Proverbs 0: 00

  I ran across a someone's Facebook post that read "I hope parents are being more responsible and not allowing their daughters  to wear inappropriate clothes because not all men ask for ID" The comments were mixed. Some , agreed. Some, did not agree. Some commenters were outraged. I am outraged! I am outraged for a lot of reasons. Not so much because, I have daughters or that I was once a young girl . But, it is the shifting of responsibility that suggest only parents of daughters and not the village as a whole should be solely responsible for keeping children safe and free from avoidable abuse and trauma. We all have a responsibility to protect children, including male children. 

Growing up in the inner city as kids, we saw and heard so many things that we probably should not. Some things we over heard. Some we were told intentionally rather they were appropriate is highly questionable. Some things we learned from other kids who learnt it from some other kids who heard it from some adults on purpose. Some of our childhood experiences are married to abnormal behaviors that, because they so prevalent and intersectional, we have normalized them.  If you grew up in a home  with less than two adverse childhood experiences you are an anomaly. The count is too great for how many times I heard some grown woman, while popping double mint, tell young girls to "use what you got, to get what you want! Or, grown some grown ass man telling young boys, "don't love her,  just fuck her and leave her cause you don't need her." as a Kool cigarette danced on his lower lip.

How does all of this transfer onto how we live and behave as a culture? Well, what I know is, in my parents generation girls were sent away if they got pregnant out of wedlock-usually, down south somewhere. There an aunt or grandparent would take care of her until the baby is born. In some cases she had no choice but to leave the child there involuntarily. When I was coming of age, teenage girls who got pregnant were discriminated against in public accommodations- no constitution stood in their way! We were thrown out of public schools, shamed, and hamulated- given two options either drop out and get a GED or forced to attend  The School for Pregnant and Teen Mothers. That actually was the name of the damn school!  No one even bothered to address the fact that the father's of those babies were in fact adult men. 

Et sic sequitur