Saving the children

I am again struck by the similarity between the old captivity narratives and the current obsession with child trafficking and abortion. Not just captivity narratives, mind you, but many other examples of where some supposed innocent was used as a justification for doing great evil. With captivity, it was the idea of Natives capturing white women and raping them—which gave whites justification for massacres. The irony was that, at least in several cases, because the women had been “tainted,” they were supposed to die too. So the supposed reason for the massacre was also killed. See the classic film The Searchers for this theme, but it shows up in many other places.

Not just massacres, of course, but also lynching. Many lynchings were justified by supposed offenses to white women—sometimes just looking at them wrong, or daring to speak to them. Not that the same culture took care of white women, of course. Not at all, but they were handy excuses to do great violence.

Enter Qanon, which exploded after Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory that held that Hillary was somehow involved in smuggling kids for sex trafficking out of a pizzeria basement. Never mind that particular building didn’t have a basement, of course. This has become an obsession on the right—with the orange person repeating it loudly and often, and I have run into more than a few adherents along the way. Not that sex trafficking doesn’t happen, of course. It does. But it has clearly now become a universal justification to support various right wing stances. I half expect to hear soon that he bombed Iran because of sex trafficking.

Lots of problems with this, of course, but first and foremost is the very clear fact that the people crying the most about sex trafficking are supporting policies that harm children the most. Good fucking god, they are standing by while RFK jr., slashes funding for pediatric cancer research. And it goes on. Same people adamant that abortion is murdering children are pushing policies that incent women to abort.

Was thinking the same thing about the trans controversy, as I just heard it from someone. Every trans person I know has spent literally years grappling with their identity—that has meant therapy, self work, etc. Very hard for moral people to dismiss that, so of course, the usual suspects made it about “grooming” kids or as the orange fucker said on the campaign trail, that kids were having gender affirming surgery at school without their parents permission or knowledge. Total nonsense, of course, but it seems to work. Same people are convinced that trans supporters are castrating young boys. Never mind that most trans people don’t have surgery, and that surgeries under the age of 18 are rare. Also never mind that more people regret their knee replacement than trans regret gender affirming surgery.

But we see the very same mechanism at work. The Simpson had it right when Rev Lovejoy’s wife would always utter, “won’t someone think of the children.” As they push policies that harm children. Using women as justification for anti-abortion policies as those policies put women in actual danger.

I get how this works. I resent the people who cynically exploit it, but even more, resent the people who just accept this without thinking.