The Happy Feminist

DRESSING ROOM DISTRESS

Some of my favorite blogs have been discussing the issue of how hard it is for women to find clothes that fit. (In fact, Alice's whole blog is called "Pants that Fit"). My husband can simply walk into a store, find jeans with his particular measurements, and buy them without even trying them on and they are guaranteed to fit.  For me, finding jeans that fit is a day-long exercise in frustration.  It seems that the difficulty in finding pants and other clothes that fit is universal among women, unless perhaps you have a boy-slender model's body. 

On this one though, I have to say, that I am not inclined to blame the patriarchy.  Clearly, clothing manufacturers have an economic incentive to try to get women to buy clothes, and it's logical that part of that is making clothes that fit.  One reason I tend to drop my money at Ann Taylor* is that, even thought it's pricey, the clothes actually seem to fit me.  That's worth paying a lot of money for! (I note that businesses also have an economic incentive to exploit the cultural imperative that women look good by creating insecurities in women about their appearance-- but this tactic is used more to market butt creams and diet drugs etc. rather than clothing itself, I think.)

I am open to theories.  I am not inclined to think that dressing room distress is psychological, as  Sara at F-Words speculates.  Even if I have poor body image, I don't think I am imagining the fact that most of the clothes I try on do not fit me.  I think that the culprit is our bodies and the fact that we are curvier and bulgier and thus more varied in more places than stick straight men are.  I think for physiological reasons it's just plain harder to make clothes that fit us, especially jeans and trousers.  That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with our bodies or that the clothing manufacturers hate us (although it sure as hell feels that way sometimes). 

Solutions?  Levi's had a program about ten years ago -- I don't know if it still exists -- where they would tailor the jeans to your body.  So you go in, and they take all your measurements and have you try on different samples, and then based on what they learn, they make your ideal jean. Then they keep your measurements on file and you can just order new jeans when you need them. It was definitely worth the cost ($50 oe so for the tailoring process plus the cost of the jeans).  I never went back and got new jeans though because I am not much of a jeans person.  (Jeans tend to be very unforgiving if you gain even a little bit of weight.)

My only complaint with the Levi's program was that the tailoring process occurred right in the middle of the store in public view.  So I had to stand on a little block while a stick skinny teenager measured the full width of my ass and the full circumference of my thighs and yelled out the numbers to the person who was helping her while other customers looked on in curiosity.

Long story short -- I'm inclined (unless someone convinces me otherwise) to let the patriarchy off the hook for my dressing room distress. But I will enumerate the following complaints:

-- Why the harsh dressing room lighting that magnifies every flaw?

-- Why do women's clothes so often lack any POCKETS?

-- Why on earth do I have to shop in a special, less well-stocked section of the store called "petite" when I am the exact height (5'4") of the average American woman?

*Inspired by an astute comment at Feministing, I did a quick internet search and learned that yes indeedy Ann Taylor has been subject to claims of exploiting sweatshop workers in China.  Aaaaarrrrghh.  The one place with clothes that fit!  Is Ann Taylor really truly bad?  Does anyone know the scoop on them?  Anyone know of a label for socially conscious businesswomen who want attractive clothes that fit??? 

ONE OF THE MANY FOOLISH THINGS I HAVE DONE

I am in a mood for random anecdotes and this post from Shadow of Diogenes made me think of an odd little incident from many years ago. 

My husband and I once met after work for dinner and a movie about 45 minutes away from where we live.  We had come in separate cars.  After the movie, he hit the highway but I wanted to stop at a bank machine to pick up some money.  When I got on the highway, I saw his little red VW putting along in the slow lane at 60 mph. It was a new car so I didn't know the license plate number.  I could tell it was him because I could see his big head and the boxes he had piled in the hatchback. I thought, "Oh, how sweet, he drove slowly so I could catch up."  So I got behind him, flashed my lights, and swerved in the lane a little bit so he would know I was following him.  I stayed right behind him for the remaining half-hour drive home.

He got off at the exit for our town and traveled in the direction of our house.  But then he turned off, and I thought, "Well, maybe he wants to stop for a drink somewhere."  I was about to call him on my cell phone, when he suddenly pulled into the driveway of a house.  I was completely puzzled, so I got out of my car walked over to him, and when he rolled down the window, I said, "What are you doing?!?"

As in, "Why are we stopping here?" 

But then I looked down and I realized that the man behind the wheel was NOT my husband.  I had been following someone else the whole time! The man responded in a kind of sexed up voice, "What are you doing?"

I then of course realized that it was nearly midnight and I was in the middle of nowhere with a strange man who thought I had designs on him.  I gasped and said, "I am VERY sorry, I thought you were someone else." I immediately walked decisively and very briskly back to my car as the man called after me, "You're very pretty!  I'd still be up for whatever you had in mind!" 

I think he was still yelling after me as I screeched out of there.  I arrived home a few minutes later to find my husband -- who had not sweetly waited for me on the highway-- happily ensconced in front of the telly. Sad to say, I remember thinking, "If that guy had sexually assaulted me, I would have had lots of 'splaining to do if I reported it."   

Another day I'll have to tell the story of how I wound up barging in to a public men's restroom, and also the time I got stopped in a restaurant for allegedly stealing the waitress's tip. 

SECRETARIES I HAVE KNOWN

Someone expressed surprise in this thread at the fact that I have a secretary.  Yes indeedy I do, and thank goodness for it.  People often view having a secretary as a sort of luxury or status symbol.  But in my job -- which is all about generating documents often to very particular specifications required by court rule -- a secretary is an absolute necessity.  Just last week when I had my appellate brief due, my secretary put together the Table of Contents and Table of Authorities in a jiffy-- a project that used to involve blood, sweat, and tears of frustration when I wrote moot court briefs in law school sans secretary.  Having a secretary is also necessary from an economic standpoint.  The commodity I sell are the hours (billable hours) I spend on legal work for my clients.  They pay me for my legal research, legal writing, legal analysis, and advocacy.  But time spent organizing files, formatting documents, making appointments, and printing out envelopes is not billable.  So if I do that stuff for myself when I could be doing something billable, my firm loses money.

The attorney-secretary relationship is, of course, a hierarchical one.  The attorney decides what she wants the secretary to do for her.  If I need something now, I can tell my secretary to drop whatever she is doing and take care of whatever I have determined to be the priority for the day.   At the same time, however, the attorney is often very dependent on the secretary.  This is especially true of older attorneys who do not themselves have word processing skills.

My mother was a professional secretary and my father had a secretary.  I did secretarial work through college and beyond, and I now have a secretary of my own.  She is my twelfth secretary in nine years -- not because I am driving them off (I hope) but because I’ve moved or they’ve moved or my employer has decided to shuffle people around.

I have determined that the key to a successful attorney-secretary relationship is empathy.  That is, each participant in the relationship should be able to understand and respect the conditions under which the other person is operating.  For example, the temptation may be to get frustrated with a secretary who is focusing on unimportant issues.  But then I remember when I was a secretary and I didn’t necessarily know what was or was not important to my boss because I wasn’t in his position.  It is up to me to convey to my secretary who is an important client, or what projects can be put on hold.  On the secretary’s end, however, the ideal for me is a secretary who seems to care about getting things done right and who seems to want to help me.  I want a secretary who tries to lighten my load, rather than adding to my load.  I think the same principle applies in any hierarchical relationship.  Thus, my job is to try to lighten the senior partner’s load while the associate below me or the secretary lightens my load.

Right now I have a secretary who actively tries to make my life easier and it is wonderful.  Our relationship is all sweetness and light (unless she has complaints about me that I don’t know about).  But gosh I have had a lot of secretaries who added to my stress:

Ms. I Got No Time For You  It was really terrible when I had to share a secretary with a very senior partner.  Not only that, but the secretary worked miles away on the floor above me.  I had no physical proximity to my secretary.  And she literally never did my work.  She simply ignored my work and at the end of the day she would always say, “Sorry, I didn’t have time for that.  I was  busy all day for Senior Partner.”  She wouldn’t even find another secretary to cover for her, thus forcing me to run all over the firm to beg other secretaries to do my work.  But the worst were email exchanges like this:

Secretary:  A fax came in for you.

Me:            Great.  Can you bring it down.

Secretary:  No time.

Me:           Then, please ask someone to bring it down.

Secretary:  No can do.

Me:          Can you at least tell me who it’s from?

Secretary: Don’t know.

This woman literally never did a lick of work for me.  Finally (and this is the only time I’ve ever done this), I told a partner that my secretary didn’t seem to have time to do my work.  To my firm’s credit, they immediately did another shuffle and I got a new secretary, and some poor sap right outta law school got stuck with Ms. I Got No Time For You.

Ms. Indiscreet Then there was the one at the D.A.’s office who just had no filter on what came out of her mouth.  I would be on the phone with opposing counsel, and she would be in the background yelling, “I CAN’T FIND ANY #)!*#)!*)*!) WHITE OUT!”  Or a member of the public would come in to report a crime and when I referred that person to Chief So-and-So, my secretary would say, “Yeah, lots of luck with that moron.”  Or opposing counsel would call after the first day of trial and my secretary would tell her, “Wow, Happy seemed really frazzled after that first day of trial.  What did you do to her?”

The Burden Shifter I told this one when she first started working for me that she should feel free to make any suggestions about how we could do things better.  Boy, she took that to heart.  But all of her suggestions were about how I could do more of her work for her.  For example, I used to forward all of my email correspondence with clients and opposing counsel to her so that she could print it out and put it in the file.  Her suggestion for improvement was, “It would be a lot easier if you could print out the emails at the end of the week, organize them alphabetically by case name, and then drop them into my filing bin.”  All of her suggestions were like this.

The Meanie This one was just downright mean to me.  She was a very good secretary and she would do my work  but she always made it very clear that she didn’t WANT to do my work.  The best was when she would yell at me for giving her typing back with corrections.  “Why can’t you get it right the first time?”  she would say, notwithstanding the fact that it was her typo and besides, I should have the opportunity to edit my work.  The other fun time was when she flamed me.  I used to give her drafts of electronic newsletters we used to send to our clients.  Her job was to work with the IT department to get it formatted and have the hyperlinks inserted.  Once I emailed her (politely as always) to ask if the newsletter was ready yet and I got a response back in all caps, “I’VE TOLD YOU BEFORE THAT JOE IN THE IT DEPT. DOES IT!!!!!!!!”  Man, was I pissed.  I don’t really care who does it, just freaking tell me whether it’s ready.  Monitor this project for me so that I can get my trial memo done.  And, if for some reason, there is a problem with you being able to do that, just tell me what the problem is in a civilized manner.

The Meanie also worked with a male colleague of mine and never gave him a bit of flak.  Male Colleague was always convinced that the Meanie just didn’t like working for a woman.  I don’t know if he was right or not, but I have to admit that it’s a possibility.

Ms. I Need You to Hold My Hand Oh, gosh.  This one made me think twice about ever telling a secretary to feel free to ask me any questions.  This one would  bounce into my office constantly to ask questions.  I once timed it and she literally came into my office with a question every ten minutes for an hour.  Questions like, “Where are the yellow post-its kept?”

Male Colleague had a lot tougher time with her than with Meanie.  He absolutely was ready to go off the deep end.  But I decided to make her my special project, mainly because I was excited to have a secretary who wasn’t mean to me.  So we would have little chats about how it’s more efficient to write down all your questions about a project and then ask them all at one time, how you might want to direct questions about the yellow post-its to the person most likely to know the answer (like another secretary as opposed to an attorney), and how you might want to think about how you could answer questions for yourself.  (For example, you could figure out for yourself when the court clerk’s office closes by looking it up on line and you really don’t need me to figure out what size envelope to put the brief in.)  She thought I was “the bomb” (her word) but she never really incorporated my suggestions fully and it always seemed like I had to walk her through every project step-by-step (left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot).

The No Show This is the one who lived a mile from the D.A.’s office but couldn’t make it in if there was even a minor snowfall, even though the rest of us would come in from an hour’s drive away.  Once she wanted me to shut down the office because there was no running water for fifteen minutes.  I was about to make the decision to do so, when the water came back on.  She gave me the most evil look I have ever seen when I broke the news to her.  It was really a scary look.

Ms. I Did It My Way Actually, I really liked this secretary.  But she had this weird thing about Courier font.  My department has a policy of using only Courier font for all our pleadings and briefs.  I am not crazy about it but it is the preference of the guy who heads the department.  Well, my secretary really hates Courier.  So she just didn’t use it.  So I had to send every single thing she typed for me back to have her change it to Courier.  When you’re generating ten letters a day, this can get really annoying.  Fortunately, she retired before I had a melt down on her.

A Mea Culpa and an Invitation  Now I know I am probably a bad person for picking on the secretaries.  I also know that it’s a two way street and that we attorneys drive them nuts as much as they drive us nuts.  If you have any stories about particularly maddening secretaries or bosses, please feel free to share.

RENDERED UNCHARACTERISTICALLY SPEECHLESS

Via Daily Kos and Pandagon.

IN HOMAGE TO BRASSY CHICKS

So I was channel surfing last night and I got sucked in to a reality show about a competition to choose the ultimate bartender for Coyote Ugly.  For those of you who don't know, Coyote Ugly is a famous New York City bar that has become a franchise in a number of cities around the U.S.  Its schtick is hard liquor, country music, hard classic rock, and beautiful female bartenders who do choreographed dances on the bar and offer body shots (where you suck the booze out of the bartender's navel).  I have never been that interested in Coyote Ugly because it's a chain, and chains are always gimmicky and canned.  Nonetheless, I found myself drawn in to the reality show by the personality of Coyote Ugly's founder and owner, Liliana "Lil" Lovell.  (She has a blog here and there is a very good article about her and her bar here.)

Lovell is a classic example of a tough, brassy woman, the kind of woman I am not but whom I really admire.  Lovell is all about getting stuff done, and getting it done right-- HER way.  She is always absolutely sure that her way is the right way (and I imagine it is since she is making money hand over fist).  She doesn't care if people like her.  She doesn't worry about sparing people's feelings.  If she has something critical to say to someone, she says it bluntly.  She makes no effort to soften her message.  Employees strive to earn her praise because they know her praise means something. 

I have been lucky enough to know a few brassy chicks like this.  I always try to cultivate them and learn from them.  Because whatever it is that makes them brassy, I don't have it.  I am hardly ever really certain that my way is the right way, and I am quite easily persuaded that others know better than I do.  And I absolutely hate making other people feel inadequate or stupid unless it's in a formal context like a trial or unless the person has really offended me.  I also tend to make excuses for people and not expect very much from others.  I excel at tact and diplomacy but sometimes at the expense of getting my message across or having things happen the way I want them to happen.

The secret of brassy chicks I have discovered is two-fold: (1)  A lot of it is just constitutional.  That's just how they are made.  I can't try to remake myself into a brassy chick because that is just not who I am.  Brassiness would not work for me because it would be fake.  I can, however, incorporate some of their moves into my repertoire for use when appropriate.  (2)  The real secret though is that brassy chicks are driven.  Lovell herself said on her blog, "I am not mean. I am driven."  The brassy chick puts her mission (such as building a successful bar) above everything else.  She is not going to worry about your feelings if soothing your feelings will compromise what she is trying to accomplish. 

This makes sense to me because, as I write this, I realize that I DO have an inner brassy chick.  My inner brassy chick comes out in only one situation, though -- when I am in trial.  A jury trial is an all-consuming event and, when I am in trial, the trial becomes the most important thing in the world to me.  I don't give a crap about anything or anyone as long as the things necessary to try the case successfully fall into place the way I want them too.  It is total focus-- which means I bark orders, I make demands, and I turn police officers who are testifying for me into quivering masses of jelly who WILL show up on time and WILL have a good attitude and WILL remember all the facts from their police reports.  I don't care if everyone ends up hating me as long as the trial goes smoothly, the exhibits are ready, the witnesses are on time, etc.  As soon as the trial is over, I return to my easy-going self. A real brassy chick is like this all the time.

Of course, another insight I have reached is that being brassy isn't always the greatest thing.  Last year, I worked with a new associate in my law firm who was a brassy chick.  She had a super-loud voice and she was so confident that she would tell senior partners in staff meetings that their ideas or policies were stupid.  The partners mostly loved getting a frank opinion from an entry-level associate, and they also figured that if she was so assertive with them that she would be just as assertive in adversarial situations with opposing counsel.  She was the darling of the firm.  But there were times when she offended people unnecessarily to the detriment of getting things done.  After one of these occasions , she came to me and said she wished she could learn how to get her point across in a more tactful way like me!  I was so flattered that a  brassy chick (even a much younger one) wanted to learn something from me that I almost fell out of my chair. 

But she was right.  A smart person (of either sex) should cultivate both brassiness and diplomacy and use whichever is appropriate to the situation.  I suspect most of us, at least most of us women, are more comfortable with diplomacy and need to work on stepping up the brassiness.  There are other personality types who need to work on stepping up the sensitivity.  Since I am in the former category, I will always love and look up to brassy chicks and try to learn from them. 

NOTE:  I should note that not all brassy chicks are feminists.  One of the brassiest chicks I ever knew was an elderly lady in my grandmother's conservative Texas church.  She was at her brassiest when railing against the idea of women ushers or women pastors.  Liliana Lovell is arguably more like an old-time madam/saloonkeeper than a true feminist.  But I do think the persona and the conduct of the brassy chick is very feminist even if she is not herself espousing feminist ideas.   

SHOULD WOMEN HAVE TO PROVE THEY ARE WORTHY OF EQUAL RIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITY?

Apparently.  Or at least that's the subtext of Mark Starr's Newsweek opinion piece annoyingly titled, "Girls Gone Wild," a story about a recent hazing incident by the Northwestern Women's Soccer team. (Hat Tip: Pandagon)  He says:

Once upon a time, the dream of the feminist movement was one of equal opportunity. They didn’t want to be like men, just to have the same chances. There was an implication, a faith inherent in that aspiration, that not only could they perform the same jobs, master the same subjects and play the same games but that they would do it in a fashion that might be better for our society. The conceit was that they would imbue all they touched with a women’s sensibility, which would be more nuanced, more empathetic and, ultimately, more humane . . .

. . . [T]he ascension of women hasn’t produced anything remotely as glorious as the feminists or I once contemplated. It turns out that power corrupts with no apparent regard for gender, that ambition can be indiscriminately corrosive, that competitiveness brings out the best in both men women—and, apparently, the worst. There is plenty of evidence now that women at the helm of a nation are every bit as tough and bloody-minded as their male counterparts, that female soldiers can also defile their honor codes, that women corporate bosses can be petty tyrants and that women athletes will resort to steroids and abuse their bodies to excel inand sports.

Well, I guess feminism failed. It turned out that we women are not more angelic than men.  Therefore, there is no justification for us to run for office, sit on corporate boards, play sports, or participate fully in society.  I will immediately give up my rights since they are clearly unnecessary. 

Sigh.  Yes, I know there is or was a strain of feminism that subscribed to the notion that women would exercise rights and power in a kinder and more humane way.  I don't believe that that is the case, but who knows.  Perhaps, a female-dominated society would be more ethical.  We don't know because this is not a female-dominated society, even if a few women have ascended to positions of power.  But I don't really want to find out if a matriarchy would do better than a patriarchy because I don't believe that one sex should ever dominate the other. 

You see, equal rights need no justification.  Why should women need to prove that they are worthy of being treated like full members of society who have ambitions to earn money and play soccer and engage in all the other activities available to men? The right of women as a class to do these things should never be contingent on women acting like sweetness and light. 

Thus, I don't see any "irony" in women who have equal rights behaving badly, as people are wont to comment.  There is no irony unless you believe that women's angelic behavior justifies equal rights.  I don't think that women's angelic behavior is necessary to justify equal rights because I see equal rights as a good in and of itself.

As a side note, I also take issue with Starr's assumption that the women athletes on the Northwestern University Women's soccer team "appear to be mimicking the basest instincts of male athletes, embracing a pathetic notion that predicates acceptance on the willingness to share humiliating rituals." (Emphasis added). Boy, this guy just won't let us off our pedestal.  Apparently, men have base instincts whereas women don't-- but we mimic them.  Now, I am sure that the notion of hazing originated on male sports teams, but to reduce women's bad behavior to mere mimicry is another way of dehumanizing us.  I see this assumption in a lot of different contexts, including the notion that women who engage in binge drinking, anonymous sex, or swearing are "mimicking men."  It couldn't possibly be that women have base instincts too and that perhaps, just perhaps, some of us actually engage in binge drinking, anonymous sex, and swearing because these are pleasurable activities? While I don't necessarily recommend these activities (except swearing which provides a relief denied even to prayer), I resent the notion that women couldn't possibly want to do these things for themselves.  Since we exist only in relation to men, the thinking goes, it must be that we are trying to be like them.

At Salon's Broadsheet, there is a take down of a similar piece by Frank Deford at NPR's Morning Edition.  For some reason, I wasn't able to listen to the Deford piece but, according to Salon, he says:  We had hoped when women started coming into sports in large numbers after the passage of Title IX that they would improve the institution, investing it with the finer feminine values. So far the results seem to indicate that instead sports has won, and womanhood has lost.

Turn in your cleats, girls. We wouldn't want womanhood to lose, would we?

MEMORIAL DAY

I was thinking this Memorial Day morning about the fact that, despite all the traveling I have done and all the people I have met, I have never known anyone who has died in a war.  And my country is AT war. Not only that, but I don't know anyone who has served or is serving in the current war. It is embarrassing to admit but the only person I even know OF in the Iraq war is my hairdresser's husband. 

Ginmar, who is herself a veteran, notes (more articulately than I) how far removed the war is from the lives of most average, middle class people:

If aliens arrived this weekend, there's no way they'd believe that today is a day to remember veterans. This war is not connected to your average every day person because few people join up any longer. The people who join are the poor, the new citizens, those who want education, purpose, adventure, and sometimes those who have no other means of escape. The military is their way out or up. They might pay for it with their lives, a choice other classes and other people simply cannot imagine. . .

[Average people] don't realize that the person with the limp next to them is a vet, or the old codger they honked at charged up Omaha Beach. Female veterans are utterly invisible . . .

I do worry a lot about the fact that the elite classes in this country are relatively uninvolved in the military, compared to other classes and compared to the elites' involvement during other eras.  As someone who grew up fairly privileged, I felt some obligation to military service when I was a teenager and young adult. (My father served in Vietnam as an enlisted man.  He was an Ivy League grad in a platoon full of people who could barely read.)  But I couldn't reconcile that sense of obligation with the fact that women are inevitably second class citizens in the military, and the worry about being sent off to a war that I might not support.  Since I had the choice to opt out, I did.  And now I live in a bubble utterly removed from all the young people who are fighting in Iraq because they didn't have the same range of choices I did.

CRITTERS

It is a warm, brilliantly sunny day here, and all the critters have come out to play.  On my walk just now, I saw a robin hopping along with a worm in its mouth, a mother duck leading a number of baby ducklings into the water for a swim, and lots of summer folks boating and bicycling and jogging and driving around in expensive convertibles.

Yep, I'm a local yokel in an idyllic country town that happpens to be the summer destination for a lot of rich city folks and wealthy retirees.  I kind of like that aspect of my town.  Fortunately, my town is not as well known as a lot of other vacation destinations so it is not intolerably packed during the summer.  It has just the right amount of human activity to seem festive.  The only time it gets annoying is during the week when I am actually living my normal life and have things that I have to get DONE. There is nothing worse than trying to get from point A to point B to finish the first of a hundred items on your "to do" list only to find yourself stuck behind some vacationers on a relaxed, scenic drive.

Of course, all the summer people are impossibly good looking, wholesome, outdoorsy, and athletic, and they all have the perfect gear and equipment for whatever activity they are engaged in. That combined with the pristine appearance of the area where I live makes me feel as though I am walking through a J. Crew catalogue. I feel as though I need to get spruced up instead of going on my walk wearing wind pants and an oversized t-shirt.  Or I can hope that my bedraggled appearance qualifies as "local color."   

SUNDAY QUOTATION BLOGGING: PROVERBS

Sunday quotation blogging is back-- at least for the time being.  I have gone through almost all of my notebook of quotations I collected in college, so Sunday quotation blogging is likely to become a more rare event. 

But, as some of you know, I am in the midst of reading the Bible straight through, and I got a kick out of some of the Proverbs I was reading yesterday. There are even a couple of Proverbs especially for lawyers!

The one who first states a case seems right,  until the other comes and cross-examines.     Proverbs 18:17.      

And this one speaks to those of us with massive billable hours requirements:

Do not love sleep, or else you will come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread.  Proverbs 20:13.

There is a lot of complaining in Proverbs about annoying wives.  While my 21st century feminist self can't condone such "wisdom" written from a solely male viewpoint (what about the annoying husbands?), I couldn't help but laugh when I imagined the beleagured sage handing down this little chestnut:

A stupid child is a ruin to a father, and a wife's quarreling is a continuing dripping of rain. Proverbs 19:13.

And I can certainly get down with the smug vengefulness of the punchline in this famous one:

If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat; and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink; for you will heap coals of fire on their heads . . . Proverbs:21-22

There is a lot of talk of disciplining children with rods, and beating fools too.  As one who has struggled with suffering fools gladly, I can relate to the impulse behind the latter, although I can't condone it!

MORE ON CORPORAL PUNISHMENT (UPDATED)

You know, I only just looked at all the comments on my post on spanking.  For some reason, I was nervous to look at the comments because that post was probably the most personal one I have ever written.  I very much appreciate your kind words and thoughtful dialogue in response to the post.  Now that I have read the comments, I find I have some more things to say on the topic -- even though I just said in my last post that we should be thinking about happy, furry puppies this weekend instead of depressing topics like spanking. So here goes:

-- I want to clarify that I was thinking of spanking (a deliberate, ritualized event) as opposed to swatting when I wrote the post.  I am not a big fan of swatting either, but I do see a difference between swatting (especially if it is rare and employed only as a last resort) and spanking.  I don't condone it, but it's a tougher issue for me.  On the other hand, I was once swatted on the ass at age eight by a teacher for talking when she was trying to make an announcement.   I didn't know she was trying to get the class's attention. She could have just told me to stop talking.  She could have tapped me on the shoulder or walked up to me if she couldn't get my attention. The swat was entirely unnecessary.  And while the event lasted less than half-a-second, it was completely mortifying.  Personally, if I have kids, I would neither swat nor spank. 

-- I think parents often believe spanking is necessary because they forget how much power they have over their children even without spanking.  As a parent (at least of small children), you are a lot bigger and stronger.  You have complete control over your children physically and materially.  You have the power to control how they spend their time, where they go to school, what they read or watch, who their friends are, and myriad other aspects of their lives.  You also -- and perhaps this is the most important thing -- have emotional control over them. 

While children may appear to be defiant at times, ultimately, especially when they are young, they want to please you.  Approval and disapproval are very powerful tools in every parents' arsenal.  Dogs are the same way.  I am reminded of an incident one winter when I had taken my parents' collie out for her evening walk.  She ran into the woods and just would not come out.  I was exhausted and cold and desparate to go to bed.  When she finally came out of the woods ten minutes later, we walked home and the whole time, I was swearing quietly under my breath because I was so irritated at her.  Half-way through the walk, she started nuzzling my hand.  I looked down, and she started crying, and she had her tail between her legs, and she rolled over.  I, of course, got down in the snow and hugged her and told her it was okay.  The point is that I didn't need to hit her in order for her to feel upset that I was upset.

As a kid, I was not unlike my parents' collie. I wanted my parents' approval.  I would have done anything necessary to get their approval if they had conveyed what they wanted in a non-punitive fashion.  While very small children may lack the cognitive skills necessary for you to get your point across by "reasoning," there are other ways to convey what you want and get it without spanking.  Spanking is overkill. It completely reduces a child, who is already under your thumb. 

-- A couple people raised the point that spanking (and swatting too, actually) involves an assault on a private part of the child's anatomy.  This is a very important point.  Biologically, the buttocks are an erogenous zone (and yes, it is erogenous even for very young children) and culturally, the buttocks are considered a private and intimate area.  Children are capable of developing great modesty at a very young age.  I personally remember that by age three, I refused to take my clothes off at the beach, and I also became very upset at the same age when I had to take my pants down for a shot at the doctor's office.

Thus, I think spanking can be experienced by the child as a sexual assault. This is especially true if the child's pants are pulled down, but it can still be sexually truamatic with the child's pants up. Certainly, spanking is an assault on the child's modesty.  For me, this was a huge aspect of the trauma I experienced as a child. I do think my experience was akin to being raped-- and I say that with full recognition of the extent of the trauma rape victims undergo. 

This article and this article address the sexual dangers of spanking children.  Project NoSpank is a large internet resource with information from an anti-spanking perspective.  For a more scholarly approach, check out the home page of Professor Murray Strauss. 

UPDATE:  My brilliant commenters have raised another important point.  I think it is important to avoid condemning spanking parents.  Despite my strong disapproval of spanking, I recognize that it is a cultural norm.  Because it is a cultural norm, a lot of otherwise good people spank their kids. A lot of people think they should spank their kids.  It is nonetheless a cultural norm that  I very much would like to see go by the wayside.

(Of course, a lot of bad people spank too. In my case, I believe that I was victimized by someone who took sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain and humiliation, and who bore some degree of malevolence towards me.)