I am curious as to whether you are hearing a lot, a little, or nothing at all about the Epstein files. For everyone who says “We’re not angry enough” or “IS SOMEONE GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS,” I want to say that Doing Something looks like constant calling out of the sexualization of girls and children, vigilance and anger about sexualized images of children in advertising, avid protection of children, and not blindly extending trust and access to people just because they are in roles of authority.
Doing Something looks like listening to children, teaching children and girls about bodily autonomy, consent and boundaries, raising girls to raise their voices and call in adults whenever they are harassed and objectified by adult men, refusing to participate in children’s beauty pageants, questioning why cheerleaders and other female sports teams “require” provocative little skirts while boys and men wear pants to do the same sports, telling your male family members that they’re being disgusting when they sexualize your children in any way, telling all of your family members that babies are not “heartbreakers” or “lady killers” because they smile or engage in cute behaviors… do you start to see where I’m going with this? I’m enraged. I’ve BEEN enraged. I have been a “bitter,” outspoken feminist for many decades, and my first feminist protest was at a Hooters in Minnesota in 1991. Why was it ever okay for a restaurant chain to serve up young women’s bodies and breasts as a feature of their marketing? So many environments and institutions contribute in explicit ways to pedophilia and rape culture.
Make sure you don’t require your daughters to be polite to men who want to hug them or tell them they’re pretty little girls. Teach them to say, “I don’t care if you think I’m pretty, I think you’re creepy.” Raise girls who are comfortable being offensive within the relentless sexualization of patriarchy. Pay for their self-defense classes. Applaud their disregard for smiling nicely when men encroach on their space and feel entitled to their attention. Teach them to return flirtatious behavior or come-ons with stony- faced contempt. Help your children document and report inappropriate behavior from coaches, clergy, teachers, doctors who may have gone into these fields exactly for their access to children and youth.
Do not imagine that this is a rare perversity, to want to sexually exploit children and minors. It is pervasive and omni-present across the globe. I don’t know if those in power will do much of anything to bring accountability to actual monsters. I don’t have high hopes because I am old and have been in a woman’s body now for sixty years.
I have watched and tracked the casual disregard for girls’ and women’s safety, autonomy, human rights, right to get an education, work, or walk around in the world unthreatened by sexualized threats and violence by men. I was groped on my breast in a crowded restaurant when I was five years old by a man who leered at me as he walked away. I just thought he was very weird and gross, but he didn’t hurt me and I was more confused than upset. When I told my mother, she turned sheet white and said, “Don’t tell your father, he’ll find him and kill him.”I never thought a thing about it until decades later. Such is the world we live in. It IS the world we live in.
Most people would rather go on being likeable than confronting the myriad ways that our society casually accepts the relentless sexualization of women from the time they’re born. Boys are also victims, and also need to be protected not only from predators but from misogynists who want to desensitize them to their empathic instincts.
Over and out on this for now. Please consider what I have said. Where in your life, community, social circles, workplaces, and yourself can you become a fierce, unapologetic defender of children and young people’s inalienable right to exist free of sexualization and sexual exploitation