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Terrible Takes on Tumblr
This one's from Tumblr, y'all!
Apparently someone took their kid to one of the protests and got heavily criticized because the protests are very violent and dangerous and no place to bring a kid.
There are a lot of *other* people saying that you shouldn't be criticizing the parent for taking the kid in for their Constitutional right to protest, because now you're blaming the parents when you should be blaming the cops, because protests *shouldn't* be dangerous and so criticizing a parent for taking a kid to one is *victim-blaming*.
And this strikes me as being a lot like the people who say that the roofie-detecting nail polish shouldn't be a thing because we should be teaching guys not to rape.
In both cases, it is in fact *true* that the world *should* be that way. But seeing as the world *isn't* that way, and going to a protest *is* in fact dangerous, the parents in this case are displaying questionable judgement. (Honestly, the protest example is actually worse than my comparison example because women of an age to wear roofie-detecting nail polish are old enough to make choices about their risk tolerances for themselves; a five year old is not.) We can say that it should be perfectly safe to introduce our children to protesting young while acknowledging that right now it *isn't*. Don't get so focused on what you want the world to be that you're ignoring the way it currently exists.
Apparently someone took their kid to one of the protests and got heavily criticized because the protests are very violent and dangerous and no place to bring a kid.
There are a lot of *other* people saying that you shouldn't be criticizing the parent for taking the kid in for their Constitutional right to protest, because now you're blaming the parents when you should be blaming the cops, because protests *shouldn't* be dangerous and so criticizing a parent for taking a kid to one is *victim-blaming*.
And this strikes me as being a lot like the people who say that the roofie-detecting nail polish shouldn't be a thing because we should be teaching guys not to rape.
In both cases, it is in fact *true* that the world *should* be that way. But seeing as the world *isn't* that way, and going to a protest *is* in fact dangerous, the parents in this case are displaying questionable judgement. (Honestly, the protest example is actually worse than my comparison example because women of an age to wear roofie-detecting nail polish are old enough to make choices about their risk tolerances for themselves; a five year old is not.) We can say that it should be perfectly safe to introduce our children to protesting young while acknowledging that right now it *isn't*. Don't get so focused on what you want the world to be that you're ignoring the way it currently exists.
no subject
There may well be a generational factor here: I grew up doing *far* more dangerous things than this at a young age. I occasionally rail about "nanny state", and this is an aspect of that -- IMO, society has decided that sheltering children is an absolute moral imperative, and I think that's just plain wrong. This is an area where parental judgement should be respected. Yes, there is some risk, but there's also critical (and likely in most cases beneficial) education.
And yes, there is such a thing as Too Much Risk to be at all rational. But I don't think this rises to that level unless you have really concrete reason to believe that this particular protest is likely to become violent. Risk is, in most cases, very subjective, and I think we over-constrain the ability of parents to decide that.