Believe in the Night

the "pedophile" as an image in most usamerican's head is just as constructed as anything else. It's always people lurking and luring kids online and, not, like, your relatives or private boarding school teachers or your youth group pastors. It's an extension of suburban paranoia of the Other that simultaneously closes rank within racial and class lines (even while shielding those accused of the crimes being talked about if they're of the "right" background). It's a confluence of anti-feminist satanic panic, end of history at the end of the cold war bringing the paranoia inwards, and a group of people so inundated with their alienated suburban protestant upbringing that they don't see other people if they see those different than them: they see criminals, and worse and worse attributes to slap onto the said criminals. It's a sickness of the culture.

it's always "kill all pedophiles" to mean "brutalize those we have social position to brutalize" and not, like, "let's seriously examine what social forces allow children to get victimized." Stepping out of even the suburbs, the number one pedophile organization is US military abroad. It's no wonder that the HOA-PTA thought upholders that hate both foreigners bringing this up AND examination of mechanisms of abuse love using racialized people of the usa as a rhetorical device; these yanks barely know, let alone interact with, racialized people!

its crazy this all started because trans women came up with shorthand for the question "are you affected by transmisogyny" and the fact that your answer might be "no" drove people into a fucking frenzy