Read it in COUNTERPUNCH, “America’s Best Political Newsletter”

by Dr. Susan Block

It’s our duty to spank booty on Spanksgiving!

Brothers and Sisters, Lovers and Sinners, on Thanksgiving, let us give thanks, and on Spanksgiving, let us give spanks. Let us spank away the hate, the greed and the fear that divide us, and let us practice the Bonobo Way of peace through pleasure… with a little consensual adult spanking.  And let us spank our hands together across a nice warm willing bottom, caroling “Oh God!” or “Goddess!” in rapture. And let us sing: Amen and Awomen. Praise be to the power and glory of spanking.

Ever since we realized that spanks rhymes with thanks, we’ve celebrated Spanksgiving on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Bonoboville. Why do we give spanks on Spanksgiving? Oh, let me count the reasons for sweet beatings of the season…

1) It’s fun. Spanking feels good, for both the spanker and the consenting adult spankee. Even when it feels bad, it feels good, at least for some pain sluts. And usually it doesn’t feel so bad, especially with all that butt flesh cushioning the blow, and a mutual agreement to keep it “soft.”

2) Spanking is relatively safe. Nobody gets spanked to death. Also, there’s no exchange of body fluids, so it doesn’t tend to spread STDs.

3) Consensual over-the-knee (OTK) spanking and light flogging can be surprisingly effective forms of therapy, as Russian studies (oh those naughty Russians!) have shown. “Impact play,” aka spanking can be good for both physical and emotional pain management, better than a trip to the spa, cheaper than antidepressants and a lot healthier than opioids.  

4) Spanking is festive. Performed as a purification ritual, it fits right into holidays like Lupercalia, Krampus, Full Moon, and of course, your basic birthday. But spanking on Spanksgiving has its own special, sublime, homey, personal and yes, even political meaning. Which brings us to…

5) Spankings can be meaningful. They can be personally meaningful, like when they bring up past childhood spankings—which, by the way, are never consensual, so don’t spank your children; only spank adults who give enthusiastic consent. However, if you were spanked as a child, sometimes you can turn it from a bad thing that made you feel helpless into a good thing that turns you on and releases your inner bonobo. And sometimes, it’s politically meaningful, as it is on Spanksgiving.

Back to Thanksgiving which, while delicious (especially when getting stuffed from both ends!), can often be a conflicted, stressful and downright nauseating family feast of carbs and schmaltz, where most of us repress our real feelings for fear of triggering some obnoxious relative. Then there’s the deep hypocrisy of Euro-American history, from Columbus’ accidental invasion to last Thanksgiving’s devastating Dakota Access Pipeline leak of 210,000 gallons of oil (too much lube!).

In a way, Spanksgiving has more of a reality-based historic precedent than Thanksgiving. The feel-good Turkey Day tale of friendly Pilgrims and Wampanoag Native Americans holding a bonoboësque feast of togetherness has been revealed to be almost entirely whitewashed hogwash. Rather than sharing corn-on-the-cob and pumpkin pie, those pious Pilgrims were actually slaughtering as many “savages” as they could with their matchbox muskets and “gift” blankets filled with smallpox. Thanks, but no thanks given.

On the other hand, according to their own town records, the Pilgrims and Puritans did administer many real spankings, paddlings, canings and whippings, as well as “tar and feathering,” most of which were nonconsensual punishments for criminal offenses and sexual “sins.” Sometimes they even put the very unwilling spankee’s head and hands into stocks during the procedures, so passersby could throw rotten fruit at their helpless heads. This was “public disgrace,” Pilgrim-style. Here in Bonoboville, we enjoy roleplaying our kinky vision of such historic Puritanical punishments—the big difference being that our “sinners” are always consensually spanked.

On the Native American side of Spanksgiving culture, many indigenous tribes have long incorporated ritual pain into their cultural practices—maybe not through spanking, but by piercing and other challenging purification rites that open the doors of perception to altered states of consciousness.  Modern BDSM kinksters might call it sub space on steroids—“sub space” being that state of bliss that a well-dominated submissive experiences—a hidden chamber of “the zone” that many enter when spanked on Spanksgiving.

For some kinky consenting adults, Spanksgiving spankings provide a playful but meaningful form of Commedia Erotica “penance” for the Pilgrims and other settlers’ original “sin” against the native tribes of this land, raising some spankophiliacs’ awareness of the genocidal, ecocidal history of the holiday.

Of course, we can’t just spank away our nation’s ongoing sins against the indigenous tribes of this land that the natives called Turtle Island, against the people America has bombed in foreign lands, against our own citizens killed unjustly under color of law, nor even our own small sins against each other.

But I do believe we can spank away our fears, beginning with harmful phobias based on childhood traumas (such as spanking), as well as our basic, often paranoid fear of being hurt, so easily stoked by anxious parents and unscrupulous politicians. A good adult spanking can *alchemically* transmute leaden pain into golden endorphins. When administered with love, trust and care, pain really does lead to gain and the conquest of our paranoid fears, giving us confidence and courage that we often didn’t even know we had.

And no, it’s not for everyone, maybe even not for most people. But in this topsy-turvy Trumpocalypse, when Thanksgiving can be especially difficult to digest, Spanksgiving can at least help put it all into perspective: Bottoms up! Turn the whole plutocratic, ecocidal oligarchy upside down and spank its ass.

Last Spanksgiving in Bonoboville, we literally stuffed and spanked a squawking orange marmalade-glazed Trump turkey (but no, we didn’t eat him). According to Stormy, Trump’s rump responded especially well to a few good swift swats with a Forbes featuring his kisser on the cover. Maybe having his own fake-tan face kiss his ass is what transformed him from an utterly insufferable narcissistic bully into a garden variety self-centered douche (at least for a few minutes), which is more than Chief of Staff John Kelly or anyone else in his “inner circle” of kleptocrats have been able to accomplish.

Spank them all with subpoenas, Mama Maxine. Season’s Beatings!

© November 21, 2018. Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sex therapist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure and horny housewife, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. Email your comments to her at drsusanblock@gmail.com.

Read it in COUNTERPUNCH, “America’s Best Political Newsletter”