Read Part 1 here.

In my previous article How To Apply The Concept Of Systemic Pedophilia, I wrote:

“If you search ‘racism in’ followed by the keyword for any topic, you are bound to find articles applying that social justice critique to the niche you searched for.”

While writing that article, I decided to try that experiment. I searched the first “racism in” topic that came to mind, which happened to be “racism in vaping,” because when I looked up from writing I saw someone vaping across from me. The first hit was an article titled “Why Tobacco Is A Racial Justice Issue.”1 Searching “racism in smoking lead to the first hit of a full academic study titled “The influence of racism on cigarette smoking: Longitudinal study of young people in a British multiethnic cohort.”2 When most people think of racial justice issues, they don’t think of smoking, yet there it is.

How are activists arriving at these critiques? Racial justice activists are simply asking the question “does this issue affect racial minorities in a specific way?” The article “Why Tobacco Is A Racial Justice Issue” looks at “racial disparities in tobacco use.”3 If certain racial groups use tobacco or certain kinds of tobacco at disproportionate rates compared to others, then smoking could be framed as a racial justice issue. While the issue of smoking is usually viewed at as a health issue, asking the right questions re-frames it as a racial justice issue.

We could apply the same critique to children’s issues by asking similar questions. “Does this issue affect children in a specific way?” Smoking is usually viewed through the lens of its impact on the adult smoker, but how does adult smoking impact children? Are children uniquely impacted by second-hand smoke, the loss of an adult parent due to smoking related-illnesses, or impacted psychologically by seeing adults smoke? Does framing smoking as only for adults make children feel discriminated against or excluded, even if it protects them from a harmful vice? If adults smoking impacts children and adults who smoke are potentially harming children instead of just themselves, how should that impact how we treat smoking? As you can see, asking the right questions could lead to a “Why Tobacco Is a Children’s Justice Issue,” the same way there are articles declaring it a racial justice issue.

This process could be applied to any issue. All one has to do is ask the right questions and examine the issue through the lens of its impact on children. When you do, treat children as their own people with their own interests, whose interests always come first due to the fact that they are the most vulnerable, most historically oppressed, and most deeply impacted by harmful behavior. There are as many ways this concept could be applied as aspects of society in the world.

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How To Apply The Concept Of Systemic Pedophilia

In Children’s Justice, I define systemic pedophilia as: “Systemic pedophilia describes the beliefs, culture, practices, language, institutions, and other social systems that allow children to be harmed.” The term systemic pedophilia functions similarly to other social justice terms used to describe harmful social systems such as racism or patriarchy. One …

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2 days ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Brendon Marotta