Law and/or Ethics

Rage and Reason: It’s Time to Talk

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 12 Comments

I’ve been avoiding writing about some very important topics well within the realm of this blog for a long time.  Why?  Because every time I start to put the words down, I have the most sickening feeling inside.  Tears turn into sulfuric acid and when I try not to let them out they drip into my stomach and rip at my guts.

I keep thinking surely it’s about to stop.  Someone is going to stop it.  But no one is stopping it, it is only ramping up into a greater frenzy.  These are a few headlines and signs that told me I have to write about this:

I am not about to stand up for prostitution.  I am not one of those people who views it like the overly-made up saloon workers from Gunsmoke just exercising their right to operate an atypical business.  If that is your image of prostitution, you need a wake up call.  Read the link to the last bullet point above, and you will have a nauseating insight into what prostitution is today.  If you think joking about pimps is funny, you have no idea what you are talking about.  None.

It’s past time for some frank talk about denial.  Men receive and appear to deserve the preponderance of blame for what is happening all around us, but no one is immune.  Plenty of women confess to using Internet pornography and there have been some high profile stories that became criminal cases of women putting their own children on the Internet and selling them to strangers for sex.

This is not about whether or not using pornography to manage your sex life is right or wrong.  That is a very complicated subject beyond this blog with so many twists and turns one could devote his or her entire life to it and never be done.  This is about facing the consequences of going down this road and dealing with it.

Being fascinated with looking at other people naked is pretty much ancient news.  It’s human, it’s normal, it’s no big deal.  Looking at other people having sex, while it’s not for everyone, is also something that is an established attraction for many human beings.  So far, nothing is really way out there, right?  It used to be that this interest had a fairly limited range of opportunity that kept it in check, so becoming obsessed with it was unlikely.  It had a place, that place was limited, and while it was omnipresent as a lurking interest it was a controlled if powerful instinct.

Enter the Internet.

What if a common but heretofore controlled human instinct were entirely unleashed in terms of access and frequency?  And what if that instinct could be harnessed to fuel an insatiable appetite that would drive an economic engine so powerful and lucrative that it would be limited only by your imagination and willingness to take new risks?

Wonder no more.  Welcome to the brave new world of online sex for money.

The “brain on sex” has been compared by neurologists to the brain on cocaine.  We are due for a serious conversation about what is happening to people’s minds in this new equation.  People on cocaine are not renowned for their thoughtful philanthropy and intimate relationships.  They are marked by paranoia, aggression, and singular focus on their addiction, usually to the exclusion of any concern for or awareness of the destruction they are wreaking on themselves and others.

The sex we are dealing with here is not Hugh Hefner’s sex.  There are no cute bunny ears and people over 18 years of age.  Frankly, one of the reasons I have not written about this is I do not really want to get into it.  It’s too upsetting.  As generally as possible I will say that I’m not sure I can even call it sex.  It is pornography.  It is self-gratification by the violent degradation of and dominance over, and in some cases killing of, submissive others.  And there is no more available “submissive other” than a child.

Right about now, you are thinking, whoa, slow down there lady.  I just pleasure to “porn.”  I’m not hurting anyone.  You are crazy.

What is crazy is the refusal to step out of a compartmentalized way of thinking in order to see what is as plain as day.  We aren’t just on the slippery slope, we are on a slope covered in grease wearing Olympic skis.

There is an old joke, “Everyone who drives faster than I do is a maniac, and everyone who drives slower than I do is an idiot.”  That attitude applies in many areas of life, not just driving.  We all look to our own “normal” to judge other people’s behavior.  But the trouble with this is that there will always be drivers going faster and slower than you do.  Don’t look to the outlying extremes, just look at yourself.

Believe me when I say, I am a typical person.  I am no better than anyone else and I am keenly aware of that.  Because I have lived in denial at certain points in my life, I recognize its reliable hallmarks easily in others.  They look something like this:

  • I can’t tell my partner about that because he/she would freak out.
  • I’m not doing anything wrong, no one is getting hurt.
  • It’s not illegal, so leave me alone.
  • What I do is my business.
  • I wish everyone would stop being so judgmental and irrational.

My call today is for all of us to step outside of the bubble and look critically at the roles we have in why selling children on the Internet is now an everyday occurrence — and by officers of the court at that.  We need to be more open about how we have allowed a generally safe and productive human interest to be twisted into a cash machine that grinds up marriages, partnerships, careers, and children’s lives.  It starts with doing one of the most difficult things to do — admitting that our choices are not necessarily benign just because we didn’t intend to hurt anyone.

We need to embrace the reality that what we intend to do really has nothing to do with what is happening.  You can be religious, or atheist, or agnostic about it, but we need to stop talking about intentions and start talking about results.  The result of what is going on now is an utter nightmare barreling along at an alarming rate.  It is screaming in the headlines.

Will we listen?

Beyond Teddy Bears and Candles – Where Do We Go from Here?

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 1 Comment

The national response to the post Saving Everyone’s Baby was, quite simply, astonishing.  As a writer, a mother, and a child advocate, I woke up around 3:00 a.m. the morning I wrote the post, just staring into the darkness.  Like many of us, I was struggling with how to process the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial.  It was not so much that I thought it was the “right” or the “wrong” verdict — I have no idea.  But I realized that no matter what the verdict had been, it would have given me no comfort.

I got up a couple of hours later and wrote the post.  I was trying to do what all writers do, use words to process emotional and intellectual issues.  I was trying to work through my questions in a way that didn’t make me part of the pitchforks and torches crowd.  I was in pain, but the writing helped me understand what was really making me feel so sad and conflicted.

I sent the post to my friend and fellow advocate, Jim McKay.  I put it on Facebook.  I also asked readers to share it, which I almost never do.  What happened in the next few hours was a complete surprise to me — 4,000 plus people around the country began reading, sharing, and commenting on Saving Everyone’s Baby.

I want specifically to thank the following people and organizations for being part of this dialogue:

I don’t know everyone by name and every place where things happened, but Jim McKay shared this as well:  “Your post is getting great buzz within the child abuse prevention community. It has been re-posted by organizations and advocates in Washington state, Idaho, New Jersey and Oklahoma, as well as by some of our folks in Parkersburg and Princeton.”

While the vast majority of comments about the post were positive, there were serious frustrations expressed by some readers, and I honestly want to thank those people as well.  One angry comment was by a woman who thought I was trying to tell her she did not have a right to be angry.  I re-read the post and I don’t see that anywhere, but she helped me further articulate what I am saying.  I am saying feel whatever you need to feel, but don’t stop with that and don’t be satisfied with that.  Move on.

We don’t do a good job sometimes of moving on after something like this.  We are great at going to a funeral.  We know how to grieve.  But we don’t seem to know very much about how to avoid the next opportunity to grieve.

That’s where the other voice of frustration came in, someone who was upset that people seem to only speak out and come together when a pretty white girl dies.  And you know what?  He or she (I’m not sure of the person’s identity) has a point.  To some degree, we still seem to classify “values” of human beings, even children.  I hope that is not really what the dynamic is.  I tend to think it is something else, something also not good, but something else maybe we can do more to change.

Bear with me here, because this will be hard to say without pushing buttons.  I think there sometimes is a gap between the group of people making up the largest percentage of “helpers” and the groups of people most in need of help.  That would make sense.  People with resources are able to help those without, it’s just basic math.  But when the people with resources (time, money, connections, influence) don’t really understand what is happening in the worlds of those they are trying to help, a feeling of hopelessness can set in for everyone.  I think this thing with a larger perceived responsiveness to a white child’s death is part of the dominant “helper group” feeling more connected to that kind of child and therefore feeling more of an opportunity possibly to get involved.

When you can’t break into someone else’s world, you don’t know how to help and you eventually learn how to care less.  You focus on what you think you can fix.  If this is true, then it has a chance of changing, and that should give us all some hope.

But where do we go from here?

I don’t have magical answers, just a lot of questions.  But now because of you, I also have a spark of connection that may light a larger fire for change.  Change is a hard word.  I’ve been involved in prevention work for long enough now that I have a pretty good handle on the reality that an issue like child abuse and neglect is not going away any time soon.  It’s not going away because poverty is not going away, sexual abuse and incest are not going away, domestic violence is not going away, unintended pregnancy is not going away, and alcoholism and drug abuse are not going away.  The well-being of children is tied directly to the well-being of the family, and families will always face trouble.  We see it a lot in my home state, the cycle of families becoming stuck in one place with these issues, unable to chart a new course without years of effort and yes, assistance.

Love and care for children is not political, or at least it should not be.  But there was some questioning of what it meant when I said, “Frankly, I don’t give a damn” with regard to what parents “deserve.”  It means that I believe if we are going to slay this monster, we have to look beyond our judgments of adults in the equation.  We have to look at the children first and foremost, and drop this craziness about who is worthy of help.  All children are worthy of help, and if their parents’ behavior gets in the way of focusing on the kids, I say just let it go.  Our national policy conversations sometimes seem to just talk right past children as if they are not even there, or as if they are some afterthoughts to what makes this nation strong.  If we put a roadblock on our ability to change outcomes for children because we don’t want to “reward” parents for “bad choices,” we are just fueling the next generation of dysfunction.

It boggles the mind.

I have set  up an email specifically to manage conversations with people who want to write follow-up posts here on some of the many complex issues not addressed in the original post.  The address is essediem@gmail.com, and I welcome anyone who wants to write on additional and connected issues.  I do require transparency of authorship, so please be prepared to include a short bio about yourself if you plan to write for Esse Diem.  While I have extended this opportunity to several specific people, I don’t know who if anyone will take me up on it.

I do know this blog strives to honor children and childhood.  I do not write about the issue of child abuse and neglect very often, as I prefer to leave that to the professionals.  But I am open to making some space here for continued discussion at the discretion of those who know more than I.

Until the next post, thank you all again for your time and your commitment to children.  Some days it is hard to know what to do next, but I think getting up and knowing we need to do something other than grieve is a good first step.