Children with privilege are the only ones who matter.

I will asplain.

I just read this post on Womanist Musings: Oh Oh, Bigots Steamed Because Sheriff Woody Endorsed 'It Gets Better Campaign'.

According to Alan Chambers, an "ex-gay" fellow who spends not inconsiderable portions of his time turning his internalized prejudice onto his fellow GLBP folk, it is saddening and disappointing to see a children's movie character speaking up about something that, to quote a quote, "at this point children have no need to know about."

Where do I start with this?

Firstly, I assume he's talking about the bizarro version of gayhood wherein it is a horrible, horrible curse and everyone who has it struggles with their feelings of abnormalcy and just wishes they could be straight, unless they're complete perverts.

Secondly, he also seems to be talking about the bizarro version of gayhood that magically kicks in at puberty (whereas straight children are straight from the age of four or so).

And thirdly, as usual, the only children that Chambers is worried about are the straight children.

This is a typical claim from bigots who are trying to prevent education in "politically-charged subjects" from happening at an early age. (Ironically, these are usually the same people who believe that children need to learn Christian Creationism in public school science classes.) I read about this frequently on Womanist Musings. White people say that children don't need to learn about racism, because it is just too horrible for their delicate little minds and their innocence needs to be maintained - plus, by teaching them by racism we might encourage them to be racist! Onoez! Of course, "children" is a misnomer -as Renee points out repeatedly, children of color in the United States start learning about racism as soon as they are cognizant enough to understand what the words mean (pretty much as soon as they have a good grasp on English.) So what they're really worried about are white children.

The same argument has been made re: disability. In another post, Renee shares the story of a woman who, in the process of giving birth to her children, sustained an injury that has rendered her unable to move any part of her body except her eyelids. The children's father, with classic sympathy, took advantage of her incapacitated state, took the children, and ran. Since then he has refused to let the children see their mother because he fears that it might scar them.

Really? SCAR them?

Scare them, maybe. The kiddies probably aren't used to interacting with someone who is paralyzed (definitely, if Dad's behavior is any indication), and it will probably concern them, and they might not know how to act at first. But if they were actually allowed to spend time with their mother and interact with her, they'd get used to it. They could have a wonderful relationship and it wouldn't bother them in the slightest. Because KIDS ARE FLEXIBLE.

Which brings me to my next point.

Kids ARE flexible. They're also in a state of perpetual learning. Kids are open-minded, and often very compassionate (once they develop empathy). There is no better time for a person's life to begin learning about oppression and develop the desire to fight it than when they are a child.

And it doesn't take much. A child only has to witness one act of blatant discrimination to figure out that it's messed up (and yes, even privileged kids have the ability to figure out when someone is being put down) and speak out against it or even start a charity to fight it. (Not saying that the kid's going to be perfect at it, but the motive is there). You can read countless stories on the Internets and Highlights Magazine about a child who does something that seems incredibly plucky, like mowing lawns to earn money to buy shoes for poor kids, or refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance until true equality has been reached, or whathaveyou, all because they were given information about the issues in question.

But most children are not given this opportunity. Instead, we "shelter" them from these issues, protecting them from as much badness as we can. And what are they shown instead? Straightness, cis genders, whiteness, able bodies, single minds. At the point in their life when kids are most able to learn tremendous amounts of things about the world, we so rigidly filter their intake that they can only learn the most privileged side of the story. And the kids, being kids, suck it all in. Their understanding of the world, of society - of what behaviors and bodies "should" exist - becomes framed to prioritize these privileged bodies.

The result of this is that when these kids do begin to gain information about a new perspective, they have no idea what to do with it. When they begin to meet people who are fat, or need special equipment to move around, or have "weird hair," or "talk funny," they don't know how to react. They might know how to pity the crippled child, or to accuse the child who speaks out about racism of making things up or being too sensitive - the limited types of interaction that are conveyed in mainstream entertainment. But they don't have any real knowledge of how to handle these people on a tangible human basis.

Some kids are more flexible than others, of course. Some of them are very open-minded and will instinctively treat nearly everyone with some level of respect and kindness. But a lot more will not. Children who have learned that the world is a place of sunshine and roses and SCWAT bodies will freeze up when they meet someone who is different. They may refuse to deal with the "other" person. They may make fun of that person to assuage their own confusion. Or they may look to their peers to learn how to deal with the person - and their peers, having roughly the same upbringing, will teach them how to scorn the nonconformist.

As the privileged child ages, unless someone intervenes in xir life, nothing is likely to change. Instead, the problem crystalizes. By the time this "innocent" child has become a teenager or young adult, xe is now convinced that the world is exactly as xe learned it, or close enough, and xir reaction to a different perspective will likely range from disbelief to an outright refusal to consider the possibility. Sure, xe is now old enough that xir innocence is probably not considered an issue, and others might finally decide that it's time to teach xem about oppression - only to find that xe is lacking the core education needed to understand these concepts. The core education can be had, of course. And the education that builds upon it. And teenagers and young adults are, relatively, more impressionable than older people. But at this point there are two things stacked against them: firstly, they may not have access to the information they need, and secondly, they may simply decide that they don't want to learn because they have other things to worry about (like building their own life).

A young child doesn't have other things to worry about. A young child's job is to learn about the world. By preserving "innocence," by shielding them from anything that might be considered controversial or "too harsh" (apparently the real world is too much for children to handle), their parents are instilling a worldview that is one-sided and profoundly naïve. Not only does it hurt the marginalized - by implicitly training children to ignore their lives and struggles - but it hurts the child, by limiting xir ability to function with various "other" persons on a fully human level, as well as xir capacity to understand why extra work and sanctions are needed to protect marginalized persons.

As for gay children, transgender children, children of color, disabled children, and many others - all of them are getting a firsthand education in some form of discrimination. "Innocence" is a luxury that they cannot afford, at least for those realms to which they are privy. Through sheer happenstance of birth or life events, we were rendered clinically incapable of retaining this quality that is supposedly so valuable to a child's healthy development, and somehow we managed not to be ruined for it. Yet this inconvenient fact frequently gets swept under the rug by people who continue to insist that innocence is the most valuable thing a child could have - not understanding that maintaining the innocence of a privileged child often means destroying the innocence of marginalized children.

Bed-Wetting!

Trigger warning: physical and verbal abuse

"You're a pig," she said. "No, you're worse than a pig. A pig wouldn't wallow in its own filth."

The year, I believe, was 2001. At any rate I was around the age of eleven. I had just had a great summer - the first summer that I had not had to wear a diaper to bed because I FINALLY was not peeing in my sleep. Then winter came, and it started again. And because I was young and ashamed, I didn't tell my mother, I just went on wetting in my bed until the pee soaked through the mattress and the moisture caused the bottom board to separate from the bedframe in the corner where I slept.

(I've always been a corner sleeper. Maybe it stems from the early years where I slept on a couch, but I've never been very good at taking up a lot of bed space. Usually I just pick one corner and stick to it. I've only recently gotten past laying as close to the sideboard as possible.)

I won't say it wasn't gross or unhealthy - it was. But it's important to understand my position.

Some of the earliest words I can remember from my mother are "You wet your pants." I remember her tone almost exactly. The disappointment. The disapproval. The now-I-have-to-spank-you-you-filthy-child. She spanked me for years for wetting my pants (though not for wetting the bed). She was somehow convinced that if she kept it up I would eventually stop.

I did, finally, at the age of or nine. It wasn't because I finally realized it was wrong, or because the arrival of my baby brother meant that now I had to be grown-uppish. It just happened that that was the age that I gained the ability not to pee myself (and ever since I've had weak bladder muscles, which can be awkward when I get sick).

That was great, because wetting my pants was wrong and unsanitary and wrong and shameful and WRONG and only little kids who were like two years old were supposed to do it. So I was happy.

But I kept wetting the bed. And it's true that it hadn't been stigmatized like pants-wetting was, but there was still that sense that there was something messed up with me. For one thing, pee made the bed stinky and it had to be washed. For another thing, it was widely touted as "normal" for people to stop peeing in their sleep at about the age of four. (Not that those were the only people I was exposed to, but the others that I knew of were just exceptions that I was supposed to relate to. Like my jerkwad uncle who wet until he was... dunno how old.)

I think the worst part was when I transitioned from Goodnites to adult diapers. MY WORD. Not only did I wet the bed, but I was so fat that I couldn't fit into the nightwear for bed-wetters of my age (I had a similar experience with pants, but that was not quite as embarrassing). No, I had to wear diapers that were made for people much, much older than myself. I was doubly messed up.

Anyway, so when I stopped wetting the bed that summer, to call myself "relieved" would be an understatement. I was SO happy. Finally I was normal! Finally I could wear underwear to bed instead of a diaper! (Turned out I didn't like wearing underwear to bed, actually.) And when it started again, I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone, to ask for my mom to start buying me diapers again, because what eleven-year-old wants to ask their parents for diapers? Besides, I was hoping it would stop. I was still hanging onto the naïve hope that if I ignored the problem long enough it would go away.

She told me that, then. "You're an ANIMAL, because PEOPLE don't do things like this. You're a pig. No, you're worse than a pig. Even a pig won't lay in its own filth." Like I was deliberately lounging around in my own germ-ridden urine because I LIKED it. But more to the point, I now knew what my behavior meant. It meant that I was foul, horrible. I wasn't just less than human - I was used to feeling like that because of my fatness. I was less than an animal. I was probably somewhere between "slime mold" and "dog turd" because of this, because of my mistake.

And then she beat me.

She beat me for being scared. For being ashamed. For hating myself. Every blow drove my pain and shame and horror deeper into me. I must have cried. In fact, I expect that I reacted exactly as I did now, reliving the moment in my head - loud, gasping sobs, the unmistakable noise of a child in agony. It happened roughly ten years ago but as I write it out the emotions are still as raw as if it was yesterday.

What actually happened yesterday was that I remembered this incident. At the time, it felt so faint that I could hardly remember it had happened. Much less that it had happened to ME. Like a bad dream, I had pushed it out of my memory so that I could go on living like a normal human being. That's the power of the mind, isn't it? To sequester away those horrible memories so that, the next morning, you can look your mother right in the face and convince yourself that she's a good, loving parent. I had to, because my mother told me she was, and I knew she had to be right because she took her cues from the Bible and the Bible was the ultimate authority on goodness and holiness.

(She didn't learn this one from the Bible; she learned it from her mother. But that wasn't something that I was willing to question at eleven. Not when she still had physical power over me and regularly beat me for disobeying her. It wasn't worth it.)

So I went back to wearing adult diapers. I didn't stop needing them until I was fourteen, months after I'd had my first period. And then they finally ended, and I learned that I didn't even WANT to sleep in my underwear, and I shut away the fear, shame, and anguish from my childhood.

And I wonder why I don't know who I am.