A Defence of Eugenics

[dotinthesky]

I stopped at the supermarket on my way home. Coming out, I nearly tripped over a toddler. Her father, a curly-haired figure with beady eyes and a five-o'clock shadow, apologised for her. I said it was no problem and fell behind them. When the little girl turned the wrong corner, her father said "come over here, you stupid cow."

"Silly?" She asked. She made some noises that she didn't want to walk anymore.

"You are a lazy cow. Now come over here. You are a pain in the ass." He picked her up. "Now look what you've done, I have to carry the beer with my other hand." He was carrying a container with six cans of beer.

I was speechless. Mind, she didn't seem phased at all. She kept chattering to him as if it was all very normal.

Comments

[dawnkitten.livejournal.com]

Jesus ... I'd have been tempted to grab her and run. Things like that make me so sad- some people should just not be allowed to breed. She's young enough now to not know what he's saying ...but 5/10 years down that's likely to be one unhappy girl

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Yup, she had no idea what the words meant. But they were said harshly, so there was still that implicit threat, ya know? Very gross. I don't know what to do in these situations. Follow him? Call the police? Find out where he lives?

[desayuno-ingles.livejournal.com]

None of these things. Scary!

[amanda-mary.livejournal.com]

Oh my. This makes me feel like an awesome parent. It also makes me feel like smuggling that little girl out of the country :-(

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

You are in so different leagues - universes even - it's not even comparable. If only I was a scarier and more intimidating person in real life, who could stop the guy and give him some words. :-/

[margotmetroland.livejournal.com]

Horrible.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Hopefully she has a mother at home that counteracts that asshole, that might leave him one day (soon.)

[stevek.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't bet on it, perhaps he was going to share the booze with the mother? ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

Classy

stepping on toes

[fisticuff-s.livejournal.com]

i am a huge proponet of breeding sanctions. i know it pisses heteros off, but really, i don't give a shit. if you aren't fit, you aren't fucking fit. get your shit together before you bring another life into the world.

Re: stepping on toes

[desayuno-ingles.livejournal.com]

This doesn't piss me off, I'm not altogether certain I want to breed, though I am hetero(flexible), but who's to say who's fit and who isn't? I mean, just being poor isn't enough to say the kids won't be loved. And if poor people should be allowed to have kids, then how can you determine any reliable means of determining who should and shouldn't breed? There are certain, indefensible ones, though - such as extreme mental illness or retardation. Sorry, snip 'em. What else....mmmm....I can't think of much else except maybe pedophelia, confirmed.

Re: stepping on toes

[sor-eye-ah.livejournal.com]

Sadly even if you are a retard under most government laws "these people still have the -right- to breed. If they then proove to be unsuitable as parents the child will be removed from their care." And so on and so forth, so they can just keep popping them out.

I know this because my brother has a severe genetic disability which he will pass onto any children he fathers, yet the law forbids my parents from doing anything to prevent bad situations. As my Mum put it "we're being nice, at least if he's snipped he can still have hankypanky if he wants without having to worry about the side affects". Department of Human Services are fuckheads.

Am just very shocked my parents 'you don't have sex until you're married' trick has held up for so many years!

Re: stepping on toes

[desayuno-ingles.livejournal.com]

Yep, here my mom's friend adopted a girl with pretty bad schiztophrenia. She popped out two - one severely autistic (the violent kind) and one a sweet "doorknob" as my mother's ex-husband used to say. Then finally after it became obvious she wouldn't take any precautions and was not fit to parent or breed, she was "fixed".

Re: stepping on toes

[idioticpoet.livejournal.com]

I'm a hetero, and I agree with you. Whenever I hear of people leaving newborns in dumpsters or tales of neglect/abuse I get pissed off. The very idea that people need a license to fish, but not to raise a child is completely ludicrous. After all, it really isn't that difficult to insert tab a into slot b.

[amberholic.livejournal.com]

The worrying thing is that she took it so casually. It just goes to show that she's become used to the abuse.

[pixxers.livejournal.com]

How did you keep from kicking his ass? I would have been arrested. :|

[aeonflux.livejournal.com]

Possibly not biological father, but stepdad or (even more hopefully transient) mother's boyfriend?

[desayuno-ingles.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Why are people mean to kids? It makes me so sad!

[mirple.livejournal.com]

a few years ago my friend and i went to a car boot sale near where we lived (i can't remember why on earth we were there) and there was a young family there - a man and woman, about mid twenties at a guess, and two children, a boy and girl about five and three respectively. i had noticed them but hadn't taken much notice until the woman suddenly screamed at and shook the little girl who burst into tears and turned to her brother for comfort who gave her a big hug. It was heart breaking and touching to see how the children consoled eachother. The husband / boyfriend / father (?) just looked cowed and made no comment to any of it. They didn't seem like a happy family.

regardless of a person's socio-economic background, some people just like to bully children cause they smaller than them. It's very sad and distressing.

Except in the good ol' USA perhaps...

[msanthropist.livejournal.com]

I think the answer to the "why" questions or the "who" questions are pretty obvious. Man's capacity for cruelty to one another is ageless and almost limitless. We commit atrocities to each other on large scales and on small scales daily and have since the beginning of time. We're all just human beings trying to learn how to make better choices, right? Most child abusers were abused themselves as children whose parents were also abused, ad infinitum. I'm not making excuses, and absolutely we must all do everything we can to stop the cycles of abuse, even speaking out when we witness these scenes of unacceptable treatment of precious innocents in public. Just my opinion.

Luckily violence and even verbal abuse against people, especially children and women, is becoming less and less tolerated throughout the international community. Child advocates in many countries have argued that corporal punishment (spanking) violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and the European Network of Ombudsmen for Children (ENOC 2001) urged the governments of all European countries as well as NGOs concerned with children to work to end all corporal punishment worldwide.

The work to eliminate all violent and humiliating forms of discipline is a vital strategy for improving children's status as people and reducing child abuse and consequently all other forms of violence in societies.

The U.S. is one of only two countries (the other being Somalia, which has no central government) that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

All this coincidentally I am learning in my current class on Relational Violence and got directly from our text: Family Violence in the US by Hines and Malley-Morrison.

Re: Except in the good ol' USA perhaps...

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

There has been a spate of violence in London related to knives - on top of the already present ones - which leaves me very weary of confronting anyone like that (even if they are carrying a toddler.) The truth is that people won't change their behaviour because a stranger called them on it in the street - who am I after all? But I wish there was something else I could have done - it's so easy to just keep walking...