Gehenna

So many things are crowding my brain for attention:

several local teenagers, one of them possibly from the school where I work, recently released a DVD they made of themselves stripping a young girl, mistreating her, lighting her hair on fire - they also included footage of themselves egging drunks and throwing rockets at homeless people.

my son is growing strong and fat and more and more independent.

an islamic Mufti in Melbourne has been villified in the media for comparing women to meat who all but deserve to get raped because of the immodest way in which they dress.

an intensive book on the therapeutic treatment of trauma I am reading points out the uncomfortable truth that in most rape and domestic abuse cases the women are ultimately victimized by society as well as the abuser - "they bring it on themselves" - the potency of the author's studied passion is too great to be swept aside.

i watched, last night, one of the most gripping, powerful movies I have ever seen - Children of Men - it warns against becoming caught up in causes and politics and power and violence at the expense, as it always is, of our children - when we lose their innocence we lose hope.

girls at my school and others have echoed the Mufti by insisting the girl effectively raped in the DVD incident was to blame for what occurred - "she was stupid to meet up with a boy she didn't know."

the major supermarket chain in England has recently been criticized for selling a pole dancing kit in its toy section - packaged in pink and with kiddie cartoon designs on the outside the toys tag line: "Unleash the sex kitten within!"

only just today, I have been confronted with yet another parent who wants the school counselor (me) to fix their kid and is deaf to my pleas that they establish parental boundaries; or that they stop placing all the weight of their marriage problems onto the kid who wants a little attention.

to me, all of these are connected and it makes me sick to see how quickly everything is sliding into a pitiful Gehenna.