Give it a whack.
Spanking for pleasure can be empowering and bring couples closer together, sexperts claim — urging those looking to level up their love lives to drag the antiquated childhood disciplinary act away from the woodshed and into the boudoir.
“Often stigmatized as abusive by those who don’t understand BDSM, within a consenting and trusting relationship, spanking can deepen your bond,” Amy Williams, a sexual intimacy expert and CEO of adult retailer Peachy said in a statement to The Post.
The pants-down proclamation comes as American interest in BDSM, which ranges from light lovetaps to more extreme bondage behaviors like choking has soared in the decade since “Fifty Shades of Grey” frenzy first brought erotic play out of the shadows — and into water cooler conversation.
In fact, the US was named kinkiest country in the world recently, according to a study conducted by KinkD, a leading platform in the realm of kink, BDSM, and fetish dating.
For frisky first-timers looking to move from vanilla to va-va-voom, a push on the tush is an easy, safe and non-committal way to find out where your fetish line is, sex and relationship expert Annabelle Knight told Cosmopolitan.
“Spanking is one of the most popular ways to bring BDSM into the bedroom. This is for a multitude of reasons, chiefly amongst them is the fact that it’s an easy and safe way to experiment without committing too much to a kink or fetish you’re not yet familiar with,” the paddler dabbler explained.
“It’s also completely free and requires no bondage gear, simply a willing participant and a palm,” Knight encouraged.
And while from the outside it might all seem a little silly, the point isn’t just the spanking — it’s about exploring the limits of your love, Williams explained.
“Being spanked is an intimate act of trust,” the wizard of wallop said.
“A lot of people who engage in spanking enjoy the fact that their partner trusts them enough to be vulnerable with them, while people who enjoy getting spanked enjoy the fact that their partner is trustworthy enough that they can give up control,” she went on.
“Giving up your power to a partner is like saying, I am confident enough in you and myself to be this vulnerable with you. That confidence is empowering. The partnership and trust elements are really what lies at the heart of it.”
Beyond the sexual heat that can be generated via the act, spanking also elicits a physical reaction that adds to the rousing rush.
The blood flow sent to the spanked area and the release of adrenaline, endorphins, and dopamine all combine to make this a pleasurable arousing activity for some.
Expert tips for sexy spanking
- The most important part of sex is communication. Discuss what you do and do not want to explore.
- Agree upon a safe word.
- For the spanker: Start light and slow. Aim for the mid to lower part of the butt cheek. Begin with a hand or soft item and work your way up to a paddle or flogger.
- Make sure to cuddle, chat and/ or hang out afterward.
And it’s not just kinky youngsters kicking things up a notch lately — older New Yorkers are booking more appointments for bondage-discipline, dominance-submission, and sadism-masochism, or BDSM, according to a Manhattan dominatrix.
Ms. Kitty LaReaux, a dom at a Manhattan dungeon, previously told The Post her boomer clients want to learn “how to please their partner” — and “unpack “years of sexual oppression.”
There has been an “influx of people coming in from all ages and backgrounds” since the isolation days of the pandemic, she told The Post, including women and married couples.
Meanwhile, men are turning up their behinds and getting more into pegging — when a woman penetrates a man anally using a strap-on dildo.
The Taillor Group, a Brooklyn-based kink collective that teaches BDSM practices to the kink curious, revealed that informative pegging gatherings called Pegfest have become some of the collective’s most popular, being attended by a breadth of interested participants — mostly cisgender men in their 20s to 60s from a range of backgrounds.
