
This map shows where readers of this blog reside and, like a well-spanked bottom, it’s pink all over.
Many never talk openly about their kinks and fantasies. Some might even be rather ashamed of their desires, considering them somehow weird and perverted. Yet, as this map shows, an interest in spanking isn’t weird at all – in fact, if anything, it’s a global phenomenon.
The darker shades of pink show where most visitors originate, these are areas like the UK and large populous states of the US, like New York, California and Texas. Many readers also come from Canada and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
But that doesn’t mean spanking is a purely Anglo-Saxon kink, there are also many visitors from all over Europe, especially Germany, France, Italy and Russia. And intriguingly, there are also many visitors from regions where English isn’t the primary language, like South America, Arabia and south-east Asia.
In fact, the only blank spaces on the map are areas of sub-Saharan Africa, plus Cuba, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. And North Korea.
This tells me two things. One – that English really is the lingua franca of the web, and two – an interest in spanking is common to all cultures. If a country has a free-as-in-speech internet connection, someone in that country is going to use it to read stories about spanking…
Yet I’ve often wondered how spankings vary across different cultures.
Online, the western view of spanking is pervasive. It is a vocabulary of school uniforms and canes, bedrooms and hairbrushes, whips and cuffs in a bedroom, or across a knee in a suburban living room. This is a view of spanking pioneered by British fetish magazines 40 years ago, and continued by producers of spanking videos (primarily in western Europe and the US), who know what their viewers want and respond accordingly.
But spanking stories and films from other parts of the world have shown there’s more to a smacked bottom than the familiar tropes. Czech company RGE Films, for instance, channels their country’s still-recent memory of authoritarian communism to produce quite unique spanking stories. Whilst on the other side of the world Hand Spanking depicts distinctively Japanese disciplinary tales.
But what about the rest of the world? What stories would a South American tell? Or someone from the Middle East? Surely amongst the two billion people in India and China there are some fascinating spanking tales to tell.
For years now, I’ve been telling you tales from my own imagination, some inspired by episodes of my own experiences – but why should this remain a one-way medium? After all, unlike the printed word and the moving picture, blogs have the potential to be interactive. So, to mark the new year, I’m going to initiate the #worldofspanking project, and invite you to share the memories of your formative spanking experiences…
How did you come to be interested in spanking?
Perhaps it’s the first spanking you watched, or the first you gave or received? Perhaps it was a time when you experienced extraordinary sensations or emotions. Or something about the circumstances that made it so special.
What I hope to learn is how the cultures we grow up in affect our intimate fantasies. What really goes on behind the bedroom doors of faraway places? How do the experiences of those living in liberal countries compare to those where the attitude to sexuality is more conservative? What implements are used? And what aspects of your own culture and recent history have seeped into your fantasies?
I’d love to know what role have stories played, the books and fairytales in your native tongue. Or was your interest first inspired by films or what you’ve seen online?
There is a delicious irony in eroticism: intimacy is about being truly known, naked and exposed, and yet we can be at our most honest when sending little messages-in-bottles to faraway strangers. Ultimately I’d love to get at least one for every country on the planet. I’ll continue to curate submissions, posting the best of what you send. I do hope you’ll take part.
To submit a contribution, you can either:
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Use the submission form – to remain anonymous, log out of tumblr and use a dummy name and email address in the form.
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Or, you can just email spankingtheatre@gmail.com
All submissions will be anonymous, and you can write whatever you desire, just mention which country you live in.
So, here’s a few ideas to get you thinking. Why not…
- Describe your most memorable spanking experience.
- Describe how you came to be interested in spanking.
- Explain how does spanking in your culture differs from how you’ve seen it portrayed in film and online.
- Or, how your culture influences your spanking fantasies.
I, and the many thousands who read this blog, look forward to learning your stories.