Do you believe your interest in spanking is inborn, learned, or some combination of the two? Might it vary from one person to the next? Does it change with the passage of time?
If you would like to contribute your thoughts to today's brunch, I encourage you leave a comment below. Once everyone has provided their responses, I will publish a summary of our discussion.
21 comments :
Does it change with the passage of time?
I am not sure if time has anything to do with changes - but I do know for a fact - in my case - health has a whole lot to do with it. I say when they took out the gallbladder they must have removed the kink at the same time. Because since then ....... well let's just say I have no cravings ... fantasies .. or desires.
As for the nature versus nurture question..... I think - again in my case - it was/is nature. My parents didn't believe in spanking.......and besides... I was one of those lil missy goody two shoes that drive everyone crazy - and rarely if ever gave my parents reason to punish me.
My first recollection of reacting to anything that had to with spanking, was when I was about eight or nine years old. I was spanked as a child, but on that specific day, overhearing and seeing someone else being spanked, elicited a reaction that even years later, is vivid in my mind.
I denied myself for years, until the beginning of last year when I realised that no matter what I do, the craving, the reactions within me will never go away.
I do not believe that my being spanked as a child did push me on way or the other (learned behaviour), I am of the firm believe that I have been born this way.
I have a natural tendency to be dominating, yet at the same time craves to submit, and in my submission, being spanked forms a natural part of it.
In the past year, I have found out to my own surprise, that for some reason I tend to follow a two-week cycle in between spankings. The results of a spanking is also something that astounded me - I immediately becomes calmer, more focused, softer and a person that I like.
My interest is definitely learned, and appears to be in a constant state of flux.
I’ve had a lifelong desire that started as a child, by having been given enemas ‘for my own good’, whenever I wasn’t feeling good or whenever I was moody. It wasn’t abuse, just the way things were done in the 50s.
Of course there were times when I resisted and got a quick smack on the bare ass. For years I craved being given enemas by a strong dominant woman and never viewed spanking as part of the desire.
Fast forward a few decades and after my divorce I met a few women who managed to get me interested in kinky things and they identified me as a Dom who knew how to spank a naughty girl.
Well as it turns out I’m much more Switch than Dom and these days the idea of being given a butt burning spanking is very exciting to me. No telling where these constant changing desires might take me in the future.
I think that for me it is definitely a combination of the two. I have always found the idea of spanking very erotic, but that eroticism was blatant in the 1960s because spanking imagery was everywhere. In other words if that imagery had not existed, then would I have daydreamed about spanking all those years ago?
Erk... um... hmmm... I am going to say nurture.
I remember of being so small… just a little tiny girl and holding such terrible knowledge and secrets carefully hidden in my heart. I think that is the most corrosive thing about being a victim… being taught to keep secrets… secrets that fester inside you…
There was not a time I can remember when I was not sexual. Not a time when I was not very aware of my body’s potential for pleasure. And not a time when that knowledge did not terrify me, deliciously diabolically terrify me. Because, there was not a time when that sexuality was not steeped in terror and violence.
It took me a long time to find my way to a safe and simple solution of power exchange and kink for feeling a heavy hand on my backside.
Once someone asked me if I wished it had not happened and I stepped back and looked at my whole life. I am strong. I am smart. I am beautiful... perhaps more so because of the pain I have had to overcome. I know I would not wish it on anyone else, but like a shattered crystal vase lovingly reassembled with patience and glue, I cannot help but decide that I am all the more beautiful for the way the light catches in the cracks and stronger for the glue that holds me together.
I believe the interest in spanking is likely a combination of the two. For me, I am sure it was inborn. Although I have no clue of my parents were in to erotic spanking, there were into collecting erotica, and my father had a collection of prints of bottoms, many of which my mom bought him, in his bathroom. Hmmm.
I know there was an erotic link with spanking for me even as a child. I was never spanked, so I don't have that association, but disciplinary spanking always intrigued me.
My husband, on the other hand, says he never had an inclination until I introduced spanking to him. It has now became a very regular part of our intimacy and he indeed has grown to 'think' that way. I guess like many things it is a combo of nature and nurture?
Think it's different from one person to the next. For me it was probably nature. I was first aware of spanking's erotic hold on me in the second grade when a pretty teacher picked up a classmate, put him over one knee while leaning against a wall and gave him a birthday spanking which I felt between my legs. After that (or perhaps before) all my sexual fantasies were about spanking as well as all my explorations in literature, movies, magazines,comics and dictionaries. I started playing in the 7th grade, realized I wasn't alone in the 8th and began to switch Had always topped) in college.
On the other hand, I introduced many a lass to the erotic aspects of spanking who had never either fantasized or experimented. Have, by experience, always known that a woman with a bottom as an erogenous zone could be aroused by spanking. (Never have been into discipline or punishment.)
I just re read my original comment on this subject and although my opinion on many things has changed over the years, I still stand by what I said about this particular subject. I think that there is or are pain play genes but that psychological influences lead people to play in different ways. Spanko and BDSM for example.
Prefectdt
I think the predilection for enjoying spanking is a part of who a person is, and it's something that one is born with. An early childhood experience triggers the inclination and associates spanking with sexuality and erotic enjoyment.
Like Xantu, I cannot remember a time when I wasn't aware of erotic feelings, and feeling terribly guilty about the secret I held inside. Somehow these sexual desires and their associated guilt got linked to spanking very early in life.
If I had had a different upbringing, would I still be a spanko? Probably. The trigger would have been different, but the preference for spanking would have emerged eventually.
I've had spanking fantasies since I was about three or four. Been fascinated with it ever since I can remember. But since sexuality was a bad thing in my family, it's taken me years to embrace my needs. I thought menopause and therapy for an abusive childhood would change my desire to be spanked, but it hasn't. On some level, I think I crave pain to punish myself because my parents treated me like shit and made me feel like I was a complete inconvenience, but on the other...I just love being spanked and I always have. So in my case, I came in this way. All psychological reasons aside, I enjoy it.
I'm going to chalk it up to a combination. Many genes require certain external stimuli to be expressed.
I think most of human sexuality works on that principle.
I believe that all aspects of our personalities are genetic and that the environment/experiences we are exposed to throughout our lives affects how these traits are expressed within certain parameters. Environment could be the difference between whether a person engages in only fun play spanking or all the way to various levels of BDSM. These genetic predispositions may remain hidden or suppressed, but they are there none the less. If you enjoy spanking in any fashion, be it giving or receiving, you were born to do so. That's my opinion anyway. :)
I'll offer a male dom perspective, not that I speak for anyone except myself.
My mom died suddenly & unexpectedly when I was four years old. I vividly remember fantasizing when in bed at night about the power exchange of spanking and whipping willing, submissive women from a very early age. I never imagined that there really were women like this in the world, however. I didn't masturbate until late into my high school years, being a religious kid. When I did, spanking fantasies always were the thing that got me off. When I had sex for the first time in college, it was great, but again, the tape was rolling in my head as I kneaded her ass in the missionary position or dreamed about smacking it in the doggie-style one. I've had a series of relationships since, including a recently concluded marriage, and spanking has been an intregal part of my sex life throughout my life. I think that initial hurt at a very early age started me down this path.
Keiter
I can say for certain that I never had spanking fantasies as a child. Spanking is new to me. Power exchange, the dynamics of power in relationships and my submission however, have been a part of my fantasy life as far as I can remember. I feel as though being spanked and the cravings I feel for them now was a natural progression but it didn't exist to me previously.
Would I have craved spanking without the existing need to be dominated? I'm not sure. I doubt it though.
I knew when I was a young teen. I think those of us in this lifestyle are all born with dom or sub or switch feelings but some of us keep their feelings bottled up longer than others.
FD
Hi Bonnie,
It would appear that our psychosexual drive is malleable enough to permit both nature and nurture a prominent role in shaping our interest in spanking. For me, both were influential I guess. I started when I was about two and by seven spanking had become deeply ingrained in my psyche as a means of sexual gratification, where it remained for many years in the realm of fantasy and self-exploration. Only recently has it grown to such an extent as to include the outside world, including Tigger, my wife.
In my case it was inborn -100%. I have been fascinated by corporal punishment since I was a child - even though I never suffered any real punishment at school and even at home the worst I got was a slap on the leg. But I used to get incredibly excited and agitated when there was any caning, whipping scenes etc on TV and all my fantasies were about being beaten by mature, powerful women. I've tried to analyse it over the years and think maybe there some chemistry between the fear of the cane and the excitment of hearing how others 'took it' that led to the fascination. My partner however never had any interest in the subject until I told her about my interests and pointed out her slightly 'dominant ways' and her little sadistic ways (she took great pleasure in pinching my earlobes and tweaking my nipples) and Mistress is now an ardent enthusiast of corporal punishment.
It almost has to be "nurture" although in two very different forms: the "true" spankos who begin fantasizing early in life (no later than adolescence), and the "artificial" spankos who learn to enjoy spanking in adulthood. Why we have two different categories is too lengthy to get into here, but is certainly related to the age at which spanking is "discovered".
As to why "nature" will not do as an explanation, the problem is that we could not then explain the persistence of spankos like ourselves across many generations. An inborn desire (a "spanko" gene) would have to be heritable, and heritable characteristics are subjected to the evolutionary tests of survival and reproduction.
Under such conditions, aberrant sexual behavior (defined as any behavior that does not lead to reproduction) would be punished by the individual’s leaving fewer (or no) descendants. We would therefore expect any kind of genetically-induced sexual deviancy to diminish over a span of time. A simple example would be the male who drives away a potential mate by trying to spank her - he loses the chance of passing on his DNA with no apparent compensation. Natural selection, then, must favor "vanilla" males if spanking behavior is genetically induced.
The relative advantages or disadvantages of spanking to the female spanko, and the possibility that the spanko proportion of the population is so low as to be consistent with a genetic origin, are also too complicated to get into here.
I learnt about the beautiful subject of 'spanking', from my school days in England. Where I witnesssed a number of spankings given to students, both girls, and boys. But most of all I wanted to spank one of my female teachers. Of course it was a fantasy, but Oh what a wonderful fantasy that was.
Wow! So many fab comments...
My interest in spanking is only nurture to the degree that I did not begin to grow up or be reared until my husband and I met and he took me fully in hand. Then and only then was the idea even introduced to me as any kind of kink...and even then I resisted it for years, so yes, it most definitely changes over time.
Now?...well come on..it is the best thing in my life..whether discipline or kink...and I do not know how I could live without it....yes..things most definitely change.
But ask me again in 10 years.
Emily
For me, it is a combination of nature and nurture. My psychic DNA is programmed to be a bottom/sub. All my fantasies and fetishies are as a spankee since the age of 14. And, my nurture, 12 years of schools that believed in corporal punishment as the proper way to educate youngsters contributed to my craving for a good spanking.
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