Ep. 252: Cuties

Daniel Markin:

Hey, welcome to indoubt, my name is Daniel Markin. Today, I’m joined by Julia Beazley, who is a friend of the show. Welcome back, Julia.

Julia Beazley:

Thank you, my pleasure to be here.

Daniel Markin:

It’s good to have you join us again. The last time that you were on, we had quite a, we say a difficult conversation, one that people often don’t want to talk about, that’s super dark. But, we talked about pornography and the effects of human trafficking and how all of these different things play out, because to so many different extents this is the field of work that some of the stuff you’re doing is involved with, right? So, Julia, would you remind our listeners what exactly your line of work is, what your ministry is?

Julia Beazley:

Sure. So, I work as the director of public policy for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. We’re the National Association of Evangelical Christians in Canada. I work out of our Center for Faith and Public Life, which is located in Ottawa. What we do there is we engage with the government and in the courts on issues that are of concern to the evangelical community. Over the last, gosh, I don’t know how many years now, quite a number of years now, we’ve really had a significant focus on issues of sexual exploitation.

Julia Beazley:

The progression was interesting. It started with human trafficking when the awareness of that started to increase and it became something that was actually in our criminal code. And then, that led us into the issue of prostitution because we said, hang on, trafficking doesn’t happen if there’s no prostitution because that’s its endpoint. And then as we were working on the issue of prostitution and we started to say, what’s the commonality here? What is upstream of these other forms of sexual exploitation? And that led us to the issue of pornography.

Julia Beazley:

So, at this point, it’s a really holistic approach to these issues as one and the same, right? You can’t talk about trafficking without talking about prostitution and you can’t talk about those things without talking about the impact of pornography and what we would call a pornified culture in driving these things. And that of course has other impacts as well. We hear all kinds of talk about rape culture, and what we’re going to talk about today, the hyper-sexualization of young people and people generally, really.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. As I remember about our conversation last time too, we talked through the different effects of pornography, but it was just amazing to hear, we shouldn’t be surprised. And there was one line that you had that was in regards to pornography, you said it’s not a matter of if, but when, when are people now exposed to it? What we’re talking about today is we’re doing a movie review thing where we’re looking at Cuties, the movie.

Daniel Markin:

If you’re not familiar with it, Cuties was a film that was in the Sundance Festival, was highly celebrated in France. And just some of the history of it, Netflix picked up this independent film. The movie is about, I believe they’re 11 years old, these girls who get involved through series of events in their life where the main character who is of Senegalese, Senegalese, is that my … Senegal.

Julia Beazley:

Senegalese, I think.

Daniel Markin:

Senegalese, yeah. So she’s of Senegalese descent, but she’s living in Paris. And so, coming from an Islamic background, living in this hyper-sexualized France as an 11 year old, she gets involved with a school club where they start to do dancing. Now, I haven’t seen the movie, but my understanding from what I’ve read is that the type of dancing that they do is very reminiscent of what you would call softcore porn. And so, the movie was celebrated, it got picked up by Netflix.

Daniel Markin:

One of the first things that hit the media was Netflix released, hey, a coming soon film and I believe the poster was a bunch of these girls in sexualized positions that was called Cuties, and that got an enormous backlash. And so, Netflix quickly switched out the poster and they had, I think it was a picture of some of the main girls going for a shopping spree or something. After that, the movie got released to Netflix and people began to see it and were horrified with what they saw in the sense that it’s 11 year old girls twerking, dancing. And, there was a lot of up close shots of their private areas.

Daniel Markin:

And so, basically it created a huge controversy. Was very not well received by many. And then, just the movie dropped in the middle of a culture war. People were quitting Netflix, boycotting Netflix, and telling them to take it down. And meanwhile, you have other people saying, no, this is amazing, look the conversation it’s bringing to our culture. So basically, we’re going to talk about this movie today and we have a lot to say. But, was there anything else that you would add to that brief summary of the film?

Julia Beazley:

Yeah. So the description on Netflix says, this is a story of an 11 year old girl who starts to rebel against her conservative family’s traditions when she becomes fascinated with the dance crew. So, when I was initially contacted about this, and if I had anything to say, I’m like, I have so many thoughts because there were just so many things that troubled me and that came to my mind as I watched this film. The main character, her name is Amy, she’s the Senegalese girl. And it follows her, I would say her progressive sexualization as she tries to gain favor with this group of girls, this dance club called the Cuties, which is not, I mean, it’s not really a formal dance club. It’s like a little clique really, but they participate in dance competitions. So, she wants in on that.

Julia Beazley:

And it’s actually her progressive sexualization that gets through in with them and she ends up taking them further down this road. And all the while is rebelling from her traditional conservative family. So the writer and director, I believe called her film a social commentary, and it’s meant to shed light on the dangers of sexualizing young girls. So she actually considers it to be a deeply feminist film with an activist message and a mirror held up to society. She said she got the idea after watching a group of 11 year old girls in a Paris neighborhood dancing in these really hyper-sexualized ways. So, she spent some time interviewing preteen girls and just asking them, how do you feel about femininity in today’s society? How do you feel about your self image in this era of social media?

Julia Beazley:

So, that’s all good, right? And having watched the film, I believe this was her intent. It’s like you’re watching and there were points where you could tell that the film was trying to say something and it’s trying to point out that the sexualization of very young girls is a problem and it does harm. But I guess two thoughts there. One is I don’t think it quite succeeds in doing that and I’ll get to that a bit later, but the second thing is how she tried to do this is deeply, deeply problematic. So, in trying to critique the sexualization and exploitation of young girls, the film actually does those very things. And it does them in a way that I think probably both harms the girls that were featured and any girl who watches, right?

Daniel Markin:

Right.

Julia Beazley:

I think when we last spoke, I probably cited dr. Gail Dines a few times from Culture Reframed, but she just has a way of saying things. She says, you can’t critique the sexual exploitation of girls if you’re going to sexually exploit them to make the film. So, in an effort to do this cultural critique, she actually perpetuates this exploitation and sexualization of young girls. Yeah, so that was the one side, but I found it so troubling on a number of other levels as well.

Julia Beazley:

The most obvious one is this, overt sexualization of these very young girls. But the girls were also really troubled in all sorts of other ways. They’re not especially kind to one another, in fact, for a lot of the film, they treat each other terribly. At first, they’re very, very mean to Amy, the main character. There are ongoing tensions and conflicts between members of the groups. There’s physical fights, there’s verbal fights. There’s just all sorts of cruelty displayed, and that’s just amongst themselves. And then, they don’t respect authority, whether that’s at school, at home, in other places. There are scenes where they use their sexuality to get out of trouble. They engage in risky online activities like taking and sending naked images.

Julia Beazley:

So the main character takes one of herself and sends it out, broadcasts it out. There’s a scene where she takes one of a boy at school without his knowledge. There’s a scene where the girls are watching pornography in the bathroom. There’s just so much here, that it’s all part of that bigger picture, right? But, it’s just really, really troubling. And then there’s the fact that Amy is from this very religiously conservative community and it’s not, I don’t think it’s depicted fairly. So all they show is the negative and unflattering aspects of this community until the very end where she comes to the end of her rebellion and returns to the relative safety of her family and community. So, there’s just so much, right, to this film.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. One of the things that was surprising to me as I researched it was I thought it was a documentary, but it’s interesting that it was a film. The second thing, just adding to your ending there, my understanding at the very end, she actually has, I don’t know, a change of heart or a change of mind, and there’s a scene where she puts on a buttoned up sweater, but then buttons it up all the way, be very modest and then goes and grabs a skipping rope. And just trying to reclaim some of this innocence. And I think that is …

Daniel Markin:

Whenever we discuss films, and we talk about this in our free show here is I always like to ask two questions. I like to ask the question, what is the message of the film and is that message true? And it occurs to me that the director has a certain message they’re trying to portray, but they’re also are other messages that can be portrayed that are true. And so, I think like what you said, the director was trying to portray something, but all of that got lost in the way it was done. So, let’s deal with that first one first with the message of the film, what was the director trying to show about sexuality and how it affects young women?

Daniel Markin:

Because oftentimes when we think about pornography, when we think about the vice that it is, we just instantly assume it’s men. But this is a unique window into how it actually affects, and how should we say it, raises young women? Because this is what they’re learning in their young age, right? So, right, they’re seeing this on their phones, they’re watching these videos, seeing the likes explode on Instagram, and they’re saying, I can do that. One of the articles I read basically was saying, these 11 year old girls don’t really even understand the moves they’re doing, but they know that it’s getting likes. And so, they emulate it. And so, yeah, if you could touch on to some of that.

Julia Beazley:

Yeah. So first I want to say, I believe the filmmakers motives, right? And I agree with her motives completely. This culture needs to be critiqued, right? I only wish she would’ve consulted with some experts on how to do this in a way that doesn’t, again, as Gail Dines says, use the exact same visual grammar she’s trying to critique to do it. Because in the end, I think by sexualizing the children to critique the sexualization of children, she’s trying to critique the very real threats to young girls of having this, like you say, this unfettered access to social media and the internet and everything it holds. But the way it was done, I think does more harm than good.

Julia Beazley:

The critique is there, but I would even, me with what I do, right, and how immersed I am in these things, I would say it’s an undercurrent. The film doesn’t really wrestle with any of these things in an obvious or maybe an effective way, right? So if you’re not looking for it or if you’re not predisposed to think in that way, to think critically about porn culture. And unfortunately, the reality is any young girl or boy who happens to watch that, right, is unlikely to be so predisposed. All they’re going to see is all these adventures of this very troubled group of young girls who are overtly sexualized in really disturbing ways.

Julia Beazley:

And except for the lead characters coming to the end of herself at the end of the film, there’s no real reckoning with the harm of all of this. It’s so quick, right? It’s like, she’s in the middle of this awful situation where they’re performing this dance that’s just terrible and the crowd is horrified. It’s terrible how overtly sexual their dance is, and she just has this moment where she just, she starts to cry, she runs home. Like you say, she puts on the sweater and goes out and starts jumping rope. That’s the reckoning. There’s no real delving into these issues or working with them at all.

Julia Beazley:

So, there are organizations like Culture Reframed. These are professionals who devoted themselves to research and to equipping parents and professionals and teachers to talk to kids about these issues, to prepare them for this culture. And they’re calling for a global conversation on just this, right? Let’s talk about the hyper-sexualization of girls and boys, but especially girls and how we can start to help them build resilience. How do we make them resilient to all of the messages and the lessons of this culture and how do we do it in ways that don’t further exploit or hyper-sexualized them? So, there’s all kinds of things that rightly need to be critiqued. And this is where we can talk a little more generally about the sexualization of children.

Julia Beazley:

So, I think as we talked about last time, girls are taught from, well, increasingly from pornography, as I think we talked about last time, but from mass media, so advertising, movies, television, magazines, social media, they’re taught from a really young age that their bodies, that their appearance and their attractiveness are the most important thing about them. That everything else about them, their intelligence, their kindness, their courage, their compassion, creativity, athletic ability, whatever it is, any of these other things are of much less importance. They’re taught that their bodies are a currency, and we see that in Cuties. I think I mentioned there’s a scene where the girls use their sexuality, I hate to even say that because they’re so young, but they’re just doing what they’ve seen modeled online and in mass media, they use this to get out of trouble.

Julia Beazley:

So, sexualization defines a person based on their sexual identity and their attractiveness. And we see this throughout our culture. It’s problematic for any person, but especially so for children. So, it’s this process that it’s in the air we breathe, right? And it shapes individual and cultural attitudes about sex, their values and their behaviors. Kids grow up seeing themselves more and more as sexual objects, and others the same way, right, rather than seeing themselves and others as unique multi-faceted human beings. To objectify a person is to take away everything that is unique, special, even quirky about someone, right, and reduce them to a function.

Julia Beazley:

So as you said, all of this is inextricably linked to the porn industry and how it’s infiltrated our culture, because that’s what porn does. It sexualizes, it objectifies to the exclusion of anything else about them. While it may, and it does in a lot of cases highlight race, age, sexual orientation, family relationships, even religion, it does so only in order to sexualize those things. So it trains us to see others as sexual objects and to view ourselves in the same way. It’s just a real problem.

Julia Beazley:

And so, this is the air we breathe, it’s the water we swim in, right? This is what girls are immersed in. It’s like this whole culture, again, I’m going to quote Gail Dines, it’s like everything girls see tells us that girls and women are split essentially into two groups, those who are desirable and those who are invisible. The choices on how to be successfully female have been reduced to that, right? You’re going to be sexually desirable or you’re not. And even highly successful, accomplished talented women are evaluated on the basis of this. It doesn’t matter if you’re an actress, a musician, an athlete, a race car driver, or the leader of a country, right, pop culture sends the message that what ultimately matters about you is how attractive or sexy or desirable you are.

Daniel Markin:

Right. And the same culture is also telling us that your sexuality, the further you push that, the more liberating it is. That you become, the more you push sexuality and the sexier you can be, the freer you can be from the shackles of everything bad, religion or conservatism, everything that’s not progressive that our culture views as wrong or regressive, they say. Actually, one of the things that is just getting into a little bit of, I guess, especially on feminism, one of the great pains that I see of it is the message right now, one of the message is, is that the more sexualized you can be the more free you can be, and that’s like a currency. And so, you see this … I was reading a book called, The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray. Have you heard of this one?

Julia Beazley:

I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t read it.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. So, he was doing a critique on feminism and he’s a gay man. One of the points he made is he was saying that there’s this weird … So, he used this illustration of Drew Barrymore way back in, I think the early ’90s or something when she was pretty young. I think she was 19 or so. She was on David Letterman and it turned out to be David Letterman’s birthday. And so, in front of the whole crowd in front of Letterman, she begins to stand on his desk and do this overtly sexualized dance. And at the end of it, turns away from the crowd, but reveals her breasts to David Letterman. And it’s all hooting and hollering and chairing, and it was this moment of …

Daniel Markin:

Murray goes on to say, and he quotes Barrymore later on, right? It’s this moment of liberation that she can do whatever she wants with her body, right? And then later on, I think she’s on it 15 years later, right? And she’s talking to Letterman and that conversation came up. She said something like, “Oh yeah, the last time I was on here, I did something pretty bad.” And I think he asked her about, he said, “Oh yeah. So tell me how that has affected you since.” She said, “I look back on that video and it was fun, and I felt liberated and I felt sexy and I felt …” And the message she’s saying, she’s like, “I’m a mom now. I have a child now, but I still look back on that with fondness.”

Julia Beazley:

Wow.

Daniel Markin:

And this overt message that she is like … And this is her at 19 being questionably like, oh, that’s underage, and then I think with the Cuties thing, that takes it to a whole nother level. But, this lie that your sexualization is liberating is everywhere.

Julia Beazley:

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I have so much to say on that too. So, let me first, I want to defend feminism, the original feminism. And one of my survivor friends said it best, that feminism was never supposed to be about my individual liberation or freedom or whatever, it was about bettering the level of life for all women. So that’s feminism to me, those are the original feminists who fought for equality and inclusion and all of those things. I don’t consider so much of what is out there today calling itself feminism to be feminism.

Julia Beazley:

This is going to be a bit of a rabbit trail, but it goes back to what Gail Dines said about using the same visual grammar you’re trying to critique, right, to do the critique. I watched a very long rambling video by Russell Brand a few weeks back, and he was talking about a new, I haven’t watched it, but it got all kinds of attention. It was a new music video. I think it was Cardi B and someone else, another female artists. And I gather, they’re calling it a celebration of all those things you just said, right? Female sexual power and reclaiming it.

Julia Beazley:

And what they’re trying to do is say, we are consistently, particularly in this genre of music, we are consistently portrayed as submissive, we’re objectified and so on, right? So what they’re trying to do is be the ones with the power and they’re trying to … But to do that, right, they’re using the same visual grammar. And so, hey, I don’t know if you ever watched the Russell Brand video, but he goes on and on and on. But again, I mean-

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, he goes on and on and he talk a bit like this and he’s [inaudible 00:25:16] over here, yeah.

Julia Beazley:

And he’s so profound, right?

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, he’s a clever guy.

Julia Beazley:

But at the end of it he says, but is it liberation if you’re doing the very same things? If everything you’re doing is still all geared, whether you’re trying to reclaim it or not, it’s still all geared for the male gaze? It’s still all the same overt sexualization and all of these things, you’re just reclaiming it and calling it your own, right? But is that really liberation? So, that’s where this new wave of feminism is today, and we see it in discussions about prostitution, right, that this is a choice, it’s female empowerment and all these things. So it’s a real, I think it’s a hijacking, frankly [crosstalk 00:26:05].

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, it’s a hijacking and it’s a dark irony that the very thing that they were trying to fight against, they become. And they’re fed the lie that, well, if you’re the one doing it, then clearly you’re in control. You’re in the driver’s seat and you’re the winner. But, it’s like to use a different analogy, it’s like someone who is a slave, right, now basically saying, okay, you’re free, but they’re saying, no, but now I choose to be a slave. It’s like, at the end of the day, they’re still a slave, right? And so, in a over sexualized culture, they’re choosing to act in a way that still, to use that slave language, regressing, right? It’s still regression. It’s not, oh, it’s just so backwards.

Julia Beazley:

When our prostitution laws were being challenged at the Supreme court of Canada, I was going to the hearings, but it was so full. It was quite a small room, so there was overflow in the lobby. And so, I found myself out there hanging out, watching on a big screen with a bunch of women currently in prostitution. And they weren’t sure, is she with us, is she not with us. They didn’t really know. So I ended up getting into a conversation with one of them and she said, “What’s your position?” And I told her, and I said, I guess I just think that we can do a lot better for women, right, than saying prostitution is your best and only option, whether that’s at an income or whatever.

Julia Beazley:

She just shrugged and she said, That’s patriarchy. You got to live with it and live within it.” So, it’s that same kind of, this is the ocean we’re swimming in and this is what it has in store for us, so we might as well try and claim it as our own, right? It’s that same thing you were just talking about. And it’s so troubling, but it is. It’s an acquiescence to all of these things that culture has told us that females are to be and how they should be. It’s really, yeah, it’s so troubling.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. So circling back then, back to Cuties as you think about the movie, I think there’s a few things that we can say are true about the movie. The first one is that the directors aim to portray the harms of an over sexualized culture, right? She’s true in that. She’s true in trying to point that out in the sense that we do live in a pretty messed up time to be a man, a woman of any age. I think we can also say at the same time, that it’s true, that she should never have used these crotch shots, these closeups of these young girls and exposing them in this movie. I think we cannot tolerate, we cannot accept that as something good. And so, I think we’re right to say, it’s true that that is wrong as well.

Daniel Markin:

And so, in the one sense, I’m like, I can appreciate that she’s trying to bring awareness to the sexualization, especially of young girls in this movie, but I think what we’ve just discussed, it’s completely lost in the way she did it. And unfortunately, isn’t going to help the cause. If anything it’s actually like you mentioned, what if your other young girls watch this? It’s actually just going to pour some more fuel on the fire, teach them a little bit more. To the person who already views this as wrong, they’re going to be like, we cannot affirm this. But to the person who doesn’t have a thought on this, right, like a young kid, they’re just seeing, like you mentioned this exciting adventure of these girls going around and having fun and I want to be like the girls in the movie, right? And so, there’s a huge danger there. Would you add anything to these truths?

Julia Beazley:

Yeah. You hit it exactly right. If a young girl is watching this, it’s just more of the same message to them, right? They’re not going to think critically about it. It’s just more of, oh yeah, okay, this is our reality. This is what life is like when you’re 11 or 12. It’s just, it’s so, so damaging and we don’t ever really escape it. I’m in my, gosh, I guess I have to say late 40s now, but this pressure never lets up that this is what you’re supposed to be in this culture. I still feel it sometimes as a woman in her 40s with a pretty solid sense of myself. So what happens when an 11 or 12 year old girl growing up in this environment and who sees this? It’s just, it is so, so damaging.

Julia Beazley:

The American Psychological Association, a number of years back, identified something called self objectification, right? So when girls are growing up in this culture that tells them, your body exists as a thing that exists to please others. They adapt, right, and they conform to this. And what we see is this self objectification, and honestly, a quick trip to any social media site, right, will give you a sense of just how prevalent this is. They’re buying into this idea that their value lies primarily in their attractiveness. There’s trying to get the likes, trying to get the attention on social media, and they’re buying it because they don’t see an alternative.

Julia Beazley:

We talked a little bit earlier about those choices. It seems like a real binary choice, either your attractive or you’re invisible. Invisibility for your average teenage girl is not a good thing. Being visible is pretty central to the identity of a lot of teenage girls. And we have all kinds of research that tells us what the effects of this are, physical and mental wellbeing. I mean, we could go on, there’s negative body image. They think they’re too heavy, they’re too thin. They’re too curvy, they’re not curvy enough. They’re not attractive enough.

Julia Beazley:

This can lead to eating disorders to low self-esteem or depression, sexting, right, which we see in the film. They feel pressured to send sexually explicit photos of themselves because their culture tells them that’s the way to get a hold of boys attention and affection. And boys get caught up in this too. Excuse me. And of course, this behavior is risky on so many levels. Those photos can get shared. Sometimes they get shared widely and the results can just be devastating.

Daniel Markin:

Definitely. One encouragement of that is I’ve, in some other reading, I’ve learned that that has actually gone down. That for at least generation Z, they are less likely to be doing that, which is a good thing, largely because they don’t want it to be shared everywhere. And so, my understanding is, they actually are drinking less. They’re going to parties less because they don’t want to be the one who is shared around.

Julia Beazley:

Cool.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, which is an interesting by-product of that. That’s just an offhanded comment, but I found that in, the book is called iGen by Jean Twenge. So, as we, I guess, put a … We’re coming for a landing here. We’ve affirmed that this movie is enormously problematic, but it’s displaying a problematic culture. And so, yeah, do-

Julia Beazley:

Can I say one more thing about the problematic culture because this is important.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, please.

Julia Beazley:

Because it’s how where we started, and so I think just to wrap it up. So the other problem with this sexualization is that it’s grooming at a cultural level. So there’s damage to their self-esteem and sense of self and all these other things, but it also normalizes sexual behavior and talk when these things should be anything but normal. And that kind of cultural grooming leaves them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation and predation. I think that’s really important here also, just talking about, if young girls are watching this movie and all of the things they see in mass media.

Julia Beazley:

There’s a recovering porn addict who she’s a powerful anti-porn advocate. She warned at an international summit a year or two ago that pornography, and I would add a pornified mass media and culture is grooming the next generation of trafficking victims, girls who will give themselves over to abuse and exploitation because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do. So, I think, there are just so many things we have to contend with and understand the far reaching and very serious impacts of this broad cultural sexualization of children.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. And to add to that, ideas have consequences, and this idea that you can be free and liberated through your sexuality will have and is having enormous consequences. And it’s going to perpetuate through the generations as time goes on, so.

Julia Beazley:

Yeah. And it’s anything but liberating, right?

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, exactly.

Julia Beazley:

It promises liberation, but it actually does the opposite.

Daniel Markin:

It’s a trap.

Julia Beazley:

Yeah.

Daniel Markin:

It’s a trap. And so, the thing, just as we come for a close here, I think the church has an interesting place in this discussion because with the teachings of Christ, the teachings of the Bible, we affirm the fact that all humans have human dignity and human value. It doesn’t matter the shape of your body. It doesn’t matter your genetic makeup, right? And certain things that whether you’re tall or short or thin or wide, right? In the eyes of God, you are beloved, you’re his child, you’re perfect, right? He loves you and the father loves his children.

Daniel Markin:

And so, as Christians, we’re the only people in the world who can actually claim to have this acceptance, this deep peace. The thing we can proclaim too is the fact that in Christ we see, no one else live in a way that was so liberating to women. I mean, he went and sat with the prostitutes. He met with them, he spent time with them. Everything that Jesus did was actually showing the human value of them. He said, I value not because of your body, but because of who you are. And Jesus values us so much that he gives up his body so that they can find value in who they really are as a child of God.

Daniel Markin:

And so, as Christians, we have an amazing, amazing message to proclaim. And so, I’m thankful for the work that you’re doing and we’ll be praying for you to continue to be fighting the fight, because ideas have consequences, but you have an amazing opportunity to help and shift some of the laws and everything happening that’s allowing this to happen. And, as God leaves and moves, I’m sure he’s going to use you in so many different ways, so.

Julia Beazley:

Thank you, I appreciate that. On that note, something to pray for, I just wanted to alert you that there has been a bill tabled in the Senate. It’s a private senator’s bill. Number is bill S203. That bill, it’s called an act to restrict young persons online access to sexually explicit material.

Daniel Markin:

Wow.

Julia Beazley:

So, we’ve got some information on our website. We’ve got a sample letter that you can send to show the Senator your support, or to send to senators in your province or region and say, hey, this is on the table and it’s important. This would be such a critical step in starting to provide some protection, so that kids can’t just stumble into these sites online. You would have to show that somehow you verify that you are of age in order to get in. So, that’s one of the most exciting legislative things to happen in a while. Yeah, so for sure.

Daniel Markin:

Amazing.

Julia Beazley:

Yeah, we have information on our website on that.

Daniel Markin:

Great. So then anyone who’s listening here can check that out and get read up on that. And, yeah, I’ll be praying that that goes through so that we can help and begin to make the wrongs right.

Julia Beazley:

Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. So, well, Julia, thank you for your time. Thank you for this discussion, and I look forward to speaking again at some point.

Julia Beazley:

Yeah, it’s always a pleasure.