Silent Approval

Trigger Warning

I read a comment the other day that people give too much attention to children because they’re cute. They said there are all kinds of organizations to help children, but what about adults, like the homeless, etc? I had to laugh. Children can’t fend for themselves like adults, that’s why, lol and we don’t do enough for our children from the infrastructure of society on up. A majority of people are raising their children and do not know how to parent except by their own parent’s example. They just repeat what was done to them. There is no effort to educate themselves on what’s healthy and beneficial for their kids based on stages of development, behaviors, and neurobiology. Most parents are just winging it and do not learn better, especially the men.

So we pass trauma and neglect down through the generations. There is not enough support for families like universal childcare and there is no longer an extended family to help, plus both parents have to work with the brunt of childcare/household management left to the mother. There is still an imbalance in the division of labor in the home where the mother is doing the majority while also working full time. It sets up a strained, stressful situation that is not conducive to the healthiest environment or energy leftover to parent effectively.

In my discussions with people, most do not know how children are as far as what they are capable of developmentally, according to their age. They think of children as mini-adults who can navigate and consent just as adults do. I hear people say, “Oh, they know better. They know what they’re doing,” when it’s apparent that they are too young to have that capacity to know everything that’s going on as an adult would. They cannot discern and have poor impulse control. They can not critically think yet. They can not fend for themselves. They are still growing in their awareness, social skills and their brains are still developing as well. They do not have full agency over themselves and need an adult’s guidance, supervision and caregiving. They are dependent and deserve to be nurtured appropriately in order to develop properly to avoid detrimental lasting, lifelong negative effects. Healthy childhood development is critical and affects the trajectory of their future adult lives.

We have scientific, sociological, psychological studies, and data that help inform best practices. We base it on objective facts, not traditions and opinions. So why don’t we adults take advantage of this knowledge so we can raise a healthier society?

Why do we believe what we think in our minds, or what our egocentric personal experience was, is the same for everyone else and universally applies or why do we follow hearsay or traditions instead of seeking what’s healthiest based on objective facts?

I had the misfortune of reading some harmful, unconscious opinions this week and couldn’t believe that people were going along with it and not refuting it. We have brains in our heads and the ability to research and seek reliable knowledge, yet we don’t. I don’t understand how people can be so blind and easily manipulated or swayed to believe harmful things that don’t have facts to back them up. Like conspiracy theories. Here is a video critiquing the harmful opinions I encountered this week. Trigger warning, it discusses sexual abuse.

It’s so bizarre that what I believe to be intelligent people who pose as caring people can be easily brainwashed and manipulated into promoting harm. What’s even worse is when others who don’t believe in the harmful ideas and know better stay quiet, don’t take a stand and the brainwashed person gets to keep promoting harmful ideas. We let it happen.

Then our kids suffer because of it. I’m talking about the pro-contact pedophile sympathizers. It’s one thing to support compassion and help those with pedophilia to not harm, but it’s another to purport that adults having sex with children does not harm and is beneficial. It’s not just a cultural framing, adults having sex with children is inherently exploitive and can be highly traumatic. Some people try to frame it as it’s just our cultural taboos that make us think adults having sex with children is harmful. Ask people who grew up in The Children of God Cult and see how that worked out.

There are people who are not pedophiles, but for whatever reasons are advocating and encouraging adults to have sex with children. They say it’s healthy for children to have sex with adults, telling parents to have sex with their kids throughout their entire childhoods from infancy. Basically advocating that parents have orgies with their children. They say our society is too guarded around sexuality, that because we don’t literally invite and introduce kids to sex from a young age, i.e. have sex with them, it leads to them being more prone to predation.

I agree we need to do a better job with sex education, but having sex with children is not the solution.

It was shocking. They said young kids could say no to sex if they didn’t want it? I couldn’t wrap my brain around their flawed arguments and how they could believe they were beneficial? They were so enthusiastic about it and thought it opened up a whole new world. And hardly anyone else took a stand against it. Barely anyone cared that there was a pro-contact pedophilia promoter in our midst.

That’s why I’ve been knocked off course this week.

I’m stunned that people don’t speak against that when they encounter it. I spoke up, but I was in the minority. People do not care about our children. They argue children can consent and should have agency over their sexuality. But children can’t consent until they get to a certain age and level of maturity, as in their upper teens, and still have to be careful of older predators who use their power to manipulate and abuse. That’s why there are laws specifying the ages and age differences of what is consensual sex. I believe protecting children from harm is of the highest priority. I believe that our society should invest the most resources into whatever will help us raise the healthiest children holistically, so that future generations will reap the benefits of healthier adults. With each generation, we would repair and heal by preventing trauma and neglect.

But how can we do this, if people don’t care and sit idly by while someone is promoting pro-contact pedophilia right in their faces? And another person is saying children are getting too much attention and what about us adults? I felt like I was in crazy town when I read some responses.

How can we change the world and create positive changes if we don’t even speak up when we can if we don’t take a stand and we don’t even bother to do research and get our facts straight? We act like we know it all while there are children suffering because we have our heads up our asses letting it happen. The least we can do is try to prevent harm and do no harm. But here I am this week encountering someone who is posing as a conscious, caring person while advocating for child abuse and others do not protest, offering silent approval.

If you are a member of a community, you have responsibilities to that community as well. If someone is promoting harm, then it’s up to members of the community to engage in counter-speech that supports the truth and attempts to educate while trying to prevent the spread of harmful information. We’ve all seen what has happened with vaccine disinformation and conspiracy theories. We’ve seen what racial hate has done. Spreading information that advocates harm is dangerous and can lead to untold abuse and atrocities.

If someone is posting support of child sexual abuse on your platform and you say nothing against it, then that amounts to approval. You are approving this open discussion that is supportive of child sexual abuse. But where does one draw the line between free speech and the spreading of harmful disinformation/misinformation that leads to the harm of vulnerable people? Most people go to 4chan or the dark web, to promote and discuss child sexual abuse/pro-contact pedophilia. The least a community can do is provide a disclaimer, acknowledging the discussion is advocating harm, but clarifying they’re allowing the expression of it because they’re honoring free speech. This way, the community would know where the boundaries are. That free speech is the top priority of the community, so almost everything is allowable, like on the dark web or 4chan. That would be good to know before you become a member of a community instead of being surprised like I was.

I was so thankful when a few others chimed in supporting what I had to say against the sexual abuse of children. The rest sat, complicitly observing. I wonder if some things are just too traumatic for others to engage with. They don’t want to face the pain and the monstrosity of it. Instead, they avoid it altogether. Maybe that’s why people don’t educate themselves, because it triggers their own unaddressed, unhealed traumas lurking beneath the surface. So they live in denial and avoidance and blindness, unconsciously repeating what was done to them, and we never break free. The cycle continues and we all suffer for it.

After I spoke up, saying some things similar to this post, they accused me of trolling and threatened me with banning. I guess I was wrong to speak up. If that was so, then I was in the wrong group. I removed myself from the situation for my own well-being.

I’m ready for the people who want to dig deeper and do the arduous work of healing from the past and creating a better future with eyes wide open, taking a stand for what’s right. Our children and we ourselves deserve it.

Who’s with me? A good place to start is to examine truthfully how you were raised and how it affected you and educate yourself about healthy childhood development and healthy parenting, boundaries, and relationships. We need to educate ourselves about abuse, manipulation tactics, and coercive power and control, too. Discover what that looks like and then look back and evaluate where things could’ve gone better for you. Face those traumas, admit that there is room for improvement, and do what it takes to heal while also making changes that help you be a more effective member of the world. Educate yourself about trauma and how to heal. Trauma is a universal experience, and we all can benefit from learning about it and what we can do to heal. If we can prevent trauma as much as possible, we can create a more healthy, functional reality.

Part of preventing trauma is being aware and to take a stand against abuse by educating ourselves about abuse so we can prevent it and stop being abusers ourselves. We can always be mindful of what our actions are contributing to in the world. We can ask ourselves, will this really objectively be helpful, or is what I am being, speaking, and doing adding to the harm and trauma?

Here’s an informative website that is compassionate and has a logical approach to CSA prevention.