It seems an odd week for mainstreaming. On one hand 50 Shades continues to cause ripples of debate on the other BlogSpot have finally dropped the boom on spanking pictures and nudity. I noticed one or two spanking blogs have escaped the axe so far, but it is only a matter of time.

Rollin Hand has already moved from BlogSpot and you can now find him here.

Talking of the spanking debate I mentioned a week or two back that the BBC had contacted me for a possible interview/contribution to the 50 Shades debate. It was put to me as a general discussion on adult spanking, erotica and such things, although after offering some background I declined to take part.

Since then I have managed to find the programme online and listened in. Although there were some contributions from women at large on the phone, one of whom described the book and film as vile, the main focus was an interview with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, the respected columnist on rights and all things feminism.

Not to disrespect the woman but she has no insight or understanding of this issue at all and one could have written every word she said in advance. She failed to grasp the point of this “dangerous book” and was unable to discuss anything new about women or BDSM or erotica in general. Instead she just trotted out well-honed arguments that that might have been from any decade since the 1970s. There was no attempt to have a balancing speaker or to explore what might be a sea-change in attitudes on this issue.

Happily, other than the ‘vile’ woman, who was given the last word, most of the contributors ‘respectfully’ disagreed with Ms Alibhai-Brown and characterised the book as a harmless bit of fun or much less dangerous than many other books a movies already out there.

You can catch the programme here if you are in the mood for some retro feminism.

Now moving on this next snippet is not strictly from the past week but I stumbled upon it after a chat with Indigo about comics, Marvel versus DC and the many spankings that featured in these stories that as a girl she missed out on.

She asked me why Sue Storm got spanked so here just for Indigo is a typical scene.

The Spank Statement has another series on spanking in the theatre and a nice spread on the 1970s spanking comedy The Ups and Downs of a Handyman. There is a nice comparison with a real life spanking scandal of the day and the top period picture above is of one of the actresses involved.

Other pictures are from All Things Spanking, About Spanking, Cherry Red, CutiePie, Firmhand  and Dallas.