|
Post by gillianren on Jul 7, 2010 13:47:21 GMT -4
I have a tendency to use the number as a shorthand--"I think so-and-so is bright normal, maybe about 120 or so." But despite accusations of it, I don't think the number is the all-important thing. I certainly don't use the number to indicate that I know more about something than the other person or in place of actual research.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 6, 2010 13:43:04 GMT -4
And yet you have still failed to explain adequately why "sleeping in the same room with kids you've brought into your life for the express purpose of hanging around with despite the radical age difference" is so terrible a thing. If we take out the seeming mythical belief that if two people sleep in a room (or even a bed) and at least one is an adult it must be sexual, is there any real rational reason why it's wrong? Is there a real rational reason it's right? Hanging out with kids in the desire to restore some stolen childhood is one thing, and I can, to a certain extent, understand it. I think it's the wrong way to go about it, but it's hardly as though people don't fail to understand psychologically healthy ways of dealing with their problems all the time. However, I do think that plural is important. That's why analogies to slumber parties and Boy Scout camp are flawed pretty fatally. It's not just one-on-one in those situations. He has gotten the child alone. The parents are pretty well cut out--what were the parents doing at the time?--and there are no other kids around to say what did or didn't happen in that room. I know perfectly well that sharing a bed isn't necessarily sexual. I've shared beds with friends simply because we were limited on beds, there was room in mine, and I saw no reason they should sleep on the floor. However, it's always been with female friends; the one time I shared a tent alone with a male friend, he ended up being my boyfriend for six weeks. Does that mean I couldn't share a tent alone with a male friend and have it be not-sexual? Oh, no--I can think of several friends where, even were I single, that wouldn't happen. But the reason I shared a tent with that friend was, well, I'd forgotten mine. (Chivalry isn't dead; he offered to let me use it and sleep in his truck, but I would have rather found someone else to share a tent with, had it come to that.) You see how there are reasons for these events? When I was a kid spending the night at a friend's house, it was because we wanted to sit up all night talking--except Sharon, who fell asleep at nine as though she'd been drugged, and I'd either read or go talk to her mother. However, in almost all of those cases, we'd sleep in the living room, where parents could keep an eye on us. So no, sharing a room to sleep in isn't in and of itself evidence of sexual abuse, regardless of relationship with the child. And in certain circumstances, I'm willing to acknowledge that sharing a bed isn't necessarily sexual, though there will always be a reasonable explanation for bed-sharing if it isn't. It is these particular circumstances. This is a man who sought out children. They weren't the children of adult friends; he didn't really have many, and to the best of my knowledge, he didn't spend much time with them or their children. They weren't the children of business associates. They weren't the children of family members. They were children who were staying with him because he went looking for children to stay with him. Alone. Not in groups. And you're saying you don't find the behaviour the slightest bit suspicious? And you're saying you don't understand why it's behaviour you should stop when other people do if you don't want other people to assume you're doing exactly what the behaviour suggested to them you were doing in the first place? After all, I have no interest in robbing banks, but I still don't hang around the lobby for no good reason, even though it's nice and air conditioned.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 6, 2010 1:46:55 GMT -4
Yeah. Not going to the corner shop and not sleeping in the same room with kids you've brought into your life for the express purpose of hanging around with despite the radical age difference is totally the same thing.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 5, 2010 13:11:35 GMT -4
Yup. Yes, they should. But it's not just molestation. (And, again, if people have already suspected you, isn't that even more reason to avoid the behaviour which made them suspect you in the first place?) When I gave up my daughter, I gave up all claim to decide how she was disciplined, for example. However, her mom and dad are responsible for that. Where were the parents?
You seem to think I believe what I do out of some kind of personal malice or something. The fact is, when the man died, I was floored. I didn't know how to handle the news. Okay, I didn't care much for 99% or so of his music, but I have quite clear memories involving him, greater than my memories involving most pop culture figures from the same time period. A friend of mine broke her arm in first grade around the same time Michael Jackson burned his hair off. She got all weird about it, because "he knew pain!" It's not possible for a person to grow up when and where I did without his having serious impact on their life.
But you know, his sister thinks he's guilty. And, yeah, maybe he's not and the whole thing was innocent. But are you seriously trying to say to me that, once you're suspected of something in part based on certain of your actions, you shouldn't continue doing the thing which makes people suspicious? Are you seriously saying he has the unmitigated right to sleep in the same room with little boys who aren't in any way related to him? (And, again, I never heard of his being a close friend to any of the parents; when and where did he encounter these kids? Did he have any friends his own age?) Sure, only 10% of molestations are by "strangers," though if he's sleeping in the same room as them, you'd rather hope he isn't a stranger, but that does mean that, if people are already suspicious of you, yes, you should mitigate your behaviour! The first time, sure, that was just his not knowing people thought it was creepy and weird. After that, he needed to stop doing it.
The man believed, I know, that there is no such thing as bad publicity. That informed a whole lot of bad decisions he made over the course of his life. Apparently, he's the one who fed the tabloids the stories about, say, wanting to buy the Elephant Man's bones and then wondered why it made everyone think he was some kind of freak. His family life warped him, and I do have intense pity for him and anger at his father for how he was raised. (Angela Bowie tells a story of how, when she and David visited the house in the '70s, she still didn't realize that he had any sisters.) I think he was trying to regain some sense of his lost childhood, but the fact is, he didn't have any normal relationships. There are more suspicious behaviours than just the "slumber parties," and why you don't find those odd, I don't know. If the "slumber parties" had included more than just him and a kid, one-on-one, maybe it would have looked better.
Oh, and you'd best believe that I'd still keep an eye on my kid's interaction with friends and family, too. However, by letting my kid hang out alone with an adult, I would be abdicating my parental responsibilities in all sorts of ways.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 4, 2010 20:53:04 GMT -4
I note that you trimmed all of my discussion of how asking what parents do versus what not-parents do is a false comparison. It is true that I did, realistically, trust my daughter to utter strangers. (Having met her mom and dad a couple dozen times before her birth isn't usually enough to trust kids to an adult.) But that is, to me, a major part of the issue. Yes, I'm perfectly aware of the statistics which show that children are more likely to be abused and/or abducted by family members, but that doesn't mean you let your kid spend time alone with an adult you don't know very well.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 4, 2010 19:19:44 GMT -4
Do you think that all parents should stop taking pictures of their kids in the bath, or in their PJ's or underwear because it's suspicious? Apples and oranges. The fact is, it's one thing to behave a certain way toward your own kid and another to behave that way toward someone else's. Now, I'm not enormously fond of pictures of kids in the bath for a lot of reasons, not least that the kind of parents who take that sort of picture are almost inevitably the kind who show the pictures to their dates when the kids are teenagers, but leave that aside. The fact is, unless I were a very good friend of the adult in question--I can probably count examples on one hand--I wouldn't let my kid spend the night with a non-related adult, and if I had any reason to suspect they wouldn't be safe with that adult, like a previous allegation of misconduct, they wouldn't spend the night with that person, either. It's not that I suspect all the adults around me of being molesters. It's that there is a responsibility issue involved. I certainly wouldn't trust my child to someone who dangled his own infant off a balcony.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 3, 2010 22:17:42 GMT -4
Oh, yes, that's it exactly. It's not just that it's something being discussed now which never was before.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 3, 2010 14:01:45 GMT -4
Okay, and someone who doesn't change their behaviour after they know it's suspicious, which indicates something seriously wrong in their thought processes, a fact you don't address. Oh, and you're not considering an alternative interpretation for the DA's behaviour--that he knows the evidence builds up to something, but he's afraid you are, as OJ did, getting off because you have money. He thought there was a conspiracy against him, too.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 2, 2010 23:09:46 GMT -4
Apart from the fact they didn't share a bed, they shared a bedroom, which was bigger than a lot of apartments. According to testimony given by the boys the DA claimed had been assaulted, Michael slept on the floor not in the bed. Secondly, it only looks "bad" because people assume the worst regardless of the situation, it's like male teachers no longer being able to comfort a child because it looks bad. The only reason it looks bad is because society now believes that an adult male that shows any interest in kids must be a pervert. If it had been a female celeb doing it no one would have batted an eyelid. I would have, but hey. Only people looking at the circumstantial evidence which is not what you believe generalize, right?
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 2, 2010 13:22:02 GMT -4
Because grown men shouldn't share beds with children outside of very specific circumstances, none of which Michael Jackson fit except with his own children. Even if you aren't doing anything, it looks bad, and if you don't know it looks bad, there's something wrong with your thought processes.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 2, 2010 3:53:20 GMT -4
Well, sure he hinted at a conspiracy; he would whether the allegations were true or not, wouldn't you think?
I'm sorry. Whether the specific allegations were true or not, his behaviour was inappropriate. Flat out. The "slumber parties," which he freely acknowledged, were not okay, and I'm frankly shocked that parents would think they were.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 1, 2010 23:11:46 GMT -4
Sometimes?
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jul 1, 2010 14:29:55 GMT -4
I believe he was guilty, but I was still able to pity him. That whole family is seriously messed up.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jun 23, 2010 18:55:22 GMT -4
Moonman has that effect on people.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Jun 23, 2010 14:44:10 GMT -4
Leaving aside my doubt that Moonman was a lawyer (and what grownup describes themselves as "42 and 3/4"?), the fact is, he came in guns a-blazing with the idea that we definitely didn't land on the Moon. That is not the attitude to take toward education. And the fact that we were able (I say "we") to answer any question he put forward should have indicated something to him. It was also impossible to cram certain concepts into his head, ones a child could understand.
|
|