Speaking of kinky cause and effect – as I just was – corporal punishment and impact play is another interesting example of an arguably misattributed cause. It used to be said that the English love of spanking and flagellation was derived from the use of corporal punishment in school. As a theory, it seems to make sense. Boys just coming into adolescence and packed with sexual energy were being beaten, and then transmuting that trauma into a kink. Hence, we ended up with the English Vice.
The flaw in this claim is that corporal punishment has been banned from British schools for a long time now, yet it still seems to be as popular as ever in kink. It’s also popular across a wide range of countries, even those that didn’t think beating children was a good idea. Personally, I was never beaten as a child, but corporal punishment scenes featured heavily in my fantasies in my 20’s and 30’s.
Obviously to prove the case one way or another one would need to do a proper survey and analyze kinky preferences over time and culture. It’s possible that corporal scenes are a lot more popular with a certain type of older British male than in the rest of the kinky community. But my suspicion would be that while corporal punishment in school might have colored peoples kinks, anyone who ended up indulging in it later in life would have been kinky anyway. Those submissives who were spanked or caned as children draw a correlation, where those who weren’t simply shrug and don’t worry about why they like it.
I’m afraid I’ve no idea who shot this picture of this happy lady caner.
I grew up at a time when corporal punishment was allowed in schools although usually only in private. I myself was never caned but I did occasionally get a slap on the back of the legs (in those days boys wore shorts). I suspect I would have grown up with the same interests even if there had been no punishments at school but I do think it has had an effect on people of my generation. I say this because I attend a number of fem dom and spanking parties and whilst the ladies range in age from about 20 to 60 the men are almost always as old if not older than me. There are some younger men but they are very much in the minority. I was speaking to a Mistress about this and she agreed that her clients were predominantly older gents and that she did worry that she might eventually run out of visitors as her regulars grew older and for various reasons stopped visiting.
Interesting perspective. It’d be fascinating to gather some solid data on this area, although I’m not sure how anyone would go about do that :).
From my perspective, I see a lot of corporal punishment videos and dommes talking about it on social media, which suggests to me its still very popular. But of course, that doesn’t directly correlate to the demographics or the changing size of the market for it. Your perspective suggests there is a shift, but hard to say if that’s broadly representative one or something related more specifically to the spanking party demographic. Of course I’ve also no idea what the shift in numbers has been over the last 20 or so years from disciplinarian style dommes who specialize in corporal play to those doing more general dominance.
I guess the question is: Will there be less people into corporal play in the UK in 10 or 20 years? Or will the number be fairly steady but the style and roleplay associated with it change? My guess would be the latter, but that’s based on zero solid data 🙂 I definitely hope the Mistress you spoke to doesn’t run out of clients!
-paltego