RIP SpankingArt Wiki

This blog is, quite intentionally, a mostly positive place. There are lots of sites where negative energy can be collected by those so inclined. I try not to dwell there. However, today I must ask your patience as I share a small rant.

I learned last week that our community wiki had been deleted without notice by its host. The SpankingArt wiki is gone.

My role in this project was small, but I invested many hours. I helped to maintain the list of spanking blogs. If you never saw this list, it contained links to four or five hundred spanking blogs. Among them were lots of dormant blogs that still contain excellent content. I wish I had saved a copy, but I simply didn't foresee this circumstance.

The wiki was apparently deleted because the host decided that the content was too controversial and might offend its advertisers. In short, it was censored.

I can't claim to have read the entire wiki, but what I saw was fairly tame. I wouldn't recommend it for children, but were we to apply that standard, half of the content on the web would be have to be deleted as well.

I feel gullible. Like Wikipedia, this was, I thought, a noble effort. It was many small people contributing to a greater whole. I envisioned a virtual community formed around a common interest and a desire to share knowledge. What did I know? It was really about generating advertising revenue for the hosting company. Perhaps I'll be a bit more cynical next time.

I feel violated. A faceless corporation passed judgment on our lifestyle and found it to be a topic so unacceptable as to be unfit for anyone to read.

I feel intimidated. Dare I ponder... How far can this go? Might all my posts and all your comments suffer a similar fate one day? What about our friends on Wordpress or LiveJournal or MySpace or FaceBook? Are we one bureaucratic whim from oblivion?

Technology brought us together. Will corporate greed and political correctness tear us apart?

I sure hope not.

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Update: The SpankingArt wiki appears to have been resurrected here. Perhaps this story has a happy ending after all.

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A Tuesday Night Rant

When I began MBS, I vowed that this blog would be a positive place and not a soapbox for whining and complaining. For the most part, I’ve kept that promise. Today, however, is the day I drive off into the weeds. What follows is a bit of a rant. If you’d rather skip all that, well, I suppose I can’t blame you. There’s plenty of good stuff to read elsewhere on the blog.

One of the parts of being a blogger I most enjoy is discovering new spanko bloggers and introducing them to the larger community. There are many great blogs that need and deserve our support and I’m delighted to be able to help them get started.

In my quest to sniff out interesting new blogs, I occasionally come across one whose approach and sensibilities are so different from my own that I choose not to recommend it. That’s fine. I don’t expect that everyone’s kink will be exactly like mine. They have every right to live their lives and promote their lifestyles in any way they choose. I make no judgments beyond, “I don’t think that’s for me.”

A couple of weeks ago, I encountered a web site that really upset me (if you’re reading this and you think I’m talking about you, I’m not, OK?). The premise was that women, all women, are fundamentally inferior and require a man to guide them through life. This guidance, we are told, should take the form of severe physical punishments. Without the active and ongoing intervention of a smarter, more aware male leader, these poor hormonally-afflicted women would undoubtedly find ruin and probably drag most of civilization down with them.

This site offended me at several levels. First, these assumptions are not true and not fair. While I’m sure you can point to individual women who shirk their responsibilities, lots of men are just as guilty. Yet, there’s no talk of punishing them. On the flip side, millions of women carry heavy burdens in life and distinguish themselves by overcoming obstacles and supporting their families. If that’s inferiority, we’re going to have to redefine the word.

In my view, men and women are not identical (hallelujah for that), but our complementary differences make us equivalent. Each gender has skills, insights, and qualities that are of benefit to the other. We are each stronger when we strive together.

Secondly, I see precious little discussion of consent. When one partner feels entitled to strike the other, especially when she is made to feel inferior and deserving of violence, we’ve crossed the line into abuse. This, for me, is the ultimate squick.

Finally, this sort of presentation reflects poorly upon all decent, caring people who happen to enjoy a little kink. An outsider reading this particular site might well assume it speaks for all of us. That is clearly not the case.

My concept of submission requires that I stand on the same level as my husband. This allows me the freedom and the control necessary to submit voluntarily. If I felt that I was below him to begin, lowering myself further would have no real significance. Free choice and the power to exercise it make all the difference. Nothing is taken from me. I yield my control willingly and therein lies the very core of my desire.

I acknowledge that other people make different choices, and I absolutely respect those choices so long as they are informed and in no way coerced. I also acknowledge that people should be free to speak as their hearts direct them. Yet, at the same time, I feel an obligation to raise my own voice when issues such as safety and consent arise.

Let me say to you, dear reader, as simply and as plainly as I can: We women are not helpless, hopeless, nor clueless. Please look around you and see the obvious truth of my words. We deserve far better than abuse, humiliation, and mistreatment. We may be smaller, but we are not less. We can and do survive on our own when life demands it. We partner with men, not because we must, but because we want to do so. In that free choice rests the wonderful transforming power of love.

I'm female by birth, but submissive by choice.