Child Abuse
We all know hitting people is wrong. It’s a bit of a throw-back way of going about things; the approach of neanderthals and pissed-up football hooligans. Most of us have the intellect to avoid hitting at all costs. It’s just wrong. Uncivilised.
Imagine if you accidentally turned up late for work, you got ticked off by your boss, and as he walked away, your anger got the better of you and you swore under your breath, saying what a fuck-wit he was. He wasn’t supposed to hear but he did. So he comes back “I heard that!” and promptly whacks you round the head, saying “Don’t let me ever hear you say that again! You hear?”
If this incident really occurred, what would happen? The person being hit could quite rightly take action against the boss who was guilty of physical assault. If the truth of the incident was clear during legal proceedings, the law would uphold the victim’s right not to be physically assaulted, and compensation might be allowed, and perhaps the assailant may receive a custodial sentence.
We all know that it is even more wrong for a large person to assault someone physically weaker than them. For example, for a man to hit a woman is even more wrong than to hit another man. Smaller people cannot defend so easily, and the assailant is therefore even more of a bully.
Now take the work scenario again. Reduce the age of the person swearing to say, 5, and make the location a family home. Clearly to smack a little child for a similar offence is even more wrong – because they are physically weaker. Smacking children is wrong. The line of thought shown above demonstrates this quite clearly. If you smacked an adult, action would be taken to punish you. But if you smack a physically weaker child, some people think that that is ok.
Egos being threatened?
Reactions to this notion may include “it never did me any harm.” But look closer. Are we, the people who were hit occasionally as children all of us the most confident, and happy people? Not usually. We all have hang-ups. In fact, there’s no evidence that being hit ever did us any good! How can we know it never did us harm, when we can’t compare the personalities of ourselves as we are, against how we would have been had we not been beaten occasionally? We would in all likelihood have turned out more secure and confident, and therefore more able to reach our full potentials in life. Hitting was accepted, in the same way as