The Watermelon

Eugenics? What is it? This is a subject that seems to have left society's consciousness in recent decades. The word Eugenics is a Greek expression, meaning "well born". Simply put, Eugenics is a method used in the late nineteenth and major part of the twentieth century to "create a better human race" by selective breeding. The idea was to "weed out" 'infidels' or 'weaklings' (this was how individuals that were seen as 'undesirable' were described and viewed)...

During my long journey to heal, I have had to research many areas of mental health to gain a better awareness and understanding of my own psychological trauma. I have gained an acute awareness of childhood trauma and the long-term effects of this. Thus I have developed a very strong empathy toward children and their vulnerability. The main reason for this article is to focus on sado-masochism, corporal punishment and self-injury (SI) behaviour and the way these inter-relate.

After years of therapy, both within and outside of the mental health system, I have had to ask myself: What is the difference between mental illness and mental injury? I now believe there is a very big and a very important difference. From my own personal experience this has meant the difference between recovery and failure in overcoming trauma. For me, it became the difference between remaining a victim and becoming a survivor. I have come to the conclusion that mental illness is very different from mental injury.

Well I'm all blogged out on the Section 59 debate for now and it's time for me to move along to some of my favourite issues that I look forward to seeing lively discussions about here at The Watermelon. I've just been reading a post over at Span's entitled "Clean Dirtiness" and some comments by Weka have inspired me to go off on a tangent to expand on some of the ideas he put forward. Weka suggests here a list of things that we can do to start addressing our energy needs:

How many people do you know that proudly claim to have been smacked as a child and were never effected by it? And are they male or female? Because I have been making some interesting observations during my conversations with (mostly male) adults who claim to be unaffected by parental smacking which have lead me to this question: Were they inordinately thick-skinned as a child, or are they living in denial as an adult, or could it be that these people are suffering from "Stockholm Syndrome"?

Well if you had been following the "Section 59 Debate" over at Frogblog last month you would likely have seen the Otago research study "On The Receiving End" referred to over and over again by one of the rabid pro-smacking brigade as an "AMAZING" piece of research. Somehow these pro-smackers have interpreted this research study as being supportive of smacking as harmless, and when I finally found the time to read the research paper myself I wondered "what colour is the sky in their world", because there is nothing in there to suggest anything of the sort.

There are two things that have distressed me the most about the way that the Section 59 debate has been framed in the media and by the pro-smacking brigade. One of them is the incessant coinage of the phrase "good parents" and the other is born from what I regard as a neanderthal attitude that we "own our children". I will discuss the emotionally loaded "good parents" rhetoric later, but for now I want to focus Part Two of my series on the latter premise as it relates to my own personal philosophy about "ownership" of another human being.

I touched upon this briefly in the "Section 59 debate" over at Frogblog, but decided not go into any depth about my experiences because the discussion was being drowned out by a handful of pro-smackers who were spamming the blog with screeds of feeble justifications for why smacking does not harm kids and misquoted research and internet news articles to support how "right" they are in their opinions.

I deliberated for several months over whether to even include a blog section on this website at all. Then I thought it would be nice if there would be other members here who would be willing to jump on board and have their own little blogging sub-section here at The Watermelon - a communal blog so to speak. So that is what I am hoping will evolve over time, and I guess somebody needs to get the ball rolling eh?