Content note: This piece touches on nonconsensual spanking, other forms of physical abuse, sexual assault, trauma, suicidality, addiction, and human rights violations.
1. It doesn’t work.According to one expert, Elizabeth Gershoff, who reviewed 61 long-term studies and 8 international investigations, “Zero studies found that physical punishment predicted better child behavior over time.” The same expert also noted that some studies found physical punishment increases children’s aggression and other behavioral problems. (I mean, yeah, when the person you’re supposed to be able to love and trust implicitly starts beating you on a sexual body part, you’re gonna have some feelings about that, and those feelings might manifest as aggression.) Gershoff’s final word on the matter: “Physical punishment is harmful to children’s development and well-being. There is no evidence that it has any positive outcomes whatsoever.” Hear hear.
2. It’s traumatic. Studies have found that, in terms of inciting behavioral problems in children the likes of which are usually due to trauma, spanking has “statistically indistinguishable effects” from other forms of childhood trauma, like emotional abuse, neglect, and the death of one’s parent. People who were spanked as children are likelier to die at a younger age from cancer, heart disease, and respiratory problems. They are also likelier to develop aggressive and antisocial behaviors, anxiety, depression, and autoimmune disorders – all problems known to arise from trauma more generally. Spanking is also linked with an increase in heavy drinking, street drug usage, and suicidality.
3. It’s sexual. As spanking fetishist and journalist Jillian Keenan argues in her brilliant Slate piece on the matter, the butt is an inherently sexual zone. The area shares an artery with the genital region, which is why spanking feels pleasurable for many kinksters – and why it’s a vastly inappropriate thing to do to one’s child. Worth noting, too, is that statistically speaking, given the amount of kids who grow up to be spanking fetishists, there’s a non-zero chance that any kid you spank is experiencing that spanking as a sexual assault on some level (sadly, I speak from experience). A scientist who’s studied spanking’s neurological effects says it produces “the same reactions in the brain” as sexual abuse. Just because a body part doesn’t seem sexual to you doesn’t mean it’s not sexual, culturally, biologically, and for many people, personally.
4. It teaches a terrible lesson. I don’t know about you, but when I think about the wisdom I hope to impart to any offspring I bear, “hit people when they piss you off” isn’t high on my list.
5. It’s a human rights violation. Children should have just as much of a right to bodily autonomy and protection from harm as anyone else in society, but as things stand, they don’t. It’s still perfectly legal to spank your kid in many places, even though – as described above – there are mountains of evidence showing that spanking is ineffective and harmful. This one form of physical abuse has been privileged as an “acceptable” form, and it’s not. It’s abuse. It’s a violation. It’s not okay.
You know when you hear a piece of news that ought to be surprising, even shocking, and yet somehow it just… feels true, completely and immediately? That’s what happened to me when I heard about Mr. Field.
It’s not that I’d ever seen him being overtly creepy in school – after all, many long-term abusers get good at flying under the radar, operating on such subtle levels that their victims can never quite tell for sure whether they’re being manipulated and mistreated or not. But as I reflected back on my time at Rosedale, I remembered that he had “favorites” every year – students, usually girls, who he spent extra time with, heaped extra praise onto, and had extra expectations for. A close friend of mine was one of these girls, and I saw the micro-level boundary-overstepping time and time again – most notably, an occasion where Mr. Field needed something from my friend’s locker for some art project, and she wasn’t at school at the time, so she just texted him her locker combination. I shudder now to think of what he could’ve done – what he maybe did – with that information.
The reason behavior like this went unremarked-upon at Rosedale was that odd relationships between teachers and students were sort of the norm there, especially since it was an arts school whose student body and staff lineup alike were always packed with nerds and weirdos. Not all of these relationships were abusive or problematic by any means – in fact, feeling able to trust some of my teachers in a way I’d never trusted a teacher before was one of the major things that helped me get through high school as a person with chronic depression and anxiety. I felt supported and cared for in a way most schools would frown upon. But I can see how that core belief Rosedalians held – “Our teachers are cool teachers, and it’s cool to be friends with them” – could easily devolve into grooming and exploitation in the wrong hands.
In the wake of the allegations against Mr. Field, I started hearing rumors about other teachers at Rosedale. I don’t know anyone who goes there anymore, but lots of people I know have younger siblings or friends who still go there, so I hear things through the grapevine sometimes. I heard a male English teacher got fired for having a mental breakdown at school and acting erratically toward his students (which he was already doing when he taught me in the 10th grade); I heard a civics teacher who I always disliked had been dismissed from his job for making creepy comments toward teenage girls; I heard one of the heads of the music department was kicked out for trying to kiss a student; and, most terrifyingly for me, I heard that the man who’d been my very favorite teacher – let’s call him Mr. J – had (maybe) gotten fired for (maybe) having sex with a student while (maybe) high on cocaine.
Now, granted, rumors are rumors, and it’s hard to know for sure what’s real and what isn’t. (I reached out to Rosedale’s administration for comment/confirmation, but as of this writing, they had not gotten back to me after four full weeks.) But like most people of my feminist ilk, I believe that the immense bravery and difficulty involved in coming forward with sexual abuse allegations are a sturdy enough barrier that false accusations of this sort are vanishingly rare (and the research bears this out). I tend to think that if the rumor made its way to me – particularly from multiple sources, which was the case with this one – that it contains at least a kernel of truth. And that fucking sucks. My heart goes out to every victim of every perpetrator of abuse and exploitation at that school and everywhere else.
This favorite teacher of mine, Mr. J, was an upper-level humanities instructor who brightened my days and changed my life. Ever-cheerful and ridiculously smart, he taught me things I still think about on a near-daily basis, made jokes that made me cry with laughter when I was supposed to be doing my readings, and wrote notes in the margins of my essays that made my heart jostle jubilantly in my chest. I became one of his “favorites,” I guess, and while I’d often been a “teacher’s pet” throughout my days as a nerdy, anxious goody two-shoes, this felt different; it felt like he actually liked me as a person, not just as a student. He took me aside before class on occasion to ask what I’d been reading lately (“I know you share my love of the written word!”) or what I’d been writing (“Did I hear that you won a poetry award?!”). He praised my answers in class discussions until I blushed and slunk down in my chair, too shy to talk to most of my classmates but never too shy to talk to him.
The memory that stands out the most to me about Mr. J is the time I was standing in the cafeteria line and I suddenly realized the two girls behind me were talking about him. They were a year or two younger than me, and were enthusing at each other about how cuuuute he was and how they wished they were taking one of his classes. Just then, he appeared, as if by magic. He greeted me, we bantered like we always did, I blushed like I always did, and then – without consulting me, without making a big deal about it – he quietly told the lunchlady to put my pasta salad on his bill. I didn’t fully realize what he’d done until he’d already paid and was out the door, and by then I had a free container of pasta salad in my hands, two jealous girls staring at me, and a brain soaked with syrupy infatuation and looping the thought, “Did that really just happen? Did that… really… just happen?”
I’ve been wanting to write an essay about this since I first heard the news about Field in August, and I thought the main point of the essay would become clearer in my mind the more that I thought about it, but it hasn’t. And that’s because… this is complicated. I had a crush on my teacher Mr. J, obviously. He thought I was cool, obviously. But what’s less obvious is: Was he grooming me, or was he just friendly and supportive? (Nothing overtly creepy ever happened; what I’ve described here is the closest he ever got to anything like that with me.) Are the rumors about him totally true, or totally inflated, or totally false? Should I be drastically revising my mental image of him?
The other thing that makes this complicated is that some of my biggest kinks first showed up in those interactions with Mr. J all those years ago. I mean, there’s a reason I talk about him in my “I’m a good girl” blog post. The idea of being “teacher’s pet,” of being “the favorite,” of being smart and good and celebrated and praised – these all loom very large in my present-day sexual psyche and they have for a very long time. Part of the reason I had a crush on him was that he inadvertently put me in a role that is, I now realize, kind of an erotic one for me. And yeah, that creates a weird dynamic where maybe I was (unbeknownst to him and even to myself) getting some kind of gratification from our relationship that he hadn’t necessarily consented to. But then, if these rumors are true and he’s a predator, maybe he was also getting something from me that I didn’t know about or consent to. Honestly, it makes my head spin to think about it.
What this ultimately points to, for me, is a fact I already know and would do well to keep learning until it’s completely drilled into my head: Fantasy is different from reality. I am sure that many predatory teachers’ “favorites” have, at some point or another, entertained fantasies of a romantic or sexual sort about their teachers. Abusers of this type actually work to create that feeling in their victims, often through horrible psychological manipulations that bear some resemblance to pickup artist techniques (neg them, play them hot and cold, keep them guessing, et cetera). But fantasizing about something doesn’t necessarily mean you want it. Or maybe it means you want it in fantasy but know it’d be a bad idea in reality. Or maybe it means you think you want it, but if it ever happened for real, it would horrify you and traumatize you.
I’ve felt very conflicted about my past feelings for a teacher who may or may not have preyed on my fellow students, but when I look at it through a consent-first framework, I can see that there’s nothing I need to feel guilty about. Having ached for some kind of relationship with Mr. J in fantasy does not mean I wanted one in reality, or that it would’ve been acceptable for either of us to pursue that. I was his student. True consent cannot exist in that situation; the power dynamics are too, well, powerful.
I still don’t know whether the rumors I heard were true. I still don’t know whether I need to denounce my past crush even though it was such a formative experience for me. But I do know that this experience has made me even more aware of the divide between fantasy and reality, between desires and behavior, between whims and decisions. I wasn’t wise enough back then to know that stuff, so I felt guilt for no reason about dreamily “wanting” things I didn’t actually, literally want. But the only person who ought to feel guilty, in situations like this, is the person in power, the person doing the victimizing. The atrocities they enact should only ever, at most, exist as fantasies inside their heads – and they ought to know better than to impose those fantasies on people too vulnerable and scared to even understand what’s being done to them.
Every morning that I wake up and read the news (or Twitter), I ask myself: why am I still doing what I’m doing?
In the face of all that’s going on, sometimes it seems pointless to write about sex toys, kink, lipstick, and dating. Why would anyone want to write, or read, about a comparatively frivolous and small-scale issue like sex, in a world that feels like it’s crumbling around us?
Answer: sex isn’t frivolous or small-scale.
Here’s why sex writing matters, even now, even still.
Because people are still having sex. There will always be people having sex. Those people need to know how to have sex safely, ethically, and pleasurably.
Because sex education is being stripped left and right. Kids, teens, and even adults need and deserve accurate, sensitive, non-stigmatizing information about sex.
Because if you understand how sex functions in our culture, you understand a lot about gender dynamics and gender politics. We need a better understanding of those things in order to reduce violence and encourage social harmony.
Because sex work is still devalued in our culture and sex workers are still treated terribly. They deserve better and the world deserves to know that and understand that.
Because rape and sexual harassment are still rampant issues, have been forever, and will continue to be. We can partly combat this epidemic by talking about what consent means, shaming abusers, and showing the world we will not stand for sexually exploitative behavior.
Because sexual entitlement and bitter misogyny still fuel horrible crimes. Good sex writing can help humanize us to each other and demonstrate that sex is not an owed commodity but, instead, an earned collaboration.
Because they’re trying to take our reproductive rights away from us. Again. It hasn’t been okay any of the previous times they did it, and it’s not okay now.
Because when you’re mired in sexual shame – shame about deep, unchangeable parts of you – you have less emotional energy for other things that matter, including political activism, charitable work, and sustaining the relationships that keep you afloat.
Because queer people and trans people are still vulnerable, still scared, and their stories still matter. Telling those stories is one way to convince the world, slowly but surely, that they do indeed matter.
Because pleasure – especially the pleasure of marginalized people – is transgressive. It has been denied from us for far too long, and we deserve far more of it.
Because asexuality is still erased, misunderstood, and sometimes used as “justification” for assault. This cannot be allowed to continue, and better education (including writing on asexuality) can help reduce these effects.
Because one of our most powerful world leaders right now is an admitted sexual abuser and not nearly enough people seem to know or care about this.
Because making art, and consuming art, can be a welcome respite from this cruel world, and can feel motivating when motivation is in short supply.
Because content creators still need and deserve to make money. Capitalism, unfortunately, doesn’t break down just because lots of other things are.
Because the better we understand ourselves – including our sexuality – the better we can harness our skills and talents to fight the powers that be.
Because distraction can be self-care, used sparingly, and maybe your diversion of choice is reading about other people’s sex lives and romances. That is fine. Welcome. I’m glad you’re here.
Because sex is a unifying experience for much of humankind, and we need to feel united and connected now more than ever.
Because pleasure is still a worthwhile pursuit – even if the world is burning, even if systems are breaking down and people are suffering. Sometimes you need a dose of pleasure to replenish your strength so you can get back out there and keep doing the work.
Because sex can be romantic, and kink can be connective, and the world needs less fear, less anger, and more love.
Because good sex writing, like all good literature, encourages empathy – something our current world is sorely lacking. We’ll need empathy, every one of us, for whatever happens next.
Why does sex writing matter to you? Even now, even still? And what else are you doing to cope in these trying times?
