Philosophy Explorer;
You seem to have three different topics mixed into one. As Sappho de Miranda noted, spanking in a sexual context is actually a fetish. It has nothing at all to do with discipline and only uses the idea of discipline to add context to the play. Probably the worst thing that someone could do is to take the idea of discipline, in this context, seriously as that could cause too serious a reaction and someone could get hurt.
Another example like this that I witnessed many years ago, is a game of jealousy that is occasionally played by married couples. In this instance I was sitting in a bar with a male friend when a fight looked like it was going to break out between two men over a woman. After watching for a few minutes, my friend slid out of his seat and walked over to the potential fight. He talked to them and the couple left. When my friend returned, he explained that this particular couple like to play the game of jealousy. They come into the bar, have a good time, then the wife starts to flirt outrageously with a third party. Hubby gets jealous and threatens everyone; his testosterone jacks up, and he drags his wife out of the bar. Then they go home and have mad passionate hot sex.
My friend explained that they have been doing this for years. The only time there is a problem is when the third party takes it seriously and believes that he must defend the woman. Then it could become dangerous, which was why he intervened. He knew the couple well and told me that they were very much in love, but they liked to play at jealousy because it intensified the experience. It was a game, but all players needed to recognize that it was a game and that no one was going to get hurt.
There was a book written, I think in the 70's, called "Games People Play". I don't know if you can still find it, but it is a worthy read and explains much of this.
Abusive relationships are an entirely different story as they are NOT a game. I have worked with many young women, who are in abusive relationships and think this has to do with power. All people are attracted to power, but what we see as power makes the difference. Wealthy men, socially connected men, football heroes, warriors, and intelligent men like professors, have no problem attracting women.
But the women that I worked with saw power as being a physical or mental ability to dominate and cause pain. They generally came from families with an abusive parent. So if a man is cruel or can beat the hell out of her, then he is a MAN, but if he is kind and respectful and gentle, then he is a wimp. She might love the wimp, but she will love him like a brother, whereas the abuser will float her boat, turn on all the lights, and send her estrogen screaming because he is powerful, and therefore a protector. It is a kind of schizoid idea, but power represents protection.
She will often actually push his buttons until he blows. Now one can say that her behavior is relative to her wanting discipline, but I don't think so. Discipline is used to change someone's behavior, but she is not looking for change, she is looking for validation of their relationship. I think that she is testing his strength, his power, because in her mind -- his discipline, or abuse, represents their connection in the same way that kindness, affection, trust, and respect represents a different kind of connection.
The third way that discipline has been noted in this thread is as regards children, and I think that Voice of Time did a wonderful job explaining those issues. But I would also state that physical discipline is sometimes necessary. In my house, physical discipline was reserved for occasions when other discipline did not work and the activity could cause serious harm as in the following examples:
I know a man, who at the age of four, was fascinated with lighters. He had been disciplined and discouraged, but one morning he woke up early and went through his mother's purse. Although she normally used butane lighters, someone had given her a beautiful shiny Zippo. When he got it to light, he dropped it in fear, but a Zippo does not go out when dropped. His grandmother's house burned down, his uncle was burned pretty badly, and the man still feels guilty to this day. My thought is that smacking his little butt and giving him a terror of lighters might have been preferable.
Back in the day when I was nursing my babies, one of them grew teeth at four months. Since the baby was actually biting me, I was running out of milk because of the pain. So I called my Grandmother for her advice. She told me to smack the baby in the back of the head whenever she bit. I thought that was unreasonable, but my Grandmother argued that it was better to teach the baby not to bite than to have my milk dry up and the baby starve to death. I ended up changing her to bottle feeding, but my Grandmother had a point. Before bottles were available, a baby that used mom as a chew toy would end up starving to death. One can not reason with a baby.
So I think that physical discipline can be necessary, and it may be unreasonable to raise a child to believe that pain is not a natural part of life -- because it is.
Gee