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Oh, save me from the arrogant, ignorant and certain.
Save me, Lady, from people who take a good idea and an inability to see reason, and combine them in a whirlwind of slander and bullshit.
Thesis: Hitting children is wrong.
Thesis: Spanking is hitting.
Conclusion: Spanking is morally indistinguishable from beatings, and anyone who has ever spanked their child for any reason, or who tries to suggest that there might ever be mitigating or even condoning circumstances is practically as much a monster as someone who beats their children to sleep at night.
Save me. Save me from people who think that their successes and luck set a minimum moral standard. Who think that a hint of gray is as good as the pitchest black. Who refuse to consider that others might be different.
His hyperbole gripped me. His absolute conviction that a single smack on the bottom is as much child abuse as is a backhand to the face. That context is irrelevant, a trivialising distraction, a craven attempt at excusing something abhorrent. And it made me angry, because he is accusing me of torturing, tormenting, my children. [Ed: by implication.] Of accusing me of saying that “terror is an acceptable way to raise a child.”
He accused me of terrorising my children. How dare he? He really, honestly and deliberately made the claim that my ever having given my child a swat on the bottom if they try to run onto the road is equivalent to keeping my family under a climate of fear and intimidation.
And then, in a hissy fit to put a child to shame, he unfriended me. It's his right. It's his journal. But still: how juvenile! The action of a petulant teenager: who knows that he omniscient, and the existence of an alternative is not something to be argued, but something which is a personal insult just by existing, and the best answer to this is to stick your fingers in your ears and shout. [He now claims that it was because I was becoming hysterical, and he has indeed unscreened all my comments. He is also accusing me of being a liar.]
Well, I hope he enjoys his life, and the company of his echo chamber. Just because I have been known to agree with him and those on his journal, what he has is an echo chamber, if he systematically excludes anyone who disagrees with him, it's an echo chamber. But because he does say things worthy of hearing, I have not unfriended him. [OK, after the way he has insulted every one of thse of my friends who expressed sympathy or support, and then insulted my wife, he has earned contempt. I've unfriended him and if he wants to say something here he has to wait for me to grant him the right.]
Me, that exchange left me shaking. So I drove home, and gave my daughters, my treasures, the pulse of my heart, a hug goodnight and somehow completely failed to hit them in any way whatsoever. But because of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sammaelhain, for the first time in my life, I couldn't get the image out of my head of me hurting my own children. I hope he's happy. [He claims that this is because I have a guilty conscience. I respond that it is because it is a deeply disturbing thought, of which nightmares are made.]
He has done to me the same thing that people like Hetty Johnstone have done: he has made me second-guess every interaction I have with my children. He has made me look for evil in every innocent interaction. He has done his little bit to murder the joy I feel with my children. I hope I get over it, but the scar will twitch for a long, long time. I shouldn't let it, but it will.
Thesis: Hitting children is wrong.
Thesis: Spanking is hitting.
Conclusion: Spanking is morally indistinguishable from beatings, and anyone who has ever spanked their child for any reason, or who tries to suggest that there might ever be mitigating or even condoning circumstances is practically as much a monster as someone who beats their children to sleep at night.
Save me. Save me from people who think that their successes and luck set a minimum moral standard. Who think that a hint of gray is as good as the pitchest black. Who refuse to consider that others might be different.
His hyperbole gripped me. His absolute conviction that a single smack on the bottom is as much child abuse as is a backhand to the face. That context is irrelevant, a trivialising distraction, a craven attempt at excusing something abhorrent. And it made me angry, because he is accusing me of torturing, tormenting, my children. [Ed: by implication.] Of accusing me of saying that “terror is an acceptable way to raise a child.”
He accused me of terrorising my children. How dare he? He really, honestly and deliberately made the claim that my ever having given my child a swat on the bottom if they try to run onto the road is equivalent to keeping my family under a climate of fear and intimidation.
And then, in a hissy fit to put a child to shame, he unfriended me. It's his right. It's his journal. But still: how juvenile! The action of a petulant teenager: who knows that he omniscient, and the existence of an alternative is not something to be argued, but something which is a personal insult just by existing, and the best answer to this is to stick your fingers in your ears and shout. [He now claims that it was because I was becoming hysterical, and he has indeed unscreened all my comments. He is also accusing me of being a liar.]
Well, I hope he enjoys his life, and the company of his echo chamber. Just because I have been known to agree with him and those on his journal, what he has is an echo chamber, if he systematically excludes anyone who disagrees with him, it's an echo chamber. But because he does say things worthy of hearing, I have not unfriended him. [OK, after the way he has insulted every one of thse of my friends who expressed sympathy or support, and then insulted my wife, he has earned contempt. I've unfriended him and if he wants to say something here he has to wait for me to grant him the right.]
Me, that exchange left me shaking. So I drove home, and gave my daughters, my treasures, the pulse of my heart, a hug goodnight and somehow completely failed to hit them in any way whatsoever. But because of
sammaelhain, for the first time in my life, I couldn't get the image out of my head of me hurting my own children. I hope he's happy. [He claims that this is because I have a guilty conscience. I respond that it is because it is a deeply disturbing thought, of which nightmares are made.]He has done to me the same thing that people like Hetty Johnstone have done: he has made me second-guess every interaction I have with my children. He has made me look for evil in every innocent interaction. He has done his little bit to murder the joy I feel with my children. I hope I get over it, but the scar will twitch for a long, long time. I shouldn't let it, but it will.
no subject
If they were logical consequences, then yes. But they are not. You don't seem to be making any distinction based on severity or circumstance: your whole point is based around absolute moral equivalence. So when I say that there is a time and place, and you say that there never is, you are equating me with child abusers.
I say that it is not always wrong, you respond that it is... and that it is a monstrous act in all cases. I have spanked my children, therefore you have accused me of being a monster. I'm supposed to sit back and say “actually, yeah, fair cop, I'm a failure as a human being”?
“hyper reaction in your posts.”
I reacted to what was thrown at me. And is still being thrown. “I do think that anyone who smacks a child is a monster.”
Sorry, I get upset when people call me a monster. It's this thing I have.
“... acting with integrity or seriously evaluating your attitude toward a topic.”
I am deadly serious in my evaluation. My evaluation of the topic is that your dogmatism on the issue verges on the insane.
“If for the first time in your life...”
Fuck you. You don't know shit about me. You are assigning to me the bigoted stereotype you associate with the picture you obviously have of "Someone who beats children". I consider the happiness, present and future happiness of my children every day. If I ever have cause to spank, it is never something done lightly. I think about how everything I do effects my children whenever I am with them.
“Have I even rejected a single srened comment you have made?”
When I wrote the above, you had been sitting on it for hours. (Maybe for good reason, maybe not, I had no way of knowing.) I had no way of knowing that you would ever unlock it. I am pleased that you have.
Words have effects. I can make you think of purple elephants, just by saying it. You have made me second-guess my own reactions... and not in a good way. Far, far from making me re-consider spanking, now it is all I can do to not think about doing so. It's not like I'm going to do it, but you have quite effectively poisoned my mind. Well done.
no subject
Your problem isn't that I don't recognize the difference, it's that I don't recognize the difference you would like me to recognize.
"Sorry, I get upset when people call me a monster. It's this thing I have."
More misleading. I am not the one who called you a monste, and as the dating on those posts will show, that comment came well afte you levied these accusations at me. You really are a despicable little liar.
"Fuck you. You don't know shit about me. You are assigning to me the bigoted stereotype you associate with the picture you obviously have of "Someone who beats children". I consider the happiness, present and future happiness of my children every day. If I ever have cause to spank, it is never something done lightly. I think about how everything I do effects my children whenever I am with them"
Then why are you so scarred by my posts?
"When I wrote the above, you had been sitting on it for hours. "
Oh I seeso because I'm sitting by my lj you rush to assume I'm censoring you? Wtf is your issue? Had a day or more gone by I could see the reaction, but several hours? Overreact much?
"now it is all I can do to not think about doing so. It's not like I'm going to do it, but you have quite effectively poisoned my mind. Well done."
Talking about a purple elephant puts it in my mind's eye for a moment, it does not cause me to obsess over the image all day. If you can't stop thinking about hitting your children you need help. And I don't mean that in a light hearted or cruel way, that's not a healthy thing to be unable to cast out of your mind.
no subject
On the contrary, if someone puts the idea of your children being harmed into your head and it doesn't disturb you, then you need help.
Some ideas stick in the head more than others. As an occultist, this should not be news to you.
no subject
Being disturbed at the thought is one thing,compulsively envisioning hitting them, which is what you admitted to is another.
no subject
I am not going to perform any of the acts which are in my head, just as I do not watch a horror movie then go out and kill people.
But there is a reason why I do not go to horror movies: I would much rather simply not be thinking of it.
It's like the (I think it was Pratchett's) description of four types of people: You are standing in front of a person waiting for lights to change. There's a crowd, so no-one could pin it on you if you were to push them into traffic.
Some people would not do it because they would be terrified of being caught and punished.
Some people would not do it because they had made a conscious decision to do the right thing.
Some people would not do it because they couldn't be bothered to.
Most people simply don't consider the possibility of pushing others into traffic.
I would prefer to be in the last category, all things considered.
no subject
The fact that you by your own words can't stop thinking about it shows your lack of mental discipline at best, and I'm not even going to speculate what it implies at worst.
I'll assume at this point we're done.
no subject
I say how your words have disturbed me, and you turn that into evidence ("'But I hope I'm wrong', because adding that makes it less slanderous") that I am one step away from following through with it. That is your own delirious invention.
I will recover from your words. My children are safe.
Netiquette Alert!
Re: Netiquette Alert!
I reserve the right to defend myself against false accusations whether other people like it or not.
Oh God Above Us!