#Mandatory child abuse reporting

[ashroomancer]

Mandatory reporting and CPS are a joke, and no one can convince me otherwise. How does a child, from kindergarten to 5th grade, go to school consistently clearly unwell and never once is it reported. I went to school bruised, hungry, scared, and often in ill fitting or weather inappropriate clothing and never once did we get a visit. Day cares, schools, community centers, they all turned a blind eye to violence towards children. And when I'd speak up about the violence my younger brothers and I were subject to I'd get told to stop being an attention seeker. In second grade I told a teacher to her face I wanted to end my own life and she told me to stop kidding. Mandatory reporting needs to be used to be useful, someone else isn't going to say something.

If you work with children and you see something suspicious report it immediately, don't assume someone else already has ...

Because they haven't

[justanapparatus]

ms bell: Mr honey was the best principal this school ever saw!

Mr honey: *makes fun of one of his students for being abused and uses it to manipulate him*

[mejomonster]

I'm imagining an AU where Silent Reading is the same but Tao Ran is bisexual

On the one hand: hilarious. Phenomenal. Luo Wenzhou would try to lock him into a friend's with benefits so FAST (even though he did that to straight Tao Ran this version would involve makeouts+ lmao), but Tao Ran would insist they should settle down and adopt if they're gonna he together then Luo Wenzhou would insist they kind of did (points to Fei Du) and Tao Ran would -.- say no dumbass that's not what I mean, what do I tell my mom?

Then Fei Du would hit college and ALSO start hitting on Tao Ran, and Tao Ran absolutely would STILL not date him because thats his little kid he babysat and thats his little violent demon he would Actually suspect of murder if it came to it and Tao Ran unlike Luo Wenzhou won't touch that walking red flag, knows Fei Du only wants him to maintain his life's status quo and AGAIN Tao Ran wants kids! A house! To build a future! And while Luo Wenzhou may actually eventually do that, in Tao Rans eyes no one younger than 30 is gonna want to so Fei Dus out of the running.

Luo Wenzhou would ABSOLUTELY stoop to the level of rubbing in he's slept with Tao Ran. That might even be what breaks his and Tao Rans friends with Sexual benefits thing (but it won't end the surrogate partners thing they're too enmeshed), Fei Du would absolutely try harder than he does in canon like hand kissing and leaning toward Tao Ran next to a wall and loudly declaring his intentions so any poor sap who WANTED to date Tao Ran would run in fear. Tao Ran, ultimately, would end up with that girl he does in canon. Unfortunately, there would never be a genuine love Triangle or throuple (there's just Too many things he sees Fei Du as NOT partner material over, and while Luo Wenzhou MIGHT have a chance with a bi Tao Ran I think ultimately he would find his vision of a future not the same as Luo Wenzhous - starting with Luo investing in this kid and case they should've stopped messing with, continuing with Luo seeming to prefer the lone wolf man life over building a family generally - he's nurturing to fei du and fei dus cat and eventually Tao Ran out of romantic spoiling but he's usually not a nurturing softie the way I think Tao Ran would prefer like himself). A throuple would be Funny, but it wouldn't happen. But it WOULD make their love Triangle era so much funnier.

On the other hand: I just cannot imagine Tao Ran ;-; (in related news he's my babygirl and I love him as much as his fool friends even though it's hopeless ahh)

[fosteringinsc]

Mandated Reporters. Who are they?

Mandated reporters are individuals required by law to report suspected child or vulnerable adult abuse or neglect. Professionals who work with children or vulnerable adults or have regular contact with them, such as teachers, healthcare providers, foster parents, social workers, and law enforcement officials, are typically mandated reporters. Mandatory reporting laws are designed to help…

[frudoo]

The 141!slasher au has me cackling. Reader lowkey being like "well, if the dick is good"

Imagining reader being taken in to be questioned by the cops for something unrelated to the boys killing. Maybe she witnessed a crime, or maybe someone else got assaulted by the guy who grabbed her. Would the guys be suspicious? Do they have a "get picked up by the cops" protocol, or do they believe there's no chance of ever getting caught? (Does reader already have a "don't talk to the fucking cops without a lawyer [ACAB!]" mindset that helped Johnny be confident in telling her the truth?)

Does reader ever help with kills? Ngl kind of seeing reader work at a children's hospital or as a social worker and taking note of ppl she knows are abusive and being like hey...Simon...<3...did u need ideas of who to kill next...

Anyway thank you for letting me share my thoughts:)

We love a reader who has her priorities straight ;)

Warnings: Mentions of child abuse/trauma.

Deep breaths. It has nothing to do with you or your boys.

     The blinds are shut and there’s a weird buzzing noise coming from somewhere inside the room. Across from you sits a social worker and a detective, and your leg bounces anxiously. 

     It’s mandatory. You’re helping a child and his mom out of a bad situation.

     You’d suspected something was wrong the first time Oliver was brought to your class with a couple of bruises on his leg. You had immediately written your observations down on his sheet and reported it to your bosses, but they brushed it off. Little boys are clumsy, after all, especially when they’ve just recently learned to start walking. The next couple of weeks, the toddler showed up unscathed and happy. 

     This morning, however, his mother dropped him off with a black eye and scratches all over his torso. You could see cuts of her own beneath the makeup she’d been crying off. You’d paged your bosses to come to your classroom immediately, and this time, they took it seriously. You weren’t thrilled that the police had to be involved, but you understood that it was necessary in saving this sweet family. You answered all of their questions honestly—neither saying too little nor too much.

     “Thank you for your time, ma’am. You’re dismissed,” the detective gives you a solemn smile and rises from her seat, opening the door to allow you out. 

     You clutch your purse tightly as you walk through the precinct, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. You’re no stranger to facilities like these. Much of your childhood was spent sitting beside your father at his desk, acting like a good little girl, coloring on blank sheets of paper and pretending that daddy wasn’t such a monster. At work, he was a hero who citizens and coworkers alike depended on to keep them safe and happy. At home, he was a tyrant, taking every opportunity he could to use you and your mother as a punching bag.

     As a child, you’re taught to depend on all the people who are meant to care for you—family members, the police—those whose first priority should be to protect. You should have been able to trust your father. You should have been able to run to him whenever you scraped your knee or got bullied at school, but instead, he was often the one causing you harm. Your mother got sick of the abuse and left when you were five but didn’t bother taking you with her, so he was all you had. He intimidated you into silence, but even if you had reported him, who would have believed the troubled young daughter of such a dependable officer? You learned too quickly, too young, that it would always be their word over yours.

     When you first became a daycare teacher, you didn’t expect to see yourself in so many of the children you either cared for or saw in passing. It broke your heart every time you saw a toddler with a limp or an older child who still wet themselves at naptime, because you knew what they were feeling. You knew the despair they felt in every step they took, the fear they felt every time someone came to pick them up and take them right back to their broken home. The very day you started is the same day you decided you had to stay there, to be some kind of light in the darkness too many of these children should have been too young to ever know.

     You have an unspecified amount of time off—your bosses decided that there was too much of a risk that Oliver’s dad might show up and try to start shit with you for reporting him. There’s still a lot of investigating that the police and child services have to do, and as of right now, the scumbag’s whereabouts are unknown. It’s nerve-wracking to leave your babies even despite knowing they’re in good hands. You’ll have to make sure and call in every day to check on them. 

     It’s about an hour drive back to the farm, and you spend every minute dreading the reunion with your lovers. None of them know about the situation, and you’re not exactly thrilled to catch them up to speed. Still, you owe it to them to be honest. God forbid they find out about it somewhere else and start believing some warped version of the truth. Just the mere idea of them distrusting you makes a sour feeling rise in your gut. 

     Kyle is working in the garden when you arrive, a wide smile on his face as he waves to greet you. The grin you send his way isn’t quite so excited, and immediately he knows something is up. If he was a bloodhound, you’d be sure he could smell the unrest in the air. The slam of your car door alerts the other three men of your presence, and they all line up by the front door curiously. Your heart is racing as you walk inside, motioning for them all to join you in the living room.

     You sit in the recliner with your hands folded in your lap, nervously eyeing each of your husbands. The fear that they might hate you because of what happened gnaws at the front of your brain, chewing until it aches. You’re not even sure if you could blame them—after all, they had a good thing going before they met you. One wrong move and the cog in the machine gets tossed aside like trash. 

     “Speak, lovie,” Simon grunts impatiently, syrupy brown eyes scanning over your face, watching, analyzing.

     “There was an incident at the daycare today,” you begin. “Child services had to get involved, and I was called to the police station to explain my side of things.”

     You’re shaking like a leaf, unable to look at any of them. The tension in the room is so thick that John could probably cut through it with his machete. Not one of them has so much as blinked, each waiting on another to say or do something first. You do.

     “It had nothing to do with any of you, I swear. I’m off work for a few days while the whole thing gets settled. I can’t say much about the case, just that… there was an abusive father involved. They haven’t found him yet, and they’re exercising the idea that I might be a target for reporting him.”

     “Fuck,” Kyle mutters exasperatedly, rubbing his hands over his face as Johnny wraps an arm around his shoulder.

     You finally gather the courage to lift your head, and to your surprise, there is no fury or hatred in any of their expressions. At least, not directed at you. They look more like they’re waiting for an order, leaning forward in their seats like attack dogs ready to pounce. Suddenly it’s clear to you—they may have been an item before you entered the picture, but once you joined them, you became their commander, one that they’ll remain loyal to until the day they die. 

     “I have a proposition,” you whisper, looking directly at John.

     “Give us a name, sweetheart.”

[gatheringbones]

[“Girls are frequently arrested for trying to protect themselves from or fighting back against abusive parents. When police confronted Diana after a fight with her mother, Diana said, “I was like: ‘What the fuck, like look at my face she beat me up.’ They are like: ‘She called the cops on you, so you are at fault ’cause if she beat you up why didn’t you call the cops on her?’ Dude I don’t want to get my mom in trouble plus anyways it’s my word against her and although I am the one looking all torn up.”

Girls are also arrested because it is easier to remove one child from the home than to arrest a parent and find shelter for the children. As a probation officer explained,

Say the police respond to a case of domestic violence. You have a 3-year-old girl, a 16-year-old girl, and the mother fighting. Say the mother grabbed that girl and started pounding her face into cement. They’re not going to take Mom to jail when there is a 3-year-old daughter there. But they need to separate the two of them. So a lot of times it really is the parent’s fault but the kid gets hauled away.

Although few of these cases ultimately result in detention (often because the violence is minor), law professor Francine Sherman has noted that girls are “traumatized by arrest, handcuffing, and in some case shackling, routine strip searches upon entry into detention, and the perception that she is being blamed for what is a family problem.”

Dating violence also brings young people into the juvenile system. About 16 percent of girls and 8 percent of boys experience physical or sexual dating violence; 22 percent of LGB young adults report dating violence. Being subjected to intimate partner violence makes young people more vulnerable to juvenile system involvement. Girls are more likely to commit nonviolent delinquent acts (like running away) when experiencing intimate partner violence. Young people also become involved with the system because of their own violence. Girls use violence with partners to express anger and jealousy at a partner’s infidelity, protest a partner’s “emotional detachment,” or get a partner’s attention.

While some studies suggest that young men and women use violence in relationships at similar rates, those studies fail to account for the type, amount, impact, and reason for the violence. Girls’ violence is generally less serious and causes less injury. Girls reportedly slap and pinch their partners most often, while boys are more likely to punch or sexually assault partners. Moreover, studies of heterosexual couples find that boys do not experience girls’ violence as frightening or controlling. Half of boys report laughing at their female partners when they use violence. One-third ignored their partners when they were violent. Girls are also more likely to use violence defensively, fighting back against their partners. Mandatory and preferred arrest laws that cover dating relationships have been linked to increased arrests of girls for dating violence, with Black girls most likely to be arrested.”]

leigh goodmark, from imperfect victims: criminalized survivors and the promises of abolition feminism, 2023

[adverbally]

Just Try to See in the Dark

Written for the @steddieangstyaugust prompt “Childhood” | wc: 1,263 | rated: T | cw: references to physical (nonsexual) child abuse and neglect, including description of injuries inflicted by a parent | tags: teacher steve, steve and eddie’s shitbag dads, hurt/comfort, shoutout to all the awesome teachers out there | title from “Close to Me” by The Cure

And with this, I’m officially caught up, just in time for the halfway point of the month! I appreciate everyone who has read and interacted with my work so far. I haven’t written this much in years and it’s all because of contributions from viewers like you. Thank you 💕

———

When Steve gets home from work, almost an hour later than usual, he goes straight into their bathroom and shuts the door.

Eddie watches him go. It’s not unusual after a long day. Sometimes Steve just wants to take a hot shower and start his evening fresh. But after half an hour, the water hasn’t turned on and Eddie is starting to worry.

He hovers outside the bathroom door for several minutes, unsure if he should check on Steve. It doesn’t sound like he’s moving around, which makes a dark corner of Eddie’s mind worry that he’s hurt. What if he fell? What if he wasn’t feeling well and something is really wrong?

It’s that terrifying prospect that finally forces Eddie to rap on the door. “Stevie?”

“Come in,” comes the muffled response.

Eddie opens the door carefully so he doesn’t accidentally hit Steve, but Steve is sitting fully-clothed in the empty bathtub on the other side of the room. “Hi, sweetheart,” Eddie greets him as he comes to sit on the closed toilet lid.

Steve has his knees tucked up to his chin, arms wrapped around his shins. He turns his head sideways so he can speak more clearly. “I had to call Child Services.”

Jesus. Steve loves his class of second graders like they’re his own children. To have to report some kind of abuse to one of them… no wonder Steve went straight to the peace and quiet of the bathtub. “Oh, baby. I’m so sorry.”

His eyes are dry, but Steve still rubs at his nose with the back of his wrist. “Yeah. Samantha. She had…” He gestures vaguely at his neck. “She usually has bruises somewhere, you know, she’s seven. But today she had actual fingerprints...”

Eddie drops to his knees on the rug next to the tub and gets his arms around Steve right as he starts to shake.

“And when I asked her about it, she just said, ‘He didn’t mean to!’ Like you can accidentally choke your own kid hard enough to leave marks like that.” Steve sniffs. “But he’s her dad and she loves him.”

With that, he buries his face in his knees and lets Eddie hold him.

Steve has always struggled with this part of being a teacher, even while he was working on his degree. Eddie can still see it so clearly, Steve pacing around the tiny dining table in their first apartment, ranting about mandatory reporting.

“You know what would’ve happened to me if a teacher said anything? My dad would’ve made us all smile and pretend everything was fine, and he would’ve beat the shit out of me as soon as the investigator left!” Steve had slammed his fist on the countertop as he passed.

“But we’re supposed to report immediately once we have reason to suspect abuse. Don’t take the time to make sure the kid is safe, don’t look at the broader pattern of incidents, just…” He had run out of breath there and couldn’t catch it for several minutes once he started crying, not out of sadness or worry but frustration.

It’s not frustration that drives Steve to tears now. It’s grief and fear for Samantha, for a younger version of himself, for the consequences of what the law requires of him.

“You’ve been looking out for her for a long time,” Eddie murmurs, chin hooked over Steve’s shoulder. The edge of the tub is digging into his side but he’ll be damned if he lets go of Steve right now. “This just confirms that your instincts were right. And hopefully now she’s gonna get help.”

“I’m scared that I just put her in a worse situation,” Steve admits, raising his head enough to wipe his cheeks with the sleeve of his sweater. “She shouldn’t have to deal with all this, she’s just a kid.”

Eddie vaguely remembers something about Sammy’s mom not being in the picture. “She can’t stay with an abusive parent just because she loves him. That’s why children don’t get to make the decisions here.”

Steve shakes his head. “But when she’s stuck in a foster home because of me—”

“Nuh-uh-uh, don’t even go there.” He ducks his head to look Steve in the eye. “She’s gonna be safe because of you. She’s gonna go home from school and not have to worry about her dad hurting her anymore. That’s huge.” He knows they can both understand that.

“I wish there was something else I could do,” Steve sighs.

“Just keep being the best second grade teacher in the state. Keep paying attention and listening to the kids. That’s what they need from you.”

Steve tilts his head to rest against Eddie’s shoulder. “It doesn’t feel like enough.”

“It’s more than you think.” Eddie kisses his temple, runs his fingers through Steve’s hair. “I had a teacher in fifth grade, Ms. Martin. It was, like, the year after my mom died, and I wasn’t coping at all. My dad was barely around to drop off some food for me once in a while. I was a nightmare student. Stole from the other kids, slept during lessons, started fights at recess.”

“It’s hard to care about school with stuff like that going on at home,” Steve says. Even now, he’s defending Eddie against shit that happened twenty years ago.

“Luckily for me, Ms. Martin understood that, too. She knew I was smart and I liked to draw, so she would assign me little projects. Stuff like illustrating a scene from the book we were reading or drawing a diagram of the parts of a plant or whatever. She let me work in her classroom at lunch and after school. Every day, she brought me a sandwich and a snack so I didn’t have to sneak food out of someone else’s lunchbox.”

Steve sits up to look at him with the most heartbroken expression. “Ed, that’s— she sounds incredible.”

“Yeah. She might not have fixed things for me outside of the classroom, but she made being at school a thousand times more bearable. Just by giving a shit.” He grins up at Steve. “Like you.”

“You know you do that kind of stuff, too, right? Like when you donated all those old dice sets for D&D Club, and when you helped me make Valentines for the whole class so nobody would feel left out. And when you delivered the pizzas for the Halloween party. And—“

Eddie hangs his head in an imitation of bashfulness. “I’m just your humble sidekick. All of that was your idea.”

“Then thank you for helping me make school more bearable for my kids.” Steve takes Eddie’s face between his big, gentle hands and kisses his forehead before angling his head back so their lips align.

“It’s my pleasure.” Eddie pushes himself to his feet with a groan as his knees creak. “Fuck, I’m getting to old to sit on the floor.”

Steve holds both hands out to Eddie, arms fully outstretched as if asking him to pull him upright. When Eddie doesn’t move, he whines, “C’mon, my ass is asleep. At least you were on the cushy rug!”

With a put-upon sigh, Eddie heaves Steve to his feet. “Shower first or food? I made meatballs.”

“Meatballs!” Steve throws his arms around Eddie’s neck, mostly for balance as he steps out of the bathtub. “You really do love me,” he fawns, batting his lashes for effect.

“You’re okay, I guess.” Before Steve can object, Eddie darts in for a quick kiss and darts off. “Wash up, dinner’s in five!”

[neil-gaiman]

Hi Neil,

April 30th is the Day of the Homeschooled Child, when homeschooling survivors, alumni, and allies raise awareness about the need for safer homeschooling regulations in the U.S. For myself and some fellow homeschoolers I grew up with, homeschooling allowed often well-meaning parents and guardians to give us excessive corporal punishments, to physically isolate us, and to expose us to a variety of conspiracy theories from unreliable and questionably sourced curricula. Warned that the government wanted to steal us and indoctrinate us, we believed that speaking to other adults about our abuse was not an option. Without teachers or caregivers outside the home, we did not have regular access to mandatory reporters for neglect or abuse.

I am hoping that people in the Tumblr community will take this opportunity to stand up for homeschooled children’s rights by signing this Bill of Rights for the Homeschooled Child and by lobbying for stricter oversight and protections for homeschooled children in the US: https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/bill-of-rights/

Please, please spread the word. <3

Happy to spread the word. (As an opinion: I think the Bill of Rights for the Homeschooled Child starts out well, but then seems to wander away from Homeschooling and into being a Bill of Rights for All Children. Whoever made it might want to keep it focussed on what could actually be within the remit of someone homeschooling a child. But that's just my opinion.)

[probablyasocialecologist]

We are living in a moment of serious gender revanchism in the United States. Feminists who self-define as “gender critical” and are otherwise openly transphobic will object to the comparison, but it is striking how much the movement to criminalize gender-affirming care for young people shares with the movement to criminalize abortion. Both find their fiercest champions in white, religious, conservative men who dismiss the evidence put forward by medical professionals that the treatment in question saves lives. Both claim to speak on behalf of silenced “children,” be they conveniently unborn or too young to be taken at their word. Both struggled to find widespread support until a father took his crusade on the road: abortion was not “an Evangelical issue” before Dr. Francis Schaeffer, a charismatic pastor, promoted his son Frank’s 1979 anti-abortion film Whatever Happened to the Human Race?; and anti-trans legislation was initially “hard to sell,” according to the Texas Tribune, until a North Texas dad named Jeff Younger built a sympathetic following online by accusing his ex-wife, a pediatrician, of wanting to “chemically castrate” their trans daughter. Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s order that citizens report parents of transgender kids to the authorities so that they can be investigated for child abuse echoes the section in SB 8 that rewards vigilante citizens for reporting abortion providers to authorities. Both movements have become central to the Republican Party’s strategy to raise funds and win elections. Not least, both movements have forced pregnant and trans people to prove, in preordained terms, their absolute certainty that they need the treatment they say they do. As the opposition puts up resistance in the form of misinformation, mandatory waiting periods, sonograms, and extensive psychological testing, patients lose precious time as hormonal processes they hope to forestall come closer and closer to transforming their bodies.

The experience of gender dysphoria is not identical to the experience of forced pregnancy, but it should not have to be for us to defend one another’s right to bodily autonomy as if it were our own. To respond to the heartbreak of losing Roe by further scapegoating trans people, as some cisgender feminists have done, is not only an unnecessary cruelty but a logical and political error that none of us can afford to make. There is no evidence to support the claim that inclusive language in reproductive health spaces “erases” or “harms” cis women, as Pamela Paul recently argued in the New York Times. (If anything, terms like pregnant people are more precise, as not all women are capable of pregnancy and not all pregnant people — e.g., cisgender girls under 18 — are women.) To say so anyway, with no basis in fact, is to do the far right’s work for them.

Dayna Tortorici, Your Body, My Choice The movement to criminalize abortion

[thehoundera]

In the recently published Cass Review (2024), there is consistent mention of the prevalence of autism in the ‘trans and gender-diverse’ population, which is ‘three to six times higher’ than in the cis population ‘according to some studies’, such as Warrier et al., 2020 (Cass 5.41). The report cites concern in de Vries et al. (2011b) about whether autistic trans adolescents are experiencing “a general feeling of being just “different”” or a ““core” cross-gender identity”. A parent is quoted saying that their child, formerly bullied due to ‘ASD’, became a ‘celebrity’ and received ‘social kudos’ upon coming out (Cass p. 160); autistic children, including underdiagnosed “teenage girls”, are noted to have trouble “fitt[ing] in” (Cass 5.43) and “express[ing] how they are feeling about […] their gender identity” (Cass 5.44). There is also a note that a higher % of adolescents who discontinued puberty suppression were autistic (Cass 14.23). (I cannot examine the relevant commissioned study yet, but would note that the raw number here is likely to be very low.)

The obvious subtext here is that autistic trans children are less trustworthy about their articulation of transness than neurotypical trans children, and should therefore face more gatekeeping and vetting. In the report, it is noted that children, who know about this preconception, are routinely refusing to disclose neurodiversity to clinicians for fear of discreditation (Cass 11.11); the report’s response to this is to advocate for mandatory clinical screening for “neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder” at point of entry for adolescent patients (Recommendation 2). I’m not going to get into the full scope of problems with this; there is no evidence that autistic people are impaired in identifying their own gender, or that the higher incidence of transness/gender diversity in the autistic population is symptomatic of misidentification. But I am going to talk about one study cited in Cass:

“In contrast [to the patients in the original Dutch study of puberty blockers], in a detailed study of young people with ASD and gender dysphoria (de Vries et al., 2010), it was noted that “‘while almost all adolescents with GID [gender identity dysphoria] are sexually attracted to individuals of their birth sex, the majority of the gender dysphoric adolescents with ASD were sexually attracted to partners of the other sex” (Cass 8.29). [highlights my own]

Anyone who is familiar with Blanchardian typology will recognise what is going on here: baseline expected attraction to individuals of one’s ‘birth sex’ (i.e. trans straight attraction) is contrasted with a suspect population who experience attraction to ‘other sex’ individuals (i.e. trans gay attraction). ‘Other sex’ attraction is used to devalue claims to transness in all trans populations, especially trans women, as it marks them both as desirably recuperable to cisheterosexuality and as unable to perform either legible homosexual gender variance or sufficiently authentic — i.e. straight — future transness, rendering them an ideal plausibly deniable target of gendered abuse. Transphobic fantasy fixates on the trans woman who pursues/‘predates on’ women, and trans men who pursue men are also a disproportionate target of anti-effeminate mockery. (This model also obviously erases bisexuality, which Cass itself notes is a high incidence sexuality among all trans groups (Cass 8.3), and uses bioessentialist sex terminology — it appears that if I exclusively dated a trans woman I would be classified here as ‘attracted to males’).

It shouldn’t matter regardless; autism and sexual orientation both shouldn’t impede someone’s right to medical autonomy. However, given this claim is clearly being used to delegitimise autistic trans people — including in the original study, where they claim that ‘adult transsexuals not sexually attracted to their natal sex show in some studies less satisfactory postoperative functioning compared with birth-sex attracted transsexuals’ — it is notable that the claim is false. It is obviously false the second you look at their data. They have a sample of nine adolescents (which would prove nothing even if the majority were ‘non-birth-sex attracted’) and the claim is still wrong about their own data.

De Vries et al (2010) is a nightmare of a study. It’s an analysis of 16 children with ASD who attended a Dutch gender clinic between 2004 and 2007 — specifically 7 children (ages 7–10) and 9 adolescents (ages 12–18). All the patients are misgendered throughout. There are also deeply disturbing comments about the sexual arousal and genital discomfort of children as young as 7, suggesting that the children seen at the clinic were asked deeply inappropriate and traumatising questions from admission. Various aspects of the under-11s’ profiles are immediately provoking, such as what the ‘behavioral program’ that reduced an 8-year-old’s ‘dressing up’ consisted of, or why certain children were referred to the clinic at all (some seem to have presented primarily with cross-gender behaviour rather than cross-gender identification). In any case, the sexual orientation of the under-11s clearly isn’t known, and the Cass Review’s claim is specific to adolescents anyway.

Of the adolescents, all of whom have a stated sexual orientation, we have:

AFAB 12-year-old, attracted to boys

AFAB 16-year-old, attracted to girls

AFAB 18-year-old, attracted to girls

AMAB 13-year-old, attracted to ‘neither boys nor girls’

AMAB 14-year-old, attracted to boys

AMAB 15-year-old, attracted to both girls and boys

AMAB 16-year-old, attracted to boys (specifically ‘homosexual’ boys)

AMAB 16-year-old, attracted to girls

AMAB 17-year-old, attracted to girls

By my count, to use their terminology that’s 3 adolescents with solely ‘other sex’ attraction (and I would note that one of those is 12 years old), 4 with ‘birth sex’, 1 bisexual and 1 with no stated attraction. THAT IS NOT A MAJORITY. EVEN IF YOU INCLUDE THE BISEXUAL IT’S NOT A MAJORITY.

There’s a more salient aspect of this whole thing, though: the outcomes of the adolescents. The only adolescents approved for ‘SR’ — sexual reassignment, i.e. surgery — at this gender clinic were the ones who are ‘birth sex attracted’. The AFAB kid attracted to boys was ‘not eligible for SR’ and ‘happy being a ‘tomboy’ after counselling’; the bisexual AMAB kid was rendered ineligible and ‘referred for cognitive behavioral therapy around disturbing sexual arousal’; of the two AMAB kids attracted solely to girls, one was rendered ineligible but still had a ‘strong wish for SR’ at followup, while the other dropped out of the clinic, was ‘unwilling to assent to a treatment plan’, and got surgery abroad (good for her). ‘Non-birth-sex attracted’ trans adolescents here are obviously systematically gatekept from surgical interventions, and there are murky suggestions of conversion therapy, while most of the ‘birth-sex-attracted’ trans adolescents were awaiting surgery or hormones at followup.

But wait, there’s more. The study itself argues for lower ‘postoperative functioning’ of ‘non-birth-attracted transsexuals’, citing Smith et al. (2005) on ‘Transsexual subtypes: Clinical and theoretical significance’. (This study is straight up Blanchardian; it literally says that trans women attracted to men have a ‘more convincing cross-gender appearance.’) What does ‘postoperative functioning’ mean? It means that gay and bisexual trans people have ‘significantly more psychological problems’ than straight trans people — which would seem evidently explainable by a) less understood etiology of transness in non-homosexual-presenting trans youth, which means later treatment & more gatekept treatment, and b) worse cultural treatment of gay trans people.

So, the Cass Review took a study full of glaring markers of sexual misconduct & conversion therapy being enacted on trans children, quoted a statement about the data that is obviously incorrect if you look at the data for five seconds, used it to make a point intended to discredit autistic youth / paint them as delusional heterosexuals, and ignored blatant evidence of a long and documented history of gay and bi trans people being blocked from necessary healthcare interventions.

[z0ruas]

April 30, 2023

"Day of the Homeschooled Child is a yearly observance to recognize children harmed by minimal homeschool laws across the U.S. On this day, we come together to honor three specific groups within the homeschooling community: 

Children who have been murdered in homeschool settings

Children who survived severe abuse and neglect in homeschool settings

Homeschool alumni with traumatic experiences

Why? Because in the national conversation surrounding homeschooling, abused children and adults are too often unheard. That’s why we founded the Coalition for Responsible Home Education and created Homeschooling’s Invisible Children, a public database of child abuse and neglect cases in homeschool settings. And it’s why we created Day of the Homeschooled Child, set in April to coincide with National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

Today, over 1.7 million children are homeschooled in the U.S. But unfortunately, state homeschool laws have almost no measures to ensure these children are receiving a quality education in a safe home. 

Here’s a glimpse of what this policy failure looks like:

In 48 states, it’s legal for registered sex offenders and convicted child abusers to homeschool their own children without any restrictions. There are no requirements for those at-risk children to have contact with mandatory reporters of child abuse. 

In 11 states, parents aren’t required to notify education officials of their decision to homeschool. That means countless homeschooled children aren’t being accounted for in any way.

No state requires homeschooling parents to screen their children for medical conditions or ensure those children receive care. Abusive homeschooling parents can keep their children away from life-saving medical care without anyone to notice or intervene.

Millions of homeschooled children ​​lack guaranteed access to child welfare programs their public-schooled peers have. That includes food and nutrition programs, age-appropriate sex education, mental health counseling and resources, and monitoring for child abuse and neglect."

[shu-of-the-wind]

Okay so I have been asked to cast an eye over SB197 in the WV legislature, which is a new bill introduced to both add a new section to WV law as well as amend an existing section about child neglect and abuse, to see what potential issues I see.

TLDR: this is not only really dangerous from a standpoint of people being trans publicly, since one of the big editions is making being trans a display of obscene material and punishable by law, particularly within school grounds, but I am also seeing a lot of parental rights additions that make me REALLY SCARED of how trans kids are going to be treated in WV. I’m going to go thru it section by section and break down why each section frightens me, so hopefully this is educational for folks.

My creds: I worked in family law as an attorney for three years, I was affiliated with a public defenders office for that same amount of time working primarily with juvenile offenders, and I am still an attorney even if I haven’t worked in those fields for the last six months. Plus I’m trans. And I love WV and wanted to live there. So.

WEST VIRGINIA'S FUN NEW SHITSHOW HORROR HOUSE TIME.

The new section (formally titled §18-5-29, Obscene matter in public schools prohibited [I will be calling it the Obscenity section]) is about 700 words of absolute garbage. Essentially what it distills down to is the following.

Section A: prohibiting anything they label as “obscene matter” in or within 2500 feet of any public school library, classroom, building, or other facility under the supervision of the state board of education and requiring that any school officials or personnel who become aware of the material remove it from school grounds. “Obscene matter” is currently defined in §61-8A-1 of the WV code, pretty fuckin broadly (unconstitutionally so in my opinion but ~that’s me~). So basically anything an “average person applying contemporary community standards would find taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest or is pandered to a prurient interest” (basically, anything ~unwholesome~), anything that an “average person applying community standards” would find depicts sexually explicit conduct in a “patently offensive way,” or anything that a reasonable person would find “taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, scientific or political value” which basically means E V E R Y THING.

Section B. This is the one that scares the shit out of me tbqh, cause this is folding in the amendment section I mentioned earlier to another part of the WV code specifically relating to child abuse and neglect. This section mandates that any “school officials or school personnel while engaged in a professional capacity or activity” shall be found to be a “custodian of children” under WV law. This basically makes EVERYONE a mandatory reporter, which like…most professionals already are, but at the same time this is EXPLICITLY MAKING ANYONE WHO WORKS IN THE SCHOOL IN ANY CAPACITY (see: any school officials or school personnel) mandatory reporters regarding “obscene matter.” So if an adult working at the school even SUSPECTS that a child has been exposed to “obscene material “while in any public school facility (unclear from the phrasing if the exposure happened on school property, or if the professional just learns about it there) and they decide not to report it (or they “fail to make a TIMELY report” when there’s no real definition of what timely means) then they can be prosecuted for a misdemeanor and imprisoned.

Section C. The state superintendent is going to establish a procedure to file complaints alleging violations of subsection A. If they find that a violation occurred, they will TELL THE COPS THAT IT HAPPENED.

Section D. No government funds (state or federal) can be used to develop or operate programs “designed to promote or encourage sexual activity, whether homosexual or heterosexual” or “to distribute or aid in distribution of any legally obscene materials” within 2500 feet of a school building or facility. Which, woof. We could unpack everything about that one, but it’ll be most of the review.

Section E. If an adult is found to have committed a felony under the child neglect statute related back to this one (if they’re found to have neglected kids by allowing them to view or possess “obscene material” is my understanding, this bill isn’t written that well) then they will be subject to penalties set forth in a felony, which I’m guessing (on average) is at least a year in jail and a thousand dollar fine, from what I’ve seen of WV felony statutes.

Section F. THIS IS THE OTHER REALLY SCARY ONE TO ME FROM A LEGAL STANDPOINT. “Any student or parent, guardian, or custodian on behalf of a student shall have civil cause of action against a county board, public charter school, state board” if the entity caused or was negligent in allowing a violation of the preceding sections, basically if they let anything slide PARENTS CAN SUE THE SCHOOL which like…if you’re talkin about a trans kid who is not out to their parents, they’re found to have “obscene material” (fanfiction?? Fanfiction could qualify here??? Risque art that isn’t even definitionally pornography?? A book abut transitioning that they’re hiding from their parents???) the school is mandated to not only out this kid to their parents, but the parents can then sue the school if the school DOESN’T OUT THE CHILD. Just spinning a hypothetical here but I hate this.

The rest of the bill is adding in definitions to Article 8A of the WV code, which are as follows. Anything italicized is the new language that has been proposed to be added by the bill; anything NOT italicized was already in the law:

(g) "Graphic," when used with respect to a depiction of sexually explicit conduct, means that a viewer can observe any part of the genitals or pubic area of any depicted person or animal during any part of the time that the sexually explicit conduct is being depicted.

(h) "Identifiable minor" means a person: (i) who was a minor at the time the visual depiction was created, adapted, or modified; or (ii) whose image as a minor was used in creating, adapting, or modifying the visual depiction; and (iii) who is recognizable as an actual person by the person’s face, likeness, or other distinguishing characteristic, such as a unique birthmark or other recognizable feature;  and shall not be construed to require proof of the actual identity of the identifiable minor.

(i) "Indistinguishable" used with respect to a depiction, means virtually indistinguishable, in that the depiction is such that an ordinary person viewing the depiction would conclude that the depiction is of an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

(i)(l) "Matter" means any visual, audio, or physical item, article, production transmission, publication, display, exposure, exhibition, or live performance, or reproduction thereof, including any two- or three- dimensional visual or written material, stereopticon, moving picture, slide, film, picture, drawing, not exceeding $500 video, graphic, graphic novel, or computer generated or reproduced image; or any book, not exceeding $500 magazine, newspaper or other visual or written material; or any motion picture or other pictorial representation; or any statue or other figure; or any recording, transcription, or mechanical, chemical, or electrical reproduction; or any other articles, video laser disc, computer hardware and software, or computer generated images or message recording, transcription, or object, or any public or commercial live exhibition performed for consideration or before an audience of one or more.

(j)(m) "Minor" means a an person under eighteen years of age or a person representing himself or herself to be a minor. Any prosecution under this article relating to a victim who is representing himself or herself to be a minor shall be limited to investigations being conducted or overseen by law enforcement.

And the big doozy here is this one:

(k)(n) "Obscene matter" means matter that:

(1) An average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, would find, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, is intended to appeal to the prurient interest, or is pandered to a prurient interest;

(2) An average person, applying community standards, would find depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexually explicit conduct; and

(3) A reasonable person would find, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

(4) For the purposes of any prohibition, protection, or requirement under any and all articles and sections of the Code of West Virginia protecting children from exposure to indecent displays of a sexually explicit nature, such prohibited displays shall include, but not be limited to, any transvestite and/or transgender exposure, performances or display to any minor.

(l)(o) "Parent" includes a biological or adoptive parent, legal guardian, or legal custodian. (underlining this one for the legal side note that remember that custodian language from before??? that's where this kicks in)

(m)(p) "Person" means any adult, partnership, firm, association, corporation, or other legal entity.

(n)(q) "Sexually explicit conduct" means a ultimate definitive sexual act, normal or perverted, between persons of the same or opposite sex, actual or simulated, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal sexual intercourse, sodomy, oral copulation of any kind, sexual bestiality, sexual sadism and masochism, masturbation, excretory functions and lewd exhibition of the anus, genitals or pubic area of any person, or lascivious simulated sexual intercourse where the genitals, breast, or pubic area of any person is exhibited.

okay. well.

I mean. This is all just gonna be an absolute garbage hellscape if this gets passed. THE IMPORTANT THING IS IT HAS NOT BEEN PASSED. If you live in WV, you can call folks and say that you are AGAINST the passage of SB197. Call your state or county representatives! They are the people who vote on this! If your representative is on the Judiciary Committee, so much the better, that’s where the bill is being evaluated right now!!! Here is the list of delegates on the committee! Call them!! Make a point to be upset!!! Explain why you don’t want this bill to pass!!! Keep an eye on the Committee website for the dates that the public hearings will be held on this bill, because there likely will be a public hearing people can speak at!! You CAN actually do something, it’s not the end of the world.

Even if you do not live in WV and you live NEAR WV, then 100% reach out to folks you know who live there and give them a safe space to land if they need to get out of the state!!! There are things you can do. Just….a heads up to everyone that this is on the table and it’s something they’re going to be discussing.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Remember in 2020 when victoria in australia passed a mandatory reporting law literally and explicitly criminalising the seal of the confessional?

There is no bond of trust so intimate, so solemn, so ancient that these prying fucks will not try to use the muscle of the state to nose their way in and install a fucking panopticon wiretap to keep a watch out for potential Wrongdoers. If they could turn friendship and romance into obligate snitch roles they would do that too

[australianwomensnews]

Inmates convicted of domestic violence tracking their former partners from inside prison. A suspected child trafficker purchasing 11 magnetic surveillance devices. An elderly couple whose relationship deterioration started in tracking and ended in murder-suicide.

These are all examples of what the NSW Crime Commission says is an escalating problem – criminals using trackers to keep tabs on their victims.

Surveillance devices, including GPS trackers that can attach to a car, mobile phone spyware and bluetooth tracking devices like Air Tags, are increasingly being used in both domestic violence and organised crime, says a report from the Crime Commission released on Tuesday.

“It’s scary. We knew devices were being used in crime, particularly organised crime, but didn’t know how widely,” NSW Crime Commissioner Michael Barnes told the Herald.

The Commission was initially investigating the use of surveillance in organised crime, like in the execution of drug kingpin Alen Moradian, but came to realise they “had to include domestic violence”, said Barnes.

Asked about the crossover between organised crime and domestic violence, he said: “I think it’s the type of people. They are macho and violent, very possessive, their ego is out of control, it’s not surprising they are unrealistically possessive and controlling.

“To do that sort of work you have to be involved in violence, and have a command and control approach.”

The Commission analysed 5663 purchases of tracking devices, with alarming findings. One in four purchasers had a history of domestic violence, 15 per cent of purchasers had a history in serious or organised crime, and 126 were subject to apprehended violence orders at the time of purchase.

One in three offenders charged under the Surveillance Devices Act with unlawfully using tracking devices were also associated with organised crime networks, the report said.

Such was the commission’s alarm that it referred 391 of those purchasers to NSW Police for investigation. NSW Police were contacted for comment.

One man – with no criminal convictions but suspected to be involved in the trafficking and sexual abuse of children – purchased 11 magnetic trackers in the past year.

In another instance, an elderly man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, used a GPS tracker from a car shop to stalk his wife of 25 years before murdering her. “The tracking appeared to form part of a series of behaviours that the offender used to prevent the victim from leaving the relationship,” said the report.

In another example, two men, both in prison for domestic violence offences, continue to undertake surveillance on their partners from inside.

“It’s extraordinary,” said Barnes.

Barnes said the Find My iPhone app can alert people who suspect they are being surveilled.

“It gives you an alert if you are in close vicinity and moving with an AirTag that isn’t on your device.”

The Crime Commission has made a number of recommendations to government to reduce access to tracking devices. These include amending legislation to explicitly prohibit accessing tracking devices in AVO proceedings and regulating the sale of surveillance devices through licensing, recording device identifiers and customer particulars, and mandatory reporting of suspicious transactions.

A spokesperson for Police Minister Yasmin Catley said the government “will consider the findings and respond in due course”.

If you or someone you know is affected by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732.

[whorejolras]

this has been sitting in my drafts for months and i'm finally posting it.

it's adding on from this post about Fantine and sex work in les mis. this post ended up being long and more about sex work than Fantine but it does come around i swear.

the way we discuss Fantine is very important, but why?

the way that we talk about Fantine and sex work in les mis - on tumblr, with our friends, in the brick club chat, in articles and in scholarly analysis - directly correlates with the way we treat modern day sex workers and the struggles we face today. notably, the fight for decriminalisation.

i'd argue that Fantine is the most famous of the "dead sex worker" trope. i'd argue she's one of the most famous fictional sex workers. she was just name dropped in the new mean girls movie. everyone knows the story of Fantine the "Miserable Dead Prostitute".

to many people, the book or musical is their first and often only point of reference for sex work, and informs how they treat real life sex workers. many of us interacting in fandom are or will soon be adults with jobs, you could be a childcare worker or a doctor or therapist or any role that makes you a mandatory reporter. and if you hold biases towards sex workers and your patient or the parent of the kid in your class is one, then what.

(you know i had a therapist tell me once that if i had any kids she would "be forced" to report me to the police for "child abuse" on the grounds of my job. that was discrimination and was illegal as i live in one of the four locations in the world with sex work both decriminalised and a protected attribute under discrimination law, but it still happened.)

how people think informs how they vote, and public opinion in turn impacts legislation that actively damages sex workers and puts them in real danger. (criminalisation, the nordic model, "legalisation" also known as licensing, instead of full decriminalisation).

here is a resource put together by NSWP, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects that covers terminology and legal frameworks. I recommend giving the whole thing a read, but if you just want to learn about the difference between the different legal models I'm talking about read from pages 12-14.

full decriminalisation is the safest best practice option for all sex workers. not the nordic model, not select legalisation, full decriminalisation for all workers including those who aren't "legal" citizens.

bringing this back to Fantine. when i search analysis of sex work/"prostitution" in les mis, this is the shit i find.

link 1 | link 2

i don't even know where to start on rebranding "oldest profession" to "oldest form of oppression" and "trafficked and forced into the industry" - the trafficking conflation is a common one. the majority of labour trafficking occurs in industries completely unrelated to sex work, with sex trafficking numbers being grossly overestimated. there are no true numbers because under criminalisation victim/survivors of sex trafficking can't safely seek help for fear of being criminalised. decriminalisation helps everyone.

I will also say that the trafficking narrative is a racist xenophobic one used to target migrant workers, making them more vulnerable to higher rates of police violence, detention and deportation. if you want to get deeper into this I recommend reading Migrant sex workers and trafficking - Insider research for and by migrant sex workers.

yet here we see the idea that most of (if not all) sex workers are trafficked or forced, a narrative that removes the agency of sex workers and obscures the reality of labour trafficking. in short, lies which serve to sensationalise and erase real lived experiences, provide publicly-sanctioned excuses for the heavy policing of marginalised communities, and helping no one.

i will quickly say here that you'll never meet anyone who fights as hard for sex trafficking survivors than sex workers and sex worker peer led organisations.

and in the second example, you see how even though they're saying sex work, (so they listened enough to know not to say "prostitute" anymore), but they're still sharing anti-sw beliefs like "selling the body/selling yourself", violent phrasing that denies us not only agency but connection to our bodies, autonomy, and consent.

this is something i'll talk about a lot more in the chapter analysis that i'll get around to finishing and posting one day: but fantine doesn't sell her body to sex work any more than she sells it to the textile factory. how is one form of physical labour "selling your body/yourself" and another isn't? at the end of the day, she still owns her body, just like when i leave a booking i still own my body, just like when i clocked out of my past civilian jobs i still owned my body. we sell labour, we sell services. not ourselves.

noting here that even when discussing exploitation and trafficking, phrasing it as "selling your body" is also gross, still removes the survivors agency and connection to their body, and shows that you're not really a safe ally to survivors at all.

these ideas, that i pulled from the first paragraphs of two of the first analyses of fantine i stumbled across, are the same ones that sex workers around the world argue against when lobbying for full decriminalisation. it's the arguments we have with law makers and councils and saviour organisations and our own families and friends.

i'll talk about this more later but look at how anne hathaway finished playing Fantine and then signed off on a letter and petition against full decriminalisation of sex work and advocated for the nordic model - ensuring that sex workers and trafficking victims alike would be more vulnerable to violent clients and policing.

ironically, the same thing Fantine faces.

so my whole roundabout point is it matters. the way we talk about characters like Fantine matter. this directly impacts how real people treat real sex workers. this directly impacts legislation that directly impacts the lives and safety of sex workers AND survivors of sex trafficking.

just in case i haven't said it enough the safest option for both parties is always complete and full decriminalisation btw 🫶🏻

all links in case they break (sorry for making it longer but i don't trust tumblr with links lol)

tumblr post:

NSWP terminology and legal models source:

screenshot 1:

screenshot 2:

Migrant sex workers and trafficking - Insider research for and by migrant sex workers:

anne hathaway article: