Parents Who Spank Should be Worried
For generations, American culture has celebrated certain socially-acceptable forms of violence against women. Generations of movies depict the assault, harassment, and stalking of women as romantic or funny. Blade Runner features Harrison Ford physically trapping a woman and kissing her forcibly despite her pleadings, set to a backdrop of romantic music. The beloved musical Grease includes the cheery lyric, “Did she put up a fight?” addressed to the protagonist after his date with the leading lady. Recently we’ve experienced a national debate over a classic Christmas song which makes tongue-in-cheek reference to the possible use of date rape drugs in a supposedly romantic context. The tone of the debate makes clear a broader phenomenon — listeners and viewers do not consciously enjoy the concept of violence against women, rather, the content is so ubiquitous they simply do not recognize the scenes and/or lyrics as violent.
Thanks to the #MeToo movement, our nation has collectively noticed this hideous blindness which characterizes many of our attitudes toward women. We are now hyper-aware that the scale of sexual violence in Hollywood is beyond what we ever imagined, and simultaneously we know that we should have known. For even as it was occurring, well-connected individuals made jokes about the ongoing violation of young women and named perpetrators on live TV, jokes upon which we now look back, shuddering, only to remember with horror that we once laughed along with them. We somehow did not notice that they described violence. The women attacked by Bill Cosby spoke publicly about their violations for almost ten years before we deigned to care, and in myriad and diverse ways, ordinary women have experienced violations we only now recognize as such. Forced into this cultural reckoning, we are just now beginning to notice the extent of the habitual dehumanization which exists in us so easily, so invisibly. And now that we have noticed, we are determined not to turn a blind eye to violence. We have collectively decided that those who use their power to harm the less-powerful are cowards and monsters, and will be held accountable. Well, mostly.
I saw a meme on Facebook today. It was a comically distorted image of a girl screaming in terror, captioned, “When you trynna explain yourself but yo momma still coming at you with the belt.” It had racked up many “laugh” reacts and commenters who humorously recalled being beaten with implements ranging from open palms and wooden spoons to clothes hangers and spiked belts.
The callousness with which we talk about violence against children should feel eerily familiar by now. As a society, we have begun to recognize the disgusting nature of movie scenes that humorize sexual assault, yet we share humorous memes about hitting children with belts. We shudder to think that we once laughed at Harvey Weinstein’s crimes, but we readily laugh at jokesters who trade ever more graphic stories of the beatings they received as children.
Finding a relevant difference between hitting children (“spanking”) and crimes we now universally regard as abhorrent is very difficult. Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that physical punishment is harmful to the child and ineffective at promoting the parents’ own goals. There exists no legitimately child-oriented or family-oriented reason to strike a child. Further, if a reason did exist, the ethics remain suspect. Any halfway-normal American now condemns a man who strikes his wife. Ask them to imagine it’s possible to strike your wife for her own good, and they still condemn the act. As a society, we recognize that striking the body of a non-threatening person is barbaric and fails to reflect their dignity as a human person, regardless of the reasons or intentions of the perpetrator.
Given that we cannot employ the child’s own good as a justification for striking him, perhaps one can appeal to the rights of the parent. Does the unique nature of the child-parent relationship endow the parent with the right to strike the child? Those who have studied history will find cause for concern in the fact that every previous instance of this type of reasoning resulted in catastrophe. No relationship between the races gives white people the right to hurt black bodies. No relationship between educated and ignorant people gives educated people the right to hurt ignorant people’s bodies. No relationship between men and women gives men the right to hurt women’s bodies. If you think that your relationship with your child is unique enough to endow you with the right to hurt his body, expect history to view you as a monster.
There is no way to compare the harm of sexual assault to the harm of physical violence against children, and I am not here to try. What I do compare is the way Americans have attempted to justify these two forms of violence against the powerless, and the way we have responded when violence stares us in the face — with humor, romanticization, poo-poo-ing, and lack of recognition.
It’s not that we think violence is funny. It’s that we don’t recognize violence against children as violence. In the same way we dehumanized women, we have dehumanized children to the point where we don’t realize the literal nature of our actions against them. Our societal blindness is so complete that it extends even to the victims themselves — just as women not far removed from the victims themselves made light of Harvey Weinstein’s known crimes, teenagers make lighthearted jokes about how terrified they were just a few years ago when their parents beat or whipped them. For those who feel a twinge of uncertainty about the idea of hitting a child, the reassurances of former victims swoop in to soothe the conscience. Parents are not violent, they are “old-school,” “strict,” or giving “tough love.” It happened to me for my own good. The child deserves this. She’ll be glad about it later. She was asking for it.
Many powerful men are afraid right now. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, they worry they are next in line to be struck down with an accusation. Let me attempt to expand the circle of afraid men. If you hit children or support hitting children, you should be afraid. Your time is coming. Gone are the days of explicit rape stories provoking laughter in the general public. Soon will come a day when your child’s anecdotes of physical assault provoke not laughter, but stunned shock. Gone are the days where sexual coercion, portrayed in plain imagery, is not recognized as violence. Soon will come a day when you strike a child and your action is suddenly recognized for what it literally is: a physical attack. In many countries the actions you condone already render you a criminal. Rest assured, your children and grandchildren will not look kindly on you for supporting violence, and like the infamous moguls we now know well, you may one day find yourself held accountable by the very people you thought could never strike back. Meanwhile, the rest of us will look back in horror on the gruesome jokes we laughed at, the anecdotes we didn’t recognize as violent, and wonder how we could have been so blind. Again.
