No sex please - we're spankos.

I believe there may be two types of spanko. I first came across this idea many, many years ago. UK members of a certain age will probably remember the agony aunt Marje Proops. I was idly glancing over one of her columns once, when a letter caught my attention. A young woman had written to Marje saying she'd discovered she greatly enjoyed being spanked by her husband, but was troubled by the discovery. Wasn't spanking a sexual perversion?

Marje's answer was basically "it depends." She told the young woman that if the spanking was a form of fore-play, then it was not a sexual perversion, but if it had become a substitute for sex, then it was. Leaving aside the question of whether the answer was a tad judgemental, I think Marje really hit the nail on the head in identifying that there might be two groups, or levels, of spanko. For the first group, spanking is the warm-up act before the main event. For the second group, spanking IS the main event. Of course, the spanking might well cause sexual arousal in the second group, and it might lead to some sort of sexual relief. The important factor is that, for them, the spanking is the very heart and soul of the experience.

This distinction is clear in people's reading habits in this library. Some expect a spanking story to end with sex, and are disappointed if it doesn't. For others, overt sexual contact destroys the atmosphere and spoils what might otherwise have been an enjoyable story. I'm only speculating now, but I wonder if the first group might also be more gender-specific in their requirements. So the heterosexual male, for example, is drawn to either M/F or F/M, depending on his leanings, with maybe a bit of F/F for variety, but M/M is completely out of the question. The second group (I'm guessing) are more catholic in their tastes. For them, a bottom is a bottom and a hand is a hand, and all gender combinations are grist to their mill.

I shall have to put my own cards on the table now. I belong to the second group and always have done, and if you look at my catalog of stories, you'll find all sorts of gender combinations, but not a sex warning in sight! It would be interesting to hear other people's opinions, and which camp you consider yourself to belong to. Or maybe the distinction isn't quite so clear-cut for you?

My view is that all of this is on a gray scale with white on one end [no sex, no spanking] and black on the other [sexual gratification from the spanking alone]. So the vast majority are somewhere between the outliers on a sliding scale of gradation which can change over time. Thirty years ago I was really exclusively in the M/F side of things but life changes and so did my proclivities so the stories I read and write moved around a good bit and even ranged into the M/m or M/M variety. To me this parallels sexuality in general for most people: you may be hetero or homo but not absolutely and exclusively. Most people have a bit of at least bisexual curiosity in them if not outright interest and some of the phobia we see expressed may be a fear of our own interiors coming out. It would be interesting to hear from others about any changes in their spanking interests as they grew older and have more experiences. We also tend to pursue what is possible and satisfies us. In my case I am happily monogamous and she is willing to give but not receive so my primary interest in spanking did accommodate that. She is a somewhat converted vanilla and finds same sex spanking stories interesting and intriguing. How's that for a garbled response?

There are as many types of spankos as there are perspectives to embrace. Personally, in dealing with many men and women across a multitude of forums dealing with every aspect of spanking imaginable I have found it more realistic to discuss the different types of spanking rather than try to categorize the participants.

Using your examples measured against only myself, I fall into both categories at different times and Rosa is often both simultaneously.

For me, acceptance or tolerance of differing orientation is subject to situation. Being heterosexual, I am not going to enter into a M/M relationship or 'submit' to a male. However, in certain circumstances I have permitted males to spank me. Once was at a BDSM 'party' and a guy wanted to teach a lady there how to use a certain type of implement.....and they needed a butt to practice on. I have also been spanked by males as the result of games or fun things with spanking penalties. Although I wasn't 'excited' at the prospect....it didn't freak me out either. Still, ladies are my objects of desire yet I have been spanked many times by females for discipline reasons where sexiness never entered the picture. And...I have also been spanked so sexily that I orgasmed from the experience. other times sex has just followed the spanking "foreplay".

The cupboard is full of variety.

Alan, you indicated that:

"For the first group, spanking is the warm-up act before the main event. For the second group, spanking IS the main event. Of course, the spanking might well cause sexual arousal in the second group, and it might lead to some sort of sexual relief. The important factor is that, for them, the spanking is the very heart and soul of the experience."

It might also be interesting to consider another group of people--those who read stories about spanking. Although I have no evidence to support this suspicion, I suspect that the number of people coming to the LSF to read stories about spanking (and hopefully to comment) is far greater than the number actually engaging in spanking activities with partners because of logistics, personal constraints, and a host of other reasons.

Couched in terms of readers of spanking stories rather than those who actually participate with partners in physical spanking activities, the issue you raised, posed as a question, would be:

"Is the act of reading a spanking story a warm-up for a main event, or is the act of reading the spanking story THE main event?"

First, in this scenario, what might the "main" event be? I can't envision someone saying to his/her vanilla spouse or significant other who is already in bed, "Just wait there baby, this spanking story is really really hot and I'm almost finished and I'll be there in just a minute to jump your bones." Nor can I imagine someone repeatedly saying, "Honey, hop into bed now because I'm just about done with this database chore from work. You know how databases make me horny." If anything, he/she would surreptitiously read a spanking story and then go into the bedroom. But coordination problems would make this exceedingly difficult to pull off effectively in the long run.

I suspect, and again I have no evidence to support this suspicion, that most of us who read stories, poems, etc. here do so alone and if there is any sexual release we provide that release ourselves. Some of us may find that reading the story, etc. is a warm up before the main event, viz, masturbation. Some may masturbate while in the process of reading the story. And still others may find that reading the story is an end in itself and no masturbation is necessary. Or perhaps masturbation becomes necessary after a critical mass of stories have been read.

I have to wonder if we have, among our male readers, keyboards with keys that stick. Keys that stick because the readers have become so overcome with the joy of reading an expertly crafted spanking story that the tears of their joy have sprayed upon the keyboard and found their way in the small crevices between key and keyboard surface. Readers so afflicted may be comforted with the knowledge that washable plastic keyboard protectors can be easily acquired by searching the net.

I don't fit into either category. Sex in a spanking story tends to turn me off or at best is mildly interesting. At the same time I'm very picky about what I read. I don't read M/M and I find I dislike most of the F/M stories that I do read. Perhaps that's more of a function of the stories I've read that were F/M also had a strong Dom/Sub theme going as well.

I can't even say that spanking is sexually arousing. I just like media (stories/films/etc.) that contain spanking and I always have.

I would put myself more in Cindy 2's camp. While I do not usually seek spanking and sex stories I do enjoy stories where the spankee enjoys her spanking whether for discipline or does awaken sex feelings in her. My preference is m/f or f/f no f/m or m/m and I do enjoy otk more than other stories. So yes a spanking is a spanking to females, but not to males. While intellectually I understand them I do not seek them if that makes sense. So we do enjoy them for sex sometimes and other times we are seeking just discipline. I would say the graph would have plenty of room for one extreme or the other in our preferences. Have a great day.
Jim

In my spankings, I always have been the spanker of a female. For me and my spankees it was foreplay, leading to other joys. Mostly with much laughing and teasing, but every time thorough. One discipline spanking, because that day that woman was really testing me. and I had to react, because she said "you wouldn't dare", when I threatened to spank her. The only non consensual spanking (in the beginning) I gave, ever. But even that spanking made us both hot and ended in bed.
I never thought about getting spanked, not from a woman, not from a man.

So I like to read humorous stories about brats and the men who are taming them.
F/M, F/m, M/f, M/m, M/M, F/F or F/f -stories and stories with (too) much Sex scenes or pure DD-stories are not interesting for me.

i have to say i can find myself in the things Cindy2 said. i only come here to read stories about spanking for pure pleasure and maybe learn a few things about spanking as well, but i do realize that if i want to learn about spanking this might not be the right place .

in the case of what stories i read, i only try to avoid the M/M or M/m stories. reading those makes me feel very uncomfortable. the other categories i enjoy if they have sex in it or not.

It really depends on the circumstances and who is at play, so to speak. For some, it is a prelude to sex, which I have no qualms with whatsoever. To others, it's an end to a means a way to be cleansed, chastised & forgiven. Still to others, it just feels good to have your bum warmed up or do the warming. It's all so very yummy and even more delectable when done bet even consenting adults.

I suppose kdpierre has a point that things are rarely just black or white, and that there is usually a continuum of shades of grey involved, but I think Alan is making a deeper point in sketching different ways people combine spanking and "ordinary" sexuality.

I have often thought of my own spanking fetish as a "parallel" sexuality. I find spankings extremely erotic, and I rarely include ordinary sexuality in my spanking fantasies - spanking is an end in itself and not a mean. (I should perhaps add that I am more likely to mix the two in real life, perhaps because the sight of a naked lady, spanked or not, has an immediate appeal to my "ordinary" sexuality!) This definitely has certain implications for the way I read spanking stories - I remember, for instance, how surprised I was when I read about someone who refused to read F/f stories because of their implicit lesbianism. The idea that mothers spank their daughters to satisfy hidden lesbian dreams had never occurred to me. It is, I think, the same with my interest for stories about spanked teenage girls; it is not a substitute for a forbidden desire to sleep with young girls, but a separate fascination of its own. My own stories often have a touch of sex, but it is usually because the story seems to demand it, and not because I am particularly interested in it.

My sexual interest in spanking seems to predate my conscious interest in genital sex, and perhaps that is the reason why these two strands of sexuality seem to exist in parallel.