Child Abuse Awareness Month is apparently in April, just FYI

Apparently everyone is changing their Facebook pictures to their favorite childhood cartoon characters if they are "against child abuse." This, if anyone wasn't sure, is fucking stupid.

Title goes here! I'm absolutely stealing this article from a friend who spent 15 minutes bitching about this to me earlier today, but I think it's worth repeating. Changing your profile picture on Facebook is not a reasonable action to claim stops child abuse. As far as I know, no charity is attached to this, so it's not like each switched profile picture raises money. And as my unnamed acquaintance pointed out, child abuse isn't exactly a divisive issue with some people strongly against it, some people strongly for it, and some people on the fence about it. Discussing your opposition to child abuse isn't likely to convert anyone who was previously all about hitting children. Which brings up the main point he was trying to raise- is there anyone out there who is for child abuse? Are people who beat their children even for it? I would assume they just think their own kids deserve it, but I doubt they're just doing it out of principle because they love the idea of hitting kids.

All switching your profile picture during a campaign like this does is allow you to feel smug, like you're making a difference without actually having to do anything. The phrasing of saying you're doing it "because you're against child abuse" is also loaded as all hell, and actually implies that anyone who doesn't change their picture is a chronic child abuser. So now you're also indirectly guilty of libel. How does that feel?

One could, if they wished to play Devil's Advocate, argue that things like this actually do help because they raise awareness of the issue. Linguists could argue that any time you talk about something like "stopping child abuse" you are helping to shift us to a public culture in which child abuse becomes more demonized and less likely to happen. But since no one takes that argument seriously when I make it in regards to not saying "gay" in a pejorative context, I'm not going to allow it here.

If anyone actually feels passionately about stopping child abuse there are probably plenty of organizations out there that would love to have your time, money, or both to assist them with their work. I found this one with a simple Google search.

So if you really care about an issue, shut the fuck up on Facebook and do something about it. What we're accomplishing with profile pictures and status updates is about as effective as spray painting "DON'T HIT KIDS" on a brick wall. Actually, it's probably less effective. Actually, I wonder if I still have any spray paint...