Fascinating discussion! Made me think a lot about the corporal punishment I was on the receiving end of, growing up. I went through a brief period, when I was very young, of being completely unpredictable and, by all accounts, an absolutely horrible child -- and I did get smacked by my parents some for that bad behavior -- but it was really when I was in an all-boys grammar school (age 10-17) where physical punishment was common and handed out with far too much glee by the teachers. Looking back, they were outright abusive in many ways. And that definitely should be stopped -- aside from anything else, it was completely ineffective in eliminating the behaviors that they were trying to punish!
Talia's comment about spanking and kink resonates too because I got into BDSM as a teenager and was very active in the UK scene for several years in my late '20s/early '30s, and it's sometimes hard to square that away with how you feel about the physical punishment that you received earlier in life -- my mum even joked that I was into that stuff _because_ she had smacked me as a kid which... that doesn't help, mum, you know?
And now I'm off to subscribe to Talia's Substack and read that article...
Fascinating discussion! Made me think a lot about the corporal punishment I was on the receiving end of, growing up. I went through a brief period, when I was very young, of being completely unpredictable and, by all accounts, an absolutely horrible child -- and I did get smacked by my parents some for that bad behavior -- but it was really when I was in an all-boys grammar school (age 10-17) where physical punishment was common and handed out with far too much glee by the teachers. Looking back, they were outright abusive in many ways. And that definitely should be stopped -- aside from anything else, it was completely ineffective in eliminating the behaviors that they were trying to punish!
Talia's comment about spanking and kink resonates too because I got into BDSM as a teenager and was very active in the UK scene for several years in my late '20s/early '30s, and it's sometimes hard to square that away with how you feel about the physical punishment that you received earlier in life -- my mum even joked that I was into that stuff _because_ she had smacked me as a kid which... that doesn't help, mum, you know?
And now I'm off to subscribe to Talia's Substack and read that article...