Return of the “chastening instrument”
They’re back…..
Run out of business by “external pressure”, the Christian marketers of nylon child whipping devices are back in the business of selling child-abuse implements for profit. When a parent in New York was arrested for abusing his child with a nylon “whipping stick”, I interviewed a young man who described his experiences growing up with one of these in the house — and watching his parents use it to train his toddler sister to automatic obedience “like a dog”.
They stopped selling their “chastening instruments” in 2006 because of – cough – “external pressures” (like attention from law enforcement maybe? or just critical outsiders?). Now they’re selling them again, but strictly on a private basis and without a website or ANY internet exposure. Emphasis theirs.
In case you’ve forgotten – the blue spanker is 9″ long, 1.5″ wide and 3/16″ thick. It’s made of virtually indestructible polyurethane. It’s very flexible. You can hide it in a purse, a back pocket, or (giggles) a diaper bag.
8 bucks per. We also make some narrower ones that are fabulous for whipping toddlers – call us for more info, because we’re too squeamish to write it down here.
Checks only, payable to Steve Haymond.
Can these monsters not just buy this crap from a BDSM supply site?
My mother never needed to buy any “chastening instruments”. She had plenty available – wooden spoons, electrical cords, etc. Most of the virtually indestructible, too, though she did once break a wooden spoon on my brother.
Whipping children is simply abuse, pure and simple. It didn’t make my brother behave better, it just made him more belligerent. It certainly didn’t make me behave better when I was whipped for something my brother did (we all got whipped in many instances) or because my mother was in a bad mood that day. Or for “sassing” – which basically meant telling her I did not like green beans, and did not want to eat any more of them (we had green beans nearly every dinner, so getting tired of a food you already don’t like is almost a guarantee for a child). All I learned from this experience was fear. Which is the actual intent, because fear is what drives a lot of these “true Christians” who think everyone needs to be frightened into obedience to their monster god.
Alice Miller wrote about the brutality of what used to be standard child rearing practice in nineteenth – early twentieth century Germany. It looked a lot like what these people advocate. Training children into unquestioning obedience.
She saw a link between what she called “poisonous pedagogy” and the horrors of the Holocaust.
Given that the US may be teetering on the brink of fascism, I thought I’d throw that out here.
I feel icky just typing this, but it needs to be said…
Obviously, no one needs to buy a special implement to hit someone; any object at hand will do.
What the customer is really “buying” here is permission–authority–to beat their child.
FWIW, polyurethane isn’t that bad.
The facebook posting mentions a nylon stick. Nylon is a horrorshow. You hit someone with nylon, you’re going to do real damage.