Friday 13 July 2012

So, are we weirdos? Or what?

No, no, don't run off. I'm not insulting you. Not yet anyway. This includes me, so I'm loath to label our little group as all that odd.

It's just that, well, we may be.

Let's just think about this a little.

If you're a spanker, then at least part of what turns you on is either inflicting pain, or else dominating (or controlling) another individual. Perhaps both.

I love to spank, but I don't consider myself to be a sadist. I certainly don't spank in order to place myself above someone. I like fairly gentle spanking; I love the sensations, and the rituals.

I love to be spanked, but I don't consider myself to be a masochist. Apart from where my bottom is concerned, I hate pain, of any sort (well, I suppose I appreciate the day after muscle ache that comes from a useful physical activity, but that's hardly relevant). I don't need to be told what to do or how to behave. Again, it's all sensations and rituals.

I guess that the rituals side is important to many of us, given the number of spankos who indulge in role play; if it's only the act of spanking or being spanked that turns you on, then no build up is necessary. How many spanking videos do you like that just start with a spanking, and feature only that? Not too many, I'd guess.

We need the story, the build up, the justification.

In short, we love the ritual.

In part this explains our fascination with the stock phrases that even vanilla people associate with corporal punishment; come on, you know them as well as I do. "Bend over", "six of the best", "you need a good spanking" "don't you dare do that", "my palm is itching" and so many more.

Let's assume that, for most if not all of us, spanking has a sexual element, even if it doesn't always lead to intercourse. The enjoyment of spanking, with nothing more, is generally sexual. Most of us become aroused seeing spanking videos and photos, or reading spanking stories.

I assume that, at least in part, that's why you guys keep coming back here.

Hey, it's why I do. I often finish a post with some tension in my trousers (of course, I usually add pictures last, which may have a baring on this).

To be entirely natural, sexual intercourse should lead to the possibility of procreation (on it's most basic level). Sex being physically pleasurable leads to a Darwinian imperative to reduce.

It's really only since the 1950's that society as a whole has accepted sex can be pleasurable for both sexes, and not be undertaken with the assumption that conception is a possible result.

Before you yell at me, I know that many men have practiced sex for pleasure before then, and that women have too, but societal mores have always suggested that, in the case of women at least, sex isn't supposed to be fun. Just look at the Victorians, for God's sake.

"Lie back and think of England " may be joke advice now, but for 150 years after it was first coined it was considered to be good advice to married women, whenever their husbands presumed to inflict their physical person upon them.

This is, of course, the root cause of the double standard that a man who sleeps around is kind of a hero, and that a women who does so is a slut. The potential consequences have an impact too; men can walk/run away, whereas women are left holding the unintentional fruits of their relationships.

It's all bullshit, of course.

I don't know about you guys but I tell my kids that there's nothing wrong with premarital sex, provided they take precautions, and care for the person that they sleep with. Irrespective of the sex or inclinations of their partner (my son considers himself to be bisexual, and I must admit that I suspected he might be gay, although he has only ever been in relationships with girls - I'm honestly fine with it either way, and I've told him so).

Actually heterosexuals and homosexuals should be jealous of bisexuals. Not an original thought, I know. And I'm not sure I agree. Sure, theoretically they have more choice but me, I'm boring. I really only like women, to the extent that I only want to spank or be spanked by women.

Not too fussy about their age though, so long as they're of legal age.

Okay then, back to it; sex is intended for procreation, spanking is sex, and spanking, unless you combine it with fucking, isn't going to make babies.

So, if those definitions are accurate, spanking is, at least, deviant.

I don't consider that to be a judgement. I'll go with the Lenny Bruce quote, which I'll have to paraphrase, as I'm fucked if I can find it on line; 2,3 4 people, none of it's dirty to me, so long as no one is harmed.

If he didn't say that, he should have.

Incidentally, I think Bruce actually said hurt, but we have to change that; spanking does hurt, which really is okay, so long as no one suffers physical or psychological harm. Hurt = sting. Harm = long term damage.

Quick question (I'll give you my answer in a moment); how out are you? Are you embarrassed if your colleagues know that you're a spanko? How about your close friends? Your family?

My wife is the only person I currently know who definitely is aware of my tastes, although I suspect that my son does.

Let's face it; despite the increasing profile of spanking in popular culture, it's still seen as something unusual. A little odd. Maybe the subject for jokes.

There's a thought. In films in the 1930s to 1950s spanking was often placed in a comedic context (the two most famous spankings, in Kiss Mr Kate and McLintock, both are). Now spankings are starting to rear (if you'll excuse my use of the word) their head again, they are usually shown in a sexual context (fair enough) but, again, for comedic purposes (off the top of my head, My Family, Bored to Death, Doctors).

I think that this is a sign that society has not yet accepted our kink. You tend to laugh at things that make you uneasy (black comedians use this to great effect in their reclaiming of the word "nigger" - watch a Reggie Hudson DVD if you doubt this - watch one anyway, as he's a brilliant comedian, although some of his stuff can be particularly unsettling, such as his discussion of rape in history).

So, I suppose we should look at how we define a weirdo. The dictionary has it as "person who is bizarre, unusual".

I'm a firm believer in the idea that everyone is unusual; no two of us are the same (leaving aside the genetically odd identical twins, who fascinate me - perhaps because I'm a Gemini, although maybe not). SO that bit of the definition is worthless.

Bizarre? I think that overstates the issue.

Synonyms vary as widely; honestly, the English language is fucking hard to analyse. I particularly like screwball, odd bird and eccentric. I'm pleased to put up my hands to any of these. Even without the spanking fetish.

Are we weirdos? I think this ends up being very much an "eye of the beholder" issue; I don't think that we're weird, but it's not hard to see why some vanillas do.

I know that my wife, who is a spanko purely by necessity rather than inclination, finds my desire to be spanked odd. I've never gotten her to explain why she's okay with me wanting to spank her, but somewhat freaked by my sudden enjoyment of going over her knee.

I would say it's a pain thing, but I fail to see why it's more reasonable to enjoy inflicting pain (even at a mild level) than it is to enjoy experiencing it. If anyone out there can set me straight on the issue I would genuinely appreciate it.

Totally beyond me though.

Is being a spanko a natural thing? Difficult question. I always thought that homophobes who said homosexuality was unnatural were talking through their arses. Lots of animals will happily penetrate anything, irrespective of gender. Dogs can be right arse bandits, for example.

I'm not sure that there is an equivalent in spanking.

I know that a few animals, such as cats, hunt for pleasure, and will toy with their prey before killing it, torturing it slowly, but that's rather different from our thing. Unless you are much odder than I care to think about!

Leaving aside Beatrix Potter and Rudyard Kipling, I don't think that animals practice corporal punishment, even for disciplinary reasons, and certainly not 'cos they're kinky for it.

So I guess it is a little unnatural.

But oh so much fun!

At this stage, if I'd planned this piece out properly, I would present you with a neat conclusion. Sadly I can't do that, as I don't know the answer.

Weirdos seems just a bit too harsh. I don't think that I am one, anyway.

Of course, I am fairly fucking odd.

Ah, I dunno.

Do you think you're a weirdo? Why not complete the poll over there, and let me know?

All the best

Tim

All pictures this time are from Girl Spanks Girl

PS I wrote this last night, after several drinks, but I'll post it as is; it's a bit rough but generally holds up, I think.





8 comments:

  1. Everybody is a weirdo, and nobody is. I've stopped reflecting on that issue because I've realized it leads nowhere. I'm referring, of course, to consensual acts: everything else is definitely weird.

    Are stockings exciting? To most men they are, yet I've never seen a chimp or a gorilla wearing them. And the same applies to high heels, tight skirts, short skirts, lipstick, and so on (you can tell I'm male, can't you?) In that sense, everyone is a weirdo because each one of us likes something that is not related to the sexual act itself. The best way to put it is: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

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  2. I don't think the phrase is lie back and think of England. I believe that actually refers to someone about to die. I think the phrase you meant was " stare at the ceiling and think of Queen Victoria". ( the Virgin Queen, yeah right!)

    BTW my definition of Kinky. " Whatever I can't convince my girlfriend to do"

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    1. I've not heard the Queen Victoria one, but (in the UK at least) "lie back and think of England" is almost always used in a sexual context; the implication of wife's doing their duty by their husbands, by satisfying their lusts even when it is (supposedly) unpleasant for her.

      It is also rather amusingly used by the songwriter Billy Bragg in the line "How can you lie back and think of England when you don't even know who's in the team?". Of course I am a massive fan of his; live his shows have to be heard to be believed.

      All the best

      Tim

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  3. Everybody is a spanko too! Those who sneer at spankos and denigrate them are simply not in touch with their feelings - or in complete denial (the lady doth protest too much). The submission, dominance and justice of the act resonate through all humanity.

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    1. I love the last sentence of this; of course I don't think that it actually means anything in particular, but it sounds really impressive. Wish I'd written it.

      For what it's worth I don't believe that everyone is a spanko, any more than I believe that everyone is into heavy bondage; it's a broad church with room for lots of different tastes.

      All the best

      Tim

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  4. I think there are a few good answers for this.

    There are a couple parts of this which I think are 100% normal.

    First, to a limited extent when we talk about masochism it's not very surprising because our brains are just messy and they can get confused about the difference between pain and pleasure. Although I'm not an expert, I suspect that there are limits to this, but past those limits there is also adrenaline to consider.

    Second, when we talk about men spanking women: hips and buttocks are secondary sexual characteristics in women. Positions which permit spanking are also positions which show these characteristics to full advantage.

    Those are two special cases, and there are probably other special cases, but with those cases considered I want to move on to the general case:

    Generally, even if nothing else can explain a particular case, all sexual deviancy can be understood once we understand how flexible our brains are. We will associate anything with anything for any bad reason. If a person flips a coin with their right hand and gets three tails in a row, and flips a coin with their left hand and gets three heads in a row, then if they don't know any better they'll think it's magic.

    And once you introduce a positive element, like sexual gratification, then you have the recipe for a lifelong obsession. For some reason (which I don't fully understand so I'm not going to try to explain), this is extra true for men. And for another reason it's especially true if the trigger is set during childhood or adolescence (in this case I'm pretty sure it's for the same reason children and adolescents learn more easily than adults which, to put it simply, is because their neurons are still in learning mode).

    At the end of the day? We do deviate from the sexual norm, and to that extent we are weirdos, but I think that's largely because we've had inputs which would have affected those within the sexual norm the same way. A sexually normal person is just someone who has had formative experiences that are normal. And to that extent, I think that there probably isn't a great deal of future in sexual normality if it even still exists, because the internet makes it so much easier to build an obsession than looking 'spanking' up in the dictionary and rereading passages from books ever did. So I think that before we die the norm will be to be outside of the norm, so we'll be in good company.

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    1. Wow. My silly little post drew a well thought out and intelligent response; many thanks for taking the time to write this.

      I tend to agree that normality is defined by many things, and that, over time, what is generally acceptable widens. The apparent increase in mainstream acceptance of spanking that we seem to be seeing supports this; the more we see it on tv the more accustomed to it we become.

      The more usual it is.

      I don't know what prompted my interest in spanking. I understand the conventional wisdom that there are format experiences that imprint onto out sexual beings, but I really don't know what that was in my case.

      I also find it strange but interesting that both people who were spanked as a child, and those who were not spanked as a child, still find gratification in this thing we do.

      Anyway, thanks for your well thought out response.

      All the best

      Tim

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  5. A friend once told me that if someone calls you weird, the appropriate response is "thank you." Are spankos weird? To answer that one would have to be able to define what is normal and that's certainly not something I have the answer to either. I feel I'm a bit weird I suppose, even before the spanking thing factors in. Lol. Is that a problem? Not really.

    I am who I am. I'm doing something that I enjoy. Would I want everyone in my life to know about it? Absolutely not. But I really don't want to know what they are all doing behind closed doors either. I think the feeling is mutual.

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