From the archives: fungrlmmm is in her late 30s, and reminisced in March 2009 about her younger days:

I have felt the razor strap on my butt many times growing up.  If I messed up I knew I would have to go and cut a switch from the tree in the front yard or take the razor strap down from the nail next to the bathroom door.  It was our choice.  I was always lazier than my brother so I chose the razor strap even though it hurt worse.

Posted last week on the Angry Czeck’s blog:

Throughout my public school experience, “corporal punishment” was the prime deterrent to misbehaving. If a classroom became too loud or out-of-control, a teacher only had to pull out her paddle to silence the mob. Rarely did she wield it, although there were some teachers who leaned on the paddle harder than others.

But it was the threat of punishment that proved most effective. If given the option of writing sentences or copying dictionary pages versus three “licks” with the paddle, the former was nearly always chosen over the latter…

Girls were always treated differently than boys. Firstly, it was a singular day indeed when a girl received a paddling. It was like walking outside one night and seeing Halley’s Comet. Secondly, when a girl did get her licks, the force applied was significantly reduced.

I recall one afternoon when a female classmate was to get her corporal punishment. She was led into the hallway like royality on her way to the guillotine. We waited breathlessly for the sound of three smacks. But when she reappeared from the hallway, with no smack to herald her return, we knew we had be gypped. The boys in the class could barely conceal their disdain.

This was the Lead Story in the “News of the Weird” column in a newspaper from Macon, USA on 19 December:

In September, engaging in a tradition of the Dussera holiday in India’s Tamil Nadu state, Hindu priests ritually whipped 2,000 women and girls over a five-hour period as penance for a range of sins, from insufficient studying to moral impurity. Said one sobbing yet inspired lash recipient, “(W)hen we are whipped, we will get rid of our mental and physical ailments and evil spirits.”

More details appeared on MSN News back on 30 September:

When a celebrity in Malaysia was ordered to get four lashes for drinking in public, there was a hue and cry, but how about 2000 women getting gruelling blood-oozing lashes for over five hours in full public view? Well, that was what happened in a remote village in Tamil Nadu. Beating women can land men in jail, but in the Tamil Nadu village, over 2000 women were flogged as part of a ritual recently.

The group whipping was done by men priests dressed in flowing red robes. They literally cracked the whip on the women in order to drive away the evil spirits from their body. The whipping was also part of a local belief that it would cure girls in their teens of their illnesses.

The whipping ceremony took place on Vijayadashami day in the ancient Sri Achappan Temple at Bavithram Vellalapatti, a remote village situated on the border of Tiruchi and Namakkal districts.

The 2000 women were made to squat in an open ground near the temple and the line of `possessed women’ extended over half a kilometre. The priests then came with a thick whip and chanting mantras, they whipped the women for over five hours. Young girls were seen writhing in pain and they received the lashes. Many were left breathless and some were seen sobbing profusely… Many were given three to four lashes extra to drive away the ‘multiple spirits’ that possessed them.

One girl was whipped for not showing interest in studies. The parents believed that the lack of interest was because there was an evil spirit residing in her. She was given a good thrashing, but the young school kid did not know if it was for poor performance in her studies or for an unseen and unheard spirit in her body. All she was keen was to somehow control the searing pain left behind by the lashings…

People believe that a few lashes would cure illnesses that afflict women. Some get the lashes as a blessing. Bavithram Vellalapatti village is probably one of the few places were men can flog women in public in the name of tradition and get away.

There’s also a video of a news report, with photographs, at Indian TV station NDTV.

(From this free festive gallery)

From the Straits Times, 20 December 2009:

A MUSLIM model who was ordered to be caned for drinking beer urged the Malaysian authorities on Sunday to decide what should happen to her four months after her case was halted.

Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, 32, was sentenced to six strokes by a religious court in July, the first woman ordered to be caned under Islamic law in Malaysia, a moderate Muslim-majority country. But she won a surprise reprieve in late August when she was detained and then abruptly released by religious officials who had planned to take her to a jail where she was to undergo the thrashing. The government said the sentence was ‘too harsh’ and could damage Malaysia’s reputation.

‘They should declare what they want to do with me, tell me, don’t leave me in limbo, at least I would know where am I,’ Ms Kartika told AFP by telephone from her hometown in northern Perak state. ‘My stand is still the same – if they decide they want to cane me, please do it. I don’t want to pressure them but what they promised is to postpone the caning until after the holy month of Ramadan, which was over in September.

‘Even my lawyers don’t know how they should help me now,’ said Ms Kartika, adding that she is now a volunteer at an orphanage in Perak after quitting her job in Singapore at the height of her case to avoid public attention.