A number of you are in interesting (and complex) relationships. Yes most of us men, especially those of us that are rather large and strong have interesting internal conflicts about hitting women. I can assure you from personal experience that a vigorously applied belt can cause a lot, lot more damage than a hand spanking. Obviously, your masters refrain from hitting you with full force with a belt although they are less inhibited about the rigor with which they hand spank. In that they are probably like me. I dislike inflicting buises and I have strong internal inhibitions about hitting a woman forcefully. I suspect that many of the same mechanisms that operate in my mind operate in the minds of your masters.

I have read the correspondence in this thread with bemused interest. This is because much of my professional career has involved studying damage to tissue and inflammation with the last decade and the half focusing on the skin. The response of the different structures in the skin to physical injury is exceedingly complex. It involves direct response of several types of nerves, direct responses of inflammatory cells, responses of inflammatory cells stimulated by nerves, direct responses of blood vessels and indirect responses of blood vessels stimulated by nerves and inflammatory cells. I keep threatening to write an essay on bruises for Jinn's Academy section and one of these days I will get around to it.

By the way, the deep pain persisting for a week or more was undoubtedly due to damage to the underlying muscle, possibly associated with some minor bleeding into the muscle (deep bruising). That is a sign that the caning was much too severe. Bruising muscle is a big no no in my book. One of the reasons I prefer the switch to the cane.

Also a botanical note. Disciplinary canes are invariably made from ratan. Although ratan is a member of the bamboo family, almost all species of bamboo are highly unsuitable for canes. In general most bamboos when subjected to lateral stress shatter longitudinally. Continuing to strike someone with a shattered bamboo cane will cause severe cuts. T. E. Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia was injured in this way while held captive by the Turks in 1917 and carried the scars with him until his death in the late 1930's. This is why ratan, with it unusual flexibility and resistance to shattering is the only species of bamboo suitable for canes.