Erotic Spanking

Erotic spanking is the practice of spanking another for the sexual gratification of either or both parties. Erotic spanking can be regarded as a form of BDSM activity.

Representations of erotic spanking and its close relative, flagellation, make up a large portion of Victorian pornography. Hundreds of thousands of engravings, photographs, and/or literary depictions of spanking and flagellation (a. k. a. birching) fantasies circulated during the Victorian era, including erotic novellas like Lady Bumtickler’s Revels, The Whippingham Papers, or An Exhibition of Female Flagellants.

Many spankings are carried out with the use of bare hands, or with spanking implements such as paddles, straps, hairbrushes, and belts.

Sometimes other implements are used for the activity: such as a cane, riding crop, whip, switch (rod), birch, gloves, a ruler or martinet. However, these would not accurately be called spanking. (see Category:Spanking implements). Erotic spankings are commonly combined with other forms of sexual foreplay, such as oral sex, sexual roleplaying and/or ageplay. The most common type of erotic spanking is administered on the bare buttocks [2], but can also be combined with bondage, in order to heighten sexual arousal and feelings of helplessness in the spankee.

Positions used may include:

over the knees (OTK) or across the lap
stooped over a chair or couch, or bench
on hands and knees (bed or floor)
on shoulder of spanker
kneeling on a bed or ottoman, stooped over with hands on the floor
bent under the arm of the spanker
lying face down on a bed
bent over, touching toes or over a desk
“diaper position” (lying on back with legs raised upward and toward chest)
Those interested in giving or receiving erotic spankings are sometimes (rarely) known as spankophiles. Examples include the poet Algernon Swinburne (as implied repeatedly in his poetry) and the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as detailed in his autobiography Confessions:

… Miss Lambercier… exerted a mother’s authority, even to inflicting on us… the punishment of infants… Who would believe this childish discipline, received at eight years old, from the hands of a woman of thirty, should influence my propensities, my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life… To fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates, or implore pardon, were for me the most exquisite enjoyments, and the more my blood was inflamed by the efforts of a lively imagination the more I acquired the appearance of a whining lover.”
Madonna was featured in a print ad for the advertising campaign Rock the Vote where she seductively threatened readers with a spanking if they didn’t vote. She later recorded the song Hanky Panky, which contains lyrics about a woman’s desire to be spanked by her lover.
In the film Neighbors, Cathy Moriarty threatens John Belushi with a spanking unless he receives approval from his wife before asking Moriarty to join them for dinner, a threat that Belushi finds exciting.
The film Exit to Eden opens with a flashback scene of the leading character as a child manipulating his family’s French maid into spanking him and registering his enjoyment at receiving the punishment.
In an episode of the TV series Scrubs called My Interpretation, the character Christopher Turk has sexual fantasies about his colleague Elliot Reid, including one where he gives her a hard spank to her behind and she responds by saying “Oh! HARDER, DAMMIT! I’ve been bad.”