What makes a spanko?

Most likely, every stone of this subjects has been flipped over several times already, but I have after an insignificant search, lasting roughly five seconds, failed to find those threads, so I start a new one. I've been wondering, originally having been thinking that there is something we all have in common that provides us with our preference (apart from the obvious spanking kink of course), but I can't see it. To my surprise, we all seem to be as different as night and day. What some people write in the threads sets some other members off, while others don't react, or instead even see it as something positive. We seem to be exceptionally different when it comes to background, beliefs, religion, education, culture, music, entertainment and media preferences, view on sexuality, politics, how we interpret each other and the world, and that's just the start of it. So what is it that gives us our desire for spanking? What is it in the minds or backgrounds that gifts us with this peculiarity?

I believe, on philosophical grounds, that the spanking fetish must be due to one or more subconscious premises which we develop in early childhood. At least in the case of most spankos. Some might develop a subconscious premise later in life - that is possible in principle, but in my opinion unlikely.

On the grounds that there are no innate ideas I rule out the possibility that the spanking fetish might be hereditary. I do not believe there any such thing as a "spanking gene or genes".

And I believe that the spanking fetish is a psychological phenomenon. Not a physiological dito.

I think I am just wired this way as a kid when we played school I would be the principal or the naughty student. Spank or be spanked, I am still playing both sides of the knee but lean heavily to being the spankee.

I reckon I was hard-wired into spanking from birth - much the same way some people are born gay. Certainly I was fascinated by spanking from my earliest years: reading and re-reading any references to it in books (especially if it involved girls getting spanked) and watching enthralled spanking episodes that showed up on TV and in movies. And I used to play spanky school-games with my little female playmates - me as the headmaster, them as the naughty or lazy pupils.

Like most kids of that era, I did occasionally get spanked, and caned at school - but I don't think that fed into my spanko inclinations at all. I never found it a turn-on.

I think the gay analogy is a good one. I don't think many people, any more, would ask what makes someone gay. They just are.

I'm not sure you can point to any experience that makes someone a spanko. Some of us experienced cp at school, some didn't. Some of us were smacked as children, some weren't. Some had very strict families, some very liberal, and some in between.

That instantly reminded me of the famous old 70s two line graffiti:

"My mother made me a homosexual!"
"If I gave her the wool would she make me one?"

A psychologist I have been seeing tells me ttwd is a matter of sexual orientation. When I asked him if it was a matter that requires counseling, he said it does not matter how someone explores their sexuality as long as it involves consenting adults and does no permanent harm. Like other orientations, we come from a wide cross section of humanity. No matter how others may view us, there is nothing wrong about us.

So it could be either from birth, something that we just happen to be born with, or on the other hand something induced by some experiences during early childhood. I read long ago in some scientific report that I can't remember now, that there is a connection between having grown up with a strict and controlling mother and later in life developing a preference for S/M. I don't know. My mother was at most medium strict I'd say, but no one ever laid a hand on me. If so, could the British habit of sending the children away to strict boarding schools in the old times explain why spanking fetishes at least seem to be more common there than in Scandinavia? I mean, I can't imagine anyone here ever suggesting that any of our members of parliament are involved in S/M, while it seems to be a standard joke in Britain. I don't want to believe that my spanking fetish is a result of external influence. My experience is that I had thoughts about spanking way, way before I even knew what sex was and long before I understood that there could be any pleasure connected to it. On the other hand, if I hadn't come in contact with images, stories or videos in this matter, I don't know how developed my fascination had been, if it had just faded away, or if I had felt the same urge anyway.

Well it is called the English vice but there seem to be a lot of Americans (and a few Swedes) on here who share that vice.