Have people ever tried to make you feel bad about having an interest in spanking?

Excellent thread.

Through caution, I've avoided ever being attacked as such. The worst I've had from vanilla friends or family is patronising dismissal, an indication they think this fetish is just silly, and I admit I do see it that way sometimes myself, not that that diminishes its power at all. I shared some of my writing with an old vanilla friend once and, whilst quite tolerant and understanding about it, he did suggest that perhaps half a million words of spanking stories was plenty enough (I've since passed the million mark).

I don't think vanilla people ever really understand it. My husband is vanilla and we lead separate as well as conjoined lives. 50 Shades of Grey didn't change the general suspicion or worse of spanking. In fact, it is more likely that we will be suspected or accused of perversion because of the massive war against child pornography and abuse. Consent and voluntary participation do nothing to negate this. Daphne Merkin's now famous piece in The New Yorker several years ago in which she expressed her desire to be spanked did not spark any significant reaction: it seemed to drop like a stone in the water.

Maternal One had a CP personal add that I stumbled over. Thus at one point, I tried to explain. It did not go over well. Just another example of not being able to have an adult conversation with a woman who persists in seeing me a kid. :-S

My vanilla wife knows about my kink, and she thinks it is weird. But she does not put me down for it. She just ignores my kink and doesn´t mind as long as I don´t rub her nose in it. My wife pays no attention to my visiting of such sites as LSF, Bottomlines and Fetlife when I am using our PC. She has not happened to glance at the computer screen when I was online.

Well, my wife is really nice. She does not object to my fetish as long as I do not live it out with her. She had a physically abusive first husband before she met and married me so she would have ample justification for objecting to the spanking fetish.

Years ago I had a girlfriend who told me my interest was awful and disgusting, so she immediately became an ex-girlfriend. More recently, a couple of politically correct types have suggested to me that spanking has no place in the world but when when challenged their arguments just didn't hold water.

I don't go around airing my differences, but if someone found out one way or another then my fall back position is: I'd rather you hate me for what I am, than like me for what I'm not.

If someone tried to make it into a joke to ridicule me, then I have this tendency to get quiet and stare a person down. My thoughts become apparent. Not many man or beast can withstand such an onslaught and remain unaffected.

I deliberately don't discuss this with Vanillas so very few would know about it.

Often123

Isn´t there a problem with that (rational) policy? How do you know whether a given individual is a vanilla or a spanko before you have talked about it? Just wondering.

Like most others, I keep quiet about the kink. I have shared selected of my stories with a couple of vanilla friends who write, and their reactions were polite interest in the one case and amusement in the other.
The person who had the most negative reaction is my wife who is convinced that the interest will lead to infidelity.

To be honest I did share it with the lady who later became wife #2 before we began dating. (Long story)Years later she became an enthusiast. I was kind of surprised.