Two Irishmen
Here's your morning smile as told to my beau over in Ireland this past summer by a guy in a real Irish pub with a real Irish accent and everything:
Q: Why is there so much paedophilia in the Catholic Church?
A: Sexy kids.
Anyway, he told me that one because I was talking about how, in the shower, instead of singing showtunes, I was thinking about all the times when I was a little girl and then a bigger girl that I was in icky situations where I realized the grown up man would have done something perverted to me if I didn't get out of the room, car, park - wherever I happened to be when I realized, "Uh oh".
And I wasn't even a sexy kid. And I'm not exaggerating. Every other day or so, or maybe it was every other week, or every month, but certainly several times a year, I can clearly recall now being in what I knew were sketchy situations where I had to keep my wits about me and that almost always meant amskraying with a hasty explanation, "I gotta go... practice piano/feed the dog/iron my Gram's underwear!"
It's true. In my day, it was up to the kid to stay out of the pervert's clutches. The thing was - every man of a certain age seemed to be a pervert. Honestly. Maybe that's just because I'm a fatherless girl from Northern Ontario, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's because, unless there's another man around to ward off the other men, and you live in Northern Ontario, little kids seem a little too inviting to men and it brings out the pervert in them. And unless those little kids have a drill sergeant Mom who has pretty much hammered it into their little noggins that preventing sexual assault is THEIR responsibility, tough nuts, kid.
It's survival of the fittest at the end of the day. You don't want something bad to happen to you? Don't let it happen, then.
The reason I'm putting my nasty nasty nasty argument thusly is because while I was showering, I realized that much of the Rightwing argument against "overprotecting" kids comes from middle-aged people who probably grew up in circumstances similar to mine and what they're essentially saying is, "Look, prey has to be wary - that's just the way it is. Otherwise, the kids get sloppy and the next thing you know..."
And there is some merit to that argument because the whole idea is to prevent sexual assault from happening. And there's probably an analogy to be made, here, between kids and the domestic cat, which has become dumber over time because it doesn't have to keep its wits about it anymore. It's gone soft. It doesn't even have to hunt for food. It just pads over to the dish and there it is.
As a result, it's devolved and can be easily mauled by a dog - often because it's been declawed, too, so it won't scratch the upholstery on the brand new ultra suede couch.
On the upside (because there has been social evolution, at least) not only do kids have more rights these days - and know their rights - but we view the predator as the problem - not the kid who was sexually assaulted. Well, except for those same Rightwingers who DO blame the kid - either for not wearing a uniform or for having a single mom who picked up with a man or for whatever reason that allowed the sexual assault to take place because, for whatever reason, the kid didn't get out of the room/car/park.
So, they blame the predator, too, but there's still an element of, "Look kid, that didn't happen to me because I had the smarts to get out of the room/car/park."
But, like I say, I wasn't a sexy kid, either, so I can't say for sure if I know where they're coming from exactly. I'm just guessing this "over-protecting the kids" argument goes a little deeper'n wearing helmets during playtime.
Tomorrow I'll blog about a friend I had who WAS a sexy kid.
Just kidding.
