HURR DURRRRRRRRR DIP DAP DOOOP I SAID SEMANTICS SO SUDDENLY ANYTHING SAID HERE IS UTTERLY TURNED MEANINGLESS HAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Nigga god damn please. The reason we are arguing semantics is because the semantics are what is important. If some dude establishes the argument with “holding your kid’s arm a little bit hard is child abuse” then there is absolutely nowhere we could take the discussion under those parameters. If I, on the other hand, spend some time dissecting the things that happened and make the arguement that defining abuse is a more complex combination of intent plus intensity then suddenly we locked in an important heated battle. For all we know the OP saw child abuse; but it may as well have been a gross over-exaggeration of the situation. What was the statistic on witnesses on the stand? Motherfucking 3% of witnesses are actually reliable in court. So this whole discussion began on suspect grounds and a proper definition was never established.
Many of us understand that child abuse because some of us who are proponent of the occasional smack came from those wacky background that turn women into strippers. Because sometimes those wacky backgrounds gave us situations in which it was not entirely clear that there was actual abuse going on or it was a situation in which we deserved punishment and it just so happened that we got smacked. The problem becomes, as things tend to do when scrutinized, more complicated because we have some things to deal with: 1) a study that keeps getting mentioned without being posted and 2) plenty of biographical evidence on many posters stating that some of those corporal punishments, at the later stages in life, provided for a positive teaching experience that made them contemplate their actions in multiple ways and adjust those behaviors. See as an anthropologist this is the shit that I live for because I understand numbers are flawed for many things so I can’t go around trumpeting graphs all day and night. So it very well seems to appear that there may be some benefits to corporal punishment in the way that it is administered.
But so long as I don’t know how the study was conducted, there is no way for me to either agree or disagree with it. For all I know kids were getting smacked for everything as opposed to being smacked in a situation in which it was the absolute last resort that a parent was going to rely on. Makes a big difference if a kid gets smacked for random shit he does and if he gets smacked for crossing lines. This is also a battle of semantics because how punishment is administered by parents might as well be small time legalize established between the adults in charge of the children. So before the kid even gets smacked, the type of smacking and the ways in which it will be administered becomes another discussion for the parents well before they do it ( or at the very least I hope they do). So for all you niggas waving that semantic flag, suck a god damn dick. Because while you may all turn into that one moment my mom smacked me and claim child abuse, my mom established had made it abundantly clear that my behavior had consequences. Continuing to do so would lead to a very clear path in which I would be the sole person responsible for the punishment. So it seems to me that my mom did an excellent job in the way she managed boundaries for me because both she and I knew what was acceptable and wasn’t, the punishments for said behavior, and I ran like a motherfucker to get away from a beatdown we both knew was the result of my continued nonsense.
At this point I might as well start a ethnographic study on adults who had gone through abuse, corporal punishment of all types and then see what is it that they feel about three or four times removed from it. It seems that so far what I’ll get from it is an acceptance of the behavior, one or two moments in which the person felt he had earned the punishment and something clicked, a minority of people who will find it unacceptable and a whole spectrum of really interesting shades of gray as some benefit from it and others suffer. But what I will get form it is a context from which to understand why it was successful in some instances and not in others. Which in the long run is far more important than just giving people numbers and telling them it is bad. Because if I can go to a bunch of “bad parents” and tell them “Look, we know you’re gonna smack your kids and I can’t stop. I get why you do it but here are a bunch of tools so you can avoid as much as possible and way so that if you feel it has to come to do that, you are able to turn into a proper learning experience for the child and so that you know what is fair game and what is abuse…” I’ll be able to help more parents discontinue abuse and save a bunch of kids asswhoopings because I won’t be preaching to people, I’ll help them parent better than some asshole black and white nonsense will. But I mean, what do I know? I’m some idiot kid who studied anthropology and you are that dumbass nigga throwing around semantics.
Cognitive dissonance, that’s some whole new level of asshole. My dad pinching me for no reason when he could’ve just told me to quit shit properly was abuse; him getting drunk and cussing me out was abuse. That is fucking insanely shitty. I am well aware of the damage that caused. My mother setting up clear boundaries was good parenting. There are mostly grown ass men posting here who understand that their parents fucked up in insane amount of ways. It just so happens that those few times where a lot of different elements came together and we got smacked, something that has not be quantified made a positive impact on our lives. Fucking deal.
