thinking about that post about how, to conservatives, gender is something you can fail at and that is a punishment that opens you up to abuse, and i think the same is true of being a child.
the Innocent Child (to be protected!) is a class of people that does not include all children, and like gender, it is something you can fail at. Failed Children are not longer Innocent and To Be Protected, but instead a class of people who need to be abused back into compliance.
Really it's like this with any category of vulnerable people, or just people in general, and I don't think it's delineated to conservatives or even that all conservatives fall under this umbrella socially. There's a pattern, for sure, but I see a lot of people who claim to be progressive falling for this sort of viewpoint too.
Prime example is how "Innocent Victim" is something you can fail at socially. People are only "legitimate" victims if they had no way to resist, if they were never violent in response, if they were a good person who lived a good life prior to having something terrible happen to them.
Being disabled is something you can fail at if you aren't exerting every ounce of your energy to live life "normally." Being poor is something you can fail at if you don't save every cent and skip the morning coffee and never go to the movies.
These are all punished by neglect (witholding of aid) or even further abuse.
The root of the problem is the idea that someone's moral standing determines whether or not you have to treat them like a person, and everyone should be careful not to fall into that.
"You are only a real X if you consistently behave like Y and if you fail, you should be punished back into compliance"
(also notice how all of these are impossible not to fail at. No one is a perfect man or woman, innocent child, victim, disabled person, poor person etc. There's always a way to find fault, so there's always an excuse for the abusive behavior.)
