Ten Children's Justice Concepts Illustrated In One Social Media Exchange

How Children's Justice concepts can be used to understand a real interaction.

Jun 14, 2022

Most of what I write deals with higher principles. However, it might help to illustrate the concepts I talk about by using a specific example. In this article, I’m going to use Children’s Justice concepts to understand a single social media exchange. Links to over ten different previously published articles exploring each concept used can be found in the footnotes and at the end of the article.

A reader sent me this screenshot:

John Adkison writes:

“Just saw Mayim Bialik as the game show host. I had to leave the house until it's over. Knowing how she framed her son's severed prepuce just makes me hate her voice. I stopped watching Big Bang Theory, a show I absolutely loved, over it. I don't understand why she wants to be a show host when she's a scientist.”

In the original post, John Adkison describes how he was watching a game show when he discovered that the host was a Jewish celebrity who framed her son’s severed foreskin. This caused him to feel upset. The upset he feels when seeing someone who revels in harming her child has even caused him to avoid certain media that triggers those feelings, even if he might otherwise enjoy it.

This is a classic case of cultural trauma.1 Cultural trauma is the ongoing complex post-traumatic stress caused by living in a culture that condones genital cutting. In my book Children’s Justice, I also refer to the cultural stress caused by systemic pedophilia as pedophilia-based traumatic stress.2

Cultural trauma can be caused by anything that reinforces or normalizes the harm the survivor has previously experienced. In this case, it was a piece of media that reminded him of a perpetrator. Instead of condemning someone who harmed a child, this media gave them greater status.

Survivors of other forms of sexual abuse experience the same thing. Working in the film industry, I’ve met a few people who report being sexually assaulted by celebrities. Whenever they saw that celebrity or their work in popular media, they often experienced similar feelings.

Adkison’s original comment was about his own feelings, but let’s look at how one commenter, Rebecca Wald, a Jewish woman who has previously attacked other activists, responded:

“I am disappointed that MB chose to circumcise, especially as she claims to be very wise about attachment parenting BUT I think the genital autonomy movement suffers when its non-Jewish constituents focus their animus on religious Jewish people who circumcise for religious reasons. And MB is a religious, observant Jew. Jewish religious circumcision accounts for a very small percentage of genital alteration of minors ... my point being there is much else to focus one's attention on if one is truly committed to making a change. However if one hates Jewish people, then it's always fun to jump into threads like this and trash them.”

Wald describes herself as “disappointed” that someone who claimed to support attachment parenting cut off part of her son’s genitals and hung them on her wall like a trophy. This language shifts the focus from Adkison’s feelings to her own and centers her rather than the survivor.

Wald then uses an all-caps “BUT” after which the majority of the comment occurs. The vast majority of her comment is an attempt to shame other activists, who she claims “focus their animus” too much on Jewish people. She concludes that “if one hates Jewish people, then it's always fun to jump into threads like this and trash them.”

Yet, Adkison wasn’t focused on or talking about Jewish people. He was talking about his own feelings as a survivor. This is key. In interpreting Adkison’s comment as being all about her identity, Wald engaged in both racial narcissism and Jewish fragility.3

This quote from Children’s Justice could have been written about this interaction:

Jewish fragility is often an expression of racial narcissism, which centers all conversations on Jewishness rather than survivors and marginalized groups. If narcissists make everything about themselves and see disagreement as a personal attack, racial narcissists make everything about their socially constructed racial identity and see any divergence from the values of that racial identity as a threat. Through the lens of racial narcissism, all conversations about circumcision or children’s rights are actually conversations about Jewishness, and differing perspectives, including the lived experience of survivors, are an attack on Jewish racial identity.4

In this interaction, Wald engaged in racial narcissism by making Adkison’s feelings and lived experience as a survivor all about her socially constructed identity and framed his lived experience as being an attack on that identity.

Antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo, who coined the critical social justice use of the term fragility, notes in her work that it is often white liberals who are the worst racists because they do not believe they have any problem with racism. Likewise, I have found that some Jewish Intactivists are often more complicit with systemic pedophilia than even opposition groups because they believe they don’t contribute to circumcision merely because they verbally oppose it.5

Wald includes the preface before her “BUT” so that the majority of her comment enacting systemic pedophilia, cultural trauma, and her own fragility on a survivor sharing their pain isn’t seen for what it is. Her “BUT” functions much like “BUT” in the phrase “I’m not racist, BUT…” The “but” is a disclaimer used to deflect and hide the systemic racism or systemic pedophilia that will follow.

Behavior like Wald’s is why I wrote A Jewish Guide To Talking To Circumcision Survivors which states:

Center the survivors. Discussion of social justice issues should be centered on the survivors harmed, rather than the fragility of perpetrators.6

Because of Wald’s fragility, the discussion that follows her comment is about Jewish identity rather than Adkison’s feelings.

Characterizing the lived experience of survivors as being about hating Jewish people is the behavior of someone complicit in systemic pedophilia using fragile, triggered, and defensive maneuvers to avoid seeing the harm their actions are causing.7

Intuitively, many activists in the replies felt there was something wrong with Wald’s response. Adkison himself responds by asking “Did I say anything that suggests that I hate Jewish people?” He knows his words have been misinterpreted. However, most replies do not have the language to articulate the harm Wald has caused.

Having the right words to describe an injustice is a form of epistemic injustice known as hermeneutical justice. Hermeneutical Justice is the key to all social justice.8 Only once we have the words to name a problem can we solve it.9 For those who have asked why we need concepts like Jewish fragility, this is why. We need these concepts to articulate the harm Wald and others cause.

Opposition groups know this, which is why they often invert names and use language to hide what is really going on.10 Wald and her cohort use the term “antisemitism” to describe survivors speaking about our trauma. This functions as an inverted name and form of epistemic injustice because it centers perpetrators rather than the person speaking about their lived experience.11 Where possible, opposition will also try to delete language and deny survivors the words to express their lived experience, by arguing that concepts that might illuminate their behavior, such as Jewish fragility, aren’t okay to use.12

Do you see how much theory it took to understand what happened in this simple everyday exchange? Yet, all of this theory could be condensed to a single memetic reply: “Your fragility is harming survivors.”

Many exchanges like this occur across the lives of survivors. To understand and solve the harm survivors face, you must study theory. I’ve included links to the concepts discussed in the footnotes if you want to learn more. The most comprehensive understanding is still the book Children’s Justice. Get the book here.