Even though it was my idea to write these introductions, I've found lots of reasons to avoid doing my own.
I'm in my 30s, a Chicana feminist scholar and live with my partner (er, guess that's "husband" now) in Southern California. We met in 1997 via the usenet group alt.sex.spanking (now soc.sexuality.spanking) and had a long- distance relationship for much of the first six years. We both write spanking fiction which isn't here, but can be found on our website The Treehouse. Mija isn't my legal name, but has been my "real" name in the spanking fetish since my very first post. Eight years later it feels plenty "real."
There are a number of aspects of BDSM and spanking I like but the core of my interest is in corporal punishment and discipline. Nothing touches me so deeply on so many different levels. Paul, my husband, and I began experimenting with it before we'd ever met. It is possible to do discipline and punishment via long distance but I wouldn't recommend it. Likewise, in person it requires time and effort on the part of both top and bottom and can easily be left by the wayside. For me, it's all about enforcing rules we've agreed on. And yes, it works.
As I've experimented with spanking more and more over the past 8 years, I've found that it's not the spanking itself that does it for me. That is, it isn't the pain (in fact, for a number of reasons, my pain threshold is lower than it used to be). It's the feeling of not being in control, of being looked after and, twin to that, held accountable. Afterward, the idea that my partner is that strong, that able to care for me when I'm not strong and loves me enough to look after me and enforce rules we've agreed to. I'm definitely not turned on by the spankings themselves, but by the idea that I could be disciplined, that my partner has the power and desire to do both.
I've struggled with a number of issues in accepting this part of myself -- that I see discipline and punishment as expressions of love -- especially with my self-definition as a feminist. It hasn't been made easier by people, both men and women, who assume because I'm a female bottom who gets spanked and punished by a male I believe this position is (or should be) universally feminine or somehow "natural." I don't believe that at all. Most women I know, kinky and otherwise, would not be happy or healthy in a relationship where they were accountable to and punished by someone else. I come from a patriarchal background, both in my ethnicity and religion, but I wasn't raised to see women as submissive to men being ordained by either God or nature. And I don't. This is what works for me and mine, not some sort of endorsement of a return to a scary world of Stepford Wives and Leave It to Beaver land.
Writing this is embarrassing. It's hard to admit that as an adult I need and want to be held accountable to an external structure of spanking. Even my friends who know I'm into BDSM tend not to know about this side of it. Yet I'm really looking forward to a chance to explore this by writing for this blog and commenting on what Haron, Angie and Natty have to say.
I think it's going to be so great!
