TC and Privacy

[ciroccoj]

Damn, is all I have to say re. tobiascharity's "online stuff" situation.

No, OK, that's not all I have to say.

1. Thank god my own mother, whatever minor disagreements we had re. the myriad ways I wasted my time as a teenager, never went wingy on me. Thank god my father never lived with me, because he so would've gone wingy on me and I probably would've been banished to a nunnery or military school. Not because he believed in religion or the military, but because they'd be able to "handle" me by crushing the spirit out of me.
   
   
2. Getting extremely disturbing flashbacks to a younger relative's internet woes, and it's making me a little scared, frankly. S. was about 14 when we realized that her own parents were going mental on her and cracking down on everything, forbidding her from doing even the most harmless things, in an effort to keep her safe. And it was starting to backfire in rather frightening ways. Like, her mother insisted on reading all her internet correspondence, with caused the rather predictable reaction of S. getting a secret e-mail address and simply doing everything she wanted to do online behind her mother's back.
   
   Bad, bad, bad idea. S. didn't have the street smarts God gave a billy goat. We (those older relatives who hadn't destroyed S's trust in us) found out she was online (thank GOD!) and were able to give her safety tips and at least prevent her from meeting other really fun 14-year old girls online and arranging to meet them in deserted parking lots and never being seen or heard from again.
   
   I know you're smarter than that, TC, and I really hope you have somebody to talk to that you can actually trust. And it really, really sucks that it sounds like trust is being betrayed all around you, not just wrt internet stuff, but regular life as well.
   
   
3. I'm also getting a recurring playback of the time I was a volunteer at the Queen's Sexual Health Resource Centre and got a call from a woman who asked me what I would tell a 14-year old girl who came in to ask about birth control. I braced myself for winginess but calmly explained exactly what I would talk to her about: birth control, disease prevention, responsible sexuality, etc.
   
   Long silence. Then the woman says, "OK. Good. That's, that's good. Because I'm sending my daughter to see you today. She's... she's told me she's gonna go all the way with her boyfriend, so... I'm sending her over to you."
   
   I know my mouth dropped open, and I had to pause for a minute before I said, "That's... uh, that's good. We're open until 5." Long silence, then I finally blurted out, "It's good that she talked to you."
   
   "Yeah." (Mom did not sound happy at all, by the way.) "Yeah. I really really wish she wasn't going to... you know. I really wish she'd wait. She's just way too young. You know? But... I just want her to be OK. I know I can't stop her, so I just want her to at least be safe."
   
   Man, I hope I can be like that woman when my own kids are older. Because I really want them to trust me enough to know that they can talk to me about something like that and, no matter how I feel about it, I'll still keep my head on straight and not make the situation worse. I really want them to know that I'm on their side, even if their side isn't what I would like it to be.
   

::sigh::This really sucks, TC. I'm really sorry.

Comments

[lonejaguar.livejournal.com]

I couldn't even verbalise what I felt when I read that from TC. I'm never been more grateful that my mom was never like that. She never pried, she never forbade me anything. She didn't freak out about me being into an older guy from Australia and still hasn't "lectured" me about it even thought he stalked me online for 4 years. Okay, so I'm 23 now so she can't really lecture me, but still.

I feel so sorry for TC because her mother's going about it the wrong way. Not to say that she shouldn't be interested in what her daughter's doing, but DAMN. She doesn't need to be militant about it and especially for the reasons she has. I hope TC finds that "friend" who's ratted her out. I can't even say how uncool that is.

[snarkhunter.livejournal.com]

Big. Ol'. WORD.

I don't necessarily feel qualified to comment, because I don't have children myself, and we didn't have the Internet at home until I was over 18, but...my parents NEVER pried into my life any more than was strictly necessary to keep me safe. My brother was another story, but he lost their trust at the age of 14, and needed extra watching.

I just don't see how sheltering your children to the point of ignorance is going to help them in any way.

And as for the fic thing...okay. Fic is different. People don't get it. (I am going to write a book on fic one day.) But it IS writing, and I don't see how TC is being subjected to anything dangerous. I mean, all the people I know on LJ, all of whom TC knows, are all good role models, from what I can tell. None of us are out there encouraging her to disobey her parents or run off with strange men from Wisconsin or something.

Okay...obviously, I've gone totally overboard here. :)

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

But it IS writing, and I don't see how TC is being subjected to anything dangerous. I mean, all the people I know on LJ, all of whom TC knows, are all good role models, from what I can tell. None of us are out there encouraging her to disobey her parents or run off with strange men from Wisconsin or something.

You know, this was something else that was making me go ballistic. I've read fic that I wouldn't want my kids to read. There is plenty of stuff out there that has made me want to wash my eyes out with soap after reading it - violent, degrading, dehumanizing stuff. Thankfully a lot of that now comes with warnings, so you can choose to avoid it if you wish. And I think there's an argument to be made that (a) although teenagers may be sexually curious and (b) consensual sado-masochism is a harmless form of sexuality, (a) and (b) really shouldn't go together because teenagers just aren't mature enough to handle exposure to that kind of thing. Not sure where I stand on that, but I can see the argument.

So yeah, I could see how if TC was reading/writing that kind of thing, a mother might do well to try to curb that. And if TC was 'hanging out' with the people who read and write that kind of thing... yes, the vast majority of them are perfectly sane and decent folks, but... this is where you might want to err on the side of caution. No, sweetie, you may not correspond with the nice lady who wrote that 30-chapter epic on the joys of bondage and whipping.

Likewise if most of us were corresponding about our crack dealer or the sorrows of being a high class call girl or our attempts to fit in with our skinhead gang. I could see mom looking at this kind of thing and thinking, I don't think this is what I want my daughter to read.

But... loving relationships. Internal moral dilemmas. Sex as an expression of affection. Interpersonal conflicts. Sorrow, loss, ambition, human emotions. That's the bulk of what I've read in TC's work, and the work of the people around her.

And the people she's not supposed to correspond with... successful college students? Professionals? Other teenagers? By and large, responsible tax-paying citizens? People who scored higher on the Purity Test than TC did? (sorry, couldn't resist;) These are the people you don't want to influence your impressionable youngster?

This really pisses me off.

[snarkhunter.livejournal.com]

And the people she's not supposed to correspond with... successful college students? Professionals? Other teenagers? By and large, responsible tax-paying citizens? People who scored higher on the Purity Test than TC did? (sorry, couldn't resist;) These are the people you don't want to influence your impressionable youngster?</i. heh. Yeeeah. I'm about as innocent as they come. ;) But yeah. Those of us who are significantly older than she is are all apparently responsible citizens of our respective countries, with no interest in corrupting anyone into doing something stupid or anything they're not ready for. I just feel like her mom is overreacting to something she doesn't understand at all. I could be way off base here, but I get the feeling sometimes that TC isn't allowed to have hobbies just for the sake of fun. Everything she does as a hobby--and she has a ton of them--except for writing would look really good on a college app. So...isn't she allowed to have any fun at all? What's wrong with writing? When I was 14, I wrote all the time. I still do. My parents have never asked to see my writing, and that was fine with me. I didn't write fic until I was considerably older, but my original fiction, while astonishingly bad back then, was an outlet for me. I didn't always keep a journal, and I think if I had been banned from writing or if my parents had read my work w/o my permission, I would have been extremely upset. eh. I'm rambling here.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

I could be way off base here, but I get the feeling sometimes that TC isn't allowed to have hobbies just for the sake of fun. Everything she does as a hobby--and she has a ton of them--except for writing would look really good on a college app. So...isn't she allowed to have any fun at all? What's wrong with writing?

Yeah, see, this is something else that bugs me. And I don't know if I'm just over-identifying with my own dad, who, as I said, would've gone nuts on me for various reasons had he lived with me.

My dad had a big thing about "wasting time" - ie it was a sin comparable to murder. I posted a comment on TC's site asking what's wrong with fic? and she answered very quickly: "slash, unoriginality, television."

OK, slash could be a looong topic. But unoriginality and television?

Perhaps TC's mom feels she's wasting her time with this, because fanfic usually never goes anywhere (shelves and shelves of Star Trek novels aside). And maybe she is. But guess what? That's part of what your teenage years are for. I know I wasted my time spectacularly at that age, doing lots of things that I now look back on and think, gee, that wasn't worth all that time and energy.

And my mother certainly encouraged me to expand my horizons and not waste more time than necessary, but it never would've occurred to her to 'ban' time-wasting activities, especially if they meant a lot to me. Banning and cracking down and betraying trust should really be reserved for things like "My daughter is selling herself for crack" or "My son is beating up gays for fun", not "my child is not using her time wisely". Get a grip!

Damn

[gypsum.livejournal.com]

I can understand where TC's mother is coming from re the livejournal thing - sort of... Certainly there are sketchy characters out there on the net, but they can be avoided if you're smart. It's a matter of trusting your kid's judgment, I suppose. My parents never seemed to care what I was doing online, which was never anything that exciting (Apocrypha was as sketchy as it got -- haha). They don't know or care what my 16 year old brother does, either. I know he looks at porn sites since I have seen them on our home computer's history, and I know for a fact my parents don't visit those. Even so, looking over your kid's livejournal entries seems like a hell of a way to limit their freedom of expression. I'd give them the 'talk' about being safe, but I wouldn't look over what they wrote.

But the fic thing... Jesus. TC told me that her mother has taken away her notebooks. That's the craziest thing I'd ever heard. Writing is not some kind of illegal drug. It seems like the worst thing a parent can do, sharply curbing their child's creativity. What good can possibly come of that? Ny mother knew what I was writing when I was spending hours on our home computer hacking away at IAS and now and then going ballistic when I thought a good portion of it had been eaten by the computer -- it's not like you can be covert about a thing like that. I think she was impressed by what I was doing and didn't much care that it was using Law & Order characters. That's the right attitude. How can a parent think she is doing her child any good when she restricts the child's freedom of expression?

My one theory is that TC's mother read some of her slash fic and gor freaked out by the thought of her 14-year old writing gay porn. Even if that's the case, you talk to the kid about sex and sexuality if you're worried, you don't ban them from writing. That seems to be the worst punishment you can imagine.

Re: Damn

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see the thing with the gay porn (or any kind of porn) is... yeah, if my kids were 14 and I found out they'd been reading/writing/viewing sexually explicit stuff, that would squick me too. I changed their diapers and cleaned up their spit-up. I don't want to think about them having sexual feelings.

But see, that's my problem, not theirs. That's my personal "I don't want my kids to grow up". Unless the sexual material is violent or degrading or any of a number of things that should raise alarms in a parent... really, get a grip. In much of the rest of the world, fourteen-year olds are considered adults, and treated as such. It's only in our culture that they're still considered children and expected to behave as though everything hormonal happening to them must be ignored or repressed.

Which, to my mind, is also a bloody dangerous attitude. It's probably part of why pedophiles have such easy targets - everybody else is telling kids that their own sexuality is dirty or unspeakable, and here's this nice stranger telling them it's OK... isn't that great?

The hell with that. I want my kids to have healthy outlets when they're that age, and to have trustworthy adult confidants, at least in part out of fear for their health and safety. I don't want them to grow up thinking sex is something so scary that it has to be shut down whenever it's expressed in any way, even in fiction. That's just a recipe for disaster, or at the very least psychological harm.

Re: Damn

[gypsum.livejournal.com]

America is very weird about sex and sexuality. In one sense, it is all over the place in TV and movies and commercials, but in another sense, it is repressed as hell. I am sure our collective weirdness about sex and sexuality derives in part from Puritan roots and the whole idea of "virtue" in early American political thought. What's really interesting to note is that periods of sexual revolution, say the 1920s and the 1960s, spur an incredible conservative backlash. The crazy fundamentalist right wing ot today evolves as a response to the 1960s counterculture and New Left stuff of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. People in academia who had been New Deal liberals were so freaked out they became Neoconservatives. Movements like the '60s did a lot of good in terms of civil rights and what-not, but they also polarized the nation.

That is a tangent. It sucks that it had to effect TC so dramatically.

Re: Damn

[snarkhunter.livejournal.com]

Also, TC's slash? Not porn. Not smut. I haven't read her CSI fic, but I know for a fact that her L&O slash contained NO explicit sex, though it was clear that the characters had had sex.