21st Century Parent problems: Is your kid a serial killer?

Is your kid a serial killer?

No.

And I say this because I favour the odds.

Is your kid just going to be a run-of-the-mill murderer?

Again, probably not. The odds against it are astronomical.

                Most people tend not to dwell too much on the people out there who take lives, or they fantasises too much about them to unhealthy degrees, you would not believe me if I told you how many wedding proposals serial killers get.

                Parents these days tend to be more paranoid about their kid being autistic then the thought they could be raising a potential killer, and with good reason. Like me, they play the odds.

                But let’s assume you did sit down and worry that you’re contributing to your kids decline into becoming the Wandering Strangler of Stoke, what should you be worrying about? Well as will all things it tends to be down to statistical odds, most people experience a lot of screwed up stuff and never go on to kill anyone,  in fact there is a growing concern now that the vague bits of popular psychology that filter into the public consciousness about the childhood of killers is re-victimising people who have already suffered through something horrible.

                To give you an example: A high percentage of killers tend to have disturbed childhoods, suffering from physical and sexual abuse. However, there remains a percentage of killers who have very mundane childhoods, although they are in the minority of cases they do exist. What’s more (tragically) hundreds of thousands of children undergo serious childhood abuse and trauma and go on to become well-adjusted adults, though of course because of this stereotype of “damaged goods” and “potential sexual predator/murderer” they’ll likely be terrified of every talking about the abuse they suffered. Which is not heathy, in case you were wondering.

So to all the paranoid parents who worry that they are somehow contributing to their kids decent into being the next Clown-Killer of Cumberland, I’ll just drop some pro-tips for you, please avoid the following.

·         Don’t give your kids drugs, they have terrible effects on the developing brain.

o   Side note: Don’t take drugs when pregnant either.

·         Avoid abusing your kid.

·         Don’t threaten your kid with made-up horrors. Hell, The boogieman, Heir Kindersnatch etc… Children have “magical thinking” and while adults can contextualise these fears, to children they are real and terrible and will fill their lives with paranoia and terror.

·         Don’t let your kids watch 18+ rated stuff. Again, “magical thinking” a lot of kids don’t have the real/unreal barrier solidly installed yet, even older kids. Use your judgment but it is likely a very good idea not to let developing minds experience “Chainsaw blood rampage IX: The Crotch-Ripper!”

·         If you punish your child, make sure they understand why they are being punished, and try and minimise any “unfairness” that you dish out. If a parent is arbitrary with their punishments all the kid learns is the world is cruel and unfair, and will quickly internalise that, and act accordingly.

·         Lastly, teach your kid how to process their emotions, not supress them or vent them. Emotional Intelligence is the ability to feel an emotion but not be a slave to it, and it’s something people spend their whole lives mastering. Kids with a head start in this will have a big advantage in life, and not just to avoid the increased chances of being a murderer.

The thing is, this is all fudging your numbers, it’s theoretically possible for a kid to endure all of the above and still be a well-adjusted adult… it’s not likely... but it is possible! On that note, you could have an idyllic childhood and turn out as the Scarborough Sausage-Slasher , but again, the odds are against you on that one.

The whole nature/nurture argument is tired, but I tend to think of it as a deck of cards, people are given cards and do the best with the hands they have, sometimes they are lucky, sometimes they are unlucky, but ultimately it’s down to the individual how they manage what they have, and what they turn into because of it.

And don’t worry if your 13yr old kid seems to be a little sociopath, they are all like that.

Toxic Masculinity: and other useful political tools.

So I take a break from working on lie detection and the unconscious minds ability to detect deception because somebody on national radio said “Masculinity is behind a lot of the problems in the world.”

I let myself be bated, shame on me.

What we have here is an “appeal to the in-group.” A person has arbitrarily decided that attributes should be associated with a characteristic and therefore the characteristic is bad. To associate with this badness is to be sick, and a blight on society, to cry out against it is to be good and virtuous! Won’t you join my in-group? You wouldn’t want to stand beside those evil (masculine) people would you?

“Toxic Masculinity” as the feminist call it, is a nice little way of encapsulating this labeling, and I haven’t really covered it in detail because sooo many other “Social Activist” have done it for me. I have covered “Toxic Femininity” in the way-back with my Princess Jay post, but I did that because frankly? It’s something people don’t talk about much, unlike its fraternal twin that seems to get coverage on the radio.

So is masculinity toxic?

No more than femininity is. It’s a noun. End of story.

Okayokayokay, I’ll give a little more detail.

Social Sciences have this idea of “privilege” the notion that all of us carry a nebulous power within us to influence society and those around us. To an extent they are correct, we respond better to certain things dependent on superficial traits of others. Beautiful people for example have an incredible social power to elicit help and/or compliance, as well as escape negative consequences of their actions, dubbed “The Halo Effect” in psychology. But to expand on this notion; If I were to stand up and talk about the problems with Islam, I’d probably not be taken seriously, if I did so as a Pakistani man, I’d be taken more seriously by the Islamic crowd (for good or ill) and if I did it as a Pakistani woman, I’d be taken more seriously by the non-Islamic crown (partially those critical of islam). So in this instance, I have very little power to influence others by virtue of my race, now I’ll give you an example from my life.

                I was asked recently to act as a spokesperson for a charity I am working with, the alternatives were, a young Asian male, and a young Italian woman. I conceded that I was probably the best person to act as a spokesperson simply because when discussing mental health people feel more comfortable receiving information from an (apparently educated) white male, I actually asked them to give me notice to grow a beard because this information would be better received from a man in his late 40’s and a beard makes me look older.

                So where does this all come from? Well Stereotypes certainly play a role, but it’s deeper than that: Seeing my pasty white face and smooth enunciated tones (I’d even make my accent more “educated and crisp” for this purpose) would tie in with what people expect to see when they hear somebody speaking as an academic. Were we making an appeal to an emotion, we’d likely have picked my Italian female colleague, as the young female features instill feelings of protectiveness and allow for a greater likelihood of emotional resonance. If we were making an appeal to millennials then my young Asian college would have been chosen as his appeal would have been greater then my own with that demographic. How we view others is based on dozens, if not hundred of tiny factors that differ from person to person and culture to culture, attractiveness, race, gender, sex, and to an extent sexuality are big ones, but it can also be influenced by things like, Glasses, wardrobe, accent, facial symmetry, and so on…

                When this “privilege” is abused, it becomes toxic, which leads us back to masculinity. “Masculinity” is defined differently from everyone who you ask, but essentially in the positive it is a strong notion of self-reliance, emotional control, and self-sacrifice. If viewed negatively it is selfishness, dead emotions, and control of others. When I stand up and make my appeal as a white male academic, I appeal to the former, the notion everyone has in their head of benevolent masculinity. Should I use abuse that position of authority then I have become toxic. It means I am a bad person, (like Princess Jay was) but not that the tools I am using are bad themselves. As I said, it’s just a noun. A lot of this appeal is unconscious, and honestly it’s not uncommon to find that you have been taken in by it, it’s the foundation of how we think after all, and it’s hard to escape.

                So frankly? Anyone standing before you and declaring that you should vilify, or pledge your allegiance to a noun is suspect, because the descriptions of nouns change and you may find yourself on the wrong end of that description when you find issues with the party line.

                Or as I like to put it: The more I agree with somebodies argument, the more suspicious I become of both the argument, and their motivations.