so, i finally watched cuties. the film resonated with me in many ways, and i want to talk about it, because unlike the many north americans having a moral panic over it, i think that i, coming from a non-western country, can talk about it with enough nuance in this thread

it is a beautiful, excruciating portrayal of girlhood, with all the toxicity that girl friendships entail. it is also a remarkably honest and brutal portrayal of how sexuality awakens in children, and how the surrounding culture corrupts it in them

i recognized myself and my childhood girlfriends in every minute of the film. i currently identify as nonbinary, but i am assigned female at birth, and i was largely socialized as a girl and identified as a girl the majority of my life, so i know full well this whole experience

i was born in the soviet union but spent the majority of my sentient childhood and adolescence in post-soviet russia, where everything western, or american was held in high esteem, and there was an overwhelming readiness to substitute existing culture with imports

as a child i was remarkably curious and precocious. my awareness of myself as a sexual being arose with the collapse. my cousin and i kissed and showed each other our naked private parts when i was around 6, in 1992 or so. it was not corrupted yet, very sweet & innocent.

but as 90s continued, i became obsessed with sex bc it was suddenly everywhere. at night, i’d watch new cable tv, where erotic american films ran non-stop. my fave one was about a group of cheerleaders who would constantly get sexy. during the day, i’d see ads for edible lingerie

my parents bought books about sex translated from english and “hustler”. they hid them, but when they were away from home, i’d go digging through their stuff and discover them. i was fascinated with things i found inside

i read about the torn stockings kink, and the hair kink in a book by someone aptly named alex comfort, or inspected very detailed photos of models with exposed shaved or hairy vulvas.

i found my parents’ condoms and inflated them like balloons. “playboy” magazine was also getting published, it didn’t have as many sexy things, but i read it anyway. through it i discovered the writing of russian avant-garde writers, and some of them, too, used sex as provocation

when i was 11, i read an interview with larry flint in “playboy” in it, it was described that flint would rape chickens when he was a boy. i loved eating roast chicken as a kid, it was my favorite dish, but after reading the interview i was vegan for a week.

i was similarly affected when i started using p2p services, like napster and kazaa, to download music, as an extremely advanced internet user for my time & age. of course, at one point i started looking for porn.

i had learned how to masturbate already, and while i mostly did it while reading, i also liked being able to find pics and videos of adult ladies licking each other out in showers. then i thought they were grown but i now realize half of the times they were dressed as schoolgirls

then, in a large porn folder i once downloaded, amidst a variety of grown-up stuff i saw a video of an adult’s huge penis penetrating what looked like a toddler. i had no idea what this meant at large, but my heart sunk, and my shortlived porn addiction ended.

but that doesn’t mean that i stopped being obsessed with sex in general. in essence, i was a lonely, single child, my father was violent and began having affairs, my mother was depressed, and i think what i really wanted was a human connection, but it manifested this way.

as most girls at this tender age, i was discovering my sexuality, but instead of having a way to see this struggle normalized, i only had a limitless supply of narratives, where this sexuality was exploited by grown ups

for instance, i looked for sexy stuff in my parents' library and among others, discovered lolita. it was a revelation and soon became my favorite book. i seriously considered it to be a love story and was very angry at dolores haze for not staying with humbert in the end.

i did not want any of my friends to know about any of this because i had internalized deeply that sex while desirable is dirty. however, when i started a new school at 12, two boys, d&m there began expressing an interest in me. they would sometimes lock me in the changing room.

other classmates helped hold the door. d&m touched me over the tights. i was grateful, because i thought that finally someone liked me. i was madly in love with one of them, and i considered it a gift of heaven when he started faxing me (exaggerated) drawings of his dick

this school was an international private school, with native english speakers. d&m were from well-off families that had connections in the west. both were influenced by the western culture a lot. d made jokes about whitney houston & sex, as i remeber to this day

nobody among teachers knew about it. my parents had no clue. i made an effort to conceal it from everyone. i was the one to start maturing earlier than other girls, and i tried to hide signs of puberty as much as i could because i was terrified of being different.

all the while, i couldn’t help but notice that our maths teacher, universally beloved, the only teacher to call kids with a respectfyl “vy” instead of “ty”, really liked hugging girls or touching them on the back while we played tag during recess.

i found it a bit weird, but i didn’t think there was wrong with his behavior, or with the boys. what i’m getting at is that there was a pervasive context of sexualization and normalization of predatory behavior but zero context for understanding its harm.

d&m transferred to different schools for unrelated reasons. but in a year’s time we had a newcomer, also d, who wanted to touch girls in private places, too: not only me, actually, all of them

he also wanted to touch our classmate a. a was two years younger than all of us and from a chechen family. (it was during the second chechen war, btw, & there were a lot of anti-chechen sentiment happening)

by that time most girls had reached puberty, too, except for a. it was common among our girl group, which included a. to talk about sex, and to jokingly unbutton each other’s shirts, raise the skirt or touch a bum. innocently, but loaded with meaning.

after all, other girls were also discovering their bodies and asking themselves and the world the same questions i’d asked myself previously. and because by then russia had already become a neoliberal westernized space, culture corrupted it immediately.

one day, during a chemistry lesson, in front of the very meek teacher, a.’s mother and aunt, stormed our class. they approached me and another girl, l., and started undoing our shirts. then they approached d. and told him they’d chop his arm off if he touched a. again.

it was a huge scandal, we sulked at a., a. felt terrible because she’d been having a hard time reconciling her traditional home and loose morals at school anyway. i don’t know how the school admin reacted, but we never got talked to about it.

recently, in my school’s facebook group, the chemistry teacher casually mentioned the issue, and said she thought that a’s parents were mad at me personally for doing something. i explained the issue, trying not to offend a. who was also in the thread

what i gathered from the response is that the situation was swept under the rug. perhaps they perceived the reaction of a’s relatives as “regressive”, bc that’s definitely how the very racist l. described it then: as if the "rural" chechens were infringing on our city liberties

when i think about it today, i wish that i had had the purity of a. to tell my mother what i was going through, to have her respond to the situation somehow, explain to me that i deserved better, and actually talk to teachers

in fact, i had a chance to do over a bit later. i had transferred to another school, which was all in english, and the teachers in the previous school were very sour because i was a brilliant if unwieldy student and the star of school plays

it was hard for me to assimilate in the new place though so after classes i’d come to my old school to hang out. in it, the same old d. and his sidekicks would sometimes catch me and drag me to the bathroom.

they weren’t as handsy as d&m before, and i would get released way sooner because i didn’t like it. at that point i’d already made friends with older boys and men online, so i didn’t really care for boys my age. and yet, the deed still occurred.

however, in a weird act of revenge, the principle—or, rather, the math teacher who liked touching girls i mentioned above, who had ascended to the position—banned me from school accusing me of dragging these four boys into a bathroom. on my birthday, no less.

i told my mother—except for the part where the boys touched me, bc i didn’t want to be a snitch. mom went to confront the principle but he was absolutely defiant. i got over that whole thing because i got new friends at the new school and did not feel it was productive to sulk

a couple months ago i learned from ex-classmates that that same guy, math teacher turned principle, is now under investigation for statutory rape. i don’t know the details but i’m not surprised.

would this had been prevented if i came forward more? after all, i didn’t see him do anything specific. just the way he touched girls was weird, abnormal, and the way he’d get obsessed with girl students was suspect

but let me go back and talk about some other stuff from that time. when i was about 12 i was online a lot, bc, as i’ve said before i was lonely. i was mart for a kid that age, and i met a bunch of people online. they were all men and older, and sometimes our intros went offline

at 12 i developed an online relationship with a 26 yo man to whom i said i was 17 and divorced (?). because of the lie, we couldn’t meet in person. but he sent me emails with erotic drawings. i broke it off and cried in the shower.

at 13, i had my first french kiss with a college freshman. i told him my age so we could meet irl. he had terrible teeth. he was very mean to me and fingered me in the movies, to which i reciprocated by touching the first penis in my life. i got tired of him soon.

at 14, i fell in love with a 35-year old journalist whom i never saw offline but with whom i had long phone talks. i dreamed that when i reached 16, i would marry him and bear a child to him. again, i got tired. perhaps my inability to commit saved my ass all the times.

there were others, including one man, whom i later saw on fb being discussing as a pedo. back then, though, we only texted on my first cellphone, until i scared him off by sending him a “forward this to 10 friends” message. he was very mad, and never responded again.

i was online a lot, and because i spoke good english, i went pretty deep into weird us-based internet. i was interested in all things weird, like murder, sideshows, satanism, drugs, about which i had read in cool indie magazines

i discovered whole communities of people talking about childlove, writing pedo-fiction, and discussing the need to fight against stigma: basically what the pedos are up to today, but in the 00s. it was mostly on livejournal & separate sites & forums back then. it was weird

there were many other things in my life that i could go on about, but i think it’s time to drive this back to the film “cuties”. it’s a vastly important film because it starkly portrays the voluntary hypersexualization of minors that happens in the western culture—and condemns it

i think that if perhaps my parents watched something like that when i was small they’d be more careful with what they kept at home, with what they allowed me to do, and would actually give me talks, not just about pregnancy, but also about consent, the way i looked, etc.

after all, they grew up in a completely different space. things like pedophilia, rape, teenage pregnancies occurred in the ussr, but those were marginal anomalies. in general, sex was supposed to stay in the bedroom, and culture was to speak of different things.

in the ussr, you watched films about defeating nazis and building communism not cheerleaders with tits or schoolgirls have sex w teachers. teens also fought nazis or built communism. young women worked as night school teachers in remote siberian villages. married tractor drivers

of course, more openness in questions of sex would be useful because even when you have free available abortions, as you did in the ussr, you still have to know how and why to use your body in healthy, safe and self-respecting ways.

and teenagers deserve to have information available to them that will explain that it’s fine to discover your sexuality as it develops, that desire isn’t bad, but you have to be careful about the way people around you perceive it

i had never been a senegalese tween growing up in the parisian banlieus, but the struggle of amy in “cuties” is near and dear to my heart, because i, too, grew up on the cusp of the two cultures

one of these cultures did not exactly offer space for conversation about sex, and the other pushed you into participating in this conversation proactively. perfection is somewhere in between but closer to ussr and will be achieved if we work towards it

a lot of people complain about the girl actors in the film, that they were exploited and abused: but i honestly think that they had a rare opportunity to explore all of this from the outside looking in, and i envy them

and i find it really frustrating when people crusade against the film itself, instead of the many instances which perpetuate the culture condemned in the film: child pageants, child modelling, jeffrey epstein’s whole cohort: all that came to the rest of the world from the west

back when i was living in moscow but was already a grown-up, me and my friends first encountered “toddlers and tiaras” on tv and thought it was absolutely insane perhaps a parody? to realize it was an actual thing made no sense at all

but american television is full of stuff like that, it’s not even funny. i don’t watch a lot, but when i catch sight, it’s always teens having sex, twerking & whatever. it is not even problematic, if you actually manage to talk about it in a serious way. but does anyone care to?

because even if the actors playing kids are grown ups, and end up being sexualized—see, for instance, the photos of “glee” stars when the show was all the rage, in gq—it’s the kids who are watching, and they internalize the behaviors when there is no pushback

so to pretend that because the girls in “cuties” are actual minors—while the film is aimed at a slightly older audience—the whole point of the film is moot, is very hypocritical. the film itself will not sexualize minors but it will bring awareness to many

no eleven year old is going to go watch french movies and try to emulate some foreign girl her age. instead, she’ll go emulating the numerous older women playing schoolgirls in romance, vampire or superpower-centered shows of which there are tons

and if you think that there is a secretive plot to please pedophiles by making an indie french movie that was based on a previous, short film project, then you’re also greatly deluded in how these things work

it’s much cheaper and easier to just go to philippines and take advantage of the overwhelming poverty to buy a child from her parents and then make into a sex slave with almost endless content-producing potential.

go fight sex tourist pedophiles who go to asia. go fight ngo workers who buy underage girls to have sex with in the countries where they’re supposed to be helping. the biggest perp for that? the united nations.

go fight model scouts like epstein’s brunel who tour the poverty-stricken countries to buy underage “models”. go fight prince andrew, bill clinton and other people who were in epstein’s black book & allegedly but quite probably had sex with minors as enabled by him and ghislaine

go fight people who are trying to normalize pedophilia by cultural substitutes and distractions and go help people who are trying to prevent it by inhibiting sex drive & offering intense therapy

either way, do not make the senegalese-french woman director of “cuties” the brunt of your anti-pedophile outcry, because she is one of the few people daring to challenge the juggernaut of child sexualization that western culture is, and you should be grateful that she dared.

i do, however, believe that netflix, being part & parcel of that juggernaut, did take advantage of the film knowingly. but if you want to be honest, protest netflix on the overall, don't threaten that you’ll unsubscribe unless they remove “cuties” as if it’s what is wrong with it

btw dig deeper on “filthy rich” & how netflix gave space to epstein's victims but also let the cia, mossad, and a bunch of implicated actors off the hook because it was not politically convenient to them. this is why you should be cancelling your subscriptions

hell, the petitions to ban cuties were addressed to william barr, whose own father gave rise to jeffrey epstein: the cynicism here is so disgusting, i can’t even begin to describe it. maybe fight barr’s family first?

i think it’s telling that a lot of the stuff i read online against cuties comes from people who call it “a show” (thinking it’s a series, not having seen) or question whether someone would watch a european film willingly as a form of entertainment not for sexual gratification

readiness to have a kneejerk reaction & utter laziness to actually rage against the system constructively, i feel, are intrinsic to the failures of the american empire. it’s much easier to just protest one single movie, or tell people to vote, than overhaul the system entirely

it is worth noting: child pageants had been banned in france since 2013. in usa they’re a multi-million dollar industry. don't say “oh, and of course it’s french”. french culture is a very questionable landscape, but things portrayed in the “cuties” film are all of anglo origins

in fact, no culture has been as damaging to young people and has been more lucrative to pedophilia as the american culture, from britney spears to skinny jeans in small sizes. why? because the united states are the bulwark of capitalism, and child sex is profitable.

while capitalism stands, humans, including children, will not live within its systems safely, because they will always be assessed for the value they bring, and sexualizing them is the surest way to extract surplus value.

it’ll take a herculean effort to dismantle the systems that perceive humans as profitable, whether in a sexual way or not. that’s what communists are fighting for, and, occasionally that’s what cultural players do, as well.

and one of the fierce fighters against pedophile capitalism we have right now is maimouna doucoure. as always, a strong black woman paves the way, while disgusting, racist haters accuse her of being the devil herself.

by the way—the race issue here is important, because the outrage aimed at the film does not exist in a vacuum: it’s within the lengthy history of accusing black women and girls of deviancy while capitalism exploits them and their bodies

a diverse team of female performers make a poignant, bittersweet film about the tragedies and indignities of girlhood only to have a bunch of mostly-white prudes silence them and pretend they’re some sort of criminals. not surprising

i highly recommend reading “wayward lives, beautiful experiments” by saidiya hartman on that subject. and just reading whitney webb or something, if you want to rage against pedophilia but don’t want this fight to become racist and misogynyst

by the way, maimouna gueye who plays amy’s mother, is a feminist powerhouse in french theatre: she played the black antigone, participated in vagina monologues and created her own plays about the splits between french society and senegalese patriarchy

meanwhile, the actor who plays the auntie, mbisissine therese diop is a trailblazer of black film from the 60s, when she starred in ousmane sembene’s “black girl”, a searing indictment of neocolonization of africa through domestic work in france. watch it!

anyway, today, i am proud to say that “cuties” is an amazing film, and i can’t wait to see where doucoure’s career will take her. i’ve always had a weak spot for senegalese & french-senegalese cinema, and i highly recommend it to everyone.