Spanking?

[Rev. Rye]

Forgive me if I’m pointing out the obvious here, but imma try and play mediator.

I think we’re witnessing a culture clash here: Boru is Irish, and in Ireland , all corporal punishment is illegal. So, it’s easy to understand why he’d be so strongly against it.

By contrast, Athena is black, specifically African-American, and while corporal punishment by African-American parents is a depressingly complicated subject (rooted in, among other things, layers of internalized oppression) that I, as a honky, am probably not equipped to talk about), but in spite of my racial handicap, it makes sense to me to hypothesize that, in the behavioral sink that is America, with that cultural baggage in mind, she’s probably seen enough use of spanking as a sort of Godzilla Threshold that it’s become normal to her. So it also makes sense to me why she would think that.

You can argue about which perspective is more valid till the cows come home (and I personally lean more towards Boru’s perspective, as I said earlier), but I don’t think this discussion is going to get anywhere until we try and think about why you hold those beliefs.

---

No I can’t get voice over to tell me the picture

It’s just a sketch of household objects (including an umbrella, pipe, that phantom telephone that the doctor mentioned in his reply, but the writer didn’t include in the original letter) and three confused Scottish Terriers standing among the mess they made.