Spanking?

[The Grand Nudger]

-to make me lunch

[Athene]

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Please, don't attempt to explain where I'm coming from in regards to my own mind, because you're totally off in regards to me. I can't speak for Boru, of course.

I've made it clear multiple times that I don't advocate spanking. 
My position is not a result of "internalized oppression" and "reliving Black racial trauma". 

It's one of recognizing that child-rearing is much more complex than many people realize, and understanding that rushing to label any and every parent who's ever spanked a child as a child abuser could stand to be at direct odds with what's actually in child's best interest if they have good parents who don't normally resort to spanking and clearly value disciplining children using non-corporal means.

Maybe you should go find another argument to mediate, Rev, because I'm not interested in your offer. I know you meant well, but it was wildly presumptuous and rather insulting for you suggest that I need YOU to assist me in my journey in learning to understand myself and my own Blackness, and that my every thought and opinion in this thread has it's roots slavery just because you read some goddamn article. 

I know exactly why I think what I think. Trust and believe, I'm self-aware as fuck.

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But mutual spanking would add a decoration to the sex process; some playful "teasing" of the partner's body is good; or so I think.

I'm not a big fan of spanking; I also have no fetish regarding the thing..but it's an excitement in sex; just like when partners play "domination/Femdom" with their wives or husbands.

A nude wife,spanking me and let me spank her..well that's good !

Lol...I'm only opposed to spanking kids. 

Apparently, there are a few folks here who don't feel that's "good enough" and are adamant that I must additionally attach some sort of moral objectivism or absolutism to my stance in order to "be on the right side of AF history"....as if I give a fuck.

I refuse to do so because I'm of the belief that there indeed exists a moral gray area in regards to most any issue and I'm inclined to think that context is a important thing to consider in making individual determinations of "right" and "wrong".

So if my agreement that spanking children is wrong as a general principal isn't enough for these cats, I don't what to tell them other than to "Go find the nearest cactus", I guess.


Now, as far as the grown and sexy are concerned...  
I have no issue with adults spanking each other. It's none of my business.

Personally, I can take it or leave it. It makes for great fun sometimes, but I wouldn't cry if could never do it again.

[The Grand Nudger]

Context provides clarity, not grey zones. I'm entirely certain that you can replace "spanking" with "beating"...and when you do that, peoples reactions on the board make alot more sense. I've explained the context of spanking, and what I mean when I say I spank my kids, before, with the same people..and it always ends with some comment akin to "that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about such and such horrible fucking thing".

Well, no shit, I'm not some dickensian villain that wails on his kids so that he doesn't have to..you know..watch them.... lol.

[Athene]

Context provides clarity, not grey zones.  

Yup..Context provides clarity in navigating the gray areas--which indeed, are there. 
That's what I was saying.

I'm entirely certain that you can replace "spanking" with "beating"...and when you do that, peoples reactions on the board make alot more sense.  I've explained the context of spanking, and what I mean when I say I spank my kids, before, with the same people..and it always ends with some comment akin to "that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about such and such horrible fucking thing".

Well, no shit, I'm not some dickensian villain that wails on his kids so that he doesn't have to..you know..watch them.... lol.

Well here in this thread, most folks don't care to acknowledge that distinction between spanking and beating and seem to prefer regarding them as one and the same. I don't know what the reasons are for the alleged change in tune it now. I suspect that self-congratulatory virtue-signaling accounts for much of it, but the reasons may vary. It is what it is.
I regard beating as abuse, as I've mentioned before. And while spanking is something I disagree with on general principle, I don't presume someone to be an abuser, or even a "bad parent" necessarily, unless they resort to spanking as a primary means of discipline. Going by the information that you've disclosed about yourself and your family over the years and gut feeling, I don't think you fit the bill as either.

Interesting that I haven't seen too much of folks accusing you of such, yet have had a few accuse me pretty relentlessly, despite my having made the same distinctions you have AND clearly stating that I don't approve of spanking children in all or most of my posts.

Lol...Maybe they're afraid you'll beat them up.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that, in alot of peoples experience, a "spanking" has been synonymous with a beating. Or that they limit "spanking" to some sort of ritual where the kid goes over the knee and the pants come down. Slapping a kid on the hand for trying to stick something in an electrical outlet or trying to yank out huge tufts of their cats fur is also spanking.

Now..personally, I've been spanked, I've been switched, and I've been flat out punched. It's not so hard to tell the difference. It's not hard to tell the difference between the people who do each respective thing, either. I think the boards might get a kick out of knowing that the same person who switched me was very much against hitting. The person who spanked me had strong reservations against switching. None of these people were bad parents, by any stretch of the most cynical imagination. Not even the guy who popped me. He was pulling me off another kid, who richly deserved the brutality I was doling out at the time. Hard to "collaborative problem solve" your way out of a 6 foot 240lb teen throwin bows. LOL, I giggle about it now, especially thinking back about other comments in thread..because he was pretty overt about the lesson to be learned. "Big man, huh?" Tiny guy, too. Maybe a buck twenty dripping wet, 5'1. Hardly lording his size over me or happy with any of what went down. Far from it. The warmest most affectionate and steady parental figure in my life.

The range of things I would get punished for, in those ways, was pretty narrow. Snakes, gators, guns, and hurting people. None of them are small issues. I can respect that my experiences aren't other peoples experiences..but a little bit of that the other way might help. I've never doubted the love or intentions or character or fitness of any of these people. While some of you may be hardheaded motherfuckers who can't stop doing things even when the people who care the most for you are driven to something that every fiber of their body screams against...I did learn to stop doing those things that would get me spanked, or switched...and I sure as shit didn't need to be sucker punched by a midget for the same thing twice.

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-and here I am, still not Whitey Bulgar, many years later...with kids of my own just as secure in my love for them that I've always been in my own parents love for me. FWIW, I decided I'd never hit my kids with objects..so switching is off the table, and that oh-so-common form of "spanking" where you lay into a kid with your belt. I hope I never find myself in a situation where it seems prudent to get into a boxing match with one of my kids...but you never know.

The range of things they might get spanked for is smaller, too. I don't have to worry about floridian wildlife, for example...so that's a load off.

[Shell B]

I never cease to be amazed at the lengths to which people will go to justify hitting children.

Boru

The only time I ever thought "I might have to hit this boy." with my stepson was in the ocean. I was holding him. He was about five or six, but we were a little deep, so I had him on my hip. He saw something he thought was a jellyfish and proceeded to try to kill us both by choking me with his arms. Had I been unable to extricate myself from him, it may have come to a smack on the face. It might sound terrible to you, but I'm an anti-spanking stepparent, and I definitely thought I wasn't going to have an alternative.

[Shell B]

I disagree with spanking even on the level you're talking about, Gae, but I don't think that's severe enough to warrant actual opposition from me. Take one step over the line into abuse and I will fully smack a person in the head with a bat for hitting their kid, however.

To say I disagree is really to say that I find it distasteful and unnecessary. (The type of spanking you're talking about.) That said, I've never raised heathens birthed from your loins, so I can't attest to being against whacking your kids.

[The Grand Nudger]

They could change a saints mind on that count. They are mine, after all. Alot of people disagree with spanking, at any level or of any kind. I get that. I don't argue that people should spank their kids. I just suggest that there actually is a line to cross between spanking and abuse.

[Rev. Rye]

Of all the studies I’ve looked at that say spanking doesn’t work (and in fact, has the opposite effect), I have to concede that I didn’t find any data sets of parents who reserved it for the sort of severe and potentially dangerous incidents that Khem, Athene, and Shell , et alium have been talking about.

[Shell B]

I even reserved yelling for severe situations. It's not because I'm a saint of a parent. It's because I noticed that if I only yelled at him when I needed to, it worked better.

I couldn't spank a kid even if I had to. I pushed a kid once when I was babysitting. He was wielding a golf club, with which he had demolished all the windows on the first floor of the house. He came at me with it. I sent him flying. I was maybe 16. He was evil.