FGM > Molest

So, over on Twitter today, I got into a discussion with Becka, who talked about female genital mutilation, and how we can't just go in and bulldoze a culture to make this go away. Which got me to talking about how people cannot do anything to cultures that practice FGM or honor killings of girls. But if a person molests a child, they are thrown into prison, and EVERYONE celebrates knowing that a former sex abuse victim is now being raped for completing the cycle of shame and becoming an abuser themselves.

People in many cultures will cheer on the destruction of thousands upon thousands of molesters, but won't broach the topic of little girls set on fire for going to school, or religions that cut off the clits of girls. You'll hunt down every last molester and make sure they suffer a thousand times worse than their victims to vent your righteous wrath, but you're not so keen to go into these organized religions and tell them to stop doing worse things to their children.

We live in a world that celebrates violence and shames itself about our most intimate act. Society has created a long term target for all of its hate, the molester. But when it comes to the real violator of children, violent patriarchal religions, you're mum on the topic. Wouldn't want to seem oppressive and uncivilized. (Pay no attention to the pedophiles being raped, though. They had it coming to 'em.)

I've seen a lot of people conveniently forget that most abusers were abused in their childhood or teens. There's no attempt at empathy with these victims, because now they're not victims. They're this generation's crop of monsters, ready to be cut down and fed to the criminals in prison as rape fodder. That these are former rape victims now being raped again isn't even considered a detail in their cases. It is a detail easily forgotten by a bloodthirsty culture eager for a new piñata to be strung up

But a person who says his god told him to cut off little girls' sex organs, and who does it over and over? That's a different matter, and people can't do anything about that. Same goes with the widespread problem of honor killings. It's a damn shame, but you know, we got to respect religious rights and foreign rights and alla that stuff.

But your government is still hunting Polansky. You will not rest until that vile molester is brought to justice for his one crime, but the religious dude who has mutilated a few hundred girls will never feel the same heat of persecution. WHY?

I'm not saying open the prison and free the child rapers. I'm saying, get the victims out of the prisons and put them in a separate asylum to treat their problems instead of making them worse. I'm saying, if you're so committed to stamping out one form of corrupt behavior, why are you not as raring to go attacking the religious zealots who do far worse harm to their kids?

Why? Because those are hypothetical kids in another country, and you don't see them. Those are colored kids, so they aren't as important as a white girl getting molested in America. I'm not going to compare tragedies and say the white girl isn't suffering. I know she is. I know that she will be shamed into hating everything about her sexuality, because people won't just make her feel ashamed of her attacker, but of herself, and for anything she may have discovered about herself in the process. There can be nothing good in what happened, so it must all be hated and shamed. Period. But her molester will be destroyed to satisfy society's sense of justice, and she will be forgotten. People move on, even if the victim never can.

But she's just the victim of another victim, and the girls attacked by men in the name of a god will never even know this bitter form of justice. No one will go in and prevent another crop of girls from being harmed there. Taking care of domestic molest is more important than saving foreign girls from worse harm.

Society pursues sex offenders with so much hateful venom that you're blind to who you're persecuting. Sometimes, when I'm reading through my feeds, someone pops off with "We should really take all these people to an island and let the worst prisoners rape them all day." Uh, that happens already without the island part, and thanks for reminding me why I don't consider you a close friend. People never once think that they are happy about taking former sex abuse victims and feeding them to even worse monsters. So the little boy who got raped by his dad and later touched a little boy can now be raped daily by a man who killed people. Sure, that's a great way to balance the scales and redress the issue. Or, maybe not. But it's okay, because you're doing something proactive about the problem. Even if it's destructive and actually perpetuates the cycle of violence.

BUT, you won't apply that same level of vitriol to people who kill children and carve their genitals.

And…go ahead and ask me why I'm bitter.