Good morning,
Since I have this passion for causing a ruckus, here is another
lovely subject we've been over before: spanking
I had my students do a paper on spanking, and discuss the "pro's" and
"con's" of spanking children. One student, in her researching, found a
website called "nospank.org."
On this website, she found a booklet (?) being touted that claims spanking is
another form of sexual abuse. I told her I had not heard of such a claim, and
did not have the background to respond to such a claim, I found this an
intriguing argument nonetheless.
Let me provide a few excerpts (I've tried to snip as much as possible and
leave the necessary info) and ask some of the wizards out there to provide
any knowledge/data/opinions.
I do not wish to resurrect the spanking argument -- I really don't -- but I do
want to know how others respond to the spanking as sexual abuse,
particularly responding to some of the claims this author makes.
I have formed no opinion myself (except to groan at the use of someone like
Shere Hite as a "sex expert.")
Thanks, JPG
----
THE SEXUAL DANGERS OF SPANKING CHILDREN
by Tom Johnson (1994, Revised 1996)
Copyright is waived on this publication
S P A N K I N G, defined as slapping of the buttocks, is a form of hitting and
thus of physical violence. That fact alone should make the spanking of
children unacceptable by the same standards that protect adults, who are not
as vulnerable. However, there is more to spanking than simply hitting:
spanking also trespasses on one of the body's most private and sexual
areas -- the buttocks. To fully address the wrongness of spanking children,
therefore, we must consider not only the issue of physical violence, but also
the issue of sexual trespass.
While the harm of spanking's physical violence has been thoroughly
explained and demonstrated over the past century in a vast body of
academic literature, scientific research, legal treatises, and relatively
recently in the popular media, it is quite rare that the sexual consequences
of spanking are openly and seriously discussed. This pamphlet aims to raise
public awareness about the sexual aspects which make spanking an
especially inappropriate and even dangerous way of disciplining children,
whether it is done by parents, educators or other caretakers. While this
pamphlet focuses on "spanking," the most seemingly benign form of
physical punishment, the arguments raised herein apply equally to paddling,
switching, caning, strapping, or any other mode of forcible buttock-beating.
Buttocks are a sexual zone
Like women's breasts, the buttocks are a sexual or erogenous part of the
human anatomy, even though they are not actually sex organs. This is why
baring one's buttocks in public is considered indecent as well as unlawful and
why their exposure in movies or on television constitutes nudity. It is also
why someone who uninvitedly fondles another person's buttocks is treated
by law as a sexual offender. The sexual nature of the buttocks is explained
not only by their proximity to the genitals, but also by their high
concentration of nerve endings which lead directly to sexual nerve centers.
Hence, the buttocks are a major locus of sexual signals.
Spanking as sexual violation
Since children are sexual beings and since the buttocks are a sexual region
of the body, we should question the propriety of slapping children's buttocks.
We generally understand that fondling or caressing a child's buttocks is a
sexual offense (even if the child does not understand it to be so). We also
know that slapping an adult's buttocks is a sexual offense (even if the
offender does not get sexual pleasure from doing so).
Spanking as sexual abuse
As in ages past, there are people today who are sexually excited by
spanking. This trait, which is often expressed in pornography and associated
with sadomasochism, is known in the scientific literature as flagellantism.
While many flagellants seek to engage in consensual spanking between
adults, some find the spanking of minors to be either more arousing or more
opportune.
Spanking and psychosexual development
Even without sexual motives on the part of the punisher, spanking can
interfere with a child's normal sexual and psychological development.
Because the buttocks are so close to the genitals and so multiply linked to
sexual nerve centers, slapping them can trigger powerful and involuntary
sensations of sexual pleasure. This can happen even in very young children,
and even in spite of great, clearly upsetting pain.
This kind of sexual stimulation, which undermines any disciplinary purpose
and which most people would agree is unsuitable for children in any context,
can cause a child to impressionably attach his or her sexuality to the idea of
spanking. This fixation may endure to cause problems in adult life. Or, on the
other hand, the child might react against these unseemly feelings of pleasure
by repressing his or her sexuality, so much perhaps that as an adult, he or
she has difficulty experiencing sexual pleasure and intimacy.
The odds that spanking a child will lead to psychosexual aberrations would
be difficult to calculate. However, the fact that there is any chance at all of
these serious problems occurring should be reason enough to do away with
the practice of spanking. The risks are completely unnecessary.
Conclusion
It is not disputed that spanking has a sexual side as well as a punitive side.
Indeed, our popular culture and media suggest there is wide awareness of
this fact, however unspoken. Society has nonetheless failed to squarely
address the serious implications of spanking's punitive/sexual duality.
Considering the power of sex to corrupt, along with the coercive nature of
punishment, we should be alarmed at the very idea of discipline through
spanking -- all the more so when it is directed at a group of people as
powerless, fragile and unsuspecting as children.
EXPERTS' QUOTES
"Spanking on the buttocks can produce definitely erotic sensations,
including sexual orgasm, in some children. Some of these children have
been known to cause themselves to be spanked, by misconducting
themselves on purpose and by pretending distress while receiving the
desired 'punishment'... The frequency with which this happens is not known,
although it may not be altogether rare. .. The spankings in these cases may
have been given for the adult's own perverted gratification ('sadism'); or at
least there might have been culpable awareness and toleration of the child's
sexual reaction on the part of the adult. ...Only some decades ago perverts
masquerading as governesses or tutors were reportedly anything but rare in
some European countries." (1965)
J. F. Oliven, pathologist. Sexual Hygiene and Pathology.
"In many cases, the avowed disciplinary value of flagellation in schools and
colleges was a mere pretense to enable sadists to secure sexual titillation."
(1974)
George Ryley Scott, historian, sociologist,
anthropologist.The History of Corporal Punishment.
"When a child is hit on the buttocks...this kind of violent touch can be
sexualized in the child's mind not only because of a real flow of blood into
the genitalia, but also because of a longing for intimacy with the parent: if
painful physical touch is the only fulfillment of that longing, then this can `feel
good'." (1995)
Shere Hite, sex researcher,
sociopsychologist. The Hite Report on the Family. Page 42.
"These are the realities that most of us remain eager to deny... So long as
children are beaten by adults, the obsessions with domination and
submission, with power and authority, with shame and humiliation, with
painful pleasure -- all hallmarks of sadomasochism - will remain an enduring
consequence of the ordinary violence and coercion done in the name of
discipline... Sadomasochism is not an aberration; it is inherent in corporal
punishment..." (1990)
Philip Greven, professor of history.
Spare the Child, Page 186.
"I have had constantly to do with neurotics in whom sadistic feelings were
first aroused by corporal punishment; after the sadistic impulse thus
awakened has been repressed and forms the starting points of very malignant
aberrations about which it would be very disingenuous to aver that they would
have developed without the free use of the rod... The number of those who
are harmed through beating, especially upon the buttocks, is undoubtedly
very great... Even one who passionately contemns sexuality will hardly be
inclined to deny that the corporal punishment induced well-marked sexual
stimulation -- although the gluteal region is not within the domain of the
genital organs." (1924)
Oskar Pfister, physician, psychoanalyst.
Love in Children and its Aberrations.
"Frequent spankings, too, may have a negative impact on sex development.
Because of the proximity of the sex organs, a child may get sexually
aroused when spanked. Or he may so enjoy the making up that follows the
punishment that he will seek suffering as a necessary prelude to love. There
are many adult couples who seem to need a good fight before a good night."
(1966)
Dr. Haim G. Ginott, child psychologist.
Between Parent and Child.
"Advocates of corporal punishment in schools should examine very carefully
the weight of evidence now available and, particularly in light of the
pornographic component, consider whether they can justify the continuation
of a system with such a capacity for exciting unhealthy interest." (1980)
British Psychological Society,
"Report on Corporal Punishment in Schools."
"Being beaten excites children sexually because it is an intense excitation of
the erogenous zones of the skin of the buttocks and of the muscles below
the skin..." (1945)
Otto Fenichel, M.D.
The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis,
Page 315.
**JPG: and what wisdom library would be complete without a quote from
Siggie:
"Ever since Jean-Jaques Rousseau's Confessions, it has been well known to
all educationalists that the painful stimulation of the skin of the buttocks is
one of the erotic roots of the passive instrument of cruelty (masochism)."
(1905)
Sigmund Freud. Three Essays on the
Theory of Sexuality, VII, Page 193.
