Little girls for sex toys?

(Originally published in Guyana's Kaieteur News on 11 November 2010)

I recently posed this question on my Facebook page: It is my opinion that men who seek relations with young girls actually just want the sex without the rest of what comes with a grown woman like a thinking mind, common sense and a full knowledge of the respect due to a female. In most cases, when the young girl grows up and starts thinking for herself, she is cast aside, too. What do you think about this creepy phenomenon?

I was more than a bit surprised when there were some – male and female – who defended this paedophilic behaviour. I’m going to be brutally honest and say that if any stinky old man touched one of my daughters at such a young age, my fury would explode to the point that the world would think Armageddon had begun. There’s no way that sick pervert would escape justice.

Which brings me to what I really want to talk about in this column; mothers who allow stepfathers and boyfriends – or anyone, for that matter – to molest their young daughters. If there is anything in the world more unnatural than a man wanting to have sex with a young girl, it is a mother who will knowingly allow it to happen.

It truly baffles me that society will look at sex between two consenting adults who happen to be of the same gender as unnatural, yet the heinous act of raping a little girl is not viewed with the repulsion it deserves. In fact, all types of homophobic rhetoric is tossed about freely (which is a shame), yet when someone talks of a man who has sex with little girls, it is almost wistfully stated as if to say, “wouldn’t that be nice.”

On my scale of good and bad, 1 – 100, the best of people rating a 100 and the worst of people rating a one, a man who has sex with little girls ranks a big zero in my book. The paedophile is the worst of the worst, the scum of the earth, a person who makes thieves and corrupt politicians look like angels. That any mother could allow such filth to touch her precious daughter is utterly incomprehensible.

I have been told that it is for the sake of money that mothers allow this atrocity. Either she wants that man in her life for the money to live and eat or she allows – or even sends – her daughter to seek out men with whom she can have sex and bring the money back home.

Of all the ways in the world there are to make money, why would any mother choose this loathsome one?

In fact, as pointed out by an acquaintance of mine, if that mother has no qualms with using sex as a means for making a living, then she should be the one to do it – not her little girl. That little girl should be playing with dolls, doing her homework and giggling with other girls her age. Not being inappropriately compromised by a rank old man.

What I find interesting is that this ugly circle starts when fathers with little girls want to abandon their responsibilities at home. Mom is left to care for children without an education, a solid job, or family with the ability to help her. So mom puts her little girl out to be prostituted or she takes a lover to take care of her, but he wants to use the little girl too.

In short, dad reneges on his responsibilities with his little girl to have fun instead, and in the process, another male is having “fun” with his little girl. Now that is one very ugly circle.

Moreover, this circle has become so popular, that it is now common to see young girls dressing to attract older men, in hopes of scoring some money or an escape from poverty.

If those older men had any moral fibre in them at all, they would send those young girls home to do their homework.

That would be the honourable thing to do. Then those little girls would have no reason to be prostituting themselves and could go back to being little girls.
Instead, the men use these girls, maybe for a night, maybe for a few weeks or maybe for a couple years, but when they are done using that girl, she is discarded like so much trash. After all, let us be honest here, men who use little girls or grown women for nothing more than sex, give not a passing thought to the fact that she is a person, a human.

Here we are again – always here again – with the fact that women hold very little value in society. Women can be chased down the street with a pot full of food the man finds unacceptable for dinner or pulled down the street by her hair – both cases that I was told happened in the last month.

Women can be allowed to die in childbirth. My husband’s grandmother died in childbirth in Guyana – and 60 years later this nonsense is still happening. Women can be beat like animals and when one takes her own life because no one else saw how precious it was, everyone finally says, “What a waste.” Yet no one saw her value while she was alive.

At the end of the day, I still cannot comprehend a mother who allows a man to rape her daughter. Isn’t it bad enough that the rest of the world does not value that little girl? But to have her own mother devalue her precious life, too? There are no more words to further communicate my feelings on this matter. My heart aches for those girls.