"I pray that no one ever speaks to you this way when you become a mother"

On disclosing sexual abuse risk and being attacked for it

Recently, I told a friend that she is putting her child at risk for sexual abuse. She frequently jokes that he is “flirting” with the adults around him. He is a toddler and he doesn’t understand these jokes, yet. But one day he will learn what flirting means, and in case it needs to be said, flirting is a sexual behaviour that takes place between adults. It is not something a toddler can do, and it absolutely should not be normalized to a toddler that flirting is something they do with adults.

I’m going to be honest at the risk of sounding extreme — I think it is sexually abusive in itself to say that a toddler is flirting with adults. I know that making sexualized comments about children is extremely normalized, and jokes like this are seen as “harmless.” They aren’t harmless. They confuse the most fundamental boundaries about sexuality, family, power, age, and consent. If they are meant as “harmless fun” then they should be easily relinquished when adults realize how damaging these kinds of jokes are for children.

When I told my friend that I had concerns, I did not say she is sexually abusing her son, even though I believe that what she is doing is sexually abusive. I told her that this behaviour puts him at risk for sexual abuse from other adults, which is also true. I told her that sexual predators build on these normalized sexual jokes and escalate. A sexual predator will see that her son thinks joking about flirting with adults is normal and harmless, and he can use this baseline of normalized sexualization to begin slowly escalating. If this is a meaningless, harmless joke, why would you risk the worst thing possible happening to your child as a result? Why do you need to make those jokes?

It took me months to gather the courage to bring this to my friend. I talked to several people about it, including my therapist. The general vibe from most people in my life is that it wasn’t a big deal, and that confronting a parent on their parenting is taboo and would likely lead to conflict. Everyone seemed content to shrug it off, even when they agreed that it was “weird.” It just wasn’t seen as a big “enough” deal to risk the drama that talking about it would entail. But I couldn’t let it go. I know that this behaviour is damaging, even if it’s seen as “harmless.” I know there is no justification for communicating confusing messages to children about adults engaging with them in a sexualized way. We need to make it abundantly clear to children that adults should never behave in a sexualized way towards them, whether it’s framed as a “joke” or not.