First, a couple notes.
In the wake of RBGs death, Razor has an excellent video where he delves once again into why he thinks the supreme court should have some form of greater oversight/term limits, as needed to restrain their power.
Also, Peter Grant is underscoring why we have to walk into any and all situations expecting the justice system to be weaponized against us. I won't claim to a lot of foresight, but while there's truth the stereotype of the antifa soy, there is also a core of knowledgeable people with money, coordination, and strategy, working in coordination with the DA's who release them as if going back out a revolving door, and it's been increasingly obvious over the last several years.
Moira Greyland, daughter of SF&F "great" Marion Zimmer Bradly, wrote a post over at Men Of The West recently, going far deeper than I wanted to know into the contents of this "innocent coming of age story," - and it is as horrible as I imagined. Worse, even. She's uniquely situated to recognize the signs and talk about it as she has suffered from utterly horrifying sexual abuse as a child at the hand of her father and mother, the latter of whom is still held up as a shining icon of feminist Science Fiction. Go read The Last Closet. I couldn't get through it in one sitting, it's a tear-inducing read. There is also more at another posting at MotW.
From her article:
On the one hand, you have nearly hysterical mothers and fathers appalled, rightfully, by what they see in “Cuties,” and on the other hand, you see pseudointellectual posers pretending a high-minded “wait and see” indifference. Some will have bought Netflix’s “explanation” that the issue was the artwork used to promote the film, not the film itself. But what is in the film is a whole lot worse than the promotional artwork.
“Cuties” is about a little girl, Amy, who is eleven years old, and Muslim. It is presented as a “coming of age” film, where Amy’s departure from normal eleven year old activities into blatantly sexual activity is lauded by the promotional materials as “exploring her burgeoning femininity,” among other lies.
For most of us, “exploring our burgeoning femininity” means playing dress-up, maybe going shopping, painting our nails, playing with makeup, dreaming about boys, and maybe even thinking about fancy weddings and having children one day. Most normal girls talk with other girls, even their mothers, for hours and hours and hours about boys, and dresses, or horses, or even ordinary dance classes. Most normal girls grow up with the knowledge that her Daddy would never let anyone hurt her, let alone allow anyone to compel her to dance semi-nude—even if she thought for an instant that she would want to. The notion of masculine protection would be part of her normal psychology, and it would be a safe harbor, not a limit to be thrown off.
Go read the whole thing, there's little directly related to this work of "art" that needs repeating here. I was going to leave it be, but another meme came to my attention:
I've discussed this before in the context of "rogue" teachers imposing draconian punishments on kids for "gun-related" misbehavior like having a picture of their Army dad with a rifle: Yes, it is possible to spot systemic rot from just one instance. Much like those overzealous "teachers" lived in a bubble where none of their co-workers would gainsay them, and the school administration backed them up, the creators of this filth were not operating in a vacuum.
I know Moira doesn't go into it in depth in her post, or even The Last Closet, but I don't believe it is a coincidence that this film supposedly showing the harm of sexualizing children, taken strictly visually, does anything but, or that Hollywood didn't blink an eye.
Yes, I know, pedowood, CDAN, the revelations of Spielberg and Lucas discussing how old Marian should be when Indy slept with her, and so on. Hell, I was reminded of how far back the rot goes by coming across the supposedly "cute" retelling of the Little Mermaid as Splash with Tom Hanks, complete with a lot of very adult content, and not just Daryl Hannah's breasts.
It goes back further than that - to the underlying philosophy. One that Moira approaches in The Last Closet. Leave aside the already libertine reputation of the French when it comes to sex, the literary and intellectual class in particular absolutely loved some good old fashioned degeneracy and pushing boundaries. If you don't believe me, go read some of Anais Nin's short stories. Better yet - don't. Sartre and his habit of bedding young girls, along with his non-wife Simone de Beauvoir and their open relationship. They worked to destroy traditional relationships. From infogalactic:
Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyle and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, "bad faith") and an "authentic" way of "being" became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work L'Être et le Néant (Being and Nothingness) (1943).[28] Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism and Humanism (1946), originally presented as a lecture.
Of course, they are held up as intellectual paragons, to be studied and admired.
And as one of my friends put it, there's nothing that the American intellectual-literary class wants to do more than be the French, as cool as the French, and thus they slavishly follow the French. And so, this utter literary poison became popular and trendy with all of the "correct" and knowledgeable crowd, including the attitudes that kids just needed to be shown how to appreciate sex and properly taught by adults to overcome their traditional bourgeois upbringing. Moira was one of the victims.
It was then buried, cloaked for quite some time. Nevertheless, the various authors and philosophers who promoted these views, breaking the traditional family and traditional boundaries, including age barriers, were still commonly recommended and referenced over the decades. And now, with renewed attempts to make pedophiles look palatable via terminology like "minor attracted persons", it's being brought to the fore again, with all the markings of being made our next frontier for so-called civil rights.
Whether out of selfishness and desire, or hatred of innocence, the intellectual class in France has worked to destroy traditional morality and boundaries, and the American intellectual class has followed suit.
