The Club - Meeting 492 - Disciplinary Spanking Rationales: Does the "Why" Change the "How" or the "How Much"?

"Why slap them on the wrist with a feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer?" – Katherine Hepburn

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly meeting of men and women who are in, or interested in being in, Domestic Discipline and/or Female Led (FLR) relationships.

 

Once again, before we get started, I would like to thank the female commenters who have recently joined us and to extend an invitation to all others who may be inclined to move from “lurker” to “commenter” status. We like having you around.

 

I hope you all had a good week. Mine had its ups and downs.  I’ve had a lot of quiet time at home, courtesy of Anne’s convalescence after her medical procedure.  I was actually feeling pretty proud of myself, having used the near total downtime and lack of socializing to reverse a developing bad trend where diet and beers were concerned, including going totally dry for more than two weeks.  Then, I got some relief one day and, of course, what happened?  Socializing that led to bad food, too many beers, and a late night.

 

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on one’s perspective, although Anne’s recovery is going well, we’re probably several weeks out from her being able to take me in hand again. 

 

In the meantime . . . on all the other days at home, when I wasn’t over-indulging, I got good and bored and decided to check out the topics and comments from the earliest days of this blog.  I’ve thought a few times about trying to compile the best of the thousands of comments to date into a topically arranged book.  We’ll see whether I actually get around to that, but I did go through about two years’ worth of topics and comments. 

 

It was interesting watching the blog’s development with the benefit of hindsight.  For the first several months, almost everyone was commenting anonymously without using names or initials.  Yet, I was able to quickly identify a few commenters who are still with us today or were until recently.  I’m pretty sure Al (or al.) gets the award for the earliest comment, but Alan was very close behind.  So, thank you guys for sticking with us for so, so long.

 

I’ve also known there were periods when we had more female commenters, but I was a little surprised at just how many we had early on. Or, at least we had quite a few claiming to be women.  Men pretending to be female disciplinarians has been a problem from the beginning.  Honestly, reading through the early entry reminded me how betrayed I felt the first time I had spent months engaging with a “couple” was were eventually revealed to be a male writing under multiple names and assumed genders.

 

Still, I have no doubt that many of putative female commenters were what they claimed. What struck me on this reading was that many of the female commenters seemed pretty far along the spectrum from DD to FLR. Maybe that was because in those early days the blog’s philosophy hadn’t quite gelled and it drew from a wider spectrum of the kink community?  

 

I have believed for a long time that our wives are often turned off by the whole whips and chains Femdom thing, and I still think that is largely true. But, the vibe from several of the early female commenters, as well as some later ones such as “Danielle,” was far enough along the FLR spectrum that I wonder whether I’ve been drawing the line in the wrong place.  Something to think about . . .

 

I was a little surprised by the quality of last week’s discussion.  I had treated it as a mere placeholder, seeking new topic ideas and continuing a discussion of our respective DD origins.  Yet, we ended up with a wide-ranging discussion of origins, face slapping, mercy and its lack, spanking duration, humbling, the terms we use for corporal punishment (spanking, thrashing, etc.), and spanking severity, among others.  We covered a lot of ground for a post with no actual topic. Good job everyone.

 

Unfortunately, I was hoping for a flood of new topic suggestions but instead got a small trickle.  I’m still not experiencing a lot of inspiration, so please serve up other ideas.  In the meantime, I’m going to try to stitch together a couple of suggestions that seem to me to be closely related. 

 

The first articulation came from Tom:

 

“I'm curious whether wives have a set method of punishment or vary it depending on the offense, or just their mood. I have had impromptu spankings where the scolding, punishment, and after-spanking warnings were all over in less than 15 minutes, and of course mostly much longer ones. Almost all are over the knee with a hairbrush, but my wife will add on a switching if a switch is available. I have occasionally had my face slapped for being too slow to cooperate or for responding disrespectfully to an order to get ready.”

 

Donn offered a somewhat different formulation, but I think that it’s still closely related to Tom’s topic to the extent Tom’s focused on the reason for the spanking (“depending on the offense, or just their mood”), and how the wife’s reason or motivation might lead to differences in the way the punishment is carried out.

 

 Here's how Donn formulated the possible topic:

 

 "Several writers have somewhat alluded to this question, but maybe an explicit rephrasing might make a subject for future discussion:

 

Thrashings can be administered for: (1) Punishment towards behavior modification (including overt expressions of mood/general attitude); (2) Inducing and getting expressions of subjugation, submission and respect for wife's authority; or (3) Combinations of both.

 

Do members get all of these kinds of thrashings? More some than others? How does your wife accomplish the "subjugation to surrender" thrashings, and how well do they work, for both husband and wife?"

 

I see where Donn was going, though I do see his three options as more narrow than the actual range of rationales couples have for delivering and receiving “real” spankings.  His first category, behavior modification, is obviously a biggie. 

 

His second category emphasizes bringing about a state of overt submission to her authority, which may or may not be a thing for all our respective couples.  There also is a flip-side to it, i.e. giving her an outlet to express and reinforce her authority or place in the hierarchy.  I think of the two together as “role affirmation/enforcement.”  

 

 Miss E also liked Donn’s formulation but proposed a significant expansion, i.e. stress reduction:

 

“I like the topic as you proposed it Donn. Another aspect to a spanking which could be discussed it whether or not anyone uses them as purely for anxiety/stress relievers. I’d been toying around with the idea and last night I decided to actually give it a try. Pregnancy has had its challenges these past few months and yesterday was a mentally taxing day. Up until this point I have always only spanked for a deserving reason and punishment. But I was so stressed last night I felt I just needed something to hold on to, his submission. So I asked him if I could spank him and made it clear it was not a punishment but something for me. He immediately said yes and was so sweetly submissive before it even began. The entire spanking was slow and intimate but we did build up to a nice intensity and he handled it. I’m asking him tonight but I suspect he was sinking closer to subspace with this one vs a punishment spanking. Regardless it was a nice and needed experience.”

 

 

I’m glad she brought that particular scenario--in which it is the wife's stress that gets relieved--up for discussion because, while various commenters have discussed scenarios in which spankings are used for relief of the spankee’s stress or anxiety, we haven’t really discussed using spankings to alleviate the spanker’s stress or anxiety, other than the obvious case where it is the spankee’s behavior that caused it.  

 

There are, of course, other rationales that might impact the way a spanking is delivered. For example there are “preemptive” or “preventative” spankings that are more about preventing bad behavior than punishing it. Those too are usually postured as being for his benefit but could also have psychological/stress relieving aspects for her as well.

 

So, of the rationales Tom, Donn, Miss E. and I brought up, which result in spankings in your household?  To Tom’s question, does the rationale for the spanking, or her mood regarding it, affect the method of punishment or the way it is carried out?

 

 

In our house, virtually all spankings are aimed more or less directly at punishing or, much more rarely, preventing particular behavior.  While spankings do reflect and reinforce her authority, and do lead me to a deeper acceptance of that authority, I can’t think of an instance in which she’s given one specifically for those purposes.

 

As for Tom’s question, Anne is remarkably binary when it comes to severity and duration.  She’s either on or off, with very little variation regardless of the nature or severity of the offense. 

 

The one aspect that does change a bit, and has changed fairly substantially over the last year, is any accompanying scolding.   

 

 

There is almost always some kind of lecture, but it’s often very proforma and perfunctory.  In the last couple of years, however, she has become more comfortable cutting loose with more passion when she’ really angry about something.  However, I don’t think the heightened anger and more severe scolding result in the intensity of the spanking or the punishment method changing.

 

I hope you all have a great week.