What makes a kink?

Of course, because I was a child, my earliest fantasies were childish – a bit campy, extreme, and plenty surrealist. This was pre-sexual and most of my kink is still non-sexual. I found this photo a few weeks ago (sorry about the quality!) and had to laugh, because this kind of conveyer-belt spanking by some sort of machinery, was – I am embarrassed to say – key in so many of those thoughts. I don’t know why it was so present. How could I invent such a thing? Most often, it was a group of children – usually girls, but sometimes both girls and boys, lined up to be spanked very formally by a caregiver/authority figure – not usually a parent (my parental spanking fantasies were very solitary and came a bit later, oddly enough), in a boarding school or some sort of home for naughty children (I know, it sounds really silly!). Wearing something specific – a specific outfit that they only wore when being spanked – I had no frame of reference for a uniform at the time, but can now make that connection. Usually it was a white t-shirt and the type of cotton navy shorts I wore often myself. The spankings were sometimes punishment but often routine, whether they were naughty or not – just a part of life. Just because. Sometimes they were unfair and mean. I liked those especially the most.

The quote I started this blog out with, is from the Madeline books – it’s how they start. I remember loving the Madeline books – all the little girls lined up in matching outfits (*ahem* uniforms) and their yellow hats. This isn’t something I’ve ever talked about, but I think it provided an early direction for these fantasies that ultimately morphed into my daddy/caregiver fantasies.

If you’re not familiar with the series, it’s about 7 year old Madeline, one of these twelve little girls, who live at a Catholic boarding school in Paris with their teacher, Miss Clavel. Madeline is the only redhead in the entire school. Reader, I too, am a redhead! They had a strict routine, a loving and attentive caregiver, and were normal children engaged in normal childhood experiences – including a bit of cartoonish mischief. This is all positive discipline, even without the spanking.

In this (admittedly not recent, but no less relevant) blog post, Paul talks about the impact The Beano comics had on his kink and the concept of normalized, proportionate, discipline for normal childhood antics, and I think for me, Madeline had a similar impact. Of course, unlike Minnie the Minx or The Bash Street Kids, Madeline never gets spanked in these books – that was all in my head, but unlike Madeline, I had an abusive childhood, so I latched onto the structure of her fictional life, and it was comforting. Inserting spankings into the story line where they feel appropriate, is something I do to this day when reading books, and it started here. I didn’t have the safety in my childhood to be a normal child because I was terrified of doing anything wrong or getting in trouble, because of an abusive and overblown response. That stayed with me through my teen years and into adulthood. I never had a detention in school, I had good grades, I was genuinely afraid of getting into trouble – even over fairly benign things. As an adult spanko, this translates to a deep discomfort with the very common – almost expected by most – bratting play, because being good is so ingrained into who I am (more on that in another post) and it seems counterintuitive (though admittedly became habit early on) to provoke a spanking when I can just ask.

I don’t think Madeline had quite the same impact as Leo Baxendale & The Beano had on Paul, given the lack of spanking in them but it’s the earliest reference I have to the type of structure and positive discipline that formed what I see as the core of my kink. I thought of strictly structured institutions often – boarding schools, some sort of strict school or home for children who needed discipline (framed as punishment in my child mind) and where spankings were normal and common. What I can relate to, is something specific Paul said:

For a boy often weighed down by the endless micro-anxieties of a normal, real childhood, pre-disposed and conditioned to be well-behaved, rule-following, good, Baxendale’s characters were liberating, at least in theory. I couldn’t hope to be much like them, but I wanted to be — to be braver, more adventurous, naughtier, and have that be normal, expected. Each week, The Beano was a safe space to explore themes of power imbalance, naughtiness, and punishment. It spoke to a part of me that was pre-sexual, but that would sooner or later form the core of (what I think of as, for lack of a better word) my sexuality.

Of course, Paul’s childhood was also different from mine, but this core concept resonates. I am adamantly opposed to CP for real children and the “spanking” I experienced as a child was experienced as abuse (and even in generous thoughts, I wouldn’t refer to it as spanking) – even birthday spankings gave me anxiety for all they felt like assault, even if I couldn’t articulate it at the time. I have vivid memories of seeing spankings in some TV shows – specifically a re-run of Diff’rent Strokes where Arnold is spanked by his brother, Willis, for dropping a water balloon off the balcony, and it’s the focus of the episode. I caught spanking references in movies (like Along Came Polly) and books. But I aspired to a more adventurous normal childhood, one with less anxiety over being seen as brat or bad.

Those earliest fantasies were consistently about a structure (discipline) that my own childhood lacked. As I got older, they took on a very consistent parental angle that became very safe and comforting and which I didn’t stray much from, for complex reasons, for years. My own father was absent and with a mother struggling to raise four kids alone, a fictional male authority became the focus of my spanking thoughts. It was never my real father, but an unidentifiable male and everything was safe and right in those thoughts. I was cared for, someone paid attention to me. I didn’t feel invisible, I got positive attention – and yes, spankings: care and love.

Although I didn’t have the language for it at the time, discipline = safety, and that’s what I saw in those Madeline books. I actually think this is true for most children but with a fledgeling kink to come to terms with, this is where mine landed. So, discipline = safety and spanking is a core part of that discipline, and to be safe, is to be loved, cared for, seen – and worthy of those things. It’s not just spanking though, it’s discipline as a whole – and I’ve recently been able to acknowledge that this discipline is a lot more than spanking (though the spanking is important, too!).

-M