Becky’s not afraid of burning in hell, but that when she gets to heaven all her friends and family she loves will see her get a bare bottom spanking by god with a wooden spoon?!
I have no memory of ever being spanked. My mom once admitted that she did do it, but one of her friends explained why it’s frowned upon these days so she stopped and my younger siblings were spared it entirely.
Yeah, based on Dina’s expression and confusion I don’t think her parents have ever done more than verbally explaining why something she did may be etong when she did something wrong growing up. I’m extremely jealous of people who grow up in such a good caring, environment where parents aren’t something to be feared.
Dina turned out great. Like, no joke, she has demonstrated many times that she has immense respect for other people’s boundaries, and understanding of consent as it applies to both sexual and non-sexual situations. She is perceptive, and compassionate, and has incredible control over her own emotions, rarely becoming angry except in situations where righteous fury is very much the appropriate response, and we have never seen her be cruel to another person, intentionally or accidentally. Hell, she’s even fought competently in defense of both herself and others, so we know she can unleash a can of whoopass when she knows somebody (like abusive dads) deserves it.
All this is to say that the Saruyamas’ parenting methods must be the envy of all. Even before seeing Dina’s reaction to spanking as discipline, I could never imagine Dina’s parents spanking her, because it *is* hitting, it’s violence and therefore abuse. Dina is most likely autistic (I am, myself) and raising an autistic child can, legitimately, be frustrating, but it seems that Dina’s parents not only were not ashamed of their daughter’s autism, they understood Dina’s autism and Dina as a person, and handled both extremely well.
So… I think anyone is valid for being extremely jealous of Dina. My mom is not perfect, but I frequently have described her as a literal saint because she is so patient and kind, and even I’m a bit jealous of Dina. (My grandmother, who also raised me, was a whole ‘nother story, but even still I doubt she was as bad as whatever you went through, Shitbird.)
I feel very compelled to say though, that the “”autism”” label as misleading as it is in many ways is a very sharp, double-edged sword.
I was labelled “autistic” unwillingly during my childhood, which led to decades of physical and emotional abuse from my family, friends and teachers, due to the sheer baggage behind the label, all the hurtful assumptions, making it very difficult for others to tell the difference between my disabilities and my personality. 😣
It’s worth noting here that the “autistic” label has never been used in-comic to date, and (almost) never authorially out-of-comic either; Dina’s portrayal as more explicitly being on the spectrum—similarly to Amber/Maisie’s DID—is something that more naturally grew into the comic through the real-life experience of commenters in similar boats identifying with said characters’ traits, and Willis then making the choice to more deliberately depict the characters in that light.
Please understand I’m not trying to throw around the “autistic” label willy-nilly; I know it’s not something everyone (the author included) is comfortable applying, and I don’t mean to disrespect your or anyone else’s experience. Mine was quite the opposite of yours, though. I only realized I may be autistic in the past couple of years (I’m 27), and it re-contextualized my school years.
See, I suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, too. School stressed my endurance nearly to the breaking point; I could barely make it through, it was like running a marathon every day. I would come home so deeply exhausted that I would pass out asleep immediately when I got home, and more or less sleep until it was time to get up for school again the next morning, never doing my homework because I was too tired for my brain to even form coherent thoughts. Despite sleeping literally as much as I could, I was never rested upon waking and each morning I had a breakdown, full-blown panic attacks about going to school because I was so drained down to the core of my soul that it felt like subjecting myself to the whole ordeal again would actually kill me. And this is considering all my teachers were quite nice to me, the other students were either friendly or barely acknowledged me, I didn’t get bullied, and I was quite smart so I understood what I was being taught (when the tiredness didn’t interfere). In other words, I had very little reason to fear and avoid school the way I did. I didn’t understand why sitting at a desk and listening to my teachers for seven hours was something that completely drained all life and strength from me.
Because I didn’t understand, I had trouble explaining to my mom, my doctors, and the school officials. My mom was heartbroken at my clear struggle but didn’t know how to help, and she let me stay home so many times that I was charged with truancy and put on probation. If I didn’t go to school, I would be sent to juvie and possibly even taken away from my mother. Her power to let me stay home was taken away; even doctor’s notes weren’t accepted; if I thought I was truly sick, I had to drag my sorry carcass to school anyway and hope and beg that the school nurse would see that I was ill and send me home. She never did.
Again, I’m 27. I dropped out of high school at 17. Today, I understand that what I was experiencing was extreme sensory overload — the fluorescent lighting, the crowds of other students and packed classrooms and cafeteria and the noise of all their chatter, the need to force myself to pay attention to the lessons. I wasn’t tired because of any kind of physical exertion. The world around me was incredibly overwhelming, and I came home tired because I’d just spent seven straight hours weathering its relentless assault. I was autistic, and the stress of trying to handle an environment that wasn’t made to accommodate students like me was drastically worsening my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Also because I was autistic, I was used to masking, putting on a face for the world, that I couldn’t lift it and openly show my distress to the people who needed to see it. I acted fine so they decided I was fine. I tried to explain to them that I wasn’t, but I didn’t have the words.
I might have gone into too much detail here, but what I’m getting at is this: realizing I related to the struggles of other autistics finally gave me an understanding of what I was going through. I didn’t see it as something to be ashamed of, and neither did my mother. It gave us a new toolkit to help me, because I still can’t be out of the house for long before I get overwhelmed and exhausted and can’t function any longer. Now I know why it happens, and other people’s coping mechanisms for dealing with it. I feel like rejecting the label “autistic” because it is stigmatized validates the stigma — it feeds into the idea it’s bad, shameful, that you’re broken — and it can prevent people from finding resources that could help them. Autism doesn’t magically go away if you refuse to call it autism; it still affects you just the same, but it’s harder to do anything about it. So I’m not saying that you (or the other readers, or Willis, or Dina herself, or anyone) has to apply the label, but it can’t gain tolerance if we always run away from it. The people who use the label as a weapon can, frankly, go fuck themselves.
Dina definitely seems to have had some very good and understanding parents. Though I kinda wonder if maybe her parents might also be autistic, because that would explain how they can understand her so well. I’m recently diagnosed autistic and I’ve always gotten along really well with my parents, and I’ve come to suspect that at least one of my parents might also be autistic.
Just to quickly add: this is not me bragging, but to express that it is unfortunate parents like the Saruyamas are a rare treasure and not the norm. I think Dina had the parents all children deserve, and I hope she teaches Becky, Joyce, and others the things their parents got wrong, both so they can heal from it and so they can ultimately be better people themselves.
Yeah, it’s kind of amazing how fast that changed. When I was in 1st-3rd grade, our (Christian private school) principal literally had a pair of paddles in his office named Thunder and Lightning. I don’t recall ever actually seeing them used, but they were there. When I switched to private school in the 4th grade, I think the few times I went to the principal’s office I remember seeing a paddle hung up on the wall somewhere but it was never mentioned. I got the occasional swat when I misbehaved, never off the cuff but rather “this is what you did, here’s what the punishment will be”.
Nowadays, my sister is raising her kids and of course the idea of spanking never comes up as far as I know. It’s almost literally unthinkable, but it’s only a generation or so apart.
Yes. Most computers these days have servers that they’re registered to in order to synchronize their clocks with the rest of the world. (This is called Network Time Protocol, or NTP.) I’d guess that whatever server Willis is using can’t do that anymore for some reason: the server’s clock runs a touch faster so it’s been drifting and they don’t know how to correct it, or at least, correct it without breaking something else.
You can manually change the server your computer synchronizes with, if you want. You probably shouldn’t. :p
Jamie said: “… the server’s clock runs a touch faster so it’s been drifting…”
Which means in a hundred years or so the server will have crept enough that it will think it’s Wednesday when it is only Tuesday, and we’ll ALL get to see tomorrow’s comic today.
Okay, whew, after the night I had at work I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going crazy. The highlight of night was a customer (at a grocery store) ask if geese ate common bird seed because, when I pushed further, she was trying to feed a wild goose (assuming Canada since they’re nesting now) that she’d brought into her house or had nested near her house, not quite sure which…
Gotta be completely honest, as someone who was spanked as a kid, I can understand why people might find that super horrifying but I’m pretty meh about the whole thing. Probably couldn’t do it to my own kids though.
It mostly taught me two things: One, my threshold for enduring pain well exceeded my parents’ willingness to inflict it, and Two, they really don’t like being mocked by a pantless child for their perceived weakness.
Also violence. Spanking is the norm in my country and we have a massive issue with violence. My parents stopped hitting me sometime before 10, i don’t remember exactly when, but tbh i still have the mentality that most problems could be solved with mild to moderate violence
It taught me a lifelong fear of authority and that my bodily autonomy didn’t matter. Advocating for myself is to this day very difficult and I often use my husband as a way to make sure I’m getting what I need from the doctors. It made it difficult to negotiate fair salaries and to step away when I knew I wasn’t being paid fairly. And plenty of other ramifications too personal to get into on this forum.
Parenting out of fear is the number one parenting technique i want to avoid for any offspring. Spankings were never about pain in my family, just “respect” and fear.
Spanking is understandably a lot scarier when you’re a child though. Adult’s a typically twice your size then. I got spanked once for stealing, I didn’t hate my parents for it, but I don’t think I have the stomach to do it either.
I got paddled at Sunday School and I feared that and while I was afraid of getting spanked by my mom I was usually worried more about any following punishment, like losing tv privileges. But yeah the spanking itself was pretty scary too. But I guess I learned at a young age that it was temporary.
Christians like to say, “Perfect love drives out fear.” That’s backwards. The brutal beatings I got until I was sixteen drove love right out the window. I’ve never been good at it since.
My step- dad shot his hunting rifle at me once when I was a teenager shortly after I had come out because I was demanding that his kids and himself don’t call me slurs, physical abuse horrifies me when I hear stories from others but I still to this day believe i deserved it
That is absolutely despicable and I really hope that your living situation changed and became a lot better after that, and you didn’t spend years fearing for your life. I am so sorry you experienced that.
It’s child abuse that’s been normalized and excused, all you have to do to know how harmful it is for a child’s development is hear their cries, screams and begging for the spanking to not start.
It is kind of twofold horrifying from the perspective of an adult that hasn’t experienced it:
1) We have science that shows this does not have the desired effect. So we know it is not effective and doesn’t teach what it is ‘intended’ to. It therefore is not beneficial and is only detrimental to the child. This is a logical horror of it – it isn’t a logical action to take.
2) On an emotional level is where it is most horrifying. To a young child, violence is absolutely terrifying. Hitting a child is betraying the very idea that adults, especially parents, are supposed to protect them, by causing them harm. And even if you were truly angry at a child, I personally have no idea how anyone could bring themselves to hit a child, especially their own child. It is such an alien feeling to me to be willing to do that.
The thing that really upsets me about the whole thing, even after the fact that it’s clearly abuse, is that some people still deny the science even after it’s explained to them. Just the vary notion that you’re somehow coddling your child if you don’t give ’em a good smack every time they upset you is just… wtf?
I guess I can see that, but speaking for myself, I wouldn’t describe my feelings towards being spanked as “terrified”. I certainly didn’t look forward to it, but fear wasn’t really in the mix. I experienced what I would call “real” abuse when I was much younger, and THAT scared me, but with spankings I mostly felt sad that I had behaved in a way that warranted this level of punishment. (Or, let’s be honest, that I’d been CAUGHT behaving in such a way.) I was never afraid that, for instance, I’d be permanently injured or anything like that. It hurt, but falling off a slide and breaking my arm hurt more. We didn’t have “the rules” written down or anything like that, but getting spanked never felt unfair—there were expectations of behavior, and the punishment from standing in a corner to grounding to spanking were (it felt to me) proportionate to how far out of bounds I’d gone.
I recognize and accept the science that says spankings don’t work, I’m not defending it as a good practice. I think if my parents were raising kids today they’d follow the modern conventional wisdom and not spank their kids. But at the same time, I can see an EXTREMELY clear difference between loving parents who performed their parental duties within the expectations of their time and peers, as compared to what I would again call the “real” abuse I experienced.
For me, the fear wasn’t physical, my spankings were never hard enough to actually hurt. It was an emotional fear that their love for me must be earned and could be lost.
I don’t have children so I have not been motivated to read the science, but I have seen children and during a certain age range they can be sociopathic little monsters and intuitively it seems that an appropriately vigorous spanking would be the most effective way to discourage bad behavior. Vicious beating, random or inappropriate application are a different subject. That said, I embrace the possibility that my intuition can lead to an incorrect conclusion.
I admit part of it may be because I deeply, deeply deeply deeply love my mother. I honestly think I couldn’t ask for a better one. Outside of a spanking when I was acting up she was a very understanding and supportive mom my whole life. I don’t wanna call her “abusive” or talk about her in a negative light, especially after she raised me all by her self trying her best.
It was a different time and it wasn’t as much of a taboo. I can say she probably shouldn’t have done it but I can’t look at it in a vacuum as if it was just some weird shit she did. Especially in the black community it was just…a thing. I dunno I’m probably taking the issue personally and if you had a bad experience/trauma with it I do pity that. I just hate hearing anything that might imply ANYTHING untoward about my mama.
Lots of parents are loving and wonderful but do some things that are harmful toward their child, often because of cultural norms. I think it’s important to talk about it so that harmful behaviours hopefully aren’t repeated on to another generation.
I’m in a similar boat, although I’m not Black (or White). I love my parents, and my upbringing may not have been the greatest, but that wasn’t from spanking. Any spankings came out of a place of love (and maybe of fear, since the only times I remember them coming into play was to keep me from doing something that could seriously injure me – don’t play with garage doors, kids! especially after your parents tell you no!).
Also, after experimenting a little as an adult, I can pretty confidently say that a slap with an open palm on a buttock is a much lower level of pain and chance of injury than with an implement such as a fist, belt, switch, spoon and/or on most other parts of the body… so I do want to clarify that what I think of as a spanking (flat palm, on the bottom) is less severe than what Joyce is describing here.
Back in the 70s, it was both much less of a thing and much more – common, that is. I do know my mother felt terrible about it; she wanted us to just behave and not “force” her to discipline us. But we were kids, we didn’t know any better. (Nor did she, in a sense. Like I said, it was a very different time, and she was – with the best of intentions – winging it.)
Yes, that makes sense, Yotomoe — lots of child rearing practices seem more understandable and forgivable when viewed in their historical and cultural and social contexts. Yotomoe, I’m glad that you are able to get a healthy distance and perspective on it now — that you can make your own choices about what you would do for your own family in the future, without resenting your mother or holding it against her for what happened in the past.
I believe she would be grateful to hear how much you care for and honor her.
I’m so glad for you, that you and she have that strong bond, and that the norms that she was raised with have not caused you to turn against her, even though you do not now endorse them yourself.
I’ve got something I’d like to add to this wrt “It was a different time and it wasn’t as much of a taboo. I can say she probably shouldn’t have done it but I can’t look at it in a vacuum as if it was just some weird shit she did. ” and before I said anything, I was wondering if you would be okay with me saying it by using what you’ve shared as a jumping-off point.
It’s nothing critical of anyone involved (ie: I will not be saying anything untoward about Mama Yomotoe, nor will I go “actually you were abused and how you feel is wrong”), so much as I want to talk about that idea of looking back on this stuff in hindsight, both with a greater understanding of how it makes us feel, and how it adversely affects others in ways we didn’t necessarily face.
As a mom who doesn’t spank, I also feel like I need to defend my mom who did.
When my daughter was a preschooler, she would sometimes throw the worst tantrums. She didn’t get her way, and now she’s screaming. You can’t talk to her about it, because she’s screaming. You can try putting her in her room to calm down, but she’ll walk back out, still screaming. Hold the door closed? She’s screaming and banging at the door, and when you think she calmed down, you open the door and the screaming behind anew. Remove toys as a consequence? Rather than getting her to behave, the lost toy just made her angrier. Deescalation wouldn’t work, because she just wanted the original thing she couldn’t have.
Then I think of my own childhood, where the spanking took a second, the sting was over seconds later, and then my mom and I are already at the stage of talking about what happened, with love and reassurance. What’s more traumatic for a child? Studies came out showing that yelling at kids is just as detrimental as spanking them. These long, drawn out “battle of wills” was certainly traumatic for both of us. But my husband didn’t want us to spank, and I wasn’t going to do it unless we were both in agreement.
Also also, my daughter is a kind, sensitive, well adjusted 8 year old now, who still tends toward anger when she’s upset, but is much better at managing and working through her anger now. I couldn’t ask for better.
I had it a few until a certain age but not many, I don’t know if I’m going to have kids or not so I didn’t know if I was ever going to put in a position where I had to think about the idea of spanking.
It’s not Meh to me, I was spanked whenever my parents were upset, and used it as a method to vent their anger out on ME to feel better, but used it as an excuse of “punishment”.
I still have nightmares of my mom forcing me to lay across the bed with my skirt down so she could beat me till her arm was sore, with the metal part of the belt, screaming at me that I needed to “submit!!”
Sounds like your parents might have been a lot nicer than mine with spanking.
Jfc, I’m really sorry to hear that. It disgusts me to no end, this culture that acts like hate is secretly really love and abuse is respect and on and on…neither you nor any child alive deserved to be treated like that and I am so sorry.
Naw, no relief really, it’s just a pain I’ve adapted to living with, it didnt make me more obedient, just afraid of authority. I had to basically help myself to want to stay alive due to fundamental ideals of what I should be, should act and should feel.
I was spanked and all it really did was contribute to my resentment against my parents. Like, it doesn’t even work. I’m pretty sure my parents didn’t enjoy it, either.
It’s incompetent parenting, expressed abusively. I don’t personally get emotional about it, but the technique is stupid because it doesn’t work, and parents who employ it are simply incompetent at being parents. Doesn’t make them bad people, just people who have been told a fairy tale and passed that on to their kids uncritically.
I got spanked once in my childhood, and that was for quite a big thing. Me and my dad talked about it in my adult life and I told him that while I don’t condone spankings, I can see why he did it. He told me that it was his one of his biggest failures as a dad. It was a strange talk.
If my spankings had ever made any sense what-so-ever, I’d likely agree. Instead, if someone got hurt or upset as a result of my actions, I was sent to a corner. But if I talked about the wrong thing (cartoons), played pretend, mentioned dad, or brought up any of the numerous random things that happened to piss mom off that day, then I’d get a beating not ever to be forgot. If she was _really_ mad, maybe she’d through a chair.
I’ve slapped the back of each of my kids’ hands precisely once and never again. They went through meltdown/ hitting stages as toddlers and nothing else was getting them to stop hitting me and others. I’ll regret it forever, but they did stop hitting after that. 😓
I should add, my father (to my recollection) _never_ even raised his hand. He raised his voice twice that I can recall. Yes they were divorced. Mom won custody, because a uterus apparently makes for a good parent.🙄
“It really doesn’t work. It’s been shown that it doesn’t work. But they do it anyway. Maybe because they want it to work. Maybe because it needs to work. Maybe because it HAS to work.”
I feel like I should link the Sydsnap video on that topic to explain, but I can never get links to work right the first try, so if you’d like to know more, just look for Sydsnap’s video on selfcest.
Full disclosure I kinda didn’t get it fully outta my system. Any other Jennifer/Billie things y’all would like to see? (Or other characters you wanna see shipped with themselves)
Dina is a strange creature. She is horrified by the prospect of Joyce getting spanked with a light wooden spoon as a punishment, while showing little to no concern that she is actively actively smothering a very sore Joyce beneath her entire body mass (which I assume is mostly cereal).
I’m not so much a fan of pages 13-15 (just think they rely on overbroad stereotypes and that the Q&A section offers no proof) but most of the pamphlet is pretty good. Sometimes folks will print it out and assemble the pages, and then hand a copy to parents whom they see hitting their kids in public.
I wish I had intervened more effectively, and more often, when I saw it. Used to see it almost every time I left the house, back in my old city.
Laura – I agree with your assessment of the Q&A, especially when they try to create a cause-and-effect relationship to something (spanking) that happened to a LOT of people because, after all, spanking was considered to be a common parenting punishment. They could have asked and answered the same questions substituting the word ‘toothbrush’ for ‘spanking’ and it would have been just as true, which means that their Q&As are just a waste of verbiage.
Lol the thing about a “light wooden spoon” is that it’s still a solid, hard surface making contact with often bare flesh, the worst welts I ever got was when I got spanked by a teacher while my mother watched with a wooden spoon, and the bruising and welts lingered for weeks.
a cane – something that was designed to leave cuts and welts when used for this – is a *very* light wooden object. just becase something doesn’t weigh a lot, doesn’t mean it won’t cause damage.
its still a solid wooden object, being swung with force. don’t assume physical abuse isn’t abuse just because its not a hammer
I’ll go on. Regardless of the weight of the wooden spoon, it is a force multiplyer. It is a harder, less flexible surface than a palm, increases leverage, does not increase air resistance, and also means the spanker doesn’t have to worry about hurting their own hand. The ONLY reason to use such an implement in this context is to increase the amount you can hurt the child.
Given all of that, and given that “light” is your word, not the comic’s, I would very much like to know why you chose to use it. If perhaps there is a reason that isn’t just ‘to minimize that it is a tool for abuse’? Explain it to me like I’m 5. In fact, explain it to me like I am a 5 year old who is under threat of being hit with whatever implements are close at hand. I will wait.
If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.
Man, if Joyce is having this bad of a reaction to what I assume is a period, she may wanna get checked out by an OBGYN. They can prescribe stuff to help with pain! Also, I had rough as hell periods back in the day and I don’t think I ever had anything I would describe as ‘full body pain’. Anyone else wondering if she has endometriosis or something similar?
Actually, I’m kinda wondering this? A comment from Becky seemed to imply she maybe only experiences this every three to four months? That’s a reaaally long cycle.
Y’know what might be kinda earth-shattering to an already semi-shattered Joyce?
Facing the possibility of infertility or sterility.
As someone dealing with that myself, I desperately hope not. But…yeah, this seems unusual, and knowing Willis, undoubtedly meaningful in some way.
My experience with PCOS (which is to say, I have PCOS) is that unmedicated, cycles are long but unpredictable. Like, have I had a cycle that’s been about three months before? Yes. Would I be able to notice or a predict a similar pattern based on this? Fuck no. Being on birth control helps a lot , but I’ve still missed periods on it.
People experience PCOS differently so I wouldn’t it rule it out yet but, based on my experience and some reading of I’ve done, I doubt that’s what Joyce is experiencing.
I have been worried about that since the first time Becky mentioned the whole, “its been about four months”.
Just, oh no….if its this bad and all and only happens a few times a year, then year she’s probably gonna have issues getting pregnant.
Also I’m freshly super mad at her mom if that’s the case! She should have been getting checked out long before this, but I’m sure her mom made some assumption about God taking care of it and now Joyce is holding the bill.
It COULD be Becky was thinking it occurred about this same time the last four months as well, which would be… marginally less concerning, though still bad. But yeah, if it is in fact this bad and once every four months, that is a ‘get this looked at ASAP’ concern.
Have you tried out a few different ones?
I only react to Ibuprofen, everything else doesn’t touch it.
My mom can only use Tylenol,
and a buddy can only use Excedrin.
I really hope you find something that works! I’m in Oklahoma and know a ton of people who immediately hopped on the weed wagon when it got legalized cause nothing else touched their pain. (I’m not saying try weed btw. I just used it as an example)
Mostly Tylenol and magnesium. When the Tylenol WORKS, it’s a good combo. When it doesn’t, magnesium kinda…masks pain most of the time? I think I had Advil but I don’t think it worked well because we don’t keep it in the house anymore (could be because it’s rougher on the stomach, not sure).
Becky counting a three month cycle a while back implied that Joyce may be on a regulated birth control for bad menstrual issues. Last I heard, they usual method is to use the BC in a way that you only menstruate once every three months. This also implies that she’s been going through this since before the strip began.
Yeah, it wasn’t literally full body but if i had a headache with it that’s what I’d describe it as. In my case it would be the debilitating pain radiating out from, well the expected place, and then also intense behind the bellybutton in the abdomen, down my legs, my back usually too. If someone woke me up from a pain escape nap and was sitting on top of me, even if they weigh nothing like Dina, i can’t say i wouldn’t punch or slap or claw them on instinct
Yeah this is setting off all my chronic illness/pain red flags. There are a lot of things that can cause a period to turn into full-body pain, including a number of autoimmune and connective tissue conditions because of how the change in hormones can affect both inflammation and join laxity (I have EDS and my symptoms are ALWAYS worse on my period). For me that’s usually severe joint pain and monthly migraines (prior to getting on a migraine preventative).
See I just gotta know what fucked Joyce up so badly that Becky knows she should be taking lots of iron, she needed to sleep all day, and now her body’s sore.
Becky at least thinks it’s a period (thus, iron, and also thus sore.)
Do those usually result in full-body soreness? No, but the cramps can feel pretty significant in your torso region, and sometimes they also come with headaches and oh yeah also they can spike your histamine levels. I’ve also definitely had cycles where it tanks my energy, and if nothing else sleep passes the time if you can manage it while waiting for the naproxen to kick in. (Don’t use weaker stuff, it doesn’t work.)
… It should be noted I also have REALLY ROUGH menstrual cycles, including familial endometriosis and a grab bag of really bad PMS symptoms, and so my sense of just how bad periods get for someone who doesn’t have those. And also didn’t get their first period on the literal eve of their mother’s hysterectomy due to endometriosis. (Mine, at least, has never caused me to pass out. Again, skewed sense of normalcy.)
Or at least, the pain is usually intense enough in specific spots that it wouldn’t necessarily feel as pronounced in say, arms. But I believe I have heard of generalized joint aches associated with it?
I’ve had cramps pretty much all over before. Most of them went down my lower body, but there’s definitely been some up higher from higher going cramps and headaches.
But the iron and the sleeping all day because you’re tireder? All the time.
Yep, my cramps are less of a thing now that I’m on BC (and have been for years now), but I have very vivid memories of soreness intense soreness in my thighs—just as painful as the cramps but less sharp pain. Also shoulder aches, but that was probably just generally tiredness because I still get those when my body gets physically exhausted.
She could just be being hyperbolic. I remember before i started treatment for endo i used to say “literally everything hurts!” Every time i got my period, cuz when it’s coming from a central source it really does feel like your whole body is in pain even when it’s not
Some chronic illnesses (that are often diagnosed fairly late because of the complex symptoms) can cause full-body pain on periods. Like auto-immune or connective tissue conditions.
Honestly, as someone who was spanked by parents who otherwise thought of themselves as good, kind liberals, I totally buy that both Becky and Dorothy were spanked as kids, and that both of them think it’s normal. I’m glad Dina is confronting that, and I hope this has consequences both for Becky and for Joyce.
I really can’t stress enough how much the threat of physical violence can affect a kid. You were spanked and you turned out fine? Sure, whatever, cool. Happy for you. Many people handle abuse very differently. Me, I’m still processing how learning to see my dad as someone who would hurt me when he was angry with me affected my reaction to, say, my partner getting non-violently angry with me.
. . . Is it odd that I never considered that a wooden spoon could be used for Spanking kids? I had only ever thought of it like. . . a Nun rapping your knuckles with a wooden ruler. But never a parent on a child.
I was spanked myself. Apparently a few times as a toddler and one memorable time back when I lived in Germany in middle school, I had been spending the night at a friend’s house and picked up some of his shitbag father’s misogynic attitudes, and I repeated those attitudes at a house party the following week.
My father apparently dragged me into the bathroom and gave me a spanking so bad that I have quite literally blocked it and that entire night out of my mind, and had to be told about it years later.
. . . If I’m ever have kids I’m never hitting them. Especially not like that.
I got spanked pretty regularly, but the idea of a wooden spoon, or really a solid object in general stuck me as weird the first time I heard about it.
My family was all about the belts, folded in half for a nice solid extra-loud crack. Or if things got really serious, a razor strop.
It was also a complete waste of time, because my ability to endure pain well outstripped their willingness to inflict it, so I basically just accepted it as an insignificant price to pay for doing whatever I felt like.
… They’re probably really lucky I never took interest in drugs or alcohol or the like, because there wasn’t shit they could have done about it with their methods.
My parents both preferred their hands, but my maternal grandmother would hit with a spoon during the year and a half I lived with her and on summer vacations. TBH the way my parents did it (purposefully targeting sensitive areas like hands and feet, welding it as a threat for compliance , etc) was much more aversive to me. My grandmother didn’t hit hard or target sensitive areas so it didn’t hurt as much and to her there was about as much emotion in it as in doing the dishes. My parents OTOH would put on this huge production about it to amp up the fear and shame factors, it was almost like they enjoyed it.
The only methods I’ve ever been familiar with was the old fashioned slap on the butt amd rarely a belt. The wooden spoon thing was was weird whenever I heard about it.
Yeah, happened to me growing up and wasn’t anyone who thought it was weird. It was only as an adult I was confronted with the idea this was child abuse (I had grown up with the idea it was stupid and counterproductive not abusive).
Ooof, last panel got me. I’m another person who got spanked as a kid. My parents only did it a couple of times that I remember, but when I was like 7, I’d regularly get in trouble for acting up in class (due to undiagnosed ADHD) and get sent to the principal’s office, where she’d spank me with a ping pong paddle. This was a weekly occurrence. My “counselors” at day care never hit, but they’d torture me with stress positions, like holding my arms out or touching my toes for an hour. None of it ever helped me get better, obviously. I was just terrified and confused.
It’s just so weird when I’m reminded that was never normal or okay.
I’d love for Willis to handle the almost universal child of abusive household experience of telling a “funny story” about your childhood and getting to the punchline to realize more than a few folks are looking at you mildly horrified.
I only got spanked a couple of times between ages 3 and 8 and it was in no way a beating. I remember being more upset that I had done something so bad that my parents had to get the wooden spoon, than being afraid of the pain.
Every kid is different, and I think my older siblings hated it more then me
I just want to acknowledge that this is likely going to be a triggering comment conversation for many. It’s OK to sit this one out.
It’s also OK to read, and process, and comment, if you want to, with the support of a trusted person nearby to help check in, in case the conversation brings up unwanted feelings.
And it is ALWAYS OK to practice self-care with hot cocoa, funny non-triggering stuff on TV, soothing music, blankets, pets, or whatever brings you comfort.
This is tough stuff, and we don’t need to expose ourselves to it if we don’t want to. And we can take steps to manage the hurt we feel.
Everyone suffers and processes their experiences in their own way. Each person’s experiences are valid. There’s no one “right” way to heal.
Sending healing and caring vibes to all.
RE: this particular study, Tetris and traffic accidents are particularly well-suited to one another, because one side effect of car crash trauma is a reluctance to drive again. Driving is SO MUCH like Tetris (you have to fit a solid shape — your car — into holes of varying sizes at high speeds) that the “gamification” of a common driving skill helps de-link the skill from the trauma.
This is a really hard conversation for me, as it may be for others. The extremely grossout eye-catching ads at the bottom and sides of the page don’t make it any easier. I don’t want to talk specifics right now and in this forum, but it touches on a theme that I’m working hard this month to process.
Here’s a paper picking apart 31 different arguments for hitting your children for those who may be interested. To abbreviate: There’s no argument. This science has been solved since the 1950s.
The name of the paper is “Demystifying the defenses of corporal punishment”, which is pretty clever. It doesn’t indulge in philosophy, you see. It just cites many, many studies in different fields that overwhelmingly show hitting your children doesn’t help them in any way and usually hurts them in profound and lasting ways.
But the mysticism of child abuse only comes in when you start saying you “discipline” or “spank” them or “take them over your knee” or whatever. It sounds like a totally different thing from what you’re doing, which is beating them, so it can’t be as bad as beating them, right? Please demystify that shit. Call it abuse or hitting or beating like we do when adults fight and you can pretty easily see that it’s not something you should do. Ten times more so if you’re an adult doing it to a child depending on you.
But that argument is mostly just implied by the name.
I get the impression Joyce’s mom didn’t spare the spoon, either, not entirely, thought as the “baby”, we’ve been given indications she was shielded from some stuff, along with Jocelyn protecting her a bit on some things like fighting for her to get to trick or treat and thus not miss out on that.
But, we were also given indications that the parents got more fundamentalist over time, even if we know Hank detested Ross and tolerated him for Becky’s sake, so it’s sort of up in the air.
Dina’s reaction definitely suggests this is not at all something her family engages with, and I am glad for her on that because I think corporal punishment is brutish and ineffective on top of that. It only breeds contempt, distrust, and defiance, not true discipline.
I don’t know about Joyce’s siblings, but I used to specifically start shit with my parents if they were mad at my baby brothers. I was beaten brutally (belts, fists, whatever they had in their hands) had my hand methodically broken by laying it on the side table and slamming down onto it… but my brothers really only got one or two serious beatings while I lived with them.
As a result, my brothers are more well-adjusted, have a relationship with my parents, and one of them absolutely can’t understand why I can’t get over it since he was a bit too young to remember most of the worst times.
Younger siblings are absolutely protected in situations like that. If we older siblings can do anything to stop it.
Nova, I am so sorry that I couldn’t respond to this timely. Your comment has been haunting me since I first read it.
They broke your hand. They broke your hand!? They broke your hand!!!
This fills me with grief and rage. This is terrifying. I don’t know what anyone could say about this. I don’t think there is ever a way to make something like that right.
I am so sorry this happened to you. I am so sorry that this happened to you. You are not alone here. We see you, and we care.
Two things: What your parents did is terrible. Unforgivable, really. If you told me this and put those people in front of me they would not walk away in one piece. And standing between them and your little brothers is an absolute good thing that you did. I thank you on their behalf.
Speaking as a 188 cm, 125 kg trans woman, I think standing between someone bigger than you and someone smaller is literally the simplest thing in the world. But it doesn’t mean it’s easy.
this is going to be an interesting one because I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that several of the commenters here were spanked as children and considered it 100% normal. Acknowledging it as abuse is fairly recent (and by recent I mean within the last 30 years or so) so in-universe Joyce was born after 2000 and her parents would be considered extra strict or abusive by her peers. If Joyce was born before 1990 it probably wouldn’t be considered odd at all. That’s my anecdotal observation anyway
The science has been there since the 1950s. It doesn’t work. It NEVER worked.
This abusive practice and other human “””traditions””” like it did not withstand the test of time — they merely cheated the test of time through use of dishonest tactics, through years of indoctrination and censorship.
I never said it worked, but one can’t deny that at one time it was so ubiquitous that nobody questioned it. That’s certainly not a good thing, but it’s a statement of a fact.
I’m getting a little freaked out by the creepy ads and bad memory associations, so I’m done looking at comments for this strip. If someone replies to something I’ve said and I don’t respond, or shares something painful and I have no words of caring … it’s not that I don’t care. I’m just having a hard time right now with this topic.
Spankings were more about shame to me growing up. My mum prescribed to hand and belt spankings (the latter I never had, but my siblings were privy to) and tbh they never really hurt, but it was the shame of getting one that bothered me the most. Like getting a bad mark at school or getting sent to time out or detention, a spanking was another label to indicate a “bad kid” and I desperately did not want one placed on me and ruin my “reputation” (a word I use in hindsight).
I suppose I fall into the “but I turned out fine!” group though. I don’t go around saying that and don’t plan on spanking my kids, but looking back, the only reason I ever got spanked was when I was perceived as being disrespectful. I became more aware of my actions and learned the art of tact when speaking, that went beyond my mother. As an adult I don’t hate her or my upbringing and anything abnormal about me *cough*social anxiety* didn’t stem from a sore butt a few times in childhood.
I’m all about conscious parenting though so spanking was never an option to put back on the table. I just feel like if my mum were around now I’d have a hard time countering her, “we did it this way and it WORKED for you!”
So when it comes to Joyce herself and her family with regards spanking I can certainly see her mother doing this. I wonder about Hank though? Like it’s kind of a coin flip. He’s definitely made mistakes in the past. Personally I could see him leaving it to his wife to raise the kids and discipline because gender roles and that. But of course letting it happen is far from good in of itself. But outside of… Jordan and Joyce until very recently their parents are under the impression their kids were well behaved. So maybe only Jordan ever got that if happened at all. (But as it turns out only John have he guy who skims off missionary money is).
I guess the threat was there though? (But seriously was Jordan the kid who got hit a lot? Shall we finally get insight into him? We’ve already been surprised by him being the next youngest to Joyce when for a long time we thought he might be second oldest after John which we jumped on just from Joyce’s caller ID on Jocelyn… we’re starving here).
Woof, might have to step away from the comments for a few days, hearing legit abuse I went through minimized as mere kink or ” It’s just a light spoon” is hella damaging my mental health.
Yes. Becky was an adult when those things occurred, and other than Carol – who she doesn’t know – people didn’t try to minimise it. Both times were rightly seen as police matters.
That her childhood was punctuated by beatings and that this was seen as not a big deal is a revelation to Dina. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise – abusers escalate, so going from zero to “gun on campus” would have been a bit unusual – but Becky and Joyce were shocked by the gun. Having a gun pointed at them was new.
That children are beaten and don’t even realise they are being abused was not something Dina previously knew.
I was spanked occasionally as a child. With a bare hand. Never an object. Still painful. Still scary. More common was my dad shouting at me until I was so upset and stressed I threw up, then shouting more because I was “being ridiculous”… We have also had to have a few conversations with my parents about how they can and can’t talk to the kids. I hadn’t realised the way my father used to shout at me wasn’t OK (I knew I hated being shouted at but thought it was me being over-sensitive) until pretty recently and am still processing that.
Husband and I are in total agreement about no corporal punishment. Kids get time outs, or possibly lose bedtime stories that night, or are told they can’t watch cartoons.
So like, after our eldest (7) kept on extending the sleep timer on the tablet for her audiobooks without asking (“just another 5 minutes, that’s nothing, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind…” But repeated 6-8 times then followed by her her being utterly shattered in the morning), he put a password on it and explained it was because we couldn’t trust her not to do that. When she watched him enter it, learnt it, then continued, he changed it and took it away for a night or two. A few weeks on, she’s allowed it again and he’s taken the password off again.
Beating a sensitive, imaginative, loving child for “being disobedient” when she’s struggling with transitions, doesn’t have a proper understanding of time, doesn’t get why it’s a big deal, etc, would have been horrible, cruel and mainly upsetting for her. I think she now understands that we do trust her to go to bed when it’s finished, that it is important that she does so (and she does worry when she can’t sleep about being tired the next day), etc.
I want my kids to respect me because they recognise I know more than they do, and have their beat interests at heart coz I love them. I want them to be able to ask questions, think independently, find their own interests, etc, not be blindly obedient to me from a place of fear…
A lot of these comments just lead me to believe that a lot of people don’t know the difference between a spanking and blatant abuse. I got spanked my entire bloody childhood until I hit puberty any time I did something wrong, but it was NEVER more than five cracks (at absolute worst) with the open palm of a hand to my hind end. Most often it was only three. Was I scared? Sure, but I knew not to do the thing that brought on the spanking again- and I didn’t!
I got spanked and I didn’t and don’t live in fear of my parents. I simply learned right from bloody wrong.
Is a kid old enough to understand why they’re getting hit? Then violence is unnecessary, just explain what they did wrong.
Is a kid not old enough to understand why they’re being hit? Then hitting them won’t teach them anything.
Either way, there’s no benefit to adding pain to the process.
Something to keep in mind when we talk about spankings, is that spankings are not always just a quick pop on the butt with an open hand. I for one have been spanked with a hairbrush before. I’ve personally witnessed my peers be spanked with kitchen utensils (spoons/spatulas) and wooden planks (my mom broke one on my cousin’s butt after he kept stealing from literally everyone he could). You might have just experienced five pops on the butt, but that obviously isn’t the same for everyone. Even in this strip, we’ve been told Becky and likely Joyce and her siblings were all spanked with wooden spoons. It immediately becomes more dubious with the addition of tools. Wood and plastic can be painful.
I love the “sure, I was hit, but it was only three at a time, and like, at the most, five. Made me understand right from wrong, and also adutls beating children is totally cool for educational purposes, y’all.” take. The internet never fails to suck.
“Being spanked taught me right from wrong,” they proclaim, after explaining how an adult caregiver physically striking a helpless child, that is completely dependent on them, for the express purpose of causing pain, is in fact Totally Okay.
Also, exactly what number of physical strikes makes it abuse? What is the reset time – like, once I have physically assaulted the child that relies on me to live X times, how long do I have to wait before another strike “counts” a 1 strike and not the (X+1) strike that makes it abuse?
Does the number of non-abusive strikes change depending on who I am hitting? Why am I allowed to strike my child, but not my assistant at work? They are both supposed to obey me, after all. (/s, if that was not obvious)
I’m in camp was spanked, not fine. IME, it was always less about behaviour and more about my parents venting their spleen on my body.
One of the issues with spanking is that it tends to escalate until either the victim comes to the attention of cps or until they’re big enough to fight back or leave. The day it stopped with my mother was the day I realized I was stronger than her and restrained her from hitting me, and the day it stopped with my father was the day I realized that there’s nothing in the world he cares about more than keeping up appearances so I rolled the dice hoping that given choices of make good on a threat kill your first born, be outed as a gun nut who would threaten his kids lives, or stop, he’d stop. Dice came up in my favour.
They both remained emotionally abusive, but at the time because my parents genuinely were worse than their parents, they and I both didn’t count it as real abuse. And at the time I genuinely didn’t think of it as abuse, I thought it was normal. My parents (as they told me in graphic and detailed accounts while defensively justifying knocking me around or berating me for hours or parentifying me to the point that I got a part time job and did too many extra curriculars not because I wanted money but because working 8 hours straight in a fast food kitchen without A/C for minimum wage or showing up to school 2 hours early and staying 2 hours late for clubs and sports was less exhausting than being at home and the only thing that would get me out of the expectation to be at home doing chores and watching kids was stuff that made them look good – working on a project to keep my straight As, working a job so my parents could brag about my work ethic or extra curriculars so they could brag about my national level competitions. I basically didn’t know how to relax until my university friends taught me), were the ones who’d experienced real abuse.
Also – I will flag there’s studies done that show parents generally spank more often and more severely than they say or think they do. That certainly tracks with my experience.
Yeah, I was spanked (more after we moved to rural TN after Dad was sent to ‘Nam) but all I learned was Might Makes Right, and If I’m Bigger I Can Do What I Want And You Do What I Want.
Also you have to respect me (read: obey me unquestioningly as a dictator) before I will respect you (read: observe basic courtesy with you and not terrorize you).
I think Dina’s about to go nuclear on Joyce. :-/ She’s angry that Joyce isn’t concerned that Becky is worried about being hit with a wooden spoon. And, like, of course Joyce isn’t: this is thoroughly normal to her. (I wonder how many of Joyce’s anxieties can be traced back to ‘being disobedient’ and either ‘earning’ the spoon for herself or watching her brothers and sister. Certainly her earliest label of ‘best socialized’ meaning ‘most obedient’ has some additional textual color now.) So there’s no concern in Joyce’s voice because Joyce doesn’t see any reason for concern, not because she doesn’t care.
But Dina could conceivably just add ‘Joyce does not care if Becky is hit’ to her list of reasons why Becky must be protected *from Joyce*. I hope not, because Dina is generally a thoughtful and kind person, but… she already (I would say) likes Joyce the least of the main cast with whom she regularly associates. (As witness at least one toothy threat-mode at Joyce, which are otherwise reserved for actual enemies.) It’s not unbelievable to me that Dina would hold this against Joyce, especially since the person/people actually responsible for hitting Becky with a wooden spoon are dead.
I think it’s more overwhelming concern from Dina right now more than rage. Could be wrong, but the last expression reads more like, “Oh my God, you don’t see what’s wrong with this.”
(This is commented below as well, I messed up the comment form the first time.)
I don’t know, the increased downturn of mouth and more crinkly eyebrow plus the question being essentially ‘you’re just hiding how upset this makes you or still asleep, RIGHT?’ reads to me like the precursor to Joyce getting the riot act. I’ll be happy to be wrong, of course!
I wasn’t physically abused with any regularity, it was pretty much all emotional.
So my only contribution here would be that even if you “got spanked and turned out fine,” your anecdotal evidence means that you, specifically, turned out okay, not that spanking itself is entirely harmless or not abusive. If I smoke all my life and don’t die of lung cancer, that doesn’t mean the health risks of smoking don’t exist.
Yeah, and it’s like “turned out fine” is pretty…open? But yeah, maybe you did turn out okay! Lots of people go through adverse childhood experiences and turn out okay. But it’s not [i]because[/i] they went through those things.
It’s also hard when people who were spanked argue in favor of spanking because I still just want to be like, “I’m sorry you went through that; you didn’t deserve it” and that’s not likely to be well received.
Also the people who claim to have “turned out fine” and who defend corporal punishment and using pain for compliance in general are pretty f***ing far from fine.
I think it’s more overwhelming concern from Dina right now more than rage. Could be wrong, but the last expression reads more like, “Oh my God, you don’t see what’s wrong with this.”
I was raised in a very strict conservative religious household. When I misbehaved (or was perceived to have done so), I would be told to go cut a switch from the thorn bushes in the woods near our house. My legs and backside would be bleeding and bruised. I was slapped, and mentally abused, made to feel like I’d never amount to anything. Growing beyond this sort of upbringing is difficult.
Thanks, all of you, for the kind words. Sorry, no spoons to respond individually today. I’m dealing with some intertwined issues that are hard to talk about. I know you are, too, and my heart aches for each of you and your own hurts in life.
For those of you dealing with nightmares, I would highly recommend a sleep study. Untreated sleep apnea, light pollution, and other solvable problems can contribute to a host of physical and mental health problems (including night terrors) that can become dangerous if left unchecked.
If anyone is having trouble getting health resources, calling your local 211 (US and Canada) is a place to start finding help. Anyone needs more specific info on how to find free or cheap health care near you, please do reply (without personally identifying details!). I’ll watch this thread, and post additional health resources upon request.
SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing wellness and/or substance use concerns. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.
Or send your zip code via text message: 435748 (HELP4U) to find help near you. https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
My mother didn’t smack me often, and it was one or two slaps on the buttocks, not very hard and definitely never with anything but her hand. That was in the 70s.
My husband, slightly older and brought up by a mother whose own father was old enough to be her grandfather, was hit with a wooden spoon – again, not very often, but it horrified me when I heard about it.
I said to my then-fiancé, “You will *not* strike my [future] children with an object. At least if you use your hand, you feel the stinging as well, so you won’t do it too hard. The whole point of things with handles is to apply more force than you can with your hand.”
So our kids *occasionally* had a light slap aimed at their bottom. As others have said, it didn’t seem to be effective as a method of behaviour change, and we didn’t like to hit our kids, even though it was still considered part of the parenting toolbox then, so it happened only rarely. That was in the 90s.
And after that, it became ever less popular and more discouraged. I wouldn’t say that what my mother did harmed me, but it didn’t help me, either. I don’t think what I did harmed my kids, but it certainly never helped, and I’ve since apologised to them for ever doing it at all.
There’s no way I’d do it if I were raising a kid now, and most of the people I know who *are* raising kids now never do. I seriously wish it had stopped being acceptable sooner.
On the *clothed* buttocks, I hasten to add. I never had my pants pulled down, and definitely never pulled my kids’ pants down. The idea was that the bottom was the most padded part: a slap would sting without doing any injury. Physically, anyway, and we weren’t taught to expect it to do injury emotionally.
I got… relatively lucky re: spanking as a kid? For a Jamaican at least, here it’s not uncommon to see a woman hitting her toddler in public for misbehaving. It was probably somewhere between 3 and 7 i think? My parents stopped suddenly when i was still young, dunno why and never asked. They also only ever hit me on the back of the hand, it always weirded me out to hear about people getting smacked on the ass by their parents. It was my mom mostly, my dad would only flick me because he was stronger (still hurt as much as getting hit) and only hit me if he was really pissed. They only ever used an open palm, i think my mom used a comb once though?
Most of my childhood memories have been deleted through depression, ADHD and unrelated trauma so i don’t actually remember much of this period which is why it doesn’t bother me. I do remember being afraid of getting hit though, especially from my dad. I think i was more…not quite traumatized but effected by their more humane punishments like taking away my phone in highschool (i was badly depressed and most of my friends were online so it was isolating. They didn’t know that) and i think our current friendly but frigid relationship and my fear of them is more due to how awful our relationship got in highschool than the spankings, it definitely set a president though.
None of this is to say I’m even remotely okay with spanking. This is just my experience, there are people who go through a, hm, milder form of spanking and aren’t as effected by it, but i still am staunchly of the belief that if you have to raise your hand in violence against a small, defenseless child then youve already gone wrong. I judge my parents for having done it and respect them realizing it was a bad move, i judge my entire country for how we normalize and expect physical abuse. It’s so widespread that when it as a kid i was baffled when my classmate said his mom didn’t hit him.
So, yeah, that’s my contribution to this discussion i guess. Tl;dr I got spanked and i very much didn’t come out fine, but it wasn’t because of the spanking, but that also doesn’t mean it’s okay.
To everyone who is having a hard time today due to the subject matter, my heart goes out to you and i hope you can take a step back and do what you need to feel okay again
I was spanked (early 90s) but generally it was only when I did something demonstrably dangerous to my physical well being, aside from one time, which was the last time it happened, when I was around 7 or 8. With the exception of that one time, generally my thought process is “yeah that was fair I could’ve gotten my stupid self killed” and never did the behaviour again, so I guess uh it did kinda work for me?
I do know that I very much resented the final time it happened, because it happened because I’d pissed my dad off, not because I’d put myself in danger like the previous times. And then it never happened again, idk if my dad had an epiphany or my parents saw a report somewhere being like “yeah no don’t do this to your kids it doesn’t work and is bad”, or what, I couldn’t tell you.
So I don’t have any sort of trauma response to spanking, and to *me* it wasn’t a big deal, but I would still say you shouldn’t hit your kids. Not to say that they shouldn’t be punished, but better is consequences like getting grounded or other things involving taking away of certain privileges (taking away computer/tv time for the day, no dessert, whatever).
Yup. And absolutely not necessary to have a thoughtful, well-behaved child (and probably counter-intuitive to that actually). Never ever spank my kid and she listens just fine because my position of authority comes from kindness and *earned* respect, not fear.
My mom hit me ONCE and it is the only scenario in which I think it’s acceptable: I was seconds away from sticking my finger in an exposed outlet that some maintenance people had left open. She hit my hand away to keep me from electrocuting myself (as an emergency gut-reaction to get my hand away from it, not as a punishment). When she explained after that I could’ve died I was like “Oh, yeah, thank you for doing that.”
I guess actually in that respect I have also “hit” my kid once…she was choking and a hit on the back is what you’re supposed to do with a kid too small/young for the Heimlich. But yeah, ok only if it is an emergency lifesaving action, not as punishment.
Yes! These scenarios are why I can argue it shouldn’t be illegal to *ever* strike a child. Occasionally – hopefully VERY occasionally – it’s necessary, not as a punishment but to LITERALLY POTENTIALLY SAVE THEIR LIVES. I would like to think that people are able to make that differentiation, but a lot of people are dumbasses.
I would also hope that most people are able to grasp the difference between a few short sharp slaps on the back to dislodge something from their airways, and beating a child.
Like, the other week, my 4 year old slipped on the stairs and I went to grab her but the only thing I could reach was her hair so I immediately let go because she was 2 steps from the bottom, almost against the stairs, and I figured having her weight suspended from a handful of hair would hurt more than slithering the rest of the way down. Then explained, apologised, made sure she was OK, etc… I wouldn’t lift her up by a handful of hair because I’m not a monster.
Yeah and accidents are a thing too, no matter how careful you are! My kid and I have bonked heads or accidentally hurt each other before while just goofing around. My mom accidentally broke my arm when I was a kid (I was jumping on the bed and foolishly tried to jump into her arms without warning her, she grabbed my arm while kind of flailing, and my arm broke…but also I am very breakable because of a connective tissue disorder…my poor mom was horrified).
I’ve been the kid who gets grilled about abuse that was NOT happening because I kept showing up at the ER with injuries (yet took 30 years to finally get the condition diagnosed) and I felt so bad that my parents went through that considering they NEVER spanked or struck me other than that one hand slap. So obviously genuine accidents or protecting a kid from further harm and accidentally hurting them in the process while grabbing them/pushing them out of danger is different.
But very very opposed to spanking and physical discipline in general (and even yelling tbh). I’m still baffled that it’s legal in this country to hit children as discipline. 🙁
Sometimes the quickest way to get someone, even a kid, away from danger is a much-milder form of technical violence. Like tackling your dumbass friend out of the way of a speeding car because he’s too dense to move on his own, as a funnier example.
Joyce’s continued pain is alarming. But also as a chronic-pain/illness-haver, very relatable and I would not object to a carefully-informed story about those sorts of issues! As current media rep of chronic pain kinda generally…sucks.
Oh shit, I hadn’t even thought of that- fellow chronic pain type person here. (Inherited fibro, whee!). It kicks in during your 20s too. And the rep generally is usually uh.
‘nothing’ or ‘Dying, frail anime waif’ type shit, sooo I feel you.
Figure I’ll put in my own two cents, even though I typically prefer to lurk in the comments and learn from what other people say.
The only time I remember being spanked (hand-to-butt) was at, like, the age of six, and even then the only detail I recall was there was a heat radiator nearby??? No idea what it was like for my older sister.
What was common, however, was yelling and emotional distance. Specifically:
• Mom and Dad taking turns at saying I did something terrible, that I was an idiot for not thinking it through, and me begging them to stop with tears in my eyes because I didn’t know what to do. I was fifteen, maybe sixteen.
• My dad getting louder with his voice, wanting to prove most complaints I had about him or his ideas as invalid, only to soon after say, “Why can’t you just say what’s bothering you? I’m open to criticism, just show me the evidence.”
• My mom acting like (or I guess believing) nothing was wrong with giving my sister the silent treatment while said sister was a) in the stressful process of moving her kids and belongings from California to Alabama, and b) dealing with being unable to take her dogs with her family and sending them to the animal shelter.
• My mom yelling to me “You don’t get to say that to your own mother!” after I stood up for my sister by addressing the point I made above.
My condolences go out to everyone who were subject to physical violence by their parents, as well as emotional. I would bet the former never occurs without the latter, but the damage is real regardless. I often wonder to myself why I imagine people would punch me or berate me soon after they get mad, even if they have no intentions of that whatsoever.
I have a very distinct memory of a teacher, as part of a lesson, asking for a show of hands for how many people had been spanked as a child. Something like three quarters of the class raised their hands. I still haven’t fully recovered from the shock of that moment. To me, violence against a child is one of the worst things a person can do, but for some reason spanking has been normalized to the point that people don’t even consider it a violent act. And so discussions about it always turn to arguments about its “effectiveness”, as if having an obedient, well-behaved child justifies hurting that child.
My parents both lived with this kind of normalized physical abuse- at least I’m pretty sure. Truth be told they don’t talk about it. But I know, because they refused to ever do it, and I *do* know they absolutely had people CRITICIZE THEM for not using physical violence as a punishment.
I feel Dina here extremely. It’s horrifying. And so normalized that people who went through it barely even process it as having been trauma. It’s very telling that Dina learned about this through it affecting how Becky processes even the idea of a loving god.
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it’s mostly that Joyce is so w/e about it, even IF it’s from not actually being awake
Spanking? This is punishment?
Yes Dina, but only if you’ve misbehaved.
And if you haven’t?
Well then Dina, it’s playtime. xP
🥺🥺🥺 😫😫😫 😭😭😭
If only a song could express what words could not…
*plays “The Innocent Abandoned” on Hacked Muzak*
Becky’s not afraid of burning in hell, but that when she gets to heaven all her friends and family she loves will see her get a bare bottom spanking by god with a wooden spoon?!
I’m in!
Kinda don’t think that’s what she’s talking about
Probably not, but it’s funnier to imagine than the truth that Becky’s just afraid of being a disappointment to the people she loves.
Sounds like a kink thing when you put it like that.
I would refuse and fo straight to Hell.
In Heaven, God spanks you with a wooden spoon.
In Hell, Satan spanks you with a metal spork.
Whats this SPEOOOONN you speak of? There is no SPeoooOOOnnn.
jesus christ i knew that preview panel was gonna be feels from the moment i first saw it but
wow
As someone that grew up with the threat of a spanking for mistakes up until I was like 12-13ish: I see this is going to be a problem for Dina.
I have no memory of ever being spanked. My mom once admitted that she did do it, but one of her friends explained why it’s frowned upon these days so she stopped and my younger siblings were spared it entirely.
Yeah, based on Dina’s expression and confusion I don’t think her parents have ever done more than verbally explaining why something she did may be etong when she did something wrong growing up. I’m extremely jealous of people who grow up in such a good caring, environment where parents aren’t something to be feared.
Dina turned out great. Like, no joke, she has demonstrated many times that she has immense respect for other people’s boundaries, and understanding of consent as it applies to both sexual and non-sexual situations. She is perceptive, and compassionate, and has incredible control over her own emotions, rarely becoming angry except in situations where righteous fury is very much the appropriate response, and we have never seen her be cruel to another person, intentionally or accidentally. Hell, she’s even fought competently in defense of both herself and others, so we know she can unleash a can of whoopass when she knows somebody (like abusive dads) deserves it.
All this is to say that the Saruyamas’ parenting methods must be the envy of all. Even before seeing Dina’s reaction to spanking as discipline, I could never imagine Dina’s parents spanking her, because it *is* hitting, it’s violence and therefore abuse. Dina is most likely autistic (I am, myself) and raising an autistic child can, legitimately, be frustrating, but it seems that Dina’s parents not only were not ashamed of their daughter’s autism, they understood Dina’s autism and Dina as a person, and handled both extremely well.
So… I think anyone is valid for being extremely jealous of Dina. My mom is not perfect, but I frequently have described her as a literal saint because she is so patient and kind, and even I’m a bit jealous of Dina. (My grandmother, who also raised me, was a whole ‘nother story, but even still I doubt she was as bad as whatever you went through, Shitbird.)
Very well said Myth.
I feel very compelled to say though, that the “”autism”” label as misleading as it is in many ways is a very sharp, double-edged sword.
I was labelled “autistic” unwillingly during my childhood, which led to decades of physical and emotional abuse from my family, friends and teachers, due to the sheer baggage behind the label, all the hurtful assumptions, making it very difficult for others to tell the difference between my disabilities and my personality. 😣
It’s worth noting here that the “autistic” label has never been used in-comic to date, and (almost) never authorially out-of-comic either; Dina’s portrayal as more explicitly being on the spectrum—similarly to Amber/Maisie’s DID—is something that more naturally grew into the comic through the real-life experience of commenters in similar boats identifying with said characters’ traits, and Willis then making the choice to more deliberately depict the characters in that light.
@The Wellerman
Please understand I’m not trying to throw around the “autistic” label willy-nilly; I know it’s not something everyone (the author included) is comfortable applying, and I don’t mean to disrespect your or anyone else’s experience. Mine was quite the opposite of yours, though. I only realized I may be autistic in the past couple of years (I’m 27), and it re-contextualized my school years.
See, I suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, too. School stressed my endurance nearly to the breaking point; I could barely make it through, it was like running a marathon every day. I would come home so deeply exhausted that I would pass out asleep immediately when I got home, and more or less sleep until it was time to get up for school again the next morning, never doing my homework because I was too tired for my brain to even form coherent thoughts. Despite sleeping literally as much as I could, I was never rested upon waking and each morning I had a breakdown, full-blown panic attacks about going to school because I was so drained down to the core of my soul that it felt like subjecting myself to the whole ordeal again would actually kill me. And this is considering all my teachers were quite nice to me, the other students were either friendly or barely acknowledged me, I didn’t get bullied, and I was quite smart so I understood what I was being taught (when the tiredness didn’t interfere). In other words, I had very little reason to fear and avoid school the way I did. I didn’t understand why sitting at a desk and listening to my teachers for seven hours was something that completely drained all life and strength from me.
Because I didn’t understand, I had trouble explaining to my mom, my doctors, and the school officials. My mom was heartbroken at my clear struggle but didn’t know how to help, and she let me stay home so many times that I was charged with truancy and put on probation. If I didn’t go to school, I would be sent to juvie and possibly even taken away from my mother. Her power to let me stay home was taken away; even doctor’s notes weren’t accepted; if I thought I was truly sick, I had to drag my sorry carcass to school anyway and hope and beg that the school nurse would see that I was ill and send me home. She never did.
Again, I’m 27. I dropped out of high school at 17. Today, I understand that what I was experiencing was extreme sensory overload — the fluorescent lighting, the crowds of other students and packed classrooms and cafeteria and the noise of all their chatter, the need to force myself to pay attention to the lessons. I wasn’t tired because of any kind of physical exertion. The world around me was incredibly overwhelming, and I came home tired because I’d just spent seven straight hours weathering its relentless assault. I was autistic, and the stress of trying to handle an environment that wasn’t made to accommodate students like me was drastically worsening my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Also because I was autistic, I was used to masking, putting on a face for the world, that I couldn’t lift it and openly show my distress to the people who needed to see it. I acted fine so they decided I was fine. I tried to explain to them that I wasn’t, but I didn’t have the words.
I might have gone into too much detail here, but what I’m getting at is this: realizing I related to the struggles of other autistics finally gave me an understanding of what I was going through. I didn’t see it as something to be ashamed of, and neither did my mother. It gave us a new toolkit to help me, because I still can’t be out of the house for long before I get overwhelmed and exhausted and can’t function any longer. Now I know why it happens, and other people’s coping mechanisms for dealing with it. I feel like rejecting the label “autistic” because it is stigmatized validates the stigma — it feeds into the idea it’s bad, shameful, that you’re broken — and it can prevent people from finding resources that could help them. Autism doesn’t magically go away if you refuse to call it autism; it still affects you just the same, but it’s harder to do anything about it. So I’m not saying that you (or the other readers, or Willis, or Dina herself, or anyone) has to apply the label, but it can’t gain tolerance if we always run away from it. The people who use the label as a weapon can, frankly, go fuck themselves.
WOW I WROTE A FUCKING NOVEL SORRY IT LOOKED SMALLER WHEN I WAS STILL WRITING IT
I really appreciated your view, thank you for sharing that!
Dina definitely seems to have had some very good and understanding parents. Though I kinda wonder if maybe her parents might also be autistic, because that would explain how they can understand her so well. I’m recently diagnosed autistic and I’ve always gotten along really well with my parents, and I’ve come to suspect that at least one of my parents might also be autistic.
Just to quickly add: this is not me bragging, but to express that it is unfortunate parents like the Saruyamas are a rare treasure and not the norm. I think Dina had the parents all children deserve, and I hope she teaches Becky, Joyce, and others the things their parents got wrong, both so they can heal from it and so they can ultimately be better people themselves.
Yeah, it’s kind of amazing how fast that changed. When I was in 1st-3rd grade, our (Christian private school) principal literally had a pair of paddles in his office named Thunder and Lightning. I don’t recall ever actually seeing them used, but they were there. When I switched to private school in the 4th grade, I think the few times I went to the principal’s office I remember seeing a paddle hung up on the wall somewhere but it was never mentioned. I got the occasional swat when I misbehaved, never off the cuff but rather “this is what you did, here’s what the punishment will be”.
Nowadays, my sister is raising her kids and of course the idea of spanking never comes up as far as I know. It’s almost literally unthinkable, but it’s only a generation or so apart.
How am I seeing posts from 12:05 when my phone says 11:56. Am I stuck in a 10 min time warp?!?
Website’s internal clock is moderately fucked.
Is that why the comic typically goes up at around 11:50 rather then midnight?
Yes. Most computers these days have servers that they’re registered to in order to synchronize their clocks with the rest of the world. (This is called Network Time Protocol, or NTP.) I’d guess that whatever server Willis is using can’t do that anymore for some reason: the server’s clock runs a touch faster so it’s been drifting and they don’t know how to correct it, or at least, correct it without breaking something else.
You can manually change the server your computer synchronizes with, if you want. You probably shouldn’t. :p
Pretty sure it’s a side effect of Ana Chronistic’s powers
Take my virtual upvote.
Jamie said: “… the server’s clock runs a touch faster so it’s been drifting…”
Which means in a hundred years or so the server will have crept enough that it will think it’s Wednesday when it is only Tuesday, and we’ll ALL get to see tomorrow’s comic today.
IIRC, they fix it so it’s synced every so often.
Site clock went out of sync a while back, I wouldn’t worry about it
Okay, whew, after the night I had at work I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going crazy. The highlight of night was a customer (at a grocery store) ask if geese ate common bird seed because, when I pushed further, she was trying to feed a wild goose (assuming Canada since they’re nesting now) that she’d brought into her house or had nested near her house, not quite sure which…
You must have jumped to the right and stepped to the left.
HAH!
Gotta be completely honest, as someone who was spanked as a kid, I can understand why people might find that super horrifying but I’m pretty meh about the whole thing. Probably couldn’t do it to my own kids though.
I’m more angry over the fact that I’ll almost certainly never fully unlearn the bad habits and lessons it taught me.
🥺 😣🙏 You have my greatest sympathy.
That’s more or less how I feel about it.
What bad habits and lessons would you say you learned from it? If you’d say anything more at all that is.
It teaches you to avoid punishment rather than to fix the behaviour itself. This can be the same thing, but it isn’t, really.
@Sammyp, this is equally true of any form of punishment.
Teaches you to be terrified of making a mistake.
Also teaches that your body doesn’t belong to you, and those who ‘love’ you can touch it and hurt you whether you like it or not.
It mostly taught me two things: One, my threshold for enduring pain well exceeded my parents’ willingness to inflict it, and Two, they really don’t like being mocked by a pantless child for their perceived weakness.
I was not a pleasant child.
Also violence. Spanking is the norm in my country and we have a massive issue with violence. My parents stopped hitting me sometime before 10, i don’t remember exactly when, but tbh i still have the mentality that most problems could be solved with mild to moderate violence
It taught me a lifelong fear of authority and that my bodily autonomy didn’t matter. Advocating for myself is to this day very difficult and I often use my husband as a way to make sure I’m getting what I need from the doctors. It made it difficult to negotiate fair salaries and to step away when I knew I wasn’t being paid fairly. And plenty of other ramifications too personal to get into on this forum.
Parenting out of fear is the number one parenting technique i want to avoid for any offspring. Spankings were never about pain in my family, just “respect” and fear.
Spanking is understandably a lot scarier when you’re a child though. Adult’s a typically twice your size then. I got spanked once for stealing, I didn’t hate my parents for it, but I don’t think I have the stomach to do it either.
I got paddled at Sunday School and I feared that and while I was afraid of getting spanked by my mom I was usually worried more about any following punishment, like losing tv privileges. But yeah the spanking itself was pretty scary too. But I guess I learned at a young age that it was temporary.
Christians like to say, “Perfect love drives out fear.” That’s backwards. The brutal beatings I got until I was sixteen drove love right out the window. I’ve never been good at it since.
That is so sad. And so understandable. How should you ever learn about love, if the people you automatically love treat you like this…
My step- dad shot his hunting rifle at me once when I was a teenager shortly after I had come out because I was demanding that his kids and himself don’t call me slurs, physical abuse horrifies me when I hear stories from others but I still to this day believe i deserved it
😫😫😫 👿👿👿
Resentment… Ŕ̵̙̪̝͍̮̘͎̰̙̭͉̂̀̋͗͌ͅA̵͙̭͖̞̘̟̟̠̪̲̦͙͇̹͛͗̃̽̒G̶̖̞͔̻̳͛̔̈́͑͛̈̇̓͂̈́̑͝ͅE̶̢̳̮̣̼̮̦̮̞̟̥̯͔̐͋̄͌͘͜….
…
I feel like I’m on the verge of a…. transformation.
What’s all that rack-a-frackin’ clutter around the letters all about?
Zalgo text may be the result of attempting to parse [X]HTML with regex.
Oh no.
Oh how horrible.
Oh, dear, how frightening.
Please know that you never deserved such a terrible thing.
Never. Never ever.
That is absolutely despicable and I really hope that your living situation changed and became a lot better after that, and you didn’t spend years fearing for your life. I am so sorry you experienced that.
“I still to this day believe i deserved it”
D:
No, you did not fucking deserve that.
I hope the day comes quickly where you will both know and believe that you didn’t deserve that at all.
I think horrifying is probably the wrong word. “Appalling” might be better.
Similar here. People treat it like a catastrophe but… I’m not sure I get it?
It’s child abuse that’s been normalized and excused, all you have to do to know how harmful it is for a child’s development is hear their cries, screams and begging for the spanking to not start.
It is kind of twofold horrifying from the perspective of an adult that hasn’t experienced it:
1) We have science that shows this does not have the desired effect. So we know it is not effective and doesn’t teach what it is ‘intended’ to. It therefore is not beneficial and is only detrimental to the child. This is a logical horror of it – it isn’t a logical action to take.
2) On an emotional level is where it is most horrifying. To a young child, violence is absolutely terrifying. Hitting a child is betraying the very idea that adults, especially parents, are supposed to protect them, by causing them harm. And even if you were truly angry at a child, I personally have no idea how anyone could bring themselves to hit a child, especially their own child. It is such an alien feeling to me to be willing to do that.
The thing that really upsets me about the whole thing, even after the fact that it’s clearly abuse, is that some people still deny the science even after it’s explained to them. Just the vary notion that you’re somehow coddling your child if you don’t give ’em a good smack every time they upset you is just… wtf?
I guess I can see that, but speaking for myself, I wouldn’t describe my feelings towards being spanked as “terrified”. I certainly didn’t look forward to it, but fear wasn’t really in the mix. I experienced what I would call “real” abuse when I was much younger, and THAT scared me, but with spankings I mostly felt sad that I had behaved in a way that warranted this level of punishment. (Or, let’s be honest, that I’d been CAUGHT behaving in such a way.) I was never afraid that, for instance, I’d be permanently injured or anything like that. It hurt, but falling off a slide and breaking my arm hurt more. We didn’t have “the rules” written down or anything like that, but getting spanked never felt unfair—there were expectations of behavior, and the punishment from standing in a corner to grounding to spanking were (it felt to me) proportionate to how far out of bounds I’d gone.
I recognize and accept the science that says spankings don’t work, I’m not defending it as a good practice. I think if my parents were raising kids today they’d follow the modern conventional wisdom and not spank their kids. But at the same time, I can see an EXTREMELY clear difference between loving parents who performed their parental duties within the expectations of their time and peers, as compared to what I would again call the “real” abuse I experienced.
For me, the fear wasn’t physical, my spankings were never hard enough to actually hurt. It was an emotional fear that their love for me must be earned and could be lost.
I don’t have children so I have not been motivated to read the science, but I have seen children and during a certain age range they can be sociopathic little monsters and intuitively it seems that an appropriately vigorous spanking would be the most effective way to discourage bad behavior. Vicious beating, random or inappropriate application are a different subject. That said, I embrace the possibility that my intuition can lead to an incorrect conclusion.
I admit part of it may be because I deeply, deeply deeply deeply love my mother. I honestly think I couldn’t ask for a better one. Outside of a spanking when I was acting up she was a very understanding and supportive mom my whole life. I don’t wanna call her “abusive” or talk about her in a negative light, especially after she raised me all by her self trying her best.
It was a different time and it wasn’t as much of a taboo. I can say she probably shouldn’t have done it but I can’t look at it in a vacuum as if it was just some weird shit she did. Especially in the black community it was just…a thing. I dunno I’m probably taking the issue personally and if you had a bad experience/trauma with it I do pity that. I just hate hearing anything that might imply ANYTHING untoward about my mama.
Lots of parents are loving and wonderful but do some things that are harmful toward their child, often because of cultural norms. I think it’s important to talk about it so that harmful behaviours hopefully aren’t repeated on to another generation.
I’m in a similar boat, although I’m not Black (or White). I love my parents, and my upbringing may not have been the greatest, but that wasn’t from spanking. Any spankings came out of a place of love (and maybe of fear, since the only times I remember them coming into play was to keep me from doing something that could seriously injure me – don’t play with garage doors, kids! especially after your parents tell you no!).
Also, after experimenting a little as an adult, I can pretty confidently say that a slap with an open palm on a buttock is a much lower level of pain and chance of injury than with an implement such as a fist, belt, switch, spoon and/or on most other parts of the body… so I do want to clarify that what I think of as a spanking (flat palm, on the bottom) is less severe than what Joyce is describing here.
Back in the 70s, it was both much less of a thing and much more – common, that is. I do know my mother felt terrible about it; she wanted us to just behave and not “force” her to discipline us. But we were kids, we didn’t know any better. (Nor did she, in a sense. Like I said, it was a very different time, and she was – with the best of intentions – winging it.)
Yes, that makes sense, Yotomoe — lots of child rearing practices seem more understandable and forgivable when viewed in their historical and cultural and social contexts. Yotomoe, I’m glad that you are able to get a healthy distance and perspective on it now — that you can make your own choices about what you would do for your own family in the future, without resenting your mother or holding it against her for what happened in the past.
I believe she would be grateful to hear how much you care for and honor her.
I’m so glad for you, that you and she have that strong bond, and that the norms that she was raised with have not caused you to turn against her, even though you do not now endorse them yourself.
I’ve got something I’d like to add to this wrt “It was a different time and it wasn’t as much of a taboo. I can say she probably shouldn’t have done it but I can’t look at it in a vacuum as if it was just some weird shit she did. ” and before I said anything, I was wondering if you would be okay with me saying it by using what you’ve shared as a jumping-off point.
It’s nothing critical of anyone involved (ie: I will not be saying anything untoward about Mama Yomotoe, nor will I go “actually you were abused and how you feel is wrong”), so much as I want to talk about that idea of looking back on this stuff in hindsight, both with a greater understanding of how it makes us feel, and how it adversely affects others in ways we didn’t necessarily face.
As a mom who doesn’t spank, I also feel like I need to defend my mom who did.
When my daughter was a preschooler, she would sometimes throw the worst tantrums. She didn’t get her way, and now she’s screaming. You can’t talk to her about it, because she’s screaming. You can try putting her in her room to calm down, but she’ll walk back out, still screaming. Hold the door closed? She’s screaming and banging at the door, and when you think she calmed down, you open the door and the screaming behind anew. Remove toys as a consequence? Rather than getting her to behave, the lost toy just made her angrier. Deescalation wouldn’t work, because she just wanted the original thing she couldn’t have.
Then I think of my own childhood, where the spanking took a second, the sting was over seconds later, and then my mom and I are already at the stage of talking about what happened, with love and reassurance. What’s more traumatic for a child? Studies came out showing that yelling at kids is just as detrimental as spanking them. These long, drawn out “battle of wills” was certainly traumatic for both of us. But my husband didn’t want us to spank, and I wasn’t going to do it unless we were both in agreement.
But dang, that period was hard.
Also, my mom only used her hand. She tried a wooden spoon on me once, but seeing the difference in my cries, she never did it again.
She wanted it to sting. She didn’t want it to actually hurt.
Also also, my daughter is a kind, sensitive, well adjusted 8 year old now, who still tends toward anger when she’s upset, but is much better at managing and working through her anger now. I couldn’t ask for better.
I had it a few until a certain age but not many, I don’t know if I’m going to have kids or not so I didn’t know if I was ever going to put in a position where I had to think about the idea of spanking.
I didn’t think much of it growing up.
It’s not Meh to me, I was spanked whenever my parents were upset, and used it as a method to vent their anger out on ME to feel better, but used it as an excuse of “punishment”.
I still have nightmares of my mom forcing me to lay across the bed with my skirt down so she could beat me till her arm was sore, with the metal part of the belt, screaming at me that I needed to “submit!!”
Sounds like your parents might have been a lot nicer than mine with spanking.
Jfc, I’m really sorry to hear that. It disgusts me to no end, this culture that acts like hate is secretly really love and abuse is respect and on and on…neither you nor any child alive deserved to be treated like that and I am so sorry.
There are just no words, Reaver. No words for something so awful. I hope you have some relief from your nightmates.
Naw, no relief really, it’s just a pain I’ve adapted to living with, it didnt make me more obedient, just afraid of authority. I had to basically help myself to want to stay alive due to fundamental ideals of what I should be, should act and should feel.
I’m surviving 🙂
Glad you’re surviving, so sorry that was your “normal” as a child because that is out and out abuse.
Believe me, the spanking was the mildest form, but yeah.. I’m coping now
I was spanked and all it really did was contribute to my resentment against my parents. Like, it doesn’t even work. I’m pretty sure my parents didn’t enjoy it, either.
It’s incompetent parenting, expressed abusively. I don’t personally get emotional about it, but the technique is stupid because it doesn’t work, and parents who employ it are simply incompetent at being parents. Doesn’t make them bad people, just people who have been told a fairy tale and passed that on to their kids uncritically.
I got spanked once in my childhood, and that was for quite a big thing. Me and my dad talked about it in my adult life and I told him that while I don’t condone spankings, I can see why he did it. He told me that it was his one of his biggest failures as a dad. It was a strange talk.
If my spankings had ever made any sense what-so-ever, I’d likely agree. Instead, if someone got hurt or upset as a result of my actions, I was sent to a corner. But if I talked about the wrong thing (cartoons), played pretend, mentioned dad, or brought up any of the numerous random things that happened to piss mom off that day, then I’d get a beating not ever to be forgot. If she was _really_ mad, maybe she’d through a chair.
I’ve slapped the back of each of my kids’ hands precisely once and never again. They went through meltdown/ hitting stages as toddlers and nothing else was getting them to stop hitting me and others. I’ll regret it forever, but they did stop hitting after that. 😓
I should add, my father (to my recollection) _never_ even raised his hand. He raised his voice twice that I can recall. Yes they were divorced. Mom won custody, because a uterus apparently makes for a good parent.🙄
“It really doesn’t work. It’s been shown that it doesn’t work. But they do it anyway. Maybe because they want it to work. Maybe because it needs to work. Maybe because it HAS to work.”
“i beat my kids because violence works. i was beaten, and look how great I am”
[dalek screech]
Explain! E X P L A I N!!
[/dalek]
A few days ago I mentioned drawing some Billie x Jennifer.
so yeah i did that.
https://imgur.com/a/C5QbSE8
might wanna put an nsfw warning on that.
Damn I normally do and I forgot this time. Wish I could edit posts.
Yeah (NSFW)
Comming by Yotomoe, I aways consider NSFW by default.
I mean it’s yoto, I’d be weary looking at anything he’s drawn in the work place
Also nice, been a while since we got full on spice. A great job as always
I am wary myself, but I would never get weary of seeing his art.
Oh. OH!
That is significantly more salacious than I had anticipated!
😁
Hey if you can’t love yourself? Right?
It’s your greatest, most HILARIOUS work yet!!! 🤣🤣🤣 🤤🤤🤤
Also TIME TRAVEL bruh!!! 🤩
Selfcest is the best kind.
That was amazing to see, well done Yotomoe. You have elevated self-cest to an entirely new level, and I appreciate it. Thank you
And saved.
Ah, good ol Selfcest tag.
I’ll be in my bunk
nice 🙂
I loved this, Yotomoe, but I don’t know if there’s a category in porn for this.
There is. It’s called Selfcest.
I feel like I should link the Sydsnap video on that topic to explain, but I can never get links to work right the first try, so if you’d like to know more, just look for Sydsnap’s video on selfcest.
Full disclosure I kinda didn’t get it fully outta my system. Any other Jennifer/Billie things y’all would like to see? (Or other characters you wanna see shipped with themselves)
I suggested Jennifer dressed as her own superhero after ego (that she definitely canonically has) a few days ago, since it seemed up your alley.
Joyce slash Julia Grey?
Amazigirl slash Amber?
Walky slash Nightguy?
Not usually what the comments mean when we say she should go fuck herself…
Dina is a strange creature. She is horrified by the prospect of Joyce getting spanked with a light wooden spoon as a punishment, while showing little to no concern that she is actively actively smothering a very sore Joyce beneath her entire body mass (which I assume is mostly cereal).
I’m not so much a fan of pages 13-15 (just think they rely on overbroad stereotypes and that the Q&A section offers no proof) but most of the pamphlet is pretty good. Sometimes folks will print it out and assemble the pages, and then hand a copy to parents whom they see hitting their kids in public.
I wish I had intervened more effectively, and more often, when I saw it. Used to see it almost every time I left the house, back in my old city.
Here’s the pamphlet:
http://www.nospank.net/pt2009.pdf
Oops, I meant that to go at the bottom. Sorry, True Survivor! This was not intended as a reply to your comment! Eep!
No need to apologize. Have a great day.
Just loved the book.
Laura – I agree with your assessment of the Q&A, especially when they try to create a cause-and-effect relationship to something (spanking) that happened to a LOT of people because, after all, spanking was considered to be a common parenting punishment. They could have asked and answered the same questions substituting the word ‘toothbrush’ for ‘spanking’ and it would have been just as true, which means that their Q&As are just a waste of verbiage.
…forgot to add, after “a LOT of people”, “who did NOT become ‘… rapists, arsonists, terrorists, torturers, etc.’ “
Lol the thing about a “light wooden spoon” is that it’s still a solid, hard surface making contact with often bare flesh, the worst welts I ever got was when I got spanked by a teacher while my mother watched with a wooden spoon, and the bruising and welts lingered for weeks.
Ouch. That sounds so awful, Reaver. I am so sorry that happened to you. I am so sorry.
Thats an extreme fundie private school for you, the stories I could tell about how religion was used to hurt me cod span for days
Dear Reaver, big hugs to you and I hope your school burned down.
a cane – something that was designed to leave cuts and welts when used for this – is a *very* light wooden object. just becase something doesn’t weigh a lot, doesn’t mean it won’t cause damage.
its still a solid wooden object, being swung with force. don’t assume physical abuse isn’t abuse just because its not a hammer
Can you please explain to the class why, precisely, you feel the need to insert that it is surely a “light” wooden sppon?
I’ll go on. Regardless of the weight of the wooden spoon, it is a force multiplyer. It is a harder, less flexible surface than a palm, increases leverage, does not increase air resistance, and also means the spanker doesn’t have to worry about hurting their own hand. The ONLY reason to use such an implement in this context is to increase the amount you can hurt the child.
Given all of that, and given that “light” is your word, not the comic’s, I would very much like to know why you chose to use it. If perhaps there is a reason that isn’t just ‘to minimize that it is a tool for abuse’? Explain it to me like I’m 5. In fact, explain it to me like I am a 5 year old who is under threat of being hit with whatever implements are close at hand. I will wait.
Hm. It ate my citation. That’s from George Bernard Shaw
“This hurts me more than it hurts you!”
Because it’s a contest, you see.
Man, if Joyce is having this bad of a reaction to what I assume is a period, she may wanna get checked out by an OBGYN. They can prescribe stuff to help with pain! Also, I had rough as hell periods back in the day and I don’t think I ever had anything I would describe as ‘full body pain’. Anyone else wondering if she has endometriosis or something similar?
Yep. Absolutely occurred to me, too.
Actually, I’m kinda wondering this? A comment from Becky seemed to imply she maybe only experiences this every three to four months? That’s a reaaally long cycle.
Y’know what might be kinda earth-shattering to an already semi-shattered Joyce?
Facing the possibility of infertility or sterility.
As someone dealing with that myself, I desperately hope not. But…yeah, this seems unusual, and knowing Willis, undoubtedly meaningful in some way.
Could be PCOS. I know someone with it who only gets their period about that often.
My experience with PCOS (which is to say, I have PCOS) is that unmedicated, cycles are long but unpredictable. Like, have I had a cycle that’s been about three months before? Yes. Would I be able to notice or a predict a similar pattern based on this? Fuck no. Being on birth control helps a lot , but I’ve still missed periods on it.
People experience PCOS differently so I wouldn’t it rule it out yet but, based on my experience and some reading of I’ve done, I doubt that’s what Joyce is experiencing.
I have been worried about that since the first time Becky mentioned the whole, “its been about four months”.
Just, oh no….if its this bad and all and only happens a few times a year, then year she’s probably gonna have issues getting pregnant.
Also I’m freshly super mad at her mom if that’s the case! She should have been getting checked out long before this, but I’m sure her mom made some assumption about God taking care of it and now Joyce is holding the bill.
Yeaahhhhhhh, this is the kind of thing that should be discussed with a doctor. Sounds like it could be PCOS.
…Says she who also lacks an OB/GYN. Look, I meant to get one, but various mishaps and life busy-ness have put it off.
It COULD be Becky was thinking it occurred about this same time the last four months as well, which would be… marginally less concerning, though still bad. But yeah, if it is in fact this bad and once every four months, that is a ‘get this looked at ASAP’ concern.
I’m sorry you’re dealing with this issue. Hope you get better.
Lucky. Pain meds only do fuck all for my pain half the time. The other half they just make my nausea worse.
Have you tried out a few different ones?
I only react to Ibuprofen, everything else doesn’t touch it.
My mom can only use Tylenol,
and a buddy can only use Excedrin.
I really hope you find something that works! I’m in Oklahoma and know a ton of people who immediately hopped on the weed wagon when it got legalized cause nothing else touched their pain. (I’m not saying try weed btw. I just used it as an example)
Mine only reacts to naproxen/aleve, as another ‘yeah pain meds are odd and specific.’
Mostly Tylenol and magnesium. When the Tylenol WORKS, it’s a good combo. When it doesn’t, magnesium kinda…masks pain most of the time? I think I had Advil but I don’t think it worked well because we don’t keep it in the house anymore (could be because it’s rougher on the stomach, not sure).
Becky counting a three month cycle a while back implied that Joyce may be on a regulated birth control for bad menstrual issues. Last I heard, they usual method is to use the BC in a way that you only menstruate once every three months. This also implies that she’s been going through this since before the strip began.
I find it hard to believe Carol would have let Joyce be on birth control, even for that reason.
Yeah, it wasn’t literally full body but if i had a headache with it that’s what I’d describe it as. In my case it would be the debilitating pain radiating out from, well the expected place, and then also intense behind the bellybutton in the abdomen, down my legs, my back usually too. If someone woke me up from a pain escape nap and was sitting on top of me, even if they weigh nothing like Dina, i can’t say i wouldn’t punch or slap or claw them on instinct
Yeah this is setting off all my chronic illness/pain red flags. There are a lot of things that can cause a period to turn into full-body pain, including a number of autoimmune and connective tissue conditions because of how the change in hormones can affect both inflammation and join laxity (I have EDS and my symptoms are ALWAYS worse on my period). For me that’s usually severe joint pain and monthly migraines (prior to getting on a migraine preventative).
See I just gotta know what fucked Joyce up so badly that Becky knows she should be taking lots of iron, she needed to sleep all day, and now her body’s sore.
She’s on her period, dude.
Trust me, as a Certified Shitty Period Haver, this is EXTREMELY relatable.
Ah.
I mean, I remember that being an early guess when it first came up, so I’ll go with that.
Well, now I think she’s a vampire.
Nonsense, Dina would have realized Joyce to be a fellow vampire by now if so. Like recognizes like.
Yeah, anyone should be able to recognize if someone’s a like them with upon only a few moments of reflection.
….. wait.
Becky at least thinks it’s a period (thus, iron, and also thus sore.)
Do those usually result in full-body soreness? No, but the cramps can feel pretty significant in your torso region, and sometimes they also come with headaches and oh yeah also they can spike your histamine levels. I’ve also definitely had cycles where it tanks my energy, and if nothing else sleep passes the time if you can manage it while waiting for the naproxen to kick in. (Don’t use weaker stuff, it doesn’t work.)
… It should be noted I also have REALLY ROUGH menstrual cycles, including familial endometriosis and a grab bag of really bad PMS symptoms, and so my sense of just how bad periods get for someone who doesn’t have those. And also didn’t get their first period on the literal eve of their mother’s hysterectomy due to endometriosis. (Mine, at least, has never caused me to pass out. Again, skewed sense of normalcy.)
Or at least, the pain is usually intense enough in specific spots that it wouldn’t necessarily feel as pronounced in say, arms. But I believe I have heard of generalized joint aches associated with it?
I’ve had cramps pretty much all over before. Most of them went down my lower body, but there’s definitely been some up higher from higher going cramps and headaches.
But the iron and the sleeping all day because you’re tireder? All the time.
Yep, my cramps are less of a thing now that I’m on BC (and have been for years now), but I have very vivid memories of soreness intense soreness in my thighs—just as painful as the cramps but less sharp pain. Also shoulder aches, but that was probably just generally tiredness because I still get those when my body gets physically exhausted.
She could just be being hyperbolic. I remember before i started treatment for endo i used to say “literally everything hurts!” Every time i got my period, cuz when it’s coming from a central source it really does feel like your whole body is in pain even when it’s not
Some chronic illnesses (that are often diagnosed fairly late because of the complex symptoms) can cause full-body pain on periods. Like auto-immune or connective tissue conditions.
Joyce is very relatable.
And Dina is indeed the best girlfriend ever.
Dina is concerned.
And the Toe should be happy he can’t be killed a second time.
Honestly, as someone who was spanked by parents who otherwise thought of themselves as good, kind liberals, I totally buy that both Becky and Dorothy were spanked as kids, and that both of them think it’s normal. I’m glad Dina is confronting that, and I hope this has consequences both for Becky and for Joyce.
I really can’t stress enough how much the threat of physical violence can affect a kid. You were spanked and you turned out fine? Sure, whatever, cool. Happy for you. Many people handle abuse very differently. Me, I’m still processing how learning to see my dad as someone who would hurt me when he was angry with me affected my reaction to, say, my partner getting non-violently angry with me.
I believe Becky got spanked, but Dorothy?
. . . Is it odd that I never considered that a wooden spoon could be used for Spanking kids? I had only ever thought of it like. . . a Nun rapping your knuckles with a wooden ruler. But never a parent on a child.
Same.
Nah, I think it just means you do not have a lot of experience with children being spanked, which is a good thing.
NSFW:
I had also not encountered it before.
For me, using a spoon for spanking is strictly sexual, which puts an extra level of icky onto this.
I was spanked myself. Apparently a few times as a toddler and one memorable time back when I lived in Germany in middle school, I had been spending the night at a friend’s house and picked up some of his shitbag father’s misogynic attitudes, and I repeated those attitudes at a house party the following week.
My father apparently dragged me into the bathroom and gave me a spanking so bad that I have quite literally blocked it and that entire night out of my mind, and had to be told about it years later.
. . . If I’m ever have kids I’m never hitting them. Especially not like that.
I am so sorry, William. That is terrible. How terrible that happened to you. Thank you for your courage and conviction.
I got spanked pretty regularly, but the idea of a wooden spoon, or really a solid object in general stuck me as weird the first time I heard about it.
My family was all about the belts, folded in half for a nice solid extra-loud crack. Or if things got really serious, a razor strop.
It was also a complete waste of time, because my ability to endure pain well outstripped their willingness to inflict it, so I basically just accepted it as an insignificant price to pay for doing whatever I felt like.
… They’re probably really lucky I never took interest in drugs or alcohol or the like, because there wasn’t shit they could have done about it with their methods.
My parents both preferred their hands, but my maternal grandmother would hit with a spoon during the year and a half I lived with her and on summer vacations. TBH the way my parents did it (purposefully targeting sensitive areas like hands and feet, welding it as a threat for compliance , etc) was much more aversive to me. My grandmother didn’t hit hard or target sensitive areas so it didn’t hurt as much and to her there was about as much emotion in it as in doing the dishes. My parents OTOH would put on this huge production about it to amp up the fear and shame factors, it was almost like they enjoyed it.
Almost. You sure?
My mental jury is out over enjoyment vs desire for control and domination.
My mom used a toy golf club. It was plastic.
Parents come up with all sorts of ways to do what they do.
The only methods I’ve ever been familiar with was the old fashioned slap on the butt amd rarely a belt. The wooden spoon thing was was weird whenever I heard about it.
Yeah, happened to me growing up and wasn’t anyone who thought it was weird. It was only as an adult I was confronted with the idea this was child abuse (I had grown up with the idea it was stupid and counterproductive not abusive).
I’m sorry you went through that, especially having to unpack the trauma as an adult
Honestly, my reaction was initially a lot like Joyce’s.
One problem is sometimes it doesn’t stop at childhood. Then you’ve got adults who don’t visit their older parents because visits turn to violence.
Old habits die hard, I mean.
Ooof, last panel got me. I’m another person who got spanked as a kid. My parents only did it a couple of times that I remember, but when I was like 7, I’d regularly get in trouble for acting up in class (due to undiagnosed ADHD) and get sent to the principal’s office, where she’d spank me with a ping pong paddle. This was a weekly occurrence. My “counselors” at day care never hit, but they’d torture me with stress positions, like holding my arms out or touching my toes for an hour. None of it ever helped me get better, obviously. I was just terrified and confused.
It’s just so weird when I’m reminded that was never normal or okay.
I’d love for Willis to handle the almost universal child of abusive household experience of telling a “funny story” about your childhood and getting to the punchline to realize more than a few folks are looking at you mildly horrified.
Man the idea of having this conversation is already giving me anxiety so I think I’m gonna try my best to not say anything more on the topic.
Totally respect that bruh!!! 🤘
How many of you want something to take your mind off things, while also helping me make something REALLY cool?
Whoever can find me a 3D model with portions and form most similar to Dina will get a free pixel art commission from yours truly!!! 😉
Next Patreon strip- A no-punchline timelapse of Dina’s mum and dad being decent parents.
OMG, I would love it.
Hmm. Yeah, this is probably gonna be a messy one. I’ll just say that something being “normal” doesn’t make it necessary or even good, and that’s all.
Very much true.
For something to have “always been done this way” doesn’t justify continuing any said “””traditions””” as humans call them.
Justification requires evidence of ongoing relevance.
I only got spanked a couple of times between ages 3 and 8 and it was in no way a beating. I remember being more upset that I had done something so bad that my parents had to get the wooden spoon, than being afraid of the pain.
Every kid is different, and I think my older siblings hated it more then me
I just want to acknowledge that this is likely going to be a triggering comment conversation for many. It’s OK to sit this one out.
It’s also OK to read, and process, and comment, if you want to, with the support of a trusted person nearby to help check in, in case the conversation brings up unwanted feelings.
And it is ALWAYS OK to practice self-care with hot cocoa, funny non-triggering stuff on TV, soothing music, blankets, pets, or whatever brings you comfort.
This is tough stuff, and we don’t need to expose ourselves to it if we don’t want to. And we can take steps to manage the hurt we feel.
Everyone suffers and processes their experiences in their own way. Each person’s experiences are valid. There’s no one “right” way to heal.
Sending healing and caring vibes to all.
Thank you so much Laura!!!
You are one of my most favorite humans around here, always so caring, so soothing and helpful!!! 🥲
Can I help too, perhaps with some soothing, nostalgic music?
*plays “Miracle Tears” by Shinji Miyazaki on Joyce’s Phone*
That is very sweet of you to say, The Wellerman. I appreciate you. Your kind words to me make me feel warm in my heart. I am grateful for that.
Love all the great music, The Wellerman.
This virtual “room of refuge” is also nice for a few happy distractions: https://mailchi.mp/5e0341b50675/roomofrefuge
Thank you Laura. So much. 🥲
I do believe you once said puzzles and games also help us to heal?
Today, I solved a difficult programming puzzle in my Python course.
It felt… satisfying. It’s something that I hadn’t felt in a long time, getting closer to my brain, the way it once was.
I only felt it for a brief time, but it gives me… hope 🌌
*plays “Unforgetting” by Devon Church*
Congratulations on your puzzle and your course! 🙂
Here’s hoping the hope sticks around and goes further for a more confident future!
Oh, and yes, here’s the study on the post-traumatic puzzle games, along with some commentary:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190108095114.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678449/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/04/09/523011446/how-playing-tetris-tames-the-trauma-of-a-car-crash
RE: this particular study, Tetris and traffic accidents are particularly well-suited to one another, because one side effect of car crash trauma is a reluctance to drive again. Driving is SO MUCH like Tetris (you have to fit a solid shape — your car — into holes of varying sizes at high speeds) that the “gamification” of a common driving skill helps de-link the skill from the trauma.
This is a really hard conversation for me, as it may be for others. The extremely grossout eye-catching ads at the bottom and sides of the page don’t make it any easier. I don’t want to talk specifics right now and in this forum, but it touches on a theme that I’m working hard this month to process.
I hope you all are safe, now.
I hope we all can be safe, now.
Please also look after yourself!
Thank you!
Thank you so much, I needed this
Here’s a paper picking apart 31 different arguments for hitting your children for those who may be interested. To abbreviate: There’s no argument. This science has been solved since the 1950s.
Wow!
Thank you so much for this!!! 😭😭😭
I will treasure this knowledge until the end of time!!!
The Power of Science</strong<… used to save people. To better so many lives.
I want to be with this Power forever. 😭😭😭
*plays “Infotain me” by Ochre*
The name of the paper is “Demystifying the defenses of corporal punishment”, which is pretty clever. It doesn’t indulge in philosophy, you see. It just cites many, many studies in different fields that overwhelmingly show hitting your children doesn’t help them in any way and usually hurts them in profound and lasting ways.
But the mysticism of child abuse only comes in when you start saying you “discipline” or “spank” them or “take them over your knee” or whatever. It sounds like a totally different thing from what you’re doing, which is beating them, so it can’t be as bad as beating them, right? Please demystify that shit. Call it abuse or hitting or beating like we do when adults fight and you can pretty easily see that it’s not something you should do. Ten times more so if you’re an adult doing it to a child depending on you.
But that argument is mostly just implied by the name.
I get the impression Joyce’s mom didn’t spare the spoon, either, not entirely, thought as the “baby”, we’ve been given indications she was shielded from some stuff, along with Jocelyn protecting her a bit on some things like fighting for her to get to trick or treat and thus not miss out on that.
But, we were also given indications that the parents got more fundamentalist over time, even if we know Hank detested Ross and tolerated him for Becky’s sake, so it’s sort of up in the air.
Dina’s reaction definitely suggests this is not at all something her family engages with, and I am glad for her on that because I think corporal punishment is brutish and ineffective on top of that. It only breeds contempt, distrust, and defiance, not true discipline.
I don’t know about Joyce’s siblings, but I used to specifically start shit with my parents if they were mad at my baby brothers. I was beaten brutally (belts, fists, whatever they had in their hands) had my hand methodically broken by laying it on the side table and slamming down onto it… but my brothers really only got one or two serious beatings while I lived with them.
As a result, my brothers are more well-adjusted, have a relationship with my parents, and one of them absolutely can’t understand why I can’t get over it since he was a bit too young to remember most of the worst times.
Younger siblings are absolutely protected in situations like that. If we older siblings can do anything to stop it.
Nova, I am so sorry that I couldn’t respond to this timely. Your comment has been haunting me since I first read it.
They broke your hand. They broke your hand!? They broke your hand!!!
This fills me with grief and rage. This is terrifying. I don’t know what anyone could say about this. I don’t think there is ever a way to make something like that right.
I am so sorry this happened to you. I am so sorry that this happened to you. You are not alone here. We see you, and we care.
Two things: What your parents did is terrible. Unforgivable, really. If you told me this and put those people in front of me they would not walk away in one piece. And standing between them and your little brothers is an absolute good thing that you did. I thank you on their behalf.
Speaking as a 188 cm, 125 kg trans woman, I think standing between someone bigger than you and someone smaller is literally the simplest thing in the world. But it doesn’t mean it’s easy.
this is going to be an interesting one because I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that several of the commenters here were spanked as children and considered it 100% normal. Acknowledging it as abuse is fairly recent (and by recent I mean within the last 30 years or so) so in-universe Joyce was born after 2000 and her parents would be considered extra strict or abusive by her peers. If Joyce was born before 1990 it probably wouldn’t be considered odd at all. That’s my anecdotal observation anyway
Still doesn’t change the fact.
The science has been there since the 1950s. It doesn’t work. It NEVER worked.
This abusive practice and other human “””traditions””” like it did not withstand the test of time — they merely cheated the test of time through use of dishonest tactics, through years of indoctrination and censorship.
I never said it worked, but one can’t deny that at one time it was so ubiquitous that nobody questioned it. That’s certainly not a good thing, but it’s a statement of a fact.
I’m getting a little freaked out by the creepy ads and bad memory associations, so I’m done looking at comments for this strip. If someone replies to something I’ve said and I don’t respond, or shares something painful and I have no words of caring … it’s not that I don’t care. I’m just having a hard time right now with this topic.
Wishing wellness to all of you, friends.
Take care of yourself, Laura.
Thank you.
Spankings were more about shame to me growing up. My mum prescribed to hand and belt spankings (the latter I never had, but my siblings were privy to) and tbh they never really hurt, but it was the shame of getting one that bothered me the most. Like getting a bad mark at school or getting sent to time out or detention, a spanking was another label to indicate a “bad kid” and I desperately did not want one placed on me and ruin my “reputation” (a word I use in hindsight).
I suppose I fall into the “but I turned out fine!” group though. I don’t go around saying that and don’t plan on spanking my kids, but looking back, the only reason I ever got spanked was when I was perceived as being disrespectful. I became more aware of my actions and learned the art of tact when speaking, that went beyond my mother. As an adult I don’t hate her or my upbringing and anything abnormal about me *cough*social anxiety* didn’t stem from a sore butt a few times in childhood.
I’m all about conscious parenting though so spanking was never an option to put back on the table. I just feel like if my mum were around now I’d have a hard time countering her, “we did it this way and it WORKED for you!”
So when it comes to Joyce herself and her family with regards spanking I can certainly see her mother doing this. I wonder about Hank though? Like it’s kind of a coin flip. He’s definitely made mistakes in the past. Personally I could see him leaving it to his wife to raise the kids and discipline because gender roles and that. But of course letting it happen is far from good in of itself. But outside of… Jordan and Joyce until very recently their parents are under the impression their kids were well behaved. So maybe only Jordan ever got that if happened at all. (But as it turns out only John have he guy who skims off missionary money is).
I guess the threat was there though? (But seriously was Jordan the kid who got hit a lot? Shall we finally get insight into him? We’ve already been surprised by him being the next youngest to Joyce when for a long time we thought he might be second oldest after John which we jumped on just from Joyce’s caller ID on Jocelyn… we’re starving here).
*But it turns out only John is ‘well behaved’: the guy who skims off missionary money
Woof, might have to step away from the comments for a few days, hearing legit abuse I went through minimized as mere kink or ” It’s just a light spoon” is hella damaging my mental health.
Take your time, Reaver.
Ouch. You can see the tears welling up in Dina’s eyes.
No. Tears don’t come out of pupils.
But they will well up over them.
Given her eyebrows, I think it’s actually her getting angry.
I’m worried Joyce is about to be yelled at for being so casual about this.
Oh, being angry doesn’t preclude tears, I can assure you. Nothing quite like rage tears.
Reminds me of this strip:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/cobwebs/
Dina’s upset in a defensive, “if anyone tries to hurt you from now on they’ll have to go through me” way.
Or, perhaps more accurately, she’s Padme in that “for the better” meme.
“Your upbringing did not really normalize physical violence as retribution for misdeeds?”
“Please assure me that your shared upbringing with Becky did not normalize physical violence as retribution for misdeeds.”
Dina knew Becky’s upbringing included threats and attempts to murder all her friends, but the realization she was spanked is surprising her?
Yes. Becky was an adult when those things occurred, and other than Carol – who she doesn’t know – people didn’t try to minimise it. Both times were rightly seen as police matters.
That her childhood was punctuated by beatings and that this was seen as not a big deal is a revelation to Dina. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise – abusers escalate, so going from zero to “gun on campus” would have been a bit unusual – but Becky and Joyce were shocked by the gun. Having a gun pointed at them was new.
That children are beaten and don’t even realise they are being abused was not something Dina previously knew.
I was spanked occasionally as a child. With a bare hand. Never an object. Still painful. Still scary. More common was my dad shouting at me until I was so upset and stressed I threw up, then shouting more because I was “being ridiculous”… We have also had to have a few conversations with my parents about how they can and can’t talk to the kids. I hadn’t realised the way my father used to shout at me wasn’t OK (I knew I hated being shouted at but thought it was me being over-sensitive) until pretty recently and am still processing that.
Husband and I are in total agreement about no corporal punishment. Kids get time outs, or possibly lose bedtime stories that night, or are told they can’t watch cartoons.
So like, after our eldest (7) kept on extending the sleep timer on the tablet for her audiobooks without asking (“just another 5 minutes, that’s nothing, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind…” But repeated 6-8 times then followed by her her being utterly shattered in the morning), he put a password on it and explained it was because we couldn’t trust her not to do that. When she watched him enter it, learnt it, then continued, he changed it and took it away for a night or two. A few weeks on, she’s allowed it again and he’s taken the password off again.
Beating a sensitive, imaginative, loving child for “being disobedient” when she’s struggling with transitions, doesn’t have a proper understanding of time, doesn’t get why it’s a big deal, etc, would have been horrible, cruel and mainly upsetting for her. I think she now understands that we do trust her to go to bed when it’s finished, that it is important that she does so (and she does worry when she can’t sleep about being tired the next day), etc.
I want my kids to respect me because they recognise I know more than they do, and have their beat interests at heart coz I love them. I want them to be able to ask questions, think independently, find their own interests, etc, not be blindly obedient to me from a place of fear…
A lot of these comments just lead me to believe that a lot of people don’t know the difference between a spanking and blatant abuse. I got spanked my entire bloody childhood until I hit puberty any time I did something wrong, but it was NEVER more than five cracks (at absolute worst) with the open palm of a hand to my hind end. Most often it was only three. Was I scared? Sure, but I knew not to do the thing that brought on the spanking again- and I didn’t!
I got spanked and I didn’t and don’t live in fear of my parents. I simply learned right from bloody wrong.
Hitting is abuse, if you are so out of parenting options your only option is to strike your kid, you are doing it wrong.
You think it’s okay to hit children. I think you might be a bit more emotionally damaged than you realize
Is a kid old enough to understand why they’re getting hit? Then violence is unnecessary, just explain what they did wrong.
Is a kid not old enough to understand why they’re being hit? Then hitting them won’t teach them anything.
Either way, there’s no benefit to adding pain to the process.
Something to keep in mind when we talk about spankings, is that spankings are not always just a quick pop on the butt with an open hand. I for one have been spanked with a hairbrush before. I’ve personally witnessed my peers be spanked with kitchen utensils (spoons/spatulas) and wooden planks (my mom broke one on my cousin’s butt after he kept stealing from literally everyone he could). You might have just experienced five pops on the butt, but that obviously isn’t the same for everyone. Even in this strip, we’ve been told Becky and likely Joyce and her siblings were all spanked with wooden spoons. It immediately becomes more dubious with the addition of tools. Wood and plastic can be painful.
You clearly didn’t learn right from wrong.
I love the “sure, I was hit, but it was only three at a time, and like, at the most, five. Made me understand right from wrong, and also adutls beating children is totally cool for educational purposes, y’all.” take. The internet never fails to suck.
Agreed. That was depressing to read.
“Being spanked taught me right from wrong,” they proclaim, after explaining how an adult caregiver physically striking a helpless child, that is completely dependent on them, for the express purpose of causing pain, is in fact Totally Okay.
Also, exactly what number of physical strikes makes it abuse? What is the reset time – like, once I have physically assaulted the child that relies on me to live X times, how long do I have to wait before another strike “counts” a 1 strike and not the (X+1) strike that makes it abuse?
Does the number of non-abusive strikes change depending on who I am hitting? Why am I allowed to strike my child, but not my assistant at work? They are both supposed to obey me, after all. (/s, if that was not obvious)
I’m in camp was spanked, not fine. IME, it was always less about behaviour and more about my parents venting their spleen on my body.
One of the issues with spanking is that it tends to escalate until either the victim comes to the attention of cps or until they’re big enough to fight back or leave. The day it stopped with my mother was the day I realized I was stronger than her and restrained her from hitting me, and the day it stopped with my father was the day I realized that there’s nothing in the world he cares about more than keeping up appearances so I rolled the dice hoping that given choices of make good on a threat kill your first born, be outed as a gun nut who would threaten his kids lives, or stop, he’d stop. Dice came up in my favour.
They both remained emotionally abusive, but at the time because my parents genuinely were worse than their parents, they and I both didn’t count it as real abuse. And at the time I genuinely didn’t think of it as abuse, I thought it was normal. My parents (as they told me in graphic and detailed accounts while defensively justifying knocking me around or berating me for hours or parentifying me to the point that I got a part time job and did too many extra curriculars not because I wanted money but because working 8 hours straight in a fast food kitchen without A/C for minimum wage or showing up to school 2 hours early and staying 2 hours late for clubs and sports was less exhausting than being at home and the only thing that would get me out of the expectation to be at home doing chores and watching kids was stuff that made them look good – working on a project to keep my straight As, working a job so my parents could brag about my work ethic or extra curriculars so they could brag about my national level competitions. I basically didn’t know how to relax until my university friends taught me), were the ones who’d experienced real abuse.
Also – I will flag there’s studies done that show parents generally spank more often and more severely than they say or think they do. That certainly tracks with my experience.
FML, that’s truly horrible. I’m glad you survived that.
People like that definitely shouldn’t be trusted with guns, nor should they have power over any living thing, much less children.
Yeah, I was spanked (more after we moved to rural TN after Dad was sent to ‘Nam) but all I learned was Might Makes Right, and If I’m Bigger I Can Do What I Want And You Do What I Want.
Hard same.
Also you have to respect me (read: obey me unquestioningly as a dictator) before I will respect you (read: observe basic courtesy with you and not terrorize you).
So much this.
Exhibit WeRunOutOfAlphabetByNow for:
i) Everything About Joyce’s Upbringing Was Terrible, and
ii) The Saruyama’s are the best parents.
Using pain to force compliance is the most fucked up method of child rearing. It’s stupid, counter-productive and evil.
Violence towards children and animals reveals very nasty things about a person.
Yes Dina, that’s a sad part in the life of a lot of people. I’m happy it was spared to her.
Being spanked did not teach me “respect,” or “discipline,” or even not to do whatever I had done – I cannot even remember the causes.
What it did teach me, and what I do remember, is that people who say they love you will deliberately hurt you, and that they can do so with impunity.
Exactly this.
I think Dina’s about to go nuclear on Joyce. :-/ She’s angry that Joyce isn’t concerned that Becky is worried about being hit with a wooden spoon. And, like, of course Joyce isn’t: this is thoroughly normal to her. (I wonder how many of Joyce’s anxieties can be traced back to ‘being disobedient’ and either ‘earning’ the spoon for herself or watching her brothers and sister. Certainly her earliest label of ‘best socialized’ meaning ‘most obedient’ has some additional textual color now.) So there’s no concern in Joyce’s voice because Joyce doesn’t see any reason for concern, not because she doesn’t care.
But Dina could conceivably just add ‘Joyce does not care if Becky is hit’ to her list of reasons why Becky must be protected *from Joyce*. I hope not, because Dina is generally a thoughtful and kind person, but… she already (I would say) likes Joyce the least of the main cast with whom she regularly associates. (As witness at least one toothy threat-mode at Joyce, which are otherwise reserved for actual enemies.) It’s not unbelievable to me that Dina would hold this against Joyce, especially since the person/people actually responsible for hitting Becky with a wooden spoon are dead.
I think it’s more overwhelming concern from Dina right now more than rage. Could be wrong, but the last expression reads more like, “Oh my God, you don’t see what’s wrong with this.”
(This is commented below as well, I messed up the comment form the first time.)
I don’t know, the increased downturn of mouth and more crinkly eyebrow plus the question being essentially ‘you’re just hiding how upset this makes you or still asleep, RIGHT?’ reads to me like the precursor to Joyce getting the riot act. I’ll be happy to be wrong, of course!
Sparkly eyes like Dina’s getting generally haven’t been precursors to anger in DoA so far. She’s becoming emotional, but I highly doubt angry.
I think she is smart enough to realize Joyce and Becky likely experienced this together and are both victims.
Why would Joyce’s whole body hurt? It was just Macaroni night at the dorm commissary.
I wasn’t physically abused with any regularity, it was pretty much all emotional.
So my only contribution here would be that even if you “got spanked and turned out fine,” your anecdotal evidence means that you, specifically, turned out okay, not that spanking itself is entirely harmless or not abusive. If I smoke all my life and don’t die of lung cancer, that doesn’t mean the health risks of smoking don’t exist.
Yeah, and it’s like “turned out fine” is pretty…open? But yeah, maybe you did turn out okay! Lots of people go through adverse childhood experiences and turn out okay. But it’s not [i]because[/i] they went through those things.
It’s also hard when people who were spanked argue in favor of spanking because I still just want to be like, “I’m sorry you went through that; you didn’t deserve it” and that’s not likely to be well received.
Whoops, forgot how to HTML even when it’s right there.
“I was okay decades later” is unlikely to be a convincing argument for me. You don’t even remember how you felt about it at the time.
Yes, it’s survivor bias in action.
Also the people who claim to have “turned out fine” and who defend corporal punishment and using pain for compliance in general are pretty f***ing far from fine.
I think it’s more overwhelming concern from Dina right now more than rage. Could be wrong, but the last expression reads more like, “Oh my God, you don’t see what’s wrong with this.”
“my girlfriend is afraid that being in love with me will get her beaten and tortured! WHY AREN’T YOU MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THIS?”
dina is a treasure
Yesterday, she had a splitting headache, and now she woke up with her whole body hurting. Is she sick ?
I was about to ask the same thing, Darko.
Winter at a college campus … sounds like flu.
Technically it’s still the same day. It’s the same chapter, and all chapters explicitly end no later than midnight.
I was raised in a very strict conservative religious household. When I misbehaved (or was perceived to have done so), I would be told to go cut a switch from the thorn bushes in the woods near our house. My legs and backside would be bleeding and bruised. I was slapped, and mentally abused, made to feel like I’d never amount to anything. Growing beyond this sort of upbringing is difficult.
Thanks, all of you, for the kind words. Sorry, no spoons to respond individually today. I’m dealing with some intertwined issues that are hard to talk about. I know you are, too, and my heart aches for each of you and your own hurts in life.
For those of you dealing with nightmares, I would highly recommend a sleep study. Untreated sleep apnea, light pollution, and other solvable problems can contribute to a host of physical and mental health problems (including night terrors) that can become dangerous if left unchecked.
If anyone is having trouble getting health resources, calling your local 211 (US and Canada) is a place to start finding help. Anyone needs more specific info on how to find free or cheap health care near you, please do reply (without personally identifying details!). I’ll watch this thread, and post additional health resources upon request.
To sign up for health insurance: https://www.healthcare.gov/
To find a free or low-cost community clinic near you: https://findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov/
Find your local public health services: https://www.naccho.org/membership/lhd-directory
Find community services, including medical care and counseling and financial support, near you: https://www.211.org/
Connect with help: https://connectie.org/
Public and private advocacy and resources: https://www.findhelp.org/
Counseling and resources hotlines:
SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing wellness and/or substance use concerns. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.
Or send your zip code via text message: 435748 (HELP4U) to find help near you.
https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
Magellan community help: 1-800-327-7451 or https://www.magellanhealthcare.com/covid-19-2/covid-19/
Mental Health America help finder:
https://mhanational.org/center-peer-support
Virtual peer support:
https://mhanational.org/center-peer-support
Anyone can be a Californian online:
https://www.calhope.org/
Support for stress for parents and children:
https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/stress-coping/cope-with-stress/index.html
https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/stress-coping/parental-resources/index.html
My mother didn’t smack me often, and it was one or two slaps on the buttocks, not very hard and definitely never with anything but her hand. That was in the 70s.
My husband, slightly older and brought up by a mother whose own father was old enough to be her grandfather, was hit with a wooden spoon – again, not very often, but it horrified me when I heard about it.
I said to my then-fiancé, “You will *not* strike my [future] children with an object. At least if you use your hand, you feel the stinging as well, so you won’t do it too hard. The whole point of things with handles is to apply more force than you can with your hand.”
So our kids *occasionally* had a light slap aimed at their bottom. As others have said, it didn’t seem to be effective as a method of behaviour change, and we didn’t like to hit our kids, even though it was still considered part of the parenting toolbox then, so it happened only rarely. That was in the 90s.
And after that, it became ever less popular and more discouraged. I wouldn’t say that what my mother did harmed me, but it didn’t help me, either. I don’t think what I did harmed my kids, but it certainly never helped, and I’ve since apologised to them for ever doing it at all.
There’s no way I’d do it if I were raising a kid now, and most of the people I know who *are* raising kids now never do. I seriously wish it had stopped being acceptable sooner.
On the *clothed* buttocks, I hasten to add. I never had my pants pulled down, and definitely never pulled my kids’ pants down. The idea was that the bottom was the most padded part: a slap would sting without doing any injury. Physically, anyway, and we weren’t taught to expect it to do injury emotionally.
Dina looks so crushed and worried for Becky
I got… relatively lucky re: spanking as a kid? For a Jamaican at least, here it’s not uncommon to see a woman hitting her toddler in public for misbehaving. It was probably somewhere between 3 and 7 i think? My parents stopped suddenly when i was still young, dunno why and never asked. They also only ever hit me on the back of the hand, it always weirded me out to hear about people getting smacked on the ass by their parents. It was my mom mostly, my dad would only flick me because he was stronger (still hurt as much as getting hit) and only hit me if he was really pissed. They only ever used an open palm, i think my mom used a comb once though?
Most of my childhood memories have been deleted through depression, ADHD and unrelated trauma so i don’t actually remember much of this period which is why it doesn’t bother me. I do remember being afraid of getting hit though, especially from my dad. I think i was more…not quite traumatized but effected by their more humane punishments like taking away my phone in highschool (i was badly depressed and most of my friends were online so it was isolating. They didn’t know that) and i think our current friendly but frigid relationship and my fear of them is more due to how awful our relationship got in highschool than the spankings, it definitely set a president though.
None of this is to say I’m even remotely okay with spanking. This is just my experience, there are people who go through a, hm, milder form of spanking and aren’t as effected by it, but i still am staunchly of the belief that if you have to raise your hand in violence against a small, defenseless child then youve already gone wrong. I judge my parents for having done it and respect them realizing it was a bad move, i judge my entire country for how we normalize and expect physical abuse. It’s so widespread that when it as a kid i was baffled when my classmate said his mom didn’t hit him.
So, yeah, that’s my contribution to this discussion i guess. Tl;dr I got spanked and i very much didn’t come out fine, but it wasn’t because of the spanking, but that also doesn’t mean it’s okay.
To everyone who is having a hard time today due to the subject matter, my heart goes out to you and i hope you can take a step back and do what you need to feel okay again
Is it just me, or is the framing and positioning going on here awfully suggestive?
I was spanked (early 90s) but generally it was only when I did something demonstrably dangerous to my physical well being, aside from one time, which was the last time it happened, when I was around 7 or 8. With the exception of that one time, generally my thought process is “yeah that was fair I could’ve gotten my stupid self killed” and never did the behaviour again, so I guess uh it did kinda work for me?
I do know that I very much resented the final time it happened, because it happened because I’d pissed my dad off, not because I’d put myself in danger like the previous times. And then it never happened again, idk if my dad had an epiphany or my parents saw a report somewhere being like “yeah no don’t do this to your kids it doesn’t work and is bad”, or what, I couldn’t tell you.
So I don’t have any sort of trauma response to spanking, and to *me* it wasn’t a big deal, but I would still say you shouldn’t hit your kids. Not to say that they shouldn’t be punished, but better is consequences like getting grounded or other things involving taking away of certain privileges (taking away computer/tv time for the day, no dessert, whatever).
Daily reminder that according to studies spanking does more harm than good.
Yup. And absolutely not necessary to have a thoughtful, well-behaved child (and probably counter-intuitive to that actually). Never ever spank my kid and she listens just fine because my position of authority comes from kindness and *earned* respect, not fear.
My mom hit me ONCE and it is the only scenario in which I think it’s acceptable: I was seconds away from sticking my finger in an exposed outlet that some maintenance people had left open. She hit my hand away to keep me from electrocuting myself (as an emergency gut-reaction to get my hand away from it, not as a punishment). When she explained after that I could’ve died I was like “Oh, yeah, thank you for doing that.”
I guess actually in that respect I have also “hit” my kid once…she was choking and a hit on the back is what you’re supposed to do with a kid too small/young for the Heimlich. But yeah, ok only if it is an emergency lifesaving action, not as punishment.
Yes! These scenarios are why I can argue it shouldn’t be illegal to *ever* strike a child. Occasionally – hopefully VERY occasionally – it’s necessary, not as a punishment but to LITERALLY POTENTIALLY SAVE THEIR LIVES. I would like to think that people are able to make that differentiation, but a lot of people are dumbasses.
I would also hope that most people are able to grasp the difference between a few short sharp slaps on the back to dislodge something from their airways, and beating a child.
Like, the other week, my 4 year old slipped on the stairs and I went to grab her but the only thing I could reach was her hair so I immediately let go because she was 2 steps from the bottom, almost against the stairs, and I figured having her weight suspended from a handful of hair would hurt more than slithering the rest of the way down. Then explained, apologised, made sure she was OK, etc… I wouldn’t lift her up by a handful of hair because I’m not a monster.
Yeah and accidents are a thing too, no matter how careful you are! My kid and I have bonked heads or accidentally hurt each other before while just goofing around. My mom accidentally broke my arm when I was a kid (I was jumping on the bed and foolishly tried to jump into her arms without warning her, she grabbed my arm while kind of flailing, and my arm broke…but also I am very breakable because of a connective tissue disorder…my poor mom was horrified).
I’ve been the kid who gets grilled about abuse that was NOT happening because I kept showing up at the ER with injuries (yet took 30 years to finally get the condition diagnosed) and I felt so bad that my parents went through that considering they NEVER spanked or struck me other than that one hand slap. So obviously genuine accidents or protecting a kid from further harm and accidentally hurting them in the process while grabbing them/pushing them out of danger is different.
But very very opposed to spanking and physical discipline in general (and even yelling tbh). I’m still baffled that it’s legal in this country to hit children as discipline. 🙁
Sometimes the quickest way to get someone, even a kid, away from danger is a much-milder form of technical violence. Like tackling your dumbass friend out of the way of a speeding car because he’s too dense to move on his own, as a funnier example.
Joyce’s continued pain is alarming. But also as a chronic-pain/illness-haver, very relatable and I would not object to a carefully-informed story about those sorts of issues! As current media rep of chronic pain kinda generally…sucks.
Oh shit, I hadn’t even thought of that- fellow chronic pain type person here. (Inherited fibro, whee!). It kicks in during your 20s too. And the rep generally is usually uh.
‘nothing’ or ‘Dying, frail anime waif’ type shit, sooo I feel you.
Figure I’ll put in my own two cents, even though I typically prefer to lurk in the comments and learn from what other people say.
The only time I remember being spanked (hand-to-butt) was at, like, the age of six, and even then the only detail I recall was there was a heat radiator nearby??? No idea what it was like for my older sister.
What was common, however, was yelling and emotional distance. Specifically:
• Mom and Dad taking turns at saying I did something terrible, that I was an idiot for not thinking it through, and me begging them to stop with tears in my eyes because I didn’t know what to do. I was fifteen, maybe sixteen.
• My dad getting louder with his voice, wanting to prove most complaints I had about him or his ideas as invalid, only to soon after say, “Why can’t you just say what’s bothering you? I’m open to criticism, just show me the evidence.”
• My mom acting like (or I guess believing) nothing was wrong with giving my sister the silent treatment while said sister was a) in the stressful process of moving her kids and belongings from California to Alabama, and b) dealing with being unable to take her dogs with her family and sending them to the animal shelter.
• My mom yelling to me “You don’t get to say that to your own mother!” after I stood up for my sister by addressing the point I made above.
My condolences go out to everyone who were subject to physical violence by their parents, as well as emotional. I would bet the former never occurs without the latter, but the damage is real regardless. I often wonder to myself why I imagine people would punch me or berate me soon after they get mad, even if they have no intentions of that whatsoever.
I feel you. I really do! 😣
I have a very distinct memory of a teacher, as part of a lesson, asking for a show of hands for how many people had been spanked as a child. Something like three quarters of the class raised their hands. I still haven’t fully recovered from the shock of that moment. To me, violence against a child is one of the worst things a person can do, but for some reason spanking has been normalized to the point that people don’t even consider it a violent act. And so discussions about it always turn to arguments about its “effectiveness”, as if having an obedient, well-behaved child justifies hurting that child.
My parents both lived with this kind of normalized physical abuse- at least I’m pretty sure. Truth be told they don’t talk about it. But I know, because they refused to ever do it, and I *do* know they absolutely had people CRITICIZE THEM for not using physical violence as a punishment.
I feel Dina here extremely. It’s horrifying. And so normalized that people who went through it barely even process it as having been trauma. It’s very telling that Dina learned about this through it affecting how Becky processes even the idea of a loving god.
Cool, cool