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blustockingFor all of you who answered the previous spanking question, thank you. :)
The theory, which is pretty simple and should hold true, but looks like it might not, is that spanking as a child creates a desire to be submissive in life, nay, sex. I can only speak for myself, so I will.
I was spanked, not much...more of threatened, but I was occasionally spanked. In fact, my parents had one of those wooden paint-stirring sticks, the one you use to stir house paint. They had drilled a hole in the end and tied a little lanyard on the end so that they could hang it on the fridge. On one side, my Mother wrote "Jill's Warm Side" and on the other "Jill's Hot Side", and I SWEAR I could tell the difference. I would hide that damn thing all OVER the house, but they'd always either find it, or just make another one. I think I only, vaguely, remember getting spanked once or twice, though I'm sure it was more, with it. The only really vivid spanking I remember is when I picked up my mother's birdbath and just dropped it. I think I was testing gravity,(children are really just little scientists) for there was NO other reason. She ran over pulled down my pants and smacked my ass before I even had a chance to think.
Here's the thing though. I absolutely adore my parents, they can do no wrong. All of the spanking was justified and it served to show me who was in charge. Of course, later, I just learned to be more creative to get what I want, but I damn well respected my parents and, essentially, I was a good kid. I'll have to ask my sister if she was spanked in that way though, because she was quite the little rebel (I just hid mine well). She, I know, was slapped in the face by my mother once, and I wasn't. That, is entirely different than getting a little paddle on the bottom.
Anyway, here's the meat. I've found that people are generally opposite of what they appear to be in day-to-day life. I'm pretty strong-willed, opinionated, and such, but I'm a submissive when it comes to sex. Now, I've been dominant and can and have played the role, but in the truest of true, I'm a sub. I've always had a fascination with cruel love. Perhaps this explains why Labyrinth is my favorite movie? That line that Bowie speaks towards the end, and I'm misquoting most likely, "Just love me, let me rule you, do as I say, and I will be your slave". It is contradictory and seemingly doesn't make sense, but it does. I want the push and pull and I want to lose to someone who adores me.
So, is it true, that assertion of power when you were young, did it make you crave it in adulthood? Or is it more simple than that, and did it just make you have a thing for spankings? I've never been one to enjoy being spanked, only occasionally and when absolutely appropriate, but it doesn't really get me off. It seems silly most of the time. I enjoy more subtle shows of dominance.
The woman I've had a crush on the longest is a dominant. She's strong and she's a bitch. She's the one all others were compared to. She made me search for a replacement, since she hates me but in the end, she's disappointed me. I found a girl like her once, but she ended up being quite submissive and I couldn't take the lead, not with her.
So tell me, for you, what do you think being spanked, or not being spanked did to you as an adult? For me, I wouldn't change a thing, and in theory, I think it defines the balance of power for children, but that's theory and I would probably have a hard time doing it to my own kids. My parents had a good system, of fairness and justification. But you also have to take into account that I was a stubborn little kid, just like my Dad. Being spanked didn't really faze me, but it made me have respect for my parents and acknowledge who was in control. The psychological effects were beneficial. I think it depends on the child and that's so hard to judge. But it also depends on the parents. They have to be fair and able to judge when it's really necessary and how firm to be depending on the situation.
Thoughts?
The theory, which is pretty simple and should hold true, but looks like it might not, is that spanking as a child creates a desire to be submissive in life, nay, sex. I can only speak for myself, so I will.
I was spanked, not much...more of threatened, but I was occasionally spanked. In fact, my parents had one of those wooden paint-stirring sticks, the one you use to stir house paint. They had drilled a hole in the end and tied a little lanyard on the end so that they could hang it on the fridge. On one side, my Mother wrote "Jill's Warm Side" and on the other "Jill's Hot Side", and I SWEAR I could tell the difference. I would hide that damn thing all OVER the house, but they'd always either find it, or just make another one. I think I only, vaguely, remember getting spanked once or twice, though I'm sure it was more, with it. The only really vivid spanking I remember is when I picked up my mother's birdbath and just dropped it. I think I was testing gravity,(children are really just little scientists) for there was NO other reason. She ran over pulled down my pants and smacked my ass before I even had a chance to think.
Here's the thing though. I absolutely adore my parents, they can do no wrong. All of the spanking was justified and it served to show me who was in charge. Of course, later, I just learned to be more creative to get what I want, but I damn well respected my parents and, essentially, I was a good kid. I'll have to ask my sister if she was spanked in that way though, because she was quite the little rebel (I just hid mine well). She, I know, was slapped in the face by my mother once, and I wasn't. That, is entirely different than getting a little paddle on the bottom.
Anyway, here's the meat. I've found that people are generally opposite of what they appear to be in day-to-day life. I'm pretty strong-willed, opinionated, and such, but I'm a submissive when it comes to sex. Now, I've been dominant and can and have played the role, but in the truest of true, I'm a sub. I've always had a fascination with cruel love. Perhaps this explains why Labyrinth is my favorite movie? That line that Bowie speaks towards the end, and I'm misquoting most likely, "Just love me, let me rule you, do as I say, and I will be your slave". It is contradictory and seemingly doesn't make sense, but it does. I want the push and pull and I want to lose to someone who adores me.
So, is it true, that assertion of power when you were young, did it make you crave it in adulthood? Or is it more simple than that, and did it just make you have a thing for spankings? I've never been one to enjoy being spanked, only occasionally and when absolutely appropriate, but it doesn't really get me off. It seems silly most of the time. I enjoy more subtle shows of dominance.
The woman I've had a crush on the longest is a dominant. She's strong and she's a bitch. She's the one all others were compared to. She made me search for a replacement, since she hates me but in the end, she's disappointed me. I found a girl like her once, but she ended up being quite submissive and I couldn't take the lead, not with her.
So tell me, for you, what do you think being spanked, or not being spanked did to you as an adult? For me, I wouldn't change a thing, and in theory, I think it defines the balance of power for children, but that's theory and I would probably have a hard time doing it to my own kids. My parents had a good system, of fairness and justification. But you also have to take into account that I was a stubborn little kid, just like my Dad. Being spanked didn't really faze me, but it made me have respect for my parents and acknowledge who was in control. The psychological effects were beneficial. I think it depends on the child and that's so hard to judge. But it also depends on the parents. They have to be fair and able to judge when it's really necessary and how firm to be depending on the situation.
Thoughts?
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I know I already posted
Date: 2002-03-15 04:26 pm (UTC)I can see how there might indeed be a psychological link between being spanked or whatever as a child and sexual tendencies later in life, in at least one possible way. We tend to always build our world and our perceptions and our selves around what we know - what we see, the place we live and the people we are with, our firsthand experiences, etc. - and we do with that what we can. It affects our behavior, our beliefs, and our actions. When we're very young, our parents serve as perhaps the biggest role models and builders for the world we live in, and they way we come to think of the world and our selves. These big important people make rules, set meal and bed times, make us go to school, etc. They also act as judge and jury when we do something wrong, and decide on punishment. Maybe if they spank us, we do indeed feel submissive and controlled, and this is carried through into adulthood and the relationships we form outside family - including love and sex. Maybe if we felt humiliated by, resentful of, or just scared of the spankings or other physical acts our parents did to us when young - or maybe even not in cases as severe as humilation, but even just a case of a sense/memory of being dominated as children - we will seek somehow to resolve that through sex as adults - come to peace with submissiveness, and actually thereby somehow gain control over both our selves and our relationships *through* submissiveness. Being submissive was something we could not control as children; but as adults, we can, and can perhaps effectively use it to come to terms with ourselves, our childhoods, and power in general. Like the quote you brought up from 'Labyrinth' - let me rule you and I will be your slave - the person who submits can have great power of the dominant one. Submissiveness can be empowering. Sex is one place where that can really be realized, more so certainly than a child/parent situation, in which the parent is almost indisputably the one in total control. So maybe if people who were spanked etc. as a kid are able to turn this submissiveness to their advantage in sex, etc., it is actually therapeutic and not damaging to *either* person involved. It makes them feel they have control over submissiveness/dominance, instead of feeling entirely at its mercy as they probably did as children. As an adult, the fears of the past can be conquered with the same tools of dominance/submission, and personal peace and well-being can be reached. Much different from people who use so-called innocentce, helplessness, and submissiveness to manipulatively gain control over people who fall for it; who cling to pain as a very wrong means of control, victimhood, martyrdom, blah blah.
I have no clue if that made any sense or was just a lot of wanking. Eek, it seemed like an interesting idea.
no subject
Yes, that made sense, it was what I was getting at. It doesn't work for everyone, as you said, there are people who end up being victims or just being manipulative, and that's a whole different story, but that pretty much sums up how I feel about it, personally. Though, of course, there are exceptions and it's always so complex, it's still fascinating and seems to work for me.
*sigh* I love how you put things. :)
It's so hard to sit here and have to work when I really want to get into this and respond more thoroughly. I keep having to write pieces at a time. Urgh.
no subject
Date: 2002-03-16 01:53 pm (UTC)I was thinking more about this, in connection with a book I read by Gayl Jones, called 'Corregidora.' A really beautiful but disturbing book about a woman who must cope not only with abusive relationships in her present - sexual abuse, beating, etc. - but also abuse in her family's past. Her female ancestors were slaves, owned by a man named Corregidora. Besides just being a slaveowning fuck, wrong to begin with, he blatnatly sexually abused the women (as slaveowners often did), made them submit to his will constantly in very humiliating ways. The protagonist of the story always heard stories about his abuse from her mother and grandmother, and feels that even she in the present can't escape this kind of dominance. Even though the days of "official" slavery are over, she somehow feels connected to it and trapped by it. She runs away from dominant men, but can't seem to escape them; but at the end takes her ex-husband (who threw her down the stairs and caused her to lose her baby and never be able to have children after that) back to her house, undresses him and herself, and kneels before him to give him oral sex.... something she always refused to do before. She submits herself to a man who was formerly abusive to her - is literally on her knees before him, very symbolic. And many critics argue that, in doing so, she is able to overcome the pain connected with submission of both her own personal past and her family's, and resolve it - that's the end of the book, resolution both in form and content has been reached. Submission as "therapy." But like you said, it's so subtle, and complex, and tricky.... other critics argue that nothing is resolved at the end. And in fact, it is very debatable. The book really ends with him climaxing, and her saying to him, still on her knees, "I could kill you." Then he tells her, "I don't want a woman who would hurt me," and she replies "I don't want a man who would hurt me either." And then it ends. You're not sure if they're going to get back together and everything will have changed, been resolved, be healthy and happy, if resolution really has been reached (climax is resolution, but does this symbolism really imply *full* resolution?); or if the cycle of humiliation, dominance, abuse and submission will continue. It's REALLY interesting, and reminded me of this discussion.
Yeah.
There's lots of dicussion of sex, dominance, submission, empowerment, and related stuff in colonial/post-colonial literature and criticism.... all related to race, gender, and power. It's really interesting. You might dig it :)