Society doesn’t need to ingest poison to know that poison kills.

It’s an established fact. This knowledge is tested, true; and disaster is unavoidable for anyone, who, in defiance of these truths, ingests said poison, while confidently proclaiming: “there is no such thing as absolute truth, so ingest the poison anyway!”

The same goes for allowing children to play on a freeway or allowing them to provoke venomous reptiles and insects.

As does exposing or introducing children to material which solely benefits the voyeuristic entertainment of adults, and the lustful appetite of an “anything goes” unhinged, eros obsessed zeitgeist.

Society should be disgusted by it. Not just disgusted by the standard of compromise involved, nor the #metoo double standard it exposes, but also the defence masking applause for it.

Discounting concerns about actual child abuse protects offenders. Thoughtless defenders become enablers, creating a culture of silence that silences child abuse victims.

All this is painstakingly well known, with many organizations (including most churches) implementing strict child protection procedures, checks and balances.

Yet, as was witnessed last week, given the “approved” context by the current “love is love” ideological paradigm, child abuse must be tolerated, not called out.

Netflix’s foray into the area of ersatz child porn is now the most prominent example of this “truth is relative” era of arbitrarily guided “tolerance and inclusion”. The Marxist “Safe Schools” program being implemented through “anti-bullying” channels in Australia, is another.

Variety reported Netflix’s watery defence of the film, saying it went along the lines of ‘Cuties’ is great because it challenges the patriarchy, by ‘making a statement about pressures young girls face in conforming to societal role models of female sexuality.’

As Forbes tells it, Netflix has called the film a ‘social commentary against the sexualization of children.’ Quoting director, Maïmouna Doucouré as arguing that once critics watch the film, “they’ll see that we have the same fight and we are altogether about that issue of hyper-sexualization of our children and protect our children.”

Acknowledging the ‘tricky line between marketing and exploitation’ The Telegraph ran its defence of the film under the headline: ‘Cuties, Netflix review: a provocative powder-keg for an age terrified of child sexuality.’

Defending ‘Cuties’, The Telegraph told its audience to ‘forget the [right wing] moral panic’, ‘Cuties’ is disturbing and risqué, [but that’s okay] because that’s what it’s supposed to be.’ 

One would have to be tone-deaf to the cultural milieu ‘Cuties’ has popped up in, not to hear those defending ‘Cuties’ as saying that “child abuse is okay, as long as it’s done in the name of fighting child abuse.’

I wonder if these defenders would allow their own daughter to ‘twerk’, on camera, or at a party for adult entertainment. Claiming it’s just a bit of innocent fun?

I wonder if their “innocent fun” because “sex education” defence works to explain my late-father bathing with my sister and I, as children, while playing what he called “submarines”, as he got an erection. Or that one-time game of strip poker, my mother walked in on, and shutdown.

It doesn’t. Neither does it justify being put in compromising situations with strangers. Being exposed to material as children that I’d never let my kids watch now, or the polished exterior of my dysfunctional childhood family home.

I wonder if their “innocent defence” explains my father chasing my sister and I around, scaring the daylights out of us, with a witch’s mask on, for a bit of “educational fun.”

I wonder if their defence works to explain the abuse he’d experienced as a child; watching people act like spectators outside the dysfunctional mess he was raised in. His motherlessness. The complex relationship with his seven siblings, step-mother and father.

Just like Netflix, I’m sure he had his rationalizing and self-justifications too.

Where adults abdicate responsibility tolerance and freedom becomes child abuse.

There’s a distinct line between educating children and indoctrinating them. There’s also a distinct line between helping children, and harming them.

It’s obvious that Netflix and other video streaming services know this, yet that persist on defending the indefensible. Why? Because sex sells, and identity politics is a hot commodity in the fickle, confused, and disorienting realm of “wokeness”.

Poison cannot be called by any other name. Peeling back the label and renaming it doesn’t change its toxicity.

There is, and never will be, anything cute about child abuse.