Cower Behind the Kids!! Arrested Development as Activism

She caught my eye just a few weeks ago, this woman, this mother. Clad in a cardy and layers of concern, she stood in front of an audience of millions and spoke her truth. With child in tow, this bluestocking Boudicca told tales of tawdry tabloids torturing her toddlers and the determination of her and her pressure group, Child Eyes UK, to counter the corrosion. Indeed, her militancy had accrued her something of a victory, convincing supermarket chains Tesco and Waitrose to accede to her demands.

Make no mistake, lushes and reprobates—Kathy McGuinness is a mum on a mission!

So, what exactly does McGuinness wish to achieve thru Child Eyes? A quick perusal of the group’s site helps put together something of a picture; essentially, being rather perturbed by the “commercialisation and sexualisation” of modern childhood, they desire legislation to protect the perceived innocence of the nation’s kids, lest they succumb to “desensitisation”. To that end, they teamed up with the crusaders at No to Page 3 to nag the aforementioned supermarkets into removing provocative publications from the sight of small children, reinforcing my longstanding view that feminism and conservatism make fitting fuckbuddies. Unlike the sobbing sisterhood, however, Child Eyes UK operates on a more egalitarian ethos, citing the great British institution of the women’s weekly as one of its targets.

Despite their maternalist mores, the group empathically claims to oppose censorship: a claim I find hard to swallow, considering their endorsement of Cammy boy’s pornhibition policy, and their favourable estimation of socon icon (and Infernal whipping corpse) Mary Whitehouse.

On the face of it, Child Eyes UK strike me as yet another crew of rent-seeking, meddlesome mums, fighting to crèchify the country as a substitute for personal parenting. However, McGuinness’ appropriation of a child’s eye view makes me question whether its the kids she and her squad wish to protect. Going by my own observations and experiences of childhood, I strongly suspect CEUK impose a selectively edited “innocence” onto the flesh-and-blood kids they claim to champion for the sake of salving their own sensitivities.

In other words, just as a nonce looks at a child and sees a crotch ornament to slip on for size, the Child Eyes crew look at the young ‘uns and see a meat shield to cower behind. Wittingly or otherwise, the youngsters serve as convenient depositories for elder effusions—all that unseemly internal muck needs to spooge out somewhere.

The birth of my homespun theory occurred last August when I read the story of aggrieved Stateside soccer mum Rebecca Seitz, who raised a big stink over an ad shown on breakfast telly whilst eating with her son. Admittedly, she didn’t go as far as CEUK in her demands and deeds, but I do remember my first response to her being: “Here’s a woman too squeamish to own her squeamishness”. Her son’s purportedly “wide-eyed” response paled in comparison to Seitz’s own media-haranguing outrage on his behalf, what with her pouting and tugging at the skirts of the broadcasters to make everything alright. Her belief in sex intrinsically being “a beautiful exquisite gift for people who are married” proved particularly telling.

Reactions like that make me wonder: How many of the activists pushing this “innocence” narrative do so as a result of unacknowledged maturation issues? Perhaps they campaign to turn the world into Planet Crèche in order to make their surroundings more conducive to their own psychology, rather than that of their kids—arrested development masquerading as activism. With their Procrusteanised concept of childhood, one could be forgiven for thinking them literally born yesterday, emerging from a laboratorial womb in  fully grown form, all the while exhibiting the most obnoxious traits shared by their pint-sized charges.

Beyond the realm of militant mums, the reaction to a mother assaulted and arrested for swearing around schoolkids struck me as another salient example. A thread on the Mail’s Facefuck page found itself dominated by a chorus of cheers for the trotter who took her into custody, many of the copsuckers applauding him for protecting the “the playground”, that sacred reserve of “the children”, from her predatory, defiling words. Again, their bratty vehemence – not to mention their naivety regarding child discourse on playgrounds – marked them out as the violated children in need of protection; toss in unquestioning reverence for designated authorities and they can’t help but exemplify the psychological nadir of the childhood they hallow. With all that, plus their endorsement of Public Order Act enforcement, those over-weaned herd animals came across to me as more disgusting than the target of their ire could ever hope to be. Of course, those same mewling babies will throw their toys out of the cot over “political correctness gone mad” should the hard hand of the law fall on their behinds.

Such mentalities being in depressing abundance, it hardly surprises me to see the Child Eyes chancers gain traction; those who know how to make their dysfunction serve a function will find rich pickings among the many, all too many, passively adherent to the same mindset. With or without the cover of children, many a so-called adult in Slave Britannia tugs at the skirt of the nanny state, begging it to save them from public smoking, video nasties, burqas, violent video games, and the burden of making sound parenting choices; and such a supine swad makes an ideal audience for any (also-enthralled) Mother McGuinness figure willing to perform the kiddy cower, taking to the act like babes to the breast.

Say “aah”, Slave Britannians—time for bitty!

~MRDA~