Free and Fair Elections

I really enjoy reading articles by Peter Heck. He is a very reasonably minded individual who is very good at keeping things in perspective. That's why I'm unsurprised by his take on the subject of this article, as it is a very level-headed analysis, but I cannot help but disagree with it in part.

I don't disagree with his argument that there has been no professionally produced evidence that Trump actually won the 2020 election. He's obviously right. The grandiose promises of the people who were sure they could produce extraordinary evidence that the election was rigged did not come to fruition. That's obviously true. Is confidence in fair and free elections paramount for our particular governmental system to endure? Yes, I'd say it is. To save from going through every little detail, I agree with most of the arguments as standalone statements. The facts are facts, unless they aren't - to make my stance a little more clear. We couldn't know any differently because no hard evidence has come of it. The election process is innocent until proven guilty, persay. But just as many people have been acquitted under shaky and suspect terms, I'm wholly unconvinced that the "judicial process" has confidently acquitted the 2020 election. We're looking at the Casey Anthony of presidential elections.

So do I disagree that it's dangerous and irresponsible to "continue to peddle" the claim that Trump actually won the 2020? It could be interpreted that way, but it's not so clear cut. It's actually a little strange that Heck makes this argument considering that there is no sanctity of the election process from the leftosphere - especially when this is discussed at length in the article. Confidence in the election process is nonnegotiable for the survival of our country as is. Yet we have been seeing Democrats et. al. contesting the results of elections since George Bush in 2000 and 2004. Suddenly, after Obama won, elections are free and fair again. Trump wins in 2016 and the democratic process is hopelessly corrupt and endangered. It's all okay, though, because Biden won in 2020, so all those glaring issues with the election process that allowed Trump to incorrectly win in 2016 have been fixed and now it's dangerous and irresponsible to believe the elections are anything except the freest and fairest in all the land.

Peter Heck insists, essentially, that it's wrong for Our Side to say that the election process is corrupt to its very core because Their Side is saying it, so we must instill confidence in the populace about the integrity of the process by discontinuing to vocally doubt it. If we stop that, then there can be confidence in our election process once again and everything will somehow be fine.

This premise makes little sense if the democratic process is, in fact corrupted. If our elections are not, in fact, free and fair, then we do nothing but doom ourselves to an accelerated takeover by a one party rule. There appears to be little hard evidence of fraud, whether it's 2000, 2004, 2016, or 2020. Very few people are found guilty for voter fraud every year. The amount of fraud or otherwise tampering of the election process would have had to occur in multiple states and affect many thousands of votes for Trump to have actually had the election stolen from him as he so claims.

Yes, of course, there has been no hard evidence. Every lawsuit was denied processing, so evidence they had was never admitted to court. Events that have long passed, like Georgia's conspicuous burst water pipe that was resolved many hours before they sent people home and "stopped counting" but didn't actually stop counting, and every other state that was an all-but-guaranteed Trump win suddenly stopping votes in the middle of the night, shutting out Republican watchers, barring up windows and blocking all oversight, dumping ballots in through the back doors under cover, some states taking many multiples of days to finish counting and the subsequent gaslighting that "this happens all the time" (it doesn't), and then suddenly multiple states inexplicably turning around for Biden at the very last second, are not things we can really go back and examine, as they were real time events that do not have quantifiable numbers. Multiple YouTubers have been suspended and videos taken down for going to registered voter addresses and finding condemned houses or empty lots. People attest to having received many multiples of mail in ballots to their address. But there is no hard evidence, I'll admit. Nothing was admitted in court because all of the lawsuits were not allowed to proceed, so how could we have the evidence? People who investigate are blocked, silenced, and stifled. The mainstream media would never write dozens of highly amplified articles about canvassers going to registered voter addresses who voted in the 2020 election and finding empty lots, so speaking about it is a "conspiracy theory". There's nothing anyone can do except shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, there's no hard evidence."

What all of these events and this, I suppose, softer evidence points to, however, is absolutely a justifiable suspicion that perhaps our elections are not the freest and fairest elections of all time, and that they may, in fact, be compromised. The confidence in our elections is paramount to a continued functioning democratic republic. Which is why it's such a crying shame that it's entirely justifiable to believe that these elections are in fact not free, nor fair, and have been rigged in various covert and unquantifiable ways. We have articles all but admitting the "shadow government" rigged the election ahead of time by changing election laws and altering as many aspects of our democratic process as possible entirely under the radar, without the people's consent and even admittedly illegally in some cases, and yet we are somehow supposed to believe it's all good. Freest and Fairest Election of All Time. Never mind that many of the events that occurred while votes were being counted that night are the same schemes that are pulled in corrupt third world elections. Claiming it is very important for us to stop questioning the validity of the 2020 election to help instill confidence in the election process ignores that questioning the validity of the 2020 election isn't the problem. The problem is the incredibly suspect validity of the 2020 election.

And that's where Mr. Heck and I will simply have to disagree. I watched these bizarre and highly suspicious situations play out in real time the day and night of Nov 3rd 2020. This isn't a random dossier that showed up from an unknown source with unproven claims that got published by every mainstream media outlet who all declared it simply must be true. This is what I saw with my own eyes. I won't allow the MSM to gaslight me into believing it is very normal for it to take many many days to declare the presidential election winner. I have watched the news coverage for the presidential election in 2004 and 2008, as well as of course 2016. 

Trump was declared the winner in 2016 by 2am on Nov 4th 2016. No states suddenly stopped counting, threw out bipartisan vote watchers, had trucks of ballots dumped into the back doors while the vote counters taped poster boards all over the windows, nor had various "counting errors" giving statistically unlikely solid chunks of votes to a single candidate at 4 in the morning. Bipartisan vote watchers were not barred entry despite having been court ordered by a judge to be allowed in. Yet I am to believe no one would have committed any fraud in an election where a significant number of people genuinely believed they were going to "vote out" a literal dictator? Impossible. I contest it is in fact irresponsible to tell people to believe that there was not malicious behavior in the 2020 election. Our democratic republic does not require only confidence in the election process, but actually fair and free elections. The illusion of a properly functioning democratic republic is not an actual properly functioning democratic republic.

I wonder if the real reason Heck insists we should no longer question the integrity of our election process is simply because it's clearly no longer valuable or useful. I don't suspect this is the case, as a man who has written before about the importance of truth. I wonder then if it was not the fruitless endeavor and hopeless doomerism of the burden of knowing the election process is most likely compromised, but there's little any of us can actually do about it which prompted him to simply explain away the problem like this. Simply believing we have fair and free elections will not actually help us have fair and free elections, but it would surely help promote a comforting illusion. 

There is absolutely no reason not to bring up these highly suspicious behaviors by vote counters, the rushed patchwork legislation changes people did not vote for, the non-zero number of registered voter addresses located at empty houses. It is imperative not to simply put our fingers in our ears and sing loudly that we have confidence in the democratic process. We must be able to have dialogue about what kind of behavior is not allowed in order to have that confidence in our elections. Barring watchers, stopping counts at midnight and sending the Other Team's counters home, taping paper over the windows, trucking ballots into backdoors at 4am - these are not behaviors conducive to a fair and free election. Do not bar discussion about these things - and if you believe that casting doubt on the 2020 election while having this discussion does not help the case, then just say that. We can speak objectively about what does not happen when a country's elections are actually fair and free without invoking the alleged "Big Lie". But it's offensive to say that we must simply drop the whole thing and start having confidence in our election process after nothing has changed. 

More Cuties Arguments

It's been a few days since my first post and the people defending this movie have not stopped coming up with new attempts to argue against the valid criticism that this movie exploited the child actresses involved in making it. Strangely enough, we have not had to come up with any new arguments to explain why this movie contains child exploitation, since pointing vaguely to said parts of the movie and gesturing exhaustedly is the only necessary action. Still, the new attempts to justify the evils perpetrated by the people who made this film keep pouring in, and so I will explain why each of the ones I have seen are flimsy at best. At worst, these same arguments could be applied without any changes to defending the production of explicit child pornography without false pretenses. The following are presented in no particular order.

"The producer created trust between herself and the actresses, so she was being responsible to not exploit them." (source)

This argument is one of those that would translate perfectly to child exploitation in general. "Trust" is the main avenue adults who seek to harm children use to get those children to do what they want. Children are, unfortunately, easy to exploit because they often trust adults and anyone who acts confident without question. The argument here that the producer created trust between herself and the child actresses does nothing to alleviate the concerns that these children have been exploited. I am not saying that the producer was explicitly behaving maliciously, but it is very easy for a sociopathic person who seeks to harm someone to feign a caring relationship with a child in order to exploit them. Saying "forming this trust is a sign that she was not exploiting the children" is not a valid argument, since forming trust with victims is a basic child exploitation action.

"No one cared about Good Boys/Toddlers in Tiaras/Dance Moms." (source one / two / three)

This is not even an argument, but people who say this will behave as if they are making some brave point, so I will address it. First and foremost, I have not seen a single person who has actually been asked if they were okay with these productions say that they don't hate them. It is entirely - aside from merely grossly irresponsible - a baseless assumption that the same people who disapprove of Cuties are somehow over here cheering on movies like Good Boys. When Good Boys was being advertised and I happened to see some of the previews, I assure you I was thoroughly disgusted. I have found child beauty pageants and all manners of glorifying bad behavior in children and young teenagers to be despicable and I all but guarantee anyone mad about Cuties does too.

 

If your criticism is actually that there wasn't a similar outrage back then, then I agree with you. These disgusting shows and movies have been a blight on our society and if it took Cuties as our collective last straw to realize this is a real problem that shouldn't be tolerated, then I'll accept that - at least we finally realized there was a problem. However, "Cuties is okay because people didn't get outraged about child exploitation sooner" is not a valid argument. If you are simply mad that people didn't get outraged about child exploitation sooner, we are on the same side.

"The people who think the children were exploited are likely pedophiles for finding those scenes arousing." (source)

The argument here fails in two places. First and foremost, the argument here is that no normal person would find the scenes where the children rub themselves and hump the floor to be "sexy dancing" because they are children. This is something we obviously agree on - the problem is that there are non-normal people out there who think it is. That's literally the entire problem that we have with the movie. The movie's defenders will say that the scenes are supposed to be shocking and disturbing because they are children attempting to dance provocatively. This is entirely true for most people - but people who are capable of thinking about things other than themselves have realized that there are disturbed, sick people in the world who actively seek out things like this to rub one out to. We capable-of-thinking-for-five-extra-minutes people recognize that while we are properly disturbed by these scenes as intended, there are other disgusting people out there who will utilize this movie for their spank bank, and we subsequently get very upset about that because we actually care about children and don't want them to be sexualized and exploited this way.

Secondly, this argument fails in a more philosophical way. The argument here is that if you are not a pedophile, you will literally not even be able to recognize that the children are attempting to behave sexually. What happens is someone against the movie says the children are behaving sexually, and someone will say "you must be a pedophile if you thought the dancing was sexy". This would require that someone who is not a pedophile will be unable to recognize the sexual nature of the behavior. It will be so bewildering that you literally won't even understand the purpose of what's happening on the screen, because as a non-pedophile, you're unable to recognize when someone is attempting to behave sexually if you don't find them personally attractive. If this is the case, the entire point of the movie is lost, because the point of the movie is to shock the viewer in regards to child oversexualization.

 

This poster points out that they "couldn't imagine there could be a context where it wasn't creepy and cringey". This, supposedly, seemed like a smart thing to say for them, but I have trouble imagining that this person genuinely is unaware there are people who are aroused by children. If this is a genuine statement and not a hard cope, I can only say that it makes things much worse to know there are adults walking around unaware that children need to be protected from disturbed, perverted adults. It does seem easier to walk around pretending that society has evolved past harming vulnerable populations of people, but that is simply not the reality we live in.

As a bonus, by making this argument, you agree there are sick people in the world who would see these scenes and find them arousing. You should then, if you were being sincere, be as outraged as everyone else, if you truly recognized this. But you are not, for some reason. Probably because you are being insincere and don't actually believe the people who are mad about the explicit scenes in this movie are pedophiles, but are trying to "no u" them.

"You can't talk about the movie if you didn't watch it." (source (also basically every article about it))

I already touched on this but I will do so again as I have an additional bit to add. Most importantly, I've read countless testimonies from people who watched it and said it was disturbing. I actually do not enjoy being disturbed. I have often taken advice from people who said to not watch things that are disturbing and I have actually avoided many internet phenomena this way. I don't watch things if people who have watched them say that they are disturbing. I have absolutely no obligation to watch something that will negatively affect my mental health. Now, the point remains, am I then allowed to talk about the movie if I haven't watched it? Because I've taken the advice of people who have stated that this film is disturbing, and I subsequently do not wish to subject myself to something disturbing, must I then forfeit my ability to comment on the movie?

Yes, if I were writing a review of the movie or commenting on the plot or something in that vein. However, I'm not commenting on the plot or the message it attempts to convey. I have seen enough to know that the movie utilized exploitation of children to be created. My issue with the movie lies there - to argue that I must watch the movie in entirety to know whether or not this piece of information is true is disingenuous. The only argument that could possibly be made would be that the clips are not present in the movie, and I would find this out by watching the movie. This is, however, not a true statement and the fact is no one has attempted to make this claim. They know that the clips people have seen are present in the movie. I do not need to know about the plot or the character building of the main characters to know that the movie exploited its child actresses. The argument that people are attempting to make it essentially "yes those clips are there but when viewed within the context of the movie as a whole, they aren't child porn". It seems very disingenuous to say that something that, out of context, would look like child porn, is magically not child porn in context, as if someone who desired to utilize those clips for nefarious purposes doesn't know how the fast forward and rewind buttons work on their remote.

"The parents signed off on it, so no one was exploited." (source)

This is one of those "could be used unaltered to defend actual explicit child pornography" arguments. If anything a child does is magically fine if the parents sign off on it, then you can have a child do anything - anything at all - as long as you have the parent's permission. It doesn't matter that we were all absolutely horrified about the testimony of the 9 year old who said her mother's boyfriend was abusing her while her mother watched, I assume, since the mother signed off on it?

No, obviously not. It turns out it's possible for parents to put their children into dangerous situations. The parents of the children in this movie are irresponsible and have put their children into a situation where they were exploited. This argument insists that parents have full license to harm their children under the pretext that they are the parents. We as a society have decided that's actually not okay and have taken steps to remove children from households which we believe are causing them harm. While Child Protective Services is a corrupt organization that has used the threat of removing people's children on unjustifiable pretexts as political stunts, the concept remains that we believe parents do not have unrestrained rights to harm their children just because they are their children. To make this argument is disingenuous, though I suppose if the person making this argument really did think it was okay for parents to abuse their children, then at least they would be consistent - however, they would still be wrong.

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Cuties is Bad and You're Not an Intellectual for Thinking Otherwise

In the rare event that you are unaware of what the movie "Cuties" is, it's a French film that was recently released on Netflix. The movie claims to be a critique of Western oversexualized culture, starring a Muslim girl who is said to "join a twerking dance group to the disappointment of her traditional family". I have read several summaries of the movie from people who watched it and unfortunately seen small portions of clips from it. It is being vehemently defended by a large number of blue check mark journalists, under whose pitiable attempts to claim that there is value to the movie they are assaulted by 99% of the people who choose to reply. The problem with this movie is that it has displays of children being exploited, which would in any other context immediately be recognizable as child pornography to any human person. Because this particular child exploitation is masked behind a "message" and a fancy certificate of being an "award winning" (Sundance co-founder pleads guilty to child sexual abuse) "French film" (the French are sophisticated, or something), some bile-spewing, backwater degenerates have taken it upon themselves to defend it as "art":

"The controversy surrounding it seems to be propaganda fueled by QAnon types and anti-Semites."

 

"The freakout about #Cuties bothers me more than almost anything I've seen in a decade as a critic:"

 

 "This is going to blow your mind, but #Cuties (arriving today on #Netflix) is... exactly what rational people presumed it was!!"

 

These are just a few of the attempts to blatantly defend mainstreamed child pornography that I've seen today. I'm sure more will show up as the days pass, since these types of people believe they are much more intelligent than the people who disagree with them and that they could not possibly be wrong, ever. These people will double down until the end of their lives and there is nothing any reasonable person could do to change that. They believe that because the movie is a movie it's magically exempt from the actions individuals took to create it and the images it contains.

For any remaining reasonable people, I would make the following points quite clear, in hopes that they will not be smothered under the gaslighting attempts being made by the mainstream journalists.

What is happening now is a clear-cut example of something I have discussed before. In a previous post I outlined why "referring to non-mainstream theories and opinions as "right wing conspiracy theories" is intentional gaslighting". What is happening right now is that an opinion the vast, overwhelming majority of people hold is being labeled as something that is exclusive to "conservatives", or fill in the blank with any group of people vilified by the mainstream. A man above claims that it's antisemites who are against this movie. This particular accusation is so outrageous because it is slightly layered: far right people are often slandered as being antisemites, and so they extrapolated from satisfactorily simply calling it a "right wing" opinion and went for the throat with "antisemite", skipping ahead on the insult pyramid, not simply calling it right wing but calling it something more aggressive that right leaning people are often accused of being. 

 

This is meant to convince anyone uncomfortable with being called an antisemite or associated with antisemites to (hopefully, from the view of the author) come to his side and start being comfortable with sharing his opinion (as he is a Good Person, and certainly not an antisemite), leaving your uncultured, Nazi opinions behind. Because, see, antisemites are against this film, and if you are also against this film, you may be on the same side as antisemites! Which would be bad, for you and your image, and your aversion to antisemitism should motivate you to begin to support these blatant attempts to mainstream child pornography or else you might find yourself agreeing on a particular topic with people you disagree with on other topics, and we can't have that.

You can see other examples of using manipulative language to attempt to win people over and force this to be a "bipartisan" issue: saying the movie is exactly what "rational" people thought it would be. If you thought this was blatant child exploitation, you are irrational, is what this man is saying to us. Truly, if you were an elevated, enlightened individual like him, you would be rational (a Good Person), and know that this movie simply never was blatant child porn, despite visually seeing evidence with your own eyes to the contrary (tip: this is gaslighting).

Indeed, if you read the parental guidelines to this movie before they whitewashed and edited them to be less obvious that this is blatantly child porn, you would have seen that it actually admitted outright that it is child porn.

Supporters of the movie continue their feet-stomping tantrums by claiming that people cannot merely be against this film for showing children doing lewd things unless they can combat the "intellect" of the movie eloquently. Further down on one of the above links, a blue check insists: "If conservatives, who have jumped on the debate over #Cuties, want to be taken seriously as cultural arbiters, they have to be able to talk about the *text* of a movie like this in an honest, responsible way." All this is saying is that if the person who is telling you the movie exploits children can't manage to combat the messaging and script of the movie in a way that sounds like it's from a Cultured Person, then their opinion is invalid. Simply showing you a clip from the movie that is child pornography in order to prove that this film contains child pornography is "not an argument", they must be able to articulate an argument against the rest of the film, the parts that don't contain child pornography, in order to be "taken seriously" as people who are against child pornography.

This is not a compromise you need to actually make. It's actually entirely valid to point out that the movie required children to be exploited to be created and saying "the entire thing is in fact wrong for this reason". They could have filmed a movie about this topic without exploiting actual children. If they did this exact same movie without the child porn, no one would have cared. It may have even been universally accepted as portraying an important message! No doubt the oversexualization of Western culture is actually bad, which I agree with. I, however, cannot agree with the decision to show underaged girls twerking and rubbing themselves to make that point. 

 

Indeed, believing you are an intelligent, cultured individual for being able to "look past" the child exploitation present here is quite ironic - nuance is something that is lost on the majority of people. It seems very un-nuanced to condemn this entire film for "just a couple parts" that are child exploitation, but it is actually just as lacking in nuance as accepting the entire film for "just a couple parts" that are child exploitation. You have accepted the whole package - the message and the child porn - as opposed to condemning the entire package. It is the same amount of nuance. The correct nuanced position would be that the shots filmed and produced that show children in compromised positions was irresponsible and should have been handled entirely differently. 

 

Indeed, I have read several people say that the scene where the girl takes a photo of her privates and posts it online is quite lacking in any attempts to soften the distress this scene should cause. Somehow, this scene is filmed in a way that elicits the correct emotional response (shock, distress) - but they managed to film the dances, the twerking, the touching and everything else horrible in here in a pleasant and jolly light. It is very ignorant and shallow minded for the individuals who produced this film - giving them to benefit of the doubt as not being child predators themselves and genuinely believing they were filming something "shocking and distressing" - to film these particular scenes in a light that was pleasant and upbeat, as if they were truly attempting to make people aware of the effects of Western society's hypersexualization on children, they should have known that such a scene filmed in this way would be a gift on a silver platter to individuals who seek out these sorts of things for their own pleasure. It should have been filmed and produced in a way that elicited shame, horror, and distress - but it was not. This is the issue, and this is a nuanced position. You are not an intellectual for "looking past" the child exploitation happening for the message of the film, you are simply irresponsible.

 

Now, I've been seeing this circulating, and if you have been tricked by the following argument, allow me to provide you with some help: "People create movies criticizing the travesty of war by making war movies showing in vivid and uncomfortable detail the crimes against humanity that occur during war." This argument attempts to say that the film has full license to show children being exploited in order to criticize the oversexualized culture of the West, which is what they are claiming to be doing in the movie.

Here is the part where that argument falls short: no one is actually killed in a war movie. It's all simulated. The actual war crimes are not actually being perpetrated, they are being depicted and everyone goes home with all their limbs once it's over. Unfortunately, showing children behaving sexually in a movie is undeniably, inseparably literally child exploitation. The fact that these children performed these hypersexualized dances, lifted up their shirts, and touched each others bottoms doesn't go away when the movie is over. They are literal children, being encouraged to behave in a way for adult viewers. That is literally what child exploitation is. That is literally, that is precisely, it is exactly, it is in absolutely no uncertain terms exactly in every single way what child exploitation is. 

 

The only way the "war movies" argument would be valid would be if in war movies, they actually bombed civilian homes and murdered women and children in drone strikes. The harm done by exploiting the children who "starred" in this movie is permanent. Those children performed those acts. Now pedophiles are in their living rooms, watching these scenes on repeat with their pants down and you are genuinely trying to argue it is art. This is unbelievable.

This analogy does not work because you are not simulating child exploitation, you are performing it. They are literal children that have been groomed to perform these behaviors on camera. It does not matter what messaging you put before and after it. You filmed children touching each other and dancing provocatively, intentionally, and then showed it to people. There is a scene that is literal, by the definition of law, child pornography and then you showed that on Netflix. These children cannot consent and they have been exploited - actually and in real time these children were harmed. That is why the movie is bad. It actually does not matter, despite the protests of the blue check brigade on social media, what is before and after the exploitative scenes.

 

Another argument I have seen people attempt to make is that it is okay that these children were filmed performing these actions for a movie because they auditioned for it and were paid. This argument would fit neatly alongside an argument for the actual professional filming and creation of child porn, and thus it is an astronomically irresponsible argument. It does not make it okay to film children in compromising positions because you have paid them. We as a civilized people understand that children are still developing mentally, they have unblemished trust in adult authority figures, and they cannot truly consent to such acts. It is the job of sane, responsible adults to protect children until they have grown enough to recognize what is and is not safe to do. These truths are self-evident and the attempts to erase them from our memory banks is done intentionally by people who wish to exploit children. Do not fall for this type of manipulation - they want to harm children for their own gain and are seeking your permission. Do not give it to them.

The main argument, overall, is that the film has a message and there is a purpose to the sexualized scenes the real children actresses engage in, thus it's not actually child pornography, nor morally wrong. As I have in no unclear terms explained in the last few paragraphs, that actually doesn't matter. They could have filmed this movie without those parts, but they chose to include them. This was an active decision by the people who created this movie. It is, actually, okay to say that any particular scene in a movie makes it inappropriate - this happens all the time with movie ratings. Indeed, sometimes entire scenes are scrapped from movies for being "too much" so that they can go down an age rating, or because the people creating the movie find that it's simply "too much" for the kind of film they're making. This did not happen. They didn't "accidentally" exploit these children and add these disgusting scenes in the final product, it was an intentional decision. These children were instructed to practice these acts, repeatedly, until they were to the satisfaction of the directors. They filmed these shots dozens of times, then watched them all and chose "the best take" - because that's how movies are made. Thus we can look at their intentional decisions and say that these scenes were too much and should not have been put out for all the world to see. It is entirely good and justified for us to say that this is wrong.

I have read the thoughts of many people who have watched the movie - many regular, non-blue check people. The vast majority of opinions I'm seeing are that the film does have its messaging and is mostly a normal coming of age story, but for no clear reason it has these extreme sexualized scenes. At best, people say it's in a "neutral" style, but most people believe these scenes are portrayed with unironic positivity. They are filmed in a bright and pleasant manner with "lingering booty shots" as explained by one normal, everyday person. Many normal people who chose to watch this film "with an open mind" have concluded, through the lens of their very own eyes, that this movie unnecessarily sexualized their child actresses. Attempting to convince someone to doubt their own testimony is gaslighting. 

 

When you see something that is distressing because you know deep in your soul that it is detestable and morally wrong, and someone tries to tell you that you are simply not cultured enough to understand it, you are being gaslit. Do not allow yourself to be manipulated into believing that the evil you knew you saw was simply "art". I will reiterate that the intended messaging in the movie is not incorrect, but the means were a violation of every assumed duty we have as adults to care for and protect vulnerable children in society. 

 

I have not seen this movie and it is a red herring to say I must see it to criticize it. It is not necessary to compromise my mental health or give fuel to the burning rage I have against what society has become for me to know that certain scenes in this movie were irresponsible, damaging, and exploitative. I have seen enough from clips and read enough from people who have chosen to watch it. It is also a red herring to invoke any whataboutisms about other movies or TV series that have exploited children, as believe it or not, I was actually thoroughly disgusted with Good Boys and found it to be outrageously irresponsible to take literal children and have them perform those scenes for a film. I despise Toddlers in Tiaras and child beauty pageants - I never said I did not. All of these things are part of the slippery slope that has lead us here. Indeed, many of the people who organize such disgusting exploitation of children are pedophiles - South Park has a very explicit joke about this in one of their episodes, where one of the child beauty pageant judges is clearly rubbing himself behind the judging counter. These are all also terrible crimes against children and are responsible for getting us here in the first place. Yes, they are bad - Cuties is also bad, and actually measurably worse. It is not hypocritical for me to not mention all of these other things while explaining why the blue checks defending this particular movie need to be investigated by federal police.