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Russia is inching towards utopian equality by considering a law that would decriminalize domestic violence:
The amendment would make "moderate" violence within families an administrative rather than criminal offence, punishable by a fine rather than a jail sentence. [...] The law was drafted by Yelena Mizulina, an ultra-conservative MP who was also behind the controversial Russian law banning "gay propaganda". She told parliament that "in Russian traditional families, the relationship between parents and their children is built on authority and power". She said it was ridiculous that people could be branded criminals "for a slap".
The Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, is due to hear the bill in a second reading next week, after passing it on the first reading by 386 votes to one. It needs to pass three readings in the Duma before it is moved to parliament's upper house, and then requires the signature of the president, Vladimir Putin.
[...] The amendment would decriminalise any violence that does not cause serious medical harm, which is defined as requiring hospital treatment. Beatings that leave bruises, scratches or bleeding but do not leave lasting negative health effects such as broken bones or concussion will no longer be criminal. If there is a second beating within a year, however, the case can be made a criminal one.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @02:06AM
I have made a few passing references to my own abusive father in the past. Let me put that out there, as plainly as possible. My real father thought that I was his whipping boy, and that he had the right to do anything he cared to do to me. The man would lash out at me for any or no reason. Often times, no reason was given at all, rational or otherwise. If there were ever "spankings", I've long forgotten those. A fist, a foot, a thrown cup, lashes with a belt, any stick he could pick up. I always had bruises and welts as a kid.
And, it simply makes me sick when parents are sent to jail for actual, real spankings. Corporal punishment, administered for the best of reasons, and with only positive goals in mind - and people spazz out over it. All because asshats don't recognize that sometimes kids need a spanking.
Those of you who have toddlers know damned well that you cannot reason with them. They have a one track mind, and you can stand in their way, pick them up and move them, natter at them, all day long - and the moment you look away, they are right back to sticking metallic objects into the electric outlet. You may pretend that smacking the child's fingers is abuse. Go ahead and claim that a swat on their little asses will damage their psyches. (My own psyche doesn't reside anywhere near my anus, but maybe you and your children are made differently.)
The fact is, a little pain focuses a child's attention on you. With that attention focused, you can reason with the child, to some limited extent.
We experience pain for a reason. Pain teaches us not to touch the glowing hot coils on the stove. Pain teaches us not to stick screwdrivers into electrical outlets. Pain teachs us not to tease the dog while he's eating. Pain is a teaching tool.
The teacher who is incapable of using all the tools at his/her disposal is one piss poor excuse of a teacher.
Zero tolerance applied to any activity, is an invitation for idiots to step in.
Spousal abuse is quite another story. In my adult life, I've struck a woman exactly three times. Each time, the woman had struck me first, and each time, I responded with a slap just a little harder than she gave me. Does that make me a wife beater? If so - suck it up cupcake. The woman learned that she couldn't slap me around like she had done to her own little brother. THAT boy's life was often miserable, with four older sisters always slapping him around. Little Phillip and I became pretty good friends, partly because I empathized with the abuse he suffered at the hands of his siblings.
A man who forces his point of view on his wife with his fists is no man at all. But, the man who submits to his wife's slaps and punches is no man either.
Common sense people. Let's try some on. I repeat - I am sickened by the things people claim to be abuse these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @02:11AM
And, it simply makes me sick when parents are sent to jail for actual, real spankings.
And when does that happen?
For chrissakes its still legal for schools in 19 states to administer corporal punishment. [businessinsider.com] Even to students who are disabled.
No actual parents are going to jail for "real spankings."
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @02:23AM
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/mom-arrested-spanking/ [thefreethoughtproject.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @02:26AM
That isn't the best of examples. The woman apparently picked up an electric cord to administer some swats across their asses. She should have had a paddle at hand. The cord got her into trouble, as much as anything. Cords and belts do NOT make paddles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @10:21AM
Its also a bad example since she did not go to jail
charges were dropped within a week
that's crazy fast, especially for a black defendant
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @10:45AM
Not going back to look it up but I believe she was arrested and booked. She "went to jail". Or, did they just write a summons, and serve it on her?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @02:18AM
Sensitive for a tough guy.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @02:55AM
Ahh, I was wondering what the fuck was wrong with you. Honestly I'm kind of disappointed it's something so pedestrian, especially considering how completely sociopathic you seem to have become over it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @03:10AM
Nothing useful to add to this conversation? Imagine that. Well, have fun, and try to psychoanalyze me, Azuma. I've already responded to your hoplophobic post - but tell me, why are you interested in the size of my penis? I've never asked about your anatomy. I really don't care if you wear a 34A, or a 48E.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:54AM
Predictable as always, right down to the use of the word "hoplophobia." Doesn't it ever bother you that you can be so easily mapped out and triangulated?
As to your miniscule wedding tackle, I personally don't have any interest in it, but I've noticed from your post history, especially recently, that you place high value on the traditional masculine virtues...to the point, in fact, of turning on your fellow men who are victims of domestic violence from female partners, which is a bizarrely common phenomenon. We feminists are your friends, honey; leaving the TERFs and separatist nutters aside, we've been trying to tell you for decades that the monolithic entity known as "the patriarchy" is screwing you too, as it's been more about class than sex for at least a century.
But it's easier to just keep on keepin' on, right? Somewhere deep down, the beatings are still happening, only now you're doing it to yourself, with the assumption that this gives you some sort of superiority to "lesser men" (and, God forbid, women of any stripe). So tough, so strong, so stubborn, until someone triggers you :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:56AM
Azuma Hazuki has mapped everyone incorrectly.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:23PM
Says the AC. There are far fewer patterns and personality types than most people want to admit. Got something to say to me, manlet? Bring it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @04:39AM
Sorry to hear that you were a victim of abuse, and sorry to learn that you have chosen to perpetuate that cycle of violence, and that you consider that violence is justified. It is indeed hard for the human animal to overcome its origins in the muck. You may say that violence is justified, "under some circumstances", and of course, as the arbiter of those circumstances, you choose to play god, so to speak, though you have neither the capacity nor the forethought to play that role.
A child's formative youngest years are spent layering on neural networks that are developed based on stimulation from the environment, starting from the blank slate, so to speak, that they are at birth. Those lower or oldest layers become a fundamental part of their personality, triggering responses and directing the flow of neural patterns at some level, all the way until exit in old age. As a self-aware entity, that child, once grown mentally, may attempt to overwrite that initial programming by layering on additional neural networks through thought, practice and self-struggle, but those fundamental layers never really go away. Except through wholesale destruction of brain matter in medically significant events. Take a look at the Scientific American Book of the Brain, if you want more detail about the process of brain development.
In a nutshell, by beating your toddler, you're teaching them, at a fundamental level, to expect physical pain from their loved one (you) and that violence is ok. I wonder if they will be able to overcome that basic lesson later in life. Certainly you weren't.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:39AM
" by beating your toddler,"
Not worth arguing with. If you regard smacking fingers as a beating, you are simply not worth arguing with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:33AM
Wow, you're a liar too, maybe even to yourself, so much so that you probably don't even recognize the intellectual dishonesty. This is the statement you made
Corporal punishment, administered for the best of reasons, and with only positive goals in mind - and people spazz out over it. All because asshats don't recognize that sometimes kids need a spanking.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:36AM
Smacked fingers, swatted little asses, corporal punishment. Or, did you have some other definition in mind? I can make a case for flogging or caning, but not with children. We were discussing children, after all.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:21AM
wow, just wow. Let's see if we can capture the essence of your argument:
Your father, according to *his* standards, beat you and you consider that abuse.
You, according to *your* standards, beat your child and wife, but you don't consider that abuse.
And you don't consider the pain that you inflict as abuse because the intensity of the beating is different. And because the reasons are different, presumably. No way to know for sure, of course, because your father never gave reasons for the beatings, and it was so unfair. I assume that you gave great explanations to your toddler, and the toddler totally gots the logic, right?
What a hypocrite you are.
A teacher using all the tools at your disposal, you call it. And yet you object to your father using all the tools at his disposal. Because you were at the receiving end. You are also not opposed to dishing it out to others or others dishing it out to the 'others' as long as they are 'others', not your own group, because eh, the 'others' are less than you and your group.
Also, what an effing moron. Your toddler just sat there stunned or schocked into silence / compliance by the pain of being beaten by a significant figure in its life, which allowed you to talk at him, without him gaining any real understanding, just a pavlovian response; and you consider that good parenting!
I'll tell you what it really is. It's not stupidity, cuz your clearly intelligent and have the capacity for rational thought. What it is is a lack of thought, a lack of patience, and a lack of empathy, probably beaten out of you by your father. I mean, forget the lack of empathy, maybe it's biological for you. But the gaps in logic? Thats just inexcusable for an intelligent person. But who knows? Maybe your fathers arbitrary beatings have destroyed your self-control and its just easier for you to give in to emotion and never follow threads of logic and information to their conclusions, after all, doing the research and overcoming your biases is hard work. yeah, understanding even a todller is complex enough that a lifetime of research and science is insufficient to describe one thoroughly, so what chance do you have?
Basically what it is is that your lazy. Intellectually, emotionally, spiritually lazy. Unwilling to do the work, and lacking the brilliance to arrive at insights without the work. Who suffers for it? The todller that is beaten by you, because its easier to beat her than to manage her environment until she can be reasoned with. The 'others', impacted by your political and economic choices, because it is easier to live with ones biases than it is to overcome them.
I mean, you can't even be bothered to seriously consider the many lifetimes worth of hard work, research and science that has been done by others. Instead, you flit through existence, dishing it out, responding to inputs automagically, no real thought there, and no effort at real thought. Your a poor excuse for a *thinking* entity.
The real question is, what are you going to do about it?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:50AM
You're obviously not even trying here. Kicking a 3 or 4 year old kid across the room with your steel toed boots can never be considered anything other than abuse. Whacking his fingers, or swatting his butt doesn't come anywhere near the level of violence of having your head batted into a door frame with a fist.
If you can't understand the difference, then you're not much brighter than the guy who whips the kid with the buckle end of his belt.
Next up, you'll be telling me that scolding the kid for misconduct is nothing more than verbal abuse.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:02AM
Sorry Runaway, but he got you good. Every single attack landed. You can't dodge, because you've been effectively shadow-sewn to the wall.
Are you an improvement on your father? Yes. Do you have a ways to go? Also yes. But the things you do cannot be taken back. Ever. Especially, as several posters have pointed out, if you do them to a kid whose brain is still wiring up big chunks of its low-level social processing architecture. Lord knows my sister and I could tell you a few things about that...
So, what are the criteria for when "corporal punishment" becomes "abuse?" Are you measuring it simply by what immediate harm is done to the child's body, or are you taking into account the more subtle but much longer-lasting damage done to his or her mental development?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:18AM
Lemme understand this. You're saying that swatting a toddler's bottom cause permanent damage to his brain and/or mental development. So - if a toddler falls and bumps his head on the floor, is he permanently damaged? What do you do then, throw him away and try again? This is making damned near zero sense.
Maybe in YOUR eyes, "he got me good".
Criteria, you ask? Lasting physical harm pretty much separates disciplinary corporal punishment from physical abuse. Of course, heaping verbal and psychological abuse on top of a mild spanking obviously crosses the line. Ask the kid. He knows whether an authority figure means ill or good to him. If he hides from Daddy at every opportunity, you know it's abuse. If he runs to Daddy for hugs and kisses when Daddy gets home from work, then it's probably not abuse, no matter what tinted glasses you are looking at the world through.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:36AM
> Lemme understand this. You're saying that swatting a toddler's bottom cause permanent damage to his brain and/or mental development.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the case. Boys especially seem rather fragile; they mature slower than girls and this society's insistence on "toughening them up" is doing them no favors.
> So - if a toddler falls and bumps his head on the floor, is he permanently damaged?
In some cases yes, but you're committing a category error here: the floor didn't start hitting the kid upside the head, he FELL. That is an accident. What is being discussed here is deliberate, purposeful infliction of pain. Forget what the exact purpose is: imagine if some 40 foot tall giant you essentially think is God physically harmed you. You don't know why. Its ways are beyond you. You trusted it. It cares for you. What the hell would you think?
> What do you do then, throw him away and try again? This is making damned near zero sense.
You've got abandonment fear too, of course. No surprise there, and no, I'm not mocking you for that. No, a good parent does the precise opposite: FIX IT, as far as possible. You can't truly undo something like that, but you can 1) not do it again, 2) fucking educate yourself about developmental neurobiology, and 3) maybe apply the golden rule for once in your life. Engage with the kid. Figure out how s/he ticks. In just about every possible case, corporal punishment is lighting a furnace to burn a hair.
> Maybe in YOUR eyes, "he got me good".
How about in the eyes of the entire scientific community since before Disco?
> Criteria, you ask? Lasting physical harm pretty much separates disciplinary corporal punishment from physical abuse.
So you really are that ignorant :/ Entirely predictable, but sad just the same.
> Of course, heaping verbal and psychological abuse on top of a mild spanking obviously crosses the line.
What you fail to see is that in nearly all cases, hitting a kid IS psychological abuse. It's not the initial pain that's the problem, unless it's doing enough damage that THAT adds its own trauma; you're messing with a fragile, plastic, and underdeveloped sensorium here. This stuff gets laid down at a level below rational, conscious thought, and it seeps into every layer above it.
> Ask the kid. He knows whether an authority figure means ill or good to him. If he hides from Daddy at every opportunity, you know it's abuse.
> If he runs to Daddy for hugs and kisses when Daddy gets home from work, then it's probably not abuse, no matter what tinted glasses you are looking at the world through.
So you've never studied attachment styles? You're describing ambivalent or incomplete attachments here. Stop pigeonholing little kids as miniature adults; from a biological, neurological, and moral standpoint, it's completely wrong. The younger they are the less rational and more naive they are; do you seriously expect them to fathom an adult mind, to truly be able to tell an adult's intentions toward them? Hell, other adults half the time can't tell how an adult's mind really works.
You've exposed a lot about yourself on this thread you probably didn't mean to, and as unlikely as it sounds, I feel sorry for you rather than hating you. At the same time, despite not having kids of my own for obvious reasons, I can't just let stuff like this pass. You can't undo what was done to you, but you can break the cycle.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @08:21AM
I remember an incident from when my baby was little, about 14 months; she had recently started walking. We let her have the run of the house, baby proofing most things. Up until that point, I had never gotten mad at her. One evening, I had my laptop out on the couch. She came over and pressed a few keys on it. Startled, I gave her a very cross look in the heat of the moment. Her face scrunched up, and she started bawling. After that, she would give the laptop a sidelong glance when she passed by bouncing along, but never touched it again. Broke my heart every time she did that. And this was a kid that would fall and scrape her knees, elbows, while out and about, but would just get up and continue doing whatever she was doing, no tears.
That's when it really struck home to me that it wasn't the physical pain that got her attention, it was the emotional shock of her trusted person, me, being cross at her.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @10:29AM
Noted. Somewhere in my writing up above, I should have mentioned that some children never, or almost never, need a paddling. A single angry look, or a word, is all that is needed. Then, there are those headstrong little tykes, who learn to push buttons, and manage to manipulate one or the other - sometimes both - parents almost before they learn to talk.
Every child is an individual, they learn differently, each presents his own challenges.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:54AM
>Those of you who have toddlers know damned well that you cannot reason with them.
No, you cannot reason with them. Beating them is also ineffective at modifying behavior for the same reason. They haven't developed the whole "cause and effect" thing yet.
My child has a real fascination with broken glass and has cut herself on more than one occasion picking it up. If pain was the teaching tool you think it is she would have stopped. Instead she hasn't yet made the connection that shiny sharp things will draw blood and induce pain.
When a toddler cannot even make that connection yet how the hell do you think they are going to make the connection that doing something you disapprove of equating pain? You're just beating them arbitrarily and undermining the fundamental trust that should exist in such a relationship.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday January 24 2017, @11:52AM
Those of you who have toddlers
Yup, got a two year old right now, and my girl was a toddler not so long ago.
know damned well that you cannot reason with them.
This is true of most toddlers, but not all. It is very true of my two year old who is stubborn as hell and contrary to boot.
They have a one track mind, and you can stand in their way, pick them up and move them, natter at them, all day long - and the moment you look away, they are right back to sticking metallic objects into the electric outlet.
So the only solution is to hit them? Here are a few more options you might like to explore:
1 - If you have to "turn your back" on the kid, then isolate the kid from the danger. Playpens are handy for when you can't devote your full attention to the child. Electrical cover guards are cheap and readily available. Your home should be pretty much toddler-proof. If you're not at home, you need to be constantly aware of potential dangers.
2 - Distract the child. Offer him a toy, book or point him at the TV.
3 - If you have the time and patience (or if no.3 didn't work), you can teach the lesson by simply being more stubborn: Pick the kid up, say "no", move him away. Repeat until the kid gets bored. The trick is to MAKE IT BORING. Absolutely DO NOT interact with him, cuddle him, talk to him, get annoyed or show any strong emotion when doing this. Don't even look at the child any more than you need to. Pick him up and move him away gently and calmly, and eventually he will move on to something more fun. This works. I've had to do exactly that this last week as he gets used to having a bed with no cot sides.
You may pretend that smacking the child's fingers is abuse. Go ahead and claim that a swat on their little asses will damage their psyches. (My own psyche doesn't reside anywhere near my anus, but maybe you and your children are made differently.)
It's not so much "damaging to their psyches" as it is "teaching them that violence is an acceptable way to modify other peoples' behaviour." Yeah, we can get into discussions about how adults or even older children are sometimes faced with situations where violence is justifiable, but that comes later - just as you don't expect that two year old to understand that he shouldn't play with electrical sockets, you can't expect him to understand the difference between justifiable and unjustifiable violence. You have to start with a broad, simple message - electric sockets are off-limits / violence is unacceptable - and start adding in the nuances in a couple years' time.