I think there’s a case to be made for the idea that people get a little hysterical far too quickly when dealing with the fear of child molestation, and innocent people get railroaded. The Satanic panics of the 80s are the most clear-cut example, but there’s other stories out there of people getting bad charges against them for naked baby pictures and other innocous things like this. This story in Salon could be illuminating on the subject, except the author drops this bomb on the 4th page:
“If we get down to the bottom line, there is no clear-cut definition,” said Dean Tong, who wrote “Elusive Innocence, Survival Guide for the Falsely Accused,” after being jailed and then spending 10 years and $150,000 to clear himself of abusing his young daughter. Now a forensic consultant in thousands of false-accusation cases across the country, Tong told me that even most police officers are not well enough trained to interpret the law, let alone photo lab employees. Tong said that when facing the slightest doubt, law enforcement officers “err on the side of the child,” noting the potential results: “I see families stripped and ripped apart in the middle of the night.”
Big, huge credibility issue—Dean Tong is fairly notorious for his sleazy involvement with men’s rights activists. He tends to take the view that most accusations of sexual assault and domestic violence are false and was a consultant for Darren Mack. Well, at least he was helping Darren Mack right until Mack murdered his ex-wife and shot the family court judge who ruled on his case. When trying to preserve his reputation after he provided testimony that his “tests” of Mack showed no violent tendencies, he ended up blaming Charla Mack for causing her own murder. People like Dean Tong seem less interested in helping clean the system up to protect the truly innocent and more interested in making it harder for women and children to get a fair shake when they come before family court judges.
Otherwise, I thought it was a pretty good article. But on a subject so sensitive, I advise people to avoid the bottom feeders as much as possible. They only hurt your case.
Hat tip, Greg.
93 Responses to “Don’t blow your credibility; avoid the MRAs”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
The fact that he’s affiliated with Men’s Rights Activists is the least of his credibilty problems. He is affronted that law enforcement errs on the side of the child? That’s when I stop listening to him.
Unreported/unresolved sexual abuse/sexually inappropriate behavior far outweighs the number of cases of “false” reports. Child sexual abuse is a serious issue. And people are far more likely to say, “No, that can’t be true” than they are to conjure sexual abuse where there is none and go on a hysterical witch-hunt.
But we don’t actually value children as human beings in our society, and in fact of late I’ve been told by prominent authors that taking the time and care to raise them thoughtfully and with integrity is a colossal waste of my time.
So there you have it.
It’s too bad that the article itself compares apples and oranges; in the main story, there was no outcry, just pictures of his children skinny-dipping on a camping trip.
I see no problem with “erring on the side of the child,” the problem is that the police probably have no idea how to best do that. These are the same brainiacs that are sending SWAT teams into gay gyms for alleged petty offenses, after all.
This guy’s story makes me sick anyway. Who “needs” naked photos of their kids? What are you going to do with them — put them in the family album so folks can chuckle over them? What kind of a “keepsake” is it?
And who pats the naked bottom of their kid as s/he runs by?
Children aren’t property. They deserve dignity, a right to their own bodies, and privacy. Once it’s no longer necessary to touch a child’s genitals and buttocks for purposes of diapering/toilet clean-up/bathing, you’re out of legitimate reasons to touch them.
And note how the guy couldn’t hold it together enough not to yell and snap at his kids when they asked him if they would be taken away. The whole article has an “all about me” feel to it.
And peeing on the fire for the family portrait offends my sensibilities on so many levels.
Tinfoil Hattie: AGREED~! There is so little reason to even have nekkid child pics unless you plan on humiliating the child when they’ve grown up! My mom took one of me at 5 months old, held up by one foot, nekkid and covered in chicken pox. The only reason to have that was to give me a hard time later….Grrrr! =P Well you can see I have my own issues.
So many men who are against children’s rights seem to be the ones intent on abusing them.
I don’t know, my parents have a picture of me when I was 3 or 4, naked and holding a broom. I thought it was a law or something that every parent has to have a picture of their small child naked and holding a broom.
It isn’t that big a deal to me. I would say the humiliation is a completely separate thing from the pictures themselves, which are just pictures - unless you’re sick and twisted, nudity in children is not a sexual thing. Kids are cute. Some kids like being naked. No big thing.
I agree with tinfoil hattie. This guy is talking about his kids as they were pets, and nothing more. And no, no one needs naked kid pics, ever!
The argument about people being prosecuted for taking a picture of their kids taking a bath at 2 is a bogus smoke screen. If you read the Supreme Court’s Ferber decision and all of its prodegy, which is essentially every single case where a statute relating to kiddie porn and criminal prosecution thereof is discussed, the law takes non-sexual nudity into account in a big way. The images have to be lacivious and appeal to the purient interest. This is not totally objective, but the appellate decisions reveal that courts see a difference between applying the statutes to a normal bath tub picture, and to one where a telephoto lens is aimed at a child’s genetaila. Let’s put it this way, if people have to stop and think whether your poster sized picture of a certain part of your child is ok or not, I’m wondering about your sexual interests and relationship with your child. This guy is an apologist for pedophiles.
I can only think of one picture I’ve ever taken of my kid naked — it was during her first bath, right after she was sprung from the harness the doctors put her in at birth to correct a congenital hip condition. I took the picture because I was happy my family was getting back to normal after the medical crisis, and I wanted to preserve the moment.
I may have taken another picture a year or two later, when she was in the tub getting finger paint cleaned off of her. She looked so strong and wild and gleeful, covered in blue paint that — again — it was a moment I wanted to preserve.
In neither case was the nudity the point of the photo. In each case there was a moment I wanted to fix in my mind, and that moment happened to be one in which my child wasn’t wearing any clothes. I wouldn’t ever display these photos in a way that would cause her embarrassment or discomfort.
Does the thought of these photos make you “sick”? If so, for goodness sake — why?
Yup. And they also deserve affection and physical contact. You respect a child’s dignity and privacy by respecting his or her wishes, not by putting arbitrary barriers between yourself and the child.
Wait. What? A parent needs a “legitimate reason” to pat his four-year-old on the butt? Again — why? Does he also need a “legitimate reason” to give the kid a kiss or a hug?
Brook, no statute purpoting to prosecute you for what you describe would be constitutional under Ferber, either facially or as applied to you. Your photographs did not appeal to the purient interest, and therefore do not constitute child pornography. End of discussion.
Likewise, I’ve never heard of a successful molestation prosecution relating to even a daily pat or two on a child’s behind. In some cultures, I understand it is even customary to kiss a a boy’s penis after diaper changing. However, I’m a bit creeped out by people who touch their childrens’ butttocks a lot when combined with other behavior such as taking up close pictures of their genitals.
Amen. I was too timid(?) to report mine, in retrospect fortunately I think, given my wife did report her abuse to her teachers, and got 3 years institutionalised as a result, courtesy of the legal system.
In defense of naked baby pictures–kids under four seem to want to spend the majority of their time naked as it is.
Yeah, there was a “topless” picture of me that my asshole dad tried to spring on my first boyfriend (!!) but considering the genuine joy a lot of kids get from being nakers, I’m not going to extrapolate that out to abuse if a parent decides to snap a pic of little Madison running around the yard in nothing but a pair of cowboy boots and a red towel.
But yes, I agree 100% with Amanda. The way to make the case that naked baby picture != child abuse is not to associate yourself with groups trying to make child and spousal abuse legal.
I wasn’t saying I feared prosecution — if I feared prosecution for my child-rearing practices, I probably wouldn’t be describing them here. I was responding to Hattie’s statement that perfectly ordinary parenting makes her “sick.”
But since you bring it up, I’m afraid I can’t agree with your dismissal of the issue. Ferber just means that no conviction for such benign activities would be upheld by an appellate court, and perhaps that no competent and ethical prosecutor would bring charges for such activities. I’ll certainly grant you that, if you like.
Is that really “end of discussion,” though? It’s possible for an over-zealous caseworker, cop, or prosecutor to do real damage to a family without any charges being brought.
And anyone who thinks this isn’t a feminist issue should Google Sharwline Nicholson’s name.
the more charged the issue or offense, the more important it becomes to get the largest possible set of plain, unjudgemental facts. that applies to all sorts of accused.
The amerault case in massachusetts never had much more than testimony that psychologists got out of 4 and 5 year olds…it has had a smell of ambiguity mixed with horror hanging over it for 20 years.
nobody who doesn’t have ALL the facts has any business prejudging the case.
and the bitch of it is, these abuse cases seldom yield a clear uncontested body of evidence. intra-family abuse typically has little physical evidence which, if cases come up, is a problem tossed in the jury’s lap. How on earth are they going to set aside their own inclination to assume that the silence and shame they do see is just a dark ocean and the crime alleged is the tip of something much larger bobbing in those waters?
When I was a kid (about 70 years ago) and for that matter, when my parents were kids, there WAS a law that you had to take naked pictures of your kids, lying on their stomaches on a sheepskin, or less commonly a deerskin. What else could explain all the pictures I have seen of myself, my brother, my parents, my aunts and uncles, all lying naked on animal skins?
I’ve got to agree with Brooklynite here. I was raised in a family that wasn’t scared of nudity. We weren’t super open about it, but there was no state of fear in the household about it. According to some of the comments I’ve seen regarding this article, I’ve been irreparably damaged on an emotional level, which is blatantly untrue and ridiculous.
Some people aren’t comfortable with nudity or their bodies, and they teach their children that. But that doesn’t mean that a family that is comfortable is somehow unnatural or hurting each other. Yes, there are cases of inappropriate nudity and sexual abuse in some homes - so we should outlaw nudity? No one’s ever allowed to hug their kids or give them a kiss goodnight because it’s “inappropriate
? Different does not equal “abusive”, no matter how much people insist it does.
Heck, when I was a kid it was near impossible to keep me in clothing, in public or not. One of the funniest stories of my childhood involves my mom taking me with her to view a house they were thinking of purchasing. I ran off through the house and as they looked for me they came across a trail of clothing, a sock here, panties here, shirt over there. And the trail ended at me, sitting naked in the bathtub of the upstairs bathroom. Please tell me - does this make my mother a horrible parent? Does this mean that something I find extremely funny [and perfectly in step with my adult personality] was actually a horrific, traumatizing event that scarred me for life? I mean, I was naked, right? So clearly that’s indicative of some sort of sexual abuse, because we all know a kid would never do that on their own.
Abuse is horrific and shouldn’t be ignored. But it’s hard for me to understand why certain actions are being demonized when they seem so innocent and mundane to me. Because my family was more open about nudity than someone elses, does that really mean we’re horrible people who are breaking some law?
My niece asked me if they were playing “duck, duck goose”? I responded that it was a lame attempt at playing “duck, duck goose”.
A lot of people here seem uncomfortable with nudity. Go to a beach in Europe sometime; there are naked toddlers everywhere. i doubt they’re going to be more neurotic than the average American when when they grow up.
This guy’s story makes me sick anyway. Who “needs� naked photos of their kids? What are you going to do with them — put them in the family album so folks can chuckle over them? What kind of a “keepsake� is it?
Um, yes?
My father is a photographer. He had five children, all of whom went through multiple stages of enjoying being naked. He and my mom were pretty laid-back about the whole body image/naked issue, and they have boxes and albums full of photos of us running around various places, naked. Naked in the kitchen, naked in the living room, naked in the wading pool in the backyard (in a city! without fences!)! It’s not something that embarrasses me as an adult, and they’re pictures that I believe that most people who have seen them consider fairly cute. I think it’s also part of how they raised four girls who have few body image issues–our bodies are what our bodies are.
For the record, I sleep naked as an adult, and will happily walk around my house naked in the evenings when it’s warm out. If I ended up at a nude beach, I’d probably join in, although I wouldn’t seek out a nude beach. At a camping trip like the one described, I probably would have been out there skinny-dipping with the kids and finding nothing wrong with it.
I’m probably as ashamed of my body as anybody, but for Christ’s sake, no one NEEDS naked pictures of children? As my family’s digital archivist I have hilarious pics of skinny-dipping. Oh no, I think there might be a few of my brother without his diaper on! Call the police!
A right to be free of embarrassment at the hands of the people who know and love you is just lunacy to me.
The most recent case of widespread panic resulting in false convinction was that holy roller church in East Wenatchee, where dozens of members were sentenced to thousands of cases of child sexual abuse, lurid tales of child sex rings were thrown about with virtually no evidence, etc.
Summary of the evil-doing here:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/wenatche2.htm
I’d almost go the other way and say that parent who doesn’t have any pictures of tiny kid naked in the bath or under the sprinkler or wherever (assuming they have lots of pictures) is missing something and a bit suspect.
And yeah, the fact that no appellate court would uphold the conviction isn’t all that comforting. Especially when the kids involved have probably been in foster care for three or four years at that point. But I think the problem is much more that Tong’s language frames things wrong — people don’t err on the side of the child when they step in at the slightest hint of abuse, they err on the side of state action. (Of course, in plenty of other cases people err on the side of closing their eyes to the obvious.) In most jurisdictions, there aren’t nearly enough resources to do anything in the interests of the child — it’s about the interests of the state vs the interests of the parents.
I think that this kind of conundrum is only going to get more pointed as parts of the US move closer to theocracy — prosecutions of parents who are “immoral” enough to let their kids run around naked and maybe even take pictures of them, and blindness to abuse by churchgoing pillars of the community.
prosecutions of parents who are “immoral� enough to let their kids run around naked and maybe even take pictures of them
Or, prosecutions of parents who are “immoral” enough to ever be naked where their kids might possibly see it.
I’m also of two minds about this article.
On the one hand, Salon has covered the issue of developers accusing parents over non-purient photos before. Even if charges are quickly dropped in most cases, Parents are subjected to a terrifying ordeal and sometimes have their kids taken away before things are cleared up. That’s inexcusable.
BUT it’s also inexcusable to bring Dean Tong into the mix. He’s a bad guy and an unqualified expert. There are many other more credible experts out there who aren’t involved with Men’s Rights and homicides. It’s a disservice to women and the issue, and it raises questions about the author.
Also, I’ve tried googling the author of this piece - Jody Jenkins - and as far as I can tell, there is no France dwelling journalist by that name. I can’t even tell if the author is male or female from the essay. Perhaps it’s a psuedonym or maybe this is his/her first published essay. Considering the credibility issue, I think Salon should provide a bit more info, especially if it’s a fake name. I’m probably just paranoid, but something stinks about this.
Agreed with Older. When I was a kid, my parents took lots of innocent naked pictures. I was a lot older than 4 when I still liked to run around naked, I’m afraid. although I assure you that all the pictures of me looking deliriously happy with underwear on my head are from when I was around 2. There was no alchohol involved.
There are pictures of me, my little sister, and the neighbour boys all in the bathtub at the same time. Our parents figured if we got that filthy together, we could get clean together. It wasn’t until I was around nine or ten that I started getting in trouble for taking my shirt off to play an Indian during “Cowboys and Indians” or swimming with the boys wearing only my panties. (Well honestly, my chest didn’t look any different than theirs did.)
My parents stopped taking photos of me naked when they stopped thinking it was cute and started wondering why their daughter thought that clothing was optional.
Brook, you can twist my words to suit your purposes if you choose, but what I said was “This guy’s story makes me sick anyway.” (Go read the comment.)
There’s a hell of a lot wrong with patting a naked 8-year-old’s buttocks. It’s not “normal” parenting. I take issue with patting a 3-year-old’s naked buttocks also. And if kids “prefer” to run around naked, more power to ‘em — but do the adults in the room need a record of the nudity?
Bath pictures, I think are cute and record milestones. Because the picture is of the bath, not the kid’s genitals. Hopefully.
The thought of taking the liberty of deciding for your child that it’s okay to stroke, fondle, touch, or make an exhibition of his or her genitals is what makes me very, very sick. It’s a power thing, and a kid that young has no say.
If you confuse that with “hugging and kissing” your children, I’d say you’re the one that needs to ask yourself why.
Salon ran a bullshit, inflammatory article? I’m truly shocked.
Maybe they could hire some of the people who think that if you possess a photo of your preschooler pretending to be Captain Underpants, you’re a rapist.
A right to be free of embarrassment at the hands of the people who know and love you is just lunacy to me.
to be “free of embarassment” at the hand of people who know and love you is…lunacy? Was this a typo?
There is a difference between teaching kids to be free to love THEIR OWN naked bodies and explore and touch them, and being the one to decide that you get to touch their bodies and exploit them for purposes of your own “humor” or “teasing” later on. More important than teaching a kid “Hey, being naked is great! C’mon! Everybody get naked and don’t be ashamed of your body!” is “You are the one who gets to decide what happens to your body, and I’ll give you that clear message by NOT exploiting it for my own chuckles and grins.”
Yeah, my folks, too. I think each of us kids has a photo taken on a towel or in the bath. Bringing Dean Tong into it is inexcuseable. It’s very much American; in Europe nobody looks twice and I found it refreshing to go to a topless beach and not be stared at.
You don’t just have issues Hattie, you’ve got the full subscription.
Well, at least she reads, pablo.
tinfoil said
“There’s a hell of a lot wrong with patting a naked 8-year-old’s buttocks.”
the essay said
“A pat on the bum as our kids ran past suddenly seemed dangerous through our second-guessing, suddenly all-critical eye.”
Unless I’m missing something, there’s nothing in there about nudity. My impression certainly isn’t that the kids are running around naked all the time and the parents are taking swipes at their asses as they dash past.
One of my favorite pictures of myself is of me about three years old, stark naked except for a sombrero and a huge smile. I’m glad my parents didn’t
… have to worry too much about overzealous photoshop employees.
I find it interesting that on a website where people routinely claim that women having sex with men is a product of the patriarchy under any circumstance, people think there’s no disempowerment involved in taking photos of naked kids.
Ask yourself why you need a record of your kids naked? To look at their genitals? If not, why naked?
Issues, shmissues. I just say things other people don’t want to hear. I’m quite used to it.
Reading the article, I thought this in particular was ridiculous.
For instance, in Dallas in 2003, as the result of a complaint by an Eckerd drugstore employee, a 33-year-old woman was charged with “sexual performance of a child,” a second-degree felony punishable by 20 years in prison, based on a picture of her breast-feeding her 1-year-old son. Although the district attorney dropped the charges in the case, the parents had to fight for weeks to get their two children back from the Dallas County Child Protective Services.
Yeah, that’s downright Victorian in its prudery.
Since I’ve been trying to figure out how to breastfeed my baby, and since I never got around to buying the nursing bra and shirts I’d been meaning to get, it’s been easier these past three weeks to walk around topless when no one else is home. Just stick the kid on the boob without having to undo any straps and buttons. Is this sexual, too, just because I’m topless? Also, skin-to-skin contact is supposed to help with milk supply, so sometimes the kid is topless, too. Call the police! Or is it only bad if I take a picture of it?
My mom’s been a social worker my whole life, and has been involved with child protective services as a child therapist. And I can tell you, there is definitely a culture there that, as someone upthread put it, errs on the side of state action. Now that I have a kid, I seriously live in fear that my mother will somehow arrainge to have my baby taken away.
False accusations like this dwarf the real problems of child abuse, though. Is it possible to talk about this without sounding like an apoligist?
I find it interesting that on a website where people routinely claim that women having sex with men is a product of the patriarchy under any circumstance
Well, I think that’s dumb, too.
Hattie, I think it’s telling that when I drew a parallel between patting a four-year-old on the butt and giving that same kid a hug or a kiss, you intimated that I couldn’t see the difference between a hug or a kiss and — your words — “deciding for your child that it’s okay to stroke, fondle, touch, or make an exhibition of his or her genitals.”
There was no suggestion anywhere in the original article, or anywhere in this thread, that anyone thought it was okay for a parent to “fondle” a kid’s genitals. Why? Because fondling a child’s genitals is sexual assault. That you would equate a pat on the butt with the sexual fondling of a child is frankly repulsive.
When you say that a pat on the butt is inappropriate, I’m not being facetious when I respond that I have no idea where else you draw the line. A raspberry blown on the belly? A peck on the lips? Where does the policing of innocent affection between parents and children end? What purpose does it serve? And why on earth is it any of your business?
You asked that question before, Hattie, and I answered it. In response you said that bath-time photos were “cute.” Isn’t that reason enough? Since when does a parent need a reason beyond cuteness to take a picture of his or her kid?
The thought of taking the liberty of deciding for your child that it’s okay to stroke, fondle, touch, or make an exhibition of his or her genitals is what makes me very, very sick. It’s a power thing, and a kid that young has no say.
Can I ask who said it was okay to “stroke, fondle, touch” genitals? I didn’t see any talk of genitalia here.
I don’t see this as a sexual issue. A “pat on the bum” is not a lingering, sexually explicit grope. It’s akin to putting your hand on their shoulder or lower back. What’s sexual about it?
I’m a touchy person. When I talk, I use my hands. When I’m with friends, I hug them or touch their hands/arms/shoulders. If I’m with my young nieces and nephews, I do the same thing. Are you saying that this behaviour is inherently sexual and abusive?
Touch is calming and comforting, especially to young children. I’m a little shocked that someone would advocate never touching a child in a comforting and reassuring manner, that someone could even begin to fathom this contact is sexual in nature. As a child I loved having my back rubbed by my mother, to this day a soft back rub makes me feel safe and secure because I associate it with her and my childhood. To deny bonding of this sort…it’s odd.
As for “who needs naked pictures of their children?” - well, who needs wedding photos? Who needs candid shots of happy moments? No one, I suppose. But people enjoy them, so they take them. Why are you so insistent on demonizing something that, more often than not, is perfectly innocent?
Go ahead and pat your kid’s naked butt. I don’t think it’s an okay thing to do to my kids. That’s where I draw my line — touching the parts of the body we tell our kids kids strangers are not allowed to touch. It’s not okay for me to touch them because I’m the parent. My opinion. My boundary. My kids.
It’s my “business” because this is a public forum, where comments on topics are invited, and I am freely offering my opinion. So what if you don’t agree with me? You don’t have to. Why so defensive? I’m not the boss of you, and I pose no threat to you. I have a different opinion.
And the article said something about the guy being worried about patting his kid’s butt. You’re right, I don’t know if he meant during the Great Naked Camping Trip of ‘06 or not. I stand corrected. I believe his article had a great sense of his own privilege tied up in it. Like he was more outraged that someone would report, as required by law, that someone had taken nude photos of his kids than he was by the idea that, oops — what if it wasn’t he who had taken them?
I made the point about genitals, etc. because that’s where I draw my line. Me. I. My line. My own opinion. On an internet forum.
It’s not my body. It’s my kid’s body. So I err on the side of not invading their privacy. Draw your line anywhere you want to.
Until they repeal the Consititution (currently in progress, I know), I will freely express my opinion, and vigorously defend your right to disagree with it.
Hattie really seems off the deep end here. Why all the focus on “need”? Except maybe for one clear recent photo in case the child goes missing, we don’t “need” any photos of anyone at all. This is so simple:
a) Young children are often naked
b) Parents like to take pictures of young children living their lives and doing things they enjoy
c) Since (a), some of the pictures from (b) will be naked ones.
Until they repeal the Consititution (currently in progress, I know), I will freely express my opinion, and vigorously defend your right to disagree with it.
That’s not your cross. Please climb down.
The Venn diagram doesn’t work out for your argument, djw, because the parents can shoose not to photograph when the kids are naked.
“shoose” = “choose”
Disagreeing with you doesn’t mean I’m “off the deep end.”
If you prefer the term “want,” okay. Why do you “want” pictures of your kids naked?
I just ask the provocative questions. Answer ‘em however you want. No need to get personal. I spoke in general terms. You can too. We’re adults here.
One reason I like this site is because of the intelligent exchange of ideas. I disagree with others’ ideas sometimes. So what? They’re still intresting ideas, and thought-provoking, and I enjoy this kind of exchange.
I don’t take, or intend, any of it personally.
Any law, especially one about kiddies, is going to be used by immoral people in power to go after those they want to marginalize. It would not suprise me to see a fundie sheriff go after a single mother he percieved as a promiscuous hippie on the complaint of a kodak employee who saw her kid bathtub pictures. But how are you going to prevent that from happening and STILL get the guy who had a box of hundreds of pictures of his children’s genitalia, which he was circulating on the internet? All laws can be misused. Is anyone suggesting we narrow the definintion of kiddie porn? Be specific as to how to solve this percieved problem of wrongful accusation while still preserving the ability to go after kiddie porn.
I interviewed for a job prosecuting kiddie porn. There is so much out there, it is a daunting task and the lawyers in that division of DOJ seemed overwhelmed. Do we really want to make their job harder just to stamp out a few wrongful accusations that are thrown out when it becomes apparent the pictures aren’t sexual? See Twisty’s not too long ago post on parents who put their young teen daughters on “grey area” websites, where they are not totally nude, but posed in a very sexual way. The PARENTS make money off of this and defend it because it ‘will help Susy become a model.’ (Of course, the modeling agencies say they won’t touch girls with this kind of material out there). No one has real time for your bathtub pictures. Relax, and worry about the real sickos out there.
What are you talking about, my “cross”? I thought it was just a First Amendment right. Did I miss something?
tf — but when you make statements that either accuse us of child molestation for delighting in some of our kid’s more candid moments, or assert that we were victims of sexual abuse because our parents took a picture of our own candid moments — do you understand how that might rankle some people?
Teaching kids that their bodies are their own and that they have the right to tell people not to touch them is GOOD.
Teaching kids that their bodies are under constant attack by perverts, and that any physical contact (even by parents) is just a pretense for abuse is NOT SO GOOD.
I think the point, hattie, was that not wanting to photograph your kids naked is the same as martyrdom and crucifixion…or something.
Why do you “want� pictures of your kids naked?
Why do you decide whether parents should “want” to keep family photos based on how much clothing the children in them are wearing?
His mention of a pat on the bum was after the investigation had started.
Wow. I knew the second I started reading this one that it would get very weird very quickly.
Hattie: okay, whatever, you raise your own kids how you want. But I do have to wonder if you’ve considered how your own attitudes towards nudity (apparently, you think nakedness is automatically sexual) and physical contact between parents and children (you don’t give a 3 year old a pat on the butt because you find it somehow sexual as well, apparently) might be problematic.
Why the hell does nudity have to equal sexual? Why does a pat on the butt–naked or clothed–have to be sexual? Yeah, a stranger should not be patting a child on the ass. A stranger should also not be kissing the child or holding the her hand.
Don’t you think that you might be reinforcing the idea for your children that parts of their bodies are “dirty” and “nasty”?
Also, I find it interesting that on a website where people routinely claim that women having sex with men is a product of the patriarchy under any circumstance, people think there’s no disempowerment involved in taking photos of naked kids.”
Again, just wow. The whole point is that to most of us photos of naked kids IN NO WAY equals anything remotely sexual. None of the happy reminisces I’ve seen here have implied in any way that the photos were taken in order to sexualise the child involved.
Why so defensive? I’m not the boss of you, and I pose no threat to you. I have a different opinion.
Defensive? I asked you a question, there was no defense in it. I merely want to know where you’re coming from since I’m honestly confused by your stance on this. You’re the one who’s playing the “Why are you defensive? It’s just my OPINION!” card.
Ponygirl hit on what I was trying to say. You are making comments that are coming off as extremely accusatory and somewhat snide. You basically told everyone that has a photo of their kids in any state of undress, that they “want to look at their genitals” - unless you’re deliberately trying to provoke people in to attacking you, what was the point of that statement?
I never claimed to tell you what to do in your own household. I’m merely asking that you provide the same common courtesy before you start demonizing others who don’t follow your “standards”, because you seem dead-set on making insulting comments towards people who don’t share your views on this subject.
tf — but when you make statements that either accuse us of child molestation for delighting in some of our kid’s more candid moments, or assert that we were victims of sexual abuse because our parents took a picture of our own candid moments — do you understand how that might rankle some people?
I’m sorry, I can’t find where in any of my comments I said any of those things. If you inferred them, I can’t actually influence that, can I.
Teaching kids that their bodies are their own and that they have the right to tell people not to touch them is GOOD.
Teaching kids that their bodies are under constant attack by perverts, and that any physical contact (even by parents) is just a pretense for abuse is NOT SO GOOD.
Since I made the exact points you’re making in the first paragraph, and do not hold with the belief (and never said, anywhere) that “any physical contact” is just a pretense for abuse, we are in full agreement, no?
Hattie, we’ve been talking about two parents who were investigated by child protective services because of their parenting choices, and threatened with the loss of their kids. In your comments, you’ve said the father’s description of himself as a parent made you “sick,” and suggested that his actions weren’t “normal.” You also said that parents had no “legitimate” reasons to touch their children’s buttocks unless they were bathing them or helping them on the toilet, and implied that patting a child’s butt was more like fondling its genitals than giving it a hug or a kiss.
You’re free to parent however you want, Hattie. I’m glad to see you think I should be free to “draw [my] line anywhere [I] want to,” too. But I’m surprised as well as pleased — you’ve certainly given a strong impression to the contrary until now.
Don’t you think that you might be reinforcing the idea for your children that parts of their bodies are “dirty� and “nasty�?
Well, I don’t think taking pictures of your kids naked is the only way to teach them their bodies are good and they should be proud of them. You can teach them that and not take pics of them in the nude. But that said, you definitely have the right to do what you want.
“And who pats the naked bottom of their kid as s/he runs by?” — How is one to inferr otherwise that only a molester would. Many of us have participated in a playful swat during the course of a streak, either as the swatter or swattee.
“There’s a hell of a lot wrong with patting a naked 8-year-old’s buttocks. It’s not “normalâ€? parenting. I take issue with patting a 3-year-old’s naked buttocks also. And if kids “preferâ€? to run around naked, more power to ‘em — but do the adults in the room need a record of the nudity?”
“Ask yourself why you need a record of your kids naked? To look at their genitals? If not, why naked?” - Many posters here have discussed the warm feelings they have towards their own naked baby pictures or the pictures they’ve taken of their children in the bath or streaking around covered in Child Woad (blue marker). Your assertion that we “need” to see our kids genitals is extemely inflamatory.
I don’t know if I can support that. I’ve had plenty of playtime with neice/nephew and cousins that I’m sure you would disapprove of. Raspberries on stomachs, snickering when the nephew streaked outside and shook his ass at us yelling “white butt! white butt!”… all sorts of scandalous behavior!
huh? are you talking about THIS website? i’ve never seen that. do you have links?
why not? kids are often naked, so a photo record of kids is bound to include nude kids. nudity is not always sexual.
My long post is awaiting moderation 10 miles upthread where no one will ever read it, so let me try again and see if I can avoid the offending words…
Reading the article, I thought this in particular was ridiculous.
For instance, in Dallas in 2003, as the result of a complaint by an Eckerd drugstore employee, a 33-year-old woman was charged with “sexual performance of a child,� a second-degree felony punishable by 20 years in prison, based on a picture of her breast-feeding her 1-year-old son. Although the district attorney dropped the charges in the case, the parents had to fight for weeks to get their two children back from the Dallas County Child Protective Services.
Yeah, that’s downright Victorian in its prudery.
Since I’ve been trying to figure out how to breastfeed my baby, and since I never got around to buying the nursing bra and shirts I’d been meaning to get, it’s been easier these past three weeks to walk around shirtless when no one else is home. Just stick the kid on the b00b without having to undo any straps and buttons. Is this sexual, too, just because I’m shirtless? Also, skin-to-skin contact is supposed to help with milk supply, so sometimes the kid is shirtless, too. Call the police! Or is it only bad if I take a picture of it?
My mom’s been a social worker my whole life, and has been involved with child protective services as a child therapist. And I can tell you, there is definitely a culture there that, as someone upthread put it, errs on the side of state action. Now that I have a kid, I seriously live in fear that my mother will somehow arrainge to have my baby taken away.
False accusations like this dwarf the real problems of child abuse, though. Is it possible to talk about this without sounding like an apologist?
Grr…I am seriously being foiled by the comment moderation…
The Venn diagram doesn’t work out for your argument, djw, because the parents can choose not to photograph when the kids are naked.
But if that results in the parents missing out on pictures of significant childhood actions/events/cuteness they want to preserve, how is that good?
I grew up in a place where it gets hot and sticky during the summer. At least when I was a child, kids up to the age of probably ~8 could go naked in semi-private areas (areas that may be open to the public, but would be seen mainly by neighbors under most circumstances) without comment. We would go to the neighborhood park and run naked through the sprinklers. We would sit naked in wading pools in people’s backyards. Parents would take pictures of kids being cute, which often involved kids being naked. And sometimes, even not just THEIR kids being naked.
Naked kids weren’t sexual, because naked kids aren’t sexual. Sure, maybe some male in the neighborhood was secretly getting off from watching the kids do what kids do. Unfortunately, there’s nothing that can be done about that until that person does something clearly illegal–and it’s probably the same person who’d still be getting off from watching the kids in run through the sprinklers or soak in the wading pool while wearing suits.
I don’t think most of them were, and most of us kids were comfortable enough about our bodies to go screaming to an adult if something bad happened. Being comfortable with our bodies was part and parcel of this–and it’s easier to teach a kid to be assertive about what’s right and wrong when they’re comfortable about their bodies than when they’re ashamed about their bodies.
I think it is perfectly appropriate for these people to question their behavior with regard to their interaction with their naked children. All parents should question their behavior with their children. They shouldn’t need to be investigated to do it.
The split in the discussion here seems to me to be those of us who have been abused and are hypersensitive to the encroachment of boundaries, and those of you who have not, and so are not.
Years ago the tradition was a bare baby on a bearskin rug. These days it seems to be the first bath or first bubble bath.
The attitudes of people like hattie are why the laws about stuff like this need to be clearer.
A great many people (and the law) think that parents have the right to take pictures of their naked children, when the nudity and pose are chosen by the child.
“Erring on the side of the child” completely ignores the fact that the investigation itself will neccessarily cause harm to the child and the family, whether or not there is abuse. Therefore, it is important to have mechanisms whereby possible misunderstandings can be quickly resolved.
Abuse needs to be rooted out, but the child welfare bureaucracies seem be a little too unconcerned with the fact that they are often harming healthy families.
Note: I had a friend (in a mixed-race couple) who had a colicky baby. Someone in her apartment complex called social services and/or the police every time the baby cried. Should people risk losing their children (and their jobs - my friend is a teacher) because racists and prudes want to take the law into their own hands?
Punishing parents for being non-conformists in the name of protecting children is wrong.
As I said before hp, I have no problem with people photographing kids naked for family albums. Just don’t make the argument that all parents will take pictures of their kids naked if they want to capture that child’s important life moments, which was the point djw made. I happen to think that you don’t have to capture every moment of a kid’s life in photographs and it doesn’t necessarily make sense to imply that not taking those pictures means you aren’t interested in your kid.
Bewilderness:
I think it’s perfectly appropriate for parents to question their interactions with their naked children, too. For that matter, I think it’s appropriate for parents to question their interactions with their children even when the kids have clothes on. What I think is inappropriate is strangers making censorious judgments about parents’ behavior on the basis of arbitrary and idiosyncratic rules.
This heated debate about about parenting standards and nudity is great, but I’m also interested in the central issue of the post, which is about the presence of Dean Tong, who is such a toxic figure it makes me question any of the conclusions the essay might make.
More importantly, Salon appears to have accepted this promotion of Tong without question or research. More importantly, they have not responded to those who are questioning the use of Tong.
Now, if this were an article about voting fraud, you can bet Salon’s editors would vet every source carefully and Farhad Manjoo would come down harshly on any so-called expert with strong ties to the lunatic fringe. I know there’s a difference between news and personal essay, but the factual parts of both should be held to the same standards and Tong is quoted in the news oriented conclusion. More importantly, Salon has done a story about the questions surrounding Dean Tong in May, 2002.
http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2002/05/22/molestation/index.html
Which makes me wonder, why does Tong get a pass in this article? Is it because it isn’t hard news but a personal essay? But why should the factual aspects of the latter not be held to the same status as the former? Is it because it’s a woman’s issue and thus the feelings take precedence over the facts?
Or is it because Salon has decided Tong is a credible source?
The original article on Tong was titled “The ultimate weapon: Pederastic priests, molesting fathers — charges of sexual abuse are everywhere these days. But a growing movement of aggrieved men claim the accusations have gotten out of hand.” Despite quoting more credentialed experts who say Tong’s claims are exaggerated or deceptive, he gets more benefit of the doubt few other self-made experts would get:
The article never really questions Tong’s qualifications, although it does conclude with caution:One wonders how Salon can go from presenting Tong as a reactionary who uses bad science but might have a point to quoting him without question. Especially as Tong has only proved himself more of a crackpot since 2002. I suspect it’s both bad editing on the part of Salon’s essay section and bad faith arising from Salon’s fascination with false allegations.
Then there’s the odd gender politics which results in Broadsheet being both an interesting blog but one with a big blind spot when it comes to examining gender issues on its parent site.
And, as I said before, a small paranoid part of me thinks the author of this article seems lighthly authenticated, including his/her gender. Jody Jenkins doesn’t seem to exist beyond this essay, unless the country musician of the same name became a journalist and moved to France. I wonder if Salon verified the details of his story, because I get a whiff of Frey / JT Leroy — although I will admit I’m oversensitive.
I happen to think that you don’t have to capture every moment of a kid’s life in photographs and it doesn’t necessarily make sense to imply that not taking those pictures means you aren’t interested in your kid.
But also, to suggest that a parent needs to think about what others might find appropriate before picking up the camera and snapping that picture is damaging, I believe. If my kid decides to take his or her first steps while buck-naked in the middle of the living room and I snap a film picture of it, I need to be concerned that trying to get that picture developed may result in some CPS hell?
It’s not just film, either. There are people who have been ‘turned in’ by cell phone operators for using their cell phone (and storing the picture on the operator’s server during transfer elsewhere, which is required by some cell phone companies) to take pictures that some random employee browsing through the server’s cache decided was inappropriate. So, if I use my RAZR to snap the picture of the buck-naked kid taking its first steps–because I haven’t a clue where the digital camera is, and need to take that picture RIGHT NOW–and then need to transfer it via the Internet to my computer (because my lovely cell phone company locked down the USB transfer capabilities) am I also risking CPS hell by daring that transfer?
Do I really have to think about all that to take a picture of my buck-naked kid?
Nudity does not automatically equal sexuality. My children take delight in THEIR naked bodies. I do not call Child Protective Services on myself when they are running around naked, giggling. I don’t know if people have decided that I am some kind of uptight prude who hates nudity because I don’t think children’s bodies belong to their parents, or what.
I concur with JackGoff: you don’t have to take pictures of your children naked to teach them that their beautiful bodies are to be enjoyed and reveled in — by them, and by the people of their choosing once they are of age.
And teaching children that their bodies are their own sacred property does not equal making them uptight about sex. If anything, it imbues them with a sense of self-respect, self-empowerment, and ownership when it eventually comes to sexuality.
Just for grins, I asked my own kids (5 & 9) if they thought it was okay for parents to take pictures of their kids when the kids are naked. Older son, more modest and getting a greater sense of boundaries with age, said, “No. No way. Uh-uh.” Younger son said, “Only if they’re an infant, or one year old.”
Unscientific poll.
My own childhood boundaries were crossed and blurred and stepped upon. So yes, I am deeply sensitive to this. And I don’t feel apologetic about erring on the side of caution when it comes to children. Am I a witch-hunter? No. Do I ask thought-provoking questions on a community board? Yep.
And I guess this isn’t the blog where commenters have said all male-female sex is exploitave. That would be more along the lines of Twisty’s commenters, whom I also enjoy thoroughly even though I don’t agree with lots and lots of what is said there.
But I get educated, and I’m made to think. Which does not scare or offend me.
Now to go cause trouble somewhere else. See you on the next inflammatory topic.
I’ve never seen an alias that is as accurate as Tinfoil Hattie. At least she’s honest about her lunacy.
Do I ask thought-provoking questions on a community board?
You keep casting yourself as the courageous asker-of-questions. Did it occur to you that the reason people are disagreeing with you is not that your questions are so stunningly complex, but that you’re wrong? Have you considered that people are calling you snide and judgmental not because you are hitting home, but because you are indeed snide and judgmental, and all the “gosh, little question-asking meeee?” eye-batting is fooling nobody?
The split in the discussion here seems to me to be those of us who have been abused and are hypersensitive to the encroachment of boundaries, and those of you who have not, and so are not.
Don’t make dumbass assumptions like this one. Some of us have been abused and are very sensitive to the encroachment of boundaries–and yet don’t think that it’s by definition abusive and violative if your children are not fully clothed in every picture you own.
I don’t have much of an opinion over naked kid pictures, only to say that I don’t like them. I think, just for me, that they are crass and embarrassing for the kid when the kid becomes an adult, and mom and dad show off naked pictures of the kid at the beach and the like.
I will say that Dean Tong is a total sham. I understand that he made up his title “forensic consultant”. Tong runs “The Abuse Excuse”, which is for men who claimed they have been falsely accused of domestic violence and child abuse. If you’re a guy who has been beating his wife and abusing his kid, and you want to get away with it, you go to “The Abuse Excuse”. Tong believes that most allegations of domestic violence and child abuse made by women are lies. Research shows that bona fide false allegations are rare. Yes, Tong was hired by Darren Mack, who made the news after he stabbed his wife to death and shot the judge who was hearing his case. He fled to Mexico, and later turned himself in to authorities. Tong blamed the court system for Mack supposedly “cracking”, and going on a murder/shooting spree. Here’s what Tong said about Mack. I think he was doing damage control, since what Mack had done would be bad for business.
Tong: “What happened to Darren Mack between then and June 12, when, according to police, he stabbed Charla Mack to death and shot Family Court Judge Chuck Weller with a high-powered rifle? Hindsight is 20/20, but my opinion is that this “family man turned hit man” was cracking under the strain of trying to hold onto his business, his assets and his daughter while navigating a misguided Family Court system that only poured gasoline on an already incendiary situation.”
Tong also blamed Charla Mack for her own murder. He said, “He claimed his wife and her very aggressive and competent attorney were drumming up a story to gain the upper hand in their demands for custody and assets. To wit: If she was so scared of him, why did she drive to his townhome the morning of June 12 without an adult witness by her side?”
Tong has no credibility at all. Citing him as an “expert” screwed up an otherwise good article.
Perhaps Charla Mack relied on Mr. Tong’s reassuring assessments of her estranged husband’s dangerousness. /sarcasm
It’s easy to come off wrong on the internet, but I think that we should be less worried about documented pictures of say…me naked with a book over my lap(taken at age 4) and more worried about that uncle who is alone with your kid.
Regarding the author’s gender: the phrase “our wives” was used in the article, so presumeably the author is male. (Could be half of a lesbian couple, but what are the odds?)
The fact that a search on “Jody Jenkins” turned up empty proves nothing; that could easily be a pseudonym he used on this article and nowhere else. Given the trauma he went through (if the story is true), that would be the sensible thing to do, so that no one connects him with it if he becomes (or already is) well known under another name.
Salon’s policy is to identify psuedonyms, they don’t print false names without informing the reader. So it does prove something Jody Jenkins is either a first time writer or someone who has never been touched by the web.
Salon usually provides a more information about their authors, including other publications they’ve written for. And every author I’ve ever googled on Salon has some sort of previous citation. “Jordy Jenkins” doesn’t even show up in Salon’s search engine.
Again, this is mostly paranoia, but given how several magazines published JT Leroy articles with a careful identity check, it’s not entirely out of the question that Salon might make a mistake.
The old Salon used to enjoy dealing with such issues. Once they published a two part essay by a guy who wrote about having loved and lost a bisexual stripper. Later the stripper herself sent in an essay disputing many claims, and Salon published it.
In this case, Salon has not addressed the issue of Tong at all, despite several people raising it with them.
While I assume it’s a guy, it is odd the author never identifies their own sex. If it was a lesbian couple it would be highly relevant to the story. Of course, it’s more likely a male author would assume his sex went without saying.
I don’t see how anyone could have missed the author’s gender; he refers to “my wife” over and over again on page three, including a line about a photo book in his living room, “Besides mundane photos of the kids, it contained a few of my wife in the nude when she was several months pregnant with Eliza.” (A line which pretty much rules out the lesbian possibility, really).
Salon often publishes articles by rather ordinary people with problems (sick kids, particularly bad relationships) who are at best lightly published prior to appearing in Salon; perhaps softdog is right and they haven’t until now published anyone with no prior writing at all, but I suspect they’ve probably printed some first timers before. I don’t read them much anymore so perhaps things have changed.
“And teaching children that their bodies are their own sacred property does not equal making them uptight about sex. If anything, it imbues them with a sense of self-respect, self-empowerment, and ownership when it eventually comes to sexuality.”
This does sound an awful lot like some of the abstinence-only, virginity-fetish stuff we’ve been seeing lately. I’m sorry, but yes, acting as if naked body=sex or sexualisation is being very, very, very uptight and unhealthy about sex. Shit, in a lot of Northern European families, it’s not unheard of for the whole bunch of them to go swimming or sit in steam rooms together buck-naked, the whole lot of them. And, for that matter, most nudist beaches (at least the ones I know of in Europe) are quite explicit about *preferring* families and actively discouraging singles, because most people see nothing sexual about a load of naked adults and children playing on the beach.
No one’s saying you have to go round touching kids’ butts if it makes you uncomfortable, but god, recognise that that feeling comes from your own past and don’t assume that other adults who do that very thing are being moved by a desire to dominate and force their way past boundaries rather than simple affection. Touching is not always about sex.
And, as Mythago already pointed out, thebewilderness, your assumption for some us is pretty freaking far off-base.
What do you make of this? http://www.pathguy.com/abuse.htm
If you look at the base site, the guy is dedicated to the science of pathology. This page talks about how his services have been used when health providers have accused families of abuse.
I don’t know what to make of it, other than his assertions of the presumption of innocence and that one should fully understand the normal range and variation of non-pathological things before declaring “proof” of damage are essentially legally and scientifically correct.
Firstly to weigh in on the whole “genitals” issue: i’m a sex educator and I’d never consider the buttcheeks a part of the genitals. that’s what we’re talking about, right - patting somebody on “the butt” means their buttcheeks. now if it meant their anus, that’d be a whole different story and yes, that’d be the “genitals” and thus a violation.
I’m a big fan of teaching children from a very early age the meaning and value of consent. you can do this by agreeing to stop tickling when they say “stop”, for example. i think this helps kids not attach judgement to any specific acts, but to realize that consenting to something makes all the difference in the world.
If you haven’t, you should read HARMFUL TO MINORS: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, by Judith Levine. (http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/L/levine_harmful.html)
Before anyone gets in a tizzy from the subtitle, I highly, highly suggest reading this book. It’s a fascinating read on our culture’s obsession with and abhorrence of sexuality.
Hmmm, so because I think children deserve a right to privacy, and their bodies should be respected, and parents deciding for them that it’s okay to record images of their naked bodies is a decidedly authoritarian, dare I say patriarchal, attitude, I am: hung up on sex, a prude who fetishizes virginity, full of issues, snide, and off the deep end.
So what am I if I think women should just lighten up about men treating women’s bodies as fodder for public commentary/touching/exploitation?
It’s about the kids. And their right to privacy. And their right to their own bodies.
Nope. Because you condemn other parents’ choices with regard to their childrens’ nudity in the harshest terms while blithely admitting that your nine-year-old runs around naked with his brother in front of you, you are a busybody and a hypocrite.
I don’t see a problem with your kids running around naked. But I also don’t see that you can defend that as an example of clear “boundaries” while slamming a parent who pats his three-year-old on the butt or snaps a photo of his toddler while the kid happens to be naked.
You’ve got lines that work for you. Other people have lines that work for them. But you’re the one who made this into a “who’s the weirdo” party, and you shouldn’t be surprised when that comes back around to bite you.
You know, my parents took quite a few photos of my sibs and I, all in various stages of undress, when we were toddlers. It wasn’t as if they were stripping us of our clothes and making us parade around in front of the camera. We were forever taking off our clothes - lots of little kids do that. There’s nothing wrong with it, and there is nothing wrong with adults who find it cute and funny.
I also had the misfortune of being molested a few times as a kid. You could never, ever mistake the pictures my parents took of me and my bubble-covered little sister in the bathtub with actual sexual abuse - I know from firsthand experience. Please don’t conflate the two.
Know what? I didn’t criticize any of you, or “slam” any of you, or say any of you are weirdos. Go back and eead. I said repeatedly that these are MY opinions and MY boundaries.
There’s nothing hypocritical about not freaking out when your kids are running around naked to/from the bath, yet not grabbing a camera to record it. There is nothing wrong with nudity per se. People who take photos of their children are not molesting their children by doing it. Nowhere did I say they were. You are making this about your own issues. I said I think it’s not protective of children to make the decision for them that recording images of their nudity is ok. I did not say it’s sexual molestation to pat a kid’s butt, though I personally feel it’s somewhat patronizing and degrading — you know, like if a man did it to a woman at work.
I didn’t call anyone a weirdo. I believe you are the one who turned this into some sort of vendetta. Not my intention, not my execution.
Your hostility seems a little out of proportion to the comments of a stranger talking about a controverial topic on a website that invites strong opinion about things.
Or do you think the only way to have true feminist cred is to believe everything you believe?
I did not say it’s sexual molestation to pat a kid’s butt, though I personally feel it’s somewhat patronizing and degrading — you know, like if a man did it to a woman at work.
…What? It would also be patronizing and degrading for a man to yell at a female coworker to clean up the mess she made or she’s not getting any supper. Or most things a parent might say or do to a small child, for that matter.
Exactly. And if, in the lunch room, a coworker dipped his napkin in his glass of water, leaned over and used it to wash my face, I would freak out. However, my mom did that about a million times when I was a kid - should I have freaked out on her? My mother has slapped my ass multiple times throughout my entire life - is she a horrible woman who doesn’t respect me or my bodily integrity?
I don’t get this idea that the parent-child relationship should be treated the exact same as any other relationship. The parent-child relationship is unique, and I think a certain amount of affectionate and fond intimacy between parent and kid shouldn’t be alarming. If the kid says “no” and the parents persist, then there’s definitely a problem there. But that’s not the situation here.
tinfoil hattie, you seem to think that all of the outrage is from parents who are defending these practices that you seem to feel are so disrespectful. But what about former kids who had similar photos taken of us, and who’ve managed to escape our childhoods without feeling traumatized by our naked baby photos? Do our opinions in this matter count for nothing?
Your opinions count exactly as much as mine do.
We simply disagree. That’s all.
But if your opinion is based on the idea that parents taking naked photos of their kids is a violation of those kids’ bodily integrity, and someone who has been one of those kids says that that isn’t an accurate description at all, then should you not re-evaluate your opinion? Or are you going to hang on to it despite any and all evidence to the contrary?
Hattie, you said that patting an eight-year-old on the butt wasn’t “normal,” and that patting a three-year-old on the butt wasn’t “legitimate.” Those statements are judgments of other parents, not descriptions of your own boundaries. And when I questioned those judgments, you insinuated that I saw no difference between fondling a child and hugging one.
If you still don’t get it, compare this:
With this:
See what I mean?
Hmmm…this weekend I helped my mom watch my neices. One is about 2 and LOVES to be naked. Being naked alone is a reason to run around and do a little happy naked dance. She had a bath and came running out adorably happy and doing a funny, silly dance. I tried to take a video of her happy naked dance, but none of them turned out due to the fact that she was running around like crazy. Am I a sicko, or would I only be a sicko if the video had turned out and been kept?
She also loves to be tickled, and will drive you crazy BEGGING to be tickled. You know where she’s most tickleish and begs to be tickled? Her butt. Am I now a sicko becuase I gave in and we had a full tickle fest with her and her 10 year old sister?
I can’t imagine having the body issues some people are showing here. Nudity was always casual in my family, but there was never anything remotely sexual about it at all, it wasn’t traumatic in any way because everyone made it pretty clear with their actions and behavior that it was really no big deal whether you had clothing on or not. I just don’t get it.
I try to stay out of defensive cranky opinion wars, especially when coupled with both sides whining “poor me”, but this statement really crosses a line for me. Implying that anyone who has a different opinion is brainwashed is completely uncalled for. If these really are your opinions, and you don’t care what anyone thinks, why are you insulting random strangers on the internet? That’s just childish and stupid.
If you think you’re right, move the fuck on and be right. But I don’t think that being cruel to others is an acceptable way to validate your parenting strategies. And perhaps I missed that great feminist classic “Everyone who is not raising their kids the hattie way is violating them”. Feminism as you’re using it in this case is a red herring, a strawman. Set up just to be knocked down so you can feel good. Not cool.
If I was your parent, I would tell you to apologize. As another adult, I’m just going to roll my eyes at you.
If hattie was really concerned about her kids’ privacy and sense of self, maybe she would concentrate more on what THEY wanted than on her arbitrary, abstract assumptions about the parenting styles of perfect strangers.
What? You mean, a paternalistic relationship isn’t appropriate when a parent deals with a child?
Oh please. When my kids are grown, it won’t be appropriate. It isn’t ever appropriate with another adult who is responsible for his or herself. So long as I have legal and moral responsibility for my children, I have duty to them and authority. Paternalistic? Yep. The parent-child relationship is the appropriate place for paternalistic!
We simply disagree. That’s all.
Well shoot. I guess being the Provocative Think-O-Matic isn’t as much fun when people actually do something other than respond exactly as you wish them to.
“And if, in the lunch room, a coworker dipped his napkin in his glass of water, leaned over and used it to wash my face, I would freak out.”
OMG Caitlin that cracked me up.