Blaming The Victim. Because, WHY NOT?

Tags

blaming the victim, consequences, drunk girls, extending logic, feminism, how to be safe, irony, logical but nonsensical conclusion, rape, rapists, safe living, safety, sarcasm, steubenville, taking responsibility, victimization

There’s a lot of talk right now about the Steubenville rape case right now, not because of the case itself – that sort of thing happens far too often. In fact the same thing happened to a girl in Maple Ridge, B.C., not too long ago.

The reason everyone is up and arms about is because a news anchor whose mother named her “Candy” (a good start right there) spend a lot of time bemoaning the consequences of the rapists’ sentencing, rather than talking about how what they did was wrong.

The clip pissed me off, of course, although I do think that it may be a good idea to emphasize the consequences of raping a girl – in case the teenage boys out there need a stronger motivation than simply “because it is wrong”.

But then I read the comments, and of course you have idiots saying things like this:

“there is no doubt that what these teen boys did was wrong in that making mockery of someone they had sexual contact with over social media. Was it cold, was it callous, was it stupid…YES YES YES…but was it RAPE? NO. However, as a mother of young daughters and sons I am appaulled that no repermanding of the girl or her family is warranted. As a society, we have a moral obilgation to say something to a young girl or woman young or old who drinks to the point of not knowing what they are doing or sayng. To say that a 17 year old male is suppose to make the moral call and say ‘naw you are to drunk to know wht you are saying or doing” is a bit much.”

“men will be men. the more that is known the better. carry mace, dont get smashed at parties, dont walk down a dark alley by yourself. im a man and i realize that although i may not be looking for trouble walking home after a night at the bar, i better not get smashed in case trouble is looking for me.”

“What those teen boys did was bad, and they deserve to be punished, but where is her responsibility for herself? Apparently drunk women have no need to take responsibility for their poor choices, whereas drunk males will have to pay for their mistakes for the rest of their lives. So much for equality.”

“i am in no way condoning the actions of these juveniles and they should be punished. but acting like the girl had no part in her being in this situation undermines the importance of being responsible when consuming alcohol.”

It’s the Amanda Todd thing all over again.

“Oh, sure, what those boys did was wrong, but it’s the girl’s fault too, because she put herself in that situation.”

For all the people who want to talk about the consequences of being raped for a girl (something that gets almost NO coverage, and which I think really should be, because a lot of men clearly don’t get why it is considered to be such a big deal), there are people out there who want to talk about how stupid the girl was to be there in the first place.

And at first, I got mad.

Then I thought about it, and I realized, DUDE, they are totally right.

I mean, the girl went out and got DRUNK with GUYS around. Who does that? What normal teenage girl drinks around BOYS? Wasn’t she leading them on by simply being  there, and then by becoming unconscious?

And why should we stop there?

Since the victim in the above case clearly is partially to blame for the consequences of her action, shouldn’t we be blaming MORE victims?

Take John F. Kennedy.

Stop blaming Oswald and look at the real culprit!

Letting Things Slide

Tags

children, discipline, going up slides, playground etiquette, rules, safety, slides

When Owl was around one year old, he began to enjoy slides.

The local mall has a slide that is nicely baby-sized, so we started him on that one. From the beginning we taught him basic slide safety/etiquette which is, of course, that you must always go around and go back up via the ladder, and not back up the slide itself.

This is basic etiquette, isn’t it?

I have begun to wonder, because we are apparently the only parents IN THE WORLD who enforce it.

I am probably exaggerating because my friend Pug Mama also enforces this basic requirement when we have visited slides with our children, and I assume that my other friends do as well with their children. But that’s because I have awesome taste in friends.

Everyone else in the world seems to think it is TOTALLY FINE for their kid to spend five minutes trying to climb the wrong way up the slide, while other children line up on top with feet pointed at the rogue child’s head.

Then, of course, Owl starts imitating the behaviour. PH or I immediately swoop in and correct him and Owl goes back to his law abiding ways. Sometimes the other parent would become aware that my one year old was better behaved than their three year old and would suddenly start enforcing the rule, which no doubt confused the kid completely.

Sometimes, that doesn’t even happen.

A few weeks ago Owl was at that same slide and had quite an altercation with two little bruisers with buzz cuts. One looked about Owl’s age and the other was three or so. They were both climbing up the slide while Owl sat on top of the slide poised to go down and said in an increasingly annoyed voice, “Excuse me. Excuse me! EXCUUUUUSE ME! NO!! GO ‘WAY!!!!!”

He began poking at their eyes, which I put a stop to instantly, but I felt bad, because after all, he was in the right. But if we poked out people’s eyes whenever they broke the rules, we’d have a lot of fun, but probably end up in prison.

The parent of the two kids, by the way, was watching with pleasant-faced bemusement throughout all this. I would have said something but I didn’t know she was the kids’ mother, since she was watching with pleasant-faced bemusement.

It was only when Owl and the up-sliders began to engage in a battle to the death on the top of the slide that she redirected her kids, who were back and going up the slide again within five minutes and the mother just shrugged at me like “Ehn, what else can I do?”

I was tempted to tell Owl to slide down anyway and kick those kids in the face.

It’s not only a problem at the mall.

The local indoor play gym has big signs up everywhere about NOT CLIMBING UP THE SLIDES, often in quick succession and merely phrased in different ways so as to try and penetrate people’s thick skulls. It doesn’t seem to make a difference. Parents stand around and smile indulgently while their kids struggle up the slide going the wrong way. Last time I tried to embarrass the parents into action. Owl pointed at the kids going up the slide and screeched “Mommy, YOOK!”

“Yeah, they’re breaking the rules. Never mind what they do. YOU go around,” I said to him loudly. The group of watching parents didn’t even blink.

I suppose I could be a douche and point out to the parents that their kids are getting in the way of everyone else’s kids AND endangering themselves in the process, but it’s none of my business and I’m not naturally confrontational.

So beyond the occasional passive aggressive comment, I just watch in bewilderment.

I just don’t get it.

It’s one thing if your kid is nine years old in a deserted playground, and able to understand the difference between sharing a busy piece of playground equipment and enjoying having the slide all to yourself.

But in a busy play park packed with self absorbed toddlers?

Really?

Even if you don’t believe in etiquette, even if you want your child to be a rebel and explore playground equipment in novel ways, even if you don’t think that your kids should have to learn turn-taking or follow posted rules…

…don’t you worry that a descending child will torpedo your kid in the face?

…Or am I the only one?

In Which Babby Decides To Be A Mountaineer When He Grows Up, and I Get Grey Hairs

Tags

babies, child development, safety, stairs

We installed the upstairs baby gate before Babby even figured out how to crawl, but we were slower about installing the downstairs gate.

A friend had given us a great pressure-mounted gate which fit my decor perfectly, back when I was still pregnant. However, it didn’t quite fit the width of our stair well.

My friend said that she had expander pieces for it in her basement somewhere, so we agreed that I would pick them up some time.

Fast forward a YEAR AND A HALF, and I still hadn’t gotten around to it. When he started crawling, though, I told her that I definitely needed to come get those pieces.

And we did! We really did! PH was going to dig out the gate and figure out how to put it together with the expandy bits that very weekend!

And do you know what happened in the meantime?

BABBY DISCOVERED THE STAIRS.

Now, some mothers worry about accidentally drowning their baby. Others fret about losing control of the stroller on a hill. Others have horrible visions of their baby falling from a great height.

I worry about him smashing his big old melon head.

…So I’m not a fan of Babby + stairs.

At first he would just get up on the first step and freeze. He couldn’t get up, couldn’t get down. Eventually he’d topple over backwards and I’d catch him. That wasn’t so bad.

"...Now what?"

After all, my friend the social worker says the bottom gate should be on the third step anyway “so they can learn how to get up and down, but can’t get high up enough to really hurt themselves.”

Okay, so that wasn’t so bad, and we’d put up the baby gate and everything would be fine.

Right?

Then, all of a sudden, Babby figured out how to go up.

"Hey, this just keeps going up! WHAT COULD GO WRONG?"

And boy, did he go up.

"Catch me if you can! No, really... you'd better get ready to catch me..."

And UP.

"I r so smrt"

AND UP.

Of course, removing him from the stairs just made them all the more enticing, and I realized that I had begun a sort of game – “How far up the stairs can I get before Boob-Lady catches me?”

"It goes up and Mommy wants me to stay away. HILARIOUS!"

No amount of distraction could keep him away, and I had no idea how to assemble the dang baby gate. He would clamber up the stairs giggling wildly, and I would come after him.

Of course, I could take him upstairs and just never let him down EVER AGAIN, but he gets bored up there after a while, and a bored Babby is an angry, angry Babby.

Besides, I knew that this was a skill he had to learn sone time. Babies need exposure to stairs in order to learn how to navigate them safely.

So I faced the inevitable. I decided that maybe I should just accept my fate… and change my plan of attack.

I decided not to remark on any upward progress (just stayed close behind him to catch him when he toppled over or slipped), but I made a big fuss over any attempt to get down.

I threw a huge party every time his foot moved DOWN a step instead of UP a step, and within half an hour he had the hang of it, and seemed to have forgotten how exciting UP could be.

Getting down: An even more exciting challenge

Instead he would go up a step or two, and come back down to recieve my wild admiration and excessive applause. He got pretty good at it, really. No more toppling over, no more slipping on the steps. He was the valdictorian of stairs, as far as he was concerned.

As far as I was concerned, I wished I had the dang gate up so I could stop having visions of him smashing his head in.

"Why yes, I AM amazing and clever. Thank you."

Anyway, he went up and down, up and down, and this kept him entertained for a while, and I much preferred it to the mad dashes up the stairs.

And then, after a pause to play with his ball, the devil must have spoken to him or something because otherwise WHY WOULD HE DECIDE TO TAKE HIS BALL UP THE STAIRS?

"Hey, what happens if I bring this toy up with me?"

"Wheee, look at it go! I could do this ALL DAY!"

Suffice to say, we PUT UP THE BABY GATE THAT NIGHT.

Babby isn’t impressed with it, but no obstacle really fazes him for long…

"Stand aside, ladies. This shouldn't take long."

It didn’t occur to me that I COULD

Tags

alcohol, culture, drinking, FAS, pregnancy, safety

Did you or would you drink while pregnant?

I’ve just had it hammered into me for so long that it seems like a ridiculous question, like asking “Would you jump out of a plane without a parachute?” or “would you feed your dog a big hunk of baker’s dark chocolate?”

Since middle school they have been telling us over and over again, “no amount of alcohol is safe during pregnancy”. So it just becomes part of the collective unconscious – pregnant women don’t drink. The image is incongruous, like a camel drinking a martini. And it’s not just me who thinks that way.

For example: I love champagne. That’s my drink of choice. We had a big bottle of Baby Canadian in our fridge last year and the occasion to drink it wasn’t coming up.

Me: We’ll just save it. *with a grin* Hey, maybe we can pop it to celebrate when we find out that I’m pregnant!

Perfect Husband: *sliding off his wedding ring* Get out of my house.

I had a few glasses of wine over Christmas, before I knew I was pregnant, mind you. It’s ironic because my grandmother kept thinking I was pregnant whenever I went to visit her, and I was talking about this with my parents over a glass of Zinfandel.

Mum: Your Nana doesn’t know something we don’t, does she?

Me: Uhh, considering that I’m drinking a glass of wine right now, clearly if she does, I don’t know either.

I guess the joke was on me.

But I’m beginning to realize that not everyone has had this belief drilled firmly into their heads. Quite a lot of people on the Dooce Community admit to drinking the occasional glass of wine or beer while pregnant. Do I judge them? Not really. I mean, the chance of a glass or two hurting the baby is pretty slim. I haven’t lost much sleep over those glasses of Zinfandel. But knowingly drinking alcohol while pregnant baffles me, because there’s always the risk. The unpredictability of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and the fact that they can’t seem to establish a “safe” zone keeps me away. I felt the same reaction when reading NewScientist’s Bumpology articles. The author has discussed that alcohol can be harmful. How studies showed that fetuses born to mothers who just a glass or two a day during the third trimester are born with a taste preference for alcohol. But she still seems annoyed by the whole “no alcohol” recommendation.

And it is her right.

But I’m like, “Bwa??”

It’s just not on my radar in the slightest. Why would I take the risk? Nor could I manage to do so without having a major blow-out with my husband. YOU suggest to him that I have a glass of wine. See how he takes it.

Those three bottles of Smirnoff Ice in the fridge drive me crazy, especially on hot days. We have friends coming by to put in baseboards for us tomorrow. Maybe I can pawn them off of them.