Dr Susan Block’s article “The politics of spanking” probably won’t tell you anything you didn’t already know about spanking, but it’s a very nice summary of how adult consensual spanking works that you can point vanillas at for their edification.
Block writes, “Everybody knows that, even if we think it’s a bit kinky, spanking adults can be fun” – and proceeds to give us a tour around the spanking fetish as we know it, from playful spankings in history (birthday spankings may date to Ancient Egypt!) to contemporary role-play. It’s an interesting read.
One minor quibble I have is the rehashing of the idea that people with powerful jobs tend to want to be sexually submissive – this just doesn’t correspond with the top/bottom make-up of the scene as I know it. (If only because most spankos I know got set in their preferences way before they were old enough to have careers.) This may be anecdotal, but then, Block doesn’t claim to have done any research on the topic, either.
Enjoy the article!