It’s Not ‘CSE’. It’s Child Rape

This post, authored by Joanna Gray, was republished with permission from The Daily Sceptic

Any idea what CSE is? I was midway through an article in the Sunday Times when I had to refer back to the beginning to find out. It sounded to me a bit like a defunct Building Society or perhaps one of those anonymous companies that deals in logistics.

It turns out that CSE is an acronym for Child Sexual Exploitation – otherwise known as child rape, child molestation or child sexual abuse. It was used throughout the otherwise excellent and deeply troubling article about ongoing grooming gang activity.

By reducing child rape to a sterile sounding acronym, the police, the safeguarding officers and finally the journalist helped to take the physical horror out of the whole depraved saga.

As this quote from South Yorkshire Police demonstrates, the police could be talking about a new strategy in relation to CCTV or traffic, not the wholesale rape of children: “If anyone is concerned about the service they have received in relation to CSE, we urge them to get in touch so we can explore this fully.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein warned against the “bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” and the increasing preference for obfuscatory language in our public discourse is entirely befuddling what remains of our collective brainpower.

The rebrand of euthanasia to assisted dying, of illegal migrants to irregular migrants, of racism into anti-racism, female circumcision to FGM, money printing to QE, the dole to benefits, crime to anti-social behaviour, lying to misspeaking, poverty to low-income-families, all help to soften or defuse tough subjects.

If we give something horrendous a bureaucratic or gentle name, then perhaps all the challenging implications will go away. In school settings punishment has been reduced to sanctions, police cells are now custody suites, and most insanely, bad mental health has been rebranded as mental health. But as Ayn Rand said, “You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality”. 

But can people really be duped by language? Of course, just ask any transwoman. Or my friend whose latest squeeze introduced her to ENM relationships. Haven’t heard of them?

No, nor had she, until her creep of a boyfriend explained that ENM relationships were the ‘latest thing’ in romance: Ethical Non-Monogamy, a.k.a. shagging around.

As is commonly said now: this has got to stop. As the old saying goes, let us call a spade a spade, and child rape, child rape not CSE.

Other example of obfuscatory acronyms and euphemisms most welcome in the comments below.

Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.

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