It is always interesting when people say, ‘I’m not
racist, but …’ then follow with something that cannot be construed as anything
other than racist. They use this little prefix to muddy the waters of whatever
happens to be their sentiment, as if their opinion comes to carry some kind of shield
against accusations of being a ‘racist’ comment; or, more accurately, that as
the transmitter of the message, they themselves are not ‘racist’: ‘but I’m not
racist, it was an observation about
ethnic difference and failure distinct from my actual personal opinion. You weren’t listening.’
The
other side of this is the person who comes straight out and says, ‘I know this
a little racist, but …’ then follows, predictably, with a racist comment. The
admission of their un-PC stance operates in a slightly different way: by means
of admission they attempt to display a self-awareness of their
position—knowledge of what is ‘racist’—that seems to illustrate their
contriteness through their early plea of guilt, and, thus, water down the
severity of their ‘racism.’ ‘It’s just a bit of a faux pas; a little character fault, you see.’
Again,
though, just because you try to either dodge the label or apologetically
embrace it, does not preclude you from the implications of your position. If
you say it, you said it, with all its connotational, societal and cultural
baggage.
In The
Age yesterday, Tracy Spicer wrote an article (longwindedly) entitled, ‘I
don’t want my kids sitting next to a man on a plane,’ which she opened with the
blatant statement: ‘I know it's sexist. But I don't want my kids sitting next to a man on a
plane.’[1]
Tracy,
that does not make the gist of your article OK. Because, in spite of your twee
admission or deflection, it is still a sun-baked sexist pile of fear-mongering
excrement, which implicitly prostates itself before simplistic generalisations
of the male human’s supposed base, uncontrollable instincts.
Essentially,
Spicer argues that when she sends her kids to fly solo—that is, without her
hawkeyed, parental supervision—she doesn’t want them sitting next to men. The
basis of her argument is that, despite the strong odds of molestation coming
from someone known to the child, stranger danger is still a risk and, presumably strange, women only account for about
8% of molestation cases.
Thus, in her logic, to sit a
child next to a man is to court a higher chance of the child being molested,
because, you know, stranger danger; that men are all kiddy fiddlers at heart, constantly fighting off their
urges—particularly on planes—to get their paedophile on. Best keep them away
from these jet setting brutes, scouring the sky’s for their prey: ‘business
trip?’ ‘In the sense that I want to do the business,
yes.’
A mother has every right to
protect her children from both real and perceived harm, but this is going way
too far. She is giving credit to an innate fear and distrust of men that
completely ignores the immense statistical improbability that every man, even every second man, is a
sexual threat to her children … on board a fucking plane, no less.
I mean there is shit luck,
then there is shit luck, and if you
(forget being a child) on one of your plane trips—keeping in mind that,
compared to say riding public transport, flying happens only every so
often—happen to be seated next to one of these out and out wackjob sickos, that
is shit luck.
And unfortunately, such is
the peculiarities of fate and twisted oddities of these peoples’ brains, just
seating a kid away from them is not a guarantee of safety; whether on a plane
or a train or seat in a playground. Lest we forget, paedophiles are predators.
Even then, to skewer the statistics a bit, if a child is
seated next to a woman there remains an 8% chance (nearly ONE IN TEN … OMG!!!)—buried
in whatever abysmally low percentage chance there is of molestation in the
first place—of that woman attempting a bit of a fiddle with said kid.
Yet, Spicer maintains the
troubling implication that, above all else, men are inherently untrustworthy, suspect to their
worse instincts (supposing there is such a base level of the male human that we
are all in possession of; that embedded in each of us is a loosely screwed wire
easily knocked free setting us all on the path of rape), and must be shielded
from children.
She is propagating a notion
of men that although undeniably true to an utter and complete minority of
screw-loose fuckwits, is otherwise a complete falsehood and horrid stereotype. I
don’t think that paedophiliac men fly around the world on the oft chance they are seated
next a child that they can rape. To be crass, that doesn’t really sound like
playing the odds to me.
There is, as I said, no doubt
that such men exist, and that sometimes horrible things occur—on the ground or
in the air—but these occurrences are exceptionally rare, and to submit to a largely unfounded fear only fuels the fires of
the sentiment; turns it into a reality that is not real that constantly insists
on its realism all the same.
And this is the pejorative –ism of racism and sexism at its very heart:
the creation of a falsehood based on a minority, or even non-existent, problem
or case, only tentatively linked to some aspect of the identity of the supposed
perpetrator: i.e. sex, race, age, whatever.
Spicer can admit to her
sexism all she likes, it does not excuse the fragility of her argument and her propagation
of a masculine myth that apparently circulates around a sexually activated hatred
of the young that is acted on in the worst possible ways. But a myth is, in the end, a myth; folklore with some element of a necessary message or warning (one must be wary of some strangers, yes), but ultimately has only a shadowy existence in reality.
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