Explain Spanking

Why a spanking is so much more than smacks on the bottom

How would you explain what a spanking feels like, to someone who might never have experienced one before?

This is, by the way, one of my favourite essay assignments when roleplaying school detentions. An excellent topic to write about both before she receives her whacking, or for when she’s sitting on a sore bottom afterwards.

Why not take a moment, and see what materialises in your own mind? Perhaps you'll add your thoughts as a comment to this post at the end.

Personally, I wouldn't try to explain the sensations of a smacked bottom, the sting, the heat, and the unique throbby soreness. Partly that’s because I've little personal experience of what that actually feels like, but mostly because I don't regard soreness as the defining aspect of a spanking. I could quite easily spank extremely lightly, with smacks that tease and tantalise, rather than whacks that made a bottom burn. But every spanking involves consent and trust.

I would describe a spanking as an eroticised trust fall.

As part of my explanation, I’d ask you to imagine standing in front of someone you trusted, and being told to unbutton your jeans. How do you think that would feel?

Can you feel yourself teeter, your balance unsteady, as your nervous fingers fiddle with the button?

What if you were told to pull your jeans down? Right down to your knees. Yes, you'd reveal your underwear, and the bulge of your most intimate places. They might even notice a wet patch if you've got all excited. Are you ready to be that vulnerable?

It's scary, isn't it? But inexplicably alluring.

Can you feel how each step, each act of compliance, is getting you closer and closer to having your bottom smacked?

Why don't you ask for it? Remember to be polite and say please. This isn't something that usually happens, is it? See how you're giving up control, putting yourself in someone else's hands. What will you ask for?

"Please may I have a good hard spanking?"

or

"Please may I have a good hard spanking on my bare bottom?"

Try it. Say one of the sentences above out loud right now. Can you feel the power imbued within those words? Your choice of words might result in your underwear tumbling down.

Can you feel the sands of reality beginning to shift beneath your toes? These are unusual, powerful feelings. Undeniably exciting and arousing.

Are you ready to bend over my lap? Are you ready to let go? To succumb to gravity, to tremble, and fall?

Don't worry, I’ll catch you. And it really is the most beautiful fall. You'll feel your tummy flutter, and your head go floaty, as if for one magic moment, you're suddenly weightless.

Soon, you'll be aware of a warm hand on your bottom, rubbing, patting, perhaps even fondling. Once you’ve been caught, my lap will feel like the safest place in the whole wide world.

I identify as a top, a kind of kinky stage director - someone who makes spankings happen. Hence spanking is a primarily a mental and emotional experience for me, rather than a physical one. I know others delight in the hot sting of a well-smacked bottom, and the floaty submissive mental state that accompanies it, and both are gifts in my power to give. The joy, contentment, and love of those I play with is what brings me tremendous satisfaction.

So, that’s what spanking means to me: a trust fall with a smacked bottom. I take great joy in catching those I spank, and making their heart thump with excitement. Almost certainly you’ll have a different perspective, but I love to hear it, all the same.

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Define Kinky

You may have noticed my explanation of spanking is so much more than just smacks on the bottom. It encompasses the anticipation before, and the lingering effects afterwards. It’s as if there is a mysterious extra dimension to spanking, and those who are aware of it use the term ‘kinky’ — but how would you explain kink to someone who might never have encountered it before?

This is trickier than explaining spanking because smacking a bum is an activity. It is something one can do, an actual sensation that can be given or received. The term kinky is more abstract, it’s an adjective, not a verb. It requires capturing the essence of an activity that not only has taboo connotations, but is shrouded by numerous misunderstandings too. That’s why many describe kink in contrast to “vanilla” activities, as if being kinky was merely an appetite for unusual sex. However, I think we can come up with a much better definition than that.

I'd say that kink is a kind of sexual contact that goes beyond physical touches. Kink is where we use ideas to take control of a partner’s erotic imagination. Whether these ideas arouse, or tease and tantalise, they're something the recipient accepts, then imagines, and feels.

The involvement of the imagination is what makes kink subtly different from purely physical sensations, where the mind doesn't need to be involved at all. That's why kinky sex involves seemingly weird props like clothes and fetish objects, or bedroom roleplaying in playfully theatrical scenarios. Kink appears strange because it somehow seems to transmute powerful emotions like guilt and shame into erotic rocket fuel.

But most of all, kink involves words.

If you were to record what goes on during a kinky relationship and depict it in a pie-chart, spanking would likely appear as a tiny slice. There might be other similarly small slices for inspections, masturbation, and fuckings, and a much larger slice for cuddles. But most of the pie would represent talking.

Words are the foundations of kink. We can’t negotiate without them, or express our desires and our boundaries. Sex without words is crude and feral, but kinky sex is a meeting of minds, as much about what’s imagined as what’s actually performed.

Words are how we keep our internal erotic fire glowing, and stoke the flames of neediness in others.

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Sex With Words

What we actually say, (or send  —  as this kind of play works particularly well over messaging) is not just what turns us on, but what we know will also intrigue and arouse our partner. It can be as simple as just talking erotically, where we drop our pretences, and tell our partner what we really want, right now. For instance:

“Daydreaming about slipping my hand up your skirt.”

“I have my hand in my pants. Is that naughty of me?”

“I want your taste on my tongue.”

“Can you feel yourself tingle where you most want to be touched?”

“Suck your little finger for me.”

“Are you making your pretty little panties damp?”

“Tell me how much you need me.”

“I know you need to hold my hand, little one, so you don’t get lost.”

“When I get home I’m going to put you over my knee, and spank your bare bottom.”

“Are you going to wank over my poor sore smacked bottom tonight?”

The secret to talking erotically is not to censor yourself. Not to stay silent for fear of seeming too outrageous. Silence does no one any favours, as it’s impossible to reply to. Often the boldest statements are the most arousing. In saying something daring we give our partner the opportunity to riff off what they’ve received.

Even though the Top might have originally instigated the conversation, and taken charge of directing it, it’s still very much a two-way dialogue. What the Bottom has to say is just as important in sustaining the conversation’s erotic energy. If a Bottom was merely to agreeably reply “Yes Sir” or “Yes Miss” to every message, the dialogue would quickly become boring and peter out.

Anyone who’s tried theatrical improv knows the golden rule is “Don’t be boring”. To keep the energy flowing, we must offer novelty, and build on what we’re given rather than block. To be kinky is to participate in a continuous quest for sexual novelty.

With the right vibe, both partners can give each other a feel-good buzz that will linger throughout the day. It doesn’t have to be a quick-fire dialogue, you might pause and give your partner time to anticipate what you’ve said. To tell them what you have in store for them in the morning, and make it happen later that evening. A long gap might seem an odd solution to neediness, but anticipation fills the mind with enjoyable imaginings of what’s to come, quite different from a mind that’s empty and cranky through lack of stimulation.

If all this makes stoking neediness sound like an eroticised kind of flirting, you’d be right. Eroticism is a flame that requires continual tending to keep it burning fiercely. In the early stages of relationships, flirting allows us to subtly signal our romantic interest. As intimacy develops, we need to be able to communicate that we still find our partner desirable. That’s why messages that keep the fires of neediness stoked are more overtly sexual. Kinky talk is like flirting, only hotter.

Once we decide we’re sexually interested in someone, we still want to hear them tell us just how hot they think we are. In disciplinary relationships, it’s an opportunity to be strict and give our partner the joy of submitting to what we say. And all of this happens without a single touch being exchanged.

To be kinky is to enjoy having sex with words.

Words transmit ideas, and ideas are a powerful magic, they can literally take control of our minds — that’s why a spanking will always be so much more than just smacks on the bottom.

So, what does spanking mean to you?