I googled “The Science of Spanking” the other day. It started off as an idle thought about why my bum doesn’t bruise or have any lasting pain after an intense spanking. Is this normal? Surely, I thought, someone must have done some scientific research into such things.

There were plenty of results for “The Science of Spanking”, but every one of them on the first page was about the long-term effects of parents physically punishing their children. This was not what I had in mind, and I certainly didn’t want to check past the first page of results. I was looking for kink, and I got directed to research into child abuse.

I never think of that meaning when I think of the word ‘spanking’. I think it may be down to the difference between British and American English. I was smacked as a child occasionally (because it was the 1970s and that sort of thing was considered normal then), but it was always referred to as ‘smacking’, never ‘spanking’. I never used that word at all until I was all grown and had my kinkster hat on.

Is there a word that exclusively means the kinky practice of beating for pleasure?

Would I get better results, I wondered, if I tried different phrases?

Firstly, I tried “The Science of Masochism” and got a whole bunch of psychological studies into what the hell is wrong with masochistic people. The second result was “Sexual Masochism Disorder” in Psychology Today. Ouch. (And not in a good way.) I wasn’t looking to be told I was a wrong ‘un. Some of this stuff will be worth a perusal, but definitely not what I was trying to find.

Next, I tried “The Science of Kink”. The results for this were rather less judgmental. It was more psychological studies, but this time, they had titles like “Current Biopsychosocial Science on Understanding BDSM”.

My last search was for “The Science of Erotic Spanking”. This gave the least academic-sounding results. It was mostly a bunch of articles called stuff like “How to introduce spanking into your love life”. And by the end of page one, it had veered off into links to erotic literature.

So I didn’t find what I was looking for, but that’s on me. Google is only as useful as the search terms you put into it. It did send me down some interesting internet rabbit holes, though.

Merriam-Webster defines ‘spank’ as “a sharp slap or blow to the buttocks usually with the palm of the hand”. My love of canes and whips and the like means my personal definition goes a little beyond that.

‘BDSM’ and ‘Kink’ are great catch-all terms, but they cover a lot more than just being hit on the bottom with stuff.

I’m sure there is a word out there that is perfect for what I want. But, for now, I’ll stick to ‘spanking’ when I’m in safe, kink-friendly spaces like this one, and ‘erotic spanking’ when I’m out in the wilds of Google, where other types of non-consensual spanking of minors sadly still exist.