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Author Topic: Child Abuse Is Not Funny  (Read 7235 times)

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Firestarter

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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #52 on: June 01, 2020, 11:40:54 am »
This is probably my last post on Jeffrey Epstein in this thread…

Jeffrey Epstein was the protégé of Leslie Wexner. By most accounts, Jeffrey Epstein was made by Leslie Wexner, who gave him tens of millions of dollars and his house.
Les Wexner was a member of the Mega Group that was founded by some 20 Jewish billionaires, who met at the Manhattan apartment of hedge-fund manager Michael Steinhardt, including:
Edgar Bronfman, chairman of the World Jewish Congress (father of Sara and Clare Bronfman);
Charles Bronfman, Edgar's brother and top executive at Seagrams Corp..

Because of the 2008 non-prosecution agreement, Jeffrey Epstein was immune from prosecution for what he did from 2002 to 2005 (and his co-conspirators, including Ghislaine Maxwell and Alan Dershowitz)...
Under this “sweetheart deal” Jeffrey Epstein was convicted to a whopping 13 months in jail, for a total of 8 hours per day. Most accounts claim that only every Sunday Epstein was locked up the whole day... This means that Epstein was locked up for a total of 56 whole days.

In July 2019, Epstein was suddenly arrested, and all the media that had previously ignored the case were now suddenly appalled over this scandal; most of the “bombshells” were old news really…
By arresting Epstein, they sort of decided that the whole non-prosecution agreement was worthless in the first place!
Then in August 2019, under responsibility of William Barr, Epstein was found dead in his prison cell, “suicided”…

As for the motive for arresting and letting Epstein die of a reported “suicide”. Epstein obviously had some dirt on very powerful people (including Donald Trump and his cronies).
President Donald picked Alexander Acosta for Secretary of Labor. Because Acosta was personally responsible for the “sweetheart deal”, as Miami US attorney, he had to resign after Epstein’s arrest in July 2019.

After his arrest, Jeffrey Epstein ordered his legal team to show that several members that had been involved in the non-prosecution agreement, besides Acosta, were now part of the Trump administration and shouldn’t be allowed to charge him again for the same crimes:
Sigal Mandeleker - serves as Trump’s Under Secretary for the Department of the Treasury;
John Roth - Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security since 2014.

There are also links to the law firm Kirkland & Ellis (that represented Jeffrey Epstein from 2008 to 2011, including arranging the sweetheart deal).
Alexander Acosta had worked at Kirkland & Ellis.
In 2009, now Attorney-General William Barr joined the law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
In 2008, Mark Filip was as Deputy Attorney General involved in the Epstein deal, now a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis.

For more on Jeffrey Epstein: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1485
For some reason 2 forums that I joined in 2016 have been deleted from the internet - Davidicke.com and Letsrollforums.com.
For some reason internet “search” engines block my posts: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?508090-Google-censors-the-world/page2
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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #53 on: June 21, 2020, 11:28:18 am »
One of the interesting subtopics that came up when I investigated the rampant paedophilia in Hollywood is the Children of God sex cult. A couple of “famous” actors were in this sex cult that promoted sex from the age of 4.
Interestingly my (first) post on the the Children of God cult was deleted from the Davidicke.com forum before I found out that David Icke was an associate of Zen Gardner of the “Children of God” cult.

Actress Rose McGowan spent some years of her childhood in “The children of God” in Italy. These days she is probably best known for accusing film producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault.
McGowan writes in her book that as a child she was physically abused by the leaders of The Children of God, and that:
Quote
I saw an 11-year-old girl being forced to sit next to a naked man, with his floppy d**k on his leg. They made her sit between his legs so he could ‘massage’ her back.

In November 1991, River Phoenix told Details magazine that when his family was part of the Children of God (from 1973 till the end of the 1970s called “The Family”) cult he had sex with other children starting from the age of 4.
On the evening of 30 October 1993 (a human sacrifice day for Satanists), Phoenix went to The Viper Room in Hollywood (partly owned by Johnny Depp). He died under suspicious circumstances the following night (on Halloween).

For more on paedophilia behind the scenes in the movies: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?505159-Paedophilia-in-Hollywood
For some reason 2 forums that I joined in 2016 have been deleted from the internet - Davidicke.com and Letsrollforums.com.
For some reason internet “search” engines block my posts: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?508090-Google-censors-the-world/page2
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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #54 on: July 02, 2020, 10:19:47 am »
Ghislaine Maxwell, Associate of Jeffrey Epstein, Is Arrested

Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested Thursday on criminal charges linked to his alleged sex-trafficking operation, according to a law enforcement official.

Ms. Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire, officials said.

The arrest came nearly a year after Mr. Epstein was charged in a federal indictment with sexually exploiting and abusing dozens of underage girls at his mansion in Manhattan, his estate in Palm Beach, Fla. and other locations between at least 2002 and 2005.

The indictment said he paid the girls — at least one as young as 14 — to give him massages while they were **** or ****, in encounters that typically included sex acts.

Mr. Epstein hanged himself in August in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, where he was jailed pending trial on the federal sex-trafficking charges.

Ms. Maxwell, a longtime confidante and companion of Mr. Epstein’s, had for years been accused of helping to procure and groom young girls for the financier, including instructing them on how to pleasure Mr. Epstein sexually.

The daughter of the British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, Ms. Maxwell also helped manage Mr. Epstein’s properties and introduced him to the high-profile celebrities and business executives who would form his social circle.

Civil lawsuits have accused Ms. Maxwell of managing a network of recruiters that Mr. Epstein relied on to entice young and often financially strapped girls and women into his scheme, promising he would help them with their education and careers.

“They were like partners in a business,” Mr. Epstein’s house manager, Janusz Banasiak, said in a deposition.

“She orchestrated the whole thing for Jeffrey,” one of Mr. Epstein’s accusers, Sarah Ransome, who sued him in 2017, told The New York Times in an interview.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/ghislaine-maxwell-associate-of-jeffrey-epstein-is-arrested/ar-BB16g4up?ocid=msedgntp

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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #55 on: July 02, 2020, 10:33:19 am »
Ghislaine Maxwell, Associate of Jeffrey Epstein, Is Arrested
I was just getting ready to post...

Several media report that the daughter of infamous British intelligence agent, media mogul and arms salesman Robert Maxwell – Ghislaine Maxwell – has finally been arrested by the FBI.

Reported by NBC and The New York Times amongst others: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/ghislaine-maxwell-arrested-jeffrey-epstein-aide/2495762/
http://archive.is/WvdEw


In the spring of 1989, Robert Maxwell and his daughter Ghislaine hosted a party on his yacht in the presence of Donald Trump, former US senator John Tower (involved in Iran-Contra), and ex-navy secretary John Lehman.
See Donald showing his thumb, John Tower to his right and Robert Maxwell on the far right: http://web.archive.org/web/20190401040734if_/https://fitzinfo.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/3a29093300000578-0-wallace-a-97_1478625492404.jpg

See Donald Trump’s entry in the flight logs of Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane.


The wife of Donald Trump’s associate CNN president Jeff Zucker, Caryn Stephanie Nathanson, has repeatedly been pictured with Ghislaine Maxwell.
For example on 2 April 2014, Caryn Zucker (front right) with Ghislaine Maxwell (left) at Holly Peterson´s HIM book party, with Epstein´s and Trump´s friend Barbara Walters in the background on the right, New York.


For more on Jeffrey Epstein: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1485
For some reason 2 forums that I joined in 2016 have been deleted from the internet - Davidicke.com and Letsrollforums.com.
For some reason internet “search” engines block my posts: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?508090-Google-censors-the-world/page2
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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #56 on: August 07, 2020, 04:10:28 pm »
Will Ferrell: Child Trafficking Comedy Skit


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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #57 on: August 10, 2020, 07:45:40 am »

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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #59 on: September 22, 2020, 07:07:12 pm »

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/september-web-only/netflix-what-cuties-controversy-says-about-us.html








Why ‘Cuties’ Isn’t Just Netflix’s Problem











The sexual exploitation of children is a symptom of a larger disease—one that we’re complicit in.


On September 9, independent French film Les Mignonnes made its American debut on Netflix under the title Cuties. While director Maïmouna Doucouré intends the film as a critique of the sexual exploitation of children, she quickly found her work facing condemnation for participating in that very thing. Within days, #CancelNetflix was trending and the film had received an astounding 1.06/10 audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes (as of publishing date).

Part of the public outcry targeted Netflix’s problematic marketing of Cuties earlier in August. If design is communication, the chosen images, description, and subtext did not critique a culture that sexually exploits young girls. It actively played into it, issuing an invitation to come gaze on the actors as they engage in “free-spirited” dance.

The film itself also faces difficult questions about the ethics of using child actors to portray the process of sexualization. Abuse survivor and advocate Rachael Denhollander tweeted: “One can’t protest sexualizing children by … sexualizing them.” And Vox movie critic and former Christianity Today columnist Alissa Wilkinson pointed out that “trying to depict something in the context of critiquing it isn’t always successful.”

The ambiguous nature of sexual exploitation within Western culture explains both the controversy surrounding Cuties and the thesis of the film itself. While public condemnation has been sure and swift, it sometimes misses the pressing questions about whether our society is safe for children: What if the sexualization of young girls is not a bug but a feature? What if Netflix knows something about us that we don’t about ourselves?

The central character of Cuties is Amy, an 11-year-old Senegalese immigrant living in France with her mother and two younger brothers. The story echoes Doucouré’s own childhood, caught between a permissive Western culture that exploited girls one way and a traditional culture that exploited them in other ways. Longing for love and connection, Amy quickly intuits what Western culture values and begins to adapt. She recognizes that this new land of smartphones, social media, and hyper-sexualization rewards her for objectifying herself. But limited by both age and her outsider experience, Amy does not know where suggestive pop culture ends and pornography begins. As she discovers increasingly explicit material online, she mimics it adding erotic behavior, dress, and mannerisms to her dance repertoire—all while oblivious to Western culture’s tacit agreements about which sexual behaviors are socially acceptable and which are not.

The challenge of the film is that there are no obvious villains. No basement-dwelling perverts luring Amy over the internet. No trusted family friend grooming her for abuse. Instead, the film presents the banality of evil and how easily a young girl dropped into Western culture might be exploited by subtle cues and behaviors that exist in the light of day. There are no **** hiding behind every corner on whom we can neatly blame the sexualization of girlhood.

One could undoubtedly argue that the exploitation of young girls overflows from a decadent society, one where sex sells. It’s true: Sex does sell. And at some point, the most hardened don’t care who is being sold. Child trafficking is real, and Netflix did market the film in a provocative way.

Yet the hyper-sexualization of our society doesn’t answer why children are sexualized. What kind of culture exploits their young this way? What kind of culture both condemns pedophilia and sells padded bras to pre-pubescent girls? Why did Netflix think that their marketing would work?

To answer this question, we must understand the degree to which our society does not value childhood in the first place. Denhollander’s memoir exposing the serial predator Larry Nassar asks the question in her title: What Is a Girl Worth? She presses into the structures and value systems that allowed Nassar to continue abusing young girls for years. Ultimately, children are threatened by both predators and a culture that does not hear them when they cry out for help.

Protecting children at the risk of destabilizing powerful organizations or indicting beloved adults means asking ourselves not just "What is a girl worth?" but “What are we willing to pay?” This question ultimately exposes our larger cultural value systems. We prize efficiency. Children are inefficient. We value wealth creation. Children are costly and can’t pay their own way. We honor independence and radical autonomy. Children are dependent and hamper our freedom. We drive toward what Wendell Berry calls “the objective.” Children like to take the long, meandering route home.

It’s no wonder, then, that such a society, would increasingly find ways to truncate childhood. Instead of making space for children to be children, we under-support and undervalue those who care for them, whether in the home or the classroom. We ask fifth-graders to map out their career goals. We hire private coaches to improve their pitching, not so they can enjoy baseball with their friends, but to prepare them for the “future.” And thus by rushing our kids through childhood, we ensure that prolonged adolescence extends in both directions.

With a smaller window of childhood, children naturally begin to adopt postures and traits associated with burgeoning adulthood. In a society that worships unchecked sexual expression, these attitudes necessarily include overt sexuality. The more children are led this way, the more likely they are to be abused by those who manipulate their intellectual and emotional naiveté—proffering “she looked older” as an excuse. While pedophilia certainly exists, the objectification and sexualization of young girls in Western culture has as much do with our complicity in viewing them as women before they truly are.

If you are outraged by the sexual exploitation of young girls, you’re in good company. In Matthew 18, Jesus warns that those who would harm children will face his wrath, and it would be better for them to have a millstone hung around their neck and be thrown into the sea than cause a little one to stumble.

But Jesus’ strong words do not stem from a selective focus on child trafficking or pedophilia. Instead, they are rooted in a holistic understanding of the goodness of childhood and the unique role that children play in God’s kingdom. Just before he warns us that we must not harm children, he commands us to actively welcome them. And he said:

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” (Matt. 18:2–5)

Part of the goodness of childhood is that children remind us of our own dependence on God. Vulnerable, limited, and wholly reliant on others to protect them, children show us how we must come to the kingdom. They show us the only way we can come. The very things that our culture disdains about childhood are the very things that God honors.

If we are to truly protect children in such a culture, it will require more than boycotts, political posturing, or public stances. It will require a willingness to disturb our own organizations and question the value systems that tell us that children are not worthy of our time, resources, and care. It will require aligning our hearts with the heart of God who delights to care for children in their weakness, who celebrates them despite their inefficiencies, and who honors them as image-bearers, even now.










Hannah Anderson is the author of Made for More, All That’s Good, and Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul.


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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #60 on: September 23, 2020, 05:27:06 pm »

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/september-web-only/netflix-what-cuties-controversy-says-about-us.html








Why ‘Cuties’ Isn’t Just Netflix’s Problem











The sexual exploitation of children is a symptom of a larger disease—one that we’re complicit in.


On September 9, independent French film Les Mignonnes made its American debut on Netflix under the title Cuties. While director Maïmouna Doucouré intends the film as a critique of the sexual exploitation of children, she quickly found her work facing condemnation for participating in that very thing. Within days, #CancelNetflix was trending and the film had received an astounding 1.06/10 audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes (as of publishing date).

Part of the public outcry targeted Netflix’s problematic marketing of Cuties earlier in August. If design is communication, the chosen images, description, and subtext did not critique a culture that sexually exploits young girls. It actively played into it, issuing an invitation to come gaze on the actors as they engage in “free-spirited” dance.

The film itself also faces difficult questions about the ethics of using child actors to portray the process of sexualization. Abuse survivor and advocate Rachael Denhollander tweeted: “One can’t protest sexualizing children by … sexualizing them.” And Vox movie critic and former Christianity Today columnist Alissa Wilkinson pointed out that “trying to depict something in the context of critiquing it isn’t always successful.”

The ambiguous nature of sexual exploitation within Western culture explains both the controversy surrounding Cuties and the thesis of the film itself. While public condemnation has been sure and swift, it sometimes misses the pressing questions about whether our society is safe for children: What if the sexualization of young girls is not a bug but a feature? What if Netflix knows something about us that we don’t about ourselves?

The central character of Cuties is Amy, an 11-year-old Senegalese immigrant living in France with her mother and two younger brothers. The story echoes Doucouré’s own childhood, caught between a permissive Western culture that exploited girls one way and a traditional culture that exploited them in other ways. Longing for love and connection, Amy quickly intuits what Western culture values and begins to adapt. She recognizes that this new land of smartphones, social media, and hyper-sexualization rewards her for objectifying herself. But limited by both age and her outsider experience, Amy does not know where suggestive pop culture ends and pornography begins. As she discovers increasingly explicit material online, she mimics it adding erotic behavior, dress, and mannerisms to her dance repertoire—all while oblivious to Western culture’s tacit agreements about which sexual behaviors are socially acceptable and which are not.

The challenge of the film is that there are no obvious villains. No basement-dwelling perverts luring Amy over the internet. No trusted family friend grooming her for abuse. Instead, the film presents the banality of evil and how easily a young girl dropped into Western culture might be exploited by subtle cues and behaviors that exist in the light of day. There are no **** hiding behind every corner on whom we can neatly blame the sexualization of girlhood.

One could undoubtedly argue that the exploitation of young girls overflows from a decadent society, one where sex sells. It’s true: Sex does sell. And at some point, the most hardened don’t care who is being sold. Child trafficking is real, and Netflix did market the film in a provocative way.

Yet the hyper-sexualization of our society doesn’t answer why children are sexualized. What kind of culture exploits their young this way? What kind of culture both condemns pedophilia and sells padded bras to pre-pubescent girls? Why did Netflix think that their marketing would work?

To answer this question, we must understand the degree to which our society does not value childhood in the first place. Denhollander’s memoir exposing the serial predator Larry Nassar asks the question in her title: What Is a Girl Worth? She presses into the structures and value systems that allowed Nassar to continue abusing young girls for years. Ultimately, children are threatened by both predators and a culture that does not hear them when they cry out for help.

Protecting children at the risk of destabilizing powerful organizations or indicting beloved adults means asking ourselves not just "What is a girl worth?" but “What are we willing to pay?” This question ultimately exposes our larger cultural value systems. We prize efficiency. Children are inefficient. We value wealth creation. Children are costly and can’t pay their own way. We honor independence and radical autonomy. Children are dependent and hamper our freedom. We drive toward what Wendell Berry calls “the objective.” Children like to take the long, meandering route home.

It’s no wonder, then, that such a society, would increasingly find ways to truncate childhood. Instead of making space for children to be children, we under-support and undervalue those who care for them, whether in the home or the classroom. We ask fifth-graders to map out their career goals. We hire private coaches to improve their pitching, not so they can enjoy baseball with their friends, but to prepare them for the “future.” And thus by rushing our kids through childhood, we ensure that prolonged adolescence extends in both directions.

With a smaller window of childhood, children naturally begin to adopt postures and traits associated with burgeoning adulthood. In a society that worships unchecked sexual expression, these attitudes necessarily include overt sexuality. The more children are led this way, the more likely they are to be abused by those who manipulate their intellectual and emotional naiveté—proffering “she looked older” as an excuse. While pedophilia certainly exists, the objectification and sexualization of young girls in Western culture has as much do with our complicity in viewing them as women before they truly are.

If you are outraged by the sexual exploitation of young girls, you’re in good company. In Matthew 18, Jesus warns that those who would harm children will face his wrath, and it would be better for them to have a millstone hung around their neck and be thrown into the sea than cause a little one to stumble.

But Jesus’ strong words do not stem from a selective focus on child trafficking or pedophilia. Instead, they are rooted in a holistic understanding of the goodness of childhood and the unique role that children play in God’s kingdom. Just before he warns us that we must not harm children, he commands us to actively welcome them. And he said:

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” (Matt. 18:2–5)

Part of the goodness of childhood is that children remind us of our own dependence on God. Vulnerable, limited, and wholly reliant on others to protect them, children show us how we must come to the kingdom. They show us the only way we can come. The very things that our culture disdains about childhood are the very things that God honors.

If we are to truly protect children in such a culture, it will require more than boycotts, political posturing, or public stances. It will require a willingness to disturb our own organizations and question the value systems that tell us that children are not worthy of our time, resources, and care. It will require aligning our hearts with the heart of God who delights to care for children in their weakness, who celebrates them despite their inefficiencies, and who honors them as image-bearers, even now.










Hannah Anderson is t :-[ >:( ???he author of Made for More, All That’s Good, and Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul.

:-[ :'( :( >:(

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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #62 on: September 25, 2020, 11:52:56 pm »
Quote
author=patrick jane link=topic=370.msg17872#msg17872 date=1600819632]









Why ‘Cuties’ Isn’t Just Netflix’s Problem











The sexual exploitation of children is a symptom of a larger disease—one that we’re complicit in.


On September 9, independent French film Les Mignonnes made its American debut on Netflix under the title Cuties. While director Maïmouna Doucouré intends the film as a critique of the sexual exploitation of children, she quickly found her work facing condemnation for participating in that very thing. Within days, #CancelNetflix was trending and the film had received an astounding 1.06/10 audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes (as of publishing date).

Part of the public outcry targeted Netflix’s problematic marketing of Cuties earlier in August. If design is communication, the chosen images, description, and subtext did not critique a culture that sexually exploits young girls. It actively played into it, issuing an invitation to come gaze on the actors as they engage in “free-spirited” dance.

The film itself also faces difficult questions about the ethics of using child actors to portray the process of sexualization. Abuse survivor and advocate Rachael Denhollander tweeted: “One can’t protest sexualizing children by … sexualizing them.” And Vox movie critic and former Christianity Today columnist Alissa Wilkinson pointed out that “trying to depict something in the context of critiquing it isn’t always successful.”

The ambiguous nature of sexual exploitation within Western culture explains both the controversy surrounding Cuties and the thesis of the film itself. While public condemnation has been sure and swift, it sometimes misses the pressing questions about whether our society is safe for children: What if the sexualization of young girls is not a bug but a feature? What if Netflix knows something about us that we don’t about ourselves?

The central character of Cuties is Amy, an 11-year-old Senegalese immigrant living in France with her mother and two younger brothers. The story echoes Doucouré’s own childhood, caught between a permissive Western culture that exploited girls one way and a traditional culture that exploited them in other ways. Longing for love and connection, Amy quickly intuits what Western culture values and begins to adapt. She recognizes that this new land of smartphones, social media, and hyper-sexualization rewards her for objectifying herself. But limited by both age and her outsider experience, Amy does not know where suggestive pop culture ends and pornography begins. As she discovers increasingly explicit material online, she mimics it adding erotic behavior, dress, and mannerisms to her dance repertoire—all while oblivious to Western culture’s tacit agreements about which sexual behaviors are socially acceptable and which are not.

The challenge of the film is that there are no obvious villains. No basement-dwelling perverts luring Amy over the internet. No trusted family friend grooming her for abuse. Instead, the film presents the banality of evil and how easily a young girl dropped into Western culture might be exploited by subtle cues and behaviors that exist in the light of day. There are no **** hiding behind every corner on whom we can neatly blame the sexualization of girlhood.

One could undoubtedly argue that the exploitation of young girls overflows from a decadent society, one where sex sells. It’s true: Sex does sell. And at some point, the most hardened don’t care who is being sold. Child trafficking is real, and Netflix did market the film in a provocative way.

Yet the hyper-sexualization of our society doesn’t answer why children are sexualized. What kind of culture exploits their young this way? What kind of culture both condemns pedophilia and sells padded bras to pre-pubescent girls? Why did Netflix think that their marketing would work?

To answer this question, we must understand the degree to which our society does not value childhood in the first place. Denhollander’s memoir exposing the serial predator Larry Nassar asks the question in her title: What Is a Girl Worth? She presses into the structures and value systems that allowed Nassar to continue abusing young girls for years. Ultimately, children are threatened by both predators and a culture that does not hear them when they cry out for help.

Protecting children at the risk of destabilizing powerful organizations or indicting beloved adults means asking ourselves not just "What is a girl worth?" but “What are we willing to pay?” This question ultimately exposes our larger cultural value systems. We prize efficiency. Children are inefficient. We value wealth creation. Children are costly and can’t pay their own way. We honor independence and radical autonomy. Children are dependent and hamper our freedom. We drive toward what Wendell Berry calls “the objective.” Children like to take the long, meandering route home.

It’s no wonder, then, that such a society, would increasingly find ways to truncate childhood. Instead of making space for children to be children, we under-support and undervalue those who care for them, whether in the home or the classroom. We ask fifth-graders to map out their career goals. We hire private coaches to improve their pitching, not so they can enjoy baseball with their friends, but to prepare them for the “future.” And thus by rushing our kids through childhood, we ensure that prolonged adolescence extends in both directions.

With a smaller window of childhood, children naturally begin to adopt postures and traits associated with burgeoning adulthood. In a society that worships unchecked sexual expression, these attitudes necessarily include overt sexuality. The more children are led this way, the more likely they are to be abused by those who manipulate their intellectual and emotional naiveté—proffering “she looked older” as an excuse. While pedophilia certainly exists, the objectification and sexualization of young girls in Western culture has as much do with our complicity in viewing them as women before they truly are.

If you are outraged by the sexual exploitation of young girls, you’re in good company. In Matthew 18, Jesus warns that those who would harm children will face his wrath, and it would be better for them to have a millstone hung around their neck and be thrown into the sea than cause a little one to stumble.

But Jesus’ strong words do not stem from a selective focus on child trafficking or pedophilia. Instead, they are rooted in a holistic understanding of the goodness of childhood and the unique role that children play in God’s kingdom. Just before he warns us that we must not harm children, he commands us to actively welcome them. And he said:

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” (Matt. 18:2–5)

Part of the goodness of childhood is that children remind us of our own dependence on God. Vulnerable, limited, and wholly reliant on others to protect them, children show us how we must come to the kingdom. They show us the only way we can come. The very things that our culture disdains about childhood are the very things that God honors.

If we are to truly protect children in such a culture, it will require more than boycotts, political posturing, or public stances. It will require a willingness to disturb our own organizations and question the value systems that tell us that children are not worthy of our time, resources, and care. It will require aligning our hearts with the heart of God who delights to care for children in their weakness, who celebrates them despite their inefficiencies, and who honors them as image-bearers, even now.










Hannah Anderson is the author of Made for More, All That’s Good, and Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul.

Quote
I saw clips of this movie but didn't watch it. The clips were more than enough for me. “One can’t protest sexualizing children by … sexualizing them." Exactly. There is no line that these people won't cross. They can no longer distinguish right from wrong and good from bad. They are evil. They believe that evil is good and that good is evil.
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patrick jane

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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #63 on: October 06, 2020, 03:44:11 pm »
 :'(

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Re: Child Abuse Is Not Funny
« Reply #64 on: October 26, 2020, 12:13:01 pm »
This video outlines current litigation against Google for banning YouTube channel with no cause. The common denominator for all of the recently banned channel is that they each exposed pedophilia and child sex trafficking.




 

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