Valerie Curnow argues for the female right to initiate violence:
I have to admit: I don’t think that a woman hitting a man is the same thing as a man hitting a woman. Don’t get me wrong: I’m anti-domestic violence (physical and emotional), or any violence for that matter, but I just don’t believe that if a woman hits a man, the ramifications are the same as when the reverse happens.
Now, I’m not talking about slugging your boyfriend or husband with a brass-knuckled left hook. Or smashing him over the head with a portrait painting. Or bludgeoning him with a blunt object. Obviously these acts are wrong, violent, and possibly a felony. I don’t mean pulling a Lorena Bobbitt or a Phil Hartman’s wife or a Francine Hughes in The Burning Bed (although the latter was found not guilty by a jury of her peers). I’m not talking about drawing blood, using lethal weapons, or murder. I’m talking more about smacks and slaps to the upper-body region when a gentlemen is behaving badly: Shoulders, chest, that kind of thing.
If Curnow believes that “smacks and slaps” are acceptable when an adult is behaving badly so long as no serious physical damage is delivered, then clearly she should have no problem whatsoever endorsing men administering spankings to adult women. After all, a spanking doesn’t have the same ramifications as a punch to the jaw. What Curnow is arguing, although she clearly doesn’t realize it, is that it’s okay for a man to strike a woman so long as he doesn’t do her any actually injury.
Of course, we’ll need some sort of guideline on what sort of spankings are permissible. Perhaps a limitation on the spanking rod to about the width of the man’s thumb?