Poll: Only Men Under the Lash?

Anonymous points out on the Men Under The Lash post (Dec 27, 2010) that only flogging men is sexist.  It is true that flogging is applied to both women and men in some countries.  But from what we have seen of the comments on this blog, most people only talk about men taking the lash.  Obviously, this must be an issue of cultural acceptance (and possibly due to the influence of Hollywood, as Anonymous points out in his/her comment).  So, I have created a new poll.  Please view and cast your vote:  should only men be seized up for flogging, or should women also endure the touch of the whip?

Laying On The Lashes

We have had several comments touching on the other side of the flogging coin:  How the “Inflictor” feels while doing it.  Some people have noted here and on the WhippingDudes YouTube channel comments that it is hard to find someone who is willing to put leather to flesh.  Based on these comments, it is easy to conclude that there are more people willing—and desiring—to expose their backs to the lash than there are people willing to strike the blows.  Why is that?

Richie has challenged the readers of this blog to begin that discussion.  At first, I thought a poll would be a good place to start, but it is hard to formulate a poll without a better understanding of what goes through a person’s mind while they are whipping a man’s bare back.

It is easy to understand the physical challenge of endurance flogging from the receiving end, but what about the emotional endurance of the Inflictor who is creating the pain?  Most people would rather feel pain themselves than watch someone else suffer, which makes it hard for them to willingly inflict it.  So, obviously, both sides have to man-up for the session:  Both have to be physically and emotionally prepared for the ordeal. 

It is possible that a Prisoner can react violently and genuinely hate the flogging, and indicate that through his grunts and screams, but that doesn’t mean the session should end before the punishment is complete (otherwise why do it at all?).  This is where the challenge for the Inflictor comes in:  He must remain unmoved and merciless in the application of the whip; he must lay each and every lash on with full force, regardless of how the Prisoner reacts.  What goes through an Inflictor’s mind when he sees a bare back, welted and sweating from dozens of hard lashes, needing dozens more to complete the punishment?

If the Prisoner is brave enough to step up for a flogging, the Inflictor has to be brave enough to see it through to the end.  Does it take a stronger will to inflict the punishment than it does to endure it?  How does a man find the will to flog another man? Would an Inflictor exposing his own back to the lash help him to understand what is needed, or would that just make it harder for him to lay it on another man’s helpless back?  

Flogging & Crime’s Costs to Society

Gary of Milwaukee points out in a comment to the “Empires Built With The Lash” post (Jan 31) that some states used judicial flogging up until as late as the 1950’s.  When the American Republic was founded, flogging was not considered cruel and unusual punishment because it had been in constructive employment and socially accepted for millennia.  Further, Anonymous makes a comment to the same post regarding flogging’s uses as a deterrent:  “In many cases, the pain and humiliation of being trussed up, stripped, and lashed with a whip did the job nicely.”

I mention these two comments together because they raise an important issue, which we have touched upon on this blog before:  Returning to the practice of flogging as a form of punishment for civilian crimes.

Crime, by definition, is a burden to the functioning of civil society.  Long periods of incarceration have proven to be ineffective as deterrent, as evidenced by high recidivism, anecdotally due to a lack of gainful employment options post-incarceration (due to the stigma of being an “ex-con” or the loss of critical skills during confinement).  In addition to the direct social costs of criminal activity, society’s solution (incarceration) itself has proven to be a heavy burden.  Governments must divert scarce resources from important uses such as education and infrastructure and use them to construct and maintain detention facilities.  Warehousing people whose actions have already had a measurable impact on society (economic or otherwise) is a second hit to law abiding citizens, who must pay for the incarceration of criminals and receive diminished services and higher taxes in return.

I am not saying that flogging would end the need for prisons because there are very violent people who must be locked away for the good of all society.  But some offenses, such as criminal vandalism, drunk driving, and domestic violence, which often result in short periods (weeks or months) of incarceration, would better be served by seizing the men up and flogging them in front of their fellow citizens, as both punishment for their past offenses, a deterrent to further crimes, and as an example to others who believe the law does not apply to them.

Painful humiliation could do the trick—and even be a source of revenue for localities that charge a nominal fee for public admission to watch criminals take the lash.