The Spanko Files: Indiana

It is my profound pleasure to share with you the words of our friend Indiana. As she describes, she was somewhat reluctant to tell this story because her voyage of discovery is not yet complete. But dear Indiana has traveled a great distance and gained many valuable insights along the way. It is both my hope and hers that readers who are new to this topic will benefit from this excellent and thoughtful narrative.

A View from Mid-Journey
by Indiana

Let me begin by admitting freely that I’m a very unlikely guest writer for a spanking blog. I’ve never been spanked as an adult, and I’ve never even been terribly confident or open sexually. It took me over a year of reading spanking blogs to feel at all comfortable even commenting, and I found that step embarrassing enough! Eventually, though, my need for a sounding board against which to explore this topic began to overcome my hesitation. Around that time, I read a post on Natty’s blog in which she and a gay friend joked about having “come out” around the same time. That post really caught my attention, as I’d begun to think of my journey as coming out to myself. So I organized my thoughts a bit and posted my own de-lurk on SSS.

As a way to say thank you, I rather timidly copied the post to Bonnie and to the writers of another favorite site. I was flabbergasted when Bonnie wrote back, suggesting that I write a guest post for MBS. I didn’t feel as though I had much to say, so I initially declined the invitation. As you all know, though, Bonnie has a wonderful way of making everyone feel included, and she got me thinking. I began to wonder if it would have helped me a year and a half ago to hear from someone with some of my hang-ups who had moved a little further down the road. After all, even though Bonnie is a tremendous role model in many ways, I couldn’t exactly imagine someone reading MBS and thinking, “Gosh, if someone that shy about her sexuality could explore spanking, then so could I!”

More importantly, I thought about the time in my early twenties that I’d first read about sexual fantasies and their relationship to reality. How I’d felt tremendous relief to “learn” that just because essentially all of my fantasies involved being spanked didn’t mean that I would really like it. Secure in that conviction, I didn’t think much about the issue, at least not consciously, for another two decades. What if the internet had been available then? Would I have stopped hiding from myself and realized my sexuality more fully in the intervening two decades? I can’t honestly say. But I wish I’d known then that spanking play wasn’t relegated to leather bars, but was quietly (figuratively, anyway) practiced by grandmothers, schoolteachers, graduate students, and kind, gentle fathers. I guess that’s another way that spanking enthusiasts are a bit like gays and lesbians. If we were all “out,” the fringe stereotypes would be a lot harder to take seriously.

Another way in which “coming out” as a spanko is like coming out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual is the difficulty a lot of us find in accepting our own sexuality. I’ve watched close friends come out as gay or lesbian, and it seems that for all but a fortunate few, dealing with their own homophobia is an important first step. I’ve felt the same thing, with the added complication that I had no idea there was such a thing as a spanko community until about 18 months ago. I’ve always believed strongly that what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes is their own business. But that doesn’t mean that it was easy for me to accept having desires outside of the mainstream. That has been a slow, semi-conscious process.

As seems to have been true for most of us, I thought I was the only one until I searched “spanking” on Google. At first, I just read the stories at a couple of large, well-known free sites. After all, that kept me busy for a while. It was as though I had been subsisting on only the odd spanking startle in mainstream books and other media, doled out irregularly and used for fantasy purposes long past the metaphorical freshness date on the label. Now, there was such a wealth of material! Some stories I liked, others bothered me, and quite a few fit both categories. After all, the spanking community is just that – a community, even a sub-culture, with its own terms and conventions. It takes a little while to understand how words are being used, especially as it there is so much variety in the community. It also took me a while to get a feel for the boundaries of fantasy and real life. Blogs like MBS helped a lot with that, because they showed me some of the people behind the stories and fantasies and helped me to see the range of ways in which adults engage in consensual spanking activities.

When I started reading newsgroups, I realized there was a lot of in-fighting within the community about which kinds of kinks were OK and which weren’t. I found this annoying and even troubling, but I couldn’t stop myself from making some of the same judgments at first. You know, “well, that’s okay, but doing this is just nuts!” That has a lot to do with not accepting oneself fully. After all, I don’t like horror movies, and I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t love Jane Austen. But I don’t think the people who disagree with me about these things are crazy. It’s much harder to be objective about a spanking kink, the exact manifestations of which probably have a lot to do with childhood experience in ways we’ll never fully understand even for ourselves, much less for others. That’s one thing I really like about MBS—everyone is accepting rather than just tolerant, and even rare disagreements are polite.

For me, the hardest issue to deal with has been the very idea of submission and dominance, especially in a male-dominant, female-submissive relationship. Just the words carry a lot of baggage. Moreover, the large number of people on the internet who believe that women need the loving, firm guidance of a superior male suggests that this is not an empty concern. I realize this is an issue that tries the patience of many readers of this blog, so let me be clear. In no way do I mean to imply that female submissives and male dominants are the vanguard of the Patriarchy, villainously striving to set women back millennia. That’s patently absurd.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not a huge hurdle for some of us to overcome. I work in a very male-dominated field, which no doubt makes me particularly sensitive to gender issues. So the hierarchical tags bothered me a lot. Over time, I have come to see the words as technical terms. I think Eve Howard made it clearest for me by defining a submissive as someone who prefers to be spanked and a dominant as someone who prefers to do the spanking. OK, I can live with being a submissive by that definition. And of course, I came to realize that the woman-in-charge who is quite happy, even relieved, to be submissive in the bedroom is a bit of a stereotype in spanking circles. I can see the attraction of that, too.

Still, I found that I had an easier time with F/F stories in the beginning. Once I got more comfortable with my interest in spanking, though, I found the M/F dynamic less threatening. And, well, I kind of liked the sex better in those accounts.  What really helped, though, was reading blogs like MBS, where I could get to “know” strong, smart, funny, and warm women who were clearly valued for all these traits by the intelligent and caring men who like to spank them. It was also hard to remain suspicious of male tops when they’re represented here by someone as obviously wonderful as Paul. Finally, it reassured me to know that people who have been playing for years still struggle with these issues occasionally.

Another similarity between the gay/lesbian and spanko journeys is that many of us are aware of our non-mainstream sexual interests long before we understand what they mean. In retrospect, it’s clear that I’ve had a sexual interest in spanking essentially all my life. Spanking fantasies are among my earliest memories, and I’ve recognized myself time and again as I read about the childhood startles and fantasies of others. Even simple things like looking up spanking-related words in the dictionary or attaching such mystical significance to the very word “spanking” that I could barely pronounce it aloud seem like near-universal spanko childhood experiences. As all that occurred long before I knew what an orgasm was, well, it’s no wonder many of us have found our journeys to be confusing!

There’s also the stereotype of lesbian women coming out relatively late in life, around the age of 40. I’ve watched it happen with friends, and I even found it a little amusing that it took so long. It seems to happen with spanking, too, and I think it’s a trend with similar underlying themes. Does it happen because women are supposed to reach their sexual peak at that time? Does it happen because kids leave home, careers get established, and women have a chance to focus on themselves a little? Does it happen because even those of us who are not terribly conventional finally figure out the extent to which we’ve been influenced by what society tells us we should do? It’s probably a combination of those reasons, at least for me. Whatever the causes, I think there’s a similar relief in understanding why leading a vanilla/straight (tick all appropriate boxes) life wasn’t working. All I can say to my late-to-come-out lesbian friends is that I’m laughing with you now. I just haven’t told you that.

I have confided in one vanilla friend, though. I had written in my SSS de-lurk that I couldn’t imagine talking to my best friends about spanking, but that was an oversimplification. I could imagine talking to one friend in particular. In fact, I had been rehearsing the conversation in my mind for weeks. I just didn’t think that I’d really do it, but a few glasses of wine and a long plane ride together were enough to overcome my inhibitions. It was wonderful. I knew she would be accepting and would try to understand, but I hadn’t anticipated that she would be so incredibly encouraging. She told me this was a part of my life that I should definitely explore. And, she added, I should provide her with the details! Well, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go that far, but who knows? I never thought I’d write anything like this, either.

As the title of this post indicates, I’m still in the middle of my journey, so I can’t give you a storybook ending yet. I can tell you, though, that even coming this far has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. For starters, my daydreams and fantasies sure are a lot more interesting! Going a bit more public has been tremendously liberating, too. Now that the big secret is out, it makes me feel that I can be more open with myself and others about a range of personal issues. Participating more fully on spanking sites also enhances the sense of community with fellow spankos, which is a wonderful and affirming experience.

Of course, I still wonder where all this will lead.

I don’t know the answer to that question. But I certainly intend to find out!

Finally, I want to thank all of you who have participated on MBS or whose blogs I’ve read elsewhere for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I suspect you have no idea how many of us out there you’ve helped along the way.

With gratitude and best wishes,

Indiana