You can even bite my underlip if you like.

Spank me?

Well, I’m not so sure, honey!

I’ve been in and out of relationships, long-term, marriage, one-night stands and all.

I have enjoyed the full spectrum of the heterosexual relationship rainbow (I have never tasted the luxuries of a homosexual relationship), but being completely illiterate in regards to the art of spanking, I cannot conceive of how the act belongs with a ‘‘feminist’’ lifestyle!

This is nothing new, I know. Believe me, in this part of the world where I live, almost three out of five encounters in some way hits this bottom line (no pun intended). Turkish culture is rooted in the corporeal punishment against women and men (Google ‘‘Ottoman Slap’’ for more about my patriarchal history).

The submission-domination game is a real turn-off sometimes—especially when it is the first time you are sleeping with someone—since it hardly ever occurs to the dominator to ask for permission, or whether the action is pleasurable.

You might be thinking such thoughts as “you don’t know how to let go and trust your partner.” Even if that is true, do I have to be degraded or humiliated at his mercy, him the master, I am the slave, so that my partner gets aroused and I punished hence also aroused? In this way, I am a bad, bad girl’? Is that a plus? Really?

What or who is a ‘bad girl‘? A woman who is breaking the rules? And what is wrong with sex under the stars? Nothing. I just want to know there is a human being alive behind those staring and devouring alien eyes! Hello from Venus to Mars?!

This makes me think of parents spanking their children for being naughty. Even a six-year old child, boy or girl, feels the humiliation: their ears burn, physical punishment cuts through the skin.

It may be learned that way in such and such a context, then as grown-ups we are told to separate the childhood memories from the bedroom fantasies.

Even when the government is getting actively involved in child reproduction and birth control policies in my country—really? Do you think this is ever possible?

To completely renounce this and reach zero, visit a few Osho camps and get high on psychedelics (which I must, no, they insist I must, and perhaps I might) to shed the layers of the ever-controlling mind, be completely free from dogma and finally enjoy life and then leave it at that? What are we talking about?

Enjoyment, play, games, relationships, intimacy for an hour, for a second, for a what? Forget time anyway, it is not zen.

What happened to the good-old ‘‘I love you,’’ gooey, normal sex? What I mean is making love. What happened to full exposure of the heart and soul? The ice-cream movie dates where one kiss was enough and you’d call it the night.

When and why did romanticism fly out the door and Kama Sutra and gender politics became a normal part of the adult bedroom?

Why is it so boring to love the heart-way and so exciting to role-play love?

Has anyone ever experienced role-play love transform into I heart you? Is it not (normally) the other way around, or am I too old-fashioned in thinking this?

No offence if this sounds too nostalgic and old school, but I am bored with all the drama and the “oh, I haven’t tried this, I must do the other 99 things on my list before I die” type of sex.

You say ‘‘grow up.’’

I say ‘‘be an innocent child.’’

Why do we have to fake play—role-play that is just an illusion of the mind—when we can really play, an act coming from the most innocent place in the heart? Is it not possible without Osho, psychedelics, mantras and tantra?

Is it not possible by just being ‘‘you and me’’?

I am a devotee to the idea of treating our bodies like temples. Although although some roads may lead others to the land of ‘‘paradise sex,” I am awfully grateful for having been fallen from that ‘‘garden of eden,’’ because nobody tells this ‘‘baby’’ if she is good or bad!

Like elephant journal gets sexy on Facebook.

Assistant Ed: Renee Picard / Ed: Sara Crolick