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There are, unfortunately, more than a few spankers who don’t really respect the people who bottom for them. Their reasons can be different, but the result is the same: the bottom feels some sort of way when things are done, and they can’t quite put their finger on it. When a bottom comes to you for a spanking, you need to respect the trust they’re putting in you; after all, you’re going to be hurting them (consensually, but still), and in the vulnerable position they’re about to be in you could seriously injure them if you wanted to.

Respect takes on many different forms. For starters, there’s respecting the bottom as a human being; you can’t just see a bottom as their buttocks. You have to see them as a whole person with wants, needs, and desires. Once you’ve done that, you then need to respect their limits — and their limitations. If they say “don’t use wooden implements”, you respect that request. But also, if they’re chasing the dragon and you don’t think they should catch it, you have to respect that limitation as well. As the top it’s your job to make sure you don’t overdo it, no matter how much you may want to — even if you’ve gone harder or used more severe implements on this same bottom in the past.

You also have to respect the other person’s bodily autonomy. If you’re going to spank them, then you’re obviously being given leave to touch them in certain ways, but you need to respect them by not touching them in ways they might not like. For example, when I’m spanking someone new, I ask them: “Is there anywhere you don’t want me to touch besides the places I shouldn’t be touching?” What this means is: there’s a nonzero chance that I will nonsexually touch you in places other than the target area, so if you have places that are off-limits, I need to know about them up-front. I also ask if rubbing is okay, and often I will specifically ask if I can touch someone’s back. Sometimes when someone touches my back unexpectedly I spasm and it causes pain; I don’t want that to happen to anyone else.

And then there’s the most difficult type of respect: respecting intuitively. At the aforementioned spanking event at the dungeon, I was playing with someone new, and she was bent over a chair. I was about to give her a set of hard spanks, and I didn’t want her to move (much). I leaned in, held her against my side with my arm around her waist, and delivered the hard spanks. In all honesty I probably should have asked before I did that, especially since I had literally just met this person less than an hour earlier, but I respected my own intuition and realized that she would be okay with this. Of course if she’d pulled away or given me any negative feedback I’d have immediately let her go, but she didn’t do that, and even a day later, when I checked in with her, she didn’t tell me there was anything I should have done differently. She knew I would respect her because of my reputation in the scene and because she’d watched me play previously.

Spanking is fun, no doubt about it. But if you don’t fully respect the person you’re spanking, it’s only going to be fun for you, and then only until the bottom realizes you don’t respect them and ends the scene.