Quote:
Originally Posted by bluestarultor
While that's partly true, there's a difference between teaching them to be discerning and paralyzing them with fear. What happens when they actually need to ask for help? Maybe it doesn't come up much, but then neither do kidnappings. By teaching them to be discerning, as in knowing what is and isn't appropriate, kind of like we used to when I was a kid, it's more for them to absorb, but it's ultimately better for them because they're not crying themselves to sleep every night over all the bad, bad men that are out to get them.
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QFT
Caution is what kids should be taught. By insulating your children they won't be able to tell the difference between a safe and an unsafe situation, and will either end up trusting everyone or no one. The differences between these situations can be very subtle and if you aren't given an idea of what normal behaviour is, you have nothing to compare them against. Potentially you will blindly walk into danger because of your failure to recognize these cues. On the other end of the spectrum, you will potentially be fearful of people when 99.9% of them don't have ill intentions.
I could go on and on about how this relates to women specifically- about weird mixed messages that tell women to feel guilty if they are not polite and complacent, yet ever vigilant about the variety of rapists and serial killers that lurk around the corner. A common reaction among raped women isn't "how did this happen to me?" but "how did I let this happen to me?" Pretty fucked up that the blame is placed on the woman. Then they (the media) point out that she accepted a drink from a stranger, or wore a skirt on the bus, or whatever, so now it's HER fault for not heeding the sage advice of society to be fearful of everyone and never leave the house. Not very good tools to work with, yeah?
06-20-2010, 07:04 PM
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