YouTube: Spanking in Westerns
Yeah, so this is pretty fucked up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4XCjJidY_I
I don't necessarily have anything against spanking; I was spanked and belted as a child, and although I have lingering issues with my father (who was universally the corporeal disciplinarian), I don't think they can be attributed solely to spanking. In conversations with friends who grew up with spankings, we all seem to agree that spanking was beneficial for us, and feel that it gave us a keener sense of proper behavior (because misbehavior means you get smacked). All things being equal, I think spanking can a useful form of punishment for a child if implemented properly, but a detrimental one if implemented poorly.
Even then, beyond a certain age, I think it loses its effectiveness and is no longer an appropriate punishment. Children are smart, if you explain why they are in trouble, why their behavior is inappropriate, and if you treat them with respect, they'll learn. It depends on the child, of course, but in broad generalisations, I'd say after age four or five, spanking is probably not necessary. Before that, I think it can be useful because it's a very firm and absolute way of conveying that Behavior X is bad. Behavior X leads to Consequence Y - that's operant conditioning. (Therefore, in order to be successful, there are rules governing the application of Consequence Y.) Since spanking causes pain, it can be good if the child is too young to understand a more abstract idea like time-out, or to follow the logical explanation for punishment.
Adults, on the other hand, are pretty much all capable of understanding why Behavior X is bad if it's explained to them. Unless you're dealing with a sociopathic individual, there's no need for corporeal punishment in the operant paradigm. Spanking an adult is essentially reducing them to young children and implying that the disciplinarian views the victim as incapable of rationality, which is a) insulting and b) humiliating. And since it only seems to be applied to women (with the implied or stated intent to "beat the meanness" out of them), it's also incredibly and disturbingly misogynistic.
I'm kind of freaked out by the reverential sense I get from that video. Spanking between two consenting adults is one thing, but the women in those films don't seem to be enjoying it, or inviting it. They're kicking and struggling - but not really very hard, huh? Notice how none of those men had much trouble flipping the girls over, none of them went away with bloodied noses or sore groins or even a hangnail. That's even more disturbing. Okay, I get it, it's a film, it's the script, they aren't supposed to fight because their characters have been bad and are being punished, and they deserve it for being uppity, right?
I threw up a little bit as I typed that.
I know Westerns are not the pinnacle of egalitarianism, but as I have never actually seen a Western, I though it was mostly confined to racism and all the women being prostitutes and getting called "Little Lady".
I grew up during the 90s, in a cushy environment of Montessori values and third-wave feminism, when the catch-phrase for pre-teens was "girl power". The idea of an infantilised woman is so alien to my ethos that I have difficulty accepting the idea as real. At the same time, I have observed this behavior in my own family; my male relatives tend to speak of women as one would speak of children. I find this tendency disturbing and difficult to relate to, so seeing these scenes, I feel as though I've entered an alien world, one governed not by reason, or logic, or sanity, but by petulant man-children who can't handle refusal or rebellion by a woman without resorting to base physical abuse to resolve their discomfort. How is spanking a woman different from slapping or punching a woman? It's not, except that it has the added benefit of humiliation. If you put a man in that position, we'd call him a bitch, or a pussy - a woman. Because it's still acceptable to treat a woman like a child. It's still acceptable to say that women are emotional, and irrational, and therefore can be spanked. And that's the most disturbing part of all.
ETA: None of the other vids from that user are any better. And apparently it's not just Westerns. Yeah. Nice to know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4XCjJidY_I
I don't necessarily have anything against spanking; I was spanked and belted as a child, and although I have lingering issues with my father (who was universally the corporeal disciplinarian), I don't think they can be attributed solely to spanking. In conversations with friends who grew up with spankings, we all seem to agree that spanking was beneficial for us, and feel that it gave us a keener sense of proper behavior (because misbehavior means you get smacked). All things being equal, I think spanking can a useful form of punishment for a child if implemented properly, but a detrimental one if implemented poorly.
Even then, beyond a certain age, I think it loses its effectiveness and is no longer an appropriate punishment. Children are smart, if you explain why they are in trouble, why their behavior is inappropriate, and if you treat them with respect, they'll learn. It depends on the child, of course, but in broad generalisations, I'd say after age four or five, spanking is probably not necessary. Before that, I think it can be useful because it's a very firm and absolute way of conveying that Behavior X is bad. Behavior X leads to Consequence Y - that's operant conditioning. (Therefore, in order to be successful, there are rules governing the application of Consequence Y.) Since spanking causes pain, it can be good if the child is too young to understand a more abstract idea like time-out, or to follow the logical explanation for punishment.
Adults, on the other hand, are pretty much all capable of understanding why Behavior X is bad if it's explained to them. Unless you're dealing with a sociopathic individual, there's no need for corporeal punishment in the operant paradigm. Spanking an adult is essentially reducing them to young children and implying that the disciplinarian views the victim as incapable of rationality, which is a) insulting and b) humiliating. And since it only seems to be applied to women (with the implied or stated intent to "beat the meanness" out of them), it's also incredibly and disturbingly misogynistic.
I'm kind of freaked out by the reverential sense I get from that video. Spanking between two consenting adults is one thing, but the women in those films don't seem to be enjoying it, or inviting it. They're kicking and struggling - but not really very hard, huh? Notice how none of those men had much trouble flipping the girls over, none of them went away with bloodied noses or sore groins or even a hangnail. That's even more disturbing. Okay, I get it, it's a film, it's the script, they aren't supposed to fight because their characters have been bad and are being punished, and they deserve it for being uppity, right?
I threw up a little bit as I typed that.
I know Westerns are not the pinnacle of egalitarianism, but as I have never actually seen a Western, I though it was mostly confined to racism and all the women being prostitutes and getting called "Little Lady".
I grew up during the 90s, in a cushy environment of Montessori values and third-wave feminism, when the catch-phrase for pre-teens was "girl power". The idea of an infantilised woman is so alien to my ethos that I have difficulty accepting the idea as real. At the same time, I have observed this behavior in my own family; my male relatives tend to speak of women as one would speak of children. I find this tendency disturbing and difficult to relate to, so seeing these scenes, I feel as though I've entered an alien world, one governed not by reason, or logic, or sanity, but by petulant man-children who can't handle refusal or rebellion by a woman without resorting to base physical abuse to resolve their discomfort. How is spanking a woman different from slapping or punching a woman? It's not, except that it has the added benefit of humiliation. If you put a man in that position, we'd call him a bitch, or a pussy - a woman. Because it's still acceptable to treat a woman like a child. It's still acceptable to say that women are emotional, and irrational, and therefore can be spanked. And that's the most disturbing part of all.
ETA: None of the other vids from that user are any better. And apparently it's not just Westerns. Yeah. Nice to know.