I’ve been a little tardy of late in catching up with other sites I love, and so I nearly missed a truly marvellous post from November by our friend Natty, whose blog is always so wonderful. She starts:

A few months ago my best friend T. and I were talking about the process we each went through in discovering our core sexuality (homosexuality for him, spanking for me). At one point we began comparing when this exploration took place and he suddenly exclaimed, “oh wow — you came out the same time I did!”

I love this application of the concept of “coming out” to the path so many of us tread as spankos – brave steps, albeit often tinged with (perhaps irrational) terror. I’m not sure it’s a simple one-stage process, though: it has facets of evolution, not overnight revolution. So let me build on Natty’s idea and postulate my own theory of the five stages of ‘coming out’ as it applies to those of us “into” spanking:

Step 1 – coming out to oneself. This is what I like. There are other people like me. This is not unusual or sick. This is an important part of who I am.

Step 2 – coming out to the virtual kinky world: delurking online, perhaps via comments on blogs like this, a contribution to a spanking forum or (in my case) a post to the soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup. (“Oh my goodness will the police arrive at my door within minutes? And what if someone I know reads this?”)

Step 3 – coming out into the real-life kinky world. Meeting another spanko in the flesh for the first time – possibly to chat, eventually to play. (Will they be safe, sane, ‘normal’? Will we get arrested, be on the front page of the newspapers?)

Step 4 – coming out to carefully selected real-life vanilla folks: sharing that one has kinky interests with a very few friends / relatives / colleagues. (Soliciting promises that “you won’t tell anyone, will you?” And finding that they are completely unfazed, yet often somewhat curious – and impressed at your self-awareness).

Step 5 – coming out to all and sundry. Reaching the point when frankly, my dear, you don’t give a damn who knows – and if they have a problem with it, it’s their problem.

I’m through levels one to four, but leaping to that fifth stage still remains a step too far for me – as it does for many, most of our kinky friends.

I wonder: where are you on the path? Did you work through the process in the same order? Where do you want to be on your “coming out” journey by the end of this year?

(And if you’re not yet at step 2, but are feeling bold enough at the start of this new year to embrace something so important to you, why not say comment or email to say “hi”?)