From Shame to Joy: A Chat with a Spanko Survivor of Purity Culture

Art by Louis Malteste

We spankos often experience shame over our fetish during our earliest years. We’re different in a way that feels intensely vulnerable, but it can take decades of fearful self-reflection to figure out why. I personally feared I was crazy. “What kind of person daydreams incessantly about violent, disciplinary, bottom-focused expressions of love?” 

My parents didn’t raise me to be religious, but I always knew my spanko journey would have been harder if they had. It’s scary enough exploring alternative forms of sexuality without all that talk of SIN floating about. 

My spanko pal Nikki, however, did grow up in that world. Her path to self-acceptance and belonging was an uphill battle she had to fight in the name of finding true salvation. In this post, she has hashtag-blessed us with her story. 

~*~

N: Thanks for having me on your blog, Sweet Tea!

T: It’s my pleasure, Nikki. You have a unique story and I appreciate you sharing it with us. I'd love to start by talking about your background. When and how did you realize you were a spanko?

N: Well, I’ve had obsessive thoughts about spanking since as long as I can remember, but it took me until I was 25 to really make sense of it. I was raised in a conservative evangelical community and grew up in purity culture, so it took me a lot longer than most people to make the connection that the obsessive thoughts I was having about spanking were connected to my sexuality. 

T: I can definitely relate to the "obsessive thoughts since forever" part.

N: Yup. So, it was during COVID that I really started questioning my faith and trying to understand these thoughts. Up until that point, what I was able to search on the internet was limited, but once I broke free from those restrictions, I discovered the term “spanko” for the first time and realized that’s what I am. For the first time, I felt like I had a language to articulate what it was I had been feeling my whole life, and I felt so validated finding out there were more people like me!

T: What happened during COVID that made you start questioning your belief system?

N: There had been a lot of little things building up in my life for a few years prior, which made me start thinking for myself and questioning what I’d been told to believe. I’ve heard a really good analogy that deconstructing your faith is like adding things to a shelf. Every time you have a doubt or question something, it goes on “your shelf.” Over time as you add more things, the shelf will eventually give out and break because it can no longer hold the weight. 

T: I love that analogy. I feel like it could apply to any collapse of cognitive dissonance. 

N: Well for me, I’d been adding to my “shelf” throughout college, but one of the biggest things that broke it was seeing how Christians responded to the pandemic. At Sunday school and church while I was growing up, I’d been told over and over to “Love like Jesus.” I was taught that Jesus wants us to care for the poor, sick, and marginalized. The Church had a real opportunity to demonstrate their faith by caring for and protecting their community. Instead, the majority of evangelicals were overly concerned about their “rights” and how they were being oppressed—just because they were asked to wear a mask and social distance. I felt betrayed. The people I looked up to as models of care, love, and protection ended up putting others in harm’s way because they were so concerned about their own discomfort. 

T: A lot of the Jesus fans certainly seem to have missed his whole message. 

N: Yeah, it made me realize how much evangelicals pick and choose things in scripture that are important to follow. They were very focused on how others were living their lives instead of how they were caring for others during a global pandemic. I was going regularly to church up until shelter in place happened, and after that, I never went back. 

T: I work with a few Christians who are embarrassed by the right-wingers in their communities, who don't want haters representing them as a whole.

N: I totally relate! When I was in that in-between phase of questioning, I felt like if I called myself a Christian, I would need to find a different term so I wouldn’t be associated with Christian Nationalists. There are some people who have deconstructed that call themselves Progressive Christians.

T: Yeah! Jesus was a progressive dude, so that fits. 

N: There do seem to be a lot of us millennials who have felt let down by the church because we wholeheartedly believed in what they taught us about loving and caring for those in need, and those who are different from us. Then when we grew up and did as they said, they called us “woke” or “libtards.” When a lot of us leave the church, we aren’t really denouncing the teachings of Jesus; we are following Jesus out the door, because we’re no longer able to live out the teachings of Jesus in the church. 

T: "Following Jesus out the door!" Amazing way of putting it. I think it's very brave that you walked away thanks to that true desire to care for others. Waking up from a warped belief system is scary.

N: Thank you! It was definitely scary, and there was a lot of grief in losing a community and everything I had known, but it helped that I discovered there was a spanko community at the same time. Instead of focusing solely on the loss, I was also gaining something beautiful and finally felt like I could be my authentic self, which was a huge relief.

T: So glad you eventually found better connections among spankos who accepted you for who you are. What did you find when you started looking for spanko stuff on the internet? Did you struggle with any feelings of it being "sinful"?

N: I did, yes, and that caused me a lot of shame for many, many years. The first time I looked up spanko content, I was 15 and had gotten my first iPhone. I grew up in an era where there was one family computer we all shared, and I was terrified of the thought that I would accidentally be discovered. 

T: I so relate to that fear! It was like in my house too. 

N: Yeah, getting caught was the worst thing I could imagine, so I didn’t start looking things up until I was able to do so in private. The first time I did, I remember feeling immense relief. I had been bottling these thoughts inside for so long and finally had an outlet. However, I started questioning if spanko content was “porn” and felt really guilty. I eventually told my pastor’s wife I was “addicted to porn,” which I now find hilarious—that was easier for me to say than bringing up the spanking thing. This resulted in years of “accountability” sessions that included having software installed on my phone, where church members would get a report of my internet search history emailed to them regularly. This lasted until I was 25. I felt SO much shame about being a spanko because they were telling me it wasn’t okay to have “impure” thoughts and I was sinning against God and betraying my future husband.

T: That is wild about the accountability software. It's way creepy when religious people obsess over the "impure" thoughts of others, but especially those of young people. You deserved the privacy to explore your sexuality.

N: Thank you for validating that. There are many things I grew up with that seemed so normal at the time, but now I realize how creepy and weird it was. I also never thought about me deserving the privacy to explore my sexuality. That just wasn’t allowed. It did feel great when I finally got the freedom to start exploring, but I remember thinking how behind I felt compared to most people. 

T: So how did you get past that shame of being a spanko and get those weirdos out of your search history?

N: The ironic thing is that I got over my shame of being a spanko through studying the Bible. There’s a verse that says, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139: 13-14). In conservative Christianity, we’re taught that if someone is anything other than heterosexual and vanilla, they’re choosing to sin and live outside of God’s will. However, as I got older and the feelings of being a spanko became overwhelming, I realized how wrong that thinking is. I did not choose this. It’s an innate part of me. I started thinking that if this isn’t a choice and I was born this way—but God doesn't make mistakes and He "knitted me in my mother's womb" and I am fearfully and wonderfully made"—then how is this a sin?

T: That makes sense to me. We certainly did not choose this. Whichever God is in charge of creation did this on purpose to a good number of us around the world.

N: That’s right. So right before Covid, when I was starting to add more things to “my shelf,” I had a falling out with the accountability partner who monitored my internet activity. Long story short, I started advocating for myself and drawing boundaries, and she didn’t like that. It was a very controlling relationship. That was when I took the opportunity to get that software off my phone and start looking up spanko things again, which is how I discovered this very wonderful world.

T: It’s great that you got yourself out of that situation. The older I get, the more "sacred" this fetish feels in my soul, like a gift that allows us to connect intimately with the primal workings of the Divine. 

N: I would agree. Something that surprised me was when I freed myself from the control of the Church and embraced who I was created to be as a spanko, was that I felt way closer to God (whatever God means) than ever before.

T: And if spanking is such a sin, how can Christians advocate for its use in corporal punishment? I think they mixed up the message God intended: do it in the bedroom consensually and leave them kids alone!

N: Ugh don’t even get me started about the corporal punishment conversation! So much hurt would be resolved if more people felt the freedom to be true to themselves and went to therapy! A classic example of this is James Fucking Dobson, who thankfully just died. The dude was sadistic as fuck and ruined so many evangelical millennial childhoods.

T: Here's to the death of all the assholes who get their jollies from harming children. 🥂 Won't be missed!

N: I'll give an Amen and a Hallelujah to that!

T: So what happened when you started looking up spanko stuff again? What did you see and how did it transform your relationship to your fetish?

N: I explored everything I could, pretty much, but was too scared to try to talk to anyone on the internet at first. Just looking things up didn’t satisfy my desires. I remember feeling like I was reaching my breaking point of overwhelming desires and I told my therapist at the time, “I have to do something. I don’t know what this is going to look like for me, but I have to take the first step.” 

T: I know that "breaking point" feeling. It hit me in my 20s when I couldn't suppress this stuff anymore. What was that first step for you?

N: I ended up reaching out to a professional. She was my first contact in the community and I felt safe because spanking was her business. After our first session, she introduced me to Fetlife, which I had never heard of before (because purity culture). So I made an account and here I am! My life completely changed. I started meeting awesome friends and play partners, joining online groups, and going to parties. I ended up moving out of my conservative hometown to a more progressive and accepting area where there is a spanko community.

T: And how did things progress once you started getting involved?

N: I was fortunate in that I met some pretty great people early on. I found an online group that made this feel normal and not creepy. It focused on us as people first, who all just happened to be spankos. That’s so important because it normalizes establishing relationships instead of just focusing on play. The first munch I went to, I remember feeling like I had known those people for a long time and that we were already best friends. It was surreal to me that the first thing they knew about me was something I used to see as a deep, dark secret. I find that bonds between spankos are powerful and sacred because most of us grew up feeling isolated and alone in this. Now as adults, we understand each other in ways most people never will.

T: Absolutely, surreal is the word and spanko bonds can be so special. How did it feel when you finally started playing in real life?

N: It felt amazing! Right before I played for the first time, I was so worried it wouldn't live up to the fantasies in my head, but that wasn't the case. I remember my first play session feeling so natural.

T: That’s great. When I started meeting other spankos, before I found balance in the scene, I went through a period of assuming I had more in common with certain people than I actually did. Like, "Wow, we share this fetish, we must be soulmates!" But that wasn't true in many cases. I find that the fetish, by itself, isn't enough for me to form the right connections these days. Did you go through a similar process of finding balance with the right people for you?

N: That’s a really good point. In the beginning, it’s exhilarating to find out there are others in the world like you, and in the beginning, I thought I would be besties with every spanko. But at the end of the day, we’re still people with different personalities and interests. As I spent more time getting to know people and meeting more people at parties, I developed my circle. These are the people in my life who, we just click. At first, we bonded over our fetish and the fact that we lived in the same area, but over time, we’ve become a close circle of friends, not just as spankos but in our vanilla lives as well. Everyone’s so funny and contributes to the group in different ways, and we’re there for each other when it matters. 

T: I love your story because the taboo thing that caused so much pain and confusion early on was the very same thing that brought clarity, healing, and true support into your life.

N: Yeah, thank you! I don’t believe in God in the same way that I used to (a magical white man in the sky), but I do believe the way that I’ve been able to form such close friendships with the spankos in my life is a miracle and an act of divine intervention.

T: It's a beautiful example of how this fetish can lay the breadcrumbs for the path to self-discovery, self-love, self-actualization—whatever you want to call it—once we pass through that darkness. I don't think I would have found "God" or my path to healing without the deep, spiritual urge to investigate this whole thing and figure out what my soul needed. I see a lot of those awakenings in our community.

N: I totally agree. It is a beautiful example of redemption, the way the thing that once brought me so much confusion and shame now brings me so much life and joy. If I weren’t a spanko, I’d probably still be living in my hometown, stuck in the same circle. I would have never met the people who have become my best friends, and I would probably be super lonely. Exploring this fetish has also made me into a better person. I’m now way more empathetic and accepting of other people because I understand firsthand what it is like to be born different in a world that expects conformity. My favorite thing about our community is that it’s a safe and accepting place to be your authentic self. This is so different from the community I grew up in, where acceptance was conditional. It’s been so healing to be in a community that provides spaces for me to discover my true self. As I’ve been friends with spankos for the past few years, I’m in awe at the way my friends and I have grown into more authentic versions of ourselves.

T: That’s hugely inspirational for any spankos still sitting on the fence about whether to seek out our kind or break away from shame-based systems. Again, I appreciate you sharing your story with us here, Nikki. Thank you for this lovely spanko chat.

N: Of course! Thanks for having me.

~*~

Such a testimonial to the power of self-love, no? The parts of ourselves we reject can become our greatest sources of inspiration and connection when we truly accept who we are. Cheers to all of you out there taking this journey alongside us. 

-T