Posts by chris
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
Sorry for my snark there Lucy, this thread…
Having taken some time to reflect, the issue I have with what you wrote is that a majority of people I have spoken to who were abused as children were abused by slightly older children. The victims were ambushed, there is extremely limited education – basically little frame of reference to provide warning signs. These crimes largely go unreported within society and families. WRT children, society’s fixation on age brackets and adults breaking the law seems to take precedence over the protection of children being abused or not as the case may be. I have strong misgiving about the way the former actress who shall not be named has been hung out to dry here.
Secondly, I find the stereotyping somewhat haphazard in that some adult abusers are incredibly attractive, pop stars, tv personalities etc, their magnetism and ability to manipulate is problematic while their personal hygiene is a non-issue.
If sexual acts become known at the time, children are damned whether these acts are consensual or coerced.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
hairy smelly “old”
When you put it like that I can’t say I’m completely surprised that you haven’t come across any individual who felt confident in negotiating the indignity of admitting that these features might turn them on. Hairy and smelly, like apes. like hirsute humans, a marked departure from anything you’d likely see in a Rexona commercial – nothing a good shower and waxing wouldn’t take care of, after all most of us watched Magnum PI for the car not the lush Hawaiian vegetation.
In this environment children are muzzled, especially around adults, they are neither encouraged nor allowed to express any sexual preference, so we’re not going to be hearing about that anytime soon. By contrast, many adults seem comfortable admitting it takes all sorts.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
But it was my choice.
Which is huge, because many justice systems might not agree with you there. In terms of sexual rights, children are basically at slave equivalency, they are dehumanised, wIth no legally meaningful right of consent and in all that gray it’s hardly surprising that adults can be easily swayed to feel fit to decide what is right for a child – a yes is as good as a no, neither are widely recognised as carrying significant (legal) power when coming from a child in a sexual context (in striking contrast to the resounding yes and no a lot of children feel empowered to offer on almost any other issue that affects them).
Islander went to lengths to draw comparisons with the bonobo, and observation and inference would suggest that these outlying sexual expressions aren’t going anywhere, they are natural social primate practices that puritanical elements in our societies have edged to the outer – facilitating exploitation and abuse.
What is going to happen for the foreseeable future is that people with pedophiliac tendencies are going to continue to be born, children are going to continue to be denied jurisdiction over their own bodies, shamed (power) and denied the language and knowledge to reliably express themselves on these issues by societies, legal and education systems whose default settings seem to something along the lines of F#&$ the children – no matter how many pedophiles are locked away – that’s what will continue to happen.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Sorry if that was vague Katharine, my inference was simply that we’re not in 2005 anymore. I’m not familiar with the law, and I’m not in a googling mood, but I’m prepared to trust that steven is correct and that the crime the person has been found guilty of wasn’t prosecutable because of *sex*.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to ,
I can’t see how it’s possable to have a meaningful constructive conversation about this stuff without bringing male vs female experiences to the table.
As I said, I understand steven, and not wishing to derail the thread further, perhaps when we’ve moved on sufficiently from 2005 we’ll be able to have a conversation in which examination of psychological elements can be carried out with less recourse to physiological based assumption.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Katharine Moody,
I guess I believe that the in-built/natural nurturing and protectiveness qualities of the female of our species exists in every woman/mother
I appreciate that you and others have the best intentions Katharine, but incessant genderising leaves me feeling unwell. I understand that not everyone has yet adopted a world view that includes other genders. I've felt on the outer over a number of conversations, just sitting, afraid to contribute, waiting for someone to represent a view I identify with as the thread meanders down the well-hewn generic male vs female dichotomy track and is then closed.
A couple of opinions, void of evidence; with regard to sex crimes, I feel the continued genderisation of society may be an exacerbating factor, genderisation is arguably the foundation upon which MRA etc are founded.
In my opinion, it is women and mothers who are ultimately responsible for saving children from this fate
It is ultimately only the children themselves who can save themselves from this fate, and that requires more honest education and more profound empowerment. I enjoyed that Elizabeth Warren lecture you posted the other day, but she does go to lengths to stress that this is the age of the two income household and an age in which children are being institutionalised much younger, so it's more difficult for anyone to keep tabs. Which is not to say that I don't think we need to better understand the reasons why these mothers failed to recognise/act/etc. to protect their child/children, It's that I think we need to understand the reasons why people failed to recognise/act/etc. to protect child/children.
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It's fairly difficult to envisage how things could get much worse.
Auckland barrister Nicholas Taylor said clearly no system was fool proof.
“Every legal system relies on compliance via threat of punishment If an individual wishes to break the law and obtain a firearm unlawfully and has no concern about the severe penalties that doing so will bring.
“So really what TV3 are saying is that if you have absolutely no regard for the law or penalties that may be imposed then you can obtain a firearm.
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Polity: Political strategy and Canada’s NDP, in reply to David Hood,
“people don’t vote for tax raises”
Contextualisng: raising taxes for 1% to pay for tax breaks for the middle class may not be so much about the hike as the breaks. It’s not comparable to say Labour’s proposed 2014 CGT where, unless you bothered to wade through their website, there was insufficient exposition as to the pressing need that the revenue had been earmarked for.
However I remain more partial to what Rich outlined above.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Danielle,
Thank you.
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Polity: TPP, eh?, in reply to ,
He was basically saying that democracy is a bit of a giggle
To be fair I did enjoy his 24th September piece on the flip- flopping of the other major New Zealand political party.