Dyke Grrl's explanation in the comments section of the last post regarding why the term "domestic discipline" doesn't work for her reminds me of a conversation A. and I were having a few months back. It was about my bedtime and there were a number of factors complicating what should be a fairly straightforward issue. "I'm just following your lead," A. said finally. "Let me know what you want me to do and I'll do it."
I remember chuckling to myself at the time and thinking you'd never hear that sort of thing on most domestic discipline sites. But then, I've never really considered our disciplinary arrangement "domestic discipline."
Now some people do, and that's cool. And some people would find A.'s and my partnership approach to discipline unpalatable and that's totally cool too. For a lot of folks, a traditional patriarchal or matriarchal structure is very meaningful on emotional, spiritual, and sexual levels.
But for me, as "domestic" has a family or parental connotation to it, and since A. and I aren't even married much less have a family of our own, it just doesn't seem to accurately describe what A. and I do. And I'm an adult. I like being an adult. More specifically, most of the time I like being an adult with A. even if there is also a little girl part of me that needs structure and my partner's devotion reinforced. But then, sometimes the adult part of me needs structure (not to mention devotion) reinforced also. I mean, every person on this planet has bad habits (tops included!) and even non-kinky people use a variety of methods to break their bad habits. It just so happens spanking is the method I prefer for me, and I have a partner who is quite happy to oblige me as it has some fringe benefits for him as well.
It's true, there have been previous discussions regarding the term "domestic discipline" on this blog. Mija had a great one early on in our history, and I even talked about my discomfort with the term in my intro back when we first started this blog. I suppose on some level it's sort of in the background of a lot our posts, and I sometimes wonder if readers feel uneasy using the term "domestic discipline" here. So I thought I'd throw open the discussion again and direct it to you readers: what do you call your disciplinary arrangement with your partner and why?
