I wish that politicians, journalists and ‘activists’ would stop using MY children, and their so-called protection, as an excuse for pandering to the religious right.
You know what? My kids surf YouTube. Sometimes even …unsupervised. Because I have TAUGHT THEM to have a fucking brain and know how to use the internet responsibly.
It’s this little thing called parenting — you know, that thing where you need to make HARD DECISIONS about morality. HARD DECISIONS about education. HARD DECISIONS about how to turn vulnerable little blobs of meat into decent, sensible & functional human beings.
IT’S HARD.
That’s why it’s called parenting, with an -ing – which implies action – and not “sitting idly”.
I am getting shitted off with this generation of parents — who paradoxically, on one hand, thrust their neurotically over-parented, micromanaged, over-extra-curricularised precocious little turds into society with no social skills, thinking that they are so much more important than other people, unable to do anything without it being part of a program, or a structured activity… where, these batshit crazy people have somehow become NORMAL in the name of “protecting the children”.
These idiots purchase devices like wipe warmers, designer organic t-shirts for $200 and Mensa tests for their 2 year olds (who, by virtue of learning to sit up a whole month early, is the next Albert fucking Einstein)…
And then, on the other hand, also fail to do the basic stuff like, you know, teaching their kids manners, self respect and basic protective behaviours like stranger danger or critical thinking.
Because parenting is more than just veneers, gimmicks & products. Parenting goes beyond babyhood and which brand of sling makes you look the most smug. It actually takes effort. And learning. And parenting with the internet is going to be a helluva lot more effort than any generation before us.
Yeah, you’re going to have to learn about technology, not sit there, screeching about this new thing you refuse to understand or learn about and just knee-jerk because you don’t understand it.
And our politicians have co-opted this idea in order to push through policies that pander to the smallest percentage of God bothering, anti-woman, anti-sex religious zealots whose immediate impulse is to kill anything they don’t understand, all the while slashing the real child protection funding and funding for domestic violence programs, you know the stuff where kids ACTUALLY GET RAPED & BEATEN ON A DAILY BASIS… putting greater and greater burdens on the teaching profession, the health department child protection & the police force who deal with actual, real harm to children on a daily basis.
Ask any welfare worker how long their case queues are. In busy Department for Community centres, there are children that are at risk every day that have been queued for other children, who are at more immediate risk, because the Department can’t keep up with its caseload.
And then they use the protection of children as an argument for the internet filter? Are you fucking KIDDING me? I parent my children. I nurture my children. I love them. I’m on my own in every aspect of their lives that isn’t the pet-cause du jour of Helen Lovejoy and her gaggle of interfering self righteous ninnies – particularly when it involves getting access to services and resources that raise healthy happy adults – yet you don’t trust me enough to make the right decisions for my children’s upbringing?
The internet filter is just more cotton wool for a generation of professional over-parenting cunts, who use “for the children” as a catch-all excuse to rationalise their special brand of busybody authoritarianism. It’s another gadget, another smokescreen, to distract dumb consumer yuppies from the real harm that this government does to children every day from its inaction and lack of funding.
Family First, eh?
Try it.