Burlington school officials recently sent a survey to middle school children asking them about their sexual activities. Seriously.
Kids as young as 10 were asked questions about intercourse, sex toys, oral, anal, etc. These are the same kids who still have sleepovers and go to the Burlington Mall with their parents to shop for glitter pens and Legos.
Public reaction was predictably brutal. A few LGBTQ advocates said there was nothing wrong with the survey, but even gay parents were outraged because the issue is childhood — not gayness.
One survey question asks children if someone has ever forced them to do sexual things that they did not want to do. To the uninformed, this might seem like a reasonable question, but notice how it only asks whether the student did not “want” to do the act. Implicit in this phrasing is the idea that a child can choose to be raped. Nothing in the survey informs children that they are too young to consent.
The survey also asked how old the child was when they first “had sexual intercourse.” It then defines sexual intercourse as penile, anal, or oral penetration, or penetration by an object. The question then gives six age options for when the “intercourse” began, starting at age 8! Why would any school official intentionally describe an act of violence against an 8-year-old child as “intercourse”?
Who in their right mind wants to inhibit a child’s ability to understand the difference between violence and pleasure? Rape of a child is never pleasure, never sex, never intercourse. It is always violence, always a felony, always extremely harmful.
Adults are supposed to protect children and respect their immaturity, or so said a gaggle of public officials recently when they expressed support for a new law to expand the age limit for juvenile court so that 18- to 20-year-old criminals will be prosecuted as juveniles rather than adults.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell is pushing for the change and says it’s necessary because children’s brains aren’t done growing until age 25. Fair enough. But if a 20-year-old criminal should be treated like a child because his brain is still growing, shouldn’t an actual child half his age be entitled to at least the same respect?
A question toward the end asks students how many times in the past year they had been made to feel badly about themselves because of their race, religion, ethnicity, or gender identity. A worthwhile question to be sure, but it excludes girls. Why? Girls are made to feel badly about themselves more often than all the other groups combined, but the survey didn’t even ask.
If you’re wondering why a school would want to sexualize children and ignore the suffering of girls, consider the massive power of the porn industry. They lobby as big tech and have enormous influence over lawmakers and public policy. They lobby through proxy groups and disguise their demands to look like socially desirable causes by labeling them things like “diversity programming” or “health and wellness” policies. And they move quickly to silence people who object by calling them fascist and transphobic. It’s a clever strategy, and they have more than enough money to make it look legitimate.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, consider this. When a child reports sexual abuse, the strongest piece of evidence is often the lack of alternative explanations for how the child acquired sexual knowledge.
Put another way, if a child reports being raped, police and prosecutors can easily prove that the child is telling the truth by pointing out that the abuse was the child’s only exposure to sexual behavior. Forcing sexuality on children — whether through school surveys or explicit community programs – creates an “innocent” explanation that perpetrators can use to discredit their young victims and escape justice.
Burlington is not the only place where this is happening. If you care about children, take steps to determine whether this is going on in your community and fight to stop it. More importantly, if you encounter an adult who supports the sexualization of children, discourage your children from befriending their kids — and never, ever allow sleepovers.
Wendy Murphy is an attorney and victims’ rights advocate.
