Infanticide and child molestation. I remember listening to CNN in the airport yesterday, when they described the recent band instructor who’s been accused of molesting his charges. Much like the Michael Jackson charges, some part of me just sighs and wonders why the hell this is on the news. I mean, I know why, it’s scary, it’s sex, and it deals with kids. I can’t imagine anything more engaging to the human hindbrain, particularly the American hindbrain. But I’m not horrified by it.
I was sexually assaulted by strangers a few times as a kid. I was also accused of rape by a kid I’d spent months fooling around with. He was a couple years younger than me. He started it, but I verbally pushed him to keep doing it. There was never any penetration, never any orgasm, never even masturbation. All this before I entered high school, some of it well before.
Am I just inured to the whole thing? I was pretty messed up by it; I’d like to think I’m much better now. I am scared to touch kids, particularly babies, just for fear of how it might look to someone. Anyone. And I want to adopt, or maybe bring someone bearing some of my genes, into the world. Heh. There’s a fucked up combination. Either way, I’d prefer a girl, just to make the sexual angle a nonissue for me.
[Then again, a couple weeks ago at a swim team brunch, one of my hosts’ very young adopted daughters announced she was going to give me a backrub. This created a small panic response in me. I could feel the blood draining from my face, I immediately turned my chair back to the wall, mumbled something like “no thank you”, and I tried to think of something that would put this determined young lady off her intended course of action without me losing it and responding way more vehemently than the circumstances warranted. I didn’t come up with anything. (in retrospect “No, don’t!” followed up with a potential grabbing of hands away from me might well have been appropriate). Fortunately, one of her dads told her (with firm parental gentleness) to leave me alone, and she complied. On the plus side, I’ve confirmed for myself that I’m not a pedophile, on the minus side, I should have handled it more gracefully.]
Maybe my indifference to it is the first stage of my involuntary icy-numb-shutting-down response. That may be the one time my brain stops its gyrations. I really don’t like it. It feels like some part of my brain gets trapped in a Liar-esque loop: Can’t take action, that would hurt. Can’t refrain from action, that would hurt.
Not a pretty situation. I guess I still have some work to do on that front.
My reply to this could/would be an essay on its own, but the summary is: I’m essentially in the same camp as you. Although, for my part, I’d prefer to have a boy for a child, simply because I feel I instinctively know how to deal with them better, which would make for better parenting out of the gate. or so I’d hope.
yes, the V-N children do all sorts of “please don’t do that, especially in a public place” kinds of things. going swimming with them sometimes results in complex ballets of ducking, extended arms and quickly raised knees. having taught swimming lessons, there was always an awareness of (and paranoia caused by) the story everyone had of a friend-of-a-friend who was fired after being accused by a parent of doing something inappropriate. you never know who’s watching and what they think they’re seeing.
Just do what I do and flee in panic upon seeing any children before they have a chance to speak.
All this is definitely the consequence of the fucked up world we live in. I see it as an exacerbated analogous to the obsessive political correctnes to which we’ve come in parenting as well. Any physical contact in response to a misbehavior is frowned upon as physical violence or cruel punishments. I got my dose of slaps when I was a kid, some of them quite painful, as I recall, and I want to believe I turned out pretty well, as well as never having doubted of the intentions or spirit of my mother in doing so…. bah..
Try teaching high schoolers who don’t know you’re gay. You have to defend yourself from all possibilities at all times. I just started coaching the diving team also, this should be interesting.
It is a tricky situation, made all the worse by those who are legitimately after the kids. An old coach of mine was accused of molesting his daughter, he admitted to it, yet couldn’t be charged as the statute of limitations had expired.
It’s something you’ll have to deal with when you’re ready to have a kid. Figure out what it is you’ll need to be ready for that and deal with this then.
I was actually seriously considering teaching. My sexuality wasn’t what kept me from it. Fear of burnout seemed far more relevant. The few times I substitute taught (basic math skills at a community college for arts, and the AP calc course in high school), I’d go in dreading it, I’d walk out high as a kite on the experience, wired and drained at the same time. I was afraid that I couldn’t keep it up, that I’d break down or screw it up for my students somehow. … Writing it out, that seems pretty fuckin’ dumb.
burnout is a serious problem, we’ve all seen enough teachers with it. I’ll come out once I get tenure and have a few more years under my belt. And it’s hard to screw up some of them anymore than they already are.