Reasons You Shouldn’t Fuck Kids

I was in a meeting yesterday where a Vietnam vet said “40 years ago today I was sitting in a M.A.S.H. unit, and it’s affecting me today.” Everyone at the table, including me, was awed.

I thought about it for a while. Can you imagine if I said “30 years ago, a babysitter fucked my brother and I, and it’s affecting me today.” Immediately would be an air of suspicion, an air of ‘is she telling the truth’? Somehow, the idea that people can blow each other to shreds in a war is acceptable and believable, but the idea that adults fuck kids and it traumatizes them, this somehow is too much for people to bear.

I guess maybe it’s too hard for people to be conscious of the shitty things people do to children. I mean, we live in a culture that thinks it’s okay to hit kids. We rationalize that it’s for their own good, and the Bible says it’s okay. The Bible. Yeah. That is where I am going to base my life decisions. A book that was written by a bunch of men a couple thousand years ago. The Bible says a lot of shit, like that it’s okay to own slaves, but no one likes that part so we ignore it.

My point is, in a culture that idolizes war and violence, but ignores child sexual abuse, it’s okay for a Vietnam vet to say “Fucked up shit happened to me and I am fucked up by it”, but a survivor can’t go public in the same way because we are instantly met with suspicion, so we are silenced from speaking about what happened to us. It’s one of the many reasons I have to go by ‘Butterfly’ and not my real name.

This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. If you’re willing to do it, or willing to live in a society that does it, the very least you can do is bear witness to those of us who lived it.