Fighting in school... and in the world...

[kukla_tko]

Grump.

Grumble grumble grumble.

Are we not men?

Go read what bradhicks had to say about revenge and why "real men fight."

Go read it again, and think about it.

Now. Do you agree with the Man of Concrete?





I do NOT.


I have posted about the bullies I had to put up with, and the armor I wore to defend myself.

Here are some of the rules my parents set and enforced in my childhood:

For the Parents:
Never strike your child in anger.
Never strike your child with anything harder than your hand.
Teach the children by example that violence does not solve problems.
Make the punishment fit the crime.

For the Children:
Never fight in school. Find another way to deal with conflict.
Did we mention not to fight in school? We mean no fighting on the playground, in the neighborhood, in the back yard, at your friends' houses, or anywhere else. Period.
(For the boys) Never fight with girls. We mean it. They fight dirty and to kill you at any cost.

Now. Am I a lawless rule breaker? Am I someone with no regard for rules or regulations? Am I out of control? Do I lack self-discipline?
I am not. I do not.

Spankings were rare, and never the "over the knee, bare butt" kind. There was no such thing as a "whipping" in my house. My parents figured out that revoking privileges was very effective. Especially since my father had very creative ideas about what constituted "privileges."
My brothers would wrestle around sometimes, and did little-boy-mock fighting (usually as a part of their elaborate role-playing war games.) If they got rowdy, mom would send them outside to wrestle. For a while, the rule was that "You don't hit back, even if he hits you first. You don't hit your little brother. He's smaller than you." The youngest learned this rule, and exploited it. He'd pick a fight with the older one, and then brag to his friends in preschool that he could beat up his brother who was 5 years older than he. Mom got wind of this and simply went to the older brother and said, "I still don't want you fighting with your little brother. However, if he hits you first, you may fight back. Don't hurt him, just let him know that he can't do that any more."

Sure enough, the youngest picked a fight, and found out that rugburns hurt.
The older boy went on to become a champion wrestler. But that's another story.
Bottom line? Nobody needed a lesson like this once they were old enough to read. Only preschoolers need lessons that involve fighting.
So, the whole idea of "eye for an eye" in a physical sense strikes me as barbaric and stupid. Little kids hit each other to "right a wrong." Babies who don't know any better manifest this kind of behavior. One grows up, gains knowledge, and learns to behave in a civilized manner. Civilized people don't go around exacting revenge through fighting. They just DON'T. (Sigh.) Or rather... they shouldn't.
One can use the court system. One could simply exert pressure on the person through other means. After all, I am a woman and I remember being a girl in middle school. There's a lot more damage one can inflict psychologically than physically. Why do you think a "humiliate" card trumps everything in the card game, "Lunch Money?"

Now. I am not an expert on statistics. I only have my limited sample to work with. However, I found that the hellraisers, the people with no real regard to the law, and the ones who were missing some of the more evolved variations of empathy were the ones who were punished with severe spankings, and were taught to settle their differences with fighting.

Here are some examples; the names have been changed to protect... uh... to defend... aw, heck. The names have been changed because this is LJ.

Example #1: Cootie.
Guy I dated in college, who continued to ruin my life for years afterward. (See the very early post about HIM.)
This guy had five brothers. (Uh, maybe six.) All their names began with a "k" sound. His folks seemed well off. They were nice, polite people with a charming home. Everyone's dinner table manners (at Sunday Dinner) were impeccable. One did not say, "Damn" or "Hell" or any of the swear words at that table.
But several of the boys had been in jail. Many of them had done a long list of things that would have landed them in jail if they'd been caught. All of them learned the trick of not getting caught.
Cootie, in particular, was prone to doing things because he wanted to, regardless of the rules. To a 17-year-old college student on her own for the first time, this was exciting. By the time I was 20 he was wearisome, and so were his exploits. He was the kind of person that helped NTC get kicked out of hotel after hotel. A vandal, a petty thief. Would rob a hotel room blind, or leave it in a state that would require it to be burned rather than cleaned. Stole random things from public or even private property. Street signs, ashtrays, velvet ropes, and the like.

He had this classic story about how punishment was meted out in his house.
He and his brother K were roughhousing. Things got out of hand, and a lamp or a window was broken. (He couldn't really remember what was broken.) Their mom found out and made him go through the ritual for punishment. They were required to "go get the paddle." It was an old fashioned Ping-Pong paddle. So, Cootie went all the way up to the room where it was kept, crying the whole way. He retrieved the paddle, and slowly walked back to his mom, continuing to cry the whole way. By the time he got to his mom, he blubbered. "Don't hit me momma... I'm already cry-an!"
She burst out laughing, and he dodged the whipping. He got sent to his room instead.

What does this tell you about Cootie?
I was aghast. I pointed out that my parents wouldn't have DREAMED of hitting one of us with a paddle. (Uh... ok. Maybe they DREAMED about it.) He just shrugged and said that with a house full of boys, you have to hit them to get their attention. "We were bad," he said. Were they bad because of or in spite of the beatings?

Example 2:
Mean. phierma and I were hanging out at a con, in my hotel room. It was Sunday, and I was waiting in the room for the person with my car keys to return so that I could check out. The room keys had been turned in, and I had nothing to do but wait. He came by and stopped to chat and keep me company. Mean came back from whatever the hell he was doing, and gave us a weird look. I asked him if he knew where my keys were, and Mean said "no", but that he would go look for the person who had them. Not too long after I got the car loaded, phierma stopped me in the hallway with a wild look in his eye, to tell me that he could no longer be my friend.

"WTF?" I responded.

He couldn't be my friend anymore because my boyfriend had threatened him, physically.

Oh. Hell. No.
Regardless of the fact that phierma and I were just friends, only friends, yup that's it, and nothing more or his SO would MURDER me with a pointy blunt object and remove his testicles with a rusty spoon--Mean should NOT have done that.
And so I tracked Mean down. And verbally provided him with a brand new anal sphincter. I explained that my friends are all precious to me. Boys, girls, whatever. I had made a commitment to Mean, and if he failed to trust me I was going to leave. Period. And if he ever threatened a friend of mine again, I would leave him. Realizing that this might not get through, I also threatened him, "Mean, not only will I dump your ass, I will KICK your ass, too. And you know I can, because I'm strong, armed with claws, and you won't hit a lady."

That made me feel icky. It seemed out of character. However, my message got through.

(Sigh.) But Mean did not learn the lesson, or evolve into a civilized man during our relationship. In fact, his attitude about vengeance cost him a few jobs, too. He was fired for threatening his supervisor.
He threatened his supervisor because the supervisor falsified sales figures (screwing Mean out of his commissions) and continuously harassed Mean. The Sup was making really inappropriate remarks about Mean's sex life. Constantly. And it got much worse after I came in and met Mean for lunch one day. (Hello... Hot redhead here.)
So, the Sup made one remark too many about what Mean might be doing with me after work, and Mean retaliated by threatening his boss.

Whoops.
And what a Dumbass!! He had the guy by the balls for sexual harassment! There were witnesses! And Mean was not the only one being harassed!

Well, we broke up. I didn't marry him. (Thank the Lord Jesus Christ!)
Once again, too... a spanked kid. A kid who learned that the only way to solve a grievance was with his fists.


I have more examples. Frankly, most of the people I know who were spanked simply learned how to avoid getting caught. They didn't learn morality. They didn't learn that their actions have consequences. They didn't learn about the greater good. They learned to avoid the person with the belt. And that was about it.

(Sigh.) and my attitude about the rules of the schoolyard is probably what got my fired from the Salt Mines. If you go to work there, be sure that you know how to act on a middle school playground.

I, for one, would rather work for and with civilized people.
Oh. Hey, look. I do!

Comments

[codeb6.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, spankings were a part of my childhood. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about how I turned out.

Hmm.

[kukla-tko42.livejournal.com]

I have a response for you, but not right at the moment. Feel free to share your experience with me, though.
(Via email.)
:)

Question time:

[kukla-tko42.livejournal.com]

So, how often were you spanked and for what kinds of misbehavior?
Was spanking the only punishment?
Were you spanked with a hand, or an object?

I am going to have to get into definitions, I see.

Spanking: Striking a child upon the posterior, one or more times with the flat of the hand.
Bare Butt Spanking: Lowering the child's pants (or skirt) to administer a spanking.
Over The Knee: Bending the child over, with their posterior in the air, belly across the lap of the spanker to administer a spanking. Frequently used in conjunction with "Bare Butt."
Whipping: Striking a child with an object such as a wooden spoon, belt, wooden switch, or paddle. May be used in conjunction with either "Over The Knee" or "Bare Butt."

So. Were you Spanked or Whipped? (Feel free to email me privately.)

Re: Question time:

[felax.livejournal.com]

I know this wasn't aimed at me, but . . . Actually, we were spanked over the knee on the rare occasions in which we acted up. If it was a particularly bad infraction, it was a bare-butt spanking or a whipping (with a paddle-ball paddle). I actually approve of spankings, personally, am very undecided on bare-butt spankings, and do not really approve of whippings. As a side note, though, I will point out that saying that I'm a violent or a destructive personality is rather laughable.

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

I don't really expect you to understand. You're too young. You grew up in the world that teaches the values you just put forth; your values on this subject seem perfectly obvious to you and it is equally obvious that old people and bad people disagree. The world I grew up in is so remote from the world that you grew up in that you simply can not imagine it.

And so when I tell you that it really was better, and that the people who created your world were the ones who persuaded me not to live by the old rules, and when I tell you that I have come to understand that these new rules are a giant mistake, I'm asking you to doubt or disbelieve what you've been told your whole life. Unsurprisingly, it's not happening.

I will leave the debate about spanking for another time. I was already doing some reading to check my perceptions, because of a question that was asked earlier in the day. At no point in my article did I say anything about adults beating children. At no point in my article did I say anything about men beating women. At no point in my article did I say anything about women beating women, for that matter. What I was talking about was about men sharing relatively trivial amounts of physical violence with each other as a way of resolving irresolvable emotional differences.

(continued)

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

(continued)

What would you substitute? Lawsuits? I'm poor, and so's the guy who just tried to send me to jail. Talking? Sure, in theory we could talk this out. He could explain to me why he's a thief, and make whatever excuses he was going to the other things for which I hold him in contempt, and complain bitterly that he had to get rid of me out of self-defense, so he could go on stealing. I could then explain to him that I was raised to hold thieves and people with his other moral failings in deep contempt. And then what? Should be agree to respect each others' emotional world views? Do you expect me to apologize to him for making him feel threatened, and do you expect him to apologize to me for his retaliation? Having thus apologized to each other, do you expect it to end there? What good could come of a talking solution? But no, as was explained in my journal, he screwed up badly enough that there is a small chance that he will do four months to a year of jail time. Will it end there? What will he do with the rest of his life? What grim determination to seek revenge will he leave prison with? What will he have to lose if he seeks his revenge? If we were to simply fight, get it all out in the open, extract the price of our mutual anger and hatred in trivial bruises and cuts and small broken bones, then it would be over. Doing it society's way means that it will never be over. He will continue to be punished for this, whether he learns anything from it or not, until the day he dies. Or he will escape scot-free, and thus learn that he was in the right, and the consequences of that will last the rest of his life.

I tell you that the old way worked, and the new way doesn't. You don't believe me, even though I show you the benefits that society derived from that social agreement. You say that there must have been hidden costs that exceed the value of that arrangement? I tell you that those costs were trivial ... and I say that as someone who, having been persuaded to abandon the old values, was a defenseless victim.

What benefit do we derive from the new agreement, the one that says that violence is always wrong? Well, we spare many working-class men a few days at a time, every few years, of getting by with some bruises and bandages and maybe a cast. We are gentle to the sensitivities of people who find the sight of violence unsanitary or emotionally disturbing (unless it's on a movie screen or on TV, in which case they just can't get enough of it, and are constantly pushing directors to make the eviscerations more degrading and the disembowelings more throrough, and pushing the special effects technicians to make this film abatoir even more disgusting every year). Certainly I'm aware of how much you object to people seeing things that disturb them. (Oh, wait, you don't.)

How many women do you know who complain that there simply aren't any men any more, only big boys? How many men do you see in the workplace who simply can't put grudges behind them, who simply can't work in teams with other men, who simply can't even get along with other men? I tell you three times: there are no men because we have outlawed being a man. Is there any other benefit to offset these huge social costs, one that I haven't thought of? That was the point of my essay. If we're getting something out of this that's worth the prolonged adolescence and destroyed lives that the new rules cost us, please, let me know what it is, so that I can stop resenting these new rules.

And you being a woman and two thirds my age, I don't expect you to understand a word of this. It's just too alien to imagine, even for you.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The one thing you haven't mentioned is whether moderate beatings have the educational effect you're hoping for. Have you seen it work? How reliably?

I need to look into the South African truth and reconciliation process more, but apparently it *is* possible to talk things out without treating all worldviews as being of equal value.

I've heard about that "no men anymore" thing, but I've never heard a woman say it--perhaps that's because I hang out in fandom, and I think sexual differentiation is weaker here than in mundania.

[kukla-tko42.livejournal.com]

Once again, apparently my wording was ambiguous.

I don't disapprove of spankings, (per my definition above, mind you) but only as a last resort, a final line.
I disapprove of Whippings altogether. I disapprove of the over-use of a spanking as the only disciplinary option.

My observations also came from the work that I did at the Charter School. I would say that the majority of those kids were discipline problems because they didn't know how to respond to either rewards or non-violent punishments. IF they weren't getting "whipped", they couldn't really be in trouble. They also had never been offered incentives. We had to redesign the incentive program multiple times because the kids were flabbergasted by it.

My favorite example is of a young boy we'll call Li'l D. Li'l D was a major discipline problem. He had major impulse control issues, and would fly off the handle and scream obscenities or strike out at the walls, furniture, or other kids.
Now, I got to know this boy. I loved that child. He was mixed-up, and wanted very badly to "be good." His frustration level would peak, and he would "lose it."

His mother put him in therapy. It started to help, but it was a slow process. One day, he lost it in class and I had to write him up for punching his chair. I was in the office when his grandma came to pick him up. The write-up notice was still there in the principal's in-box, and she saw it sitting in the box. She whirled around on Li'l D and started hollering at him for "Bein' bad in school again." Before any of us knew what was what, she had taken off one of the slippers she was wearing as shoes, and smacked him "Upside the head" with it. (In the face, actually.)

Gee.

I wonder where he learned his impulse control and anger management?

Turns out that his mom is a career professional. Wonderful woman. However, she's not really his primary caretaker; his grandma and aunties and cousins are.

Hmmm.

Of course, we saw examples like this all over. And I heard the other kids talk among themselves about what home was like. Some kid broke a school rule and the whole class gasped and murmured:
"Ooooh! You broke a RUUUULE! Miss Teacher's gonna WHIP you!"

WTF? No teacher in that school would dream of hitting any child (not to mention that we weren't allowed to, either.)

Bad parenting is bad parenting. Using spankings indiscriminately is just as bad as failing to discipline your kids. Spankings are a tool that should be used sparingly.

Hot Damn

[kukla-tko42.livejournal.com]

Wow.
Your journal entry was bugging me. I felt a need to express my opinion on that subject... and two or three others that have ALSO been bugging me.

So, no. You said nothing whatsoever about spankings, beatings etc. You said nothing whatsoever about women fighting in any capacity.

Gee, old man. That's just about the most condescending thing you have ever said to me. I honestly never expected you to be condescending to ME. I didn't realize you had it in you.

In case we're getting our wires crossed, here's what it sounds like you said:
"Oh, you're too young to understand, and besides, you're a girl. I was talking about what men are supposed to do to each other, so you don't need to get your young pretty head all confused. YOu couldn't possibly imagine the world in which I grew up, so don't bother."

Imagine? Jesus Fuck A Monkey! Imagining other people's worlds is what I do while awake, and mostly while dreaming. I am (in no particular order) a sci-fi fan, an artist, a writer, a playwright, an actor, and an empath.

Brad, if "men" take the road of the Man Of Concrete, how does that affect the way women are treated? Not only is there a "separate set of rules" for women, but remember that a great percentage of men's issues with each other have to do with property rights to their women. Heck, the only time I ever saw you get "big and threatening" with someone was that time at Gothic Coffeehouse when you got big and threatening to Mean's friend who asked me to leave. I didn't think it was appropriate then, and I don't think it was appropriate now.

The rules changed because Women are in the same places that Men were ages ago. Here's an example: If the person who had framed you for grand theft was a woman, how would you have reacted? It could have been a woman. If she had framed you for stealing, would you still feel that a brief physical confrontation is the right answer?

Ah. That's a trick question, and I will cop to it. If you say "yes," then you look like an evil bastard because you'd beat a "lady." If you say "no," you look like you are treating women differently, and it's a blow to equality. Frankly, there's not a good answer, but I will give you three guesses which one will piss me off more...

Do you miss the ol' boys clubs? Where men can settle petty differences and right wrongs by swinging at each other?

You and I seem to have an opposite view; you feel that fighting out the minor differences is an evolved standpoint; that males are not allowed to grow up and become men anymore.

I take the other stance; Boys are required to grow up and be men by using their intellect and the tools around them to settle their grievances.

Re: Hot Damn pt 2

[kukla-tko42.livejournal.com]

And yeah, I have heard a few women whine about there not being any "Men" left. Funny. This complaint is as old as the hills. It's not just my generation that says it, and we won't be the last generation to say it.
(Well. We will if *I* have anything to say about it.)
When a woman says "There aren't any good men" what she means is that her last few relationships failed. She's shifting blame in a non-specific way. It isn't her fault that the relationships failed, and it isn't even the fault of the men she's choosing; all men are inherently flawed, and she's a saint for putting up with their shit.
It's a bullshit line that women comfort themselves (and each other) with.

Personally, I would like to see WOMEN evolve past this crap. But that's another rant for another day.

Bottom line? There's more to the world of your childhood than this small puzzle piece. In order to get that little piece back, you have to reconstruct the spot in which it fits. And frankly, from where I am sitting, some of the connective pieces are ones that oppress other people.
Nope. I don't want to live in your world.

Oh.
And one more thing; Men *are* still allowed to vent their anger and frustrations against other men, in a physical confrontation.
That's what sports are for.
Maybe it's time you took stickjocking back up...

I have a lot more to say, but right now I must leave for an appointment.
You are welcome to your opinion, Brad. I am going to disagree with you.
But don't condescend to me like that again. It pisses me off. It's ok to tell me that I missed your point, or that I haven't understood your position; and then clarify.
Never tell me I CAN'T understand something, espeically if it is because I am young or female.

Re: Hot Damn

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

It has nothing to do with condescension or youth, and everything to do with the actual times. You can no more imagine what the emotional life of men was like in the time of my childhood than I can imagine, really, what it was like to be a woman in the 1920s. We could both study the hell out of it and model the heck out of it and do the best we can with educated guesses and inadequate metaphors. But if a woman my parents' age told me that my guesses were wrong about what it was like for her then, then I'd be inclined to assume that her first-hand knowledge trumped my imaginative guesswork.

Kukla, if I actually tried to base my answer to your trick question on what I thought would piss you off or not, I wouldn't be me. And it should not surprise you that I honestly can't guess in advance which answer you'd find more annoying. But I will answer it. No, if a woman had done this to me, I would not want to fight her physically over it. It has nothing to do with economic roles and everything to do with the fact that without these feminizing rules that have been adopted in my lifetime, it is much more natural and much healthier for men to settle our matters in the way that I proposed. It's what two real men do, period.

Do I miss a world that had real men in it? Almost every day. The world that had real men in it put 10 of their number on the moon and brought them back again. The world that had real men in it had a working economy. A world that had real men in it wouldn't still be whining and shaking in its shoes and crying like babies over a single attack three whole years ago.

The "let's all care about each others' feelings and talk things out" model is a reasonable way to be human. It is absolutely essential to many circumstances. It is, in fact, the best way to handle big differences for both genders, because when too much is on the line, the traditional male model of conflict resolution presents unacceptable levels of risk. But there is more than one way to be an adult human being. When women first entered the workforce, they were told to be more like men. That was wrong. Now that women are in the workforce, men are being forced at literal police gunpoint to be more like women. That's wrong, too.

Re: Hot Damn

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Oh, and puhleaze. It's not about venting excess energy, it's about anger with a specific person. Spending a couple of months making plastic and metal armor so I could go spar with and get beat up by blacksmiths with a dozen years of practice in the sport would be boring, expensive, hard work. It would be not even vaguely fun. And it wouldn't do a damn thing for me. I don't want to hit Brumbear or some random stick jock in the SCA, I'm not angry at them. Punching bags or pillows isn't going to do a thing for me; it's not about needing to punch any random thing, it's about want to punch one particular person.

Re: Hot Damn

[kukla-tko42.livejournal.com]

I was simply suggesting an activity that would allow you to vent any aggression you may have built up. Frankly, that's something that sports are good for. I recalled that you used to Stick-Jock.
Maybe Boffer weapons.

Maybe not.

Now.
Did I, in fact, suggest that all of this could be resolved by understanding feelings and talking it out? Not.
I simply pointed out that there are better ways to deal with greviences than violence.

Heck, you have plenty of dirt on this slimeball. He was fucking a coworker while he was on the clock. In a conference room.
He was making out with that same coworker in the parking lot the night that a major event of vandalization occurred.
These are the kind of charges that can make his life hell.

I object to this whole "Us vs. them" division of Men and Women. I don't want men to behave like women, or women to behave like men. I want to see more integration of these stereotypes, so that we can all work together.

Because in your world of real men, women don't get to live like people. Men are people. Women are their property. Oh, sure. Let the girls go to college, it's a great way for them to get their MRS degree. Oh, it's ok to let them work in the typing pool, since we don't have to pay them very much and they're decorative.

Figure out how women get to play too, and I might back you up.

Here:
Joan at the office gets pinched on the ass by her boss, Jack. She turns around and tells him off.
He does it again, and calls her "sugarpie."
She kicks him in the knee, then in the groin. (Probably stomps his insole with her pointy pump heel, too for good measure.)
Fight over.
Joan wins.

Um.
I don't think this is good office behavior, for either of them.

That's why there are other proceedures in place for this.

Oh. Wait. By your rules, Joan should wait until Jack is alone in the parking lot, either right before or right after work. She should sneak up on him in the dark, and then perform her crippling action.

I am willing to bet that Jack won't pinch her bottom anymore, but don't you think there's a better way to deal with it?
Including a higher standard for Jack's behavior in the office?

Or is Joan supposed to find a champion to win her fight for her? Dad, brother, sweetheart, husband, or male coworker?

We need a little more male perspective

[thesigother.livejournal.com]

I am not that much older than Kukla, or that much younger than THE BRAD, but I remember those rules, and I guess my generation had both ideas presented to us.

I have been spanked. Looking back there were other ways to have handled it, but then again I was a relatively good kid. I remember the "Jail house" mentality of going to a new school, finding the biggest bully and socking him in the nose. And yes, that is PRECISELY where you find that kind of mentality still. I guess "Real Men" graduate from penitentiaries.

So Brad, you are not wrong for remembering those rules. The women are not wrong for waxing poetic about how they need a "cowboy" or a "hero", or a "real man", but they are wearing some heavily tinted rose colored glasses.

To go along with the "OLD world order" there are some other things that went along with it. Racism and Sexism for example. That same chickee who wishes for the "real man" wouldn't like to be slapped on the ass or pinched or whatever as she puts files away. Or hanging the black man in the next cubicle because he is taking away a desk job from a white man. I am of the opinion, if you allow certain behaviors to continue, you get a whole other wad of crud to go with it.

Do I want the Old world order back? I don't think so. It would reduce dealing with people back to the elementary school recess grounds, and I never fared too well there. The New World Order actually levels the playground for me. Although, actually being older and wiser now, I probably would do better on that playground now than I did then. I am a nice guy, but sometimes I don't want to be nice, not even a little.

As for THIS CLOWNSHOE, quite frankly I would love to shove his size 22 shoes up his size 3 rectum and stretch it out for the guys already in jail. Don't worry Brad, this guy is pretty. He will make a nice girlfriend for someone. (There does that make you feel a little better?)

[savrille.livejournal.com]

Ah. I have several opinions regarding this issue (spanking) and the totally seperate issue of "manly men".

Not nearly enough room to address it here and important enough I'll just do an entry.

Feel free to stop on by to comment. :)

[green-shoe.livejournal.com]

"Frankly, most of the people I know who were spanked simply learned how to avoid getting caught. They didn't learn morality. They didn't learn that their actions have consequences. They didn't learn about the greater good. They learned to avoid the person with the belt. And that was about it."
I totally agree!