It's just not OK to beat people....but you knew that right?

DISCLAIMER: I don’t watch anything on World Star Hip Hop[WSHH] ever...because many of the video descriptions i see from there I don’t agree with, nor can I support. Most often what I see come up are violent portrayals of one incident or another...either someone getting beat up or children being beat... you know things of that nature.

As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, I just tend to stay away from things like that. I don’t share the links for " awareness" and I tend to try not to speak on them in my personal life....because I spend my whole work life doing so if you catch my drift. And i encourage you all to do the same. Sharing and watching the link does no good to help the victims in those situations unless you tell someone who can help...

Recently, there has been a video circulating that depicts a father beating his children with an extension cord for uploading a twerking video onto facebook. As always, i ignored the links on my timeline and refused to share. However, i feel compelled to speak out on this subject because one thing I’ve seen entirely too much of is people SUPPORTING the PERSON who BEAT another PERSON.

Now I have no children, but I do work with children and I’m the eldest of seven children...my youngest sibling just turned 5...I am 26...

Last time I checked, beating people is not OK. Pretty much anywhere you go, Beating a person can land you in jail or in some sort of trouble. If my co worker does something incorrectly, it is not considered acceptable for me to beat said coworker.  So in a society where we are expected not to beat people, why do some feel its OK to beat children when they do something incorrect?

Oh I know why!

Its because children as a whole are NOT respected in our society. Its because we somehow think that by birthing children we OWN them. Its because we believe that as adults, children are inherently supposed to listen to everything that we have to say, that they must respect us regardless of whether WE show THEM respect or not.

To be honest, corporal punishment is the lazy way out. If often instills a sense of fear, rather than respect and teaches children to obey the rules to avoid punishment as opposed to obeying the rules to help society run smoothly. Yes I’m aware that I have no children...

I’ve seen many a parent get frustrated with a child and label it bad simply because they don’t want to do what YOU want them to do. I’m not talking about harmful stuff of course, I’m referring to simple things like eating when THEY feel they are hungry or going to sleep when they are tired. Then to physically beat a child simply because they are their own person to me ridiculous.

Not to mention the fact that beating in and of itself is just not an appropriate way to solve most problems. Are there some instances where physical force is necessary? Yes especially in cases of self defense, but to use it as a form of punishment is just plain lazy.

I can think of several different ways that that situation could have been handled differently. But in order to enact those alternatives, it will take TIME, which people "don’t have enough of". I know for a fact that ignoring a child's temper tantrum will eventually cause them to stop...but parents give in because THEY don’t want to hear the child screaming, or they are embarrassed or whatever excuse is underlying their actions of giving in to the child's requests

If we respected children and people as the HUMANS they are, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, because violence would hardly be an issue. Because people who value and respect another person will not bring harm to them...logically it makes no sense.

But respect is a word that is often thrown around yet seldom explicitly explained and even less rarely freely given...yet somehow it is one of the greatest expectations that we have of others.

Bottom line, its not OK to beat people, let alone our most vulnerable members of society. And encouraging that type of behavior simply because a "Father" was "punishing" his child reflects a serious problem in today's society.

P is for Pedophillia

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294292/Paedophilia-illness-NOT-crime-says-cardinal-just-days-papal-conclave.html

Above is a link to an article today that I read. DISCLAIMER: I will never EVER post a link to an article that I have not read...so if I post it it is safe to assume that I read it. With that being said, my discussion on this particular piece is twofold. I'll start with the most obvious concern....

I feel some type of way that a behavior that is typically considered to be taboo is now on its way to acceptability simply because some people affected by it have the MONEY to MAKE the rules otherwise. I think that it is a perfect example of how the legal system in these United States is fueled by 1. Money and 2. Religion.

All the years that pedophilia has been a "problem" and now, that it is drastically beginning to backfire on the Catholic Church, it should be looked at as a "disease" according to the current Pope. I agree with the idea that people who are abused are certainly more likely to abuse others. At the end of the day, there is a difference between committing a wrong and admitting it, and committing a wrong and trying to cover it up...which is what happened with the Catholic church. So the fact that this is being proposed now of all times, to me it seems like a desperate SOS which quite frankly is insulting at best...

But because the Catholic Church as a whole possess an extremely large amount of money, they in fact have access to the types of people who can change laws and what not transforming this "thought" into reality. And regardless of whether this "thought" becomes any sort of law, it has already been put out there. So the opportunity for people to begin using it as an "excuse" or justification is out there. Which of course opens a can of worms...

The fact that a "highly respected" leader of a major religion is making these sorts of statements has the potential to give the wrong types of people justification for inhumane actions. It is not OK to you know engage in that type of behavior....we ALL know that. Regardless of what types of urges a person may feel, they all still know right from wrong. And any person who is genuinely a good person IMO would never be able to engage in these particular behaviors simply because they would find it impossible to take advantage of a human being (a vulnerable one at that) in this way.

For sexual molestation etc., like all types of abuse is one of the worst human traits to have. No one approves of it and yet it goes on continuously behind closed doors. Why is this?

This brings me to my 2nd point. One of the reasons our sexual treatment of children and dolescents has spiraled out of control, IMO is because America's sexuality is ridiculously repressed. As I was typing that sentence, I had an epiphany, I haven’t seen or heard about any cases of abuse outside of these United States...(feel free to point out examples if you have them) But anywho yea about that repressed sexuality. Sex is so very taboo here..but yet it's everywhere. Its like placing a fresh baked tray of cookies in front of someone and then telling them NOT to eat them....that's stupid....and yet that is what occurs every day here.

So because sex is something that we don’t talk about, naturally "inappropriate sex" is something that we REALLY don’t talk about. People who have the "wrong" types of sexual urges usually don’t have an environment to discuss them until they’ve already gotten into trouble...which of course is pointless.

If we were more understanding, acknowledging and accepting of sexuality in general, I think people would be able to better control the sexual urges they have that are deemed harmful and unacceptable by society. Because it is always easier to cope with comething when you have support.  With that being said....

Once upon a time, humans were married at a much younger age. "Adolescent" "teenager" and "pre-teen" are all relatively new terms in relation to the amount of time that humans have been around. What we consider to be "teenagers" were already married and working...and having families. Also of course from a "natural" stand point it makes sense that people would be attracted to a younger human...for reproductive reasons....[NOTE I am ABSOLUTELY not referring to abuse of CHILDREN at this point, I’m talking about people who have already experienced puberty. ]

I have absolutely no research to back this up, but my hypothesis is that something genetics wise has certain people attracted to "younger humans". The fact remains though that the behavior is illegal, often morally frowned upon and socially unacceptable. But consider this, if we are already taught to keep secret about sex, we are not going to discuss our urges with anyone appropriate or not. So we miss out on the opportunity to have conversation about why even though you have those particular urges it is NOT OK to act on them.

The priests of the Catholic Church are not allowed to have sex at all...Just let that marinate for a little bit.

Instead of giving people a safe environment to discuss and cope with these urges, we shame them for even having the thought as if that will somehow force it out of existence. If we take steps BEFORE and incident occurs, we just may be able to prevent some incidents from occurring. Of course, we also have to acknowledge the other part of this equation.

People who engage in this type of behavior are obviously manipulative at their cores....Because you have to be manipulative to take advantage of a child. But that doesn’t mean that the current structure of our society has not contributed to the series of events that we have unfolding today. Is becoming more open to sexuality the solution to all that ails us? absolutely not...but is it a step in the right direction? Yea I think so....