Re: forms of abuse -- Let's Talk Spanking

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Subject: Re: forms of abuse

Author:
Douglas

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Date Posted: 16:26:16 02/06/26 Fri
In reply to: Emily Travers 's message, "forms of abuse" on 01:12:17 02/05/26 Thu

That is very interesting Emily. I have a couple of questions for you regarding this.

1.I have been raised to believe that spanking isn't always child abuse. That it's a proper tool to teach lessons etc. Perhaps I was brainwashed to believe this? Would you say that spanking (real spankings, not a quick swat over jeans) is by default child abuse? Even if the parent doesn't think of themselves as abusive?

2. Could the fact that it embodies all four (super interesting that it does) also explain the appeal, the passion many people have for spanking and how it got fetishized more than any other form of abuse?

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[> [> Subject: the alchemy of abuse?

Author:
Emily Travers
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Date Posted: 22:49:43 02/07/26 Sat

Good questions: I do think that it being the sum of the standard forms of abuse cited by health discourse - there may be other acts which also contain all 4 forms - has resulted in it becoming a stand-in for 'abuse' as a whole; that is to say, that there is still a sizable minority of people who do not think of it as abusive at all.

It is almost as if, in being the sum of all the usual forms of abuse, it itself could be seen as transcending abuse itself, if you follow. As if, alchemically, you mix up all the ingredients and the thing then becomes something else entirely.

And though I don't consider enculturation to be the same thing as brainwashing - the latter is a specific term used to denote a calculated replacement of certain ideas and not an original socialization thereof - it does remain for us to answer the question regarding what KIND of society we want to live in. For myself, physical coercion of minors is not an ethical option, though it might well teach something or other. There are many reasons why ALL professional healthcare bodies are against spanking, whether they are psychological in basis or more generally physiological. Once in a while we do find specific figures in the history of psychopathology using cp as therapeutic - Jung and Bettelheim, for instance - but the results have both been equivocal as well as, of course, the patients being adults.