I completely support this and I intend to do something similar for my kids. Anonymity is one of the best gifts I can give them.
That said, I expect to be downvoted into oblivion.
> anonymity is one of the best gifts I can give them
I don’t know, I mean a lot of parents tell themselves they are doing a lot of things, me included, that they have no control over in reality.
I sympathize with the parents who try to turn their kids into celebs. We made this celebs-rule world.
For every one person, kids or adults, who feels exposed online, there are 99,999 more toiling away in obscurity.
On this forum probably the children are going to be fine. Their parents are rich enough that even if you are not a nepo baby in the strictest sense of having a famous last name, they will be fine. They can do whatever and they will be fine.
If you’re some random person, obscurity is crushing. If you’re not a nepo baby and you have no above average cognitive gifts, which is 80% of people, getting some attention can change your life.
Most people have the level of drama, the stupidity, the vapidity of influencers. You just didn’t know that until TikTok. TikTok doesn’t cause this, it doesn’t even exacerbate it.
And social media DOES benefit them, it IS rational. It’s the textbook definition of elitism to tell people who found a little fame and like it that they aren’t like the smart kids or true blue nepo babies, who can be offline and still thrive in this world.
I agree with the first but not the second. I think "social media" is a net good, by far. At the same time, there are negative effects: one is that it creates a constant audience for whatever stupid thing the Influencer wants to do or say, which is an incentive for them to say or do stupid things.
To me this feels like the cell phone discussions of the mid-90s (people who refused to get cell phones because they didn't want to be constantly connected). Eventually almost everyone realizes that the world has changed. Unless you keep your kid from interacting with the world, there will eventually be little you can do to prevent them from having some online presence.
> In contrast, as my kids play sports, most of their peers are trying to build their brand -- as NIL deals are almost directly correlated with your social media popularity.
If the kid wants to "build their brand" with parental permission, that's one thing. It's another thing entirely for random people unrelated to the kid to record them and put it online.
Aside: I wonder if it’s going to be a different experience for kids in the generations that have thousands of photos from their childhood available to them. As someone interested in knowing more about my past, I can’t help but to think it will be a good thing to know all the cool stuff they did, whether they remember it or not.
- Hey, thanks for inviting me to your wife's birthday party. I had a lot of fun. But could you please remove my pic from your Facebook post?
- Why did you show up in the first place? OR You're in a lot of the pics; I can't remove all of them. OR Are you too good to be seen in pics with my wife and her friends? OR Are you hiding from the law? Did you murder someone?
I feel like photos are nothing special, a lot of the friction/anger people are just responding to perceiving an accusatory tone. (But I'm willing to let the odd photo slide, so maybe dropping the worst arguments made life easier)
Weird and potentially dangerous as well. When I was a child, adults warned us about "stranger danger", but now parents advertise their children to potentially dangerous strangers…
What I find truly weird is how many people there are that don't find it "weird" or at all concerning in any way to openly share such photos so freely.
The typical security precautions are very hard to maintain in real life. e.g. should your child win some spelling context or a regional crosscountry run or whatever, how would you explain to them that their name and photo are not appearing among all the other winners?
I'm reminded of the scene from Jurassic park, where nedry is chastised for using a man's name during a clandestine meeting at a restaurant, and nedry yells out "Dodgson! We got Dodgson here! See, nobody cares!"
Same. There is something unsettling about willfully pushing kids into the attention economy, it can't be good for mental health long term and definitely assists nefarious actors build permanent profiles of them.
As long as everyone has an Apple device it just works, and I assume there is probably a similar way to do this with a Google photo album (although I will say, I think Google is way more likely to do something sketchy like default everything to public or make it easy for someone to publish content accidentally).
This poor kid was 8-years-old and attempted suicide on a regular basis. Every time she tried to kill herself, the mom would document the gritty details, post pictures and details about it online (and of course get massive likes/shares by well-intentioned folks wanting to "raise awareness"), and request donations for her "activism."
That girl will never be able to "pass" as female due to her face/identity being plastered on social media as a trans kid. She also will have to live with the horror of millions of strangers knowing the gory details of her trying to shove a knife into her wrist, chugging Tylenol, and having complete mental breakdowns at school that required emergency medical intervention.
My gut instinct also suspects the girl's poor mental health has a strong element of Munchausen by Proxy. It is bizarre for an 8-year-old to know that Tylenol and wrist-slitting are both preferred methods for suicide, and to act on this knowledge.
Despite all this, the mom was clearly raking in donations, and collecting thousands of comments about what a "hero" she was for "bringing light" to trans issues. The horrified comments by trans individuals were always buried at the bottom of posts.
The entire page felt like thinly-veiled child abuse, but there isn't anything in Facebook's code of conduct that could be used to stop it. And Facebook of course had no incentive to address the content--the page had millions of likes and was surely a great source of traffic/profit.
I would love to see policies in place to restrict this sort of child exploitation. I am all for freedom of speech on social medical platforms, but blatant exploitation of children in exchange for money is a special sort of cruelty that should be reined in.
> Sharenting is the practice of parents publicizing sensitive content about their children on internet platforms. While the term was coined as recently as 2010, sharenting has become an international phenomenon with widespread presence in the United States, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom. As such, sharenting has also ignited disagreement as a controversial application of social media. Detractors find that it violates child privacy and hurts a parent-child relationship. Proponents frame the practice as a natural expression of parental pride in their children and argue that critics take sharenting posts out of context.
There is a section "Applicable legislation":
> There appears to be little guiding legislation regarding parents' online control over their children's media. While different countries have their respective laws to protect children's privacy, most hand over the responsibility to the children's guardians, which sharenting may exploit as the parent is able to take advantage of their child's power to consent. This presumption in favor of the parent fails to protect the child's privacy from their parents.
> Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United Nations broadly advocates for a child's individual identity. Article 14 outlines the applicable legal guardians' duty to represent the child's best interest.
Which then goes into the specifics for Europe and the United States.
I think it is hard, because influences are in random jurisdictions and just arise without much structure. Maybe it can be controlled at the platform level, like YouTube and TikTok as they are the ones funnel money to these influencers? It would require some creativity and a lot of desire.
This sounds super-scummy. I'm not surprised she's pissed-off. Both parents quit working? And if Claire doesn't perform, they'll lose their home and she won't be able to "have nice things"? Talk about emotional blackmail.
If you're thinking of daddyofive, IIRC they had the two kids who were from the dad's previous marriage taken away and put in their bio mom's custody. They were then charged with child neglect and restricted from uploading footage of their kids. They ignored that restriction with no consequences though.
That was the Daddyofive/Familyofive situation. IIRC they eventually ended up loosing custody of all their kids.
Looking at the example of culture even before the internet, kids who participate in entertainment from a young age end up often messed up. For example see the Jacksons (Michael being only the most prominent example in his family) as well as a multitude of child stars (Shirley Temple being the exception that proves the rule).
I bet once you removed the financial incentive a lot of this over sharing of kids’ lives would mostly stop.
Social media, while not permanent, can be long lasting, and can have a chilling effect on a child’s future agency.
Guarding it until they can make their own decisions is what all good parents ought to do.
How is this not obvious and common sense?
"My childhood was made into content and all I got was this multi-million dollar inheritance" doesn't sound too bad. Plenty of people have worse childhoods and don't get a penny.
It's not positive, but it's "I have a splinter in my finger" relatively to what many (most?) children experience who don't grow up in the top 1%.
There's another post on the front page currently about over 100 kids who were illegally employed in hazardous jobs, and yesterday we had an article about laws being proposed to remove the hourly limits on child labor. I think the children affected by those things would prefer to have had their face on their mommy's instagram and never have to work a day in their life over working in a meat sanitation plant from their 13th birthday on.
It's all relative, but I guess that's an unpopular opinion. Maybe most here feel closer to the kids on instagram than those in the meat packing plant.
Maybe I was raised differently, but it sounds like her family got the deal of a lifetime. Supporting your parents financially is just part of life for a lot of people, some even get a lot of happiness out of it. I know folks here on H1B that live shoestring and send more than half of what they make back home to their family, and are happy to do so. I know it's easy to paint Claire as having been exploited here, but can one not look at the bigger picture and see that this is clearly a positive thing for their family?
If I was 17 again and had the opportunity to post videos of myself talking instead of my parents working 50h weeks, I know I'd do it in a heartbeat.
As a parent this really stands out. I have a kid around that age and almost his entire "serious" knowledge comes from home. He does pick a lot from other kids at school but in a very abstract way.
When I think about what is on his mind compared to what you painted there, the difference is mind-blowing. A good illustration of the dangers of social media for people —of all age— who lack guidance and perspective.
What in the absolute fuck.
That's monstrous
I believe that you have taken the position that this child is really experiencing gender dysphoria, but it's at least an equally plausible scenario that the parents are responsible for that too.
This is a serious hole in the argument for providing gender affirming care to children in an attempt to reduce harm. The trans-activist community is becoming complicit in child abuse when it denies the existence of this problem.
I actually do work in the space of telling the stories of trans folks (although not involving kids because obviously) and even with adults we still take crazy precautions. I push hard even when we get someone who doesn't want to be anonymous because you can't put that cat back in the bag and being a google search from being outed will haunt you if you ever want to "go stealth."
Exactly! This seems so incredibly obvious, and I was stunned by the thousands of followers on the page who seemed to nonchalantly view this kid's privacy and wellbeing as a worthy sacrifice for supposed "trans activism." Especially since there were quite a few negative comments from trans individuals pointing out why this was wrong and a major violation of the girl's rights.
Stories about trans kids are very important to tell, and they can be wonderful tools to encourage empathy and understanding. But they deserve the utmost caution and respect when handling them, especially when there is the complication of people being able to profit off the children.
The other startling thing about the page was the mom's complete lack of interest in shielding details such as what school or hospital the girl went to. It seemed wildly dangerous to publicly proclaim your child to be a member of an endangered minority who often faces hate crimes, and then tell the world exactly which elementary school they attend. Talk about a great way to bait nut-jobs.
I realize I sound very twisted talking about those sorts of possibilities, but as someone who works in cybersecurity, I have just seen too many creeps commit too many crimes.
I would absolutely love to see a policy that forbids the sharing of photos of children, and any identifying details of children, to a public audience. If people want to share those things with their direct network, then sure. But it seems a wild violation of personal rights to be able to share those personal details about another human being to the entire internet, when the child is far too young to consent.
Jazz in particular has been treated terribly. He's been physically and mentally destroyed by his family and his clinicians, brainwashed from age 2 or 3 into believing he was supposed to be a girl. This nightmare is all he's ever known. There will be no happy ending either, just misery and the shock of realizing his life is a travesty.
His show should be watched as a dire warning against the medical abuse of children.
Unfortunately, it seemed CPS had cleared her. At the time (this was back in ~2017), I shared the page with a friend who works alongside CPS, and she grudgingly agreed there wasn't really anything CPS could do. The kid seemed to have legitimate medical diagnoses, and the mom could easily argue in court that she was just "documenting her daughter's medical journey."
I can't seem to find the page now, which I'm hoping means it got shut down. Fingers crossed that little girl has found health, happiness, and the privacy she deserves.
- I agree that parents who publicize their children on social media are massive creep in my opinion, who do a massive invasion of the child privacy. That should almost be illegal in my opinion since the child can't consent.
- At the same time saying that no skin should ever be shown ever because "it titills sexual creeps" is a dark road that points in a direction which in some places ends up at covering the faces of women for the exact same reason. Should we forbid children to go to the pool because sexual creeps might go there ?
On the other hand in many places of Northern europe nudity is more common even in public. That works because they don't culturally associate as much nudity with sex as americans or other parts of the world do.. (You'd obviously get beaten up for masturbating in these places especially with children around.). And that doesn't seem like so bad a thing to me
It’s entirely different than standard social standards about clothing and nudity in public.
I'm talking about intentionally filming one's own children for the viewership of creeps online for perpetual consumption in order to make a profit. This would be akin to making one's living by nonconsensually filming nude beach visitors in northern europe for 8 hrs+/day and uploading that online vs someone just visiting a nude beach.
I would be happy with a law forbidding to post public pictures of your underage kids, regardless of skin exposure.
Genuine Q: at what point can the child consent? A lot of people here are talking about a media blackout of their children since the child can't consent, but when does that end? Can a 5-year-old consent to have their pictures posted online? 10? 15?
I don’t suggest that, but I think it’s pretty bad to post lots of swimsuit pics to social media. And it’s absolutely horrible to accept money in exchange for 1:1 videos or commissioned photos for internet strangers. There’s no legitimate purposes for adults to ask little kids to pose on swimsuits for them. I’m not sure if it should be illegal, but certainly scorned and people who practice to have appropriate levels of opprobrium.
It's significant easier to hone your creepiness when you have an endless supply of training-material. It might even help you to discover this side of you in the first place.
> On the other hand in many places of Northern europe nudity is more common even in public.
Not with children. Even in Europe parents are generally quite protective with them. And here the topic of family-influencer and sexualization of their children is also a hot topic.
Sure, it doesn't solve the problem of child videos using other monetization channels like product placement, sponsorships and so on but don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Ban the commercialization of videos and images containing kids. No more child actors, singers, models, etc. Remove the child labor law exceptions which have been given to these industries.
If you're posting content to the public (i.e. random strangers), you're on one side of the line. If you're posting content in a controlled manner to people consisting of friends and family you actually know, you're on the other side of the line.
Second step, zero public posts involving children, maybe with some narrow carveouts.
There should be a general blanket ban on parents monetizing their kids. We don't need child actors in movies, most stories can be written to avoid their necessity. And maybe very soon, it should be feasible to replace child actors with CGI.
And this legalized pedophilia industry makes 5 billion dollars a year[3]. Unbelievable.
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/teen-bea...
[2] https://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report
[3] https://truthout.org/articles/child-beauty-pageants-a-scene-...
So maybe access to videos of lightly dressed children, icky as it may feel, lowers the rate of pedophile rape.
You know this framing is BS because they'd all scream bloody murder if monetizing that content were outlawed. It's not about pride in their children, it's about monetizing their children. Of course it's no surprise that somebody psychopathic enough to do this to their kids would also be comfortable lying about their motivation.
Usually these types of behaviors are accelerated with some kind of pharmaceuticals.
I guess the easy way to make that distinction would be if your content is "monetized" but even then it seems like there are many loopholes and gotchas.
A simpler definition could be how a content is meant to be spread; whether it is "broadcast" vs. "multicast/unicast".
Like, I cannot think of any legitimate reasons a kid's "performance" needs to be on tiktok. Facebook/whatsapp, maybe, if you're sharing it only with your friends, or even YouTube with linked-only if you want to send the link to grandma. But why would you ever want to publicly post a video of your child for five million+ viewers?
When you do it on an account that makes money or is even tangentially involved with making money.
Like, do we want to make a rule that a family drama must be filmed without showing that family's kids? If not, then we have to permit child acting at least in some way.
I think that the solution is to have all such people register with no exceptions. Just make X and Y and Z high enough that it excludes the large majority of people.
These people should probably be shamed publicly for this kind of exploitation, for sure. And things like the Coogan law should be applied when the kids are a big part of the brand.
People adopt. Some people purposely adopt kids that they know have special needs. Sometimes, people with the best intentions, end up in a situation where they are way over their heads. Before you're actually in the situation, there's no possible way to know how difficult it will be, nor what your limits are. (And until you've seen someone actually overwhelmed, it's hard to even imagine what that looks like.) If a child's needs are beyond your limits, you are doing them absolutely no favors to keep them in your home. Having any child, even one biologically your own, is fundamentally a risk.
So consider some hypotheses:
A. The couple in question genuinely wanted to help a child who needed help; and genuinely wanted to inspire other people to adopt by sharing the sorrows and joys; but unexpectedly found themselves in over their head, and made the difficult (and publicly embarrassing) decision to pass the child on to someone better suited to care for them
B. The couple in question thought that a good way to make a few bucks would be to adopt a difficult child for 6 months, get a large viewership, and then pass them on to someone else
I mean, I suppose B is possible, but it seems like a really dumb way to go about things. There would certainly be lots of easier ways to make money.
Whether it was right to make a public spectacle of the child's situation, even assuming the best intentions, is a different question.
In other words, there's a third option other than "malice" and "good intentions": narcissism.
But the most important thing, as the other commenter says: making a public spectacle of the child's situation is the question that's being asked here. And it's an important question because the ability to make a public spectacle might be the difference between some people getting kids or not.
Um....disagree. That's literally THE question being discussed.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/202...
>Once, she told her dad she didn’t want to do YouTube videos anymore and he told her they would have to move out of their house and her parents would have to go back to work, leaving no money for “nice things.”
Yeah, lots of people find happiness in things done with consent. Those same people find unhappiness, resentment, and anger when those same things are done without consent.
Consent matters!
Children are not born owing their parents anything.
This take is disgusting, frankly, because it ignores the core issue: that it was nonconsensual. It would be like commenting on a marital rape story "but many wives love having sex with their husband!"
The article says that this child is considering cutting off all contact with her parents when she turns 18 and can move out. Does that sound like happiness to you?
Monetize your kids at your own risk.
Yes they are. That is the function of children with respect to parents in the circle of life, just as it is the function of parents to care for children. Not all obligations are ones you voluntarily undertake.
Of course there are boundaries to the scope of that obligation. But those are defined by society, not "consent." The problem in Claire's story is that the parents are perfectly capable of working but choose to burden her instead.
> I know it's easy to paint Claire as having been exploited here, but can one not look at the bigger picture and see that this is clearly a positive thing for their family?
Something being good for parents and siblings does not necessary imply it is good for the kid. The distinction matters. Sometimes it is a balancing acts and other times it is simply an exploitation.
it'd make movies better, anyway
A prominent example; it's quite the read: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-12-18/...
> But it is the suit filed by 11 former members of the Squad that has placed the Piper Rockelle saga at the center of an explosive online controversy. The plaintiffs, all of whom are minors, allege in the lawsuit that Smith offered to show an 11-year-old girl how to perform oral sex, mailed Piper’s underwear to men and pretended to be a raunchy version of the family’s dead cat while inappropriately touching and harassing the children.
> Trimmer, a photographer, said Smith often urged the kids to pose more provocatively for thumbnail photo shoots — the images used to promote YouTube videos. She would frequently tell the Squad members to make ‘sexy kissing faces’ for thumbnails, to ‘push their butts out,’ to ‘suck their stomachs in,’ ‘wear something sluttier’ and would otherwise position Plaintiffs’ bodies in explicitly and sexually suggestive positions,” the complaint said.
> Numerous Squad members also allege that Smith regularly interacted online with a man posing as a young girl named “Megan” who sent her money, a Gucci bag, laptops, lawn furniture and other expensive gifts in exchange for images of Piper. In the lawsuit, Corinne said she witnessed Smith mail “several of Piper’s soiled training bras and panties to an unknown individual,” adding that Smith told her “old men like to smell this stuff.”
They know who the audience is.
This is miles away more horrific.
And even that is difficult. I mean, let's say Facebook could be required to forbid people from sharing intimate stuff about children with the world at large, but only let them be visible to family and friends. “Wow, easy, problem solved!”, right? But then there are lots of people who have many hundreds, even thousands, of “friends”. How “direct” a network is that?!? So no, not easy at all.
However, the law you are proposing would prohibit a parent from posting an image of their child winning the spelling bee, in a full suit.
I have no idea how to thread this needle, outside making my personal choices.
https://arresteddevelopment.fandom.com/wiki/Milford_School
> Children should be neither seen nor heard.
Surely, kids can be seen in movies, tv shows, news articles about kids competitions or events, etc?
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/#article/part1
1. We regularly share photos through private photo albums. This allows her the same exposure to photos of the grandchildren as social media would.
2. We made it clear she's free to share photos with people via direct text messages. It adds a bit of friction and keeps the photos relatively private.
3. Explained that it's the right of our children to control their presence online (with some parental assistance). They aren't old enough to do that so until then, please don't share.
4. Emphasize many times that it's about protecting and empowering our kids. It's not about preventing her from showing off her grandchildren.
Oh yeah, I forgot: Rich people do.
If we exempt them from your new rules, why?
We need to be very careful about Well Intentioned rules (or worse, laws) because they will be applied selectively and in ways the authors didn't intend.
Those posts aren't monetized. To monetize social media posting requires intent, it doesn't happen by accident.
Seeing how he's overcome all that, beat alcohol, and was able to find a place in the world of media that was about his interests rather than his mother's is inspiring, but a lot of kids don't make it out so well-adjusted. And even here it took decades.
I’d been printing off photos in various sizes (wallet to 8x10) and sending them along to my parents/grandparents - but it does take more effort to follow through. I do post photos of kids to a private account but maybe once or twice a year.
Ironically she switched to an android phone because she had too many photos I think and was always running out of storage. Of course the new phone had no photos, and her old phone would have been just fine if she was happy to start over too.
As soon as anyone visits their house, they immediately see recent pics of the kid.
It's been a big winner.
I don't think it's reasonable to excuse or downplay exploitation of children in one way because exploitation of children occurs another way elsewhere. We can argue against addressing harm to children because other harm happens to children all the way down to the source of Omelas's good fortune if you like, but I don't think this results in positive societal outcomes.
"Lifelong distortion" is a strong claim that hasn't been demonstrated. I wonder how much of this consternation for kids being present online is a generational thing. People from the generation where privacy was the default are reacting badly to the movement towards no privacy being the default. Of course, those from the old generation take it for granted that their way of living is the right way and the alternative is "distortion". I'm also from that generation and I cringe at how easily people destroy their own privacy. But I don't make the mistake of assuming this emotion has normative value. The world is moving to a social-media infused existence. Being a digital luddite isn't obviously the superior lifestyle. Preventing kids from making the most of it isn't obviously in their best interests.
I think their point is that you and many others are underestimating how bad a "normal" childhood can be.
As a society we have settled on the idea that regardless of the emotional development of a minor, they are materially incapable of granting consent since we believe they do not yet the maturity to comprehend it. I know this is a terrible analogy, but alas, this is where I feel the slippery slope leads by centering this debate on the idea of consent. Yes, there is a material difference in the kinds of consent we're dealing with, but I'm not sure if they're all that different.
I think is pretty broad, but do you suggest no depictions of under 16s on any online media? It's one thing to restrict minors from participating on social media, but are you suggesting their likeness cannot appear online posted by other people? Parents? School yearbook? School social club?
https://www.verywellfamily.com/difference-between-baby-newbo...
Posting privately for your extended family yes, but that should never be posted publicly.
The issue is trying to ban an innocent thing - photo of a kid in state normally seen in public vs "making kids perform for camera, encourage them children to form participate in parasocial relationships with the audience".
No kid ever build parasocial relationship by having photo in family album, even if public. And photos of kids are as old as photography.
One could make regulations about monetization of such things I guess. Monetization does not just happens randomly. You have to enter into contract with social network to send you money, you fill taxes. That could be workable, theoretically.
It's important to protect the private lives of our children. But it's very challenging to draw clear, enforceable lines in criminal laws and social media terms of service.
"I'm sorry mister, but we can see chidren playing in the park at 44:28 in the hour-long documentary you've produced, so we had to remove the video."
/s
Implementing your proposal is also unreasonable: before one took a photo of their spouse in the park, they would have to clear the background of all persons or get their explicit consent.
That's what PP described (even if they didn't realize it):
"It's because an adult can do almost all jobs where child labor would be used, usually it's just that adults are more expensive;"
It's not about morality or protecting children from harm; that's just the lie that's used to sell it.
The one line of reasoning I can think of that does limit itself in this regard is the one says "there are no good adult substitutes for child actors, hence an exception," but this is a very cynical moral ground for child labor laws, as there are probably many potential exceptions that could be forced here that we would find profoundly repugnant and we would have to abandon that line of reasoning or be forced to admit we are more interested in industry outcomes than the welfare of children or our moral worth.
Moreover, your comment is also an example. You can't simultaneously describe yourself as not denying the problem while completely dismissing that problem as "moral panic designed to deprive adults of access to care".
I am completely on board with giving adults access to care. I am significantly more hesitant to give parents access to medical interventions for their children. Please do not warp my words.
PS: You might describe Munchausen's by proxy as a rare condition, but its prevalence is on the order of 1% of the population, which happens to be at parity with the rate of gender dysphoria in the population. It is not a rounding error.
The 1st comment stayed close to the article subject. It presented reason for concern even without speculating about the child's gender dysphoria. Adding that speculation predictably moved the discussion far from the original subject. Not bringing up something at every chance is not denial. Never mind extremely active denial.
[1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9834-factitio...
Honestly, who gives a fuck?
Yeah sorry, that may sound a bit harsh... But really, what's this constant renaming of things supposed to be actually good for? The main effects seem to be:
1) Some people get to feel all good and righteous and “with it”, because they know the PC terminology; and
2) The rest of us are A) either annoyed at i) having to learn new shit again, ii) not getting to be in that hip and in crowd, or above all, iii) how smug and pompous those masters of the PC vocabulary come off, intentionally or unintentionally giving the impression that they look down on us peasants...
Or B) Just confused as to what the fuck they're talking about.
So thank you, I guess, for having taught us – me – this, so I won't look like an ignorant bumpkin next time someone says it... But I would very much have preferred not having to.
You too?
I've been down this road. I'm not going to say anything that can convince you.
edit: You might want to consider not using the same rhetoric as folks who call people groomers for not wanting kids to kill themselves because they can't get treatment for their dysphoria. Reconsider your sources of information if you sincerely feel hurt by being seen in the same light. You are parroting propaganda.
I'm basically going to ignore the part where you accuse me of using the "same rhetoric as X". I don't know what that means, or how it's relevant to what we're talking about. I'm certainly not hurt by it, as it doesn't mean anything.
If Adolf Hitler himself arose from the grave to agree with me, and that caused me to change my mind, then I would consider that evidence that I didn't have a good reason to believe it in the first place. This is not the case here.
I am actually pretty skeptical of the claim that the "people calling trans-activists groomers" are making this point. That just sounds like a name that you've given to the entire set of people who disagree with you, regardless of their reason.
Concretely, it seems that we are both of the opinion, based on the content of this comment chain, that it is important for the system to protect children. Either from killing themselves as a result of not being able to receive gender affirming care, or from their parents, who use them as a means of acquiring attention.
My claim is that it is well established that the latter problem exists, and that it exists commonly enough that it is not clear that, even under the most generous assumptions of the causal link between gender affirming care and suicide attempt reduction, that this offsets the damage that is caused by giving Abusive parents this tool.
Moreover, this is clearly not black and white. This is a matter of policy. I am not claiming that it is impossible to protect children from both threats. I am merely claiming that gender affirming care doesn't.
Or sharing of videos on Youtube like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Bit_My_Finger
Of course, when there was no money in it, it was easier to assume children were not being harmed or otherwise manipulated for the purpose of making the video.
There is no such licensing or enforcement mechanism for amateur online content creators (except 2257), and the "stations" are absolved of any complicity (230). Advertisers have little idea what content they're sponsoring since content delivery is a shell game. Creators can pivot from toy unboxing videos to dildo recommendations mid-stream without any oversight.
It took upstream payment processors going rogue to force compliance with 2257, because apparently we don't have a functional government to enforce its own laws anymore. The situation is not at all the same.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/05/entertainment/spencer-elden-n...
Limiting the space of 'allowed' expression and saying it's okay because culture is not essential isn't really the best path to take as a society.
I think the Scorpions did something similar with putting an underage girl on the Virgin Killer album, but that may have been non-photographic (not looking it up).
Decades later, Nirvana is still a topic of discussion because of it (and still earning royalties), while the kid in question whose image is used in perpetuity gets told to pound sand because he missed an arbitrary deadline.
We don't need to exploit children as a form of creative expression. We just don't. Depravity is not cultural enrichment.
If it's really art for the sake of art, art justifying itself, then let it be done for free. I want the monetization of such things banned, because I don't think this is art for the sake of art. I think child modelling is done for the sake of commercial exploitation.
Parents with Munchausen's manipulating their prepubescent children into socially transitioning is a good explanation for the rise in prepubscent children socially transitioning. If we allow ourselves to believe that this scenario exists, then we must allow ourselves to consider the possibility that it happens a lot, since Munchausen's is at least as common as gender dysphoria.
Not if there is no reasonable basis for that suspicion; in that case, it is just practicing bigotry.
> Parents with Munchausen’s manipulating their prepubescent children into socially transitioning is a good explanation for the rise in prepubscent children socially transitioning.
Without a causal mechanism to explain the increase in both the incidence of the disorder and that particular manifestation, its a pretty crappy explanation, when “people become more likely to report symptoms that they actually have when the social stigma of reporting those symptoms is reduced and awareness exists of treatments that mitigate the symptoms” is a much better explanation with a clear causal mechanism for the upswing in reports of gender dysphoria.
There is absolutely a reasonable basis for that suspicion. There are simply many times more prepubescent children with claims of gender dysphoria than at any other point.
How effective a test is for diagnosis depends heavily on what my priors are about the population it is applied to. If I were to administer an HIV test to every American adult, and then started everyone who got a positive result back with antiretrovirals, I would almost mostly be giving that treatment to people without HIV. This is true even though the test is very accurate. If the number of people walking into gender clinics goes up by a factor of 5, I cannot, a priori, expect that my test has the same predictive power that it used to.
> is a much better explanation with a clear causal mechanism
A priori, they are both good explanations. An explanation is good if it's simple, predictive, and you do not have the data to disprove it. The way we distinguish between competing good explanations is through testing. So far no one has proposed a test to tell the two hypotheses apart, except perhaps to look at the rate of detransitioning among the cohort of recent transitioners. This data has yet to become available, as it requires longitudinal study, but the leading signs are not necessarily in favor of your hypothesis. https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/107/10/e4261/6604653
> Without a causal mechanism to explain the increase in both the incidence of the disorder and that particular manifestation, its a pretty crappy explanation
Eh, what? It's right there in what you replied to: The manipulation is the causal mechanism.
You people are like broken records, honestly. Any criticism automatically becomes bigotry or hate or genocide or whatever. It's absurd.
You seem to have confused what used to be called Munchausen's syndrome and Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. Or where you got your information did. Now they are called factitious disorder imposed on self and factitious disorder imposed on another. Factitious disorder imposed on self is estimated about as common as gender dysphoria. The ranges overlap. Estimates for factitious disorder imposed on another are much lower.[1] And most cases involve infants or very young children. Probably because older children can speak for themselves and are less pliable.
[1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9834-factitio...
Of course if there were some specific reason to believe that the child was being manipulated, then it would be medically appropriate not to treat them with puberty blockers. But you said "this is a serious hole in the argument for providing gender affirming care to children" as if you think this should be the overriding concern even when there's no specific evidence that the child is being manipulated. That is what I take issue with.
Suppose that we were discussing an influencer parent who was exploiting their child's blindness for social media views. Would you be telling people that it's just as likely as not that the child is just pretending to be blind to satisfy the parent with Munchhausen's? If not, you're special pleading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading.
> Parents with Munchausen's manipulating their prepubescent children into socially transitioning is a good explanation for the rise in prepubscent children socially transitioning
It's a very poor explanation, because more people of all ages are transitioning more than in the past, not just prepubescent children. It also stands against an obvious and much simpler explanation, which is that children today are more likely to encounter the idea that someone can be trans and much less likely to be told to suppress non-normative gendered behavior.
> we must allow ourselves to consider the possibility that it happens a lot, since Munchausen's is at least as common as gender dysphoria.
You say that as if it means that a given child presenting with gender dysphoria is just as likely to have Munchausen's by proxy as actual gender dysphoria. But there are tens of thousands of possible conditions someone with Munchausen's might imitate instead. We should expect that the fraction of them that imitate gender dysphoria is dwarfed by the number of people who actually have gender dysphoria.
It's telling that your argument is entirely theoretical. If there were a significant number of children manipulated into socially transitioning because of Munchausen's by proxy, there would be actual confirmed examples to refer to. If it were a large-scale social problem, there would be data on its prevalence. But there isn't, because this is a scenario fabricated to apply unjustified scrutiny to children with gender dysphoria.
I disagree with your apparent assumption that "manipulation" by a parent must not only be a negative thing, but that it must also be a conscious effort made by the parent to affect their child's behavior one way or the other. I put the word "manipulation" in quotes because I believe that for many people the word carries a negative connotation, and I'm attempting to point out that in the context of parenting it absolutely does not have to be negative.
I think it's important to note that when children do things that upset a parent, the parent will naturally react in a way that potentially "manipulates" the child into not acting that way anymore.
For instance, if a child acts out at school and gets suspended for a few days, some parents might frown but then say, "That's okay. We know that this incident doesn't reflect who you are." But then let's imagine that the parent is more distant than usual that night, and doesn't interact with their child as much as they normally do (for instance, they might not ask about the child's day during dinner). Even though the parent may not be intentionally doing this (maybe they're just caught up thinking about their child, and what they can do to help), they are in fact sending signals to their child displaying their displeasure.
Similarly, when a child does something that pleases a parent, the child might discover that the parent is more talkative than usual at the dinner table that night, and more interested in what's going on in the child's life. This rewarding behavior could be explained by a parent simply being excited about their offspring succeeding.
In this way you can see that it doesn't take much to "manipulate" a child's behavior. Some people might refer to "attempting to manipulate the behavior of their children to produce a desired outcome" as "parenting". If a child throws a rock and breaks a neighbors window then a parent might scold the child, and this absolutely counts as "manipulating" the child's behavior.
Getting back to the discussion at hand, when a parent rewards their child for a specific behavior in a manner that suggests that the child is courageous and unique, the child might feel pressured to continue engaging in that behavior. If a child is considered by their parent to be courageous and unique when they engage in a specific type of behavior, what might the parent think if the child suddenly stops this behavior (from the child's perspective)? Instead of courageous and unique, will the child now suspect that their parent views them as a cowardly sheep, or a quitter? Is it so far fetched to imagine a scenario in which a child takes a certain stance as a rebellious gesture, but then finds that it backfires when their parents are thrilled about it and shares it with the world? Can you imagine the potential embarrassment of the child? Adults aren't the only humans who can get embarrassed, afterall.
In summary, even such small things as a frown or a smile (or even talking a little less or more than usual) can serve to manipulate a child's behavior, let alone ecstatically sharing every detail of a kid's behavior to the online world. Creating the equivalent of a reality TV show of a child's life will absolutely impose the unspoken expectations and unconscious biases of the parent, and will in effect manipulate the child's behavior and course of action.
Edit explanation: Clarified a point earlier in my response, and fixed/embellished a few sentences.
There is at least one picture of me (not on social media, admittedly), as a toddler, buck naked in a pool with another toddler. It was (and still is) and innocent picture even with the visible genitalia. So no, it's not automatically "depravity" to show nude people, even kids.
Don't be mistaken, I'm not for child exploration, stuff like kids beauty pageant, or over-exposed young people are downright creepy, but I'm reacting at the idea of making any representation of kids taboo.
Says you.
> Decades later, Nirvana is still a topic of discussion because of it (and still earning royalties), ...
I think the album's popularity and the royalties aren't solely attributable to the cover :)
> We don't need to exploit children as a form of creative expression...
There is no pornography, no sexual abuse, in fact there's nothing sexual about it at all, and the parents were paid for the photo. Please help me understand how it constitutes exploitation.
- This enables abusive parenting styles and forces adult children to need to unlearn this lie in order to come to terms with their abuse;
- This enables parents having an outsized influence on adult children, such as controlling their sexuality, interests, physical location, etc;
Frankly: the parents have an obligation to care for their children because they generally chose to have children or chose to keep them once they were had. The child did not choose to be born and does not have a choice on the quality of their parentage. It's unacceptable to then place the burden on the child for choices they didn't make and have no control over.
“Choice” is not the be-all end-all of morality (or, really, even particularly important). The obligation for parents to care for their children and vice versa arises from the nature of people and the nature of the relationship. Parents have an obligation to care for children even when they didn’t choose to have children. Conversely, children have an obligation to care for parents even though they didn’t choose to be born.
People who didn't choose to have children are not called parents.
> Conversely, children have an obligation to care for parents even though they didn’t choose to be born.
You've offered nothing to support this supposed (but not really) symmetry. This seems like back-rationalization of some cultural norm or tradition (especially when coupled with your anti-individualism swipes in the other comment).
Perhaps your beliefs are not as preordained as you may believe.
People take care of their families because of a bond that has nothing to do with blood. That bond is uniquely about mutual feelings and as a parent we have only a few years to make that bond last a lifetime.
If it's formed on top of obligations and resentment it'll break the first chance it gets. Just take a look at one of the kids in the article: she probably had a great life materially, but the minute she turns 18 she's willing to never talk to her parents ever again.
To be clear, in this particular example the parents are breaching their side of the obligation by burdening their kid while they’re still healthy and able to work.
Just one example: in India people help one's families to a huge extent. But kids are also brought up under heavy use of corporal punishment and there's a high degree of family involvement in children's affairs, such as dictating career choices and marriage. Is that a healthier society?
If societal pressure is the only reason why people take care of their families, what's the point? So I don't find it individualistic if someone does not feel obliged to help, it's much more complex than that. There should be more between a parent and child than obligation and well-defined roles. I help my family because I love them, because they raised me to love them, not solely because they're my ancestors.
Parents are adults who can and should care for themselves. You aren't born into debt.
To expect both your parents, as well as your children, to be responsible to you at both ends of your life is selfish and entitled.
If there was a protest outside my business, could I post a photo of the crowd online? What if it were a riot?
What if, as I and a large crowd were peacefully leaving an event, I lifted my camera above my head and blindly took a photo of the mass of people shoulder to shoulder?
Many places have laws which would prevent someone from taking a photo of an individual and selling copies of that photo without the subjects permission; but these laws don't usually apply to someone in the background or a crowd shot, and they don't apply to non-commercial use or some commercial uses, including journalism.
I didn't say that this art cover is such a thing. I attacked your criteria of a "pressing need" with this description, this argument is independent of discussion about this particular cover.
> I want the monetization of such things banned, because I don't think this is art for the sake of art.
I don't think anyone should be able to ban other people from committing voluntary transactions. The band wants to sell the album. I want to buy it. Somebody else's opinions on what is and what isn't art are not relevant to either of us.
There is no 'moral' answer. We, as a society decided that children acting is fine and that it is not outrageous and we like watching entertainment with children instead of exclusively adults. People are concerned for good reason because hollywood is predatory and when lots of money is involved then people act out of bad interests instead of the child's interests, but that is tertiary to the fact that acting is allowed for children to do and we allow them to get paid for it.
Being paid changes the dynamic in a deep way from being a hobby. It opens up the floodgates of manipulation and abuse.
How is it at all tertiary? It's the primary point: we don't allow children to work for pay because of the potential for abuse; children get paid to act; many child actors are abused as a result of extracting money from them and their labor.
We make an exception because it is convenient, not well understood by the public, and we all benefit from the resultant entertainment.
Sure, you can make them do things or forbid them from doing things you deem inappropriate or detrimental -- if they are your own kids. When society tells other parents what to do or not to do, then we are in different territory.
> How is it at all tertiary?
Forbidding all work is one end of the spectrum which is obviously stupid (no lawn work, no babysitting, etc) while forbidding no work is obviously stupid (let 12 year olds operate construction cranes). It is finding the in between that is difficult.
Acting for money is fine when it is what, $50 for a community gig? Or $5000? What if they are exceptionally talented? Or you say, nope, zero dollars for anything a minor produces since they cannot produce things of value?
Where do you draw the line?
Hence, the 'lots of money' part is tertiary to the 'we let them do it' part.
Yes. If an Indian village raises their kids the way Americans do everyone would die of starvation.
The idea that someone could hold such cultures up as an ideal is literally insane to me.
It seems to me that these systems stem from the basic concept that women and children are the personal inanimate property of their family unit, to be disposed of however the family wishes, like a used car or a plot of land. The idea that this is healthy or normal appears to be a rationalization and not rooted in any basis besides tradition.
No one forced my Mother to marry my Father. There was a period where they just talked and got to know each other. She could have said no. Nor did she have to compromise on her career. It was not a business transaction where my Father went to a supermarket to get one wife to cook and bear sons.
It looks like you've read about an Arranged marriage that went bad in a news article and seem to have decided that you know all that's there to it.
It's more about having a narrower sense of the scope of the individual relative to the collective and the relevance of individual choice. Both facilitated marriages and parents' involvement in career choices arise from the quite sound premises that (1) young people are bad at making decisions and can benefit from the acquired and collective wisdom of the family; and (2) that people have a moral obligation to perpetuate society and support families, and fulfilling those obligations isn't about individual choice. (Note that both principles apply equally to men and women.)