"SpankOut Day" 2009
Today is the 11th Annual SpankOut Day in the US. (Thanks to Prefectdt and Natty for alerting me to this.) Smacking is still legal in the UK, although it is illegal to use punishment on a child that leaves "physical marks or mental harm". I've spoken out before on inappropriate legislation governing issues that are better left to personal conscience, so I'm not about to stand on a picket line crying out for yet another repressive Bill or Act of Parliament. But if smacking children were made illegal in the UK or US, I'm not at all sure that I'd object.
Like many spankos, I find this subject massively uncomfortable. I have fetishized corporal punishment since long before I reached puberty; I was getting turned on by thoughts of spanking when I was still a child, and I cannot easily separate the concept from my sexual response to it. As such I have a strong internal taboo against associating corporal punishment with actual children. The idea is inescapably sexual for me. Of course, children absolutely do have sexualities (no matter how much our society pretends that if we ignore this fact it will magically go away) and I'm not saying that children should never play sex or spanking games with each other. But adults in a position of authority have a duty of care which should not, in my opinion, engage with that child's sexuality directly. And spanking games and punishment are two very different things.
The primary issue, for me, is consent. As a feminist, consent is absolutely central to the realisation of my kink. It is what separates fantasy from reality. I might lie in bed at night telling myself stories about being enslaved, raped, abused; but my enjoyment of those stories, in the safe space of my own imagination, gives no-one permission to enact them.
Informed consent relies on experience, to some extent; to make a meaningful choice, one must have an awareness of what the other options entail. People accumulate this experience slowly and at different rates. Of course some people under the age of consent are morally capable of it. Some legal adults seem incapable of it. But I think the law in this instance is a justifiable compromise to protect the majority.
I know, better perhaps than the vanillas discussing this legislation, what the benefits of loving discipline can be. I can see the point of view of those who argue that loving, responsible corporal punishment is occasionally the most effective and appropriate option for a parent. I've had some lengthy debates about this in the past, and the responsible physical punishment of children looks remarkably similar to my adult D/s relationships. It goes like this: Discipline is only ever administered with prior warning. The consequences of an action are made perfectly clear in advance; and once stated are always followed through as promised, to ensure stability, predictability and security. Discipline is never administered in anger. It provides cleansing and catharsis; it is quick, it is memorable, and once over it is over, forgiven and forgotten. These rules apply to most methods of responsible discipline, but they are particularly important when it comes to corporal punishment, where the line between discipline and abuse can be so hard to make out.
I can see the argument in favour of the "responsible smacking" of children. I can see its virtues as a consequence of bad behaviour that is swift, fair, and leave no room for later guilt-tripping or emotional manipulation. But even so, I cannot condone it.
I, as an adult with a developed sense of personal agency and responsibility, can consent to physical discipline. And even I would never, ever want my Dom to hurt me in anger, or for anyone not my Dom to think they had the right to punish me physically. I have chosen my partners and explicitly negotiated a bargain that will benefit both of us. Children cannot choose their disciplinarians and even if they could, they cannot truly consent until they have a fuller understanding of personal responsibility and the consequences of their choices. I'm not saying this automatically happens at 16 or 18 or 21. But children's choices are so limited by their personal and legal dependence on their guardians that they cannot give meaningful consent.
Which is irrelevant to the central, pragmatic point, that most children who endure physical punishment are given no choice in the matter whatsoever. Most corporal punishment of children is not loving, negotiated and responsible. I would not wish that on any adult; it seems inhumane to me that I should wish it on someone so particularly vulnerable as a child.
Another great post - I personally think it's a bad parent who's forced to physically smack their kid. There are a million different ways of dealing more effectively with the problem.
ReplyDeleteI actually do support a parents right to use corporal punishment, but it is something, to me, has to be done only as a last resort. I was smacked by my parents a total of two or three times in my entire childhood and it was always as last resort.
ReplyDeleteJeremy
I hate to make a comment about personal experiences on this subject but I cannot think of a better way of getting my point across. I grew up during the 1970's and early 1980's when CP for children was normal (well at least it was on the council estate that I grew up on). My own experiences of CP as a child where mild and infrequent, the odd couple of light slaps across the backside from my mother and a few short sharp spankings at infants and junior school. I managed to avoid being tawsed at comprehensive school (thats high school to you Americans). But even these light experiences left me in great mental turmoil. Having fantasized about spanking and punishment, since my earliest memories, my inexperienced, child's mind could not understand why the actual event was so abhorrent. As an adult I can understand that consensual sex between adults is a wonderful thing but if one of the parties is not consenting then it is rape. I hate to make the comparison between rape and non consensual spanking, as I have never been raped and suspect that rape is a far worse thing than a non consensual spanking but they are along the same lines and as a child, even the light CP that I received, did have a heavy and negative psychological effect.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast the kids that were (I presume) vanillas took CP, even when it was very severe, in their stride and it had no effect on their attitudes or behaviour. In fact at the Comprehensive school getting tawsed (or slippered if it was a girl) would gain the recipient a lot of respect amongst their piers and if anything was regarded as a badge of honor, amongst the more troublesome kids.
To conclude, if a child is naturally a bottom or a submissive, CP is psychologically extremely damaging and amongst the vanilla kids it is just an ineffective, wast of time.
Spanking children does not work.
Prefectdt
To quote the late great Isaac Asimov 'violence is the last resort of the incompetent'. Behavioural techniques are research proven to be effective: children are attention seeking machines, so giving them attention at the right time is the key. Most give it at the wrong time (ie. when they misbehave)and not at all at the right time (ie. when they are good) so like Pavlov's dog they learn how to get attention (not that I am comparing children to dogs).
ReplyDeleteHaving said that it is a bizarre fact that as corporal punishment has slowly been retracted from first schools and the police and then the family there has been and equal and opposite rise of violence and antisocial behaviour amongst children. People who believe in corporal punishment with children always site this.
However the fact is the situation is more complex than it seems. things have changed radically since the 60s with violence much more prevalent in the media and a wider variety of media. There are a lot of factors contributing to the rise in antisocial behaviour amongst children, so the correlation to retraction of cp is not entirely a valid one.
Put simply as a mental health professional I would come down well on the side of being against corporal punishment as a means of discipling children; or anyone unwilling of any age for that matter. That said it ain't 'alf fun though if everyone is!
My experience is similar to Prefect's, though we were never spanked at school. I too found the strange association of spanking with parental disapproval on the one hand and my own sexuality on the other to be extremely confusing. I think that's part of the reason it took me so long to sort out my sexuality in general. Of course, that might just be American puritanism, too, who knows?
ReplyDeleteOne of the arguments the anti-child spanking crowd uses is that it creates People Like Us. Although I am indebted to those publicizing this misconception, as it ultimately led me to the internet spanking community, I think they have the causal relationship backwards. I agree with both Pandora and Prefect that the real problem is adults engaging in behavior with children that at least some of them will find to be sexual.