The Club - Meeting 509 - Desire? Need? Curious? Fetish? What is your level of DD spanking interest?

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” - Frank Herbert

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 relationship.

 

I hope you all had a great week.  Or, I guess it’s been a couple of weeks since we had a real topic change.  This flu that is going around is no joke.  I felt like walking death for a week, and I’m still not back 100%.  I’m trying to live cleanly to give myself the best chance at recovering quickly, so I think I’m going to try to stay dry for the rest of February.

 

 

Being more or less on the sidelines for two weeks did allow for a wide-ranging discussion about the origin statistics we gathered.  In addition to the statistics themselves and speculations about how to account for them, we ventured into Freudianism, consensual non-consent, caning, fear, and a bunch of other areas that might provide some fodder for new topics. 

 

As for the statistics, I tried to tally up all the responses. These are approximations, because a few people gave narrative responses that didn’t wholly track to the options I’d provided.

 

How prevalent was spanking in the community/communities you grew up in? (very prevalent/moderately prevalent/not prevalent at all)

 

Very - 14

Moderately - 4

Not prevalent - 1

[Varied across multiple communities (2)]

 

How open were parents and kids in your community about spankings, including talking openly about the subject and/or spanking in public? (very open/moderately open/it was known but kept mostly/it was not discussed or performed in public at all)

 

Very open -8

Moderately open - 11

Not open - 1

 

How frequently were you subject to corporal punishment at home? (frequently/a few times but not regularly/not at all)

 

Frequently -10

A few times but not regularly – 9

Not at all – 3

 

If you were subject to corporal punishment at home, who was the primary disciplinarian? (mother/father/both mother and father equally)

 

Mother - 10

Father - 0

Both - 7

 

Were you subject to corporal punishment at school? (yes/no)

 

Yes - 9

No – 12

 

Were you spanked by relatives or third parties outside your home or school? (yes/no)

 

Yes - 4

No – 17

 

At what age did you develop an interest in spanking or being spanked? (pre-teen/teen/20s/30s/40s or older)

 

Pre-teen - 11

Teens - 8

20s - 1

30s - 1

40s – 1

 

At what age did you develop an interest in Domestic Discipline or DWC-style spankings? (pre-teen/teen/20s/30s/40s or older)

 

Pre-teen - 1

Teens - 5

20s - 4

30s - 5

40s - 5

60s - 1

 

As has been the case with virtually every poll I’ve ever done on this blog, the answers quickly revealed some substantial problems with the questions. The biggest was probably in the phrasing of the question around school spankings.  As it turns out, several people drew a distinction between being “subject to” corporal punishment at school, i.e. corporal punishment took place at their schools, versus being “subjected to” it, meaning that had received such punishment themselves.

 

I’m not planning to provide some grand unifying theory, based on this data, for how people come to be attracted to these lifestyles. The data set was very small, there was no control group, and while there may be some visible patterns, there’s not much to go on with respect to why such patterns might be there. 

 

But, there are a couple of things that do jump out at me.  First, the overwhelming majority of respondents said they developed an interest in spanking or being spanked in either their teenage or pre-teen years. It was hard to assign some respondents to only one of those groupings, because their answer was something like “around puberty.” But, the responses did seem to solidly verify that most of you acquired your interest in spanking at a pretty young age.

 

Second, there seems to be an interesting inverse correlation at play. Not a single respondent who was spanked at home said that their father was the primary disciplinarian.  And, the 10-7 split between “mother” and “both” looks closer than it actually is, because if someone referred to even one spanking from each parent, I put them down as “both”, even though some said that they were spanked mostly by their mother and only once or twice by their fathers.  It’s an interesting split, especially given how prevalent the phrase “Just wait ‘til your father gets home” once seemed to be.

 

So, can we conclude that father’s doling out discipline in our childhood is inversely correlated with developing a desire for DD-style spankings later in life?  Hard to say.  It’s a pretty definitive result in this data but, again, the data set is incredibly small.  And, as ZM pointed out, correlation does not equal causation.  Still, it’s interesting, and it makes me wonder a bit more about this hypothesis from ZM:

 

“(original hypothesis): "Suppose that there were always a certain percentage of people who were hardwired to want or seek discipline/spanking/etc. If that is the case, then because spanking in schools and homes was such a common thing up until the past few decades, what if somehow many/most of those who were hardwired that way experienced the reality as a child and either it somehow scratched that itch so the desire went away or at the very least, for most who had that need or want, spanking just became a matter of fact punishment which never transitioned into a sexual desire, since they simply didn't think of it that way? Then, as childhood spankings began to become much less common in society, the people who are hardwired that way were left with this smoldering desire that they didn't understand, which manifested as interest in adult spanking, mostly with erotic tones. If this (admittedly far-fetched) theory is correct, then spankings frequently occurring in schools and homes could have actually de-sexualized spanking for most, and actually kept adult spanking from becoming a thing!"

 

(revised hypothesis): Same hardwired people as above, still growing up surrounded by spanking. Of those that got spanked with some frequency, it generally scratched the itch or at least satisfied their curiousity, so it ended up de-sexualizing spanking for almost all of them. But for those who either were spanked infrequently or not at all, the thought of spanking became a very sexually exciting thing.”

 

We seem to have this intuitive sense that childhood discipline somehow gets sexualized and that leads to an adult interest in spanking.  But, ZM’s hypotheses flips that on its head and asks whether it might be the case that the prevalence of spanking in the community might lead many to be curious about it (some morbidly so), but many who actually experienced it, or experienced it often or hard enough, may have had that curiosity fully (or more than fully) satisfied. I don’t even think we need to start with the assumption about a large number of people being hard-wired to be into spanking. It could simply be that it was so prevalent in many communities that kids pretty much universally knew about it, and unsatisfied curiosity could turn into a fetish-like interest in the right circumstances.

 

 

How does that relate to the inverse correlation with spankings by fathers?  Well, maybe spankings from dad were just a lot harder, or the power differential was such that they were more threatening or intimidating, so those spankings not only did not lead to any erotic attraction later but stamped out whatever curiosity the recipient may have had?

 

Did it really work that way? I don’t have a clue.  As ZM suggested, a fundamental problem with trying to draw conclusions from this kind of survey is our respondents are by definition in a population that is self-selecting for a strong spanking interest. The data we don’t have is from all those people who were spanked at home or at school and who grew up in communities where spankings were prevalent and openly discussed, yet they never developed an attraction to it. You can hypothesize that the difference is the result of some Freudian process that gives some an Oedipal-like interest but not others from similar backgrounds, or that there is a genetic predisposition that exists in some but not others or that is triggered in some but not others, but in the end all we have is theories and none of them are really testable.

 

Partway through the discussion last week, someone suggested this topic.  It might have been Doug, but the specific comment it was in didn’t identify the poster:

 

"I had a thought that is tangential to this topic. Maybe it could be a future topic. The questionnaire asks at what age we “developed an interest” in spanking and DD. We all have an interest in spanking and DD or we wouldn’t be here. But I’m curious what different people mean by “having an interest.” That could cover a wide range of mental states, from being curious about it to being obsessed with it. Is DD something you would like to have, but it’s okay if you don’t get it? Or is it a really strong desire? Or not just a desire, but a need? A craving?"

 

 

So, let’s make that this week’s topic.

 

 

For me, it’s hard to characterize. The easiest way to begin might be with the question is it “okay if you don’t get it?”  Would my life be okay without DD?  Sure.  If something were to happen to me and Anne, would it be a deal-killer for any future relationship?  No.  DD is part of my life and part of our relationship, but only part.  If I had to, I could and would go on, more or less okay, without it.

 

In another sense, however, I’m not okay if I don’t get it.  There are times that we get out of the habit, or that I start not liking being accountable to someone, when I think that maybe I’ve outgrown the need for DD.  Yet, almost as soon as I have that thought, something happens that proves that indeed I do still need and that I’m not okay without it, in the sense that without it my behavior does get objectively worse, as does my mood and sense of well-being.

 

Does my interest reach the level of a fetish?  No, not even close in any scientific sense of that word or even in most colloquial senses. But, is it something that has a strong element of erotic energy, one that fuels lots of fantasies and dreams?  Yes.

Is it merely a desire, or a need?  That’s a tough one.  As I said, when I don’t get it, it’s undeniable that my behavior gets objectively worse, and I feel less balanced.  In that sense, it tilts toward a need.  And, the whole concept of “desire” is paradoxical when it comes to DD, because when it is an immediate prospect I definitely do not desire it.  

 

How about curiosity versus obsession? That’s an interesting one, because when I first discovered adult spanking, via a segment of the HBO series Real Sex, I was curious. When I discovered the DWC, however, I think “obsessed” would be a fair characterization of what I felt.  Today, “obsessed” probably would be a bit strong, yet it’s true that my interest level has stayed high enough to do this blog almost weekly for over 10 years.

 

I would say I have a desire for discipline and accountability, and I need them to be serious and real.  The need/desire does not rise to the level of a fetish, but is strong and long-lasting.

 

How about you? How would you describe your level of interest in or need for disciplinary spankings?

 

I hope you all have a great week.

Continue Last Week's Discussion

Hi all.  Happy Saturday.  You may have noticed I went mostly silent mid-week and wasn't very active responding to comments.  Unfortunately, I got laid out by a bad case of the flu.  I'd hoped I might be back in shape in time for a weekend post, or at least a summary of last week's discussion. No such luck. So, no post this weekend.  Feel free to keep up the discussion on the other thread.

The Club - Meeting 508 - Spanking Influences and Correlations (Or Lack Thereof)

“As kids, our experiences shape our opinions of ourselves and the world around us, and that's who we become as adults.” - Chris Hemsworth

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 relationship.

 

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 had a good week.  Mine was pretty good.  Quite a departure from last week on the Domestic Discipline front.  No spankings. 

 

Was it just me, or did last week’s conversation never quite gel?  A few comments here and there, but participation seemed to be down significantly.  Hopefully, people were just busy with other things.

 

Near the end of the weekly comments, Donn raised some issues about racial, religious, and geographic influences on adult DD participation. I don’t want to get into those issues directly, particularly religion and spanking. Whenever I’ve done so in the past, it’s attracted some discussion that I just don’t want to get into.  But, Donn’s comments did lead to an observation from me about the correlation, or lack thereof, between the prevalence of spankings in our respective childhoods and our DD desires as an adult.

 

My point being that, after over ten years of running this blog, I’ve been unable to detect any such correlation. Some of us were subject to corporal punishment as kids. Some weren’t. Some had strict parents. Some had very lax parents. Some experienced spankings in school. Some did not. 

 

 

Although I think most of us intuitively believe there should be a positive correlation between relative degrees of exposure to spanking as a kid and interest in spanking and discipline as an adult, I have a really difficult time seeing one emerge from the thousands and thousands of comments on this blog. We seem to assume that if we want to be spanked by our wives now it is probably because we were spanked by our mothers as kids, but I just haven't seen much evidence presented in our blog comments that it's actually true.

Some of you may be familiar with the polls that were posted on the old DWC website.  While illuminating, they too were riddled with hidden assumptions that almost undoutedly skewed the results. For example, there were several questions related to spankings by mothers, but there was not a single question (from what I recall) about whether participants were spanked by their fathers. There seemed to be a presumption, hidden in the otherwise seemingly neutral questions, that adult DD interest must be associated with parental spankings and, more narrowly, with spankings from the mother and not the father.

But, it’s also been a long time since I’ve tried to drill down into the issue in any systematic way.  In the early days of the blog, it was somewhat easier to figure out the leanings of our participants/lurkers on various issues, because Blogger had a neat little polling widget.  Unfortunately, that polling capability is long gone, so I’m stuck with just asking tailored questions and hoping people respond.  It’s a pain in the ass, but I’m going to try it again this week.

 

So, here goes my attempt to ask a series of questions with the specific intent of teasing out the extent to which there is or is not a correlation between our early spanking experience, or lack thereof, and out interests in DD as an adult. 

 

I hope both regular participants and lurkers will participate, as it’s an easy entry point into telling us all a little bit about your DD background but without having to craft a long, self-revelatory comment.  So, here goes. I’ve put the choices in parentheses to try to keep things simple:    

• What is your DD orientation? (spanker/spankee/switch)
•  How prevalent was spanking in the community/communities you grew up in? (very prevalent/moderately prevalent/not prevalent at all)
• How open were parents and kids in your community about spankings, including talking openly about the subject and/or spanking in public? (very open/moderately open/it was known but kept mostly/it was not discussed or performed in public at all)
• How frequently were you subject to corporal punishment at home? (frequently/a few times but not regularly/not at all)
• If you were subject to corporal punishment at home, who was the primary disciplinarian? (mother/father/both mother and father equally)
• Were you subject to corporal punishment at school? (yes/no)
• Were you spanked by relatives or third parties outside your home or school? (yes/no)
• At what age did you develop an interest in spanking or being spanked? (pre-teen/teen/20s/30s/40s or older)
• At what age did you develop an interest in Domestic Discipline or DWC-style spankings? (pre-teen/teen/20s/30s/40s or older)

 

Like I said, I’ve tried to keep this simple and straightforward. Unfortunately, I know from experience with the old Blogger polling widget that I will inevitably look at the responses a week from now and know I should have added certain questions or stated some questions differently. But, let’s go with those for now.

 

Please try to answer each question using one of the suggested options. But, feel free to give additional details to clarify or further elucidate your answers.

 

I will try to kick things off.

 

• What is your DD orientation? (spanker/spankee/switch)

 

Answer: Spankee

• How prevalent was spanking in the community/communities you grew up in? (very prevalent/moderately prevalent/not prevalent at all)

 

Answer: Very prevalent in the community I was born and raised in for several years. It was less prevalent, or at least not as openly prevalent, in the community where I went to high school.

 

• How open were parents and kids in your community about spankings, including talking openly about the subject and/or spanking in public? (very open/moderately open/it was known but kept mostly/it was not discussed or performed in public at all)

 

Answer:  In the community where I was born and raised for several years, it was very out in the open.  Parents talked about it and were not at all shy about spanking kids (their own and sometimes others) in places where it could be overheard or sometimes witnessed.  Where I went to high school, it was much less open, though still practiced in school.

 

• How frequently were you subject to corporal punishment at home? (frequently/a few times but not regularly/not at all)

 

        Answer: A few times but not regularly.

 

• If you were subject to corporal punishment at home, who was the primary disciplinarian? (mother/father/both mother and father equally)

 

Answer: I don’t have many specific memories of childhood spankings, but I think mother and father roughly equally. I recall my biological father (he died when I was young) threatening spankings, but I don't recall any actual ones. I am pretty sure my mother did spank me a few times when I was young, but not often. I do remember her spanking one of my step-siblings.  I recall one belt strapping from my step-father, and it was very memorable.

 

• Were you subject to corporal punishment at school? (yes/no)

 

Answer: Corporal punishment did take place at school, and I was sent to the principals’ office a few times with the expectation I would be paddled, but I don’t think it ever actually happened.

 

 

• Were you spanked by relatives or third parties outside your home or school? (yes/no)

 

Answer: Yes, a handful of times by uncles or aunts.  There may have been others, but I don’t recall.

 

• At what age did you develop an interest in spanking or being spanked? (pre-teen/teen/20s/30s/40s or older)

 

Answer: 30s.  Late 30s to be specific.

 

• At what age did you develop an interest in Domestic Discipline or DWC-style spankings? (pre-teen/teen/20s/30s/40s or older)

 

Answer: 30s. Late 30s to be specific.

 

Even though I’m sure it will be a small sample and the results won’t be remotely scientific, hopefully we’ll get enough answer to either see some patterns or conclude there just don’t seem to be any.  In any event, I look forward to see all your answers.

 

Have a great week.

The Club - Meeting 507 - Authority to Spank for Third-Party Interactions

Discipline yourself, and others won't need to. John Wooden

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 relationship.

 

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 great week.  Mine seemed generally OK as I was going through it, but an outsider who isn’t into Domestic Discipline probably wouldn’t see it that way.  In a rare event for us, I got two spankings in the same week.  It was a consequence of two overlapping developments.  Anne surprised me in ordering a spanking for something that I thought didn’t really merit one in light of the whole context. She also brought it up as I was leaving to take care of something that seemed a lot more important.  I didn’t exactly refuse, but I certainly pushed back, and we got in an argument about it. She got angry and dismissed me without delivering the spanking.  I ended up apologizing relatively soon afterward, and the next time we were together, I got the first hard spanking.

 

The other, related development involved getting our weekly check-ins back on track, including using the weekly reporting form I highlighted here a couple of weeks ago.  When I filled out the form prior to our weekly session, I noted that the original misbehavior from earlier in the week had been addressed but the arguing/resisting had not.  Honestly, I probably could have spared myself the second spanking that resulted, simply by not pointing out that the two were separate, serious offenses and should be dealt with separately. But, I was feeling contrite about the arguing and felt there should be consequences.

 

It's been quite a while since I’ve been spanked twice within a few days. In the past, I didn’t feel like the second spankings were all that much worse, but this time it really was.  It definitely gave me an incentive to stop at—at most—one serious offense per week.

 

I thought we had a good discussion last week about the differences between DD and BDSM/Femdom, though I was a little surprised at how strong some of the views were.  I feel like I need to be clear that I don’t personally have any problem with BDSM or its practitioners.  Same with Femdom and Master-slave relationships.  They just aren’t what this blog is about, and I do get irritated when some newcomers ignore the disclaimers at the top of the blog and the DD-oriented content, and come wading in with comments replete with a bunch of very BDSM-oriented vocabulary and themes.  But, I do still credit people who are into BDSM with having the courage and freedom to explore their fantasies and give the finger to socially-imposed norms that might discourage such exploration.

 

As for this week’s topic, it comes from a suggestion Donn made a couple of weeks ago:

 

"How far outside your personal relationship with your wife does she extend her authority? In particular, what types of interactions with other people, third parties (not part of your immediate family) does your wife apply her "rules" and "expectations" for good behavior for? Verbal interactions with such outside people? Business interactions? Religious and moral affairs? Does your wife have some sort of broad standard, like "Never take unfair advantage of others," that she enforces for ALL of your behavior?”

 

I don’t really have a lot to contribute to this one, as the vast majority of my wife’s disciplinary authority is, in fact, exercised within the confines of our relationship.  When I’m punished, it’s almost always for some behavior that affected mainly her, or some personal failing or rule-breaking that didn’t effect any third-parties.

 

There have been a few exceptions.  A year or two ago, she got angry while we were out to dinner with another couple. She thought I was dominating the conversation.  The other wife is a personal friend and the only mutual friend/acquaintance who knows about our DD relationship.  The incident was notable for a couple of reasons. First, a day or two later it led to a very, very strong scolding followed by a hard spanking.  Second, at the time of the spanking she revealed to me that during a private moment at dinner she had told our friend that she was pissed off at my behavior and intended to spank me for it.

 

 

There were a couple of times, a long time ago, that I was spanked for something I said to one of the kids that she thought was hurtful or rude.

 

I can think of only one time that any kind of business interaction resulted in a punishment. I left a very nasty message for a business acquaintance over something I thought (mistakenly) he had done during the course of a matter we were working on for different clients.  I was both factually wrong and overly aggressive, though the guy was widely disliked in our professional community and my error was in-line with what many would have expected of him.  I actually don’t remember whether Anne spanked me for it, but I have a very strong memory of her forcing me to call and apologize to him.

 

 

There has never been any call to punish me for something like taking unfair advantage of others.  Same with things like being rude to waiters, waitresses, and other service providers.  I don’t have any tolerance for people who behave that way and would never do it myself. 

 

That’s about it for my personal experience on this topic.  One question I would add to Donn’s: If your wife does extend her authority to your interactions with third-parties, does the punishment involve those third-parties in any way?  For example, when I mistakenly accused the business acquaintance of bad behavior, my wife made me apologize directly to him, as he was the one I had wronged.  When she thought I was dominating a dinner conversation, she brought that friend into it by telling her what she intended to do to me, knowing that the next time we saw that friend she (and perhaps her husband) would know I had been spanked.  I recall being very self-conscious at our next get-together, because in being more careful about dominating the conversation, I knew that the friend might attribute my quieter demeanor to the spanking she had been told would happen.

 

 

And, of course, we’ve talked here multiple times about the fantasies some of us have regarding witnesses and some of us have assumed that it would be a much more emotionally powerful experience if a witness had been wronged in some way, such that the spanking was to correct or punish behavior that witness had experienced or been the victim of.  

 

So, tell us about far the wife’s authority extends outside your personal relationship.  If you’re willing, give some examples of how behavior toward third parties has resulted in being disciplined.

 

Have a great week

The Club - Meeting 506 - DD, DWC and BDSM - What's the Difference?

“Power is not a means; it is an end."  - George Orwell

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 relationship.

 

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 had a great week.  Mine was kind of mixed.  The super cold weather finally let up a bit.  It was nice to be able to go for a walk without having to bundle myself up like the younger brother in “A Christmas Story.”

 

 

On the DD and FLR front, for the first time that I can really remember, I came right out and asked not for a spanking, or for more strictness, but for a pause.  I realized that I was still struggling internally with the family loss we experienced at the first of the year, and I just wasn’t in the right headspace to deal with disciplinary spankings for something other than really egregious conduct problems or with our recently implemented check-in procedure.  I told Anne honestly how I was feeling, and she appeared to get it.  Isn’t communicating like adults wonderful?  I told her that I don’t expect to be in this negative headspace for that much longer (maybe a week or two), and hopefully that’s the way it plays out.

 

But, the situation was, perhaps a nice segue into part of this week’s topic.  Norton had brought up the possibility of discussing something along the lines of the story, A Husband’s Essay, from the DWC website.  He said:

 

"Dan, your last post was very compelling, and included two enthusiastic disciplinary wives who both talked about how much they enjoy disciplining their husbands. There was also a mention of "A Husband's Essay", which is about occassionally giving disciplinary level spankings even when the husband had done nothing wrong to earn one. This has also been referred to as a "therapeutic" spanking, which has been discussed on the blog before. One idea for a post is to see if any of us have tried it and/or how would we feel about it if the wife suggested it?"

 

The situation he referenced—giving or getting a disciplinary-level spanking even when the husband had nothing wrong—wasn’t quite the situation I was in last week.  Mine was more getting a spanking for something relatively minor (in my mind) at a time when I was wrestling emotionally with something much bigger.  There would have been nothing therapeutic about that for me at that time. Though, I can see how others might use spanking to work through emotional issues or to instigate some kind of catharsis.

But, as I told Norton, I’ve just never really liked that story and, in fact, it’s one of my least favorite pieces of content among all the DWC stories.  Why?  Well, I think it’s because my attraction has always been to what I see as the core elements of the DWC, i.e. accountability and consequences.  In my view, A Husband’s Essay could easily be titled “All the Reasons I Like Spanking That Have Absolutely Nothing to do With Domestic Discipline.”

 

As I think someone pointed out, in the FAQ section on the DWC website, Aunt Kay was emphatic that, in her view, it was not best to reserve all spanking for disciplinary purposes in a DWC home.  So, she was clearly more than open to non-DD spankings.   

 

But, I think it’s also a fact that virtually all the content she chose to write about and put on the DWC website was about real spankings as real consequences for real bad behavior.  A Husband’s Essay is, to me, the single nod to those other kinds of spanking that she wholeheartedly supported but chose not to make a focus of her group.

 

Al focused in on an another potentially “therapeutic” spanking scenario:

 

However, the idea of the wife spanking the husband (who has not "earned" a spanking) simply because she feels the need to spank - to relieve stress or frustration perhaps - is an interesting concept that we have not discussed as much as other topics.

 

 

For me, that one is a hard “no.”  So, I guess in addition to refusing a spanking if either of us are intoxicated, we can add that one to my very limited list of exceptions to “anytime, anywhere, for any reason.” 

 

Though, I recognize that maybe it’s not all that limited.  Instead, it reflects that, for me, the whole attraction to the dynamic needs to be tied to accountability and consequences. I have exactly zero interest in experiencing a very significant amount of pain just because someone else feels like inflicting it.

 

 

That discussion, and my observation that the WordPress version of the blog seemed to be attracting a lot of BDSM interest, led Alan to propose a somewhat broader topic:

 

There may be a future blog topic in the apparent confusion with F/M DD spanking and master/slave-femdom -BDSM It would be interesting for folks practicing or interested in spanking within a domestic discipline framework to discuss and explain the key differences felt between DD and BDSM. Many consider DD spanking to be another branch of the BDSM umbrella that comprises DD. I don’t. Dan doesn’t, and I think many others feel similar. Yet nowhere I know has anyone articulated clear differences. Spanking, for example, is common in BDSM; indeed, often, it seems central to BDSM. But to me, DD spanking has little in common with BDSM as it is commonly described. The comments Dan mentions above from Femdom interests illustrate the practical nature of the issue. Many in the BDSM community see no difference between what we practice and what they do. Can we move the needle a little?

 

So, let’s combine that with Norton’s suggestion about “therapeutic” spankings to explore exactly what it is that distinguishes a DD/DWC relationship from everything else? Or, is it really distinguishable?

 

To me, it clearly is, even if I can’t lay down a precise definition that encompasses all DD relationships and none of anything else.

 

Though, I don’t think it’s a purely binary thing. There are lots of variations in these relationships and, as we explored during our most recent explicit exploration of BDSM back in May of last year, many do incorporate BDSM elements into their DD/DWC relationships.

 

To me, maybe it boils down to two (sort of three) questions:

 

·      To what extent is there a core element of accountability and punishment, i.e. real consequences for real misbehavior, and to what is extent is that element “real” versus just an element of some kind of scene or role play; and

·      Is the erotic element, which I fully accept is a part of virtually every DWC-oriented relationship, the central motivation or goal?

 

I brought up—based on some real recent comments—what I see as something that is pretty clearly not on the DD side of the line, i.e. a scenario where he gets off on being spanked, and she gets off on giving spankings, so they do it every day regardless of behavior. To me, that is just plain old S&M. 

 

In response, Alan added: 

 

“But the question I raise is not -what are the degrees of difference--but is not the difference one of a kind? As many have noted re DD, it must be real and ( con sensually ) non-consensual to work.”

 

I’m not sure I understand 100% what he means by “is not the difference one of a kind?”  So, Alan, if you wouldn’t mind, can you explain that a little more?

 

So, let’s wrap up these threads into one topic on what distinguishes DD/DWC-style relationships from other relationships and activities that include spanking.  Or, as Al, put it: “This is an interesting direction - a post/discussion about the differences between true DD (DWC-style, for example) and BDSM - and perhaps the overlap as well.”

 

As a subset of that, we could talk about Norton’s reference to “therapeutic” spankings. On that one, Al had observed that he thought of “therapeutic” as being the same thing as “maintenance.”  I don’t see them quite that way.  I used to see maintenance as something that was pretty much outside the DD/DWC paradigm, but Al has convinced me that I’m wrong about that.  

 

 Although it probably is a gray area, I get the role in plays in reinforcing the couple’s respective roles and the overall DD/DWC dynamic. I see the dynamics in A Husband’s Essay as scenarios in which spanking is being used to serve an entirely different purpose, i.e. some kind of therapy or stress relief for either the spanker or the spankee. But, I’ve very interested to hear whether others see it differently.

 

Have a good week.