Lose of the traditional punishment story

myrkassi



That's also my take on it.

Unless you're even older than I am, and corporal punishment in schools is part of your personal experience, all non-consensual ("traditional") spanking stories exist somewhere in either the historical or fantasy genres - fantasy not in the narrow sense of elves and pixies, but in the sense of taking place in a world which is at least a little different to our own.

I, too, find that they're difficult to write believably. Particularly given that my own personal choice is to confine myself to scenarios where the spanking is, strictly speaking, consensual, but nevertheless not enjoyed.

Everyone tests everyone in all sorts of ways to determine all sorts of things, not the least of which is suitability as a partner in a potential household. What you describe here, however, sounds more like the antics of a curious bottom (of either gender) testing the patience of their respective Tops (again of either gender).

This is not to say that people (again of all genders) don't test others to see how far they can push, but the motive for it could be as simple as finding out what one can expect to get away with......something that all people do from the time they're 2, and not necessarily suitability as a father/husband.

I think BashfulBob was spot one in labeling what he was describing as 'misogynistic' since it used to be incorrectly assumed that any power dynamic between a couple was decreed by 'God & Nature' to be male dominated. The fact that there are at least 6 currently functioning matriarchal societies across the globe proves that societal gender dominance is sociological/cultural, and not inherent. (And besides, there is no god. LOL)

Absolutely, because the practice of CP for chldren or adults is almost universally seen now as not only 'cruel and inhumane' treatment but also counter-productive in terms of positive societal outcomes. Scientific studies - by which we mean those carried out around the world in long-established, mostly government-funded universities with no axe to grind, by academic researchers with a track record of several years' worth of intense study to their names, and subject to peer assessment and the protocols of academic research - these actually-genuinely-scientific studies published by people obliged to tell you if they get results they don't like - are, I believe, virtually unanimous in condemning the practice, just as 95% of the world's highly trained scientists will tell you that vaccines help save 100 times more lives than they harm and that global-heating, caused largely by the burning of fossil fuels, is a clear and present danger to the future of our planet. These are facts, proven by objectively established methods of research. over long periods of time, not something dreamed up by a Youtube influencer making money this week out of clicks and likes before moving onto the next rage-inducing issue. Understandably, some people don't like these facts and want to believe in what they choose to call 'alternative' ones, but evasions and obfuscations won't alter these facts and people with integrity recognise they need to be faced and tackled. They're not 'autotuned', they see the world as it is, not as populist demagogues would persuade them it is.

Just as a majority of people came to accept that feeding Christians to lions in arenas in Rome or burning 'heretics' alive in London streets were practices unworthy of us as human beings, so too, during the 1980's (at least 30 years before the coining of the notion of 'cancel culture') did the tide turn - in the UK at least (a hopeless national victim of the global woke conspiracy, I know, but hey, we're all victims, aren't we?) - against the use of CP in schools. There was a big debate over the course of many years, during which no-one got 'cancelled', and where many teachers resisted the change but finally came to accept it because...that's democracy, the precious result of a culture that believes in educating its people to think for themselves and value truth over lies. We're having a similar national debate right now about assisted dying. The Irish have in recent years had similar vital debates - and votes - on issues where the tide of feeling was moving away from the precepts of the long-dominant Catholic church.

So...if you ask me, spanking's got a lot to answer for!

And to take issue with the quote I started by quoting - sorry about the digression - if one elaborates just a little from 'modern setting', then it's all too frighteningly easy to imagine CP making a return, especially in the context of today's extremism where anything anti-woke is guaranteed to get the mob baying for blood.

First they came for the children...

P.S. I won't be applying for a US visitor's visa after posting this rant.

Here are some points that may be worth a comment:

Self-censorship (for good and for bad): I think this might be a factor. After MeToo, the idea of middle-aged men fantasizing about teenage girls getting spanked on their bare bottom, seemed less innocent than before. We may say "Oh, it’s not about THAT" and be perfectly honest about it, but you will have to work hard to get the idea across in the non-spanko world. I don’t know if the thought ever stopped anybody from writing stories they otherwise would have written, but admit that I have been a little bothered by it myself (only good for me, probably).

Literary development: I started looking for spanking literature about the same time as some of the venerable gentlemen above (where are the ladies?), and I remember more or less the same as them: Sporadic articles/stories in magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, plus books by that incredible productive author Anonymous (much of it real or fake Victorian fiction). Even though the spankings/canings/birchings were of a disciplinary nature, the stories were clearly written for erotic purposes. A little later I discovered spanking magazines like Janus, Februs, and Blushes and what I remember from them is more or less of the same type: young women (schoolgirls, nurses, secretaries) being spanked by middle-aged and elderly men, apparently for disciplinary reasons, but clearly with an erotic purpose. If I remember correctly, things started changing with the advent of the Internet: We got more stories of the "traditional kind" by writers like Carolina Jim and Daria Little, just to name two that I remember from those days. What made these stories different from what I had read before, was that they were (at least ostensibly) purely about spanking - the erotic content was only in the eye of the beholder. My guess is that it is this kind of story Smachtai would like to see more of.

The influence of the Internet: I think one of the reasons why we now have many more "untraditional stories" is the development of spanking and fetish sites. Before the Internet, we knew very little about each other and about the possibilities we had. I’m sure I was not the only teenager wondering if I were the only one in the whole wide world with a spanking fetish. The internet changed all that: It created new opportunities to meet and to learn from each other. As we learned about the possibilities, we also got new topics to write about: If spanking relationships between adults were possible, what would they look like and how would they function? How could one get a relationship between a spanko and a non-spanko to work? How do you introduce the topic of spanking in a new relationship? You don’t write about such things if you think the chance of meeting another spanko is almost nonexistent, but once you know the possibility is there, it becomes an interesting challenge.

Gourmet

Cancel culture is when things change and I don’t like it

I think it's important to keep a few things in mind. Everything you say is 'true', but as they say on Snopes, "lacks context".
1: The 'studies' you mentioned are all (to my knowledge) statistical, meaning that none have ever tested for 'causality', because...........
2: It would not be ethically possible to conduct such a study on human children, so we will never know.
3: No one has defined what possible better outcomes there are and what quality of outcome we now have.
But most importantly, 4: What exactly was being tested for? Since the practice can range from a default strategy, to an extremely infrequent option of last resort, and can occur in families with individuals representing every range of parental capability or incapability, how is any orf it 'scientific' except statistically?

(FWIW, not an advocate either way, but I like science to be understood for what it is.)

Fair enough, as are the points you make. I'm just a retired teacher and no expert, but statistics showng the negative effects of CP on students' academic and other social outcomes, along with the widespread anecdotal evidence in sociological studies from hundreds of recipients of CP in UK schools (including the boarding-school survivor community) do surely constitute a body of scientific evidence worth taking seriously?

I would argue that the 'autotuned' were those in the old days who entrusted their children to (sometimes sadistic) educators, knowing full well they'd be assaulted, and did so because everyone considered it normal. Those who claim 'it never did me any harm' might usefully ask themslves how they came by such a glaring lack of empathy for their fellow humans - in this case, their own children.

It was always a crime to assault another adult. Why was it ever okay to hit children? Or am I just 'auto-tuned' by the woke mind virus?

I found your whole post incredibly erudite and (ahem) sensibly measured, Alef, but this bit I didn't quite get. I'm not sure why MeToo should make any difference, in that one's sense of guilt or innocence about one's fantasies of spanking (assaultng) a teenage girl (underage child) was always a matter of personal conscience. I'd suggest that we would always have had to work hard to persuade a non-spanko that such a fantasy was innocent.

MeToo exposed more of the ubiquitous misogynist sexual harassment that was prevalent in certain industries than had hitherto been the case, and the publicity around and the prosecution of some of the more egregious perpetrators perhaps gave some men in powerful positions pause for thought about abusing that power, but hasn't that all changed now? The tide has turned in recent months, with sexual predators now feted and welcomed with open arms. Perhaps we will be too! But I'm not holding my breath, and we could instead face a backlash of the dirty perv variety.

My views?

For the most part, spanking has stopped being use as a punishment. I don't see punishment spanking stories as misogynistic as there are quite a few that focus on women controlling their husbands along with mothers (aunts, grandmothers, babysitters, etc) spanking teenagers.

The second issue? Virtually all punishment story are NC. There might be a domestic discipline agreement or the subject might have agreed to follow a code of conduct, but the subject being spanked doesn't have safeword. The punisher makes all the decisions.


Okay, so back in 1950s and 1960s "ethics" were looser. Here's a link to a movie that was make about study done back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Identical_Strangers

The study took sets of identical triplets and put them in different homes to track nature verse nurture. All three homes would fit into three different categories, so you could see how growing up in those three different conditions impacted children who were genetically identical. How did they know that these households matched those categories? These were the second or third child that family was adopting. The results of that study ...

Well they weren't what the researches wanted. The study stopped. The data is sealed until 2065 (when all the children are assumed to have died) and that's it.

One can always discuss what is and what is not MeToo - and the discussion may look different from one country to the next - but to me it seems to be more than the eradication of some very unhealthy traditions in certain industries. What comes in addition, is a new way to view and assess human relationships. I definitely had the impression that many people looked at their own relationships as well as the relationships of their peers and the relationships they found in art and literature, from a new perspective, some to the degree that they suddenly decided to report incidents from twenty years ago to the police. Let me use the old story of Heloise and Abelard (including the spankings!) as an example. It can be read as a story about young, romantic love, but it can also be read as a story about a lascivious teacher taking advantage of a young, innocent student. It can probably also be read as a story of an ambitious and headstrong young girl seducing her teacher. If one reads the story with an open mind, all these interpretations are there to a varying degree, and much of the joy of reading it, is to keep them all present at all times. Many post-MeToo readings of stories of this kind seem to close most of the interpretations in favor of one of them (the lascivious teacher), and the point I wanted to make, was that if writers sense this new and rather unforgiving climate, they may - consciously or unconsciously - censor themselves.