Spanking for Jesus

The great thing about the internet is that it lets you come into contact with a tremendous diversity of human cultures. That’s also the horrible thing about the internet.

Here’s today’s sub-culture: Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD). It’s Christian patriarchy with some frightening unresolved issues. Basically is consists of a relationship in which the Christian male reinforces his role as the head of the family by punishing the Christian female in ways reminiscent of the way children are punished. Most obviously, this means spanking.

One CDD site defines it like so:


Supposedly this is neither erotic or abusive. I’ll just let you evaluate that statement for yourself.

Just to grapple with the main issue here, this is extremely patriarchal. An article at xoJane puts it well:

Men are granted more freedoms than women — such as the freedom to behave as they choose without consequence. Also, CDD dictates that the only way a marriage can be successful is if the woman can be taught to behave in the “correct” fashion (as determined by her husband), and be sufficiently submissive (both inside and outside of the bedroom).

Basically men get to have all the power, and none of the responsibility.

CDD seems to be an extreme result of the worst aspects of Christian marriage. I run across so many conservative Christians who seem to see marriage as a hierarchy, and it seems natural that certain folks would need to reinforce that hierarchy with physical punishments. I could see Marc Driscoll or the like supporting CDD on the sly.

My hunch is that CDD is an extremely small sub-culture. A Jezebel article points to a Yahoo! group with only 47 members – half of whom are probably there ironically.

Oh, and no I’m not going to attach a picture to this post. Use your imagination.

  • The Other Weirdo


    Denial. It ain’t just a river in Egypt.

    • flakingnapstich

      As far as I can tell, these guys are S&M “Lifestyle” devotees who have removed the submissive’s ability to negotiate a scene or call “Red” or “Yellow.” It’s no longer a power exchange at that point. It’s not a healthy dynamic and will be prone to abuse. It’s everything books like “Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns” warn people interested in BDSM to avoid.

    • grindstone

      It’s just Christian Kink. I personally don’t care how you wrap it up or what color bow you put on it, but it’s kink.

      • The Other Weirdo

        It’s only kink if it’s consensual.

        • grindstone

          Very true.

      • flakingnapstich

        It’s not healthy kink though. There’s no real power exchange. It’s all about one party having abject domination over the other, and the submissive has no real ability to say “no.”

        There’s no calling “Red” or “Yellow” in these arrangements, no scene negotiation, and I doubt there’s much in the way of aftercare.

  • JohnMWhite

    While the spanking in particular raises eyebrows (and perhaps, for some, other body parts), I don’t see this movement as being much different from what the Abrahamic religions preach in the mainstream. Women are meant to submit to their husbands, men are meant to be the ultimate authority, and family discipline is meant to be maintained through violence. This is what these holy books advocate, and it is simply the case that moderates ignore these passages as everybody ignores whatever bits don’t suit them. All we have here are Christians who are a little more honest about what their faith expects, and a lot more enthusiastic about spanking.


    Strip a woman of her self respect and she may well buy into the idea that spousal abuse, in the name of Jesus, isn’t really abuse.

    • http://religionconfidencetrick.blogspot.com/ jonny

      You might want to spend some time pondering who strips a girl of their Self-respect. There are only a limited number of suspects:
      a) the father
      b) the mother
      c) the girl

      At the end of the day, one has a responsibility to one’s Self not to be degraded.

      I’m vaguely aware some women “need” men to take care of them; but for the life of me, not one of them seems to be in a position to explain how or why they got themselves into that position. Was it their fathers who raised them to believe they could just ‘catch’ a man who valued their needy?

      • David Simon

        d) the culture at large
        e) any combination of a, b, and d
        f) also, seriously, are you blaming children for letting themselves be misled?
        g) that’s not cool dude

        • http://religionconfidencetrick.blogspot.com/ jonny

          d) blame avoidance
          e) blame avoidance
          f) fool kids once, shame on you. fool the same kids again, shame on them.
          g) what are you, 13? Stop buying the lies of your mother as real. You fear being identified as a victim. This makes you a victim.

          If a girl is stripping herself of Self-respect, your unwillingness to address the issue because it’s “not cool, dude” wouldn’t be cool.

          Culture doesn’t erode Self-respect. Parents who want slaves and children who want to be enslaved erode Self-respect.

          The first lie is the only crime for which the child is victimised. From that moment on, they take the majority of the blame.

  • DavidalBarron

    If these fellows aren’t spanking their wives with Bibles, I’m not going to accept their lifestyle choice. If they are spanking their wives with Bibles, pics or it didn’t happen.

  • Aspieguy

    Because nothing brings a woman closer to Christ than a good spanking…….

  • Noelle

    Reminds me of an article I read a few years ago in some respected :) magazine like Parade or Newsweek or something like that on good questions to ask someone on a first date. “Do you enjoy pain with sex” and “Do you believe in God” we’re listed in the do not ask on the first date list. It did not say how many dates in one should wait to ask those things directly.

    • UrsaMinor

      If you can’t ask these questions, then you’re screwed in more ways than one if you have sex on the first date.

  • Michael

    it’s negotiated before they get kinky that she will not be able to end the scenes, and she agrees to that.

    If she is truly unable to demand he stop in any way, and really tries to stop him but fails . . . that is clearly rape, regardless of what was previously agreed. There are some rights you cannot give up.

    Hence the existence of “safe words” and such.

  • Paul Hoover

    I guess the part where husbands are admonished to love their wives as christ loved the church doesn’t count.

    • Mogg

      Generally not, no.

  • http://religionconfidencetrick.blogspot.com/ jonny

    Women sure do themselves a disservice by embracing misogyny. More women than men go to church and it’s a peculiarity that is rarely discussed. What no misogynist woman has ever been able to tell me is how misogyny benefits men?

    I know for a fact men have killed a lot of women who were honest about female biological desire to reproduce. But why would men do such a thing? I mean, didn’t they have mothers who raised them Right.

    If you ask these men why they killed this woman, you know what they would tell you?

    One day, mothers will understand what “equality” means.

    • Nox

      How misogyny benefits men? If you mean actually benefits, it doesn’t. It perpetuates a world which deprives all of us (obviously I don’t mean men are affected by this nearly as much as women, it just isn’t benefiting anyone). Why do some men find the idea of misogyny beneficial? Because it is the idea that women are inferior or not suited to positions of power, and those men want an easy rationalization for why they should feel superior or why they should be in power.

      You don’t really need a very complex explanation to explain why humans pursue things they perceive to be in their own selfish short term interest. That’s most of what humans do.

      • http://religionconfidencetrick.blogspot.com/ jonny

        You seem to be confused about the brutal nature of power. Though it is (of course) a psychotic corruption of logic and the product of need borne out of traumatic abuse repressed by the sub-conscious mind; for all it’s faults, it is pure in the sense that it adheres to strict rules of mathematics which allow for very accurate conclusions to be drawn based on game theory modeling. With power, Might is Right. In reality, Might is never Right or it wouldn’t need to use force to persuade. If might were right, it would just make the convincing case for others to act in their own interests.

        But in games of power, “Might is Right” is the rule subscribed to by everyone. It is the only Rule of International relations. When push comes to shove, everything drops to the lowest common denominator (might).

        My point is that men don’t need a rationalization for why they should feel superior or why they should be in power; these are lies women tell to conceal the truth. Women want to be inferior. Women want to reduce themselves. Women want to manipulate men and compete in cosmetic competitions to appeal to men. Men want women to be honest and compete for things that matter but the little leeches just want to pursue sex. So they don’t want agency, as that will make it hard for them to run their Confidence game (“you first”).

        Misogyny benefits nobody but women are the ones perpetuating it because they imagine it’s their good thing for sex. Men have never had a motive to propagate misogyny; not unless they had a mother who hated women and lied to her son/s.

        • VorJack

          …. aaand we’re done here.

        • Nox

          I’m sorry about your mother. But if you look at the world as it exists or the world as it has existed for the last several thousand years and conclude the problem is women having too much power and rigging the system up to benefit themselves, you have profoundly misunderstood reality.

          • http://religionconfidencetrick.blogspot.com/ jonny

            Open your eyes. It is not fathers shaming toddlers into getting dressed. It is not fathers lying to prepubescent girls about how a Real Woman is Supposed to feel desire. It is not men who are killing women for being honest about their disproportionate desire for sex but rather the sons of misogynist women (who hate women and lie to their sons about women) who are killing honest girls.

            Men have never had a motive to perpetuate misogyny.
            But women….? Look at the hard evidence in front of your eyes and stop being your mother’s brainwashed vassal slave.

            The Jesuits used to boast that if you gave them the boy for his first seven years, he’d be their man for life. A modern mother can Stockholm Syndrome a child in four. I think I could do it in three years (but never would, of course).

            Men cannot dictate values. Mothers control the emotional education of early childhood development. You need to open your eyes.

  • http://brgulker.wordpress.com/ brgulker

    I don’t think this kind of language is uncommon in american evangelicalism.

  • David Simon

    It is not legal to sell oneself into slavery; even if you sign a contract agreeing to do so, it does not compel you to.