Gods I hate this society
One of my LJ friends, lanyel, defriended me. This happens occasionally and sometimes I just have this burning desire to know why, so I went to his LJ and asked what I did wrong. This was his response:
No you didn't do anything wrong. The other people that i cut from my journal, i cut because i was not reading their journals anymore. I removed yours only because there were pictures of young girls there and I was worried that I would log on in a public place and then someone would wonder why that was...
(I assume he meant the icons more than the friends-only pic, since the friends-only pic can be avoided easily enough.)
Oh. My. God. I got so angry! Not at him, of course, because it's perfectly understandable in this society of fear based around the pedophile panic, why a male might be uneasy having an age player who identifies as a little girl (complete with icons) as an LJ friend. What with all the pedophile panic bullshit... GRRR. Pedophiles are this generation's communists, the government and the media are making people see pedophiles around every fucking corner, and it's ridiculous. Yes, there are some serial child molesters out there, but they're actually not very common. The media just makes them seem so common in the same way they can make you think the murder rate is going through the roof when it's really declining; if all you focus on is the bad things, the bad things are going to seem a lot more common than they really are.
Besides which, the whole concept of protecting the children from molestation by cracking down on the serial molesters is ludicrous; serial child molesters are only about as common as serial killers, which is to say "a tiny percentage of the population." Since 90% or more of child molestation is done by the parents/legal guardians or other relatives, children are in far more danger of being molested by their family than by a stranger. Hell, kids are probably more likely to get bitten by a shark than they are to be molested by a serial child molester. (Okay, admittedly that one was a guess on my part, but on the whole my point remains valid.)
And furthermore, the kind of shit that this society does in the name of protecting children just does more harm than good anyway. Couples torn apart and one half thrown in jail because despite being only a few weeks older, the boy was 18 and the girl was 17. One-time offenders at low risk of reoffending forever denied the possibility of rehabilitation by being put on the sex offender registry. And I even once read a news story that just takes the cake: a man was driving along and a young girl ran into the road after her ball, almost getting run over. Angry, he got out of the car and held on to her arm and gave her a severe scolding on the dangers of running into the street. HE GOT ARRESTED FOR THIS. Arrested, when he'd done nothing wrong! The charges were dropped, but he got put on the sex offender registry anyway! You look at all that, and more, and you tell me this society is sane. I dare you!
Really it's all so much hypocritical bullshit anyway. What about people who are physically grown up but are mentally retarded? And oh, it's a crime worthy of a lifetime of punishment to take family snapshots of your baby boy in the bathtub, but the doctors can cut off part of his penis (circumcision), or mutilate the genitals of an intersexed baby and no one bats an eye? (Which is even more hypocritical and insane when you watch the big stink they make over female genital mutilation. Oh, it's not okay to mutilate a girl's genitals, but you can do it to a boy without a problem?) And sure, we're starting to crack down on people who prevent their children from getting health care because they think prayer alone will cure them, but we still allow the Amish to refuse to immunize their children! We still allow the Jehovah's Witlesses to refuse their children needed blood transfusions! We still allow the genitals of babies to be mutilated to make them "normal"! (Made all the more insane in that I'd be willing to bet if some parents into something weird like homeopathy were to refuse their children Western medical help, the same people trying to pray the illness away would be joining in the furor against them.)
Yes, child molestation is a horrible crime. But in my opinion it isn't nearly as bad as murder. And anyway, that doesn't mean society should be able to blow the problem way out of proportion just so they can have a scapegoat for their every guilt. You want to protect the children, society? Then stop being so goddamn overprotective. You're creating a generation of children who never learned how to grow up properly. So you're only doing your children a disservice by "protecting" them from the world. How are they to learn how to be an adult, if you expect them to magically metamorphose into adults the minute they turn 18? IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK THAT WAY!
If you *really* want to protect the children, then tell doctors to stop mutilating infant genitals! Stop expecting everyone to conform to your unrealistic dual gender system! Stop letting people refuse their children medical treatment on religious grounds! Stop filling children with fear of the universe! This fear of the pedophile around the corner is not helping. All you have to do is tell them what my parents told me: "If someone wants you to come into their car, demand to know the password. If they can't guess the password, run like hell."1 I never had a chance to test it, but I liked that system. And it didn't leave me afraid that someone was going to snatch me. Far from it; it made me feel safer. But then, my parents trusted me a lot more than parents today trust their kids. My parents treated me like a human being, and not as some fragile pet. (Okay, admittedly, I'm childlike and haven't learned how to fit into adult life properly, but that isn't their fault; I retreated from reality for most of my childhood, to escape the bullies, and *that* is why I ended up as I did.) And also stop punishing all males for the crimes of a small minority!
1 = We came up with the password system when I was about 5. And I got to choose the password. A sign of how ahead of my peers I was, the password I chose was "Naked dancing girls." :-) I think they allowed it because it was unlikely anyone would be able to guess it.
No you didn't do anything wrong. The other people that i cut from my journal, i cut because i was not reading their journals anymore. I removed yours only because there were pictures of young girls there and I was worried that I would log on in a public place and then someone would wonder why that was...
(I assume he meant the icons more than the friends-only pic, since the friends-only pic can be avoided easily enough.)
Oh. My. God. I got so angry! Not at him, of course, because it's perfectly understandable in this society of fear based around the pedophile panic, why a male might be uneasy having an age player who identifies as a little girl (complete with icons) as an LJ friend. What with all the pedophile panic bullshit... GRRR. Pedophiles are this generation's communists, the government and the media are making people see pedophiles around every fucking corner, and it's ridiculous. Yes, there are some serial child molesters out there, but they're actually not very common. The media just makes them seem so common in the same way they can make you think the murder rate is going through the roof when it's really declining; if all you focus on is the bad things, the bad things are going to seem a lot more common than they really are.
Besides which, the whole concept of protecting the children from molestation by cracking down on the serial molesters is ludicrous; serial child molesters are only about as common as serial killers, which is to say "a tiny percentage of the population." Since 90% or more of child molestation is done by the parents/legal guardians or other relatives, children are in far more danger of being molested by their family than by a stranger. Hell, kids are probably more likely to get bitten by a shark than they are to be molested by a serial child molester. (Okay, admittedly that one was a guess on my part, but on the whole my point remains valid.)
And furthermore, the kind of shit that this society does in the name of protecting children just does more harm than good anyway. Couples torn apart and one half thrown in jail because despite being only a few weeks older, the boy was 18 and the girl was 17. One-time offenders at low risk of reoffending forever denied the possibility of rehabilitation by being put on the sex offender registry. And I even once read a news story that just takes the cake: a man was driving along and a young girl ran into the road after her ball, almost getting run over. Angry, he got out of the car and held on to her arm and gave her a severe scolding on the dangers of running into the street. HE GOT ARRESTED FOR THIS. Arrested, when he'd done nothing wrong! The charges were dropped, but he got put on the sex offender registry anyway! You look at all that, and more, and you tell me this society is sane. I dare you!
Really it's all so much hypocritical bullshit anyway. What about people who are physically grown up but are mentally retarded? And oh, it's a crime worthy of a lifetime of punishment to take family snapshots of your baby boy in the bathtub, but the doctors can cut off part of his penis (circumcision), or mutilate the genitals of an intersexed baby and no one bats an eye? (Which is even more hypocritical and insane when you watch the big stink they make over female genital mutilation. Oh, it's not okay to mutilate a girl's genitals, but you can do it to a boy without a problem?) And sure, we're starting to crack down on people who prevent their children from getting health care because they think prayer alone will cure them, but we still allow the Amish to refuse to immunize their children! We still allow the Jehovah's Witlesses to refuse their children needed blood transfusions! We still allow the genitals of babies to be mutilated to make them "normal"! (Made all the more insane in that I'd be willing to bet if some parents into something weird like homeopathy were to refuse their children Western medical help, the same people trying to pray the illness away would be joining in the furor against them.)
Yes, child molestation is a horrible crime. But in my opinion it isn't nearly as bad as murder. And anyway, that doesn't mean society should be able to blow the problem way out of proportion just so they can have a scapegoat for their every guilt. You want to protect the children, society? Then stop being so goddamn overprotective. You're creating a generation of children who never learned how to grow up properly. So you're only doing your children a disservice by "protecting" them from the world. How are they to learn how to be an adult, if you expect them to magically metamorphose into adults the minute they turn 18? IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK THAT WAY!
If you *really* want to protect the children, then tell doctors to stop mutilating infant genitals! Stop expecting everyone to conform to your unrealistic dual gender system! Stop letting people refuse their children medical treatment on religious grounds! Stop filling children with fear of the universe! This fear of the pedophile around the corner is not helping. All you have to do is tell them what my parents told me: "If someone wants you to come into their car, demand to know the password. If they can't guess the password, run like hell."1 I never had a chance to test it, but I liked that system. And it didn't leave me afraid that someone was going to snatch me. Far from it; it made me feel safer. But then, my parents trusted me a lot more than parents today trust their kids. My parents treated me like a human being, and not as some fragile pet. (Okay, admittedly, I'm childlike and haven't learned how to fit into adult life properly, but that isn't their fault; I retreated from reality for most of my childhood, to escape the bullies, and *that* is why I ended up as I did.) And also stop punishing all males for the crimes of a small minority!
1 = We came up with the password system when I was about 5. And I got to choose the password. A sign of how ahead of my peers I was, the password I chose was "Naked dancing girls." :-) I think they allowed it because it was unlikely anyone would be able to guess it.