#infanticide tw

Much of the exploitation in New Canaan was enabled by their extractionist view of children as commodities to be collected en mass. But to avoid having to criticize that social structure by looking for situational causes of abuse, Joshua leaned on the biblical reading of trauma as “sent by god,” something you’re meant to glean a lesson from. Every bad thing that happened to him had a secret meaning, in his mind, so when he grows up and joins the Legion he makes a good handler for the recruits because he treats them like they’re there for a reason.

His control over the Sorrows obviously benefits him, and it’s a massive blind spot in the idea that he’s “changed,” but he genuinely believes he’s doing them a favor. Even when he’s subjecting the White Legs to ethnic cleansing, when the idea of himself as a teacher or a conduit for god’s plan has been completely cast aside, he still acts like that’s what he’s doing. Because at that point it’s just habit.

The commodity view of children he was raised on informs the way he interprets the infanticide he openly salivates over the prospect of committing as an adult. It isn’t that much of a problem when women in New Canaan undergoing pregnancy induced psychosis kill their babies because they’re their babies. It isnt that much of a problem when Joshua ~dashes the little ones against the stones~ because the adults they belong to are subhuman to him. But when the Legion murders New Canaan’s children, Joshua walks around moping like it’s a grand injustice, finally an infanticide that’s a crime, because these were the children of good christians and the Legion didn’t have their parents consent to end their lives. This perception also renders his forced removal of children from their parents in communities subsumed by the Legion as a kindness he’s doing them. They’re no longer available for murder because now they belong to a good christian. He fit with Edward’s training system like a glove.

Meanwhile, Edward was raised by neoliberals. So his upbringing gave him a situational view of abuse, but specifically the kind that is designed to remove as much responsibility from the adult perpetrators as possible. Adults in your life treating you badly? You must not be fulfilling their needs (wants) the way you’re supposed to. Still treating you badly? Well you see that’s because there’s some pseudo-eugenic factoid in the abuser’s reproductive history that forced them to see you as an object. Even if you’re not their biological kid. Even if you’re not their kid at all.

They only think it’s acceptable to take half your paycheck and destroy your things because they didn’t want to have kids, of course. That’s why they’re using children to do things which would be unacceptable to do to anyone else, right? Because they secretly don’t want to be around them? Your gym teacher giving you sexual nicknames and screaming at you after every lap just needs to realize she’s Bad With Kids™, then she’ll stop on her own. Mom put bleach in your milk? That sucks but we’ve got abortion clinics and free contraceptives now, so one day we’ll be able to prevent you from being tortured by people keeping you in their house against your will - not by altering the social status of children or parents or anything, just by stopping you from existing. Benefitting from this? They’re not benefiting from this. They’re the victim and you are (by drawing breath) victimizing them. It’s not your fault but it is your responsibility, champ :/

This kind of group victim blaming that alternates between obscuring the reason why children are abused and framing that abuse as a functional inevitability that isn’t actually anyone’s fault sets an effective precedent for the Legion’s collectivized brainwashing machine, which seems to be operated by some kind of religious institution, based off the inclusion of the priestesses. If children are a collective commodity, Caesar’s quotidian enforcement of sexual and reproductive violence is just good business.

And if any amount of displeasure with the way a child enters an adults life makes it impossible for that adult to refrain from abusing them, then why would the people making these babies have a problem with them being taken away? He’s not being cruel, by disallowing these people from relationships with the children he forced them to have. The birthers, the impregnators, are already being used as tools to extract value for Caesar. If they happen to have children, that’s just one more product they can churn out for him - and the folks back home in the NCR barely ever had a meaningful disagreement with this logic, regardless of how they shake their heads at his methods.