[Marxism] No Escaping Sexualization of Young Girls

["Huibin Amelia Chew" <hachew@xxxxxxxxx>]

"if we want to get to the heart of the problem, we should obsess a
little less about whether the neighbor down the block is a dangerous
pedophile -- and ... worry a whole lot more about good old-fashioned
American capitalism, which is busy serving our children up to
pedophiles on a corporate platter."

--
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0825-33.htm

No Escaping Sexualization of Young Girls
With JonBenet back in the headlines, it's hard for a parent to avoid
paranoia.
by Rosa Brooks

It's been a good week for the media, and a bad week for parents.

The arrest of former schoolteacher John Mark Karr in the slaying of child
beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey launched a flurry of excited stories about
pedophiles, child abduction and murder. The cable news stations could hardly
hide their glee, and even the New York Times joined in.

In a two-part series on pedophilia, the newspaper reported that many
pedophiles now use Internet support groups to swap how-to tips on getting
jobs as camp counselors and teachers. Increasingly, the Times said,
"pedophiles view themselves as the vanguard of a nascent movement seeking
legalization of child pornography and the loosening of age-of-consent laws.
They portray themselves as battling for children's rights to engage in sex
with adultsŠ."

Great. For anxious parents, it was a week of being paranoid and creeped out
‹ a week to double-check the window locks, run a background check on the
preschool music teacher and remind the kids not to enter beauty pageants,
talk to strangers, go online or leave the house until their 40th birthday.

True, the statistics suggest that an American child is about as likely to
share JonBenet's fate as she is to be killed by lightning. The abduction and
murder of children by people outside their families is exceedingly rare.

But as the mother of preschool girls, I know how easy it is to succumb to
irrational panic in the face of this week's 24/7 media obsession with
pedophilia.

All summer I'd absent-mindedly allowed my little barbarians to streak
through the house naked, bodies festooned with grape jelly and Crayola
Washable Markers. Now, with pedophiles apparently lurking everywhere,
demanding civil rights and social acceptance, I was suddenly insisting that
the girls put their clothes back on, right this minute, please.

I eyed my neighbors with newfound suspicion. That guy mowing the lawn down
the street ‹ why was he smiling at us?

It was only when I hauled the girls off to the local shopping mall that my
paranoid fears were replaced by all-too-rational anxieties. First, we darted
into Abercrombie & Fitch, joining a gaggle of preteens checking out the
T-shirts. Perhaps a slinky pink number that coyly declared "The Rumors Are
True"? Or maybe the masculine gray one emblazoned with "Something About You
Attracts Me ‹ I Wish I Could Put My Finger On It"?

Well, no thanks. We headed toward Limited Too, where we found thong-like
underwear sized for 7-year-old girls. My 4-year-old was entranced: "Mommy,
those underpants have no walls!"

We soldiered on, through Old Navy (where the toddler section carries clothes
that make 2-year-olds look like Britney Spears), through Toys R Us (where
ads for the scantily clad Bratz Babyz dolls, with their bottles and their
painted toenails, boast that these "Babyz already know how to flaunt it, and
they're keepin' it real in the crib!"), and past the Disney Store (where
little girls can covet seashell bikinis like those worn by the Little
Mermaid and glittery halter tops like those worn by Princess Jasmine in the
surprisingly broad-minded sultanate of Agrabah).

By the time we made it to CVS Pharmacy, I thought we were out of the woods.
Wrong. Those bare-midriffed Disney princesses are everywhere ‹ even, it
turns out, on diapers sized for people weighing 18 to 34 pounds.

In our hyper-commercialized consumerist society, there's virtually no
escaping the relentless sexualization of younger and younger children. My
26-month-old daughter didn't emerge from the womb clamoring for a seashell
bikini like Princess Ariel's ‹ but now that she's savvy enough to notice
who's prancing around on her pull-ups, she wants in on the bikini thing. And
my 4-year-old wasn't born demanding lip gloss and nail polish, but when a
little girl at nursery school showed up with her Hello Kitty makeup kit, she
was hooked.

In a culture in which the sexualization of childhood is big business ‹
mainstream mega-corporations such as Disney earn billions by marketing sexy
products to children too young to understand their significance ‹ is it any
wonder that pedophiles feel emboldened to claim that they shouldn't be
ostracized for wanting sex with children? On an Internet bulletin board, one
self-avowed "girl lover" offered a critique of this week's New York Times
series on pedophilia: "They fail, of course, to mention the hypocrisy of
Hollywood selling little girls to millions of people in a highly sexualized
way." I hate to say it, but the pedophiles have a point here.

There are plenty of good reasons to worry about children and sex. But if we
want to get to the heart of the problem, we should obsess a little less
about whether the neighbor down the block is a dangerous pedophile ‹ and we
should worry a whole lot more about good old-fashioned American capitalism,
which is busy serving our children up to pedophiles on a corporate platter.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--
The naiveté of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are
committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an
occupying army committing rape?? You raped the country, why not the
people?

14. Imagine your 14-year-old sister...daughter...her 5-year-old sister
were also killed... I don't believe the troops should be tried in
American courts... they should be handed over to the people in the
area and only then will justice be properly served.

It fills me with rage... The pity I once had for foreign troops in
Iraq is gone...eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths
in Haditha and the latest news... I look at them in their armored
vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they
are 19 or 39...if they make it back home alive...about [those] they
left behind… it's difficult to see beyond the horrors... how many more
they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will
they rape?

-Baghdad burning

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