Gender of spanking story characters, how important?

Bramblewine

Intersex people still have a definitive sex, which is determined exclusively by the presence of male or female gonads; the “intersex” part means their external genitalia confuse the matter, and external genitalia are of course what doctors go by when reporting the sex at birth, since they almost always line up with the gonads. But there have been cases where children were born apparently female but the organs that were assumed to be ovaries are found later in life to be undescended testicles. There’s been a case recently of a runner who was believed to be female, reported by the birth doctor as female based upon external genitalia, and raised as a girl, but who later was revealed to be male after some medical examinations.

But as I say, sex is entirely determined by the gametes produced by the person in question. Small gametes mean a male organism, large gametes mean a female organism. There are organisms which don’t use sexual reproduction and thus have no sex, there are those which have both male and female gonads producing male and female gametes, and are thus both male and female; many flowering plants fall into this category. There are even some animals that have sex and can change it - some species of frogs do this according to sex ratios in local populations, and I think there are some fish that are, I believe, male early in their adult life and female later in their adult life.

But always, sex is determined by the gametes produced, which are determined by the gonads. In humans, testes (even if un-descended) mean a male, ovaries mean a female. External genitalia don’t change that, and being intersex is a case where external genitalia are insufficiently clear. If someone can give me an example of a human who possessed both ovaries and testes, I’m all ears.

I enjoy reading stories with certain sorts of spankings, not others; gender is less important to me than scenario, characters I like, atmosphere, and all the other things that go with a good story. At the moment, I might struggle with a gender-fluid story (as a reader) not because I have any problems with gender-fluid people, but because reading, for me, should be a very effortless, direct process. Anything that trips me up and makes me realise that physically I'm reading, rather than simply "downloading someone else's thoughts" detracts, and destroys the illusion; and at the moment, the use of pronouns trips me up, because I'm conditioned with half a century of conventional pronoun-usage. One 'they' in the wrong place pops my bubble, and throws me out of the story-world back into the normal world.
I'd have the same problem writing; it has to be quick, for me; if I have to stop and think, the story gets laboured, clunky, dull and muddy. But also, I think I'd struggle to put myself in the head of a transgender or fluid-gendered character; I couldn't do them justice. I already feel guilty writing about women, and live in fear of a genuine possessor of two X chromosomes telling me that I'm a patronising man with no understanding, and that my female characters are unrealistic and rubbish.
I have the same worries as DianaMiller about writing M/m, and I'm grateful to Njrick for being so open-minded. Also I'm quite soft and gentle in my interactions between people; I like romance, friendship, closeness, and a sense of humour. I tend to shy away from anatomy. My feeling, rather from outside, is that M/M writing tends to be a bit harsher and pornographic than I feel I can write convincingly. As an author, you can write for yourself to some extent, but you also have to think about the readers. If the M/M community is tougher and wants more overt, rough stuff than I can write, and no one else wants it at all, then I'm doomed to be a rather unsuccessful writer of that genre!

Thanks to all who responded. I don't have room to address every comment directly, but I would like to acknowledge some that resonated:

Several of you said you find the content of a spanking story, whether it ticks the right buttons for you, more important than the characters' genders. For me, that's exactly it. As a female spankee, I initially gravitated to stories featuring female spankees, but I find that I don't like every female spankee story - some just aren't the kind of scenario, or aren't the kind of spanking, or aren't the kinds of characters, or whatever, that works for me - and I do like spanking stories with a male spankee (or a gender ambiguous spankee, as the case may be), if they check the right boxes for me.

The gender of the spanker, I care even less about, and I've come to realize that reflects my own preference. I'm open to being spanked by people of any gender. So, the spankers in my fantasies can be any gender, if I'm fantasizing myself being spanked, which is, more often than not, where my spanking stories start.

@opb I enjoyed your story! Thanks for the recommend.

I think what I like is the context, the story that’s happening regardless of the spanking, and the relationship between the main characters, so I don’t like stories with robots or machines. My main preference is F/F but I’ll read and write some M/F. I have occasionally ventured into F/M but I think those of mine have all been humorous. I’m very unlikely ever to write M/M, though would possibly very occasionally read it if there was a good story and it wasn’t too sexual for my prim maiden aunt eyes. I’m just not that keen on very male stuff in the same way that I rarely read vanilla books that are entirely about men. If a non binary story came up in the recently uploaded list I expect I’d read it.

@njrick
Sorry, we posted at almost the same time and I completely missed your post as a result.
Thank you. I'd hope every reader is like that. Looking at myself, when new stories are loaded, there are certain authors where I readily click the story because I know most of their content is within my comfort zone, so to speak, and with other authors I prefer to wait until the story is validated or I might look for some content clues in comments left by other readers before I decide whether I'll read it or not.
I'm probably a bit of a hit-or-miss type of author myself as I've shared M/F, F/F and F/M here, so readers don't quite know what it's going to be before the stories are validated.

@opb
I just read The Appointment. Interesting and well-written story. I can't say how it would have affected me if I had read it before reading this thread, though. The part where the characters say they 'don't know who they are' and 'people like us' might have confused me.
The story tag says F/M. I pictured the characters as two young men. I don't know what made the validator decide on F/M, but then I don't know what made it M/M for me, either. Could be the names, or the description of the clothing, or maybe some subconscious wishful thinking.
It was cleverly done, though, in the story. The genders were never revealed, and single characters were never referred to as 'they'.

@MarkHall
On the MMSA site, which is for M/M spanking fiction, the story content has as much variety as it has on LSF. Some of it is indeed harsh and pornographic, while other stories are soft and romantic. There can be sex involved, or not at all. Of course there are also the spanked by parent/strict headmaster/guardian type of stories.

@ Blarg

What you are saying about "sex" sounds right biologically, but the current thinking on "gender" is different and depends on how people "identify." It's something I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around, not because people can and do identify differently from their biological sex (I know that's true), but because of the multitude of variations that seem to pop up - with definitions/categorizations that seem to confuse more than the explain.

For the purposes of spanking fiction, clarification that a "man" in a story is really a "trans man" (and even specifically a non-surgically altered trans man) seems unnecessary unless a) the story deals with issues such an individual has to deal with (which in my mind, making them part of a spanking story trivializes them), or b) you have to get into genitalia (in which case I'm not interested). Just call him "he" and be done with it.

I realize that "non-binary" is somewhat different - with gender neutral, gender fluid and gender queer being ( at least some) variants, and neither "he" nor "she" works. My feelings on non-binary characters being featured in spanking stories may depend on the reasons. If it's a non-binary author exploring their (?) spanking interests, then I'm sympathetic, no matter what problems it causes for site management. If it's anything else - then my question to the author would be - why?

Thank you all so much for this delightful thread. It really made me think and consider my reactions.
I have little experience other than the traditional gender roles and this is what I feel most comfortable writing and reading about.
I do however agree with Mark Hall and given my background and traditions just get annoyed when I am asked to use a plural term to describe a single individual.
I do not wish to be offensive to anyone but just feel that no minority group has the right to take a term in the English language, change its meaning, and then attempt to insist that I use it in a way that suits them. I maintain the right to continue to use the traditional historical usage.
I do try and read stories as soon as they are posted, especially if they are from authors whose style and character development I have enjoyed reading in the past or new authors I am anxious to discover.
If however, I am looking at 'latest read' or 'pot luck' I will always read the validators report and gravitate to M/F or M/f. I respectfully suggest that this does not make me a misogynist, as I have nothing but admiration for the 'fair sex' and their achievements; it just happens to be what I enjoy.
I write mainly M/F myself with some F/f and on one occasion even M/M where the overall plot called for it as part of telling the tale. I have never written F/m or F/M and I don't think I ever will.
Anyway, fortunately, this wonderful community of which I am very privileged to be a part is many-faceted and there is plenty of variety to suit every taste. Thank you all so much for the huge enjoyment that LSF gives me each day and for how welcoming you have all been.

If you're talking about the kind of spanking story that internet spanking stories typically are - a short story focused mainly on the spanking scene(s) - then yes, you're right. There isn't much room for in depth personal identity issues in that, gender related or otherwise, and they couldn't really be fit in without trivializing them. But there could be in a spanking novel that also has some seriously in depth character development. Which I've never encountered before, but I kind of sort of have it in mind to write one.


And getting into genitalia usually doesn't fit in a spanking story either. Maybe in highly erotic ones, but the best erotic spanking stories keep that part toned down. I prefer the kind where the most explicit it gets is a mention of someone getting wet or hard, or simply describing the emotional impact of being aroused, over anything that goes into greater detail.


For me, it all started when a spanker character I wrote stubbornly refused to be a man or a woman. I tried writing the character both ways, and neither worked. Both seemed inauthentic. It finally dawned on me that this character was neither.

So, a non-binary character was born.

Later on, I wrote a story about a character with my screen name, Bramblewine (I'm planning to repost that one here). The character isn't real world me, but is kind of an alter ego. At first I didn't think about Bramblewine the character's gender at all, I just assumed, if an assumption had to be made, that she (?) was female, like me.

But then someone complimented me on the story and referred to the character as "she," and my brain rebelled. I realized that I was not thinking of that character as a she after all. Nor as a he. More likely non-binary.

In reality, I don't identify as non-binary at all. I'm cis female and not at all questioning. But in my fiction, non-binary characters turn up.

Does that mean I have a non-binary alter ego in my spanko identity? Maybe. I've heard of spankos who like to roleplay the opposite gender of their own when they participate in a spanking scene. It never would have occurred to me to do that, but maybe this writing non-binary characters is my version of spanko gender bending.

To step outside of myself, I imagine that readers don't care about genders when it comes to spankings as discipline. Likewise regarding age. If spankings are more discipline based, then what sex or age matters little because it's primarily about a subject getting what is due them is what fuels the reader's rocket.

Getting back in myself, while I don't mind pratfall spankings, which is in a sense, someone getting what is due them, I'm not a devotee to disciplinary spankings as such. I'll contradict myself in a moment. Spankings are erotic for me, and as such I'm most interested in M/F spankings alone. I'm only barely interested in F/F slightly more than M/M, and M/f and F/m fall behind that with F/f and M/m being tbe absolute least interesting to me.

Now to contradict myself. First, being into erotic spankings doesn't necessarily mean I dig pitty-pat-parties. I can't tell you how many times I've read a story that you can tell the writer has limp-wristed the spanking for the female. This is why I generally don't like reading stories by writers who write F/M. I imagine the gist why they do this is "women are the frail sex and therefore men shouldn't take advantage of women's physical nature (or the lack thereof) by giving them a damn good spanking.
A belief that outside of spankings I 100% support. Maybe one day I'll explain how I recently narrowly avoided going to jail for standing up for a woman who was being molested, and got strangled for my efforts.

Second, I actually DO read the occasional F/F story because a woman spanking another woman doesn't usually brook any of that pitty-pat-party nonsense. However, since my dangly-bits do reside outside and thus dangle, I don't relate to non-dangly-bits sex, and thus erotic F/F spankings run against my currents. Some guys get charged by F/F sex, I don't because I realized that either such pairings have little to no interest in people with dangly bits and thus have no interest in them. It's really as simple as that.
A somewhat gray area for me is the F/f where the spankee is a pre-adult. As long as sex isn't hinted at or explored, they don't make me squick too much. M/f tends to suggest sexuality regardless so I'm less inclined to that grayed area for that pairing.

While I recognize people think and do otherwise to my ways, and have no problem with that aspect, wont deter me from what I like and enjoy.

As a writer, I totally understand the need to explore other avenues of interests and challenging what is "acceptable" and support thinking outside the box. As a reader, I am less sympathetic.

Ummmm, well from my personal perspective what you "imagine" is totally incorrect, however I don't presume to speak for any other writers of F/M spanking fiction.

In my F/M writing, I can't imagine many (if indeed any) butt-blistered male characters who would look down upon the females who inflame their bare behinds as being "the frail sex," not even once they've stopped bawling and blubbering long enough to express an opinion on the subject.

So why can't a capable, strong-willed female character demonstrate her determination and dominance by administering that "damned good spanking," as opposed to undergoing it herself? (Not that I have any problem with a feminine character getting her sweet bare derriere thoroughly tanned, sometimes even along with a masculine one receiving the same treatment, although in my fiction it's usually courtesy of a highly effective female spanker.)

My spanking stories are primarily F/M because that's the top/bottom gender dynamic which I find the most compelling, not because I consider my female characters as being too wimpy to handle being spanked soundly--including by males, since I have written a small handful of M/F accounts. The ones involving only adults almost always involve a degree of consent by both spanker(s) and spankee(s), with one ironic exception that I recall, so "women's physical nature (or the lack thereof)" isn't really an issue.

Even in fantasy, I don't support the nonconsensual spanking of adults (except possibly in a playful, humorous situation) although in many cases the consent involved is granted somewhat grudgingly. However, my feminine disciplinarians are to be respected as quite competent and confident, as they have no trouble demonstrating atop the exposed posteriors of their punishment recipients... --C.K.