure Anne wouldn't have agreed to get together with others back then and probably wouldn't have agreed to a call. We were pretty young and, frankly, probably lacked enough confidence to go for it back then. I really do regret that.

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    19. Just wanted to comment, though I have written it here before, that my ex-wife was STRONGLY opposed to spanking me, but that had nothing to do with me and everything about her upbringing. Even in rejecting spanking very directly, forcefully, and repeatedly, I don't think she rejected me for wanting it or asking. It was just a bridge too far for her. On the other hand, my current wife had never even heard of DD, yet she really took to it. So, even though I had a wife who would never, ever accept it, I still am of the opinion that most wives could warm to the idea, at least, and probably many if not most would eventually embrace the idea.

      -ZM

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    20. Al: “However, there is obviously some element of FLR in any ongoing F/M DD (DWC-style) marriage/relationship - just by virtue of the fact that we have agreed our wives can paddle our bare ass when we misbehave. I have certainly come to see and respect my wife's position on issues much more quickly over the years, and whatever vestiges of "control" that I believed that I might have been entitled to as a her husband have been gradually relinquished.”

      I loved that website, though I was never a member. To be honest, I saw Aunt Kay’s DWC philosophy of F/m DD as a form of FLR from the outset. In fact, I would say that Aunt Kay’s philosophy had a female supremacist edge that I found very alluring. What I mean is that she believed that in some ways we men never cease to be boys who need firm maternal style discipline, so it is appropriate for wives to spank their husbands when we behave immaturely…as we inevitably will sometimes. The reason I find that view alluring is that, while it may not be true that the wife is more consistently mature than the husband in every marriage, it is true in mine. The most humbling thing about being scolded and spanked by my wife is the awareness that I deserve it. But it is wonderfully affirming to know that the woman who punishes you for your shortcomings loves you.
      GH

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    21. >that my ex-wife was STRONGLY opposed to spanking me, but that had nothing to do with me and everything about her upbringing<

      While my wife was enthusiastic about paddling me from the start - paddle, brush, or a short strap (like a leather paddle/strap) - she said she could never use a belt on me because that was what her Mom used to excess on her bare legs when she was a child (to the point of abuse for a small child). --al

      .

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    22. "In fact, I would say that Aunt Kay’s philosophy had a female supremacist edge that I found very alluring."

      While the masthead distinguished the DWC from BDSM and "master/slave" lifestyles, I do think your characterization has some merit. While the emphasis was on domestic relationships, it's also true that many of the stories do have a vibe--or outright say--that men are less mature than women and need female discipline. Having men spanked by other wives was also a thing. So, while I think it is pretty light on female supremacy, it's certainly not absent from that website.

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    23. I agree with you, Dan, that the female supremacy aspect at DWC was pretty light, but I probably picked up on it because it resonated with something in me. It definitely didn’t have a BDSM mistress/slave vibe, which would have turned me off.
      GH

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  18. I will add that I doubt that many women fantasize about being spanking wives and consider asking their husbands to be spanked husbands. Of course, there may be a small handful - possibly because they have heard of it (online, from a friend, etc) and think it makes great sense - or they have figured out that they would enjoy spanking their partner just for the joy of spanking. But, women generally don't obsess and fantasize like men are prone to do (yes, there are always exceptions, and I don't mean to stereotype, but men and women are wired a bit differently). And, of course, as much as men often don't believe that their wives would be interested in spanking them, probably even less women believe that their husband would be interested in getting regular bare assed paddlings of 50 whacks or more.

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    1. While I don't know how many men are interested but don't raise it, I'm pretty sure the number of women interested in F/m DD who haven't raised it to their husbands is very low.

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    2. And the few we've gotten here are men pretending to be women. Everyone remember "Belle"?

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    3. Personally, I like the fantasy of a domineering woman imposing DD on a reluctant husband. But whenever I encounter supposedly true stories about that, I am skeptical. I think Dan is right that F/M DD is almost always initiated by the man. But then, I suspect M/F DD is also most often initiated by the woman. I think it must be easier to ask someone to be your disciplinarian than to tell them that you want to discipline them.
      GH

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    4. GH, I think you're right on all counts. We do, as a society, emphasize egalitarianism so much, and have become so anti-corporal punishment, it would seem to be pretty difficult to admit you want to discipline someone. I too am skeptical of the stories involving imposed DD. I can think of two relationships I know of based on relationships formed here that kind of fit that pattern. But, those wives also will say that the husband wasn't all that reluctant, and the DD basically was an extension of other D/s-oriented kinky play.

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    5. Yes, I could picture real DD emerging out of D/s oriented erotic play, Dan. Didn’t you say that you and Anne initially did role play spankings and then discovered that role playing was unsatisfactory, so you moved on to the real thing? My wife and I had a different experience. I wanted her to try role playing some spanking fantasies. She said no. After a while I approached her again and said that I wanted a real DD relationship, one that would her real power to punish me when I annoyed her. She was still skeptical. She thought, not unreasonably, that I was offering her the illusion of real authority to get her to satisfy my kink. However, she decided to give it a try, warning me that if I wanted real DD, it was real DD I would get. So that’s what we have. In a way, I am in the opposite situation to Cynthia Ellen. She gets erotic play spankings from her husband, but she also wants real DD. I get real DD from my wife, but I wish she would also give me “good boy spankings” for erotic purposes sometimes.
      GH

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    6. I did, though I'm not sure whether one can be characterized as an extension of the other in our case. The role playing was, for us, not just unsatisfactory (though it is true that I'm not sure either of us got that much of a thrill out of it), but problematic in that it basically acted a sexual reward for bad behavior. Anne flagged that issue and called an end to it, but I didn't disagree with her assessment. When I discovered the DWC and brought her that concept, it flew only because of how fundamentally different it was from the role playing.

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    7. That makes sense about not giving a sexual reward for bad behaviour. In our house, spanking is strictly separated from sex. Well, it’s sexually exciting for me, but I know it’s not going to be followed by any kind of sexual reward.
      GH

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  19. On some level, I was intrigued by spanking for as far back as I can remember. This was especially true when I was reaching puberty. That was the age when my own spankings were coming to an end and my interest shifted to whether any middle school girls were spanked. My instincts were that girls were much less likely to be punished that way, and if they ever had been, not for quite some time.

    As I progressed in school, it's fair to say that I was more mature than most of my classmates, especially the boys. I always found older girls more attractive, even though I clearly had no chance with them. When I was a high school senior, a teacher got me into a college French class trip to Quebec that was about 75% female. I was in heaven!

    I dated a few women who were a couple of years older than me, but fell in love with Beth, who is two years my junior. She had no experience being spanked growing up and became very curious after my mom gave her a description of how I had been disciplined.

    We were living together at the time and Beth continued to press for details when we got home. I let her try giving me a hand spanking for some minor transgression I had committed. Then I suggested that she would need a wooden hairbrush if she wanted to spank me like I remembered. She took me up on that and the brush she bought has resided on her dresser ever since.

    It's no surprise that discipline from Beth has a distinctly maternal feel, but since she's an elementary school teacher, that probably plays out in her lectures too. For someone who's never received a real spanking herself, she learned very quickly how to give one.

    Kevin







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    1. Thanks, Kevin. After I just posted a response to GH speculating about how infrequent it is for wives to initiate, it sounds like your wife pretty much did.

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    2. Beth welcomed the opportunity to discuss corporal punishment in general, and my experience growing up in particular. That opened the door, but in all honesty, I had to ask her to spank me, embarrassing as that was. I'm sure she wouldn't have gone to the hairbrush if I hadn't encouraged that too.

      I realize I am blessed to have a loving partner with an open mind. She made it easier for me to ask than I had initially imagined.

      Kevin

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    3. That's great stuff. I definitely initiated the conversation, but I was actually pretty shocked that my wife wasn't just open-minded about it but quickly agreed to try it.

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    4. Dan, why do you suppose that wives who spank are less interested than we spanked men to talk about DD at websites like yours? I wonder if it’s that spanking is always a bigger thing to the person on the receiving end.
      Kevin, I find it interesting that your mother described to your wife how you were disciplined and that your wife pressed you for more details.
      GH

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    5. GH, I honestly don't know, but I do think that "bottoms" seem to almost always me more "into" the whole thing than tops, regardless of the gender alignment. One of our former commenters, KD Pierre, does spanking cartoons. The last one on this page illustrates it in a way I always find amusing.http://mattmansfigures.homestead.com/cart90d.html

      But, while I believe the dynamic of bottoms being more passionate than Tops about it is probably real for both sexes, I have absolutely no idea why.

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    6. GH, I had previously told Beth that my sister and I had been raised in a strict household and that my mom spanked us. But I didn't provide nearly the detail that mom gave her. I, fortunately, wasn't present for that conversation but it clearly made an impression on my then fiancee. The most Beth ever experienced in her childhood was one or two swats on her clothed behind, and those occurred when she was a preschooler. Needless to say, my mom had a different approach.

      So Beth was a little stunned to hear that my mom took a hairbrush or wooden spoon to my bare bottom fairly frequently. But she could see that mom and I had a loving relationship while I was growing up and still do today. In lots of ways it's much better than the one she has with her own mother.

      Beth heard my mother’s view on my discipline and wanted to know mine. It turned out to be a very helpful conversation between soon to be husband and wife.

      Kevin

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    7. Kevin, as you said, it's great you found such an open-minded and curious partner. But, you're also to be commended for being honest at that relatively early stage of the relationship when she questioned you about your mother's discipline. I really don't know how forthcoming I would have been in the early days, assuming I had more to tell on that front.

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    8. Thank you Dan. I'm sure I wouldn't have been so forthcoming if Beth hadn't been asking all the right questions and giving me positive feedback.

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    9. My circumstances were similar. My wife wanted to know all the details of my mother's spankings, including position, length, number of swats, how hard, with what, who took my pants down, privacy or the lack thereof, accompanying scolding, warnings beforehand, the reasons for being spanked, when and how she decided it was enough, other punishments, and particularly what I felt was most effective, etc., etc. I was a little sorry during this process I had brought it up! But it all worked out, clearly.
      KOJ

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    10. KOJ, from all that you have said, I think it’s fair to say that your wife is a spankophile. Lucky you! Or unlucky, depending on circumstances. ;-)

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  20. Reading many of the comments above, describing how women with little or no interest or experience with DD spanking can, in fact, become first willing and subsequently ( often) enthusiastic in becoming a disciplinarian.

    We need to be careful to observe that the readers of this blog are self-selected in many ways and may not represent in their DD experiences the experiences that males overall have in seeking spanking partners.

    But speaking candidly, many men complain about the shortage of women who spank because many of those men are clueless about how to approach a possible partner about spanking. Most women who do end up interested in F/M DD are in long-term committed relationships, and many of them, if not most, would probably eschew DD altogether if they were not. They will not respond to a post like “Well-hung male in south Texas looking for a female who loves to spank men.”
    But I want to make the larger point: given the number of women who adopt F/M DD, we might have greatly underestimated the suppressive power of culture and traditional gender roles in concluding that women, in general, unprompted, show little interest in F/M DD.

    The reality is that many of those supposedly uninterested women do, in fact, come to show much interest in F/M DD within a relationship they value and in which the male in the relationship has explicitly, usually strongly, made clear that is what they want. Take away the pressure of cultural norms and gender norms, and these women frequently bloom.
    Alan

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    1. "But speaking candidly, many men complain about the shortage of women who spank because many of those men are clueless about how to approach a possible partner about spanking. Most women who do end up interested in F/M DD are in long-term committed relationships, and many of them, if not most, would probably eschew DD altogether if they were not. They will not respond to a post like “Well-hung male in south Texas looking for a female who loves to spank men.”

      Great point, particularly the second sentence. And, to make an obvious point, the first D in DD stands for "domestic."

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    2. I've shared my story here a few times over the years (and it is in the user stories tab here as well). However, once again just briefly for the discussion,.

      My wife and I had been married 20 years or so with never a hint that she might be interested in any type of "kink play" at all. I had been fascinated with F/M spanking for years but never believed she would be interested at all and was not willing to take the risk of discussing it (and I had dropped a vague hint now and then but with no response at all).

      Then, one fateful night, the kids were spending the night away, and my wife and I after way too much wine, opened up about our sexual fantasies - and I confessed my "mild fascination" with being spanked. And - in one of the Great Surprises of my life - my wife immediately said "Oh, I would love to spank your ass - hold on" - and she went to retrieve a ping pong paddle. She gave me quite a few whacks as I laid over her lap bare bottomed - and some actually stung a bit. Then, the next morning, waking up with no kids present, she jokingly told me that I needed to be paddled again for leaving the toilet seat up. And so I was - longer and harder this time - almost like a real spanking. At breakfast, she jokingly made a comment that she should start spanking me to keep me in line. I was completely shocked by this turn of events - but could not let it pass. I showed her the DWC site - and she spent the morning reading it - and that afternoon she put me over her lap and blistered my ass with a new wooden hairbrush. She had become a DWC wife and I a spanked hubby - and we never looked back. Although - I would never have imagined how much that a real DWC spanking would actually hurt!

      She told me later that as soon as she got into that first "play spanking", she realized that she loved the feeling of power and control that it gave her, as well as the spanking itself - the crack of the paddle against my bare skin, my reaction.

      And while I know that our story would hardly hold true for every woman out there who might get drunk enough to paddle their husband's bare behind - but as I wrote before - I do believe that the number of women who might decide that they could make a habit of paddling their misbehaving husband's bare butts is probably much higher than many would suspect. --al

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    3. Al, thanks for sharing again. I am a sucker for "origin" stories, even if I've heard them before. There's something about how people find themselves in these relationships that I find endlessly compelling.

      Regarding your "vague hints" - it makes me wonder how many times men think they've been rejected when, in fact, they just weren't direct enough in telling their wife what they want.

      Our first steps into the DWC and DD was actually fairly close to yours, with a few different details. We hadn't been drinking when I told my wife about it. I had discovered it a few days before and just couldn't keep it to myself any longer. I told her about it and, before leaving for work the next day I wrote down the url for her. Honestly, I thought she probably wouldn't even look at it. Instead, she spent the morning devouring it. She called me shortly after lunch and told me I should go shopping for a heavy brush. (Which proved to be much easier said than done.) I think it did take her quite a bit longer to actually embrace it, and for years she struggled to understand why any man would actually want this. But, I think from the beginning it gave her that feeling of power and control that your wife experienced.

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    4. Hi Al,
      I love how your story began, where you shared your fantasy, and your wife really ran with it. That is obviously one of the big recurring fantasies that many of us (maybe all of us) who are into this have, the whole "be careful for what you ask for" thing. Also, that was the theme of probably the single best F/M spanking story in recorded history, which we have you to thank for: "Even More," from the DWC website.

      Also, it is very interesting how you describe your wife's reaction: "she realized that she loved the feeling of power and control that it gave her, as well as the spanking itself - the crack of the paddle against my bare skin, my reaction." My wife would say exactly the same thing, including she absolutely loves the crack of the paddle against my bare skin.

      This week has been a pretty amazing week for interaction, with certainly one of the highest number of comments ever. Also, probably because we were talking about "origins," there has been a lot more mention of the word "fantasy." This got me thinking, so I went back and read what I wrote 7 years ago (Dan published it on April 18, 2016, Vol. 135 -- "Fantasy versus Reality"). I was curious to see how I might feel now, since that was very early on in our DD relationship, basically only a few months after my first spanking. I can say that nothing significant has changed in these 7 years with regard to the relationship between my fantasy and the reality. Several weeks ago, there was a discussion that hit on the fantasy part, and I was really hoping that it would turn into a discussion, since I think the whole "fantasy vs. reality" theme is a pretty rich one to explore, but I simply didn't have time to jump into the discussion and it died out.

      Anyway, glad to see you back. I always love your input, Al!

      -ZM

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    5. Since I am really struggling once again to come up with a topic, and because I'm pretty tied up with some other stuff this weekend, I may re-post an updated version of that 2016 post, which was mainly a letter from you. And, a great one at that. I just read through the comments to it again. There was some really great stuff in there. I really miss Marisa. She was a real hard-ass, but I felt like her insights into the psychology of the whole thing were brilliant. One thing that kind of sucks about these purely on-line forums is people's participation comes to an abrupt end sometimes, and you never know why. Did they die unexpectedly (it happens)? Did they simply lose interest? Did they quit the lifestyle? Did they get offended at something? Though it's also true that I've had many stop participating over the years who I am more than glad to see gone. That 2016 post and the content moderation I had turned on brought back memories of a serious troll infestation I had going on at the time and that got quite nasty for a while.

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    6. >"Even More," from the DWC website.<

      Thanks, ZM. Dan has shared that he found the story impactful as well.

      I wrote that story so many years ago, a good couple of years before my wife first spanked me or had any idea that there was such a thing as F/M DD. I was participating at the time on the old Usenet spanking groups and wrote a few stories for the group - one of which was "Even More". At some point, I emailed it to Aunt Kay for inclusion in the fiction page (again, before my wife was introduced to the DWC site).

      When I did introduce my wife to the DWC site, one of the stories I pointed out was "Even More" (without telling her that I wrote it) - so, in a sense, the story became a self fulfilling prophecy. --al

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    7. >"Even More"< - Side note, as I told Dan once, my only disappointment was that that when the webmaster copied it to the site, he cut off the last line - which should have finished " he did love her even more" - tying the closing to the title.

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  21. Interesting the number of women saying that they like the "crack" of the paddle on the bare bottom. My wife made exactly the same comment about two weeks ago. This is probably a factor in why she likes to use wood... I would much prefer to be beaten with leather - I find it slightly easier to take.
    The fantasy is just that until you are over her knee and the implement lands. Reality then intrudes!

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  22. “ Interesting the number of women saying that they like the "crack" of the paddle on the bare bottom.”

    My wife has mentioned this several times, although I don’t think it is limited to wood for her. She has come to relish picking up the strap (which has a handle) and the cane, albeit not as frequently.
    It’s conventional wisdom that women are less visual than men, but I have read little about their aural senses, which may be greater than men. My wife has told me that she fell in love with my voice before even meeting me (we did many get-to-know-you “telephone dates” before getting together.
    And she gobbles up books on tape (audible) like they were some delectable edibles. Still, the glee she seems to receive from hearing the loud crack of paddle or strap echoing around the room is fascinating ( and very sexy)
    Alan

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