I have written about this before. The tradition is simple.

Easter rolls around: you beat your girlfriend, daughter, even mother and aunts or female neighbours with a twig and you throw water on her.

That’s probably about the only way the average Slovak man will manage to make a woman wet anyway, so it’s natural to feel some sympathy for this practice.

Every year some feminist or some dude who thinks jumping into the breach for horribly oppressed women will write in the Slovak media how barbaric this tradition is.

They are wrong.

It’s a way for people to act like children (I mean that in a good way) and to blow off some steam.

It’s a simplistic tradition – Slovakia is a country where simple village life permeates everything – but it’s not a misogynistic tradition.

Maybe on some level it makes men less violent towards women throughout the year as the country has at least one day where in a symbolic way you can take out some frustration on women for being wholly incompatible with men’s desires. Not their fault. It’s just nature’s way of selecting the fittest. Yes, it’s cruel, though nature does not operate in cruel or not cruel terms.

I was once contacted by Elle. They wanted to do a piece on why so few women are killed by their partners in Slovakia. They were the most amateuristic, impolite, immature and chaotic journalists I have ever had to deal with and I have associated extreme exasperation with the publication ever since, but I suppose they got those statistics from somewhere.

I’m all for women’s rights, but one has to be afflicted with some serious blindness to female psychology to think women will be sexually satisfied if they are not being dominated at least some of the time.

I doubt those feminists are attracted to meek, ‘nice’ guys. There are feminist views and there is human nature, the result of millions of years of evolution. Some of those views and human behavior are simply not very compatible.

Equal pay? Sure. Of course. Can a woman do any job a man can do? Yup.

A bit of being dominated here and there? Well, if you want her to get wet other than by throwing a bucket of water on her, then yes…

And there is not just one bestselling book about a woman bending to the sexual will of a billionaire hung like a great Dane. There are many.

Of course there are women who prefer to be sexually dominant. They may even have to get used to the idea that this is also ok and that their are men who want nothing more than to be dominated by a woman, but generally women do get aroused by dominant men. The key is that it has to be respectful and consensual dominance.

By the way, imagine being the only woman in town not being beaten with a twig and not being hosed down… Or being a transgender woman and being passed over? How left out would those women feel?

I know Slovak women who hate the tradition.

I know Slovak women who like and respect the tradition, but try to hide when the hour arrives.

And I know Slovak women who like the tradition and probably look forward to it.

You know what a serious problem is? Those circa 6,000 girls who will have their clitoris cut out whilst tied to a cold floor today. Every fucking day of the year.

Maybe pro-feminist guys who want to collect brownie points should be writing more about that and less about entirely harmless Slovak Easter traditions.

Do I honor the tradition myself?

Not anymore. But only because I find it boring and because on Easter day there is nobody around that I would want to flirt with. (Zuzi and I have been together for 10 years). If I were courting someone today I just might.