From a 2006 entry on the “Quit the City” blog, describing a vacation in Ethiopia:

Probably the most memorable occasion was our visit to the Hamer people, where we were lucky enough to see a ‘Bull Jumping’ ceremony. I was suspicious that the Hamer were putting on the ceremony for the benefit of tourists, but as soon as we arrived it was clear that was not the case. The ceremony is an initiation ceremony performed by men before they marry. The star of the occasion is the ‘jumper’ who… stark naked, attempts to run over several bulls lined up in a row, while the people of the village yell in support. The jumper is successful and is permitted to marry if he manages to run over the bulls four times without falling off…

Prior to the jumping, the other ‘event’ is the whipping of women. And I don’t mean a tongue lashing, I mean actual whipping with long, thin, flexible branches. Although the thorns are removed before the whipping takes place, by the end of the day backs are severely slashed…

The meaning of all this was explained to us as follows . . . The men doing the whipping are previous successful ‘jumpers’ who have, therefore, graduated to be to be ‘beaters’. The women being whipped are not randomly chosen, they are the female relatives of the jumper (sisters, nieces, cousins, aunts, mother). The more they are whipped, the more pain they suffer for him and the more he feels their pain. The jumper will never forget the whipping of his female relatives and so he will never forget them…

For the Hamer woman – the more she is whipped, the more she shows her love for the ‘jumper’. We saw women begging men to whip them and crying when the men refused or did not whip them hard enough… The whipping was brutal and not easy to watch.

Here’s a photo of a Hamer man with a whip used “for ritual flogging of women”, from Lonely Planet:

From Harper’s magazine, March 2004:

From interviews with Iranian brothel workers conducted by Roya Karimi-Majd forZanan, a women’s magazine published in Teheran…. Translated from the Farsi.

When I was in the fourth grade my mother died, and my father died when I was sixteen. My older brother took the other eight of us to Teheran to live with our half brother and his family in a couple of tiny rooms he rented in the Islamshahr district.

A couple of days after we arrived, I befriended a girl at the vegetable market. I went to her house, and she lent me a beautiful overcoat of hers to wear to the store. When we went out, everyone was staring at me—I had become pretty. That night my half brother, who worked in the same area, came home, ate dinner, and then beat me. He kept saying, “Two days you’ve been in Teheran and you’ve been corrupted! What were you wearing? You’ve ruined my reputation!”…

I was in so much pain that I couldn’t sleep. When the morning call to prayer sounded, I ran away. I said to myself, “I’ll go find my mother’s sister. I’ll go back to my hometown. I’ll find a husband and be free from all of them.” It was nighttime when I got to the southern bus terminal, and the tickets were sold out. I didn’t have much money, so I went into the bathroom, where a few other girls were sleeping.

I had just started to fall asleep when a loud sound awakened me. The religious police were conducting a raid, and they took us all to the police station. From there we were sent to court. I couldn’t understand a word of what the judge was saying. I was sleepy. I wanted to tell him what had happened, but I couldn’t. In the end he gave me a sentence: eighty lashes and a 30,000 toman fine [thirty-five dollars].

When they whipped me, it hurt… At first, I screamed out loud. Then I just bit down hard on the edge of my chador. I was an idiot. I was only sixteen years old. I was locked up for three months. I actually missed my half brother’s beatings.

A Gulf Times report from Qatar on 2 July 2006:

A 32-year-old Filipina housemaid was found guilty on Thursday of illicit relations and sentenced to 100 lashes and immediate deportation. While denying the charge of illicit relations, she admitted that she was the mother of a three-month-old baby.

According to her sponsor, he reported the matter to the police after he found a baby in her room last April. “She told me that the baby belonged to another Filipina maid who left Doha a few days earlier.”…

However, the maid told the police that she allowed her boyfriend into the house “many times”. She said the “father” of the child is now in the Philippines waiting for her to join him so that they can get married.

WildChild, in her mid-30s from Tennessee, posted the following anecdote back in 2006 on a parenting forum:

Oh yeah when I was in school , paddling was very popular. In fact I think it may be what kept alot of us out of trouble most of the time , just the threat of having our asses smacked with a wooden board.

At that time a parent did’nt have to give permission for a teacher or administrator to paddle a child. I can remember my sister getting her a** busted everyday for about a week because she would not do her homework so after a couple of warnings the teacher began to give her three licks with the paddle everyday until she turned it in.

Finally after the end of the week the teacher called Daddy and told him what was goin on, he ended up going to the school and paddling my sister with the teachers paddle. She never was late turning in her homework again.

Nicole posted a comment in February 2009 on Dax Montana’s blog after he’d described his school paddling:

Corproal punsihement is actually still widely used in some parts of Texas–or at least it was at the high school near Dallas that I graduated from in 2001.

I took a 5-lick paddling (administered by the girls’ PE coach) for skipping (senior skip day) because choosing ISS meant you couldn’t particpate in graduation. Yes, my ass still hurts when I think about it.

Later that afternoon after swimming practice at the Y, a girl of about 10 in showers said to her Mom: ‘Look! She’s a big girl and she still gets spanked too.” After the shower, I looked in the mirror and my ass was still bright red!

A story about the rough life of girls in Philipino gangs, from the zReportage news site in January 2007, contained an interesting reference to their initiation process:

Davao’s gangs usually start out as cliques in school where they are called barkadas. They become more territorial once their members drop out of class, and eventually function as families for girls bound together by similar experiences of abuse and an adolescent desire for independence…

Most girls get sucked into gangs simply because they have boyfriends who are established members. In many of the city’s mixed gangs, the guys call the shots. They decide the date for parties, how much money everyone should chip in for alcohol, and who to send to the frontline during riots, says Taba, a founding leader of Hostage. For the most part, boys use girls to attract new members. “The girls are here pretty much for our pleasure,” Taba adds…

Tina heard about Hostage from a neighbor soon after the group’s establishment in 2000. Although it already controlled much of Boulevard’s Piapi market area in Barangay 22, the gang wanted to expand its 40-strong membership. “They need sisters,” Tina’s neighbor had told her. “Sisters” or “wives” were euphemisms for girlfriends. So she joined, and became Hostage secretary as well as Jun-jun’s girlfriend. Being part of the first batch of members and having a Hostage boyfriend also exempted her from undergoing the gang’s belt-whipping initiation ritual…     

Survival sex is widely practiced in gangs. They are where girls first learn how to indulge their adolescent concepts of love. And sexual intercourse, if it comes to that, is not necessarily consensual. Male gang members often manipulate girls and convince them to use their bodies as bargaining chips for protection or other necessities like food and cigarettes. Pure physical contact, whether or not it involves violence or an exchange of goods or cash, is equated with emotional love…. Guasa estimates that more than half of the 875 girls whom Tambayan has assisted experienced their first sexual encounter as a result of force.