Rule of Thumb Pt. 01 - Sex Stories

Rule of Thumb Pt. 01

... use a stick thicker than his thumb when her beats her." He paused, letting that remarkable statement sink in; saw, as always, that many of the students were now looking, not at him, but at their thumbs.

"He could beat her if he thought she'd spent too much money. If she hadn't cleaned the house properly. Had maybe looked a little too long at that good looking feller on the corner." The kids giggled nervously at his hayseed delivery. "Legally speaking, she was actually considered his "chattel," hisproperty. The husband waslegally responsible for her debts and behavior, so he had to have the authority to "spank" her if you will, to discipline her, if she didn't behave properly. We, and by 'we', I mean America and the Western democracies, we've come a really long way in a really short time. But here's the thing: it stops with us. In South America, Japan, India, China, all the Muslim nations in the middle east and the near east, and in all of Africa: all of these cultures still -right this very minute - condone "marital chastisement" as it is called, the legal right, or at minimum, a strong cultural expectation that a husband may physically punish his wife for perceived misdeeds.

"Now I want you to do a gut check. How does that make youfeel? Does it feel creepy? Wrong? Disgusting? Do you feel Astonished? Angry? Afraid?" He paused, searching their faces to see if he was getting through. "Well those are exactly the same emotions people from those cultures often feel when we ...

... tell them that womenshould not be subject to marital beatings; thatthey are arewrong,backward,ignorant,barbaric, when we tell them they should pass lawsprotecting women, and that men who beat their wives forany reason shouldbe put in jail. To them that's just crazy talk.

"There are roughly 1 billion people in the Western democracies. There are roughly 5 billion people, a couple ofbillion women included, who think we are the ones who are crazy for acting sostupidly; who know intheir bones, just as you do inyours, that our ways are utterly and completely wrong and dangerous. Now I want you to think about this and tomorrow, I want you to be ready to tell me: why are five out of six people on this planet so obviously mistaken for believing that men should be permitted to beat their women?"

He loved the delicious irony of this speech every time he gave it. It was always interesting to see how the kids struggled to reconcile their western liberal cultural indoctrination with the sheer numbers that stood in opposition to their deeply held but inarticulate beliefs. And he knew it didn't stop there: child brides, clitorectomies, honor killings, legions of enslaved prostitutes, polygamy. The profound dominion of men over women that reigned everywhere in the world - except in the West - was a staggering reality. And though he understood intellectually why the West was right and the rest of the worldwas on the wrong side of this gulf, another part of him, also quite rational, had to ...