What makes a spanko?

Simone Weil, now there's a philosopher I like, also liked to be spanked.

This has always been an interesting question.most of us believe there is a spanking gene and we are hard wired for it. For many spankos will say that they started at a very young age. I have no memory of a trauma that supposedly made me a spanko,but I seem to have known more about it than I should. I was a electronic babysitter kid in other words watching tv and there were many shows and movies that did have spankings as I i may have developed my interest that way. As far as I know I am the lone spanko in my family,but I do remember as soon as I could I would look for comics that had spanking or watching for shows that had spanking and it always thrilled me when I overheard words like spanking that would excite me. I cannot explain why I am a spanko,but I am. Have a great day.
Jim

I subscribe to the concept of no "spanking gene" (but I definitely believe in spanking jeans heh heh). However, I believe there is an "extremist" gene, and depending how a child is raised or gain through various input, becomes some variant because of that extreme gene. Insert whatever you will. gay, masochist, sadist, foot fetishist, oral sex fetishist. etc etc
In other words, if we had different input at a formative year, we might have much different fetishes today.

Purportedly, all children's personalities are developed by age 2. Maturity is another matter, altogether.

One thing about being a active spanko is our degree of interest . I am mild myself where my interest is in only certain types of spanking and that includes sounds,marks,costumes etc. We are all bundled under the extreme as well as the mild. So while our interests vary in an individual level we are all grouped as having a spanking interests and even at that I do cringe at being linked with the most extreme of our ilk.I found the science to be all right,but my guess is science can prove whatever it wants too with funding,wording of even test subjects. I remember a show done and they proved it was a myth,but the final question was it is plausable that it happened as we have no access to the actual people or for that matter what the doctor may have ordered at the time and we can't prove otherwise as all myths are based on something that did happen and either got accepted as fact by reliable sources of it was a story that may have been written as fiction as then taken as fact. I do recall that line of you tell a lie long enough soon everyone will believe it is fact and back it up. Thanks for all the great replies. Have a great day.
Jim

I agree with all of those who have written here that it is extremely difficult to determine actual numbers of spanking adherents. It was suggested that the large number of women who were enthusiastic and read all of the Fifty Shades of Grey novels means that there are many female spankos or at least, women who are interested in the topic. The popularity of those books--which most of us who love good spanking lit tend to regard as crude and simplistic--shows, I suggest, that the interest at least is out there. I was fascinated by it at an early age, well before my parents spanked me and my siblings. I even recall an article in what was once the most popular magazine in the U.S., Reader's Digest, that treated spanking humorously. I now suspect that treating it humorously meant that it was widely accepted then among middle-class people. I soon gravitated toward non-humorous spanking lit, so whether that article kindled a hitherto hidden or suppressed interest or created it remains an open question for me.

Glagla
Going back to initial question, I like many of the other folks who have responded, cannot trace back the origination of my kink but it seems to have pretty much better there all along. My earliest memories were very silly children's thoughts which aroused me before I knew what that was and many years before I had any knowledge of the birds and bees. Jillian Keenan is a saint in my book, and I envy her ability to be "out" and for being a champion of Spankos. I grew up in a family that believed in spanking, but I have no memories of actually being spanked myself. I truly was a "good kid" and my parents were literally pretty hands off. My school used CP, but I never witnessed it. I like many others looked up spanking in the dictionary and wore out old VHS copies rewinding to parts having anything to do with spanking, i.e. scene in Sound of Music, John Wayne spanking Maureen O'hara, etc. etc.

I have no sexual trauma in my past and was basically just baffled, and like so many others assumed I was alone or nearly alone, and it never occurred to me to look for a mate who shared the interest. My interest is very strong I'd say.

MOST INTERESTING probably to readers, in recent years I discovered that a sibling of mine shares the kink and he/she told me he/she believes one of our parents does as well. I doubted this, but he/she claims she found something by accident showing that he/she must. Regardless, when we siblings shared this info it was extremely fascinating and ever since I've considered it more likely that there is a genetic component. Of course we were raised in the same community by the same parents, so maybe there's some shared experiences that pushed us that way. but my sibling is much older than me and his/her personality is very very different than me. Truly this is one of only major things we have in common, and the thought that our parent shares the kink, well to me that tended to change my mind a bit on the subject.

As far as shared experiences are concerned the only thing that strikes out as possibly being relevant is that we were raised extremely religious and we were piled on guilt about pre-marital sex and lust from an early age. And my sibling and I both apparently experienced a same sort of thing during puberty where we felt guilty lusting after the opposite gender but since we did not know that spanking had really anything to do with sex we didn't feel guilty thinking about spanking.... constantly. So anyway who knows!. I mostly don't focus on this question now as an adult and instead just try to think of my kink as something interesting about me that I find a lot of enjoyment in.

Oh and answering someone's question from prior comments, I am mildly active in real life re my kink, but only with my spouse, who is not actually into spanking. My spouse plays along, but only enjoys the mild side of thing and I don't think she really understands. But still I take what I can get and try to reciprocate for my spouse in other ways. If I were single I expect I'd be more open about this and who, like me would want spanking to be a more central part of our sex life, etc. Anyway sorry to go on. Really I shared just because I doubt many people have had the fortune of learning something like this from a sibling/parent.

Oh and besides the dictionary thing, my school gave out these folders every year that had all the school policies and procedures including the rules regarding CP and when and how it could be used. In school I took one of those folders every day to school and I read that paragraph must have been 10,000. Haha, I wonder if i still have one of those lying around somewhere.

Yes, I don't know if to call it genetic or what, but I do feel that the interest in spanking for many people even though not all, comes with the shape of our mind. Having grown up in Sweden, spanking and CP were non-existent and not mentioned. I didn't know it existed when I was very young. There was one national TV-channel and two national radio stations and nothing else and they made certain that nothing "improper" came through. As many others, I was certain that I was alone in the world with my kink once I had begun to realize that I had it. I had no previous experience, but when I saw a play spanking in some old movie for the first time, it was like electricity going through me. No one else seemed to react or they just seemed to think that the scene was stupid. I think it must mean that this preference comes with the way we are, just as you are born gay, or immediatelly love soccer from the first moment you touch the ball, and so on. We just are the way we are.

People don't know what shapes the mind of children.

A gay male might become that because his mother was more distant when he was a baby, (tending to him but she's strung out from tending to him constantly, so her efforts are more mechanical in efforts) while his dad was more nurturing (not so strung out because he's at work all day, and is more fresh and expressive. He develops a closer bond to (simply) a male, at a formative age, and... Maybe, since young men are more prone to labor for work, so the father's pheromones (sweat) is more noticeable to the male baby. Baby's don't "remember" big construct ideas. It's more simplistic. Love is expressed as liking who cuddles him/her most often when they are scared, feeds them quickest when they are hungry on demand.

My point is, sometimes it's the little things that make the largest impression.

Parents have a tendency to give reassuring light pats to the bottom of a baby... Is that which causes a spanko "gene" to develop? The baby thinks (simplistically) pats to the bottom means love... It's a fact that we have more nerve endings around our backsides, than anywhere else in the body. The baby experience love, and caring and associate pats to the bottom as expressions of love. The action is "remembered" in their primitive mind until they see a movie or read a passage and it clicks resulting in a eureka moment.
Now what makes a spanko a top, bottom, or switch is another matter entirely.

Just "throwing it up on a wall to see what sticks," so to speak.

Lonewulf

I think that you are on the right track, Lonewulf. There simply cannot be any "spanking gene" (in other words the spanking fetish cannot be due to our genes) because we know on philosophical grounds that there are no innate ideas, only innate reflexes. (So our sexual arousal in itself is completely physical and is geneticly programmed, but *what* we get aroused by involves perception and therefore cannot be determined until we perceive things, which is *after birth*. In other words - *what* we perceive as "sexy" involves ideas, which develop *after* birth.) We are never born with *any* ideas.