*** Content Warning: descriptions of the potential sexual coercion of children ***

Is spanking child abuse? I know many studies have found that spanking leads to violent and antisocial behavior, but should it be considered abuse?

There are many different responses to this issue.  Some are for spanking children, if administered “with love” and “without anger,” and many are against spanking children (such as myself) because it’s an ineffective discipline technique and physically and emotionally abusive. But I’m going to go in a different direction. …

SPANKING AS A DISCIPLINE TECHNIQUE FOR CHILDREN IS A DEEPLY FUCKED-UP CULTURAL PRACTICE.

Spanking, like it or not, has a sexual element. You as the adult “spanker” may not intend that … at all … but it’s still there.

Even many people that endorse spanking stop after children reach puberty or begin to develop secondary sex characteristics. If spanking doesn’t have a sexual element, then why would the practice have to be stopped because of age? Because even spankers that don’t intend to introduce a sexual element to their “discipline” realize the inherently sexual nature of spanking.

And even if you as an adult don’t see children in a sexual fashion, [CAUTION—EXTREME CONTENT WARNING] sexually abusive adults that do can manipulate access to the private parts of young individuals trained to submit to spankings. Is that really what you want to be teaching children? That adults with good community standing and sterling reputations that love you (or claim to) nonetheless can have access to your buttocks?

If we teach children that their bodies are inviolate and wholly their own, yet leave this one backdoor open (pun intended) for bodily violation, who do you think benefits from that?

And, no, making the spanking hard enough or clothed enough doesn’t remove the sexual element. It increases it for many individuals. And reducing the intensity or forcefulness of the spanking … or using an implement instead of a bare hand, or vice versa … or making sure that the spanker is the same gender as the spankee … doesn’t mitigate the erotic elements either. What I just described doesn’t sound like any kind of activity adult caregivers should be having with their minor charges. It sounds like erotic negotiation between kinky adults.

ALL THE “NO’s” … EVER … IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.

Addendum: This doesn’t even take into account any involuntary sexual responses children/pre-adult adolescents might have in reaction to this particular kind of abuse. Way to fuck up a kid even more than the inflicted physical and emotional abuse already would.

Addendum 2: Ignore the 13th paragraph of the second link as anti-BDSM claptrap (for the adult, ethical, and voluntary type, that is).