Punishment
Never hit in anger. It might work in the short term, but ruling through fear undermines trust. It undermines the whole relationship.
If there is a punishment contingency in place, follow through, every time.
A negative punishment contingency is taking away something desired in order to encourage a decrease in the frequency of an undesired behavior.
A positive punishment contingency is adding something aversive in order to encourage a decrease in the frequency of an undesired behavior.
Is it ever appropriate to use pain or some other form of suffering (aversive stimuli) as a punishment? Yes. If that is the designated consequence of a behavior, and the person commiting the behavior has accepted the rule that specifies this particular punishment for that particular behavior, then there is a behavioral contract in place. This contract doesn’t supercede any safeword protocols. Safewords should always be an option.
Ideally, punishment should include contemplation, introspection, and communication to ensure that the person being punished understands why and willingly accepts their aversive consequences. By accepting the punishment, the guilty party is ritually paying a symbolic fine for their breaking of the behavioral contract. This suffering helps the punished person feel like they have paid their debt.
The combination of introspection and debt paying helps to reduce the frequency of the undesired behavior. Neither of these is as affective when experienced alone.
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Just gonna put it out there that “punishment” given in anger isn’t punishment and it sure as hell isn’t kink. It’s just smacking someone around like an out-of-control asshole.
If you’ve ever done theater you may have had lessons in stage fencing. (At least when I was young that was the catch-all term for actors performing any kind of fighting.) First lesson of stage fighting was: those are swords, knives, even axes you’re swinging around. If you’re not 100 aware that you’re performing somebody’s gonna get hurt. (Anecdotes of actors failing to drop character while stage-fighting were always gruesome. One involved the aforementioned axe!)
Point being that it’s ok to feel pretty much _any other _emotion at all while spanking or otherwise administering corporal discipline to someone you’re topping. But anger? Yeah, a good top knows if they’re legitimately angry it’s time to talk, not hit.