I’ve had these links open on my Firefox browser for a couple of days now, since Caitlyn sent them to me.
Honestly, I’m not sure what to think here. It’s like the scary answer to the question, what if you crossed BDSM with a thread of Fundamental Christian ideology and rhetoric, wherein spanking became God’s will?
According to the tenets of Christian Domestic Discipline, the husband is the head of the wife as “Christ is the head of the church,” and because of that, discipline in the form of spanking and related forms of corporal punishment are a necessary inclusion in a marriage. The site cautions that husbands should warm up with lighter, less intense spanking, though the explanation doesn’t seem to preclude any pain or injury to the woman:
After a sufficient warm up you will be able to spank her with great intensity and a longer period of time, hence enforcing a proper punishment and the tears that are sure to flow….
If you spank with fast, hard swats you will cause her to cry, that is true, but you have failed to take into account what is truly needed. She needs and desires to submit to you and your decisions as her HOH, and by taking time to slow down the spanking and thoroughly punishing her she will find solace and be happier.
So it’s not just spanking and physical contact, but enforcing a relationship of domination and submission within Christian precepts.
There are several individual accounts of couples who find this structure in their relationship to be a good thing, who enjoy exploring submission and domination within the rhetoric that doing so is God’s will.
As Caitlyn, who brought the links to my attention, pointed out to me, the position on whether this is punishment and domination or a form of erotic play is unclear. In some of the sections of the website, the woman is not at all meant to enjoy it, and should be crying at the end. The male section underscores the need for an “authoritative” man who dominates and leads through that domination. The store affiliated with the movement sells crotchless pants and historically-influenced undergarments with secret kinky spots.
The people writing in the guestbooks and on blogs for this movement all seem to be indicating that their participation is voluntary, making the arrangement, superficially speaking anyway, consensual. And hey, if this is what turns you on, more power to you.
What truly disturbs me is the insight provided by the fiction affiliated with the Christian Domestic Discipline store, specifically, the Christian Domestic Discipline Spanking Romance Short Story Collection by Leah Kelley.
Kelley writes in her Author bio that she was inspired by Woodiwiss, Lindsey, and Scott, and enjoys creating “stories with strong heroes teaching and leading their feminine heroines as set up in the Bible. Men were never meant to be the wimps the world and the church have taught them to be. They were meant to lead their families, not be a joke to them…. That’s why I believe he has the right to spank his wife if need be.”
So based on a platform of inspiration that includes old-skool romance, spanking included, also potentially rape of the heroine, Kelley has written several short stories inspired by or operating within the CDD world. I’ll let the review speak for itself:
This book is not your average “spanking” romance; it is not a normal romantic, erotic, or Christian product, though it attempts to be all three. What this book is about is no more or less than men dominating women and beating them into submission, both spiritually and often physically….
The author claims the spanking of the wife is not domestic abuse, but it’s actually one of the worst kinds I’ve seen because it’s methodical and, worst of all, cloaked in a false cape of Christianity. In fact, if a man lost his temper and hit his wife (not punched her, but hit her) because he honestly forgot himself in the heat of anger, I’d find this LESS abusive than a man who methodically hits his wife because she displeased him. This author claims that the heroes in this book have “that edge, but it’s tempered with the knowledge that they love the heroines and just want what’s best for them”.
Clearly, this isn’t romance as I and many other readers have come to define it. The idea that the hero/husband must dominate the wife/heroine into accepting his world view, because he knows best and operates with total and complete authority over her, leaving her no autonomy and self-actualization… that sounds like an old-skool romance come to life, dipped in the glittery justification of Christianity and a literal interpretation of the Bible, and sold wholesale as a marital aid. My discomfort is immeasurable.
Am I really the only person who thinks this site is not for real? It was linked from Savage Love a few weeks back, and it just smacks of bizarre spoof to me. Or viral marketing ploy gone awry, or one person’s kink (recall daffodils and enemas) that they just HAD to share. Somehow I just can’t buy that there’s this whole teeming underworld of Christian spankers. Christian wankers, now that I’ll believe…
OMG, my spam word is “values73”. I… I have nothing to say.
Don’t know about these “good Christian” women, but I had a girlfriend who, after her dh knocked her around, got him drunk till he passed out, pinned him to the bed using a quilt and her kid’s diaper pins, and took a cast iron skillet to him, head to toe. Then she took the gun and every penny she could find and moved to the other side of town. Only after he attended counseling did she even consider getting back with him. He started to raise his hand just once, and she dead-eyed him and said “I still have that gun.”
It’s amazing the amount of self-control a sentence like that can inspire in a man.
I hope it’s a spoof. Nothing can make a woman go atheist faster than religion saying it’s ok for a man to strike his wife in the name of da lawd.
I mean obviously this is just a specific Christian group that is into a little spanking, but justifying this as a Christian right traps young men and women raised by these believers into thinking that women are subservient to men.
I am beyond angry.
This is exactly the type of twisting of the Christian philosophy that keeps women from becoming leaders in many Christian faiths. Regardless of how far we come, certain passages from the Bible will always keep us at the bottom.
I am sickened.
I’m a little disturbed by those of you who think the women that stay with these men are stupid. When you are brainwashed into a certain belief all our life, its damn hard to believe the complete opposite and leave the faith. Look at women in cults. Religious fanatics (men as well as women) believe whatever bullshit is fed to them by their own religion. If its hard enough for a non-fanatic woman to leave an abusive spouse, think how much harder it is when your God is telling you that only by submitting to the abuse will you get into Heaven. We are all so enlightened these days that some blame the victims for not getting help. Just keep your compassion and remember-you aren’t in their shoes.
I am glad to see that so many here are clear that this bunch does not represent the greater population of Christians in the world.
Every group has its batshit insane whack jobs. This one apparently takes the whacking part more literally than most, twisting selected bits of the scriptures to further an agenda.
Somewhere in that swamp there is a guy who couldn’t get his dick up without hurting someone, and somehow he found a partner to go along with him on it.
Trouble is, he decided to “share.”
Squick.
I came across these weirdos last year sometime and am still boggling about it. Every part of me screams “wrong, so wrong!” I mean, hey, do whatever you wanna do in the privacy of your own home, as long as it’s all consensual, but when you bring it out into the light of day, slap a sign on it and call it “God’s Will”, you’ve taken it beyond kink.
I was going to spew all over the comment thread, but Cathy said it all:
Word.
Crystal Lutton wrote an article about the history of spanking & the church that some of you might find interesting: http://aolff.com/?p=121
Quote: In fact, the well-known saying “spare the rod, spoil the child” is not the wording found in any of the “rod verses” in the Bible. Instead it is a line from the Samuel Butler satirical poem “Hudibras” that ridicules the Victorian lifestyle. The very line today used to condone and even endorse the modern practice of spanking was originally penned to criticize and ridicule that same practice.
KimberlyD, thank you. I wasn’t quite sure how to articulate what I was thinking, and you did a great job of doing it for me.
When you’re trapped in a situation like this and you can’t let yourself listen to other opinions because they’ll “lead you to the devil” and thus you’ll be condemned to burn for all eternity…then anything, up to and including being beaten by your husband, is tolerable if it means you’ll be saved. These women shouldn’t be blamed for being trapped in a miserable life of fear, knowing nothing else, and they shouldn’t be considered stupid, either.
Ewww. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth after reading that.
Sorry, but that just sounds like outright subjugation and abuse to me. What makes it doubly repulsive is its wrapped up in religious ribbon that basically says “God wants me to beat the crap out of you, dear. It’s the right thing, the Christian thing to do.”
Our church is about as conservative as it gets (I have friends who homeschool, wear head coverings, etc.) but I can’t imagine anyone would think of this as being God’s will—or having anything to do with a husband’s being head of the household. What spouses do for fun is up to them, but in all my years of hearing about how a Christian family is supposed to operate, not once have I heard that a husband is supposed to “discipline” his wife. This is utterly bizarre.
I’d just love to see these people and Gorean lifestylers mix it up. Real Encyclopedia Dramatica material, it’d be.
I appear to be the one to have thrown out the word ‘stupid’. I can see KimberlyD and Vyc’s point. Those ladies are raised to be subservient and to fear God, their father and then their spouse and His (their) retribution. I can see where that would make it hard to leave or challenge (because you’d get beat for that too).
When I looked at that site the first time (it is blocked on my computer right now because my 13 y/o son has discovered porn) it had interviews with the ladies that were being spanked. They rationalized it. I’m sorry, but my visceral reaction to that was my coarse ‘stupid’.
In more rational times, I understand that they are victims of their upbringing, previous abuse or religion. That does not change my very first reaction.
When I read stuff like this, it makes anything to do with Christianity embarrassing. Why do people feel the need to take the Bible and screw with it, thereby making it come across as something it was NEVER meant to be?
And after reading that super sweet post from the guy trying to impress his new girlfriend on a shoestring budget…I just want to throw up.
What Caty M and Shiloh said.
It’s called taking a Bible verse out of context. That verse was never meant to say anything near what these people are saying it says. I’ll save you the Bible School theology lesson *smiles* but let me just say that my hubby has a B.A. in Biblical Studies and he wouldn’t hit me EVER. He wouldn’t even think of it.
Ugh. I hate it when people use the name of Christianity to justify their craziness.
It doesn’t from where I’m sitting. I’m not going to feel embarrassed or ashamed because a bunch of fools going make claims that are nothing but nonsense.
This is very interesting. I kind of have a question, and hopefully someone can explain this to me, because it’s really bugging me.
The same as quoted above can be said for the man, too, who beats the wife. He’s been taught that he has to be strong, he has to be the head of the house, he has to administer the discipline, or he’s not a man/not doing right by his wife/not following God’s Law. Is he also, then, not to be blamed? Because the idea really bothers me, of that being the case.
Honestly Willa, I do see the men as being victims of their upbringing. Do I see them as being the same kind of victims as the women? No. Causing someone pain should set off all kinds of warning bells in a man’s head. But those men are products of the hate sown by their priests and fathers (or whomever taught them this behavior). I think they should have some moral compass inside that points to “WRONG!” but I do also pity them their childhoods if this was all they experienced.
Ulrike, I’m not sure where that site is getting its information from, but there’s no way that Samuel Butler could have been talking about the Victorians in Hudibras, considering he lived in the 18th century, not the 19th. So, I like the point, I guess, but that mistake….just, OMG ::sigh::
Every story belongs to both author and reader. Once it is gone from the author’s hands, the author has little control as to how the reader reads it. This is equally true for the Christian Bible.
In more charitable moments, I pity these folk, trapped in such a twisted reality that they are so easily tortured by either their own sexuality or their religious leaders’ sexuality that they end up twisting their lives around justifying it.
In less charitable moments, I remember that these kinds of people almost always actively recruit, and in some cases have *very* organized hierarchies that seem to have a gift for funneling extensive quantities of money into the pockets of their leaders, which then goes towards twisting more of the outside world to fit their warped worldview, invariably trampling my rights as a citizen and a human being who owns her own damn hangups and is perfectly fine with her own damn kinks…and my charitable feelings fly out the window.
Quite frankly, I’d rather hang out with furries than “Christian” Domestic Discipliners.
You had me at spanking, lost me at punishment, and completely lost me at christian. I’m not religious, but obviously these people are using their religion to give reason for their sick fantasies. Hopefully they live a sad and lonely life where any woman with a lick of sense (christian or no) would stay at least a hundred yards away from them. I’m hoping the testimonials are about as truthful as the penthouse letters.
I’m trying to think of non-religious romance (specifically geared to the non-religious), and now I kinda want to see a Church of FSM romance with the wife spanking the husband because she’s making him conform to her world view where when you dress like a pirate, the hook is just silly…
D:<
That is all.
I haven’t had a chance to read through all the comments, but I think from what I have seen we all seem to agree it’s just plain wrong.
I was raised in a Catholic household, but baptized in the Episcopal Church, much to my Baptist Great-grandfather’s dismay. Which probably goes a long way to explain why I no longer practice any faith. This like this enforce that even more for me.
I respect anyone’s right to practice whatever faith they believe in- but I do not respect any religion that says hitting, spanking, raping or anything along those lines.
I did. Felt great although he had a hard time explaining the broken jaw to his commander.
Sarah, if you have a few minutes, you should e-mail Lutton about it.
This quote leapt to mind when I looked at the CDD.
Eek.
Shared this site with a very close friend who has way more experience in the BDSM world than I do. He said it looked like a fetish site more than a Christian site. I don’t know—and would be interested to know if it’s for real or it’s a satire before I get all huffy.
My bad—that quote is from the CDD site—near the end of a long list of disclaimers.
Right on, SarahF. That’s exactly what their problem is. Yeah, I don’t have a problem with the “spanking until she cries” thing, because plenty of women get off on it in a consensual scene. But this is not about consent.
I loathe it when people don’t take responsibility for their own choices (because acting on any unusual sexual preference is a choice, when it comes right down to it), and try to offload the responsibility onto God, how their mother treated them when they were are child, or any other bullshit reason. Because if you don’t take responsibility, you can’t be responsible – are these people going to learn about concepts like Safe, Sane, Consensual? Like those who go through abstinence “sex education”, I’m sure the levels of ignorance and potential damage are huge. For both parties.
Buggery, didn’t end the itals after “exactly” in the first sentence. Oops.
Argh, one more try with fixing
Phew!
Bullshit