I found this on Facebook. Conservatives, who are all about "stop sexualizing children", seemed awfully silent in the comments.
But God forbid a teacher put a rainbow flag in a classroom.
Jesus fucking wept.
I'm not going to lie, shit like this was one of the reasons I got too anxious to brush my fucking teeth as a preteen. I wasn't ready for this kind of sexualization but was being pushed into it because my body developed early and I knew people would be looking at me differently.
So any time anything had to do with my mouth I was excessively defensive of.
I cried when I forgot my bathing suit at home and my mom forced me to wear my sister's two-piece because I "wasn't ready" for people to see me like that and I knew that two-piece suits were "sexy" and I didn't WANT to be sexy, I wanted to be eight and play in the sprinkler.
I was scared, terrified, of being seen sexually just because I was existing. I had to stop so many things because I was terrified of "leading someone on" and it being my 'fault'.
Even in kindergarten I was being pushed into "like-likeing" my best friend just because he was a boy and I was perceived as a girl, even though I didn't feel that way for the guy! I just liked hanging out with him and playing with his cool skull mountain toy he always brought to school.
Not quite the same as the picture above, but it was a stepping stone. I complained but I was brushed off and made to feel like I really did have romantic feelings for the other kid because the adults around me kept saying I did.
I never felt I could even talk about why I stopped eating bananas and popcicles or got anxious brushing my teeth or anything to do with my mouth because I was always brushed off before. Told I was ready for things I wasn't.
Like, this kind of shit fucked me up from a very young age and I will always be furious about it.
I always think about it when I hear about how the queer community is "sexualizing children" when it was fucking heteronormative society flooding my pre-teen brain with crap like this is so normalized but fucked me up entirely as a kid.
Growing up as a boy in elementary school and junior high, I actively avoided having any kind of relationship with girls, even friendships, because of adults sexualizing us.
It wasn’t physical. I didn’t have a sexy body (still don’t), but the teachers and my mom were constantly watching for who was “sweet on” who else and gossiping, and I had enough anxiety and undiagnosed ADHD/autism/whatever things going on already, plus homework and the usual pressures of school.
Mom volunteered at school a lot, the faculty and staff knew her, and anything that happened to me within a couple days led to a “is there something special that happened at school you want to tell me about” from my smiling mom on the drive home. (Dad grew up in Chicago and hated living in cities, so we always lived in some exurb with nothing around, 20+ minutes from school and my friends.)
So I got really good (as I’m sure many here can relate) at controlling every last scrap of information that could be a problem later. Which, since I couldn’t just threaten folks into silence, always meant not creating the information in the first place.
It never stops either! After I brought my mom to open house at work once (I was 40), one of my female coworkers came up to me afterwards and said my mom had been asking them if there was anyone I was interested in.
And if I complain, it’s suddenly my fault because I’m not letting her be a mother!
So for the rest of her life, mom is getting a curated, museum set piece version of my life.
“Why don’t you cut her out of your life?” While she is not my enemy, there is wisdom in “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer,” that I feel applies in my particular case.
Sexualizing kids hurts all of us. I’m in full agreement with the folks above. It needs to stop.