So many of these pro-cp posts romanticize corporal punishment, weaving a myth of some golden age when there were no problems in schools that couldn’t be addressed with a sore bottom. Underlying statements such as “It never did me any harm” is the assumption that if it didn’t do me harm, it didn’t harm anyone else.
Not every negative experience is dramatic, and not every negative effect of corporal punishment is dramatic either. Many keep quiet about negative experiences because of social pressures. Where corporal punishment is widely accepted, no one wants the label of whiner or pussy or wimp. I expect that many of the negative effects are subtle and go unnoticed. People become good at hiding scars, especially when they suspect that revealing the scars will bring down, not sympathy or understanding, but derision. Probably a lot of people hide the scars from themselves.
