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Archives for March 2022

What Is The Complicity Principle?

March 7, 2022 By Brendon Marotta

“The ‘Complicity Principle’ emphasizes that one is accountable for what others do when one intentionally participates in a collective that causes the harm together. One is accountable for the harm we do together, independently of the actual difference an individual who intentionally participates in such group action makes. Participatory intention is intention to act as part of a group in collective action of agents who orient themselves around a joint project.”

– Barbara Applebaum, Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy.

Who is responsible for systemic social justice issues? While no one person is to blame for society-wide injustices, many people participate in harmful systems. The Complicity Principle is a concept in critical social justice that suggests that although no single individual is responsible for systemic issues, each person who is complicit in a system of harm is responsible for their role in that system.

Take for example the issue of circumcision. Parents say the doctor told them to circumcise. Doctors say they have to circumcise because of their job at the hospital. The hospital says they have to offer circumcision because parents want it. Who is responsible?

Genital cutting is a systemic issue. No one person created the entire system that led to a child being harmed, yet they all were complicit in that system. The Complicity Principle would suggest that everyone, including parents, doctors, and hospitals, is responsible for their role in the system, regardless of how significant that role was to the harmful outcome.

Complicity in a systemic problem can take many forms. For example, suppose a parent tells children that they can’t say no to adults who want to touch them or hug them goodbye and then gets mad at the child when they disobey. If an abuser uses that cultural conditioning to tell the child “you have to let me touch you, or your parents will be mad at you,” is the parent complicit in that abuse? From an individual perspective, no. From a systemic perspective, the cultural ideas they shared contributed to the harm of children, so they were complicit in a larger social and cultural system that lead to pedophilia.

In my book Children’s Justice, I call the system that leads to children being sexually harmed systemic pedophilia. Systemic pedophilia does not describe individual desire but an entire system of culture, ideas, language, institutions, etc. While an individual might not personally harm children, they might be complicit in systemic pedophilia through the language they use, people they contribute money to, or cultural ideas they share.

The Complicity Principle explains why critical social justice activists often speak about systemic issues in a totalizing way. If social justice issues are systemic, there is no neutrality. Every choice either contributes to those systems or doesn’t. When people protest that they personally are not to blame for a systemic issue, they ignore the ways that they might be complicit in that system, even if they have no individual bad intentions. This triggered defensive reaction is an attempt to avoid seeing their own complicity in systemic issues known as fragility, and on the issue of systemic pedophilia, pedophile fragility.

Avoiding complicity in systemic issues requires developing a critical consciousness, which means seeing how every action, idea, or aspect of society you interact with either contributes to systems that harm or creates the better world we all desire. On children’s issues, this means looking at how the larger systems we participate in impact children. It means recognizing that there is no neutral, and you are either complicit or antipedophile.

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Filed Under: Blog, Children's Justice

Mastery Does Not Come From A 60-Second Video

March 5, 2022 By Brendon Marotta

One challenge I’ve found promoting my new book Children’s Justice is that people want complex ideas in a short attention span. They want mastery of an issue in a 60-second video.

This is literally impossible. Short-form content can communicate an idea, but mastery requires your time. If you want to change social issues that have existed since the earliest recorded history, you might actually have to read a book.

If I could have delivered the ideas I share in Children’s Justice in a short video, I would have done that instead of spending all the time it takes to write a book.

I recognize the need to build interest. It’s why I go on podcasts and write these articles. It’s why I’m looking into producing an audiobook and turning some of these ideas into short-form videos. However, once that interest is gained, it has to translate into action. There is no other way to get the social change desired. You must read.

If you find an idea here interesting, read the book. If you don’t understand an idea here, read the book. It’s all there. I’m not going to put every bomb in the book online. Some you will have to discover when you read.

By the way, the same is true of creating. If you want to change the world, you have to regularly create. Have you noticed these articles come nearly every day? I write that much because I care that much. If you care too, you can support this work here.

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Filed Under: Blog, Children's Justice

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