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Mar. 24th, 2006 06:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beandelphiki"There is one place in which one's privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed – one's body."
Guaranteed - or it should be. Anybody who disagrees can get the FUCK off my friendslist STAT.
Mmmkay.
Today there was some crazy shit that went down in a locked post in a community on my friends list. And when I say "crazy," I mean TOTALLY. FUCKING. BATSHIT. Like, "I hope some people never breed, oh shit they maybe already have," kind of BATSHIT.
It started over this story, in the news god-only-knows-where (except we know it HAS to be American):
The parents of a young teen-aged girl (14, I think) set up a fake MySpace account posing as a 14-year-old and befriended their daughter online. The girl admitted, to this fake account, that a 16-year-old boy that she'd met online was going to be at her house in just 15 minutes and that her parents didn't know. The parents immediately called the police and then headed for the house.
The police and parents arrived at approximately the same time to find a 28-year-old convicted sex offender standing on the front porch.
Was this monitoring of the girl's online activity appropriate or did the parents invade her privacy?
Ahh...okay, stop. Hold on. TIME OUT.
This girl isn't even old enough to DRIVE yet, and her parents are sneaking around creating fake MySpace accounts to keep tabs on her?
They are so out of the loop with what this child does online, that they did it to check up on what she was doing while they were out of the house?
They were out of the loop with what she was doing online, but they left her alone in the house, and let her use the computer while they were gone?
How much do you want to bet this was her OWN computer, in her own bedroom, and that's part of the reason these people were spying on her?
I mean, WHAT THE SHIT, we call that PARENTING? I can't even believe there's public debate over whether or not her parents did the "right" thing by invading her privacy.
No. No, they didn't do the right thing. They didn't do the right thing a LONG time ago. We know this because they are sneaking around to supervise their own child, and SHE, meanwhile, is calling boys two years older than her (she thinks) to their home behind her parent's backs.
Why does anybody actually think either of the proposed courses of action here - act like your kid doesn't exist, or spy on them - are actually viable parenting techniques? WTF? *headshake*
So that's the post, basically. The OP thought it was "appropriate" to do that, and, well...I suppose if the situation was that out of control in the first place, it's better than letting them be raped. But that whole situation should never have happened at all. Okay? Can we agree on this?
So immediately, someone (who is apparently on the flist of some people on my flist, so those people may not want to click below if they recognize this) replies to a hypothetical child (in part) like this:
you have no expectation of privacy. you have no "room." You have no door. you ain't got shit.
...Aaand, my spidey-senses go BERSERK. Holy batshit. "You ain't got shit"? What's wrong with this picture? Is this parental over-statement (like that old, "I brought you into this world...!" thing we've all been told), or more like when he told you that she just walked into a door?
So I replied. Man, I was a fool for saying anything, but after reviewing all the comments to that thread, I'm not sorry. Because some people are simply loons.
My reply (again, in part, I'm not quoting all of this):
Uh. That sounds like a great way to ensure a kid grows up with an incredibly fucked-up sense of boundaries. If the idea is to keep them from getting into trouble and being taken advantage of, it's a bit contradictory to also teach them that any adult should have access to them, regardless of their feelings.
How about, "no unsupervised computer time?"
Key words in there being "sounds like" and "access."
When someone says their kid has, "No privacy!" I don't know if they're indicating a really screwy child-rearing method or not. But dude, if it SOUNDS LIKE IT, maybe something's wrong with the way you put that.
Please, don't anybody tell me you don't think this sounds off. The NAVY gives you more privacy than that. Seriously now.
What followed after that was the most ridiculous argument I've had in recent memory. During the course of that argument, I was informed that having some expectation of privacy results in a kid that is an entitled, spoiled brat who can't function in the world. No privacy now, boy, that teaches you RESPECT!
Meanwhile, someone else replied to say that children need to learn that their parents have access to them, it's about authority and trust, etc. At this point, I got a sense of seriously conflicting messages.
"Access to a child," means pretty much only one thing in my lexicon: access to their body. I've seen the same ideas regarding women in feminist communities, so this isn't an obscure way of putting it. When I say, "access to [someone]" it doesn't generally refer to anything other than access to their body.
For this reason, when I see the second woman saying parents should have access to their children, my mouth is going, "FUCK no," but that doesn't match the rest of what she is saying at all. So:
We may have totally different ideas of "access" here. Expecting your kid to follow your rules, not lie, not sneak around, report anything that ought to be reported, etc. is totally different from teaching them they have no privacy.
"No bedroom door" to me isn't discipline, it's "covert sexual abuse." And I don't mean if the kid is sharing a room or whatever; I mean, if a kid is forced to make everything they do public. "No privacy" to me means just that.
What gets flagged "no privacy" in my head? Most fundamentally:
Not being allowed the privacy about your body that you request.
It doesn't matter if your mother used to scrub your little armpits in the tub and put your diaper on you - once you are old enough that you can declare your autonomy in that area, you have a right to privacy regarding it. That means:
-it's wrong to force a child to get undressed in front of anyone (barring medical issues, the necessity of which I leave to be determined on a case-by-case basis)
-it's wrong to put them in a situation (no bedroom door and no other place to change) where that will occur
-it's wrong to watch or look at a child in any state of undress if they have requested otherwise (barring medical issues)
-it's wrong to walk into the bathroom when they are using it if they ask for privacy
-it's wrong not to let them shower behind closed doors
Further (after puberty begins):
-it's wrong to restrict their privacy with the intent to keep them from masturbating (it's none of your goddamn business, holy crap)
-it's wrong to walk in on them in an attempt to catch them masturbating
Essentially, it is totally wrong to violate personal boundaries regarding bodily integrity, and to leave your child with the sense that their bodies are continually under observation.
But possibly, when the first woman said, "no privacy, no room, no door," she didn't mean any of the above. I find that a stretch (what, exactly, is the idea behind having no door?) but um, maybe we're on separate tangents. Our original thread is is like, "Say what?" "Say what?" so I link her to my explanatory, "different ideas of access" comment.
And the response was...yeah. She's not abusing her kids by not letting them build pipe bombs in the bedroom, she loves them more than anything, and blah blah, she'll kick my ass for interfering with the way she raises her kids. (Yeah, that's what everybody says.) So we still are miscommunicating, and you know...fuck all this, "what this means to me, maybe we crossed wires" shit. She hasn't read a thing I've said.
I wouldn't call the police on anyone for not letting their children build pipe bombs in their bedroom. Or not letting them make a MySpace. Or whatever the hell it is you ever thought I was talking about.
I'd call the police on people who don't let their children change, shower, or use the toilet behind a closed door. That's not a joke for metaquotes, that's a fundamental violation of their bodies.
Response:
and i'd still whup your ass.
no child anywhere has been endangered by pissing with a door open.
What, do I need to go find case studies? Jesus. It's not exactly the open door that's the problem here, it's not letting the door be shut. I SAID that.
A bunch of stuff about wiping kid's asses. Um, if your kids are still at the stage where they can't wipe their butts, they haven't asked for privacy, have they? And it's not illegal, etc. No, but if I really thought something was going on, I'd report suspicions anyway. Better safe than sorry.
(She seems to think that she'd even be AWARE if she was ever investigated. Right.)
You're gonna call the police and tell them you don't like that my kid can't lock their bedroom door?
And still ignoring everything I actually said.
I'm thinking, okay, I just set her off because she took it personal. People don't like it suggested that they're abusing their kids, not even abusers. Now, I didn't actually say I thought she was - I said her statements on raising a kid sounded fucked-up, and you know, nothing's changed my mind on this.
I become a lot less sure that she's not a nutcase when I read the rest of the threads. She jumps in to agree with virtually all of the most frightening sounding stuff, and ignores anyone who says, "No privacy? That's...um..." Well, except for someone protesting "no privacy" who she replies to with some rant that has nothing to do with the comment.
Oh, and she says this:
let me ask some of y'all pansy privacy for children folks this:
What in the hell GOOD is a teenager doing behind a locked door?
Anyone?
See, i remember the hormonal insanity that came with adolescense and nothing good can come from that.
And this, in a response to someone else, referring to me:
no lock on a door equals sexual abuse. me thinks someone's peepee was violated?
I have no words in response to that. None. I cannot think of a better way to have completely shown her ass.
I slept a bunch this afternoon; I think I may need to go to the doc for antibiotics, because it still feels like I have a KOOSH ball in my throat and chest. But I got up and checked email, and she hadn't replied back to my last comment. So I checked her journal, wondering if she was just offline, or ranting in her journal. Answer seems to be both. Brilliance from her public posts and comments:
Second woman from the original post -
I never want to meet that person's kids. You know they aren't going to change the diapers and if they do they won't wipe the baby because that would be inappropriate touching and the child doesn't have the power to say it makes them uncomfortable
*simply stares* Do you ever get the sense that you are all alone in being sane? Because I clearly remember having a bunch of stuff about people who "actually" abuse, stuff about the expectation that your child is NOT a complete mystery to you, and stuff about, "No, I wasn't talking about ignoring the building of pipe bombs."
Maybe I was speaking in Swedish and didn't realize it.
First woman =
no slamming my doors equals child abuse?
*STARE* Maybe she didn't understand anything I said because she's just really stupid.
[2]yea, she's crazy ovveracting but I am pretty sure she was abused. If memory serves me correctly (i am not going to search), she had mentioned in one of those " call out your parents for their abuse" things about her mother allowing her step dad to force her out of her clothes when he would whup her ass and it later led to an eating disorder because she had so much fear and hatred towards her body (hope I'm not mixing her up with someone else).
Yeah, you are, since none of y'all have my gender straight, and I've never replied to one of those threads.
[2]When the parent is a bad parent though, you know, the trust doesn't work.
[1]of course. which i think was said a thousand times
...By me. Not her. Yeah. All I got from her was shit about kicking my ass, and a defense of peeing with the door open. I'm still utterly unclear on whether or not she knows what the distinction between supervision and violation is here.
[1]i told her i was sorry someone touched her peepee. it was pretty obvious.
She didn't.
I wonder if the other people on the thread disagreeing with her "obviously" had their peepees touched, too?
[still 1]but in the end i don't care. i pity her. but not enough to NOT knock her out if she were to call the authorities cause my kids can't lock their door.
Really stupid.
Best part of all, best line of all time, from the post these comments were on:
someone please explain to me people's inability to differentiate between themselves and universial truths?
Like the universal truth that everyone has the inherent right to privacy regarding their bodies? Do you differentiate between that and being greatly offended over criticism of an announcement that makes it sound like you violate that right?
But hey, this is someone who, one post down, writes:
Children are NOT people
A moment of silent contemplation here.
I feel so bad for her kids.
Guaranteed - or it should be. Anybody who disagrees can get the FUCK off my friendslist STAT.
Mmmkay.
Today there was some crazy shit that went down in a locked post in a community on my friends list. And when I say "crazy," I mean TOTALLY. FUCKING. BATSHIT. Like, "I hope some people never breed, oh shit they maybe already have," kind of BATSHIT.
It started over this story, in the news god-only-knows-where (except we know it HAS to be American):
The parents of a young teen-aged girl (14, I think) set up a fake MySpace account posing as a 14-year-old and befriended their daughter online. The girl admitted, to this fake account, that a 16-year-old boy that she'd met online was going to be at her house in just 15 minutes and that her parents didn't know. The parents immediately called the police and then headed for the house.
The police and parents arrived at approximately the same time to find a 28-year-old convicted sex offender standing on the front porch.
Was this monitoring of the girl's online activity appropriate or did the parents invade her privacy?
Ahh...okay, stop. Hold on. TIME OUT.
This girl isn't even old enough to DRIVE yet, and her parents are sneaking around creating fake MySpace accounts to keep tabs on her?
They are so out of the loop with what this child does online, that they did it to check up on what she was doing while they were out of the house?
They were out of the loop with what she was doing online, but they left her alone in the house, and let her use the computer while they were gone?
How much do you want to bet this was her OWN computer, in her own bedroom, and that's part of the reason these people were spying on her?
I mean, WHAT THE SHIT, we call that PARENTING? I can't even believe there's public debate over whether or not her parents did the "right" thing by invading her privacy.
No. No, they didn't do the right thing. They didn't do the right thing a LONG time ago. We know this because they are sneaking around to supervise their own child, and SHE, meanwhile, is calling boys two years older than her (she thinks) to their home behind her parent's backs.
Why does anybody actually think either of the proposed courses of action here - act like your kid doesn't exist, or spy on them - are actually viable parenting techniques? WTF? *headshake*
So that's the post, basically. The OP thought it was "appropriate" to do that, and, well...I suppose if the situation was that out of control in the first place, it's better than letting them be raped. But that whole situation should never have happened at all. Okay? Can we agree on this?
So immediately, someone (who is apparently on the flist of some people on my flist, so those people may not want to click below if they recognize this) replies to a hypothetical child (in part) like this:
you have no expectation of privacy. you have no "room." You have no door. you ain't got shit.
...Aaand, my spidey-senses go BERSERK. Holy batshit. "You ain't got shit"? What's wrong with this picture? Is this parental over-statement (like that old, "I brought you into this world...!" thing we've all been told), or more like when he told you that she just walked into a door?
So I replied. Man, I was a fool for saying anything, but after reviewing all the comments to that thread, I'm not sorry. Because some people are simply loons.
My reply (again, in part, I'm not quoting all of this):
Uh. That sounds like a great way to ensure a kid grows up with an incredibly fucked-up sense of boundaries. If the idea is to keep them from getting into trouble and being taken advantage of, it's a bit contradictory to also teach them that any adult should have access to them, regardless of their feelings.
How about, "no unsupervised computer time?"
Key words in there being "sounds like" and "access."
When someone says their kid has, "No privacy!" I don't know if they're indicating a really screwy child-rearing method or not. But dude, if it SOUNDS LIKE IT, maybe something's wrong with the way you put that.
Please, don't anybody tell me you don't think this sounds off. The NAVY gives you more privacy than that. Seriously now.
What followed after that was the most ridiculous argument I've had in recent memory. During the course of that argument, I was informed that having some expectation of privacy results in a kid that is an entitled, spoiled brat who can't function in the world. No privacy now, boy, that teaches you RESPECT!
Meanwhile, someone else replied to say that children need to learn that their parents have access to them, it's about authority and trust, etc. At this point, I got a sense of seriously conflicting messages.
"Access to a child," means pretty much only one thing in my lexicon: access to their body. I've seen the same ideas regarding women in feminist communities, so this isn't an obscure way of putting it. When I say, "access to [someone]" it doesn't generally refer to anything other than access to their body.
For this reason, when I see the second woman saying parents should have access to their children, my mouth is going, "FUCK no," but that doesn't match the rest of what she is saying at all. So:
We may have totally different ideas of "access" here. Expecting your kid to follow your rules, not lie, not sneak around, report anything that ought to be reported, etc. is totally different from teaching them they have no privacy.
"No bedroom door" to me isn't discipline, it's "covert sexual abuse." And I don't mean if the kid is sharing a room or whatever; I mean, if a kid is forced to make everything they do public. "No privacy" to me means just that.
What gets flagged "no privacy" in my head? Most fundamentally:
Not being allowed the privacy about your body that you request.
It doesn't matter if your mother used to scrub your little armpits in the tub and put your diaper on you - once you are old enough that you can declare your autonomy in that area, you have a right to privacy regarding it. That means:
-it's wrong to force a child to get undressed in front of anyone (barring medical issues, the necessity of which I leave to be determined on a case-by-case basis)
-it's wrong to put them in a situation (no bedroom door and no other place to change) where that will occur
-it's wrong to watch or look at a child in any state of undress if they have requested otherwise (barring medical issues)
-it's wrong to walk into the bathroom when they are using it if they ask for privacy
-it's wrong not to let them shower behind closed doors
Further (after puberty begins):
-it's wrong to restrict their privacy with the intent to keep them from masturbating (it's none of your goddamn business, holy crap)
-it's wrong to walk in on them in an attempt to catch them masturbating
Essentially, it is totally wrong to violate personal boundaries regarding bodily integrity, and to leave your child with the sense that their bodies are continually under observation.
But possibly, when the first woman said, "no privacy, no room, no door," she didn't mean any of the above. I find that a stretch (what, exactly, is the idea behind having no door?) but um, maybe we're on separate tangents. Our original thread is is like, "Say what?" "Say what?" so I link her to my explanatory, "different ideas of access" comment.
And the response was...yeah. She's not abusing her kids by not letting them build pipe bombs in the bedroom, she loves them more than anything, and blah blah, she'll kick my ass for interfering with the way she raises her kids. (Yeah, that's what everybody says.) So we still are miscommunicating, and you know...fuck all this, "what this means to me, maybe we crossed wires" shit. She hasn't read a thing I've said.
I wouldn't call the police on anyone for not letting their children build pipe bombs in their bedroom. Or not letting them make a MySpace. Or whatever the hell it is you ever thought I was talking about.
I'd call the police on people who don't let their children change, shower, or use the toilet behind a closed door. That's not a joke for metaquotes, that's a fundamental violation of their bodies.
Response:
and i'd still whup your ass.
no child anywhere has been endangered by pissing with a door open.
What, do I need to go find case studies? Jesus. It's not exactly the open door that's the problem here, it's not letting the door be shut. I SAID that.
A bunch of stuff about wiping kid's asses. Um, if your kids are still at the stage where they can't wipe their butts, they haven't asked for privacy, have they? And it's not illegal, etc. No, but if I really thought something was going on, I'd report suspicions anyway. Better safe than sorry.
(She seems to think that she'd even be AWARE if she was ever investigated. Right.)
You're gonna call the police and tell them you don't like that my kid can't lock their bedroom door?
And still ignoring everything I actually said.
I'm thinking, okay, I just set her off because she took it personal. People don't like it suggested that they're abusing their kids, not even abusers. Now, I didn't actually say I thought she was - I said her statements on raising a kid sounded fucked-up, and you know, nothing's changed my mind on this.
I become a lot less sure that she's not a nutcase when I read the rest of the threads. She jumps in to agree with virtually all of the most frightening sounding stuff, and ignores anyone who says, "No privacy? That's...um..." Well, except for someone protesting "no privacy" who she replies to with some rant that has nothing to do with the comment.
Oh, and she says this:
let me ask some of y'all pansy privacy for children folks this:
What in the hell GOOD is a teenager doing behind a locked door?
Anyone?
See, i remember the hormonal insanity that came with adolescense and nothing good can come from that.
And this, in a response to someone else, referring to me:
no lock on a door equals sexual abuse. me thinks someone's peepee was violated?
I have no words in response to that. None. I cannot think of a better way to have completely shown her ass.
I slept a bunch this afternoon; I think I may need to go to the doc for antibiotics, because it still feels like I have a KOOSH ball in my throat and chest. But I got up and checked email, and she hadn't replied back to my last comment. So I checked her journal, wondering if she was just offline, or ranting in her journal. Answer seems to be both. Brilliance from her public posts and comments:
Second woman from the original post -
I never want to meet that person's kids. You know they aren't going to change the diapers and if they do they won't wipe the baby because that would be inappropriate touching and the child doesn't have the power to say it makes them uncomfortable
*simply stares* Do you ever get the sense that you are all alone in being sane? Because I clearly remember having a bunch of stuff about people who "actually" abuse, stuff about the expectation that your child is NOT a complete mystery to you, and stuff about, "No, I wasn't talking about ignoring the building of pipe bombs."
Maybe I was speaking in Swedish and didn't realize it.
First woman =
no slamming my doors equals child abuse?
*STARE* Maybe she didn't understand anything I said because she's just really stupid.
[2]yea, she's crazy ovveracting but I am pretty sure she was abused. If memory serves me correctly (i am not going to search), she had mentioned in one of those " call out your parents for their abuse" things about her mother allowing her step dad to force her out of her clothes when he would whup her ass and it later led to an eating disorder because she had so much fear and hatred towards her body (hope I'm not mixing her up with someone else).
Yeah, you are, since none of y'all have my gender straight, and I've never replied to one of those threads.
[2]When the parent is a bad parent though, you know, the trust doesn't work.
[1]of course. which i think was said a thousand times
...By me. Not her. Yeah. All I got from her was shit about kicking my ass, and a defense of peeing with the door open. I'm still utterly unclear on whether or not she knows what the distinction between supervision and violation is here.
[1]i told her i was sorry someone touched her peepee. it was pretty obvious.
She didn't.
I wonder if the other people on the thread disagreeing with her "obviously" had their peepees touched, too?
[still 1]but in the end i don't care. i pity her. but not enough to NOT knock her out if she were to call the authorities cause my kids can't lock their door.
Really stupid.
Best part of all, best line of all time, from the post these comments were on:
someone please explain to me people's inability to differentiate between themselves and universial truths?
Like the universal truth that everyone has the inherent right to privacy regarding their bodies? Do you differentiate between that and being greatly offended over criticism of an announcement that makes it sound like you violate that right?
But hey, this is someone who, one post down, writes:
Children are NOT people
A moment of silent contemplation here.
I feel so bad for her kids.
