Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (44 page)

For spanking purists who are specifically interested in and aroused by the spanking itself, the spanking scenario is an elaborate, ritualized erotic art. For D&Sers a spanking is more likely to be one of innumerable activities which enhance the power dynamic. For most D&Sers the power dynamic often predates and supersedes the act of spanking; whereas, for the pure spanker, the act of spanking defines the power dynamic.

The interests that spankers describe range over a spectrum of individual preferences. Several factors, however, seem common: authority, erotic coercion and humiliation, and ageplay.

For the duration of the spanking experience, spankers enjoy the feeling that an authoritarian figure has assumed total control. The authority may be benevolent (for example, a parental figure who lovingly corrects behavior); or it may be capricious or possibly cruel (for example, an employer who takes unfair advantage of his or her authority). The credibility of the authority is a
matter
of extreme importance.

One means of engendering credibility is by gently exceeding the submissive’s
pain expectations. Spanking submissives seek out partners who, while compassionate, are capable of being strict and even slightly intimidating during play.

In spanking, as in sex, attitude and creativity are vastly more important than physical attributes. The ability of the dominant to convey genuine authority is usually far more important than how the dominant looks. Male submissives may prefer older, matronly women, but just as many are titillated by being disciplined by a slender, youthful woman reminiscent of a baby-sitter. Women generally show a preference for fatherly figures.

Successful spanking dominants pride themselves on their ability to intuit what the submissive needs. This adds to the plausibility of the surrender scenario.

Although some spanking devotees do not perceive any of the activities associated with spanking to be humiliating but perceive encounters as purely playful, erotic coercion and humiliation are typical aspects of a spanking. Recipients often fantasize that they are compelled to accept the discipline, and one of the dominant’s tasks is subtly to persuade the submissive that he or she cannot resist the inevitable. One means of persuasion entails subjecting the submissive to erotic embarrassment.
In all cases
a crucial distinction is made between erotic humiliation—which enhances mutual pleasure or believability—and uncaring or insulting attacks.

Submissives may feel pleasurably humiliated when their garments are pulled down and gathered around their ankles to expose their buttocks and genitals. Others are embarrassed when spanked over their underpants. Panties may be worn by men as well as women: Some nontransvestite heterosexual men wish to wear ladies’ undergarments during a spanking to increase their humiliation. This interest in lingerie is usually confined to its use in a spanking encounter.

Rituals are common in spanking. Some individuals will always select a paddle that is associated with a particular kind of infraction; the very presence of the implement is symbolic. Additionally, each element of the scenario may have important psychological and ritualistic meaning to the partners. For some spanking enthusiasts, in fact, nothing less than a closely scripted, rigidly specific scenario will do. They discuss every detail before the spanking commences and leave little or no room for improvisation.

Rituals may dictate how the spanking is administered, particularly in punishment fantasies. The dominant may, for example, assign a predetermined number of blows as the penalty for a particular infraction and may require the submissive to count the number of spanks aloud. Thus, a boisterous riposte may translate into 25 spanks, a refusal to say, “Yes, ma’am” may translate into 50 spanks, and so on.

“Corner time” is another favorite ritual. The submissive partner is made to stand in a corner with his or her reddened buttocks exposed. The exposure is sensual (cool air on tingling, warm cheeks), embarrassing (an act which children may suffer), and exhibitionistic. This combination can be irresistibly exciting for a spanking fan.

Although there are differences between male and female spankers, in body as well as in attitudes, they share an interest in ageplay. While acting and being treated as childish is often considered to be shameful in our society, where maturity is respected and children are not, most spanking practitioners find childishness erotic in a spanking context. Spankers who wish to be spanked and then put into diapers or baby clothes are not uncommon. More common still is juvenilist roleplaying, which may include scoldings and age-appropriate clothes such as short, frilly frocks and underwear, and flat-heeled,
patent leather shoes. Also popular are adolescent fantasies where the submissive is treated as an unruly teenager or a sassy young college student who cannot maintain good grades. Some, of course, do not wish to be seen as any other age but their own.

Interviewees believe that the ability to reexperience one’s childhood persona in the safe context of a consensual spanking is deeply relaxing. It relieves the tensions of adult life and puts the individual in touch with the inner child. As was discussed in
Chapter 6
, many people who relish ageplay—and particularly submissives—were required by parents or caregivers to behave maturely at an early age. The submissive may crave both the access to childish
emotions
and the resolution of inner conflicts through concerned discipline. The spanking feels like an act of love, which creates a tender bond between the disciplinarian and the disciplined.

A spanking scene often begins with verbal domination, usually a scolding for misbehavior, imaginary or real. Many submissives playfully bait the dominant by inventing impish transgressions. Dominants usually seek to gain the upper hand psychologically before applying the palm, although the submissive often remains frisky, at least until he or she begins to reach a pain limit.

Spankers desire a happy ending: emotional resolution. The person spanked feels that he or she has been taught a valuable lesson and is somehow improved. The authority feels satisfied at having corrected the submissive’s behavior and by the sheer physical control of a willing partner. Couples often complete the scenario with cuddles and kisses.

Debate over the best spanking technique is endless. The conventional wisdom is that the dominant who begins slowly will be able to prepare the submissive for a longer and more erotically intense spanking. Sexual excitement permits the submissive to enjoy greater levels of pain.

Most spankers intersperse blows with caresses and rubbing of the buttocks. Some submissives will consent only to light, erotic spankings. Still, many devotees seek significant pain and lasting marks to make the punishment aspect more realistic.

Spankers also may be masochistic and wish to endure harsh physical punishment, including severe canings that leave significant bruises on the buttocks. For them, it is often a challenge and an accomplishment to accept as much discipline as the dominant can impose. In some cases such submissives feel that their willingness to bear the pain is both proof of their devotion to the dominant and proof of the dominant’s authority.

Enthusiasts invest considerable time, energy, and money in stockpiling spanking implements, from the sophisticated exotica available at adult toy stores to more mundane equipment purchased at sporting-goods outlets and tack shops. One of our interviewees boasted of owning well over 50 different paddles, straps, and canes.

Making one’s own equipment is uncomplicated, and many people do just that. But equipment is easy to find: Virtually every tourist shop in the country has a small stock of paddles among its novelty items. One must wonder how many of those kitschy paddles, brightly decorated with puckish sayings and crude drawings of blushing schoolchildren, are eventually swatted across some feisty spouse’s buttocks, even if only in jest.

While some enthusiasts never go further than hand spankings, others are baroque in their tastes. Perhaps the most popular implements are paddles, particularly when they resemble those used for corporal discipline in schools. Some paddles have holes drilled in them so that air passes through, decreasing resistance and increasing the velocity of the blow. A paddle may leave bruises,
depending on the force with which it is applied, the number of the blows, and the sensitivity of the recipient. Old-fashioned wooden hairbrushes (whose backs are used for spanking and whose bristles may be scraped across the tender skin for additional sensation), straps and belts, and canes are all well liked. The cane is a favorite tool for “naughty schoolboy or schoolgirl” scenarios. Used with force, it gives serious pain and leaves distinctive stripes, or welts.

While some spankers have a fetishistic interest in specific implements, many like the impromptu informality of using the nearest thing at hand. Dominants delight in experimenting with common household items. Virtually any object with a flat surface (the sole of a shoe, a wooden cooking spoon, a Ping-Pong paddle, and even books and magazines) can be used. Some spanking submissives are excited when a common item is used uncommonly, since the dominant’s ability to transform a mundane item into a punishment tool further asserts his or her dominance and confirms the recipient’s helplessness. Over time such objects may assume their own erotic importance: The memory of having been spanked with a copy of
War and Peace
may make the text memorable for a volume of reasons.

Proper garb plays an important role in a spanking scenario. Purists almost universally dislike fetish clothing and express distaste for the “whips-and-chains” sartorial flamboyance of sadomasochists. Although some spanking enthusiasts (especially those whose interests overlap with other areas of D&S) may find exotic lingerie tantalizing, sober, businesslike garb or a collegiate, preppie look is almost always preferred.

Once a spanking begins, options vary as to how much of the submissive’s clothing remains in place. While some individuals find it exciting to be slowly undressed until they are completely naked, others wish to keep their panties in place and others consent to having only their buttocks revealed. The dominant almost always remains fully clothed throughout the experience,
although a submissive may ask a dominant woman to raise her skirt above the knees so that he or she may rub against the dominant’s garters or hosiery. But even when the dominant is professional, the client often specifies that there be little or no direct sexual contact. The exceptions occur when spanking is used as foreplay to lovemaking, in which case anything goes.