Spanking Parties

[web-ed]

Most spankos do not get all the spanking action they crave. The lucky ones are in happy, long-term spanking relationships, or are so young and good-looking they can convince most "vanillas" of the opposite sex to play with them, or are free to travel around the country to the various spanking parties where they always seem to be able to find plenty of suitable play-partners, but there are many among us who are, for instance, married to a "vanilla" spouse and don't get to go to parties. I can certainly empathize with this group, but while understanding their frustration, in this post I would like to describe what is a rather different problem, namely, Spanking Party Burn-Out.

I don't know what year the first spanking party of any kind took place, but they've probably been around for decades (a 1967 issue of Eye has an article on "London's Spanking Parties"). If we confine ourselves to widely-publicized events, however, I think they only go back about 20 years (the first Chicago Crimson Moon party was 1993; I'm not sure what year the first Shadow Lane party was). Like most of the people who got into the party scene during the 90's, I found it unbelievably exciting at first . I hadn't spanked anyone for years (this was of course before I had CSR and started meeting people that way), so I had plenty of built-up spanking energy, plus being unmarried I hoped I might find a compatible woman. Also, I was still a young man (though just barely) and because of that I certainly found women prepared to play. And I did have some good spanking experiences - where but at a party would you find so many women willing to go over your knee or to bend over for swats? But eventually, the party experience began to pale for me, and for some others as well, although certainly not all party veterans feel that way.

What happened? For one thing, the women I most enjoyed playing with stopped coming to Crimson Moon for one reason or another, making it difficult to find play-partners. I didn't go to other parties (except the 2001 Shadow Lane party in Palm Springs) because they were all a long way from Chicago. As for that 2001 SL party, I found that most people tended to break up into little private parties in someone's room, leaving little chance to meet people in the party room. To those who say "You've got to network before the party" I find that's easier said than done - and isn't the whole point of a party to function as a mixer anyway? By 2006, I was playing so little at the parties I had to ask myself why I was even bothering any more.

Now it is certainly true that your gender and orientation will affect just how much in demand you will be at a party. If you are female, then regardless of whether you're a Top or a Bottom, you WILL find men eager to play with you. If you are a male Top as I am, it won't be that easy, and if you're a male Bottom you may have one hell of a hard time finding ANY female to Top you. But lack of play-partners isn't the only factor leading to Spanking Party Burn-Out.

We were all so eager back in the 90's, bursting with pent-up spanking desires, and those of us who were not yet middle-aged could dream of finding someone to spend their lives with. But that isn't easy under any circumstances, and what I found was that confining your mate-search to spankos only makes it tougher - after all, you've now eliminated the 99% of the opposite sex that isn't into spanking! Running through dozens or hundreds of spanking partners seemed like kind of a dead-end somehow - we played and played and played, and it wasn't new any more, and their seemed less and less point to it all.

I've attended only two parties in the last three years, and I don't know if I'll ever attend another. There are some who just continue to attend several parties per year and never seem to tire of it, and some who are completely frustrated because they've got zero spanking action and would probably very much like to try a party if they could, but while both groups might find this difficult to understand, Spanking Party Burn-Out is very real.

Although I concentrated on Burn-Out in this post, this topic is for any thoughts you might have about spanking parties - your own experiences, questions about what it's like to go to one, whatever. Don't be shy - post your opinions or questions right here!

Next day update: see separate post below for more information on where the 99% figure came from.

[daneldorado]

Hiya Web-ed... Thanks for your very interesting article about "Spanking Party Burnout." It's illuminating to learn about someone else's experiences in this tantalizing arena.

I've only been to the Shadow Lane spanking parties, but I went to quite a few. Their first was held in 1991, at a hotel in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles. You are quite right, when you say that

"I found that most people tended to break up into little private parties in someone's room, leaving little chance to meet people in the party room. To those who say "You've got to network before the party" I find that's easier said than done - and isn't the whole point of a party to function as a mixer anyway? By 2006, I was playing so little at the parties I had to ask myself why I was even bothering any more."

At that first SL party in 1991, I got lucky when I was selected to spank the blonde and glorious Jennifer Brooks, who was at the time the number one "catch" through the many videos in which she appeared. Jennifer later launched a series of F/M videos, and it appears that this may be the configuration she is most comfortable with. But in 1991, she was over my knee, taking a series of swats that almost took the skin off my hand, to her near-naked derriere. She was, and probably still is, an enormously "game" girl.

At later SL parties, I would often spend the evening just watching others "play." And I'm not complaining. It is great fun to watch a beautiful girl getting spanked, and there was certainly a lot of that, at these parties. One year, I got to spank Janice Gold, another semi-famous spankepreneur (is that a word?) who published some spanking mags and also some videos. There were others.

But, being married to a vanilla girl who is nevertheless understanding about my fetish, I never dared to "date" a spanko girl to take to these parties. And, as you say, it gets boring after awhile, since more and more cliques were forming, to spank behind closed doors, away from where most of the guests were hanging out.

In another part of your message, you suggest that 99 per cent of all females are NOT into spanking. Counselor, I think you are assuming facts not in evidence. Can you cite a legitimate study that confirms that figure? Or is your evidence anecdotal? Please, don't take offense. You are the webmaster of the most popular spank site on the Internet... so, I assume you have some rational basis for that 99 per cent figure. I'm just trying to figure out what it is.

In my teens and twenties, I spanked a lot of girls who were not generally known as being "into" it... but when I put them over my knee, most of them did not seem to mind. I suspect some of them were spankos without realizing it.

Cheers,
Dan

[web-ed]

In another part of your message, you suggest that 99 per cent of all females are NOT into spanking. Counselor, I think you are assuming facts not in evidence. Can you cite a legitimate study that confirms that figure? Or is your evidence anecdotal? Please, don't take offense. You are the webmaster of the most popular spank site on the Internet... so, I assume you have some rational basis for that 99 per cent figure. I'm just trying to figure out what it is.

In my teens and twenties, I spanked a lot of girls who were not generally known as being "into" it... but when I put them over my knee, most of them did not seem to mind. I suspect some of them were spankos without realizing it.

Cheers,
Dan

Every time I think I should explain or qualify something I put in a post and then decide against it, I always regret it, and so it is with my 99% figure for non-spankos. (And no offense taken, by the way Dan - you're quite right to question it). In the context of a post on spanking parties I decided it wasn't worth a footnote, and that was a mistake. The truth is that there is no study that validates this figure, or any other figure when it comes to spanking. I wish there were! In vain have I searched for reliable statistics on our spanking interest to use in my research on the psychology of spanking. Some surveys have been taken, but the problem is that the samples either fail to be random or fail to be taken from the general public, or both. I think that this is because while psychological studies of various fetishes, or paraphilias, have been done, up to now no one has made a serious study of spanking only. What we need (and don't have) is something like a Gallup poll, where average citizens are asked over the phone if they have any interest in spanking, plus follow-up questions if they are.

My figure of 1% refers to true spankos, people who had a definite interest in spanking going back at least to adolescence and probably earlier. It is only my estimate, based on observation, and has no statistical validity beyond that. I have used it as a rule of thumb in the absence of a more reliable figure. I quite agree with you that more than 1% of women will accept a spanking and even like it to some degree. I spanked a number of women in my youth - but then again (and I say this without vanity), I was a rather good-looking young man, and good-looking young men can get women to do a great many things. (Of course they should not misuse anyone, but that's another subject).

The percentage of women who will accept a good spanking every now and again is much higher than 1% - it may well be as high as 10 - 12% (this is an estimate based on a survey I read years ago that 25% of young couples had experimented with spanking). But they are not all "true" spankos who had a strong interest early in life. The percentage that will accept a very light spanking is even higher - probably at least 25% - but again, I wouldn't classify most of them as "true" spankos.

Once again, we brush up against the necessity of distinguishing between those who had the spanking interest early in life and those who developed it in adulthood, possibly through experimentation with a spanko partner. Actually, now that I think about it, while this distinction is important in trying to untangle the psychological origins of the fetish, it was a lot less important in the context I used it (finding a compatible mate). The spanko should be probably content to find someone who has a good interest in spanking even if not quite as strong as his.

So let's clarify: if you search for a mate from among spankos only, you are eliminating a large proportion of the opposite sex, even if it's not as large as the 99% figure I used.

[samantha]

I can't imagine any scenario where I'd ever actually go to a spanking party, but I am curious about this idea. What actually happens there? Do people really spank each other in public? For real? This happens at a hotel, no? Do the hotel employees know what is going on? I can just imagine the conversations between the staff! And from the spankees perspective, wouldn't they get too sore after one or two trips over the knees of a spanker? And the noise?! I am surprised that things like this aren't held in people's homes instead by private invitation, via online relationships....but I suppose that could become a privacy issue, so I suppose that could pose a problem.

[web-ed]

I can't imagine any scenario where I'd ever actually go to a spanking party, but I am curious about this idea. What actually happens there? Do people really spank each other in public? For real? This happens at a hotel, no? Do the hotel employees know what is going on? I can just imagine the conversations between the staff! And from the spankees perspective, wouldn't they get too sore after one or two trips over the knees of a spanker? And the noise?! I am surprised that things like this aren't held in people's homes instead by private invitation, via online relationships....but I suppose that could become a privacy issue, so I suppose that could pose a problem.

• Yes, people really spank each other in public (in certain designated areas only) as well as private.
• Yes, it happens at a hotel. Years ago, Leilani and I used to try to figure out alternative venues such as rental halls, but there were problems with every idea we came up with. It would be a little hard to keep things quiet from the Knights of Columbus or other such group, for instance.
• Do the hotel employees know what is going on? At least some of them do. One time, I wondered if the pretty young desk clerk who checked me in understood exactly what "Crimson Moon" was - she said something about the portable heater behind the desk keeping her warm. Almost certainly some staff do not. I must say that the wait staff at the 2001 Shadow Lane Party in Las Vegas behaved themselves beautifully, pretending not to notice when spankings were taking place in the main banquet hall!
• And from the spankees perspective, wouldn't they get too sore after one or two trips over the knees of a spanker? - Experienced Subs at a party learn to pace themselves, allowing some time (say 30 minutes or so) between spankings. Also, they might not play as hard at a party as they would in a different setting. I remember at one young lady's first party, she had two or three spankings, and then I introduced her to the benefits of bent-over paddling. She was pretty resilient and didn't complain, but I believe she really felt the effects the next day !
• And the noise?! I am surprised that things like this aren't held in people's homes instead by private invitation, via online relationships. The noise is a real problem - you can hear any form of spanking except caning right through a hotel room's door, making it vital that the party folks have an entire block of rooms dedicated to them and away from everyone else. Years ago, Crimson Moon "lost our lease" at a certain establishment because of this problem, although it was really their fault for not isolating us completely. My take was that they were too greedy to fill every available room rather than being satisfied with the increased occupancy rate that CM provided. The result was that somebody saw something he shouldn't have, and that was it for us at that hotel.
• Private homes - such parties do exist, of course, and they're a good idea, but you can see the problems:
  1. They must be hosted either by single people or by mature couples whose children are grown. Even then, you have to have adequate spanking space. I don't have parties at my house because the basement would have to be remodeled first, although I could perhaps have a very small party in the rest of the house.
  2. Space limitations mean such parties must be small. We often had well over 100 people at the CM parties, and they came from all across the country.
  3. Online relationships, a/k/a "networking", are easier said than done. There are all kinds of online groups, but very few of them host any parties. Of course, people can and do meet on a 1-to-1 basis, but that entails more risks for the woman than a party does because men at a party are all known to the group's leaders - you never throw an "open" party where anyone can just show up for both safety and legal reasons. Also, in a party setting, the woman can look over all the prospective male spankers and decide by whom she wishes to be spanked (she's sure to have a choice).

[web-ed]

I'm supposed to be the fount of all knowledge when it comes to Chicago Spanking, but I must admit I don't have the answer to this question, even though the first Chicago spanking party I ever attended was given by the Chicago Spanking Society back in 1997.


Since this was sixteen years ago now I've redacted certain details even though they weren't exactly secret.

What I know is that CSS was founded by some former members of Crimson Moon. I didn't see the advertisement above, which was taken from Jennifer Brooks' Behind the Scene #17, and of course the internet was still in its early days at this time. I found out about CSS through a prospective play partner I had contacted through Shadow Lane - I never knew her real name, but she sent me a hand-written letter (again, this was before email became universal) giving me their contact information, and soon I had been invited to their next party. As I remember, this was the June 1997 one listed on the advertisement above.

The first spanking I gave at the party was to one of its organizers, a woman who intended only to Top the whole weekend but who agreed to take one spanking at the beginning of the first night. Nervous as I was, I nonetheless volunteered for the job and was soon smacking away on her bare bottom in front of a goodly number of people. (I've often Topped female Tops since, and I've always liked it - it's the alpha male thing, you know !) I must admit I was somewhat embarrassed by the presence of so many people there - and I was the one giving the spanking! I don't think I gave too many other spankings that weekend, but I had a very comfortable suite at the hotel and I did give one excellent paddling (with my wooden platform tennis paddle) to a very wonderful spankee whom I still remember fondly .

What happened after that was rather strange. I was unable to attend the next major party for some reason, and after that I never heard from CSS again. They were mentioned on a spanking website whose name I have now forgotten - perhaps they're listed there still - but I always believed they must have become defunct shortly after that. Perhaps the financial side was too difficult to manage, or perhaps they had trouble finding a kink-friendly hotel, or perhaps it was too much trying to compete for out-of-town spankos with Crimson Moon (which I joined shortly afterwards). Running a spanking party is a difficult business - when Vince was still alive and running Crimson Moon, Leilani and I used to try to figure out ways to make things easier for him, but all of our ideas were too difficult in practice to do any good.

So if anyone out there reading this knows the fate of the old Chicago Spanking Society, please join this board and let us all know what happened - I've always wondered.

[web-ed]

When I started this topic nearly nine years ago, I was already suffering from what I termed "Spanking Party Burnout" and while that is not the precise subject of today's post, I'm wondering if the phenomenon might be widespread enough to explain the situation I'm about to describe.

When spanking parties got started nearly thirty years ago they were something new and exciting, and yet for me less than ten years after I started attending them in 1997 the bloom was off the rose for reasons I explained in that initial post. Now that could have just been me, but Richard Windsor has written about SPB over on his blog also and we must now consider whether Spanking Party Burnout has afflicted other people besides myself, Richard, and Dan (see his own post on this topic). We can begin by inquiring into the state of spanking parties today. Let's consider two developments I've known about for some time but have been too busy to relate here:

1. Chicago Crimson Moon, which was founded in 1993, has officially been dissolved. That means no more spanking parties in Chicago.
2. I have received reports that other well-known (out of Illinois) spanking parties have devolved into events dominated (in a double sense) by pro dommes.

So what happened to Crimson Moon? Mike must have retired from planning the parties (he was basically irreplaceable in that role), but whether he got tired of it or whether the attendance was too low to maintain the parties I no longer remember. Either way, it means there just wasn't enough interest to sustain what had been one of the country's largest spanking organizations. (Yes, the Wuhan Virus panic and the State Governor's insane overreaction in 2020 didn't help, but something deeper had been going on for some time).

And for the other parties? Well, back in the day the party attendees were dominant males, whose numbers had to be limited, and submissive females. Yes, female tops and male subs were present, but they were a small minority. To be reduced to male subs and pro dommes, something must have happened to the male tops and female subs just as with Crimson Moon.

What can explain this? If it was widespread Spanking Party Burnout among the older generation we would have to conclude that younger people - the next generation of spankos who couldn't possibly be burned out at their tender age - was simply not interested in meeting new people for spanking purposes. What that would mean for the future of adult spanking is pretty ominous, and we'll consider it another time.

And if it wasn't Spanking Party Burnout? What else could explain a declining interest in spanking social groups? Economic factors, perhaps? If there are any other suggestions or analyses, please post them here.

[jesseray]

I suspect in many cases folks got married and parties simply became memories.
My wife see's it as foreplay and not much beyond that....and her level of jealousy would stymie any
kind of participation. So parties as well as producing spanking product has ended in my case.

Ray

[bigwily]

I found the Spanking Parties posts to be most interesting. My curiosity into spanking dates back to my childhood while watching McClintock then giving a playful spanking to my my sitter. She was about 19 and I was 11 or 12. My first and only spanking party was Shadow Lane in 2007 at the Stardust in Vegas. I have been single for 21 years and I was 50 when I attended this party. It was quite true that there were several people who knew each other, but I found it rather easy to mingle and spanked 4 women that weekend and enjoyed viewing several other scenes. The 4 private play scenes that i enjoyed were all memorable as the bottoms were all active participants. During my last 20+ years of dating it's been my experience that about 50% of women or greater are open to spanking while a muck lower % are true spankers. I'd love to attend another party in future!

[web-ed]

I found the Spanking Parties posts to be most interesting. My curiosity into spanking dates back to my childhood while watching McClintock then giving a playful spanking to my my sitter. She was about 19 and I was 11 or 12. My first and only spanking party was Shadow Lane in 2007 at the Stardust in Vegas. I have been single for 21 years and I was 50 when I attended this party. It was quite true that there were several people who knew each other, but I found it rather easy to mingle and spanked 4 women that weekend and enjoyed viewing several other scenes. The 4 private play scenes that i enjoyed were all memorable as the bottoms were all active participants. During my last 20+ years of dating it's been my experience that about 50% of women or greater are open to spanking while a much lower % are true spankers. I'd love to attend another party in future!

Thanks for sharing your experiences, Bigwily, and my apologies for being so far "behind" that I'm just getting to your post now. As everyone knows, I've had a rotten time of things the past few years and it's been all I could do to keep the lights on at CSR and do one or two posts per week on the main site. I'd like to address some of the interesting things you had to say:

1. Congratulations on being able to give a spanking to your baby sitter ! That's something a lot of us would have liked to do but I'll bet very few of us could claim to have equalled your feat. At the age of eight I was able to impress my sitter by taking the back off the TV set and fixing it (I was always a technically-minded lad), but she didn't offer to let me spank her as a reward - drat!
2. I'm going to take a guess that your experience with the 2007 Shadow Lane party differed from Dan's and mine at the SL parties we attended because it took place in Las Vegas instead of Palm Springs, although it's possible that you possess great interpersonal skills (I'm still wondering how you managed to spank that 19-year-old baby sitter). Vegas is, after all, a pretty uninhibited place and perhaps something of that atmosphere loosened up some of the female attendees there a little more. On the other hand, Palm Springs is a nice place to visit (it's too expensive to live there!) but it's more like a retirement community than the BDSM capital of California, and "What happens in Palm Springs can't be expected to stay in Palm Springs".
3. So, you've found that 50% of women are open to taking a spanking? That's very interesting. I couldn't take a personal survey during my dating years for complicated reasons (part of it is that for about 15 years I was only looking to date among the spanko community, a group not representative of the general female population) but I remember a poll of young couples which claimed that 25% of them had at least experimented with spanking. I can see now that I should not have drawn the inference from that poll that 25% of women would take a spanking under the right circumstances because I neglected to consider that unwilling male partners might be holding half the women back! After all, unwilling-to-spank males are a pretty foreign concept to us eager-to-spank males at CSR!
   
   In fact, though, your 50% number jibes with the 25% of couples figure: if 50% of males and 50% of females are willing to try out spanking, then forming couples at random would yield 25% of the couples with both partners willing and who then presumably went ahead and applied some heat to the seats of the females!
4. I'm going on too long as usual, so I'll address your last point in a separate post just below.

[web-ed]

Bigwily's last remark was that he would like to attend another spanking party in the future. Enough time has elapsed that my bitter disappointment with past spanking parties has lessened somewhat and perhaps I wouldn't mind attending another one myself, but I think that at the present moment in time it is not likely we'll see an upsurge in large parties. That is so because:

1. The social retardation of younger generations continues apace. On those rare occasions I'm actually out in the world, say at a bar or restaurant (I don't drink alcohol and don't eat out much because of dietary restrictions), I see younger people (below 40, say) sitting near each other but not talking because they're too busy twiddling around with their toys (i.e. "smart" phones). They spend all their time on social media rather than actually socializing. That problem is only going to get worse with the generation that was cruelly and needlessly locked out of schools by the Covid panic. (Healthy children had close to zero chance of suffering death or serious illness from Covid-19). Younger people lack and are probably going to continue to lack the necessary social skills to attend anything as socially demanding as a spanking party.

2. Spanking parties cost money and the economy is in the tank. Not only must there be some sponsoring organization with financial resources up front (you need to be incorporated and have insurance if you're going to throw a large spanking party), the attendees must be able to afford travel and hotel expenses. We're teetering on the brink of recession now, government's attempt to fudge the GDP numbers to make itself look better notwithstanding, and there's no reason to expect things to improve any time soon. Real disposable income is down by the largest amount since the Great Depression of the 1930s, meaning that ordinary folks can't afford to traipse around the country attending spanking parties. (I drove about 3000 miles to attend the 2001 Shadow Lane party - it was combined with another trip - but I couldn't think about doing that today).

3. Finally, with things going so badly - America today is in the worst shape it's been in my entire lifetime and I believe the same could be said of Canada, Western Europe, and maybe Australia and New Zealand as well - I think most of us really aren't even in the mood for spanking parties right now. Again, the very wealthy might not feel that way, and they can also still afford travel and hotel bills, but that sure ain't most of us!

I guess that leaves the possibility of small spanking parties held at private homes, and I'd like to be able to host one but I simply don't have either the space or the single lifestyle any more. And even if I did, it would only benefit people in the greater Chicago area. I suppose what we spankos need is a socializing force outside of traditional social media such as Twitter and Facebook, but I can't imagine what that would be. The "kink" alternatives I know about don't seem to have been very successful at all, perhaps because they were overrun by what I'd call a bunch of wankers and wannabees.