That "spanking game" in Oregon
Why surprised? Well, Aunty has a preference for the consensual, kinky side of spanking. And what went on in a corner of Aunty's favorite state does not sound universally consensual, despite the testimony of a group of girls who claim it was all in good fun.
Actually, Aunty has hesitated to comment on this tawdry affair - mainly because, as noted by el terso ojo - we really don't know the full story. At best, we have glimmers of what happened, filtered through the various legal teams and a voracious MSM that never allows context to get in the way of a good story.
As far as Aunty is concerned, even if only one of the female victims of the "spanking game" experienced the spanks as sexually inappropriate or abusive - then the activity was totally out of line.
This is not, as some are claiming, a case of political correctness gone wild. After all, as a society, we have supposedly decided that sexual harassment and bullying at work or school are unacceptable.
It is quite clear to Aunty that the last thing a vulnerable, awkward middle-school-aged girl needs is for a couple of bratty boys to be slapping her buttocks against her will.
At that age, many or most girls are incredibly self-conscious, and any act that sexually invades their body-space - whether or not it is regarded as perfectly acceptable by some girls in school - has excruciating repercussions for many young women at a critical phase in their psycho-sexual development.
Actually, if readers want an idea of what it is like to be sexually abused by peers in middle school, read the excellent personal account provided at el tercer ojo.
Of course, Aunty was shocked at the images of the accused boys dressed in prison jumpsuits and ankle-chains. Clearly, this is a case of the state overplaying its hand when other, less-dramatic consequences would have sufficed.
But, to dismiss the "spanking games" as "kids-being-kids" is to send a message that our society has yet to fully de-legitimize schoolyard bullying and sexual harassment - despite the ruinous results such activities can have on the psyches of vulnerable victims.
posted by Aunty Agony at 3/05/2007 11:37:00 PM
9 Comments:
As someone who has been affected by a stammer all my life and the endless abuse I had to face up to daily from my childhood peers.
It may not have been sexual abuse but believe me Aunty I know where you are coming from but your remark of "Kids being Kids" is exactly what my parents were always told if they tryed to do anything.
Paddy P
Goodness Aunty! I knew something had to have happened because my stats jumped so fast this morning. I thought it was because I'd put up a picture of me in jeans getting whacked with a single tale at the fall SL party. Just goes to show. ;)
Seriously, thanks very much for your thoughts on this. I do feel sorry at the idea of children being treated as adults in the legal system, but then again, abuse doesn't get less abusive because the person doing it is under 18. Sadly we've yet to find a balance between the two extremes.
Thank you, Auntie.
I did some further reading before jumping to comment: it looks like the behavior of both the boys in question and the officials, school as well as state, was nothing short of utterly clueless. More than spanking was involved on the boys' part -- they were, for instance, allegedly grabbing girls' breasts in some cases -- and the school just completely abdicated any responsibility it had to discipline them appropriately before calling in the police.
That's the real obscenity that I find disturbing. What in the world made them simply bypass the enormous variety of regularly sanctioned punishments -- detention, weekend school, or suspension for starters -- that are normally used by schools to curtail unwanted behavior?
These boys had no idea of the seriousness of their offense, but they certainly do now, especially if they're convicted. Oops, sorry kid, neglected to tell you while I was trying to stop you that your life is going to be ruined before it's even started.
Under the statutes with which the boys are being charged, harassment victims under 14 cannot, under any circumstances, be construed to be giving consent, and rightly so. The reasoning is that such youngsters do not meet general state requirements for consent; in a nutshell, they don't know what they're doing. But in this case, the perps are also well under 14. Seems to me they don't meet the competency test, either.
I've taught elementary and middle school: there are hundreds of kids ignoring a teacher's order to stop right this minute, in schools all across the country, for all kinds of offenses. It's part of the culture of school, part of the eternal struggle for control. There are also a few teachers right now with the clout to grab an offender by the arm, pull them aside, and without being too rough get in their face and say "You stop this or your world will come permanently apart."
But first, the teacher has to know it will happen. If one of the school principals involved in this affair had done something like this, and the boys still ignored them, well, I'd say "Life is hard, kid, live and learn, sorry we lost you."
But given the way it was handled, not even notifying parents there was a problem until their sons were in jail, it's hard not to see it as another successful attempt by a school and state to officially criminalize being a arrogant, clueless boy. There's so much wrong with this, it would take a book to express it.
the school just completely abdicated any responsibility it had to discipline them appropriately before calling in the police.
In the UK we call it POLITICAL CORRECTNESS gone mad. Though one suspects that in the colonies it's as much to do with taking the most extreme measure to ensure the minimal chance of private litigation by parents of the "victims". I haven't read the story but did glance at it, pictures tell a thousand words.
As an aside, in this country, such playground games as "Kiss Chase" are banned for similar reasons. Also as a child in juniors 7-11ish we used to run around the plaground slapping girls bums, I don't think I remeber there being anything sexual, I think the point was just to get girls to chase you or to mess up their skipping, chatting, whatever. I don't ever remember the Plod being involved, You would much more as like, have to spend the rest of playtime/breaktime walking with the teacher who monitored playground, or get sent to sit out breaktime in the scholl hall.
Anonymous, you need, I think to understand that your situation is different from that of these "kids" at face value. I have a kid and he will be a kid, and quite often it is a lack of foresight, understanding, life experience that makes him do stuff that is wrong. This said some kids are just rotten and bully for the sake of it, I remember that too.
Anyway soap box back to storage ttfn.
I'm going to have to disagree most strongly with auntey on this one. And I was someone who was bullied as a child.
I'm not sure that aunty knows the laws, nor how inhuman and inflexible they are, but one thing she should not fool herself about: the quest for a perfect society and a perfect world almost always leads to more evils than it eradicates. I urge Aunty to google on Genarlow Wilson for overreaching affects of many of these well intentioned laws and for her to check out Liestoppers and Bill Anderson at LewRockwell.com to see how these laws can be abused by unscrupulour or ambitious prosecutors.
Clarence
Tempest. Teapot.
Generated by idiots in the thrall of political correctness which has apparently driven whatever little sense they were born with completely from their tiny, cheerless, pointed heads.
From the most recent articles:
Since then, some of the girls have said they felt pressured to tell authorities and school officials what they wanted to hear - that the boys were doing something much worse.
"The girls have come forward to our attorney and have talked to our attorneys and our private investigators and deny any - well, not all the things, they say 'Yeah this happened, it's funny. If we say no, we're laughing.' "
Aunty, you betray your politically correct feminist perspective here and it makes you seem hypocritical. These boys should not have had their lives ruined for teenage spanking sex play. There are many forms of appropriate punishment, but jail time and ruined lives are not amongst them.
Either girls and boys are equal or girls are delicate flowers and boys are beasts. If that is the politically correct opinion then have the guts to say it. In point of fact, boys of that age also are extremely sensitive and have emotional problems, but you only have sympathy for the feelings of girls. This is just another example of making schools, and relationships for that matter, dangerous for boys.
It seems that our politically correct brothers and sisters won't be satisfied until the birth rate drops below zero and all boys are convicted in utero for sexual abuse. In that state it won't be long before the only two groups in the US will be muslims and hispanics. You go girl!
I disagree with you completely, boys and girls have to learn at a very young age that some things are just not f-ing okay.
I was in a similar situation growing up and everyone including my parents wrote it off as just kids being kids. That is until I wrote about it in my suicide note a few months later. I've been through years of therapy and I still don't feel like kids beings kids is an excuse.
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