When the Joke stops being a Joke

Sometimes, I wonder how we have become so comfortable turning certain things into joke simply because we have heard them for so long.

A grown man calling a little girl “My wife”

Adults making sexual jokes around children.

Parents laughing when child is repeatedly treated as someone's “future partner”. People brushing it off with, “it's just a joke”

The child doesn't even understand. But the fact that a child does not understand something does it make it harmless?

We often talk about child sexual abuse as though it begins with an obvious act committed by a complete stranger. But sometimes, the things that deserve our attention begin much earlier - with the language we normalise, the boundaries we ignore, and the behaviour we excuse because they are presented as humour.

A child is a child

Not a future wife

Not a future husband

Not someone's “little girlfriend”

Not a person to be sexually discussed or treated as an object of attraction

And no, i am not saying that every adult who make inappropriate joke is automatically a child abuser, that distinction matters. But i am sayubg that we should stop pretending that every joke involving the sexualisation of children is completely innocent. Because children learn from what adults normalise around them. For instance, think about the “mummy and daddy” game many of us grew up playing as a children, we were young, we probably didn't understand everything we were imitating. But isn't it interesting how children can absorb and internalise what they repeatedly see, hear and can encourage to play out- even when they are too young to fully understand it's meaning?

If children can absorb roles and behaviours from something as simple as a children game, then perhaps we should be more careful about the things adult repeatedly normalize around them and call “Just a joke” .

The most alarming situation is how quickly we attach the label “pedophile” when something serious happens, while overlooking the smaller behaviours that should have made us uncomfortable in the first place.

We should be teaching children that their boundaries matter. We should also be teaching adults that certain boundaries are never mean to be crossed. And when someone repeatedly behaves in a sexually inappropriate way I assume toward a child, it should not be dismissed simply because “nothing has happened yet”.

Perhaps, the question we should be asking in not only “ What did this person eventually do”?. Maybe we should also ask “ What did we allow ourselves to call a joke before it got serious?” Because sometimes, protecting children does not begin with reacting to the worst thing that could happen. Sometimes, it begins with refusing to normalise what should have never been normal in the first place.

Temiloluwa.