Photo by Flickr user robotclaw. Used under a Creative Commons license.

A reader with the pen name Slap Unhappy asked Em & Lo for advice with the following situation.

My wife and I have been together just over five years. The other night while having sex, she asked me to slap her in the face. Repeatedly. I was raised not to lay a hand down on a woman, and now I am being asked to. We are pretty active and broad in our sexual tastes, but this one is kind of weird to me. Thoughts, ideas?

– Slap Unhappy

Source: Em & Lo

First of all, I recommend reading E&L's response, which is both informative and thoughtful.  But the question brings up another dimension that I don't think is explored often enough.

Back in the late 1970s or early 1980s I ended up breaking up with someone early in a relationship because she wanted me to slap her. It just totally freaked me out. A few years later I was really freaked out when a partner told me she was terribly turned on by spanking.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know about BDSM. In fact I’d done a fair amount of bondage and coercion role-playing. But neither of those partners had seemed the least bit interested — they’d just had previous partners who’d done it to them and they’d discovered they liked it.

My loss in retrospect, and of course theirs too.

What I didn’t understand at the time, and it’s really important for Slap Unhappy too, is that boundaries and respect for boundaries are really important not just to protect the sub, and in more gendered terms they’re not there just to protect the woman.

You’re absolutely right that, especially when we’re turned on, people can withstand far more “impact” than their partners may be psychologically or even physically comfortable giving. (Psychologically as in Unhappy’s and my case where hitting someone went against ingrained upbringing. And physically it often hurts one’s hand more to spank someone than it hurts the spankee’s bottom.)

So anyway, while it might be Unhappy’s partner’s wildest turn on to be slapped, if it’s a turn-off for him then she needs to a) recognize that it’s a boundary issue for him, b) negotiate to see if there’s a way to make him comfortable enough to consent, and if not then c) respect his boundary and his decision not to participate.

Oh, and possibly if he goes ahead anyway then she may also need to d) help work with him through what I’m going to call potential “top drop” afterwards. Because what he might agree to try he might still be bummed about after.

Bottom line: We don’t usually think of boundaries and consent as moving in the direction of the top, or in heterosexual relationships as working towards the man. But boundaries are boundaries and consent is consent and when they’re confronted it’s important that they be respected regardless of who’s boundaries they are or who’s consent is required.

It’s always ok to say no.

Quote of the day from Holly of The Pervocracy

Cosmo suggested that to get kinky and taboo, I could wear sexy lingerie or give him an oil massage or—so very naughty—pretend we were strangers. Drew rolled up the magazine and spanked me with it.

She said it here.

Finally, a non-humiliating use for that @*%!#$ magazine. Because while nobody has to be kinky and taboo, if you’re going to you probably don’t want to try any direct method Cosmopolitan (or it’s insecurit-industry brethren like Details for men) tend to suggest. (I think even 50 years on Cosmo occasionally hints that woman-on-top is kinky and taboo.)

Anyway now that I’ve sort of aired out what it does and doesn’t mean, let’s look at a specific example SugarMag raised in the comment that prompted me to write this post:

[W]hat about the whole Christian husband spanking wife thing that has web sites that say “yeah ok it is kind of sexy but also biblical and good for the marriage, women really need to be spanked blah blah blah” and they say they are anti feminist (which seems pretty obvious).

This is one of those places where you can’t just pick up a “sex-positive” stick and start whacking way.

On the one hand there’s no question that receiving tapotement (as neutral a word for percussive stroking of the buttocks as I can find) turns on a lot of people, male and female. And for quite a few others, adding emotional, psychological, or historical/cultural/traditional elements adds to their and their partner’s appreciation. So even if tapotement (ok, spanking) isn’t your cup of tea there’s broad but not universal agreement that if it’s between adults who consent for mutual erotic gratification then it’s consistent with sex positivity.

On the other hand there are a couple of other sort of warning signs. Using tradition and, especially, gendered power/hierarchy traditions to cover up the “ok it is kind of sexy” suggests that it would be wrong to instead request to spank or to be spanked for plain old sexual arousal. That crosses the shame boundary and therefore isn’t consistent with sex-positivity.

Furthermore, making a universal judgment that all women “need to be spanked” for “biblical” purposes (yeah, like the Bible’s clear about that) is inconsistent.

Two other principles (no controlling another’s sexuality, gender-free perspective) with the idea that it’s a gender necessity for all male partners to control all female partners. That pretty much all such groups forbid women from spanking men is another inconsistency with the sex-positive tenet of gender-free perspectives.

And finally, there’s the huge point that claiming religious, moral, or traditional authority for the practice of husbands spanking their wives in order to “control” them collides massively with the sex-positive principle that everyone has the freedom to decline.

So while it’s not a clear-cut as “nope, it’s always wrong” or “it’s always right,” SugarMag provides a great example of how easy it can be to be “pro sex” without being “sex positive.”

I mentioned Goose and Gander in an earlier post admiring, among other things, the combination of sensuality and silliness they bring to their BDSM and multiple-partner sexual encounters.

Along those lines, then, I’d like to highlight a point Greta Christina makes about the way we too often treat sex as if it were a job interview, a surgical operation, a tournament round, or a church service…

The thing is, sex — both vanilla and kinky — can often feel so very serious, all fraught and intense and laden with meaning and consequence. And while that can be lovely, it can also be a burden, adding this lead weight of self-consciousness and anxiety that really doesn’t help the proceedings.

... in the course of just totally knocking two related issues out of the park: the negative connotations of spanking, and the embarrassment of being seen by others with “o-face” in a serious pean to silliness in sex.

But spanking is right on the border between the two. It’s just transgressive enough to make you feel like a freak — and it’s just un-transgressive enough to make you feel like a dork. You can beg your partner to beat you, or stand over them with a whip in your hand, and feel like an outlaw and a rebel. But it’s very hard to say “Please spank me” and not feel at least a little bit like a nerd. When you’re bent over someone’s lap with your pants pulled down, or caressing someone’s bare bum getting ready to give them a good smack, it can feel like a crowd of invisible vanilla people is standing alongside, cringing and saying, “Ew, gross, you’re into that?” — while a crowd of invisible sadomasochists stands next to them, rolling their eyes and saying, “Oh, puh-leez. Give me a break.” You get the silly feeling from both sides of the vanilla/pervert spectrum.

...

But that’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m talking about is the connection between silliness and playfulness. The fact that it’s hard to take spanking too seriously can create a certain freedom to simply enjoy it.

...

And when you come right down to it, any kind of sexuality can look pretty darned silly. When you think about any type of sex too closely and imagine what it might look like to visiting space aliens, it all can seem outrageously, mortifyingly ridiculous. Now, you can deal with the absurdity of sex by simply ignoring it and not letting it get to you. And there are times when that’s the right thing to do. But there are times when it’s completely appropriate to accept the absurdity, and revel in your inner dorkiness. And when you’re whipping yourself into a sexual frenzy by spanking a bare bottom or getting your own bottom spanked, that might be a good time to start.

She said it here.

To this day I’ve regretted never making the connection between various partner’s reactions to spanking-like activities, and I seriously regret (and someday hope to apologize) for sort of freaking out at the partners who hinted they’d get off on me spanking them. (This in the face of me being perfectly comfortable playing the top in sometimes quite heavy bondage games, sometimes with the same partners.) Anyway, Christina exactly gets to the root of why it’s not the big, or exotic, or even particularly kinky deal it’s often made out to be. (Mea culpa: that I too have made as big a deal out of as anyone else.)

As for how silly we look when we have sex? Particularly when compared to photographed or filmed media representations which are, by definition, dramatic reenactments rather than actual experience? Oh well, we’ve usually got a choice between looking good and feeling good. Me? Once you recognize where they’re coming from, the shift of sensation from cerebrum to brain stem, the shift from facial expression to body expression? My, my that kind of “silly” looking is about as sexy looking as we can be.