Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

The Right to Remain Innocent: Insisting That "Nothing Children Do is Sexual" Puts Kids in Danger


Table of Contents

1. 
Introduction: "Nothing Kids Do is Sexual" is False

2. Grooming, Denial, and Desensitization

3. Saying "Nothing Kids Do is Sexual" is Dangerous

4. When "Letting Kids Be Kids" Puts Children in Danger

5. Children's Freedoms: What Are They?

6. Author's Notes




Content



1. Introduction: "Nothing Kids Do is Sexual" is False

      Many people seem to agree that “nothing children do is sexual”. That is a perfectly reasonable position, if by that, they mean “nothing children do should be sexually arousing to adults”.

     However, “sexual” and “sexually arousing” are not the exact same thing. There is certainly some overlap, but only when, and because, people fail to properly articulate the difference between them. "Sexually arousing" is more specific than "sexual", by which I mean "having to do with (i.e., pertaining to) sexuality, sexual attraction, or the genitals / reproductive system".
     I bring up the fact that children have sexual urges, and masturbate, in order to demonstrate that the idea that “nothing children do is sexual” is patently false.

     Children exploring themselves in the privacy of their own rooms, is fine. But it is, no doubt, sexual; because what they are doing pertains to their sexual organs / genitalia. 
     
But to point out that children's sexual self-exploration is sexual, is not the same thing as stating that it is sexually arousing, or should be sexually arousing. The act of noticing that children have sexual urges, does not, by itself, sexualize children. If it did, then medical science itself could be described as sexualizing children.
     I do not bring up children's sexual urges, in order to justify sexual activity between children and adults. Nothing could justify that. I bring up the fact that children have sexual urges in order to explain that it is possible for children to "do something sexual". This is to say that it is possible for children to be introduced to sex, sexual content, and sexual context - and possible for them to be traumatized by sexual activity - regardless of their age.
      The idea that “nothing kids do is sexual” is false, because we know that children masturbate, and we know that minors have sexual fantasies.

    Children have these feelings and do these things, and we should be able to admit these facts without  “sexualizing” children, and also without being said to have sexualized children when we have not.
     The only people who want to pretend that "sexual" and "sexually arousing" aren't different things, are people who want to confuse us into thinking that anyone and everyone who points out that a child is being objectified, is perverted themselves.
     They want us to be scared into refraining from even talking about the subject of child sexual abuse, which has the effect of guaranteeing that children will never be rescued from abusive situations. This is the so-called "conspiracy of silence" which has loaned its name to the title of a documentary about child sexual abuse.




2. Grooming, Denial, and Desensitization

     It seems that some people are so unwilling to admit that kidnapping and child rape are as serious and widespread the problems as they are, that they have become defensive, and are in denial about the dangers which children face.

     They are in denial about the fact that the way some parents are leading and expecting and conditioning their children to behave, is excessively focused on their appearance, hygiene, dress, and/or make-up. Rewarding the child for looking "cute" or "pretty" or "attractive" too much, can have the effect of "grooming" the child to accept unwanted touching or flirtation. So can conditioning a child to kiss you too often in order to get what they want.
     Sometimes, parents' direction or negligence can even condition children to casually accept touching from adults, when that touching should be recognized as flirting.

     Parents reinforce children's complicity in grooming when they coach their children to look attractive at work, or tell the child to "kiss the cop's ass a little bit" if they are pulled over for a moving violation.     Many such girls are unaware that simply dressing attractively at the job site can attract uninvited flirtatious attention. This is not to blame the women, though; bosses want things this way.
     If the child voices any objection to being groomed (or being conditioned to accept grooming, which is often indistinguishable from grooming itself), the parent rationalizes their concerns away, and makes it clear that the child must learn to accept that people judge them instantly based on their appearance. Parents act as if the fact that many people are judgmental, justifies conditioning girls to devote huge amounts of their attention, time, and money, to their appearances; and to dress attractively at their first jobs.
     Not voicing objection to these behaviors, is thus the price children are learning to pay, for receiving accolades in school and other opportunities.



     It's very sad and disturbing that I actually have to write the next few sentences. It says something about the times in which we're living.
     
But if parents can make their kids dance in a cage, or grind on a stripper pole – and it's supposedly not child molestation – then what would these parents do, if they actually witnessed an adult touching their child's genitals?
     

     Breasts, armpit hair, and pubic hair are not the genitalia, but they are secondary sex characteristics. If some adult is making jokes about your kid's pubic hair, and won't stop, then you need to stop rationalizing and denying, and keep your child away from that person. And you should certainly not allow your child to perform for that person, nor take artistic direction from them.
     The mere fact that they are not directly talking about your kid's actual penis or vagina itself, should not put you at ease. If we keep saying "Nothing kids do is sexual", then the next thing we know, we'll be saying "Touching children's breasts, armpits, and feet is not sexual."
     These are the consequences of letting possible child rapist Bill Clinton teach our children that oral sex is not sex.


     To put it bluntly: "Nothing kids do is sexual, because children are by definition innocent and not sexual?" Wouldn't that imply that a child can disrobe, or even masturbate, in front of strangers, and it's automatically not sexual, because it's a child?
     If nothing kids do is sexual, then by that logic, someone could molest them, and it wouldn't be sexual.
     
If sexual means "pertaining to sex" instead of "arousing", then "Nothing kids do is sexual" is clearly false.
          If you touch a child's genitals, it will elicit something resembling a sexual response. The fact that a sexual response is triggered, does not always mean that the touching is desired. This would be like if a woman told a man "I know I didn't take advantage of you because you had an erection." As Oprah has explained, child sex predators will often subject their victims to pleasurable touch in order to confuse them into thinking that they liked it and consented.
     A
dmitting that the child will feel the touching as something sexual, is not admitting attraction to children; it is admitting that a child can be traumatized by sexual touching even if the child has not yet entered puberty.


     Children are capable of being exploited sexually, because children have genitals. The fact that they experience sexual feelings does not make it OK for adults to abuse them, nor does the fact that they have genitals.
     But in this new way of "thinking", to notice that there is something sexual about an adult touching a child's genitals - or about a child grabbing his crotch while dancing like Michael Jackson in front of thousands of people - would itself be perverted. Almost as if to molest a child at a young enough age, would remove all sexual context from the act, and maybe even all possibility of sexual gratification or arousal, on the part of both the adult and the child's, as well. This is obviously not true.
     
This line of twisted logic is nothing but pedophile-enabling grooming which is intended to desensitize us to child sexual abuse and confuse us about at what age it is possible for sexual activity to traumatize a child. It is possible at all ages.
     Some parents attempt to rationalize-away the idea that they should do something about the abuser. The Talmud makes numerous excuses for raping girls under three years old, using the same kind of twisted logic (about how the injury will go away, and how it's as if it never happened).
     
But it doesn't matter if the child forgets the abuse, or physically recovers from it. The child may still recover the memory later in life. Sometimes the trauma will fester subconsciously for years before those memories are recovered, causing the child all sorts of unexplainable suffering.
     We are not a civilized society as long as we continue to cling to "logic" that could someday lead us to conclude that "your child wasn't raped, because he was too young for anything sexual to be able to happen to him."

     These lines of twisted logic are nothing but pieces of pedophile-enabling grooming propaganda, which are intended to desensitize us to child sexual abuse, and confuse us about at what age it is possible for sexual activity to traumatize a child, and for sexual context or content to be introduced to children. It is possible at all ages.
     To insist that “nothing children do is sexual” too steadfastly, is to ignore, and consciously deny, all reasonable objections to placing children in what any rational person should be able to recognize as sexual contexts and sexual situations.


     Some adults have paraphilias ("kinks") for certain body parts, such as feet, armpits, and pubic hair. Understanding this is crucial to being able to detect when a potential child molester is fixated on some (supposedly) "non-sexual" body part of your child (or someone else's child), and to understanding how a non-sexual body part can be sexualized by someone with a perverted mind.
     Nickelodeon writer Dan Schneider has a foot fetish. He was filmed, on the set of iCarly, dragging teen actress Jennette McCurdy by her feet.
     Schneider snuck foot-related sketches and jokes into his shows for years undetected. Some people who know about Schneider have even surmised that Nickelodeon's foot logo (seen below) is some sort of veiled reference to Schneider's foot fetish.



     In fact, Dan Schneider's writing - and the acting of another pedophile named Brian Peck - have provided Nickelodeon's child audience with years of "immature gross-out comedy desigend for kids" which is actually cleverly-concealed humor based on child grooming.
     
McCurdy has now gone public about this, quit acting, and published a book about her exploitative mother.

.

     Proceeding from the idea that we should “let kids be kids”, what now dictates whether a child is being molested, is the child's ability to recognize the behavior as sexual, rather than whether the adult is touching the child for the adult's own purposes of sexual gratification.
     As long as the child's parents are capable of denying – and rationalizing-away – the problematic, hypersexualizing, exploitative nature of what they are teaching their child to do, then nobody else gets to criticize the parents' final decision. This is excused on the grounds that, if a parent is legally considered the child's guardian, then there is probably some actual active guarding going on. That would be a misguided assumption to make.

     We cannot continue putting the responsibility on children (most of whom don't even know what sex is yet) - instead of the parents - to recognize that something that's happening to them, is sexual. Yet that is what we are doing, each time we say “let kids be kids” to people who are only warning us that we are putting our children in harm's way.
     Parents should be jailed for repeatedly allow their children to be near, or be seen by, someone whose intentions are sexual.





3. Saying "Nothing Kids Do is Sexual" is Dangerous


     The Democratic Party, which once exalted itself as the party that cares about children, and the party of “it takes a village to raise a child”, has emphasized improving children's health and freedom from work at the expense of increasing children's safety from sexual predators. The Democrats have become distracted, by their lust for power, from the need to protect children. And, in some cases (Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, probably the Podesta brothers, etc.), their lust for actual children themselves.
     The Left used to consistently criticize the exploitation of children, though. Friedrich Engels, for example, called to an end to child exploitation, in the workplace and elsewhere. Some communists believed that communal raising of children could reduce child abuse; it would at least reduce the rates of abuse by the child's own biological parents.
     But now, with the rise of the deliberately transgressive social "values" of the Left (whose values have been poisoned by the neoliberals who run the Democratic Party) the Left's concern for children's welfare has largely dissipated, outside of their need for education and health services. Being concerned about children's physical safety, and right to remain unmolested, is, by and large, considered a "fringe" issue, or even a "conspiracy theory".


     As a result of this distraction, it is now deemed “bullying” to criticize parents who let their children dress inappropriately, or dance in manners which could be perceived as provocative, in public. If you don't want children to dance on stripper poles or in cages for adults' entertainment on TLC's Toddlers and Tiaras – and you talk about it on the internet – then you are “bullying” the child who you think is being exploited.
     “Shame on you, that kid might commit suicide!” Ridiculous, isn't it? If the child commits suicide, it's not going to be because people are criticizing their parents' decisions; it's going to be because the child is being treated like an object by its parents in the first place. A child whose parents care more about the possibility that the child's actions will lead to more money and attention for the parents, than about their child's dignity and honor, is being bullied by its parents.

     Children are usually not the ones who decide to put revealing or provocative photos or videos of themselves onto the internet; it is usually done under the parents' direction, management, and "supervision". But even when the parent is not directing the child to do these things, the parent still gave them access to the phone, and probably set up the account for their child. It's the parents who are at fault, not the children. That goes even when the child is the one who "decides" to post photos or videos; because children cannot make these decisions on their own.
     Most people understand that, but the idea that there are some things that children can do which parents' approval would never make acceptable.

     When parents objectify their children on the internet, they are not thinking about the bad things that could result from broadcasting photos and videos of their children, when they are at awkward stages of their life, and are still unable to give fully informed consent to the publication of photos and videos of them which they may regret later.
     Parents who use television shows or social media sites to display their children's bodies, for people they know are looking at them with intent of sexual gratification, are putting their children at risk of kidnapping by those people, and they are ignoring the possibility that their child could become a star, only to become addicted to drugs, or even die at a young age.
     I know that that is the worst-case scenario, but the fact that Jeffrey Epstein and his financiers have had ties to the fashion and beauty pageant industries, means that several industries which capitalize on girls' and young women's beauty, could potentially put unwitting females at risk.
     Not many mothers, who run their children's Instagram or TikTok accounts, seemed to know that just a few years ago.
     But after nine straight years of major sex crime busts at Disney, and grooming scandals involving men at Nickelodeon, it now seems appropriate to conclude that most mothers still trying to get their kids into the entertainment industry, know about these dangers, but simply don't care. To them, child actors are their children's competitors; not people who need to be protected.


     These days, we are not free to object to any level of child exploitation or child objectification, no matter how obvious. Only if a child is fully naked, dancing for money, is it deemed child exploitation.
     Nowadays, a bunch of adult males can get together at a bar, to watch a preteen boy dress in a belly-shirt, dance to Gwen Stefani (while impersonating Gwen Stefani, and lip-syncing to her singing about being just a girl), and nobody gets to say anything.
     As long as the boy doesn't take his clothes off, and there's no stripper pole, and nobody's throwing money at him, then he must not technically be a stripper, and there cannot possibly be anything wrong with what's happening.
     Does this sound like an exaggeration, or a stretch? Well, sadly, I didn't make that up. A boy who calls himself “Desmond is Amazing” did this in Brooklyn in 2019. His parents suffered no consequences, aside from a visit from New York Child Protective Services, and comments from some “haters” who evidently had the good sense to tell them that they're exploiting their child.

     The same boy can even dress as David Bowie, even though Bowie once raped a 13-year-old girl. Child actresses and girl singers can dress up as David Bowie for Halloween, and wear David Bowie T-shirts. Yet nobody seems to notice, and nobody seems to care, that kids the same age as groupies whom Bowie would probably try to rape, now idolize Bowie.
     
Parents of girls who become David Bowie fans should tell their daughters that David Bowie raped either three or four girls between the ages of thirteen and sixteen years old, or else they should stop letting their daughters listen to child rapists, and not tell them the reason until they're old enough to understand.


     The fact that Desmond danced without a stripper pole was enough to allay most readers' worries. But even when there is a stripper pole present, all the warnings on Earth are no match for a modern parent's denial.
     In recent years, several mothers have danced with their daughters on stripper poles, and posted videos of it on the internet. When they received the inevitable backlash -  people criticized them for introducing their very young daughters to exotic dancing - they argued “It's just a dancing pole!”.
     Sadly, the age of the girl involved in the article below, was just three years old or younger.


     But it's not only dancing onstage half-naked, and on poles, that is off-limits, as far as criticizing parenting decisions goes. Kids can also use ketamine with adults now!
     “Desmond is Amazing” was only nine years old when he said “Everyone can do drag” and then explained how it's totally normal for a nine-year-old boy to snort ketamine (which was widely considered a date-rape drug until just five to ten years ago) with adults who are covered in kabuki-style pancake makeup!


     In 2019, I became aware that a child singer, who was then aged 15, was allowing people in the audience to touch her hands and forearms during her concerts. These audience members were not only children, but also adult males.
     This child singer got her first tattoo on her forearm in 2019, at age 15, and was allowing grown men to caress her forearms, where the tattoo was located.
     Also, the smell of alcohol was in the air, because the concert took place in a bar, and both children and adults were present. Additionally, when the singer took breaks to go off-stage, the music that played over the speakers was rap music that contained curse words. I heard a young woman complain to someone else that there were children in the room while the speakers were playing vulgar rap lyrics.
     Evidently, the fact that this girl wasn't doing all of the things that strippers do (like take their clothes off), is enough to justify allowing her to do some of the things that strippers do (like dance in front of adults).
     The audience should have asked themselves the following question: "Wait, adult men can caress 15-year-old girl singers on stage, but they can't touch adult women whose job it is to take their clothes off for money!?"
     This is not just a matter of me "reading too much into it". Adult men now have a place they can go, if they want to touch children on stage without getting to know their parents and asking if it's OK first. This should not be acceptable, yet it is accepted, because we accept everything now. We do this because accepting the way things are, is easier than changing things, and accepting it makes you feel like you're being tolerant, and makes you want to pat yourself on the back.
     It's a bullshit line of logic, it puts children at risk, and it's the reason why society's problems are getting worse.




4. When "Letting Kids Be Kids" Puts Children in Danger

     The idea that “nothing kids do is sexual” is supported by the equally fallacious notion that “letting kids be kids” means we should let them remain completely innocent, or as innocent as possible, about sexual matters, and about the sexual intent which other people might have, regarding them.
     We are saying "letting kids be kids", and letting kids walk or bike unattended to the corner store, wishing for the old days when we didn't have to worry about them getting abducted. And then we still let them go to the corner store. We pretend that nothing has changed. This is a deliberate confusion of reality with fantasy; yet people who say parents should watch their children more, are regarded as the ones who are living in a fantasy world.

     It's not that kids need to be told specific things about sex at a young age; they don't. All I'm saying is that many kids are told not to talk to strangers, and are told to beware of kidnappers, but aren't told exactly why. Some kids don't make the connection that most kidnappers want sex; some kids simply assume that kidnappers want ransom money from the parents.
     Kids, at the very least, deserve to know that kidnappers want to rape or molest them, or, at least, that, in general, they probably want to do something that involves unwanted sexual touching or violation that they will not enjoy. Children deserve a “good touch vs. bad touch” talk, they eventually need to be told that they are more likely to be abused by someone they know rather than by a stranger, and they deserve to be taught the accurate names for their genitals (so that people can't easily use secret names for genitals and sexual acts to trick kids into keeping those activities a secret).


     If “let kids be kids” means “let kids wear whatever they want when they're swimming” - or “let kids play outside in their underwear or bathing suits, and if someone is watching, then they're a creep, and it's not the kids' fault, and they shouldn't have to cover up” - then that's fine.
     But people who say “let kids be kids” to justify silencing people who are criticizing parents' exploitation of children and children's images, are off-base.
     If you want to "let kids be kids", then that needs to with taking at least the bare minimum of reasonable steps to ensure that they are adequately informed about the dangers of kidnappers; and also to guarantee that they will not come near, nor be seen by, nor perform for, people who may not respect their children for any reason aside from the monetary and sexual value which can be extracted from them.

     Criticizing parents for “displaying their children in public” would be creepy and unfounded. But if the “public” in which the parent is displaying the child, is the “public” that's on the internet, or in the entertainment industry, then the parent might be doing it for profit.
     That might point to the possibility that the child doesn't really want to be dancing, modeling, singing, doing gymnastics, swimming (or whatever they're doing), and that the parent is pressuring them.
     A parent who would pressure a child to do something, so that the parent can take pictures and put them on the internet, is a parent who probably doesn't care whether the child would object, or will regret it when the child becomes an adult.
     Such a parent might even be the type to directly condition a child to do things they know are inappropriate or uncomfortable for attention or money, or even actively sexually abuse or assault a child.
     This is not difficult to imagine as something that is widespread, if you consider how many mothers of girls allow them to drink alcohol and/or have sex with their boyfriends "so that they're not out having sex somewhere where they're not safe."
     Despite such mothers posing as "cool" or "liberal" - and rationalizing that they wish they'd had such freedom as children (the operative word here being "children) - they are actually endangering their daughters. We should also be wondering how many mothers allow their daughters to have sex in their own houses because they plan to seduce their daughters' boyfriends.
     Mothers need to stop worrying about trying to be their daughters' friends. Believe it or not, it is possible to parent a child too liberally.


     Parents' denial about the possibility that they are exploiting their children, has caused these types of twisted logic to emerge, surrounding the old adages of "let kids be kids" and "nothing kids do is sexual".
     These sayings used to promote and protect the innocence of children, but have now been turned on their heads, by pedophile enablers who want us to lower our guards.
     Take "Nothing children do is sexual" for example. This phrase means that means that children are, by definition, sexually innocent, so nothing they do should be perceived as sexual. And that is a fine idea that makes plenty of sense. But if this saying is kept short, and never elaborated upon, then it will remain not descriptive enough, and confusing.

     Because there are many mothers who steadfastly believe that absolutely nothing children do should ever be interpreted as sexual in any way, it is now impossible to warn mothers that their child is being sexualized, groomed, or sexually exploited or objectified.
     Thanks to these new lines of "logic" surrounding "Nothing children do is sexual" and "Let kids be kids" it's almost as if noticing that children are being exploited sexually, is a more heinous crime than if you were to actually exploit or abuse the child yourself. The parents' denial will always reign supreme over the objections of others.
     Now, the idea that “nothing children do is sexual” is being used to pretend that any and all people who criticized the exploitation must have been perverted enough to see something sexual in what the child did, in order to be “bothered” enough to criticize it.
     Basically, if you think a child is being exploited for their appearance, or otherwise being put on display for adults, then you're the pervert. Because “Who else, except a pedophile, would notice the sexual undertones which I didn't detect?”

     You did detect them, though. In fact, you willfully ignored, rationalized, and downplayed those sexual undertones away.
     Are these mothers really saying that they had absolutely zero sexual intent when they taught their five-year-old daughters to dance in a tight costume inside of a cage? Do they really think a person would have to be a pedophile to predict that instructing a little girl to perform a dance full of pelvic thrusts, for a room full of adult strangers, could potentially elicit reactions of sexual arousal in people who might be in attendance for the wrong reasons?
     These women know exactly what they are doing. They do it because they know that pedophile alpha males rule the world, and they will do whatever it takes to be materially comfortable in that world. And, of course, objecting to their child's exploitation would end that material comfort very quickly.



5. Children's Freedoms: What Are They?


     There has developed a sort of licentious acceptance, and apathy, about child abuse, which enables parents to continue to sexually exploit their children, as long as it is done for the sake of the child's "prospects" (as I have explained), or else for the sake of the child's ability to “express himself”.
     So now a kid taking his shirt off and shaking his ass for adults at a gay pride parade, while people film it and then upload it to the internet without getting the child's and parents' permission first - isn't “exploitation”, nor in any way inappropriate. Now it's “self-expression”!
   Is a kid shaking his ass for adults? [For example, minor children who dance at gay pride parades.] Do you have a problem with it? Well, now it's “self-expression", which is protected free speech.
     As dance, it could even be spun as artistic: “If you object to it, then I can't help that you have 'tastes in art' which are different from mine.” Or worse, as something patriotic: "If you don't want me to let my child twerk next to grown gay men, then you are a fascist who is trying to take away my First Amendment rights."

     Children's freedom no longer consists in the right to remain innocent, and in the right to play without being endangered. Children's freedom now only consists in children's freedoms to act like adults (while adults get infantilized); more specifically, to look more like how American culture's stereotypes of what good, patriotic, compulsive-purchasing hypermasculine and hyperfeminine adults tell them how to look.
     Our society is suffering from apathetic acceptance and normalization of child exploitation. It is through this normalization, that other parents become desensitized to noticing child exploitation, and become unable to tell the difference between a child who's being exploited, and one who's not. Eventually, the parent may simply stop responding when the child objects to what the parent is instructing the child to do, or the parent will stop caring that the child is objecting.
     The parent will override the child's objection, instead of doing what they should be doing, which is giving the child veto power over all situations which the child is even remotely worried about their safety being compromised. There is no point in screaming at your kid, telling him he's safe, if he is freaking out and crying and panicking and saying no.
     Many people will read the preceding passage, and conclude that this means that I want children to be able to refuse to eat broccoli and take baths, or even that I want children to make decisions that override their parents. Nobody could reach this conclusion except for a pedophile, a pedophile enabler, or a person who is in extreme denial. Any reasonable person will understand that I not talking about some imaginary sort of children's freedom from being given adequate nutrition if they don't "consent" to it; but rather, I 
am talking about physical safety, and safety from sexual predation and grooming.


     A parent who accepts child exploitation, thus cares nothing of the child's lack of ability to give informed consent without an adult's guidance. Or else the parent deems whatever minimal level of attention they given their child, “guidance” and “supervision”, making it OK for the child to drink, dance, smoke, swear, or even take drugs, “as long as an adult is watching them”.
     Well, excuse me, but since when does an adult watching you, necessarily make you safer? Remember Desmond is Amazing, dancing in a bar, near where alcohol was being served? Those adults were watching him pretty closely. But as long as they're watching him, then he's being supervised, right? Wrong! Many of those men were only watching his body so that they could jack off to the memory of him later.


     Just as Desmond's mother is doing to him, some women seem to be conditioning their daughters to be nothing more than objects intended for men's entertainment and viewing. But as long as these mothers can pass off their daughters' activities as “dancing”, “rhythmic gymnastics”, “ballet”, or “just having fun making videos on the internet”, then no man can criticize it.
     Some women even seem to take personally, the fact that many of the people criticizing these “parenting” decisions, are men.
     In the midst of this recent battle to stop the sexualization and exploitation of children on the internet (as well as the hyperfeminization and early feminization of young girls), two traditional ideas have taken hits: 1) the idea that growing up with at least one woman and one man in or nearby their household is essential to raising a well-rounded child; and 2) the idea that fathers deserve to have equal input regarding how their kids are raised (unless they have committed spousal abuse or child abuse).
     And spousal abuse must be punished. But we must not punish spousal abuse instead of ending the demonization of poor divorced fathers, and fathers who were wrongly accused of abusing their kids. We must not prosecute spousal abuse instead of ending the demonization of fathers who are trying to warn people that their child's mother, teacher, priest, coach, dance instructor, child modeling photographer, or anybody else, might be trying to groom or objectify their kid, or expose them to sexual material or conversation.
     We must repeal the 1994 Clinton crime omnibus bill, which was penned by the current President Joe Biden, because it took nearly twenty different types of guns out of the hands of American mothers (and fathers alike), while the Violence Against Women Act (a portion of the 1994 crime bill) promised women a form of protection which has proven itself far inferior to having a man to protect the house: the administration of a Social Security and child support system that makes fathers pay ransom to the state in order to see their children.


     The silencing of men who oppose child exploitation, has at least four negative consequences. These include the following:
     1) men, whom have historically caused most of the exploitation of females, are now being discouraged from voicing an objection to that exploitation, when a man speaking out would represent a “sea change” on the issue of gender relations;
     2) it puts all of the responsibility on women to criticize other parents, when women are already shouldering most of the burdens of parenting;
     3) the exploitation and abuse of children has become more difficult to detect and call-out when it is perpetrated by women; and
     4) the issue of men losing custody, is being ignored, which is extremely dangerous because removing a man from the household removes the member of the household whom is most capable of defending the family from the state (and from its possible attempts to take custody of children without cause).


     This insanity has got to end.

     Today's kids and young adults are being pushed through an amoral machine that's designed to turn them into either: 1) submissive wage-slaves who are effectively whores due to the way they are being objectified at work; 2) people with no skills, save for dancing like horny idiots; 3) outright child sex slaves and child prostitutes; or else 4) people who sell their children into prostitution.

     Child exploitation does not increase solely through exploitation on the job site, nor solely at the hands of government. It also increases due to lax social mores, which can be exacerbated by economic stressors.
     Sadly, the way this often manifests, is that unemployed parents are telling their kids to go to work, when the parents should be mature and stable enough to retain employment and make that sacrifice for their child (who risks dangers and unwanted flirting at the workplace).
     Economic stress and child exploitation both become rampant when those who have the most skills and the most control over the means of production, strategically withhold skills, education, and opportunities, from teenagers and young adults (any of whom might lose control of their life, and then resort to potentially dangerous sex work as a last-ditch effort to pay the bills).


     That is why we must fight child exploitation and child objectification on the economic front, the political front, and the social front alike. And we must teach our children that the sex trade is not always dangerous, and not always shameful, but can become dangerous or shameful quickly if they go into it without being cautious, realistic, and prepared to defend themselves.

     Take off the blinders. These behaviors are problematic. Noticing that they're problematic, isn't perverted, nor is it obscene. Noticing that children have sexual urges isn't obscene. What would be obscene, would be to fail to do something about the numerous widely condoned and legal forms of exploitation of children (in addition to the blatantly illegal forms of physical and sexual abuse of children).



     We have got to stop “shooting the messenger”, and shouting “pervert”, when people speak up about children who have no idea that they're being exploited for adults' sexual gratification; children whose guardians have abdicated their roles as protectors of their children's lives and innocence. They have not protected their children's innocence; but rather, their right to remain ignorant.

     There is no way we are going to be able to consider doing things like legalizing sex work for adults, nor establishing minimum ages for working and being party to contracts, until we establish and spread basic social mores which would limit adults' abilities to interact with children, based on an understanding that all adult-child interactions carry with them an extraordinarily high risk that intimidation will occur (whether intentional on the part of the adult or not).
     Otherwise, no child will be able to get even remotely famous or successful at an early age, without becoming objectified or exploited by adults. This is tragic, because, often, lack of financial independence is what causes children (and usually their mothers, as well) to become susceptible to child abuse.

     If wives and daughters do not achieve sufficient financial dependence from abusive fathers without risking becoming dependent upon bosses or welfare checks in a way that makes them susceptible to unwanted advances in the workplace, then girls will begin to grow up directly from children, up into strippers. This will happen so early and become so common, that it will become a part of our culture, which nobody can criticize, because everyone is doing it.
     
This is peer pressure. This is group sacrifice of children, for the sake of demonic, public, ritual child sexual abuse. Children will never learn that being exploited on stage - or getting exploited in fields aside from entertainment - is unacceptable, until their parents learn that it is unacceptable first.

     This process has already taken root in Japan, where grown men can come to leer at prepubescent girls as they sing on stage, preparing to become pop music stars.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JywMhWnOQqk

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0df7k__KEHw

     And as you can tell by the stories above (about Desmond, and the 15-year-old child star with the tattoo who let adults touch her on stage, whom I mentioned), it is happening here in America as well.


     We must teach children that "drawing on themselves" with semi-permanent tattoos, permanent tattoos, and piercings at young ages – and dancing for adults, especially near where alcohol is being served – are not things to be proud of. Nor are they things that children should be able to decide by themselves. Nor, even, are they activities that a parent's approval and permission could ever make acceptable.
     
We must teach them that these prohibitions are not to be cruel or harsh on them, but to keep them safe from adult predators who get off on seeing children mature too fast.

     Considering how few American parents are well-educated about the problem of sexual predators in our government, parents might not even be able to offer sufficient guidance, in a way that leads to a decision which acknowledges the child's dignity and the child's right to remain innocent.
     
If a child insists that getting a tattoo or a piercing will help make them "cool", the parent usually doesn't consider whether the child is choosing a painful form of "self-expression" out of a misplaced desire to commit acts of self-harm.
     
By this, I mean to say that some people who get piercings and tattoos, do so because they are socially acceptable forms of self-harm. There is a French saying that translates to "you must suffer in order to be beautiful."
     H
owever, the kind of people I'm talking about might never guess that they are doing it to themselves because they are struggling with suppressed memories of trauma or abuse. They might never consciously think "I want to take the power to harm myself into my own hands", but they might do it anyway.
     
By getting artistic works imprinted onto themselves, which can serve as beautiful calls for help, they can draw positive attention to themselves. Unfortunately, though, this only feeds the cycle of self-abuse; as the person's need for positive attention is satisfied, but for the wrong reason, while the very real self-harm (minor though it is) is being ignored as a sign of desire to self-harm. We would be foolish to assume that there exist no minors who experience the same thing.
     Moreover, sex traffickers have been known to "tag" or mark the people they traffic, with tattoos. It is a sad state of affairs when some people are getting painful tattoos to help them heal from sexual abuse, while other people are getting tattooed because they're getting taken as some pimp's or sex trafficker's property.

     No parent could possibly understand - let alone convey to their children - all the possible negative consequences which could result from getting a tattoo, getting pregnant, or having sex at an early age. The child can't be "guided" to the right decision, if the parent can't even warn the child of all the potential negative consequences.
     
That's why adults need to work together to craft laws that protect children, while respecting the freedoms of adults, and confer an adequate amount of freedom upon children at the same time.
     So why are we allowing certain states to go on having no minimum age for marrying and tattooing as long as a parent and/or a judge says it's okay? Whose freedom does that promote?


     It's not that kids should be ashamed of doing these sorts of things, necessarily. They certainly shouldn't be bullied for it, anyway.
     But, to the point, it's their parents who guided them into those bad decisions. The parents should recognize that they are exposing their children to risks such as kidnapping and objectification, and the parents should be punished – not the kids – while the kids should be told that their parents instructed them to do something that was wrong, selfish, and potentially suggests mental illness.

     We must teach children - and parents as well - that painting children up like whores at young ages, and making careers out of looking pretty for adults and doing little else, are not dignified. The fact that many people consider sex work to be less shameful than other professions we could name, does not mean that teenage girls should be taught that they should start getting ready to become prostitutes when they are still in high school.


     There are some decisions that no children are mature enough to make; not even with a parent's guidance, and a judge's permission. This includes marriage, pregnancy, driving, drinking, taking drugs, and getting tattoos and intimate piercings (and, arguably, getting any piercings at all).
     Getting tattoos, before you're old enough to make long-term decisions about what permanent marks will be on your skin, is not glamorous. A girl should not look like a piece of luggage that's been shipped around the world before she's eighteen years old.

     Reducing yourself to little more than a work of art may seem glamorous. But to do this to yourself is an act of self-objectification. The fact that you do it to yourself, is not “empowering”, and it does not power away from anybody.
     It just allows you to reduce yourself to the level of an object, saving those who wish to objectify you, the expense, of having to start that process by themselves (which they do by grooming you, noticing things you're sensitive and self-conscious about, and making you vulnerable to flattery about your appearance).


     Tattooing is not just "drawing on yourself", it involves the act of allowing an adult to cause you pain for money. Old people should not be looking down at permanent artwork on their bodies, fifty years from now, thinking "I got that before I was old enough to consent to anything life-altering or permanent or painful" (all three of which tattooing is).
     Piercing and tattooing involve danger because they involve direct infliction of pain. Adults - who are, on average, larger, stronger, and more mature than children - have a responsibility to protect children from dangerous decisions, because are not wise enough to protect themselves.
     Unfortunately, we are approaching a point at which adults are not wise enough to protect children; or at least have willfully abdicated their duty to do so.

     Children are being publicly sacrificed for the sake of artistic self-expression; we must not deny this.

     Any parent who allows their child to be objectified for adults in such manners, should be looked at as if they were worse than a pimp. And they are worse than many pimps; because some pimps exclusively pimp adult women, and who leave children alone.


     Don't fall for cheap objectification. Don't yet others reduce you to the monetary value of your appearance and your image. Be a real person, not just a work of art. Respect yourself. Maintain your dignity and hold onto your innocence.
     Your dignity and innocence are more precious and valuable than anything you have, no matter how much others are willing to pay to see your other "talents", and no matter how much others are willing to devalue your innocence or cast doubt on its existence.


     We must not suffer those who question the innocence of children in order to justify "instructing" them about sex on the grounds that "they need to learn sometime". Anyone who talks like this is a sick person.
     When I attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the late 2000s, my "sociology of sex" professor announced that there would be an optional extra credit assignment in the course. He then held up the prize that would be given to the winner: a red T-shirt, with white letters that spelled "If you don't teach your kids about sex, I will."
     That might seem like a funny "inside joke", for academics working in the fields of sexual sociology and gender studies, because their job is to teach "kids" (really, eighteen-year-old adults) about sex. But ultimately, it is little more than a threat to rape people's children if they do not overwhelm their children with sexual information before they reach adulthood (basically, conservative people's children).
     This kind of talk should be unacceptable. It is joking about children's innocence and safety. And it has got to stop.



6. Author's Notes

     I have previously discussed many of the topics mentioned in this article; specifically in my September 2020 article "How Your Children Are Sexually and Economically Objectified and Trafficked into the Social Security Slavery System", which can be read at the following link:
     http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-your-children-are-sexualized-and.html




Written on March 8th and 9th, 2021

Published on March 9th, 2021
under the title
"Insisting That "Nothing Children Do is Sexual" Puts Kids in Danger"

Edited and Expanded on March 23rd, 2022
and April 25th and 26th, 2022

Title Changed on March 23rd, 2022

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Against the Beating, Circumcision, Piercing, and Tattooing of Minors (Incomplete)

Table of Contents


I. First Introduction: Abstract / Summary
II. Second Introduction: Goals and Purpose of This Article
III. Third Introduction: Why I Wrote This Article
IV. Six Reasons Why Children Should Not Be Hit
V. Why Children Should Not Be Circumcised
VI. The Primary Duties of a Parent
VII. Why Young Children Should Not Get Their Ears Pierced
VIII. Twenty Reasons Why Minors Should Not Get Tattoos or Body Piercings
IX. Why You Don't Have the Right to Sell a Part of Your Child's Body
X. Which Institutions in Our Society Are the Most Plagued by Child Abuse?
XI. Constitutional Analysis of How to Achieve Legal Changes in These Policy Areas
XII. Conclusions



Content


I. First Introduction: Abstract / Summary

     What follows - aside from an explanation and defense of my thoughts on those topics - represents a more or less comprehensive encapsulation of how I think children ought to be raised, aside from the topics of adoption, abortion and infanticide, and children's education.
     This article is also intended to function as a general treatise on my understanding of how and why children have limited ability to give consent.

     To be clear, when I say (in the title of this article) that I am “against the beating, piercing, and tattooing of minors”, I mean to say that I oppose the beating of children except in the most extreme of circumstances (which I will explain). Also, that I oppose the circumcision, tattooing, and body piercing of minors under 16, regardless of the presence of parental consent, and regardless of whether the state has legalized it. Additionally, I mean to say that I oppose the piercing of very young children's ears.

     In this article, I will focus on four types of adult/child interactions which cause me the most concern, since they involve the direct and willing infliction of pain upon children by adults: 1) beating, hitting, and spanking; 2) infant genital mutilation; 3) the piercing of minors; and 4) the tattooing of minors.
      Additionally, will explain why I believe that parents whom allow their children to get piercings and tattoos, are either enabling their children's self-harm, or exposing them to a great risk of self-harm and/or harm by others.
     I will also explain, throughout the article, why I think that the child's ability to give truly, fully informed consent is vastly outweighed by the power of suggestion of both the parents and the state. I will defend the notion that the state's and parents' approval of beating or spanking does not make it consensual on the part of the child.
     I will also explain why I think that the fact of the state's and parents' approval of the circumcision, piercing, nor tattooing of minors, should not be construed to suggest that the standards of governments and some parents should be the example for all parents, or for society in general.
     I will defend the notion that beating, circumcision, piercing, and tattooing – and other actions – put children at risk of not only self-harm, but also delinquency, endangerment, neglect, and insufficient protection. I will also explain why I believe that parents should be charged with child neglect, child endangerment and reckless child endangerment, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, if they allow their children to come to harm in these ways.
     I will also explain why I think that all of these abuses of children constitute not only direct physical child abuse, but also behavioral conditioning to avoid resisting adults' attempts to compliment their looks, flirt with them, and even “buy them” in various surreptitious ways (as well as, potentially, even pseudo-sexual or semi-sexual forms of child abuse).
     Following that, I will explain why I believe parents do not have the right to sell their children's foreskins to medical research companies. Penultimately, I will share my thoughts regarding which locations, and which institutions and industries in our society, I believe are the most plagued with pedophile grooming, child sexual abuse, and human trafficking; and give some additional advice to parents about how to protect their children from various threats.
     Finally, I will explain my thoughts about what the law ought to be in regards to the beating, circumcision, piercing, and tattooing of minors; as well my thoughts regarding the obstacles and advantages to making progress through enacting either federal law or state laws to address these problems.

     At the end of this article and throughout, I have provided links to my other articles on topics relevant to those discussed herein.


II. Second Introduction: Goals and Purpose of This Article

     Looking around this country for the past twenty years, I have been horrified to have to contend with the average American adult's lack of understanding of what constitutes consent. Considering the deprivation of our civil liberties since 9/11, I especially doubt that the the government understands the need for its authority to derive from “the consent of the governed”.
     But the need for consent of the governed, does not concern me as much as does the average American's understanding of why children do not have the ability to consent to life-long decisions (especially those which involve physical pain). I have documented many of these instances of abuse, in my May 2017 "listicle" (article / list) entitled "One Hundred Four Links About Arrest and Abusive Treatment of Students", available at the following link:

     Since the parietal (frontal) lobes of children's brains are not as well-developed as those of adults, their ability to understand long-term consequences - and make complex decisions based on those consequences - is relatively limited. Teenagers do not make decisions based on information, nor facts, nor pros and cons, nor cost-benefit analyses. For the most part, they process information - and make decisions - based on emotions, which are regulated by the amygdala, not the frontal lobe.
     The frontal lobes of children's brains are not well-developed enough to make important decisions through careful thinking and through using facts, as opposed to making decisions according to their feelings and according to impulse. There is even recent research that suggests that the human brain doesn't fully mature until the age of 25. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164708
     This is why children who have not yet reached the age of 18 (or 17, in about half of the states' primaries) are not allowed to vote in elections. It is why their ability to enter into contracts - including work contracts and marriage contracts - are limited by law, and by the consent of judges and parents.

     [Side note, concerning the age of consent in an anarchist society:
     Even if elections are rigged, and the government is illegitimate (and they are), establishing an age of consent to interactions bearing many potentially life-altering or negative consequences, is essential to ensuring the survival of civil society. This is always true, whether anarchists are seeking to establish a moral code either outside, or against, the state.
     If you believe that any contracts and binding decisions which are made in society, should be made voluntarily and furthermore in a way that ensures minors' full information alongside parental guidance, when making decisions bearing life-long consequences, that doesn't necessarily make you “a statist”, and it doesn't mean you support the use of legitimized force against peaceful people.
     Whatever contracts or decisions anarchists decide to adopt concerning the age of consent, should be at least as good as, or better than, whatever age of consent laws the federal and state governments are enforcing now.
     If a community of anarchists declines to set any minimum age required for working, being party to contracts, marrying, etc., then people who trust government because they want a moral society in which children are safe, will not see anarchism and the abolition of government as solutions to the problem of child exploitation. They will correctly note that government sets an age of consent, while anarchists don't. And if anarchists are resolved not to set any age of consent requirements whatsoever, then the only way they can prove they're responsible, is to adopt some comprehensive, serious, and rigorous set of checks against the power of adults to exploit children.
     Throughout this article, I will support the idea that the age of consent to various activities, are set too low in most states, as well as by the federal government. I will additionally support the idea that potential anarchist replacements for age requirements – such as the notion that a child may work or marry, provided that they are “sophisticated” and “mature” enough – also risk causing us to run into some problems, in terms of our standards about judging whether a child has full or impaired ability to consent.]

     Decisions bearing life-long consequences, are the types of decisions that can have effects that last throughout one's entire lifetime. This is especially true in regards to decisions which involve the direct and willing infliction of pain upon a child. I say this because children can spend decades recovering from physical child abuse.
     Sure, a child might appear to “consent” to some things; say, for example, being lightly punched by a parent while they are young. More accurately, they can be tricked into appearing to consent. But children cannot consent to this behavior; not if it happens over and over again, nor if they are conditioned to accept punching as a normal everyday part of discipline or play, nor if punches are inflicted upon the child by a much older adult who should know better. A child cannot consent to the years of emotional trauma which may result from an apparently consensual thing that happens to them while they are still too young to know for how long it will continue to affect them and bother them.
     Decisions which affect children for their entire lives, especially decisions involving physical pain or permanent disfigurement, are too complex for children to make. But to leave pain and dismemberment aside for a moment, and to deal solely with decision-making: children may regret the decisions they made when they were children, once they come of age. Children are not yet able to understand all the activities from which they may be precluded, as a result of making an irreversible decision before they come of age.

     I will explain in this article why the mere fact that judges and parents can and do "give consent for a child to be married" - and the fact that judges can emancipate minors, and other things - should not suggest that society at large should accept these things as normal or beneficial to children's well-being.
     Governments and parents who allow their children to be married, basically "consent on the child's behalf". Which really means (as far as I'm concerned) that the child who appears to consent to a marriage can never be consulted while they are "of sound mind and body". Which is to say that no child is “of sound mind and body” - no child is in full possession of his wits and his decision-making capacities – before reaching an age of mental and emotional maturity.
     Additionally, many important decisions a person could make, also require that the person reach physical maturity. I believe that physical maturity must be present – in addition to mental and emotional maturity – for a person to make a consensual decision about whether to submit to pain (or to harsh labor, or tough physical conditioning, for that matter).

     In general, I will explain why I think the so-called “consent” given by a minor under age 16 – even with parental consent and state legality – is not sufficiently informed, and therefore does not constitute truly and fully informed consent. I will advance “fully informed consent, and awareness of most possible negative consequences” as a stronger standard for ensuring that consent has been given, than the mere appearance of consent.
     I believe that a child can never fully anticipate and weigh the pros and cons of all of the possible negative consequences pertaining to children interacting with adults. Especially since children's inability (or significantly impaired ability) to consent, precludes them from participating in all sorts of contracts and interactions. But an awareness of most potential negative consequences, might sometimes be good enough. However, knowing most consequences of an action, is not a guarantee that one will be aware of the worst possible consequence.

     The fact that children are precluded from participating in some adult activities (including working, being party to contract, sex, marriage, and even everyday social interactions with adults) may upset some teenagers who believe that they are mature enough to handle them. However, I will explain why I believe that the purpose of excluding children from most adult activities, is to keep children safe from exploitation and manipulation by adults. Especially, from adults who tell children what they want to hear; and who feed their desire to be told that they are mature enough to handle it.
     Although I would consider many of those interactions natural rights that should be free, in the event that the only people participating in them were adults, I will defend in this article the idea that children's limited ability to fully comprehend what they think they're consenting to, does not qualify them to become party to most contracts and interactions. And especially not without both: 1) significant parental guidance; and 2) full parental information. Not just one or the other, but both. And also, regardless of the opinion of a judge.
     After all, we're talking about fully informed consent being (or becoming) the standard. Not just some base level of “consent”, which merely requires a person to be “talked into it”. For fully voluntary consent to be said to have occurred, a person has to: 1) be able to fully understand all of the potential consequences of an action; and 2) not be forced, coerced, threatened, manipulated, nor even pressured, into an interaction, in any way.
     It is not enough to assent (that is, to give up struggle, having no realistic means to choose a different alternative); we must consent, and we must truly want to do what we're doing, without any reservations, worries, more pressures. Consent must not only be fully informed; it must be enthusiastic. Additionally, free choices cannot be made without a plethora of realistic alternatives. Nor can they be made when options are taken away unreasonably, or when options are rendered difficult or expensive to choose without cause.
     That is the standard which we should set for ensuring that adults fully consent to decisions and actions. But since children are so impressionable, they require extra protection; more protection than adults do. Children need to be shielded from the possible manipulative and pressuring effects which may result from certain adults' power of suggestion. This is to say that many children have been so well-conditioned to trust parents and adult relatives and teachers and police officers, etc., that they have practically been trained to trust all adults.
     A child should not take as gospel what an adult says, in several situations. For example, if: 1) that adult doesn't know what he is talking about; 2) that adult is overly confident or unsure of what he is saying; or 3) that adult is just communicating a matter of his opinion. Especially if that opinion is in regards to how a child should be brought up, and how cautious a child should be about kidnappers and predators; and especially if the child's parents are not within earshot while the conversation is happening.
     I will explain herein why I think much more consideration and protection than Western society currently considers normal, is necessary in order to keep children safe, and shielded from undue influence by adults whom are not their parents. I will also explain what I think are the roles of each the parents, the state, and other adults in society, in protecting children.


III. Third Introduction: Why I Wrote This Article

     I grew up in an affluent suburb on the North Shore of Chicago, called Lake Bluff. Once, when I was eight years old (this would have been around 1995), I was dining with my parents, and a friend of my father's, at home.
     My father's friend had a daughter who was around 5 or 6 years old. He was talking about how he had recently taken her to get her ear pierced. I can't recall how the whole conversation went, but he expressed a tinge of remorse or regret, or talked about how he hesitated, in getting her ears pierced. It might have been due to a concern about the pain involved, or the girl's youth, or perhaps both.
     I, of course – being who I am, and also being, at that time, a fly-on-the-wall eight-year-old – responded as rudely as possible to this as I could; by pouncing on this father's slight amount of regret, and attacking it with the first thought that came to my mind. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was something like, “You know what would be a good thing to do? Not poke a hole in your daughter's ear.” My reasoning went like this: If his daughter never got her ear pierced, she wouldn't have to endure the pain, and he wouldn't have to think about it. It seemed logical enough!
     Immediately thereafter, I began developing the reasoning that backed my opinion up. At the age of eight, I already had some vague idea that it's wrong to pierce a very young child's ears because: 1) it is painful; and 2) it makes them “pretty”, when they're too young to need to be pretty for anyone. The idea that 3) children are not mature enough to be able to consent to that type of thing, was developed later, and slowly.

     The next of my memorable experiences involving the piercing of minors, occurred at the age of nine. I was in third grade, and a new student joined my class; a male student with a single ear piercing. He told us that if he'd had the other ear pierced, then it would mean that he was “gay” (homosexual). He also told us that he was not gay.
     There were several strange things about this kid, aside from being the only boy in the class with an ear piercing (and the only student with a single ear piercing, as well). Aside from the facts about sexuality which he revealed while explaining his piercing, he would tell us other things about sex and the adult world. These included things that we, at age eight and nine, did not necessarily want to know, but maybe thought that we wanted to know. (Here's the thing about learning sexual things when you're still a child: you don't know whether you really wanted it to happen, until after you become an adult.)
     The boy told us about how many men a woman could “take on” sexually at the same time (which he claimed was five). He told us about how the goth rock singer Marilyn Manson – then a new phenomenon, in the mid- to late 1990s – had had his ribs removed in order to be able to “suck his own dick”. Again, we were eight and nine years old when this kid told us these things.
     Some of my readers may be thinking, “How do you end up going to school with kids like that Where the Hell did you go to school? ” To repeat, I'm talking about affluent northern Chicago suburb Lake Bluff, Illinois, and the District 67 school system.
     I assure you that this did happen; I personally observed it. Additionally – and I don't mean to cite fiction in order to prove a fact – fim directors such as John Hughes and Todd Solondz have devoted large portions of their careers making films alluding to the abuse and neglect of children being overlooked, and assumed to not happen, in the suburbs. And art often imitates life.
     The list of strange things about this child continue! He had shadowy, deep, sunken eyes. He looked like he either hadn't been exposed to the sun much, or was overtired, or both. I noticed this at age eight, and I was somewhat disturbed by it, but not enough to talk to any adult about it. The child's appearance and behavior only became suspicious enough to me to speak and write about as the years went on.
     Thinking back now, I can't help but wonder whether this child looked the way he did, because he was either kept inside, or deprived of sleep, in order to perpetuate sexual abuse. If this child was, indeed, abused physically or sexually, how could it have gone on so long unnoticed? Not that I, nor any other innocent child, should have had the responsibility to notice it. But what about the child's teachers, and other parents?

     The third and final of my childhood experiences involving the piercing of minors, which I would like to share with my readers, occurred when I was 13 (around 2000). I was in a homeroom class which was made up of students from multiple grades.
     We had all just returned from summer vacation. A 14-year-old girl came up to me, said “look at my new belly button piercing”, and gave me about half a second to decide whether I wanted to see it. I realize, looking back on it, that she was basically “flashing” me a part of her body, and giving me virtually no opportunity to decline her offer to look at her piercing.
     My immediate reaction to this was twofold (aside from my unease with not being given an adequate chance to decline): 1) I had a visceral reaction to the thought of someone enduring pain on that part of their body; and 2) I thought it was “slutty”. By the age of 13, I was mature enough to express thought #2, so I expressed thought #1 instead, and said something like, “Didn't that hurt”?
     And I did think it seemed “slutty” for a 14-year-old girl to get her navel pierced. Especially if she was going to be showing it off like that; probably to younger and older boys, and female friends alike. Granted, when she “flashed” me, there was supervision by the homeroom teacher. But the teacher didn't think anything of it, as far as I can remember, and made no attempts to either discipline or defend the girl for that behavior, after she did the same thing to several other students within the preceding moments.
     At that time, at the age of 13, I had some basic notion of “Doesn't this girl realize that by wearing this body jewelry, she will be basically encouraging boys and men to look downward on her body, towards her groin? Shouldn't anyone who's talking to 13-year-old, be looking them in the face, rather than at their torso, whether that person is an adult or a child? Doesn't this piercing ensure that strangers, and maybe even adults, will be enticed to look at that part of her body?”
     I also thought, "How could her mother approve of such a thing?" I had no sense of just plain "that's kind of tacky", and it definitely did not cross my mind that, “wow, she must have gotten that piercing because she has a super-cool mom”. I don't want to blame or "slut-shame" the girl, but I thought, "She knows that this will make people look at her body all the time. She knows what she's doing." But did she? Can someone as young as 14 really be trusted to make a decision to get pierced, and to wear body jewelry? Granted, the holes from piercings will disappear if the rings are taken out, but isn't it inappropriate for someone that age to wear body jewelry for any duration of time?
     For this girl to display her body in class in this manner, risks normalizing the same behavior by the other children in the homeroom class. Especially students younger than she was, such as myself at that time. The purpose of body jewelry is to advertise for a mate. Just like young girls having their ears pierced, 14-year-old girls do not need to attract a mate, much less with jewelry that they know will attract people's eyes downward. Which invites anyone and everyone to focus their attention towards those parts of a 14-year-old's body.
     I now understand that the privilege of wearing body jewelry, and wedding rings, are supposed to be reserved for adults, because they are signals that indicate whether a person is looking for a mate or not. And minors should not be participating in this sort of signaling, especially if it involves or requires permanently altering parts of their body.

     I can honestly say that I feel traumatized by what I was told by that new student in my third grade class. And, in a somewhat similar way, I was traumatized by being “semi-consensually” flashed a belly button piercing by a 14-year-old girl when I was 13.
     It's not that I didn't enjoy looking at an older girl's body, I just couldn't bear to look at her there, because of the thought of the pain involved. I felt that pain, sympathetically. Especially because it was a small, pretty young girl who willingly chose to endure pain. I just couldn't process the thought of anyone purposely inflicting pain on a girl – especially a girl that young, or anyone for that matter – without themselves feeling that pain too, and without experiencing a feeling of revulsion at the thought that they're inflicting pain on someone else. I mean haven't we even observed rats feeling a revulsion towards causing pain to other rats? Why would this girl let someone put her through this pain? Was the pain "worth it", and what did she get out of it? What kind of person would poke a hole in another human being, especially a 14-year-old girl, and probably for money, no less?

     Something about these events just didn't sit right with me when they happened. But they must have not upset me quite enough to consider talking about it with my parents or teachers. I still regret not having done so.
     That aside, my thoughts on these events have matured significantly since I went through them, and so has my reasoning regarding why I believe that children should not be exposed to the risks associated with piercings and tattoos.
     What I can do about it now, is to impart the thoughts and advice that I have on these topics, and use this article to prompt a new conversation about these topics, both in private and in public.

     Aside from the personal experiences I've recounted above, the other reasons why I've written this article, is because I have recently noticed that more and more parents are allowing their children to get tattoos before they are 18, sometimes at ages as low as 12, or even younger. I have even discovered one tattoo artist who allowed his daughter to give tattoos to adults at the age of just 6 or 9 years old, while allowing the girl to wear temporary tattoos as well.

     Articles on that story can be viewed at the following links:
   
http://www.littlethings.com/noko-nishigaki-tattoo-artist/
     http://au.news.yahoo.com/nine-year-old-girl-follows-dads-footsteps-become-tattoo-artist-060223442.html
     I've written this article to explain why I think that nobody under 16 should be tattooed under any circumstances. I will also explain why I believe that temporary tattoos and "semi-permanent" makeup are gateways to permanent tattoos (as well as more drastic alterations of appearance).
     Aside from the issues of tattooing and piercing minors, I am also writing this to explain why I think that, under no circumstances, should anyone under 16 be considered capable of consenting to, nor considered to be "asking for", getting beaten as punishment. I defend this idea, contrary to the twisted logic of some of the more thoughtless and cruel parents, who jump to physical discipline as their first-ditch effort, and give their children little to no indication as to what will cause them to resort to physical methods of discipline.
     Herein, I criticize egregious, unnecessary, and disproportionately violent hitting, beating, and spanking of children by parents, which I feel that too many parents accept. In this article, I give some practical advice to parents about how to make hitting and spanking into last-ditch disciplinary efforts only.
     Aside from piercing, tattooing, and beating, I have also written this article in order to criticize the practices of circumcision and female genital mutilation, to compare and contrast them with one another, and with the other practices discussed in this article.
     I give this advice not only in the interest of helping children avoid unnecessary physical pain and trauma; but also in the interest of helping parents avoid losing their children's respect through using too harsh disciplinary techniques; and also to help parents avoid accidentally inculcating their child into obeying, and not questioning, the authority of adults.
     I give this advice out of concern about parents, and other adults, who may wish to coax their children into – or else refusing to consider the dangers involved in – submitting to pain inflicted by adults, in exchange for pleasure, beauty, money, a long-term career, a mate, and/or other rewards.

     I aim to explain, throughout this article, as many of the potential negative consequences and connotations of piercing and tattooing, that I can think of.
     I will also explain why I believe that to pierce or tattoo a minor is to expose them to the risks of more potential negative consequences than even parents and governments can anticipate. Additionally, I will explain why I think that means that a child's consent to some painful and/or life-changing decision – even if enthusiastic – means almost nothing; without regard to whether they are being guided by parents or government, and without regard to how direct that guidance is.
     But first, it will be necessary to explain why children should not have pain directly and willfully inflicted upon them. I will explain my thoughts on that within the context of why I believe that children should be neither hit, spanked, nor beaten (except in extreme circumstances), nor have their genitals mutilated.


IV. Six Reasons Why Children Should Not Be Hit

Preface

     As a preface to my six reasons why children should not be hit, I would like to clarify and qualify.
     When I say “hitting”, I mean to include beating and spanking, in addition to striking. I regard all of these as more or less the same thing, because they all involve direct application of physical force and pressure, by the adult upon the child, with the deliberate intent of causing pain.
     Don't misunderstand me; if a child is about to die, or is hurting another child badly, or doing something that is extremely likely to result in their imminent death, injury, or kidnapping, then the use of physical power is necessary. But that should not imply that force is always useful and necessary to prevent harm to the child, nor that it should be acceptable when force is used when other techniques such as blocking and restraint can be tried before more forceful measures need to be attempted.
     But by all means, if a child's life is in clear and present danger, and “violent force” or some sort of “violent” restraint is for some reason the only thing that can save them – like jerking them away from a moving car in a way that causes a slight amount of pain to them – then that “force” should be considered acceptable. Moreover, the action would certainly qualify as saving the child from imminent harm, and/or saving the child from itself, so some limited degree of “force”, as I described, would be acceptable, to avoid a greater harm from befalling the child.
     However, my acceptance of the use of “force” in such situations, should not be construed to mean that parents may use force on their children whenever they think that not doing so will result in a greater amount of harm to the child, as compared to if the parent were to refrain from hitting the child. That is not at all what I mean to say.
     First off, for children under two, it would be brutal and extremely unnecessary for an adult to strike a tiny baby or infant (whether it's beating, hitting, slapping, spanking, or anything). The sheer size and relative power of the adult, relative to the child, is automatically an instance of disproportionate use of force. That is not a fair fight, and children should not be fighting anyone, especially adults. (I see you, child fighting leagues. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TWHAwAJaIQ)
     For children between the ages of two and six, something which could sort of be called “force”, or “forceful”, might be acceptable, but only to control and punish behaviors that are actually violent and threatening. These include destructive and self-destructive outbursts, hurting other children deliberately, or (perhaps) extremely mean comments and bullying of other children. But overt force – such as spanking, hitting, beating, etc. - should not be among the first resorts.
     If a child smart-mouths - and says really hurtful things, or things that endanger them – then it might be acceptable to introduce some sort of threat into their discipline, because if they're smart-mouths, then it's possible that they can be reasoned with. However, that threat need not be physical. Confining the child to its room, taking cell phones and internet etc. away, and restricting the child's social hours, can and should all be tried before resorting to striking a child in any way.
     Of course, if the child is recklessly disobedient, to the point where they risk their life on a near-daily basis, then, yes, overt forms of restraint and even “trapping” - and maybe even physical force is probably necessary to keep the child from running away and doing something it will regret. Especially if the kid is especially violent or threatening to join a gang.

     In my opinion, it would be ridiculous to argue that a child any younger than 7 years old has any capacity to understand the long-term consequences of what they do, nor a well-developed ability to understand that other people are other people, feel feelings, and can feel pain.
     To repeat, I believe that smart-mouth children can probably be reasoned with (since they think they're so smart). As such, many of them can probably be talked out of the most reckless of behaviors they are considering. But children age seven and younger should not be expected to be reasoned with.
     As a matter of fact, six or seven is the age at which most American parents have just stopped lying to their children (if not later). Like about things like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. We should not expect children to adjust well to us lying to them for six years, and then, just a year after we tell them Santa and the Easter Bunny are fake, expecting them to know it's wrong to hit other children and steal from them, and be fully accountable for their decisions.
     Unless you like seeing 7-year-old children handcuffed in courtrooms on trial for murders they accidentally committed. Which are definitely accidental, because - if you need a reminder - is because they don't know any better, because they're children. They haven't been around as long, to learn as much as adults have about the world around them, and about the possible dangers around them. Additionally, to develop their awareness and decision-making abilities. So they shouldn't be held to as high a standard of culpability and awareness as adults are. It's as simple as that. I'm not sure why some people need so much explanation.

     In general, there is more or less nothing a child could do which would merit being hit. It may seem as though I have just named a lot of them, but I've really only named: 1) the child committing, or realistically threatening, physical force; and/or 2) “joining gangs” (but remember, that includes the girls, too; don't think I don't hear Lana del Rey singing about running away and joining biker gangs http://genius.com/Lana-del-rey-yayo-lyrics). And then I explained that other methods should be used before resorting to overt force.
     As such, I cannot conceive of a circumstance in which I would approve of hitting a child below the age of seven or eight years old. Only using or threatening violence; committing reckless acts of disobedience; or ignoring their parent's warnings about dangers to their life, limb, and liberty; could possibly justify such a thing, and – at that – it must be to prevent greater harm from resulting.
     Additionally, I think parents should be held fully responsible for any harm, threats, force, and fraud committed by their child. However, this is not to say that the parent should serve the full sentence which an adult would serve if they committed the same crime, considering that the child did not know better, and the parent did not commit the act. But an adult should receive a sentence which is similar in form to the sentence which they would receive if they had committed the act personally, but which is a lesser punishment than if the adult had done so personally.

     The frontal lobe of the human brain – the part that controls decision-making – continues developing throughout the first 25 to 30 years of life. This means that, even when children reach their late teen years, their decision-making abilities are likely still not well-developed enough to fully understand the long-term consequences of their decisions.
     You can read articles about the development of children's brains and decision-making abilities here:     http://www.tenneyschool.com/frontal-lobe-brain-teen-decision-making/
     The fact that people significantly below the age of 25 or 30 have significantly less developed decision-making abilities, hinders, and calls into question, minors' ability to fully consent to activities, in a manner which is sufficiently informed, conscious and aware of repercussions (including how they could be held responsible, and how their action could result in harm to someone else or themselves). And that standard is what is necessary for true and full consent to be said to have occurred. I cannot imagine that any child below the age of 16 is capable of fully consenting to any potentially harmful and/or life-altering decision in such a manner.
     Granted, children can gradually be introduced to responsibilities, between the age at which they learn to speak and/or clean up after themselves, and the age at which they leave their parents' home. In particular, children must eventually be introduced to the responsibility to take care of passengers in their cars, when they learn to drive. And that is why so much practice is required of them before they can hit the road without an adult.
     But aside from the responsibility to care for others' safety on the road: Minors shouldn't be relied upon to be trusted to save someone's life; unless they are an older teen with lifeguard training, or a minor well-trained in emergency resuscitation. But even if a child has such capacities, it would in most cases probably be too traumatic for the child to have to bear the consequences of failing to save someone's life, such as having to contend with the possibility that they're responsible. As a child, they wouldn't be responsible, and probably shouldn't be relied upon to save people's lives or watch over people's safety, but that is not to say that a child capable of reviving someone should be prevented from doing so, especially if it is as a last resort.
     The fact that children can be gradually introduced to responsibilities, does not necessarily guarantee that they will be able to handle - nor that they should be held fully responsible for - the consequences that come with those responsibilities. That is why we gradually introduce responsibilities to them, and it's also why we make privileges conditional upon responsibilities.
     But we must remember not take children's rights away, as a punishment for failing to live up to responsibilities and earn privileges. The privilege can and should be taken away when a child shirks a responsibility, but the freedoms a child needs to survive must not. These include the freedoms to breathe, eat, and move around (at least within the house). To take away a child's right to those things, as well as warmth and shelter, would be completely unreasonable punishments; as a reaction to shirking responsibility, and as a reaction to anything but the most violent, reckless, or threatening behavior a child could do.

     I will explain throughout the remainder of this essay why I believe that children's impaired ability to make decisions, primarily hinge on the importance of avoiding situations which could result in negative life-long consequences befalling the child; especially those which directly involve or are extremely likely to involve physical harm (and/or severe emotional harm) to themselves and/or to others.
     I will also explain why these situations which bear negative consequences that specifically and directly involve the infliction of physical pain upon children, must logically include the tattooing and piercing of children under 16, because of the nature of what those actions entail.
     I will also explain why I believe adults must be around to guide children away from such decisions, because adults can think of possible negative consequences of actions, which children aren't capable of imagining. However, that doesn't mean that adults always will think of all the consequences.


Reason #1: Almost Nothing Kids Do Merits Violence

     Not that you should need a reason not to hit children, but the first reason not to hit kids, is that it's exceedingly rare that they would do something so bad, that it could merit using physical violence. And what follows is my explanation of why hitting children is almost never an appropriate or necessary punishment for anything a child could do (falling short of committing or realistically threatening overt violence).
     Physical violence does not “correct” children's behavior. Hitting, beating, and spanking are not examples of “discipline”, although some may wish to call it “physical discipline”. Examples of discipline which a child should be learning, include, first, gaining control over their basic bodily functions, so that they're at least capable of doing a single thing or being outside for several hours at a time. And then, later, once they're capable, adhering to normal school and sleep schedules, studying, and scheduling hobbies and other activities.
     Adults must not use hitting, spanking, beating, caning, etc. as substitutes for either discipline or education. Physically hitting a child, does not “teach” them anything, except to endure your abuse. Unless a child is threatening force (and is realistically capable of delivering on their threat) - or the child is actually using force – then to use direct physical force against the child would most likely not be worth the cost of saving the child from any potential harm (to whomever) which could result from their actions (that is, because such risks would be low, given that no harm is risked).
     Additionally, the cost of teaching the child to grow accustomed to being hit - whether for discipline, “education”, or any other reason – has consequences, and they are often long-lasting, and devastating to child development and the consistency of family structure and a nurturing home.
     A child who grows up in constant fear of being hit by its parent, will cry and cower out of fear – and shrink from their parents' commands – solely out of fear of being hit again. Far be it from me to explain why, but apparently some parents are too inconsiderate of the possibility that they're hitting their child for crying, because he's crying, which is because he thinks his parent is going to hit him again. For a parent to continue to hit a child for crying for fear of being hit, is to perpetuate a never-ending cycle of abuse.
     To hear a song about that topic, listen to Kimya Dawson's 2002 song "Stinky Stuff (Hold My Hand)": 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpvinhZnMI8
     All children, and adults, need natural human rights to live, and to grow safely and comfortably. No child deserves to grow up having no clue how to talk his parents out of beating him. Any parent who is too quick to resort to physical “discipline” of the child – or who issues too many commands such that no child could possibly follow all of them and still be in full compliance, or demands too much transparency into the child's life to the point where it interferes with the child's innate right to personal privacy and bodily autonomy – is at risk of not only communicating to the child that they are not allowed to question or resist a parent who is hurting them.
     And that, I believe, increases the chances that the child might think they have no right to resist other adults who may want to willingly and openly inflict pain on them. It probably also increases the odds that the child will eventually teach the same behavior to its own children.
     To hear a song about that topic, listen to Lou Reed's 1989 song "Endless Cycle": 
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFulWX-sD_g
     Watch the following video, and ask yourself - whatever this kid did - whether it was truly necessary for the adult to use the amount of force he did to get the child to stop shoving him.
     http://1079ishot.com/out-of-control-kid-taunts-pushes-man-messing-with-cars-video/



Reason #2: Most Adults Are Larger and Stronger Than Children, Such That Nearly All Uses of Physical Force by Adults Against Children Amount to Disproportionate Violence
Reason #3: Enduring Pain as a Child, and Being Coached Through It, Damages the Nervous System, and Changes the Way Children Process Pain

Reason #4: The Use of Violence Demoralizes its User, Delegitimizes its User's Authority, and is No Substitute for Non-Violent Attempts at Reasoning with the Child

Reason #5: Hitting of Any Kind is a Violation of the Child's Right to Autonomy Over its Body, and Spanking is a Violation of the Child's Autonomy Over its Private Parts and Genital Areas

Reason #6: Overt Forms of Physical Punishment (Like Beating, Hitting, and Spanking) are Not the Only Traumatizing Forms of Physical Punishment; Subduing and Tickling Can Be Traumatic Too



[Explanations for reasons #2-6 as to why children shouldn't be hit, will appear here at a later date, as will the following sections of this article:

V. Why Children Should Not Be Circumcised
VI. The Primary Duties of a Parent
VII. Why Young Children Should Not Get Their Ears Pierced
VIII. Twenty Reasons Why Minors Should Not Get Tattoos or Body Piercings
IX. Why You Don't Have the Right to Sell a Part of Your Child's Body
X. Which Institutions in Our Society Are the Most Plagued by Child Abuse?
XI. Constitutional Analysis of How to Achieve Legal Changes in These Policy Areas
XII. Conclusions]





Originally Written on May 3rd and 9th, 2019
Originally Published (in part) on May 9th, 2019

Based on Notes Written between April 28th and May 9th, 2019

Edited and Expanded on May 11th, and June 12th, 18th, and 21st, 
and July 9th, 2019

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