"Beat Me, Hurt me, Show Me You Care"

I'm old enough to remember when, if you discovered a girl who liked being spanked, you'd tumbled across someone that your friends would describe as "kinky", or, at minimum, "hot". But nowadays I find it difficult to even meet a girl anywhere (okay, not that I'm trying that hard) who doesn't ardently desire to be spanked, whipped, "punished", generally debauched and degraded, and all as an essential part of a "romantic" relationship.

One can't help but wonder (Can one?) about the rise of this social/psychological phenomenon. I mean, it must mean something, mustn't it? It can't simply be an accidental thing. There must be something in the evolution (and I do not in any way mean to equate that term with "progress forward") of our society that has led to this outbreak of women desiring painful pleasure.

I can only offer the most modest of guesses, but here it is. I believe that our society - especially in terms of relationships between men and women - has suffered an essential fracture of sorts, and that this breakage has resulted in both men and women suffering ever-increasing emotional frustration. All the various elements of this "fracture" are too numerous, and too complex, to go into here, but I'll just offer a quick notation of one: "Feminism", while it may have opened a few employment doors, has most assuredly not led to the goal of more overall societal satisfaction for women. If anything, it's had the opposite effect - burdening more and more women with the arduous task of being a single mother, and creating men so "sensitive" that they just make you want to throw up. And thus, I think at least a part of this is just a collective scream on the part of women for the bygone days when men were like Hemingway and Humphrey Bogart, a sort of ultra-frustrated cry of, "Jesus - Will you stop being such a weenie, and just club me over the head and rape me?"

And (I could be wrong about this next part, but Christ, what's the likelihood of that?) I also think there's a yearning on the part of women to be "taken". For all the glorifying of the single life, I believe the vast majority of women still ultimately desire the comfortable confines of marriage, family, and something called a "home" (not just a swanky midtown apartment). For that matter, I'd say the same applies to men. You live alone for awhile, being "owned" starts to look like not such a terrible alternative.

Well, I could go on, but I've no doubt that I've already said enough to start several enthusiastic fights. Let's be polite in our outraged screaming, all right?