If I have learned anything after this past weekend, I am more than ever opposed to child stars. It is cruel. There should be laws against children on T.V. and advertising towards children specifically. That’s why everyone is so upset about Miley and I’m not, they loved her. They thought they knew her, and she wasn’t even old enough to know herself. Someone wrote the lines of her life and herself, for her. I bet Billy Ray is sorry now. It is a monster that is far out of his control. Not her, her career. His very daughter is being used as the primary distraction for an aggressive military intervention. The people in the media obviously sacrificed Miley for their own gain. If there was no news it would be obvious they were hiding open dialog about Syria. This way they can blame us, see you were so distracted by the Former Disney star, you let us start a war. Never mind that the VMA stories were shoved down our throats. I have my algorithms tailored to seeing global news and conspiracy theories. But my actual friends and family make sure I see every last bit of propaganda. Are pop stars just another form of sex slave?
A 17 year old girl killed herself. She was raped at 14 years old by a teacher. The judge declared she “seemed older than her chronological age" and was "as much in control of the situation" which alleviated some of the responsibility of the rapist. Let’s get this straight. Children, let’s establish that as anyone a teenager or younger can’t consent to rape. Coerced rape, or violent rape. Sex with a child is rape. Let’s face it, we have all seen and personally experienced teenagers’ lack of self control, they are children. When someone is in a position of power and they use that to have sex with children there should be the harshest of punishments. That’s how you know we are neck deep in a culture of child rape. No one in that court room batted an eye that this person got only 30 days in jail. Far less than someone smoking a joint, less than burglary of bullshit household junk, the only one who noticed was this 14 year old girl who had to face a world so heinous she chose to kill herself instead of continue on. I know she was 17 years old when she died. But she had spent 3 years dealing with severe trauma and betrayal and obviously didn’t get adequate support from the courts or rape counseling so she was still 14 in her mind.
Most children who are raped never face their accuser. If they do it is to be violated all over again in a court room and see their rapist get away with a slap on the wrist. You can recover from these things, I know this primarily because so many women have to. It’s not about the rapist in recovery; it is about learning that the love of your family can surpass the trauma to make life worth continuing to live. I know you can recover to be the beautiful person you are meant to be because my best friend, one of the most beautiful people I have ever met, was raped at 5 years old by a family friend. The only reason Jerry Sanduski is in jail forever is because he raped many boys and had control over hundreds if not thousands of children in the course of his long career coaching children.
Anyone who can rape a child can never be around any children. Diocese choose to protect rapists, schools choose to protect rapists. We send our children off with the supposed Leaders of our Communities, those who we specifically entrust our children’s safety to and they use that power to Rape them. Personally I know a man who raped a teenage girl that was a member of the church choir he was an instructor of, he was out of jail in less than a year. Had he had the chance he would have raped one of my other best friends, I kept her away from him. She still suffers nightmares because now every interaction they’ve ever had she sees through the lens of he was trying to fuck her. All the loving gestures of family friendship were manipulations. The girl at the church had been raped before as a younger child. The rapist received leniency since she was already sexualized. So being fucked up already by ANOTHER rape counts against the victim? It means she Wanted to be raped and further victimized by being blamed in a court of law before she was even out of her teens? Instead of the man who was supposedly trained to teach children being severely punished, she was punished further. I could tell he was a creep. I hate to say this because someday I will be wrong about the wrong person. But I always have the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when people like that are around. His body seemed just a little too up kept for his age, he had too much of a tan. He leaned in too closely when he wanted to compare tattoos.
As a teenage girl I realize that some of my odder behaviors and fashion statements had to do with keeping creepy fucking grown men away from me. Instead of being prude with my clothing, I chose to be outrageous. I loved myself and my body, even though culture and society told me I was wrong and that I was fat and ugly and needed to fix myself. I was conflicted about that. I chose to be angry all the time, as a way to control who I let into my world. I hate when a grown man tells a young girl to smile. How fucking dare they! You would never say that to a man, or a boy for that matter. We say other horrible things to boys, “Boys don’t cry.” But that’s another matter for another post.
Miley Cyrus is being slammed in the media. I’d like to focus on potential war and many people are right that it is more important immediately. But the culture that perpetuates the sexualization and the shaming of women has been around for a long time and it is time we address it. I heard nothing about how Robin Thicke, a Thirty Six year old man with a wife and a child of his own was grinding on someone who the media considered a child up until her latest single dropped. They even acted like he should have been ashamed to be on stage with her. We take these child stars. We sexualize them because let’s face it, if women in Hollywood have to open themselves up to sexual harassment and possible abuse to get ahead, do you think it would be any safer for children, children whose parents sold them out for a buck and their own desire for fame?
Fame is overrated. I am the mother of a very beautiful boy; I was often approached when he was a baby and toddler and told to put him in modeling and acting. I didn’t want to travel for hours to the city, wait for auditions, be stressed out, compete against other people, why would he? So I had to make a choice to protect my child as we all do. Would he love a college fund? I’m sure he would. But I’d rather we continue to live in poverty until I can convince the world we need free and easy educational access on the internet than subject him to possible abuse and a culture that deems his only value how cute he is, until he is not.
Children deserve childhoods. There used to be laws about how much a child actor could work. They were required to attend school still. They were forced, in some cases by their parents, to have an education and opportunities outside of acting for the inevitable day they can’t make money doing that anymore, or just don’t want to. Once your child is in that industry and your family income depends on their career it becomes a lot more difficult to parent and to take back the reigns if something goes wrong.
Miley is a grown women, I support her right to be as naked as she wants. Naked female bodies are not a crime. What she did was overly sexualized but it had nothing to do with her body being bad or wrong or something of shame as the media talking heads would have you believe. Someone is using her though right now and it is sad and horrifying. I never watched The Disney Channel much as a kid. I find their programming disturbing and lacking in depth for some reason, maybe because I was reading novels by 8 years old. Their message is tailored but often overlooked, the princess of a little girl. How many more child Disney stars have to devastate their fans with their quick decent into madness before we stand up and say, these people are fucked up because we fucked them up as children. People who haven’t had counseling and faced their abuse head on still act like and have the mentality of children. I see it all the time interacting with adults in the real world.
We are so obsessed with youth, 70 year old women in poor health worry more about their wrinkles than their ability to walk. There is a tumblr I just found out about called “thigh gap”. Perpetuating and encouraging women to starve themselves instead of love themselves. I love the internet for the ability to communicate it has given me and over 1 billion other people. I love that we can network globally. I love that it is so much harder for governments to hide secrets. It isn’t hard for pedophiles to hide secrets though. Hackers spend countless hours trying to expose child pornography and trafficking rings on the internet because those are the criminals lurking in their corners of the internet. Disenfranchised silenced people need a place to speak openly, to be Anonymous. It is difficult for them and yet child sex slavery is rampant?
It seems to me that there is enough power in the world governments that if they wanted to crack down on child pornography and really do away with it, they would. It seems that if they really wanted to do away with children all over the world, mostly women, being sold into sex slavery, they would. Every time there is a major sporting event planned thousands of sex slaves are flown in from around the globe to satisfy the needs of our culture. Someone is fucking these children. How can the people being fucked take the brunt of the blame? People use their positions of power to take advantage of children and often times those children never get to leave those situations of abuse. Until we legalize prostitution completely we won’t see these things change.
Women should not be shamed for doing a job that primarily men are paying for. When prostitution is legal it will empower women. When selling sex is the choice of a woman and not her master because let’s face it, every prostitute has a pimp. They need a keeper, they need protection, and they have no choice. You can’t call the police to report a violent John. That equals jail time. If you come forward with a rape accusation as a grown woman get ready for the full on attack of your character, in the media and in the courtroom. So no one with a questionable past (i.e. every normal human being but especially sex workers) can come forward. Expect that everything you’ve ever done will be put on trial if it might make you look bad and your rapist look less bad.
1 in 3 women will be raped, usually before adulthood. I don’t want to be “one of the lucky ones” anymore. I want children to be safe. This world is not safe for children. You know it’s not. You don’t take your eyes off them for a second in public if you are a good parent. You wonder about and meet all their teachers and coaches and hope that if something was wrong you’d know. But the fact of the matter is, despite the hairs on your neck, you probably wouldn’t.
Corey Feldman came forward recently claiming the death of his best friend Corey Haim was after years of torment and drug addiction caused by the abuse they suffered as children. The family of the deceased asked him NOT to speak up. I understand there must be shame involved in finding out your son’s suicide was due to the abuse you “let” happen to him as a child. You need to stop blaming yourself. No one wants that for their child. You need to stop blaming the kid who is still alive and speaking up, and start telling the whole world about child abuse. It is rampant. Most kids are suffering some sort of emotional or verbal abuse regularly. Children are taught to be silenced. “The adults are talking.” If adults can’t speak up for them, how on earth can they have the courage to speak up for themselves?
I remember the fear of childhood. You are smaller, you are weaker, and this is a competition driven world, kill or be killed. Alpha children are no safer; they spend more time striving to succeed, more time with coaches and adults outside their home, more time trying to please. Somehow society decided children are here to serve us. When idiot politicians say children need to go back to learning the value of hard work I want to puke. Or maybe just show them black and white photos of children in factories at the turn of the past century. Maybe just fill their mind with statistics of how many child lives were lost before we had safety standards in the work place and child labor laws. You know, those pesky regulations getting in the way of business and profits.
We live in a culture where whether working or “stay at home” mothers never work hard enough. Where fathers are praised if they do us the privilege of sticking around, because raising children is so awful. They can just leave, they can be states away, family number 4 and nobody bats an eye. Try being a woman telling people she has children states away, or who live with her first husband. The scenario is rarer for women and almost accepted as normal behavior for men. As if men are animals that need to be tamed and not fellow human beings. Every person is capable of loving children, of hearing them and understanding them. You have to be taught how though. This world teaches how to gain power, how to get ahead. How to control others to your advantage, children are just a casualty of the land all of us adults live in.
I wanted to start writing funny things. I have heard I am funny. I always laugh at my own jokes. I think I am the only person who ever will. How can I write impactful funny stories of inspiration when this is what I am confronted with on a daily basis? The average American sees 500 advertisements a day. Televisions are everywhere you go, Facebook, YouTube, magazines, newspapers, radio, and more flood our subconscious with images and sounds designed to illicit an emotional response, often a sexual response. About mops and food? I can’t be the only one who thinks this psychology is not okay to be using on people, and not just sometimes but consistently throughout the day.
A lot of these advertisements are geared towards children. Hook a loyal customer in childhood, brand them for life. That is why so many people are upset about Miley. They think they know her. They don’t realize her entire self is a construct of some male writers sitting in a conference room. They love her as if she were a child they watched grow up in real life. To see the beginnings of a downward spiral we have seen many times before with Britney and Lindsey and all the other children Hollywood has chewed up and spit out was too much for the viewing public to take. On top of that, those of us who keep ample tabs on global news know she was used. She was the sacrificial lamb of the news media. The media doesn’t have to explain why all they cover is Miley and not Syria when people actually do care about Miley. That is the most brilliant part of all.
We only read the drum banging pro-war Syria headlines, while we are engulfed in what will happen to this young girl, and once they start another military action of aggression they can say, “But we had to make this decision without you. You chose to click Miley so it is your fault no one spoke up and stopped this war.” It isn’t your fault, or mine. There are plenty of people speaking up in the name of peace. Those voices can be easily drowned out in this sea of information technology. An internet that could potentially be filled with every single bit of human knowledge known to man, and instead it is filled with porn and brain candy. We could publish every single scientific study online. All knowledge could be free to access and if I have my way someday it will be. Freedom of information, freedom to educate ourselves, will set us free from these horrible things. Right now the internet is full of pornography that shows primarily mutated female bodies doing acts that don’t remotely resemble normal human sexual practices.
We have advertisements constantly thrown in our faces when we choose to use “free” services like Facebook and YouTube. I finally saw so many advertisements about what is wrong with my belly fat and my body on Facebook that I started taking screen shots of them so I can write about that as well. I am perfect, Facebook wants me to think otherwise. We cannot simply choose to abstain from the world of child sexualization and advertising. We cannot stop the objectification and slavery of women by avoiding these things. That is often the answer most often given, don’t look. You don’t Have to read those horrible things internet trolls are saying about women constantly. The facts are though that these things exist, not only do they exist but they are rampant, and if no one stands their fucking ground nothing about this system will change.
Find the pedophiles hiding behind internet security. Find the men who profit and get off on the sale of women and children. Protect all women, sluts or not. Children’s issues are women’s issues. We are all in this together. These same things hurt men, they may receive slight privileges but they can no more protect their children from this world than we can as women. The culture of finding all men who date our daughters threatening has to change. Once we weed out the bad men (and women) who perpetuate the abuse of children we won’t have to fear all men. Men don’t rape because women are promiscuous or because no one stopped them. Rapists rape because they are awful people. It is the good people staying silent to this injustice that surrounds us that keeps these problems from being solved.
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today was the 50th anniversary of the March On Washington. Instead of write about civil rights of black people and how far we’ve come and how far we have to go I chose to write about my issue; Women’s civil rights as a representation of civil rights for all. At the March On Washington Martin Luther King, Jr. said labor rights is our issue. The dignity to work for a living wage, women are paid less for the same jobs as men, as are black people and other minorities. It's time we take back the world from the "beautiful" people and regain our meritocracy. We need everyone who has valuable ideas and work ethic to have access to contribute. Slinging burgers for minimum wage doesn't help you contribute. Working just to pay your child care costs and have someone else raise your children does not help you contribute.
Our culture has taught us that sex is the be all and end all of our happiness. It is, but a small part, of a vast amount of life experiences that bring happiness and love.
There is a young girl on trial for sending her girlfriend pictures of herself nude. They are teenagers, children, 14 and 19. The older girl was 18 before the trial started. Other girls have been brought to trial and faced potential jail time for sending nude pictures of themselves to boys they trusted who forwarded them to the entire school. That has become a common form of bullying and abuse inflicted on naïve teenage girls, making them trust you and then humiliating them publicly. There is even a website for grown men to post the nude photos of women who have broken up with them. Makes me so glad our cell phones never had cameras in high school. Nude female bodies are not a crime. All naked images of children should not be seen through a sexual lens, only in this world they are. Even the models we chose for runway are children, we put 6 ft tall anorexic 14 year old's in garments made for mannequins and call it fashion. Well not anymore, there is a law now that they have to be 16 years old. If you've been following along, any teenager is still a child. It is really just another way our society worships the youth and destruction of women instead of us as whole beings.
There are hundreds of thousands of pedophiles around the world with nude photos of children or trafficking real children and our justice system wastes time prosecuting teenage girls, children, for their own mistakes. These mistakes in this world never go away. Once an image it out there, it exists on the internet forever. Jail time doesn’t rehabilitate anyone, or teach them a lesson. It just makes an example out of another girl being told what is “appropriate” for girls but doesn’t also apply to boys. Plenty of teenage boys (and Mayors and Congressmen) send pictures of their dicks via text and Facebook, I never hear about any of their trials.
We are brainwashed from infancy to be sexualized objects. Wigs for your baby? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING? If god forbid you act on that sexuality and take a nude photo of yourself, or dress provocatively, if you are raped or harassed online or IRL you will suffer the full brunt of our judgmental society. Tell me again how I’m a fucking feminazi for supporting the civil rights of women in this world. I want my ERA. If you don’t know what that stands for Google it and stop being a part of the problem. I want laws that make sense about child abuse, and child pornography. When we as women remember how to speak up for ourselves, we will save the children and all the men and women they grow up to be.
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