Posts by Russell Brown
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I know it's not your point, but it's interesting that we are considering banning something not because it is harmful, but because it isn't beneficial enough - as though we might ban all toothbrushes without the flexi-head, indicator bristles and gum massagers. And although it's not higly beneficial, it is arguably (so that study goes) better than all of the alternatives.
The problem with the way the study is quoted is that it takes "good" smacking, separates it out, and declares that it doesn't seem to do any harm. But the bad smacking is, well, bad. It's a retrospective classification that generates its own result. The parents who did the bad smacking were presumably under the impression they were doing good smacking too.
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Russell, I'm glad that we are all now clear that this bill is about making smacking illegal. So why the charade? Isn't your argument a slippery-slope argument - allowing dope use inevitably leads to P-induced murders?
What I'm saying Neil is that the difference between good smacking and bad smacking is reliant on the perception of the smacker. As I said yesterday, do you trust the loonies expressing violent fantasies about Sue Bradford on CYFS Watch to tell the difference?
But, again, what is the justification for smacking anyway? I'm generally relaxed about what consenting adults do, but I think the presence of non-consenting minors should require us to set the bar fairly high for the "right" to do it.
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OK Russell seeing as you asked, heres something on the great New Zealand moral argument
Children are treated differently to adults in law - they cant have sex drive cars and get married. When they are small their parents clean their teeth. When they are older , they do it themselves. You know that.
And when they are older, they smack themselves? All those are issues of consent or competence; actions taken by adults on their own account. I'm not sure eligibility to be smacked is the same thing.
However you ignore the fact that you don't discipline adults for correction. Parents have responsibility for their children. Parents do not have responsibility for their children who are adults. So the "corrective discipline" is the act. However, hypothetically, if we were in a society where parents correct their adult offspring for misbehaviour by smacking them on the bum or whatever ( covered by section 59, say), then the same laws would apply to kids.
But some cultures do discipline adults for correction, most notably when those adults are women. The fact that it is commonplace doesn't make it right. You actually need to make a justification for smacking to warrant its place in the law. "Everyone round here does it" isn't a justification.
Adults don't get disciplined for correction by their parents
So, the act of smacking against a child in this context doesn't need to be sanctioned and compared with adult assault because the motivation for the physical contact is quite different.
So what am I saying thats new? Nothing really, so the moral issue irrelevant.
It's a bit late to start on something major, but I think Rob's post above gets what I was saying. Like him, I'm not denying qualms, but I've come to a conclusion on balance. Righto, big day tomorrow ...
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Oh, and I wish I had written this Second Life review now.
That's a gorgeous piece of writing - literally LOL. Juha, you are bringing the good shit today.
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Okay, try this one.
The most persuasive evidence the pro-smacking lobby can present is the New Zealand longtitudinal study showing, at the best, marginally better outcomes for children who were "lightly smacked". Outcomes for those more than lightly smacked tailed away.
Knowing that smacking does little, if any, good, would you then continue to sanction it on religious or other grounds, knowing that in some homes it will inevitably - and demonstrably - lead to more serious assaults, which we know to be damaging? Is it a custom worth keeping?
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... and I'd suggest that the standard would be even higher where you've got an actual right (like raising your children according to your religion) involved ...
Woah. I presume you have in mind some qualifications to that right, stopping short of say, female circumcision.
It is not an absolute right, and as I said this morning, I do not regard religious justification as an argument. If I do, what do I say the man whose religious leader says it's okay to slap the wife?
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Another question while you're at it, Graeme. If the bill, in removing the social sanction for hitting children, does in fact stay the hand of parents who currently have a strange understanding of reasonable force (because, really, not everything that happens under that defintion is a "light smack"), would that trump your legal argument? Yes, it's a hypothetical, but a reasonable one to pose.
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Although I notice the govt of the Netherlands is making noises about Second Life being a virtual training ground for paedophiles - I wonder if next they'll move on to WOW being a virtual training ground for homicidal maniacs...
I wouldn't call it a training ground, but so-called "ageplay" in Second Life is seriously creepy. I wrote a column about it:
The company installed an age-verification system in June, obliging real under-18s to occupy a separate world, but the verification is weak. Writer Katier Reitveld registered, created an avatar who appeared to be 12 – and had a series of disturbing experiences.
“I was propositioned by a male resident,” she writes. “He took me to a castle and expressed an interest in stripping, raping and restraining my child avatar. He did, however, ask whether I was indeed over 18 in my First Life … I was definitely not enjoying the experience.”
This is new ground for social mores. On one hand, the unreality of the world seems to preclude real injury. On the other, it unquestionably seems to be normalising paedophilia. At what point does such a world become unacceptably disinhibited?
I'm also suspicious of the ways Linden Labs manipulates and makes money out of it.
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It was not the express intent of parliament to criminalise all contact on the rugby field ...
No, it was not the express intent of Parliament to treat activity on the rugby field any differently than the same activity on the street. There is no Section 59 for for rugby. That's just what happens.
PS: Dave you're also welcome to address in turn Bradford's moral argument ...
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We need prosecutorial discretion to deal with fights on the rugby field because sometimes we want to use criminal law to sanction fighting on the rugby field. We never want to use criminal law to sanction a light smack.
And we never want to use criminal sanction in respect of acts that occur in the run of a rugby game, even when they would certainly count as assault off the field, and even when they result in serious injury or even death. We only do so in the case of the extraordinary act that warrants it.
As I noted, the police don't prosecute people who do what Pete Hodgson did either, even though they could consider it assault. (Ironically, the same people who would continue to protect far more grievous assaults against children screamed loudly about that being assault ...)
But I'm happy to address this argument, as I did in the original post - it needs to be addressed. How about you have a go with Bradford's moral argument? And "everyone does it" is not a viable answer.
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