The forms of misopedy.
Looking at the real reasoning behind child abuse.
The word misopedy is defined by most dictionaries as an “abnormal dislike of children”. The implication is that all adults are moved by a normal dislike of children. And it wouldn’t be wrong. All adults are misopedic because it’s inescapable feature of our society. All adults believe children are less than their equals. Misopedy seems to be a cultural universal, in any culture and society in which adults and children have coexisted the adults have been misopedic. Even to attempt to write an history of misopedy might seem an unrealistic aim — it would be an encyclopedia detailing every civilizations and every historical period until the present day. But a less ambitious aim would be to define what are it’s core tenets, what does emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect tell us about the many facets of misopedy?
Emotional abuse (molding minds).
It is estimated that 36.3% of all children of the globe experience severe emotional abuse.
What have adults always believed about the mind of a child?
Many things. Children are emotionally weak, malleable, their minds are as soft as clay, blank slates upon which an adult can draw whichever picture brings them the most joy or is more convenient to them, empty vases to be filled with knowledge. Children’s minds are in movement, hopefully towards the Adult ideal, the Mature ideal, hopefully not towards rebellion or idleness. Or at least this is what was told to us. That it was an adult’s job to pick up the puzzle pieces of a child’s brain, to build it, to effectively make it. As if adults were the real producers of children’s thoughts. Pedagogy has always been also misopedy. From the ancient philosophers to developmental psychology, the child is always incomplete, empty, waiting to be filled. We lock children up for 6 to 8 hours in hopes that their minds will be less and less childish the more they’re imprisoned between four walls where the fiction of adult supremacy is maintained through the school rules. In schools, children are told the lie that twenty of them are weaker than one adult. Obviously that is not the truth, or the teacher wouldn’t be so anxious about whispering and exchanging messages. The teacher has to look behind their shoulder. He always has to fear rebellion. One could say the same things about the parent and the family in general. Adults scream a lot, they terrorize a lot with their words and they often use them for the purpose of degrading the child. Perhaps children’s mind are not so malleable since there is so much need to use brute force to give them the shape adults please.
Physical abuse (breaking bodies).
It is estimated that 22.6% of the children of the globe experience severe physical abuse.
What is the strength of a child’s body?
Children have been perceived since the earliest of times as both too weak and fragile to stand up for themselves, too delicate to live without adult protection, but at the same time as possessing a mythic resilience. You could expose them to hardship and disease and it didn’t matter. They were a child after all. And most importantly, you could use their body to unleash your frustrations. They can take it. Since antiquity, we have records of tools used by parents and schoolmasters to “punish children for their own good”, while what it really is, corporal punishment, is an adult giving to bestial passions by destroying the only people one is still allowed to treat like objects. And after all your child is yours, and if you are a teacher, temporarily yours, so why not throw it and hit it when you are frustrated? You have never been taught the child in front of you could also be a person. And after all, the only good children are the broken ones. Somehow the belief that a good child is one who flinches at adult touch is still widespread. The good child validates adult ego by always being terrified. For a lot of western children right now, the rod might be a specter, but it’s logic follows them anywhere.
Sexual abuse (raping bodies).
It is estimated that 12.7% of the children of the globe experience severe sexual abuse.
There is a contrast between how the minds and bodies of children are perceived. While it seems that adults cannot wait for the child’s mind to match the adult ideal, the body of the child is seen as beautiful when it remains immobile, still. Our culture has attached a lot of significance to the way children’s bodies look like. First of all, children just have to be cute. It seems that to adults the only thing worse than a disobedient child is an ugly child. And their smallness, the lack of body hair, the short height, have all been identified as signs that children’s bodies are just made to be owned by adults. So much so that sexually subjugated adults are pushed to imitate children to be sexually appealing. The connection between the perception of children’s minds and children’s bodies does seem evident when one looks at the connection between teaching and sexual abuse in history. To this day, “teachers” of any sort (and that includes parents) are the main sexual abusers of children. From seeing the child’s mind as an empty vase to seeing their body that way is a small step. And there is also the aspect of the ideal child being conceptualized as a masochist, as ready to do anything to keep adults happy, like the “exemplary” Isaac from the biblical story. And the fact that children have been conceptualized as both redeemers and the cause of downfall of adults. When is a pretty child *too* pretty? When it starts to threaten adults instead of appeasing them.
Conclusion (what actually is misopedy, then?).
Misopedy is the lenses through which adults see the world. Child abuse might be the most evident example for it, but there is not a current thing that exists in society that has not been touched by misopedy. The dictionary definition is just part of the same system that would like us to see the world through it, but to not perceive the glasses that we have on.
