fitting punishments that don't fit

From Trevor Bothwell's commentary -- "Oregon boys being Nifonged" -- in the DC Examiner:

According to ABC News, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face up to 10 years in jail and a lifetime as registered sex offenders if convicted, all over a stunt Mashburn claims was practiced by girls and boys alike every Friday during school.

Bradley Berry, the district attorney who appears to be doing his best Mike Nifong impression by prosecuting the boys seemingly for doing little more than acting like kids, maintains that his office "aggressively" pursues sex crimes that involve children. "These cases are devastating to children," Berry said. "They are life-altering cases."

Berry is correct, though he isn't referring to Mashburn and Cornelison, whose lives he's apparently trying to destroy single-handedly. Instead, he perversely suggests that teenage girls are going to be ruined for life because a couple of 13-year-olds behaving like clowns smacked them on the backside.

Bothwell points out that there was nothing sexual about the conduct, and it is inappropriate to treat the kids in a manner normally associated with child rapists.

I agree, and I wrote an earlier post about this ridiculous but outrageous affair, which I castigated as a a "too damn typical" example of the "complete lack of common sense which now seems to have modern America in a deathlock."

Complaining about these problems does not seem to make them go away. Nor does complaining about a lack of common sense seem to restore common sense.

In the old days, boys who did something like this would have had their own butts beaten -- by adults. I suppose if we use today's standard, the adults who beat the boys bottoms would be arrested and prosecuted, not for violating some new law against spanking, but for "felony sexual abuse." And why not? What's good for the goose...

Does anyone really know what's good for the goose anymore? Are we to look into the mind of the perpetrator to determine what is and what is not "sexual"? There are people who really get off on having their butts spanked, are there not? Likewise, there are people who really get off on delivering the spankings. How are we to know?

Is a teacher who takes pleasure in spanking a child a child molester? Or is this too inflammatory a question even to pose in this blog? If it is, then I think it's all the more reason to pose it.

Let's take a trip down memory lane.... These archives are full of accounts of school canings and whippings. I don't think I need to provide lurid examples, but trust me. Caning and whipping may have been abolished in recent years (by a vote of 231-230) but the accounts will live on forever in cyberland.

Well, perhaps I shouldn't have said "forever." It would not surprise me to see the same governments that abolished what were once standard practices to impose censorship on even utterly factual accounts of them. People might enjoy reading about it, and we can't have that! Bad boys might get ideas. (Fraternity paddling is probably another example of sexual abuse, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if by merely mentioning it I have run afoul of the various net-nanny moralists of the "left" and the "right.")

And Tom Sawyer's teacher Mr. Dobbins, despite the "merciless flayings" he clearly enjoyed administering, completely escaped punishment for inflicting what were obviously "devastating" and "life-altering" traumas. Why? Because this was completely normal for a Victorian schoolmaster, that's why.

(To even point this out is by definition moral relativism.)

Today, Ritalin has filled the ecological niche once reserved for corporal punishment. Whether this is right or wrong isn't up to me. Probably just as well, because many people would consider me highly immoral. For the life of me, I've never been able to understand why whipping someone or punching someone in the face is less harmful than so much as touching the same person's genitalia. When I was a child if I had been given that choice, I'd have gladly chosen the latter as the lesser of two evils, notwithstanding society's determination that it is far, far worse. (I feel the same way as an adult, BTW.) I'm not saying it's right to touch someone on the genitals, mind you. It just strikes me that there is something profoundly illogical going on. But however logical my view may be, many would consider it immoral. Knowing this does not help me understand why.

I don't know what to do here. Perhaps another unscientific poll.

First, the punishment of the boys:

how would you punish the boys who smacked the girls' butts?
criminal prosecution for sexual abuse
a stern lecture plus suspension from school
psychiatric counseling and or appropriate medication
a severe spanking
being told in a deep, manly voice to "Knock it off, shitheads"
  
pollcode.com free polls

Finally, a simple either/or question:

what would you rather have to endure?
being punched in the face
being briefly touched on the genitalia
  
pollcode.com free polls
UPDATE: In light of an excellent complaint that the school punishment poll is rigged, I've replaced it with a new one with additional choices. My apologies to those who voted in the previous poll, whose results are as follows:
criminal prosecution for sexual abuse 10% 1

a stern lecture plus suspension from school 50% 5

a severe spanking 40% 4

Previous voters, feel free to vote again.

MORE: Had to redo it again, as I had trouble with the "and or." (You cannot use a "slash" mark, so the psychiatric treatment choice would not appear.)

posted by Eric on 08.03.07 at 09:34 AM





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Comments

That poll is rigged!

Any punishment more severe than their being told in a deep, manly voice to "Knock it off, shitheads" is a wild overreaction.

But back in my day, schools had men in them. The absence of them now doesn't seem unrelated to these medical and legal punishments' taking the place of the mild social reinforcements of decorum I remember. I'd rather get shouted at for two seconds than have my brain washed out with Ritalin for years. And I was. And it worked. That's what a man's voice is for.

On your latter point, I recently read a biography of Michel Foucault, and the saddest and most ironic part of it was the paragraph-long anecdote about his having made a point very like yours about the special status of sexual assault (and "assault") being usually the primary source of its harm, and *not something we actually believe* when we examine it, and immediately being browbeaten out of speaking such heresy ever again by a then-rising feminist establishment he'd mistaken for radical.

No one, especially men, and extra-especially gay men, is permitted to say these things.

Some Guy   ·  August 3, 2007 01:00 PM

Seriously, ridiculous. A slap on the butt equal to ten years imprisonment. Absurd.

John Kaiser   ·  August 3, 2007 02:56 PM

I went with the "deep, manly voice" but there's a subtext there--if the boys continue to misbehave there'll be physical consequences. Not necessarily a paddling, but being grabbed and dragged off in front of peers is a humiliating punishment in itself.

Granted, lots of folks fear to do that now. I once spent a few months as a Sunday School teacher at a Unitarian church, and the only qualifican I had was a prior incident where I put a stop to some horseplay.

Karl Gallagher   ·  August 3, 2007 03:17 PM

Ten years for horseplay, but since plenty of rape/murder cases complete with DNA evidence get thrown out on technicalities, we may not need to fret over this on so much.

Scott   ·  August 5, 2007 11:12 PM

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