Saturday, July 28, 2012

MBS Spanko Brunch #341

Hello again, and welcome to our weekly brunch celebration. Our question this time was suggested by our friend, Reece Seever.

Among spanking bloggers, F/M enthusiasts are greatly outnumbered by M/F blogs. Why is this?
  1. There are simply fewer people practicing F/M spanking
  2. Bottoms tend to document and women are more verbal
  3. Fewer women than men are interested in topping
  4. Men are more reluctant to reveal weakness or submission
  5. M/F spanking aligns more closely with traditional gender roles
  6. Male bloggers get distracted and lose interest
  7. Women have sturdier backsides and a higher pain tolerance
  8. Women like to look at women more than men like to look at men
  9. The established blogging community nurtures M/F blogs
  10. Men are less likely to seek support on the internet
  11. Some other cause we haven't considered

I don't know the reason, but I'm hoping that you good folks will enlighten us all. To participate in brunch, just enter your response in the form of a comment. Please feel free to reference the letters above or provide your own explanation. Once everyone has had their chance, I'll post an edited summary.

20 comments :

Anonymous said...

I have one of the blogs in this category. I want to acknowledge the terrific support of other bloggers for my blog posts, most of whom are female subs.

I am very interested in reading the comments to this post.

abby said...

Hmmmm....maybe some of all the above. but mostly I think men are less likely to share being a sub.
abby

Bas said...

All of those reasons apply a bit.
I think reason a. has a deeper reason. When deciding to implement TTWD, we have to decide which one of us is being spanked by the other one. No real reason that this should not result in a 50/50 division for F/M and M/F.
But all men are sissies and terrified of being spanked (I can certainly speak for my self), and they will do anything to make sure they end up with M/F.

Anonymous said...

All those reasons play into it, but when it comes down to it, the main reason is there are just fewer men in submission vs women.

Simon said...

Since you have one of the few blogs that lists a wide number of many different types of blog I'm unsure about disagreeing with you to but my impression is that there are roughly similar numbers of each. Admittedly the F/M blogs are often harder to find but many of the blogs in your sidebar list a number of them. Having said that I do feel that in general M/F is more socially acceptable than F/M but I have no explanation for this that makes any real sense.

Lillian said...

Hi Bonnie,
Interesting topic, and I would say almost all of the above. I think the dominant male/submissive female is a message we absorb through societal osmosis from early childhood. The fairy tales and bed time stories we grew up with (and tell our children) celebrate the strong, dominant male and the beautiful (but delicate) woman in need of rescue.
And....there is probably some primal stuff going on - women bear the children, meaning we were weakened by babies at our breasts or advanced pregnancy (or both) and small children to tend, so we tried to mate with the strongest and best hunter we could.
I think these pre-concieved gender roles and stigmas must make it difficult for submissive men to admit to themselves who they are. It was hard enough for me to admit my submissive nature to myself, as a woman - it must be very difficult to get past for F/m relationships, but maybe that makes them very strong when they get there.
Just my two cents worth. :)

Christi @ Beautiful Trust and Submission said...

I definitely think it's a combination of A and E.
Another factor could be that while us female bloggers have tons of other female bloggers like us who are there for support and encouragement, I don't think men are as likely to seek out other men in the same open way we women seek out each other in the blogging world. Just my thoughts.

Ana said...

I realize that we are a minority, but please don't forget F/F! Or M/M for that matter, which gets even less attention. The F/F presence online may be small, but we are still significant. (At least to ourselves! ;))

I would say e, i, and k.

e: Because a lot of blogs (I might say the majority) associate spankings with sex and heterosexual traditional gender roles generally don't support female dominance, there can be a twofold backlash against non-M/F blogs. One is the idea that by fate or divine right that a man spanks and a woman is spanked. This implies that a woman is not capable of spanking. Thankfully not on my blog, but I have heard comments from male spankers saying that it was "unnatural" for a woman to spank or they have treated it as playacting (like trolling her and saying she needed a spanking to "put her in her place"). Also, because most blogs associate spanking with sex, then F/F and M/M get confused with a different kind of sexuality.

i: Very thankfully, the above bigotry has not been part of my blogging experience. Things have changed quite a bit since I started out. But I will still get comments from really nice people who still talk about my "husband" spanking me or referring to D as "he" or "him. Or just not getting the dynamic because it falls outside of what is more familiar.

I do want to say that there has been, as joey mentions, incredible support. But I do think that sometimes people aren't quite sure what to do or how to respond to ttwd dynamics that fall out of M/F.

k: The assumption that all spanking pairs are cross-gender. I mean, if you look at your blogroll (still one of the most amazing things you do for the ttwd community), blogs that are NOT M/F are generally noted with a "F/F" or "F/M" after the title. (I sometimes have thought perhaps I should add an F/F at the end of mine.) But not one marked as "M/F". Why? Because it is understood as the norm.

With all of this said, I want to say that the online community has changed a heck of a lot since I ventured online. This kind of support for relationships that are not M/F did not exist 10-12 years ago. The ttwd blogging community pretty much didn't exist because blogging was still new. So...I think that as the blogging community expands and becomes more established, we will see more and more non-M/F voices joining the crowd and becoming more "normal". There is a lot more acceptance now than there used to be already. :)

Joan said...

I think men who enjoy being spanked are less likely to be in a 24/7 relationship including spanking. If fetlife is any indication, there seem to be more men that get their spanking "needs" met in a different sort of setting--parties, relationships that aren't live-in, professional dommes. That sort of thing. It means that the sessions aren't constant, the "dynamic" may not be continual, and it might include ethical privacy concerns. Just not as blog-friendly a scenario.

But... I'm just guessing.

Hermione said...

I suspect there are roughly equal numbers of F/m and M/f practitioners, but the former are more reticent about coming forward with the details. It's true that woman are more verbal, so that could be another reason there are fewer F/m blogs. Male reluctance to admit they enjoy submission is another reason. Blogging in general takes self-discipline and committment, and I believe that losing interest is equally possible for both sexes.

As far as the established blogging community is concerned, it is well represented by F/m blogs. I count many of them as my good friends, and frequently get an equal number of comments from male and female bloggers who are on the receiving end.

One observation I'd like to make is the recent rise in domestic discipline blogs that are formally linked to a popular and very specific DD methodology. Those blogs are usually by female submissives. F/m relationships have their own methodologies (Spencer, for example) but for the most part the F/m blogs are more independent of any formal adherence to a specific set of behaviours. They therefore tend to be on their own, and not part of a pre-established group.

A-Non said...

The questions are (1) are there an equal number of M/f and F/m spanking couples? (2) Is there equal desire among men and women to be spanked? (3) Is there equal desire among men and women to spank a partner? (4) Given that the answer to Q1-Q3 are Yes, are women or men more likely to blog about their experience? and (5) Given that the answer to Q1-Q3 are Yes, are tops or bottoms more likely to blog about their experience? Personally, I think there are many more M/f couples than F/m couples. Some men enjoy being spanked, but it seems that a much greater proportion of women enjoy a good bottom warming. I've heard one explanation being that women have very busy minds with lots of task-switching in our thinking, but during a spanking it is impossible to think of anything else. So spanking provides the chance to think about nothing (or, at least, nothing other than surviving the present threat). Also, I think there is something to the satisfaction that women get out of suppressing the "fight-or-flight" response that arrises when being spanked. This may connect to a feeling of satisfaction at controlling all of the emotions that come with a spanking -- and having a man help us to control that desire to fight or flee. Personally, I find F/m stories a bit creepy, because I find it unattractive to see a man losing control of his emotions and I have no desire to control a man's actions through spanking. (I have other means!!) On Q4 and Q5, I think women are more likely to blog and bottoms are more likely to blog, both of which, with what may be a greater proportion of M/f spanking couples, leads to more M/f blogs. I don't think that support or encouragement from other bloggers has much to do with it.

Anonymous said...

Bonnie, thanks for doing me the honor of posting the question. All the answers are very enlightening. I admit that the one that intrigues me the most is (c), i.e. if there are an equal number of women who would like to be the dominant and, if not, why not? When my wife and first started our DD journey, she was a very traditional, vanilla woman from a traditional Catholic family in which, where made the money, had the job, set the tone for the family and, whenever they argued, the result was either he won or they both sulked until someone gave in. The first several years of our marriage were like that in terms of the sulking part. If we argued, it was all passive-aggressive stuff that left us both unhappy. And, she had never once experienced a situation in which she could really be the one in control. While it was "weird" to both of trying this little experiment in switching the traditional gender roles, she now says she would not have it any other way. Ordering me to bend over and take a thrashing is just way too empowering for her to ever go back to a more traditional role.

Thank you to everyone for your input.

Anonymous said...

Not for any DD or dominance reasons, but I did once have a lady friend, who would take MF, but was also very happy to use FM. I don't know how it started; I think we might have read something somewhere about a couple who played spanking games, and we decided to try it too ! Very simple - each of us throws a dice, and the higher spanks the lower. The di is then thrown again to decide, the number of spanks, what with, bare or clothed, and the number of spanks.The spanker decides the position of the spankee, and if more than ten spanks, can elect to restrain them . I used to find it so exciting to find myself bound and bent over a stool or chair, whilst S deprived me of my trousers and pants, before raising a burning smart in my firm bottom, often with a light wooden paddle; she didn't spank too hard, as she knew it might well be her own curvy bottom, getting similar treatment after the next throw. Once both our bottoms were scarlet and smarting after numerous to throws, we were only too keen to soothe them with some thrilling sex D.

Kaelah said...

I believe there are several reasons why there are less F/M blogs than M/F blogs. First of all, I don't think that there are fewer men who want to be on the receiving end of a spanking than women.

But in my opinion, x/M is much less acceptable than x/F in most societies (especially in the more traditional ones like in some states of the US, where many blogs come from) and in our community as well. One reason for that is the belief in traditional gender roles which makes only women on the receiving end okay since they are supposedly the delicate ones who need guidance and a strong shoulder to cry on. Quite frankly, a view that totally freaks me out, but which I have come across several times in discussions. Some people simply state that M/F is the only "natural" and therefore legitimate constellation.

(continued below)

Kaelah said...

(continued)

A second aspect which, unfortunately, is also still common in our world and in our community is homophobia. When it comes to spanking, that also affects F/M because some men refuse to look at nude or bare bottomed men and therefore fight for the prohibition of x/M stuff on forums and the like. I was just recently involved in such a discussion. Luckily, as Ana already said, the community has become a bit more open-minded, and so the forum owner decided that everyone was welcome as long as x/M stuff, being in the minority, was labeled accordingly.

Another problem I have observed is that men who enjoy being spanked take the huge risk of being seen as unmanly. I discussed that topic, which is connected to the issue of traditional gender roles, in a recent post. I actually think that there are quite many people who feel uncomfortable with the thought of a man handing over control to a woman for a spanking, no matter how playful said spanking might be. The idea that a man might show stronger emotions during a spanking, let alone cry, seems to be even more disturbing for some people. In my opinion, there are many women among those who have these kinds of prejudices as well. Consequently, it seems that there is a considerable number of men who like to play on both ends, but don't tell anyone because some female bottoms (and maybe some male tops as well) wouldn't see them as "real" tops any more. Maybe we would have more mixed M/F and F/M blogs, too, if that weren't the case.

Yet another issue is that, in my experience, people often have only black and white views and don't distinguish properly between different ways of doing things. So, being a bottom equals being a sub, being submissive equals being weak, being into spanking equals having a DD or D/s relationship and wanting to get spanked equals the desire to cry and to let go of control. For someone like me, a switch who doesn't believe in traditional gender roles, who doesn't identify as a submissive (even though I often play as a bottom), who loves watching M/M spankings, who doesn't do any real-life punishments and who uses spankings for sexual pleasure, relaxation or empowerment, this makes feeling at home in our community already rather difficult at times. I think for male bottoms who are into non-DD spanking, our community must be even less inviting. There aren't many good F/M clips and pictures which could attract their attention (but tons of M/F stuff), most of the existing F/M blogs are about DD only (so, they have a bigger support group at least, which lovers of other forms of F/M spanking don't have) and men who admit that they enjoy being spanked take the risk of having to face the kind of prejudices which I pointed out above. So, why should male bottoms who are into non-DD spankings feel like they belong in our community and like it is worth to invest lots of time into writing an elaborate F/M blog?

Maybe another aspect is that men are generally less likely to write a blog about their private spanking exploits than women, anyway. But, what about female tops then? Maybe there are indeed slightly less female tops than male ones. But I think that F/M blogs written by female tops are also rarer because female tops also face the risk of having to deal with prejudices, especially if they and their fantasies aren't of the strict wife / mother / auntie or the mean mistress kind, which seem to be the most common and accepted roles for a female top in the spanking and the BDSM community.

Anonymous said...

i actually think there r more f/m situations tham m/f
as 4 many men the release of control and the experience of phisical consequences is a big part of the need for corporal punishment. i also think from your list big factors r: B,D,E,F,&H. Plus getting caught doing my own blog or even commenting here will & have brought "too sore to sit" results. living dangerously, ur bud, buttwed

Anonymous said...

Interesting topic.

I believe that women are more verbal, and willing to share their feelings and thoughts with others. They build a relationship with other M/F bloggers, and it becomes a self supporting arrangement. Men's blogs get far fewer comments. Male spanked bloggers may be more reluctant to share, as their appear to be far less f/m blogs than m/f, but I think there are far fewer f/m than m/f arrangements in our society..

Social upbringing makes it far easier for a woman to want or agree to be spanked, than a man, and far easier for a man to agree to spank a woman.

bottoms up
Red

Spankedhortic II said...

A variation on "C Fewer women than men are interested in topping" I hope that this statement is wrong and it is more the case that less women are prepared to admit that they are interested in topping than men, due to image problems. Either way a guy who finds himself without a regular Top has little chance of finding regular play and therefor has less to blog about from a personal point of view.

E "M/F spanking aligns more closely with traditional gender roles" Yes I think this has an influence. It certainly influenced me into calling myself a Switch, in my younger days. The male ego has a lot to answer for.

F "Male bloggers get distracted and lose interest" Sorry what was that point again?.

K :Some other cause we haven't considered" Probably many but there is one that is very prominent not only to X/m bloggers but also to male X/f bloggers. There are a few exceptions (Devlin O'Niell for example) but most male spanking and BDSM bloggers attract a lot less comments and interaction than their female counterparts. I cannot speak for all the male kink bloggers but although a lot of the time I shrug this off and do not let it bother me, there are times that it can be very discouraging and I can imagine a new male blogger noticing this could be put off continuing his blog.

Prefectdt

Loki_Darksong said...

Hello Folks! Loki here. Now regarding this week's question. Well here is what I feel are the combined answers.

*D)Men are more reluctant to reveal weakness or submission.*

Well yes and no with this one. You see its not a reluctance to show submission per say. Its a sad fact that many within the Spanking Community has associated submission in men as a weakness. Furthermore there is the misbelief that bottoming is submission, especially when it is a man who does it. All of which is far from the truth!

*E)M/F spanking aligns more closely with traditional gender roles.*

I have encountered this little tidbit myself in a debate on Fetlife last Summer. This is another belief that is being rigidly preached in the Spanking Community. M/F and F/F roles are what is supposedly the traditional roles for spankers as dictated by the media. F/M spanking seems out of the norm in that sense. And the men who bottom have found themselves the subject of ridicule.

*I)The established blogging community nurtures M/F blogs.*

This also is in concert with the enforced norms within the Spanking Community. That norm being that M/F spanking is on the top, with F/F spanking right next to it. F/M spanking is looked down upon and M/M spanking is practically banned. One can look at every major spanking event in this country and see this actually played out.

Now I am a straight male top with almost twenty-six years within the Scene as a whole. And I can say that this is wrong. How can a community that is outside the norm have the audacity to impose a norm? Why should it matter which gender is gets spanked? I have spanked and have been spanked by both women and men. And I for one do not see what the problem is.

Our Bottoms Burn said...

I think all of the reasons you list play a part in it.

I think there are as many males as females who enjoy a spanking, but they hide as they know most women will reject them.

Submission does NOT have to be a part of spanking.

There is a world of difference in what F/M conotes as opposed to F/m.

Want to get into even more confusing dynamics, try switches.

I can relate to Kaelah's and Loki's replies.

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