Tenderbutts and Domestic Discipline

There is a phenomenon in domestic discipline I’ve wanted to write about for a long time now. I call that phenomenon: the Tenderbutts. If you haven’t met them yet you will. No, it’s not wives with very sensitive bottoms. It’s not even people who love a more sensitive brand of wife spanking. It is those in the field — usually women — who not only seem to have a very sensitive notion of discipline, if not a romance-novel notion of it, but also who demand that their brand of domestic discipline is the only REAL one. Anything much harsher than their kinder, gentler correction is outside of the practice of discipline, and into the field of bdsm. It must be shunned.

I don’t have a problem with couples who practice a lighter version of discipline. I don’t believe it will be fully effective, but if it works for them, I recognize that it is part of the variety that makes up domestic discipline. The practice naturally comes in many folds. However, I do have a problem with practitioners who — and I believe hypocritically — kick out of DD anyone who gives longer, harder, or more frequent spankings than occur in their household. They are wrongly defining discipline. They are also behaving like busybodies, and finding any problem in another’s practice they can, so that they can be right. They can protect the world from hard spankings.

A few things in common with tenderbutts: They tend to be pushy. They tend to play the victim game — as the secular world does — and claim the women will be mistreated if she receives anything harsher than their idea of a romance novel spanking. They seem obsessed with placing this or that person into the field of bdsm, just because they don’t agree with the firmness of spanking, or the less-than-gentle words spoken to the disciplined wife. They consider you a miscreant if you sexually train your wife. They communicate constant offense at all these things, and nearly live to be offended. If it smells like harsh discipline, they get offended.

As you can imagine I’d say, the tenderbutts really need to give it up. Perhaps they need a new hobby or something. Domestic discipline, for anyone who has read widely and at length about the field, includes those who are harsher and milder in the punishments, and a wide variety of practices are commonplace. That includes various instruments, leaving bruises on the bottom, the use of commands which need to be obeyed, and sometimes the blending of sex with submission. None of these are fringe practices, but are common. Yet in the tenderbutt world, even those practices which are characteristic of dd, which can be found in an abundance of homes, are too much like bdsm for their liking. They need to protect butts out there. And they have been offended. Very offended.

I would not consider forms of discipline to fall outside of marital discipline, and inside of bdsm, unless they met multiple requirements. They would be something far less common in dd. They would also be common, or characteristic of bdsm. I would see multiple of them. I also tend to link the more extreme end of punishments, and punishments not given on the backside, with bdsm as well. But unless I saw multiple of those strong characteristics, I would not call something bdsm. That would be unrealistic and unfair. I might say it was harsher than usual. I might say a practice was more common in bdsm. But I would not try to claim the practice is not dd, or that the couple who use it don’t practice dd. It ends up grasping at straws unless you see multiple clear characteristics of the bdsm world. I used to have a number of friends in that world, and feel I can sense it character, and I’m also familiar with some of its common practices. In managing the website I occasionally keep out comments which are too heavily bdsm in character. I also edit others which enter the more extreme end of bdsm.

It is natural that there is some overlap between two fields which both use headship, obedience, and punishment. We should expect some overlap. However, the field-marshall aggressiveness of tenderbutts seems to imagine that there is some great barrier between them, or that they are entirely unlike. This is wrong. One will find they have similarities, including similarities in techniques, instruments, rituals. If we were to use the tenderbutt logic back on them, we would have to declare that they do not practice dd either. We would slice their particular lightweight variety right out of the fold, and define it as a separate discipline. We’d then have to give them some name for their more sensitive spanking predilection. We could call it DD “Lite” or something. We could define them alternately as compassionate conservatives, or erotic novel fans. Anything but DD. Just because they have their own, distinct variety. That would be the tenderbutt logic used back upon them. How comical it would be.

There’s also the sneakin’ suspicion, as we’ve seen already once on this website, that some who act like tenderbutts are privately AGAINST DD as a whole. They are just keeping that to themselves so they can sound credible when they criticize this or that practice, say how horrible it is, or compare it to bdsm. If they came out for what they really are, such criticism would be meaningless. The one who appeared on this site very quickly outed herself as a feminist, and a socialist to boot. I’m not saying this is NORMAL of tenderbutts, whom I conceive of as simply misguided and pretentious users of discipline. The average one does approve of male leadership and discipline, they just demand everyone bow down to their light-weight brand as the authentic one. It must be noted though, considering the language they sometimes use, and their hostility, that these more feminized denizens of the spanking world may be, underneath it all, nothing but feminists.

Lastly, I have to say this. Beyond calling men and women with these tendencies to repent, I want to say that a sensitive and romantic image of spanking is unrealistic in the first place. A wife does not get to control how much force goes into a swat on her behind. She does not get to decide how often she needs correction, or exactly how she will be spoken to. She is going to have to deal with firm words, and hard correction. Discipline in marriage does not involve coming home and stripping down and throwing yourself on your husband’s lap declaring: “I’m ready for my spanking now, honey. Give it to me good!” It’s not just there as foreplay to sex either. These attitudes can be counter-productive, since they pretend that the wife can be in control and that the wife’s desire of what discipline is like should be fulfilled. That’s wrong. Trying to fulfill all her desires is probably what got her in trouble in the first place! She needs to submit to her man, and accept a correction which she does not decide on. A spanking is for discipline, and it will hurt. It is generally not something you want to experience. That is not any extreme bdsm kind of attitude, but comes as normative to marital discipline. Some women like to write their own romance novel to imagine just what discipline will be like. But I assure you this: your fantasy will sizzle during a thorough and burning correction.