Corporal Punishment (as Etiology)

Simulated corporal punishment (parental, academic, judicial, or otherwise) is a extremely common BDSM script, at least in the West. A number of kinky people have pointed to childhood experience with corporal punishment as a causal factor in making them kinky (e.g. Rousseau (1977) [1782]; Berest 1970). Others make it very clear that they were never physically punished (e.g. Krafft-Ebing, p. 99)

Tanahill (1982, p. 382) suggests that this explanation may be overdetermining, since corporal punishment was virtually universal in the West in the not-too-distant past, and kink seems to have always been fairly rare. Again, corporal punishment is an almost global phenomenon, whereas kink (and especially flagellation scripts, c.f. Comfort's introduction to Kokkoka, p. 67) seem to be more common in the developed world. Moreover, in Europe and North America if anything, kink is perceived as becoming more common with time (Wagner 1982) while corporal punishment has been declining, especially in institutional contexts.

It seems noteworthy that non-corporal techniques for parental and schoolroom discipline also feature prominently in D/s scripts.  These include standing in the corner, writing lines, food deprivation, and loss of defined "privileges."  Given that all of these are common subjects of BDSM interest, it seems possible that the ur-variable has more to do with power dynamics than the particular mode of punishment.

There are two relevant studies.

Moser and Levitt (1987) find that 18.6% of their sample of kinky people remember getting erotic enjoyment from childhood punishments. It is possible, of course, that such punishments might influence one's sexuality even if they were not enjoyed at the time. Unfortunately, there is no control here.

In a survey of college students, Strauss (2001) found a correlation between corporal punishment and the presence of any one of six indicators on his Masochist Sex Index (MSI). Of those students who had received the least corporal punishment (or none) 40%-46% had an MSI score of 1 or higher; of those students who had received the most corporal punishment, 71%-75% had a score of 1 or higher. This pattern is mitigated by a measure of “parental warmth.”

This survey is troubling in some respects, though. First and most glaringly, it is not evident that Strauss'es MSI is a good fit for actual masochism. The very high incidence of masochism that he found is consistent with his theory that (commonplace) corporal punishment causes deviance. But about two thirds of the total contributions to the MSI scores were respondents saying that they enjoyed actual or imagined rough sex. While this may form an interesting category of its own, it is not self-evident that this is the same as masochism per se. Moreover, only a very small percentage of Strauss'es sample (5% of men and 2-3% of women) enjoyed actual or imagined spanking. This would be the most direct evidence for an etiological theory based on spanking, but Strauss does not look at that correlation by itself. Finally, Strauss presents regression lines without data, and several mislabeled or inconsistently labeled charts.

My impression is that in his desire to demonstrate the evils of spanking, Strauss has tried to paint a corporal-punishment-to-masochism connection quite a bit stronger than really exists. Nevertheless, both of these studies would suggest that (1) childhood corporal punishment likely promotes kink, but (2) corporal punishment is neither necessary or sufficient to produce kink, and (3) the vast majority of children who were corporally punished do not become kinky.

Updated 6/23/2010