What makes a spanko?

I think the 'English Vice' saying comes from the pre60s when dominatrix were only associated with Old Etonians and Tory backbenchers. These days spanking appears to be more of a middle class fantasy and is global.

I also tend to believe that most spankos are born with that inclination, but the way it manifests itself depends on your upbringing.

Having a spare month recently, I did some research. Using Library stats and a world population website, I calculated the LSF membership rates for different countries. The results (to the nearest hundred) bear out the legitimacy of the English claim to (some kind of) ownership of this our 'vice':

Leadership Board:

England 1 in every 18,100 (i.e. chances are 4 of us are at Old Trafford for home games)
Scotland 18,600
Wales 22,400
Ireland 30,700
USA 31,900

(UK as a whole = 1 in every 19,100)

The top non-English-speaking countries are:

Iceland 1 in every 42,700
Denmark 47,900
Sweden 54,000
Norway 54,200
Netherlands 92,100

(This may say more about these populations' language skills than their spankomania.)

The UK Office of National Statistics estimates the Gay and Lesbian population of the UK to be between 2% and 4%.

As Sadomasochism in its broadest sense is as much a longstanding and traditional erotic preference as homosexuality, I would not be surprised if that also constitutes between 2% and 4% of the population.

Therefore the numbers interested in pure spanking, excluding the S&M and B&D enthusiasts, could be as high as 2% to 3%. Even a higher figure than that would not surprise me based on what I have observed over the years.

There is a high probability that any bloke who says he prefers female bottoms to boobs is highly likely to be a spanko.

One study (done at the peak of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' popularity) showed that the majority of women had at least fantasised about getting a spanking - so maybe it's people who don't have an interest in spanking that are the strange ones...!

myrkassi

I agree with that myrkassi. I would hazard the majority of women in the First World have been spanked at least once as part of foreplay at some stage in their adult lives. Though I think the number of those woman who actually desire to get spanked regularly either as foreplay or as DD drops considerably from the total.

From my own experience of a lifetime of enthusiastic M/F spanking, I'd venture a highly subjective estimate:

Some 10% of women positively enjoy being spanked;
A further 20% are willing to try it, at least out of curiosity, and may then come to enjoy it;
A further 20% will agree to it, mainly to gratify their partners;
The remaining 50% have no interest in it, ranging from indifference to outright hostility at the very idea.

So maybe we don't need to have anything in common that would explain why we enjoy spanking? Maybe there isn't something special that unites us? Enjoying spanking might be something even more common than being gay/lesbian and a preference that's completely independent of where we happen have been born and gotten our cultural/social moulding? Just like being left-handed. It's just something that you happen to have a preference for and an exposure to it later in life can encourage or discurage a development of it?

The definitive statistic from long ago (not sure of the source, but it was credible). Roughly 10% to 15% of people have some interest in spanking, from mild curiosity to full-out spanko. Compare that to golf, where only about 4% of people play.

This site seems to have more men than women commenting but whether that means more men than women are interested in spanking or just that they're more interested in reading about it, I don't know.

On many web sites, users use alternate genders as a means to avoid unwanted attention - or as a means to get attention. No way to really determine quantities vs actual gender.