‘Stupid little girl’

We live at a time where the balance between the rights of the individual and society are becoming so skewed in favour of the individual; the tragic consequences of such a path are already becoming all too apparent.

The ‘me’ and ‘my rights’ culture is not only at the risk of losing the bigger-picture, but sadly often denies someone else’s legitimate rights. First case in point is the Spanish woman who thought she had a ‘right’ to have children – even though she was in her sixties.

She lied about her age to get IVF treatment and had twins, and now even before they turned three – she has died of cancer, leaving them orphans. The cruelty of such people has no bounds. Not only have they been denied a ‘mother figure’, but she actually wasn’t their biological mother!

Knowing it would be difficult in Europe, she travelled to the land of the free, the USA, where she become pregnant through donor eggs and sperm. The key point about the US is that they have laws which allow people to donate with total anonymity – meaning the children, in all likelihood, will never know who their father was – or even know who their real mother was.

Similarly, Diane Blood felt she had a right to have children using her dead husband’s sperm – because she wanted to have his children, and he wanted to have children (when he was alive). These are not isolated cases, nor is it a uniquely European fad. Even a 70 year old woman in India has had twins!

Through the selfish actions of these women, they have denied these children their rights to know their parents, and left to live with a permanent gap in their life. It is a known fact that adopted children have a yearning to know who their real parents were, why they look the way they look and have those mannerisms, etc.

What happened to these children’s rights? What happened to society’s right to have people who are psychologically stable, but is instead left with traumatised children going through the care system?

They always plead that many children are born or become orphans. Or in the case of those deaf parents who want a deaf child, that many children are born deaf.

Yes, many children’s parents die, and many children are born deaf – but that is different to deliberately or knowingly allowing that to happen. People die all the time, that doesn’t mean we go and kill healthy or innocent people. Children are born deaf, but we don’t go around destroying their ear drums.

It is a blessing and a privilege to have children, not a right.

On the same me and my rights theme, a young female prison officer has taken her employers to an employment tribunal for alleged victimisation – because she claims they thought she was too pretty!

In their defence, the other officers including the management, have claimed that instead of being an authority figure in the young offenders’ institution, she was trying to be the prisoners’ friend. She allegedly wore heavy make-up and would often mingle freely with the prisoners on her own. A prisoner was apparently overheard saying how she looked “sexy”, and another saying, “I wouldn’t mind taking you back to a cell”.

The crime of her senior colleagues was to warn her that she risked being dragged into a cell by the prisoners because of her appearance. She was allegedly called a “stupid little girl” for putting her safety at risk.

If that scenario did actually take place, what other words can describe such a person? Stupid, because she was so naïve in a young offenders’ institution described as, “without doubt the most spontaneous, volatile and violent”.  And ‘little girl’, because she herself was only 22, and like many young people did not realize the words and actions of her seniors were for her own benefit.

If being called a ’stupid little girl’ helped to prevent any harm coming to her, then that’s the best thing they could’ve said to her! She should be grateful to her managers, instead of taking them to a tribunal. Incidentally, God forbid, if she was assaulted, I can just imagine  a compensation claim for failing to protect her! As usual, some people want to have their cake and eat it.

This is the la la land of me and my rights. The rights of others and duties towards them, seems to have been forgotten.

At times we have to sacrifice some of our desires, in order to preserve the legitimate rights of others – especially when it comes to preserving life and promoting safety.