- Laura Maw, ‘The Shining,’ Domestic Violence, and the Architecture of Horror.

this one liberal dude on twitter made the (correct) take that parents have overwhelming power over their kids and very often abuse it and restrict children's rights and he was ratio'd by conservatives, communists and liberals alike who made comments like "my kids will have rights when they pay the bills" to "aw are you upset mom and dad didn't you get you a lega set for christmas". way to prove his point lol! any criticism of the power dynamics adults and particularly parents have over kids and how it is often used to abuse kids or refuse to let them exist as themselves is drowned in mockery and the idea that parents have absolute authority over children and that any less than that is actually spoiling them.

i said it before: people only care about Children as an ideal. as property. as something that is Innocent and deserving protection From Evil Traffickers but also something Dumb that barely deserves the status of human with autonomy. and its fucking wild how even the staunchest communists think of this as normal, and how people refuse to understand that this dynamic is how kids are emotionally, physically and sexually abused, as well as robbed of their voices and too scared/ashamed to talk about it.

it's worth saying this dude is the parent of a now adult trans girl, and his reflections absolutely come from parenting as well as how he was expected to behave as the father of a trans daughter, how much power he had over her treatment and the refusal of doctors and teachers to listen to her and going over her head to him so they could misgender her and make him consent to conversion therapy.

he did not do these things, but the expectation and judgement that he as a parent was supposed to take away her rights and the sheer power he had over her as a minor made him reflect a lot. and now people are mocking him for sharing this reflection, even as black kids are killed or sent into the school to prison pipeline, as disabled kids are refused humanity, as parents kill their kids to spite their divorced spouses, as trans kids get their healthcare revoked, as migrant kids remain locked in cages. even as these same people panic over child trafficking and pedophile sex rings and refuse to admit how much csa and abuse is from family members.

Sometimes I just want to smash your head against the brick wall until your fucking brains pop out.

The Babadook (dir. Jennifer Kent, 2014)

Santa knows this child has been good, the parents though, have been naughty towards the child Happy Holidays to all, except the parents of course

Storyville - Defying the Cutting Season

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has been illegal in Tanzania since 1998. But every year thousands of families still plan to have their daughters cut, an ordeal that could cost them their lives. The ‘Cutting Season’ takes place during the December school holidays.

During this time hundreds of girls are saved from FGM by the police, the government and the work of the Safe House. It is run by Rhobi Samwelly, who was herself a victim of FGM, and now, not only does she valiantly run the safe house but she also works with the local police to rescue and protect girls at risk while arresting the parents and cutters.

But they have a tough and dangerous job and old customs die hard. Men believe that girls must be cut to reduce promiscuity and cut girls command twice the bride price in cows as uncut girls. Girls like Rosie, just 12 years old, have had to make the most difficult choices of their young lives - run away from home, not knowing if they will ever see their families again, or submit to female genital mutilation and child marriage.

These brave and courageous young girls are fighting against a tradition that goes back thousands of years. They are standing up for their human rights and fighting for change in their community.

The Safe House is the one safe place they can escape to.

the other commenter on this post was a terf so i’m reposting w the donation link for the shelter referenced above:

https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/safe-house-training-centre-tanzania/

That soviet propaganda piece makes me want to cry— to be sure one of the most under appreciated aspects of socialist ethics was the understanding that children are not the private property of their parents, they are the responsibility of an entire community and should be truly empowered and allowed live with some degree of autonomy and respect. How far away a possibility children’s rights are these days breaks my heart because it is this isolation of children within the family above all that makes them vulnerable to all manner abuse. And it’s soul-killing to encounter evidence of abuse within a home and to not know what to do because the “alternative” of the state intervening may actually introduce them to more abuse.

If anyone “deserves” a revolution in this world it’s children who are made utterly dependent on adults and then punished for it. I can’t wait for “the family” as such to be utterly outdated and for children to be free.

anyway you guys can claim that talking about racism is “discourse” as much as you want to but i know that racism in the community is actually really dangerous and it actually makes impacts in real life the way the petty squabbling over useless bullshit on here doesn’t. we live in a world wherein lgbt neo-n*zis exist and white lgbt people call the cops on black lives matter protestors and white gay couples abuse their adopted nonwhite children and where if a jewish lgbt person goes to pride with a star of david flag people will tell them they’re “zionists” so yeah homonationalism is far more than just internet discourse.

DaddyoFive Update

HEATHER AND MIKE (MommyoFive and DaddyoFive) just lost custody of ALL THEIR CHILDREN

Cody and Emma, Mike’s kid’s, have been given back to their real mother

Alex, Ryan and Jake, Heather’s kids, are being reconsidered by a judge to live with their biological father and so far it looks like the real dad is going to get his sons back

some sources for those wondering

http://www.craveonline.com/design/1256793-youtubes-daddyofive-loses-custody-children-following-child-abuse-allegations

https://youtu.be/8Qp6u8G8Vf8

Please pray

Hey y'all. Idk of anyone of you guys keep up with international news, but yesterday, in Guatemala, there was a tragedy. A state-run orphanage that houses over 800 kids ( FULL CAPACITY IS 300) went into lockdown after 50 boys escaped. Many girls, who were locked in very over crowded small quarters started to panic and though they were never going to be let out, and they decided to protest. They were protesting the sexual and emotional abuse that is everywhere in that country, and the awful conditions they’re living in. They burned a like of mattresses, and the fire caught too quick. The girls were trapped, and the death toll is up to 34. Guys. I WAS IN THIS ORPHANAGE LAST YEAR. I’ve seen these faces. At one point during my visit, I had to just walk out of the building I was in so I could cry.. My heart hurt while I was there. And now, my heart is breaking. THe government is requiring that the orphanage close. So. PLEASE pray for the kids that will be removed, as they could end up back with bad families, on the streets, or another orphanage. Please also pray that Guatemala opens up international adoption again so that these kids could find forever homes. Guatemala has the highest orphan rate in central/South America.

as a welsh person i want you all to accept that W is a vowel because honestly it makes pronouncing acronyms so much easier. wlw becomes ‘ooloo’, wjec becomes ‘oojeck’, love yourselves and stop giving us shit when we tell you welsh has 7 vowels. english actually has 15 vowel sounds but because y’all only use 5 letters you have to rely on a spelling system devised by satan

and please, enough with the “keyboard smashing” jokes. not original, not funny.

“ #okay but can any of y'all even pronounce your own town names tho? #bye”

yeah, we can actually because the spelling is phonetic. meanwhile english folks have placenames like bicester or keighley or beaulieu, which you have to learn the pronunciation for individually because the rules are so inconsistent. i mean people can’t even agree how to pronounce marylebone but sure welsh place names are the weird ones

“#But are you aware your language literally looks like a potato rolled across a keyboard”

fun fact: for decades children were beaten for speaking welsh in school, even in areas where english was barely spoken, because the government decided in 1847 that the language made people lazy and immoral

fun fact: welsh orthography is actually easy to read if you take your head out of your arse for one minute and learn our alphabet - just like french, or spanish, or korean, because surprise! languages use different spelling systems that are not based on english. novel, i know - and in the 18th century, travelling schools were able to teach people to read and write welsh in a matter of months, so that wales enjoyed a literate majority, a rare thing in europe at the time

fun fact: the english have been taking the piss out of welsh for years, just like they’ve been doing for irish, and scots gaelic, and cornish, and british sign language, and a hundred and one other languages, because evidently the fact that the whole world isn’t anglophone and monocultured and Still Part Of The Empire is a problem, and something that needs to be corrected

high quality screencaps from anthony burch’s (lead bl2 writer) ask.fm

before you ever even consider having a child you should be ready to handle a disabled child, you should be ready to handle twins, you should be ready to handle a gay child or a trans child

because if you’re not ready for your child to be anything other than one straight, cis, able bodied and able minded child, you’re going to end up neglecting and abusing somebody for years to come

and even if your child is all that, you might have a feminine boy or a masculine girl on your hands. so be fucking ready for your child to be a human being and not YOUR PRODUCT or PROPERTY or CREATION

fucking sort your shit out, i am so tired of shitty parental sob stories about how “hard” it is to “raise” (read: beat the divergency out of) an autistic child or whatever. do you know what’s harder? being the divergent child of parents who you’ve already let down by virtue of existing in a way they didn’t ask for. putting up with years of neglect and abuse because you’re just not good enough for them, you weren’t what they were planning for or expecting.