I don’t know how many of your readers will be familiar with the term ‘Third Culture Kids’ (or TCKs for short). Basically, it refers to people growing up in one or more countries, or cultures other than the one of their birth, their family or passport. Military brats are one such group which fits the terminology, children involved in a cult are another. I am one of the latter.
Obviously, as I am writing to you, I have a spanking fetish, and I have always wondered whether this kink arises in TCKs because of a lack of stability growing up – we crave discipline and structure, to the degree that we fetishise it.
By the time I turned 18 and and left the cult in question [Editor’s note: contributor has not asked us to identify this specifically, for both privacy and security reasons] I had lived in Japan, Macau, Libya, Portugal, Mexico, Thailand, Poland, Italy, Argentina and the United Kingdom. My parents are both Scottish, and I hold a UK passport. The country we were in had little impact on corporal punishment: us children received it everywhere. However, different people and different communes had different methods of disciplining the young.
In Italy, we children were mostly cared for by ’Auntie Kita’ and ‘Uncle Jose’. Auntie Kita favoured hand spanking: over her lap, bare bottom, ten or so spanks. Every child from a year old to 15 or so could expect to be turned over her lap. Auntie Kita was nicer than most of the aunties and uncles and her spankings didn’t bruise, they just left a warm bottom.
Uncle Jose used his belt but still over his knee. It would leave small bruises but still didn’t hurt too badly. Another adult in this home was Uncle Peace. He used a wooden spoon and would pop it all over the bare bottom over his knee, spanking until he heard what he called a ’broken cry’. I hated being spanked by Uncle Peace but eroticised it very early on, and would break minor rules around him in the hopes of getting one of his dreaded spoon spankings.
In Japan, I spent some time in a camp for teenagers, and there bare bottom paddlings in front of everyone weren’t uncommon. On my first day I was in trouble for my rebellious spirit, and one new uncle bent me over a chair while anothjer administered six hard swats on my bare bottom, using a large wooden paddle with holes in it. It hurt like hell and my bottom was bruised.
Once I left the cult, I went back to the UK to get qualifications and find a new life. I found a husband quite quickly and we had our eldest daughter in 1999. Although I was now an adult, I had little knowledge of how to actually raise children.
One day, when my daughter was four years old, she was obstinate and rude – so I turned her over my knee, bared her bottom, and spanked her bottom soundly until it was very pink and she emitted that same broken cry Uncle Peace had required.
My daughter received several more similar spankings until she was about six and told my husband about them. He was shocked – certainly, he believed in a single smack for naughtiness, but not an extended spanking. This is one of the ways being a TCK has impacted me – in my world, long, over the knee spankings to the point of a very warm, sore bottom were normal. In my husband’s world, a single smack was justified but anything more was cruel.
Working out what is normal in what country is hard, especially when before the age of 18, I only spent about eight months living in the UK. The culture I grew up in was bad, but it was all I knew. I have recently asked my parents how they would have raised me and my siblings had we not been in the cult. We had a good conversation, and I inquired about spanking. My mother said: “Even before I was in [name of the cult], I believed in a good, hard smacked bottom for a naughty child.”
So, it seems I would have been soundly spanked even if I had just grown up in the UK. But would I have eroticised it? Would bending over a knee and taking my discipline feel so necessary and important in my life if I’d had a normal childhood? I will never know.
Contributor: Mia