When I saw the first “To Catch a Predator” report on Dateline, I was overjoyed that finally the media was reporting on the sick-as-hell trend of older guys picking up on 12 and 13 year old kids over the internet. Last night Jeff and I sat down and watched the third installment of the ongoing Dateline sting operation with just as much joy as we experienced during the first one.
We would snicker wildly as perv after perv was caught on tape walking into the kitchen with cheap booze expecting a few hours of sex with a person who was barely out of elementary school. Unlike the first “To Catch a Predator” filmed in Virginia, where soliciting a minor for sex doesn’t come with very heavy charges, this one was shot in Riverside, California where attempting to molest a minor is a felony. The sick fucks went right from a suburban kitchen and into the hands of law enforcement. Yippee!
Besides the unfortunate realization that the cops busted 51 motherfuckers, or I should say kidfuckers, in just 72 hours, was the fact that Dateline concentrated a little too much on the legal system. I’m not saying that these guys shouldn’t do time, in fact, I was pleased to hear the D.A. guarantee that all, but one of the guys busted would do at least 18 months in prison. However, I think Dateline should have put a little self-criticism behind their well-done report and examined the larger picture.
We live in a society fueled by a media that is constantly sexualizing women at a younger and younger age. When I was in high school, the beautiful, sexy, desirable women were Cindy Crawford, Tawny Kitaen, and Kelly LeBrock. As a bright-eyed, 16-year-old, I had the desire to look like them, but realized that they were women, and I was still a girl. With the surge in popularity of Brittney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and the rest of the Cocktease Crew peddled by the media, the separation of girlhood/womanhood that I experienced in my teens no longer exists.
Coupled with the sexualization of children is society’s consistent backlash against women. We have careers, can support ourselves, are trying our best to exhibit confidence, and instead of praise, we get branded as bitchy, career-obsessed, angry, and unapproachable. Basically, after the age of 27, our culture and mainstream media says that women get so mean and bull-headed that men might as well not bother approaching us, because they will most likely get their penises bitten off. According to society, we gals go from being sweethearts to evil harpies just by aging a few years.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving these perverted fucks an out. Wanting to have sex with a kid is sick, wrong, and should be punishable by more than 18 months in prison. However, if we are going to keep our kids safe, we need to spend as much time figuring out how the problem started as we do concentrating on what to do once we are confronted with it. I’m a realist, so I know that if Dateline can get 51 guys in just 72 measly hours, imagine what’s going on when Chris Hansen and crew isn’t watching.
I’m not sure when 13 became the new 22 in terms of desirable age for a female, and as the mother of a little girl, it scares the hell out of me. I don’t get it at all! I look at a 13-year-old boy or girl, and to me they look like adorable little kids. Dateline helped the organization Perverted Justice catch these guys by offering pictures of their staffers at 13-years-old. Each photo was your typical “school picture day” shot and most of the kids had zits and braces. How is that sexual in any way!?! Maybe for guys it is the thought of new and untouched pussy, because beyond that, I just can’t figure out why any adult would want to be with a kid.
Dateline ended the show by calling for a change in laws and profiling a group that does presentations at middle and high school assemblies to try and warn kids about the dangers of chat rooms. While all of this is quite noble, nothing is going to change. The media is still going to glamorize younger girls and tell grown men that the little miss writhing on the floor in a Catholic school girl uniform is the best sex they could ever hope for.
Until we start calling “bullshit” on the sexualization of young teenagers, and boycott media that portrays women in their late 20s and above as unapproachable, tainted, shrews men with little self-esteem and a shitload of perversion are going to go after our kids. In the meantime, we can curtail the actions of the sick fucks by supporting Perverted Justice making the would be childfuckers paranoid, and if we’re lucky enough to see a loser with a grocery bag full of cheap beer and Trojans sheepishly approaching the house of the 14-year-old neighbor girl we can harness our inner vicious, independent, 30+, uberbitch, grab a bat, and give that fucker more of a scare than any anchor with perfect teeth and a camera crew ever could.
4 comments:
ROCK ON regarding the Dateline constructive critique!
So, you're right about examining the larger societal issues that help create the problem of pedophilia and sexualization of children. I would suspect that we also need to check out the infantilization of women (what's up with all the pube shaving and adult women dressing like school girls). But, this would mean that our society would actually have to look at our society, and not just react to a bad thing with an immediate fix. It might mean we have to take a look at the big picture, and we don't do that often or well.
Recommend the book "We" by Robert Johnson as what is going on in our culture, and where it started falling apart, and how the hell we can fix it!
Great post!
You said it. But as a mother of 4 girls (and 2 boys) I want to tell you -- don't wait around for someone to "stop sexualizing children". You have to do it yourself. Everyone will laugh histerically at you as you prohibit your little girl at age 8 from watching the Little subserviant Mermaid and other movies with oh so little sex in them (that adds up in the end, we all know) but shrug it off. It's a lot of work, but worth it in the end. There are tiny little bits of it everywhere, and you must be watching very closely to keep as much of it out of your kids' lives as possible. Good Luck, and know that there are many more doing the same.
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