The third version of the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse is up. I wasn’t able to get anything submitted this month, too busy really, but it does appear that there are plenty of good posts to read!
Tags: CarnivalAginstChildAbuse
I’ve decided to annouce now, despite the fact that the child abuse stuff has not been redesigned and moved over just yet, that 50% of all of my affiliate link $$ will be going to prevent child abuse. You can read more about it over there, and see the actual links. Affiliate links on this…
In reading over some of the entries and comments from the first carnival against child abuse, I was struck by the juxtaposition of two things. One, a comment listed in the carnival by Carolyn Lehman: “You can never anticipate the aftermath of speaking out.” The other from a post on Sonnie Daze which talks about…
The July Edition of the blog Carnival Against Child Abuse is up, hopefully I’ll be able to get some time to read through some of the other entries!
Pin I started writing this post in my head last night while, across the country, my wife’s cousin was awaiting news on her toddler’s heart transplant. Ever since we learned about his heart problems and the likelihood that he would eventually need a transplant, I think most of us tried not to think about it beyond…
Pin I can’t completely take credit for this idea. It came to me reading an article about helping traumatized children heal, but I do believe it is something that we don’t always think about when offering advice on things like how to know if your child might be in trouble, or if your friends might be…
Pin What I want to address, however, is how our society defines victims and how it leaves far too many people behind. The article above is a great example. How many people, if asked about sex trafficking, picture little white girls or women abducted from Target? Probably a lot. For many, the only information they’ve ever gotten about trafficking are warnings about Target or shopping mall parking lots from their Facebook friends. They don’t know how many teenage boys from broken homes, living in poverty, are pulled into being trafficked. How many gay youths, rejected by their families, fall victim to it? How many immigrant children here, with no parental supervision, are sold off by the people who should be protecting them from sexual slavery?Â
Those stories, even if they’re told, are not going to grab national headlines. They are not going to evoke world-wide outrage and sympathy. Those are things that happen to “other people”. We might even be tempted to start looking for reason why it’s their own fault, or at least the parents fault, right?Â
From a media perspective, we also have to keep this in mind. An abduction of a young white girl from her home, is a rare event. It’s actually newsworthy because it happens so rarely. When it happens, it’s shocking. A trans, minority, teen being coerced into selling themselves, with no one to turn to for protection, isn’t any of those things. A gay male teen being kicked out of their parents house and trying to make it through homelessness, is also not something that happens so rarely that there would be major news coverage of it. These things happen all of the time. So often, that they aren’t really news.Â
So, which group should we have support and services for? I’d like to vote for ALL OF THEM. But that will take educating people about the reality of who gets abused, who gets trafficked, and for us all to accept that it happens everywhere. Until we get there, and are willing to see all different types of people as victims, we will continue to fail one group or another. That’s not acceptable.Â
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Thanks for posting this. I hope you have time to join us for the carnival in September. I especially appreciate the support for the new hosts of the carnival as it travels away from my blog.