It being Sunday, the day many Americans (like myself) read from the Good Book, attend church and are inspired by the wise, loving message of Christ and all of God’s prophets, I have decided to provide inspiration to the rest of you with a passage from a different kind of prophet. Hear the good news from a different kind of Gospel. So I present to you a reading from the book of John (Escape from Childhood) chapter 11, verses 1 through… uh.. 23, maybe, ish:

Years ago, a friend of mine used to tell a very funny Embarassing Moment story. Hearing of a sale at one of New York’s large department stores, she went there early, like many other women, to find some good bargains before they were all snapped up. As soon as the doors opened in she went, in a dense crowd of hurrying people. As she walked along, she found herself just behind two small boys whose heads came up only a little above her waist. Feeling affectionate and mischievous, she put a fingertip on the top of each boy’s head and walked along that way for a step or two. But no more than that; in an instant, two furious adult faces looked up at her and in a harsh, high, but adult voice one of them said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” They were midgets!

Over the years I have heard her tell this story several times and every time joined others in laughing at it. Only after many years, really quite recently, did I realize that behind her act and our laughter was this thought — that if those midgets really had been children, it would have been perfectly all right to walk along with her fingertips on the tops of their heads. What made the story so funny was that what seemed to be such a good idea, the sort of thing that all of us child-lovers would like to do, turned out so quickly to be such a bad idea. We laughed because we could so easily put ourselves into her shoes, imagine ourselves with hearts brimming with love, putting our fingers on the dear little children’s heads, and imagine our horror at finding our mistake. But what makes it such a good idea to walk along with our fingers on the tops of strange children’s heads? What gives us the right to do it? What gives us the right to think that they like us to do it?

We treat someone as an object when we use him for our purposes, to achieve our ends, to get things for ourselves, without considering or caring what this does to him or how he feels about it, without asking what he gets out of it or whether he gets anything at all. Many women complain with good reason that most men use them, or would like to use them, as sex objects. Such men believe that if not in reality at least in fantasy they have a right to use all women for their sexual satisfaction. Many men, especially young men, habitually “size up” every woman they see. That is they think about what the woman would look like naked and what it might be like to have sex with her. They make a quick judgement — “Terrific lay!” “Okay.” “Not so hot.” “Ugh!” If the judgement is favorable, they spend a moment or two, or more, having fantasy sex with her. Some may even try to turn their fantasies into reality. If the judgement is bad, they dismiss the woman from thought. They do not think of her in any other way. She has no other interest for them…..

….These ideas about women and men are well understood–at least, more people understand them all the time. They may make more clear what I mean in saying that almost all adults, men and women, use children as what we might call love objects. We think we have a right, or even a duty, to bestow on them “love,” visible and tangible signs of affection, whenever we want, however we want, and whether they like it or not. In this we exploit them, use them for our purposes. This, more than anything else, is what we use children and childhood for–to provide us with love objects. This is why we adults find children worth owning and the institution of childhood worth preserving, in spite of their great trouble and expense.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 16th, 2005 at 11:55 am and is filed under Youth Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.