(no subject)
Dec. 4th, 2007 07:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cinema_babe[I'm leaving this post public for a few hours, eventually I will put it under a f-lock. Maybe.)
Just in case anyone was wondering, I'm not doing any stinking voluntary screening of my journal. I'm a god damned adult so people can assume that anything I post is for adults. My profile warns people.
Although I believe that a society has the responsibility to provide for the general safety of children, I refuse to be responsible for other people's inability to monitor their children on-line. If the idea of talk about sex, kink, alternative lifestyle and he general rantings of a (sometimes) madwoman will warp the delicate minds of little Hortense and Percy.....lock 'em in a box like veal.
Any posts that deal with explicit material (heck, most of my posts for that matter) are f-locked and that should be sufficient. This idea of "OMG! UR WURDS MUST B LABLED AS DURTY BCUZ OF THE KIDZ" is nothing more than censorship and I put it in the same category as book burning.
Fuck That.
Let me end by relating a story. As I have mentioned, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household. I mean like crazy fundie. No Christmas, no birthdays, very austere. My mother was the model of probity. when I was about 10 my mother and 2 of her friends accidentally took a group of us kids to an R rated move (Macon County Line, in case you're wondering. It's a long story about how this could happen but trust me it wasn't intentional and all three women were horrified when the movie opened with a bare breasted woman asking her lover to return to bed.)
Anyway, the next morning, we were driving to church, the whole family in the car, and I turned to my mother and asked her what the word "screw" meant (one of the lines in the movie referred to someone who, "screwed his daughter." Nice movie for a 10 year old, heh.) Did my mother freak out? Did she curse the film makers or the theater for showing such filth? Did she wail about how the world was destroying her childrens' innocence?
Nope.
She calmly said, "That word means a man and woman are having personal relations with each other. It's a vulgar word and not one that we use in our home." Question answered. (She told me in later years that she almost died when I blurted the question out. I never noticed it.)
I might have a huge axe to grind about a lot of things my mother did but this was one of her shining moments. My mother lived with the attitude that she was responsible for setting the moral tone for her children and incidents where we were exposed to something outside the her moral limits were an opportunity to discuss and reinforce what she believed; she seized it as an opportunity to parent.
It's too bad more parents don't adopt her attitude.
Just in case anyone was wondering, I'm not doing any stinking voluntary screening of my journal. I'm a god damned adult so people can assume that anything I post is for adults. My profile warns people.
Although I believe that a society has the responsibility to provide for the general safety of children, I refuse to be responsible for other people's inability to monitor their children on-line. If the idea of talk about sex, kink, alternative lifestyle and he general rantings of a (sometimes) madwoman will warp the delicate minds of little Hortense and Percy.....lock 'em in a box like veal.
Any posts that deal with explicit material (heck, most of my posts for that matter) are f-locked and that should be sufficient. This idea of "OMG! UR WURDS MUST B LABLED AS DURTY BCUZ OF THE KIDZ" is nothing more than censorship and I put it in the same category as book burning.
Fuck That.
Let me end by relating a story. As I have mentioned, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household. I mean like crazy fundie. No Christmas, no birthdays, very austere. My mother was the model of probity. when I was about 10 my mother and 2 of her friends accidentally took a group of us kids to an R rated move (Macon County Line, in case you're wondering. It's a long story about how this could happen but trust me it wasn't intentional and all three women were horrified when the movie opened with a bare breasted woman asking her lover to return to bed.)
Anyway, the next morning, we were driving to church, the whole family in the car, and I turned to my mother and asked her what the word "screw" meant (one of the lines in the movie referred to someone who, "screwed his daughter." Nice movie for a 10 year old, heh.) Did my mother freak out? Did she curse the film makers or the theater for showing such filth? Did she wail about how the world was destroying her childrens' innocence?
Nope.
She calmly said, "That word means a man and woman are having personal relations with each other. It's a vulgar word and not one that we use in our home." Question answered. (She told me in later years that she almost died when I blurted the question out. I never noticed it.)
I might have a huge axe to grind about a lot of things my mother did but this was one of her shining moments. My mother lived with the attitude that she was responsible for setting the moral tone for her children and incidents where we were exposed to something outside the her moral limits were an opportunity to discuss and reinforce what she believed; she seized it as an opportunity to parent.
It's too bad more parents don't adopt her attitude.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-04 03:01 pm (UTC)I'm on a prowrestling community on LJ and a mom came on and started asking questions because her son wanted to read a couple of the current big wrestling biographies.
She took the time to find a place to ask, the questions to ask, and took the answers seriously when we said '90% of the wrestling biographies out there discuss drug use, sex, and the bad sides of the business.. MOST of them discuss how negative these things are, but they all contain language'.
What she does with that info is her own business, but kudos to her for learning.
It sometimes bothers me that there is a chance I won't have kids with Dani just out of a lack of time and selfishness.. knowing we'ld be smart parents.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 03:25 am (UTC)I just had to say *Amen*! And, seriously, good for your mom!
I'm the mom of a 6 yo, and we're pretty laidback about age-appropriate discussions of sex and the human body, but even so, there's plenty of issues we don't want her exposed to -- which is what off/back/delete buttons are for. It is completely and utterly *our* responsibility to monitor her media exposure, to know what she's watching and what websites she's visiting (at this age -- obviously as she gets older she'll have a lot more freedom). I don't understand parents who want the government/schools/TV networks/etc. raising their kids for them. Or, okay, I *do* understand them -- it's a whole heck of a lot easier to plop the kid in front of the TV or computer than to spend the time and effort to engage with them -- I just don't understand why they wanted kids if they didn't want the responsibility of raising them.
I've enjoyed all the posts of yours I've come across -- mind if I friend you?
no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 06:21 pm (UTC)Drive by comments are always welcome as long as you don't make fun of my funny looking wardrobe. That must be done in person!
Yeah, that is definitely one of the best things my Mom ever did; she handled it very well.
I'm so tired of this whole battle cry of protecting the children. To the best of my knowledge, unintentional, passing exposure to something age inappropriate will *not* damage a child and, in fact, often it goes right over their head.
(Ask me about the time my mother took away my 45 of Donna Summer's Love to Love You, Baby because of what she called "the sounds" and I didn't figure out why until I was in High School, heh)
Please feel free to LJ Friend me; I hope you don't mind if I do the same!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 07:45 pm (UTC)Yeah, I've got to admit you're right about the age-appropriate thing -- it's really unlikely to do any damage (when it comes to general information, at least -- I do find that if she's exposed to a distressing movie or conversation, she's often distressed about it for a couple days, even moreso when she didn't really understand the topic itself). But a lot of what I try not to expose her to is totally about my own self-defense -- if I haven't figured out how to explain something, I keep hoping I'll have a few more months to come up with my answers!
This semester she's in school for the first time, and I've been spending more than a few quiet moments wondering which she's going to ask about first -- more information on sex, or whether Santa Claus really exists. I don't know which conversation I'm looking forward to least!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 12:36 pm (UTC)I try to be open and honest about the darker sides of life and I try to present multiple sides of controversial issues so I can teach my son to be more accepting and understanding.
I hate it when lazy parents try to crack down on risque situations because they don't want to have tro explain things to their kids and just want to raise them in a fundy bubble!
Like fundy Christians are any better than fundy Muslims!!