Nature or Nurture?

I've often wondered how many of my often-spanked cohort of childhood friends went on to become spankos. The (necessarily) clandestine nature of our activity makes it very difficult to form dependable impressions.

At some point, in most of our lives - spanked and unspanked spankos alike - the topic has popped up in some teenage or young-adult discussion, and our pulses have pounded. I'll never forget one of those in which a very bright, very close friend said she'd only been spanked one time and her mother had broken a yardstick over her butt. She clearly thought that was impressive, but a third friend scoffed at her tale (tail?), saying her own father, a retired Marine Officer, regularly and routinely used a fraternity paddle. My sense was that the yardstick girl might share our tendencies, but the paddle girl had already enjoyed enough spanking to last a lifetime. I wanted to know, but couldn't risk probing though for fear of exposing my own rabid interest.

Since CP is not unknown in the animal world, spankoism could possibly be a hardwired mammalian thing. So we can't automatically reject the "nature" theory.

If the proper answer is "nurture" then we will have our answer within a generation or two because society is risking the grand experiment of stamping out CP in everyday life. Will spankoism die out also? ...or will it blossom because of its new forbidden status?. Time will surely tell.

Guy

As usual, Guy, you make a very insightful point. I too wonder about conversion rates of younger people to spankism in today's environment. I've been quite surprised in my time at the library at how many of the folks I've met are from my own age cohort (fourth and fifth decades). Perhaps our peculiar interest is heading toward extinction?

This is an interesting discussion I have had a number of times without getting an inch closer to a solution, but perhaps I may shed some light on the question raised by Guy and Bill. In the Scandinavian countries, spanking of children has been illegal for 25 to 30 years (in schools, it has been banned for 80-90 years). Of course, some children are still spanked, but my guess is that the percentage is quite low, well below 5%. Spanking is not a topic for discussion, and it has almost disappeared from public culture. However, children still seem to be aware of the concept, and you can occasionally see spanking games among very young children. I am also amazed by the number of young, never-been-spanked people I run into on sites like this. I am not ready to draw a conclusion, but I think there are strong indications that erotic interest in spanking is not a purely cultural phenomenon based on the existence childhood punishment, but a more intrinsic human phenomenon.

I think that an interest in spanking is both nature and nurture, physical and psychological.

On the physical side nerves in the buttocks also are connected to the genitals. When they are stimulated the genitals are stimulated to some degree also. Of course that stimulation is often masked by the pain at the time but later on the genital feelings may still be there and a person may, sooner or later, learn to connect the two.

On the psychological side many people have erotic feelings based on dominant/submission themes. Spanking is one of the expressions of those feelings.

Exposure to those themes will generate an increased interest in them. For example , although spankos have always existed spanking in the past was mainly associated with punishment. Nowadays with all the porn sites normalizing behavior that was formerly underground many more people, particularly women, now consider spanking to be a form of foreplay although still kinky.

There does not seem to be much of a connection between whether a person was spanked as a child or not and whether they have an adult interest in spanking. Possibly that may be because most children, with some exceptions, don't have strong sexual feelings until they reach puberty. Most spankos don't began to think of spanking as being sexy until they began to have sexual feelings, usually as preteens or early teens.

I can think of one notable exception however. One female that I know personally told me that she had no interest in spanking until one day, when she was in her thirties, she was walking along with her then boyfriend and he gave her a sharp slap to her bottom. Instantly she thought, "I liked that!"

As a result of that incident she began researching spanking and became a full fledged spanko. And this was in the days before the internet when spankos had to share their mutual interest through ads in magazines and through letters, a much more laborious process than today.

At that time, being already in her thirties, she thought that she would probably never get married but because of her new found interest a few years later she married a fellow spanko. Certainly a happy ending. (pun intended)

I was never spanked by my parents but corporal punishment was very much part of everyday life in British schools during the 50's - 60's when I attended a school in South London. I had my fare share of spankings/canings but didn't enjoy the experience. Maybe it was because it was administered by male teachers or because I considered it punishment. I can't believe that it had anything to do with developing my interest in spanking which I know I've had from a very early age.

I wouldn't worry. I've conversed with quite a number of younger people (in their twenties) who were never spanked as kids, but yet are already die-hard spankos (getting more action than I ever have).

And the younger generation seems much more open about it as well, in no small part because they've grown up in the internet era exclusively.

...which is undoubtedly why they see more 'action' then those of an earlier generation.