#youth rights

[hyperlexichypatia]

As I keep shouting into the void, pathologizers love shifting discussion about material conditions into discussion about emotional states.

I rant approximately once a week about how the brain maturity myth transmuted “Young adults are too poor to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own” into “Young adults are too emotionally and neurologically immature to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own.”

I’ve also talked about the misuse of “enabling” and “trauma” and “dopamine” .

And this is a pattern – people coin terms and concepts to describe material problems, and pathologization culture shifts them to be about problems in the brain or psyche of the person experiencing them. Now we’re talking about neurochemicals, frontal lobes, and self-esteem instead of talking about wages, wealth distribution, and civil rights. Now we can say that poor, oppressed, and exploited people are suffering from a neurological/emotional defect that makes them not know what’s best for themselves, so they don’t need or deserve rights or money.

Here are some terms that have been so horribly misused by mental health culture that we’ve almost entirely forgotten that they were originally materialist critiques.

Codependency What it originally referred to: A non-addicted person being overly “helpful” to an addicted partner or relative, often out of financial desperation. For example: Making sure your alcoholic husband gets to work in the morning (even though he’s an adult who should be responsible for himself) because if he loses his job, you’ll lose your home. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/codependency-addiction-recovery.html What it’s been distorted into: Being “clingy,” being “too emotionally needy,” wanting things like affection and quality time from a partner. A way of pathologizing people, especially young women, for wanting things like love and commitment in a romantic relationship.

Compulsory Heterosexuality What it originally referred to: In the 1980 in essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493756 Adrienne Rich described compulsory heterosexuality as a set of social conditions that coerce women into heterosexual relationships and prioritize those relationships over relationships between women (both romantic and platonic). She also defines “lesbian” much more broadly than current discourse does, encompassing a wide variety of romantic and platonic relationships between women. While she does suggest that women who identify as heterosexual might be doing so out of unquestioned social norms, this is not the primary point she’s making. What it’s been distorted into: The patronizing, biphobic idea that lesbians somehow falsely believe themselves to be attracted to men. Part of the overall “Women don’t really know what they want or what’s good for them” theme of contemporary discourse.

Emotional Labor What it originally referred to: The implicit or explicit requirement that workers (especially women workers, especially workers in female-dominated “pink collar” jobs, especially tipped workers) perform emotional intimacy with customers, coworkers, and bosses above and beyond the actual job being done. Having to smile, be “friendly,” flirt, give the impression of genuine caring, politely accept harassment, etc. https://weld.la.psu.edu/what-is-emotional-labor/ What it’s been distorted into: Everything under the sun. Everything from housework (which we already had a term for), to tolerating the existence of disabled people, to just caring about friends the way friends do. The original intent of the concept was “It’s unreasonable to expect your waitress to care about your problems, because she’s not really your friend,” not “It’s unreasonable to expect your actual friends to care about your problems unless you pay them, because that’s emotional labor,” and certainly not “Disabled people shouldn’t be allowed to be visibly disabled in public, because witnessing a disabled person is emotional labor.” Anything that causes a person emotional distress, even if that emotional distress is rooted in the distress-haver’s bigotry (Many nominally progressive people who would rightfully reject the bigoted logic of “Seeing gay or interracial couples upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public” fully accept the bigoted logic of “Seeing disabled or poor people upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public”).

Battered Wife Syndrome What it originally referred to: The all-encompassing trauma and fear of escalating violence experienced by people suffering ongoing domestic abuse, sometimes resulting in the abuse victim using necessary violence in self-defense. Because domestic abuse often escalates, often to murder, this fear is entirely rational and justified. This is the reasonable, justified belief that someone who beats you, stalks you, and threatens to kill you may actually kill you.

What it’s been distorted into: Like so many of these other items, the idea that women (in this case, women who are victims of domestic violence) don’t know what’s best for themselves. I debated including this one, because “syndrome” was a wrongful framing from the beginning – a justified and rational fear of escalating violence in a situation in which escalating violence is occurring is not a “syndrome.” But the original meaning at least partially acknowledged the material conditions of escalating violence.

I’m not saying the original meanings of these terms are ones I necessarily agree with – as a cognitive liberty absolutist, I’m unsurprisingly not that enamored of either second-wave feminism or 1970s addiction discourse. And as much as I dislike what “emotional labor” has become, I accept that “Women are unfairly expected to care about other people’s feelings more than men are” is a true statement.

What I am saying is that all of these terms originally, at least partly, took material conditions into account in their usage. Subsequent usage has entirely stripped the materialist critique and fully replaced it with emotional pathologization, specifically of women. Acknowledgement that women have their choices constrained by poverty, violence, and oppression has been replaced with the idea that women don’t know what’s best for themselves and need to be coercively “helped” for their own good. Acknowledgement that working-class women experience a gender-and-class-specific form of economic exploitation has been rebranded as yet another variation of “Disabled people are burdensome for wanting to exist.”

Over and over, materialist critiques are reframed as emotional or cognitive defects of marginalized people. The next time you hear a superficially sympathetic (but actually pathologizing) argument for “Marginalized people make bad choices because…” consider stopping and asking: “Wait, who are we to assume that this person’s choices are ‘bad’? And if they are, is there something about their material conditions that constrains their options or makes the ‘bad’ choice the best available option?”

#mad pride #neurodiversity #ableism #ageism #youth rights #liberation #disability rights #classism #capitalism #mental health culture #pop psychology #feminism #emotional labor

[your-local-ruebit-hole-detective]

okay, you know what? Running away shouldn’t be a crime. It shouldn’t be dangerous, either. Any kid should be able to leave their parents if they want, for any reason. No I’m not kidding.

“But Rue, where will these kids stay? Do you want them on the streets?”

of course not. In an ideal world, a kids would have multiple adults other than their parents they could look to for care, but I recognize that that will never be a reality for every single child. So: youth shelters, if they have nowhere else to go. There should be clean, warm shelters where anyone under 18 can stay for as long as they need, no questions asked. (And of course shelters that aren’t just for kids, but we’re talking about youth rights right now)

“But Rue,” I hear you say, “what if some moody teenager runs away after an argument?”

First of all, I’d rather a thousand moody teenagers run away than one abused child be trapped. Second, so what if one does? A kid needs time away from their parents, so they leave. The vast majority of them will get some time to cool down and then go back home, and if they don’t want to go back, period? Then nine times out of ten, they have a good reason. (Because yes, as hard as it is for you to believe, kids are humans who have common sense.)

“Okay, but what about the one time out of ten the kid doesn’t have a good reason?”

Then the kid doesn’t have a good reason. It doesn’t change anything. If someone wants to break up with their partner because of something stupid, you wouldn’t say they legally shouldn’t be able to. (And if you would, then you’re just a bad person.) No one should have to be in a relationship, romantic or otherwise, that they don’t want to be in.

#youth rights #childism

[self-loving-vampire]

Really interesting how if you forcefully undress and spank an adult you can be arrested for sexual battery but if you do it to your child for the purpose of humiliating them and establishing dominance they call it “discipline” and most people don’t have a problem with it. 

It’s just normal parenting.

#abuse #child abuse #youth rights #100 #1k #2k #3k #4k #5k

[aronarchy]

Why we don’t like it when children hit us back

To all the children who have ever been told to “respect” someone that hated them.

March 21, 2023

Even those of us that are disturbed by the thought of how widespread corporal punishment still is in all ranks of society are uncomfortable at the idea of a child defending themself using violence against their oppressors and abusers. A child who hits back proves that the adults “were right all along,” that their violence was justified. Even as they would cheer an adult victim for defending themself fiercely.

Even those “child rights advocates” imagine the right child victim as one who takes it without ever stopping to love “its” owners. Tear-stained and afraid, the child is too innocent to be hit in a guilt-free manner. No one likes to imagine the Brat as Victim—the child who does, according to adultist logic, deserve being hit, because they follow their desires, because they walk the world with their head high, because they talk back, because they are loud, because they are unapologetically here, and resistant to being cast in the role of guest of a world that is just not made for them.

If we are against corporal punishment, the brat is our gotcha, the proof that it is actually not that much of an injustice. The brat unsettles us, so much that the “bad seed” is a stock character in horror, a genre that is much permeated by the adult gaze (defined as “the way children are viewed, represented and portrayed by adults; and finally society’s conception of children and the way this is perpetuated within institutions, and inherent in all interactions with children”), where the adult fear for the subversion of the structures that keep children under control is very much represented.

It might be very well true that the Brat has something unnatural and sinister about them in this world, as they are at constant war with everything that has ever been created, since everything that has been created has been built with the purpose of subjugating them. This is why it feels unnatural to watch a child hitting back instead of cowering. We feel like it’s not right. We feel like history is staring back at us, and all the horror we felt at any rebel and wayward child who has ever lived, we are feeling right now for that reject of the construct of “childhood innocence.” The child who hits back is at such clash with our construction of childhood because we defined violence in all of its forms as the province of the adult, especially the adult in authority.

The adult has an explicit sanction by the state to do violence to the child, while the child has both a social and legal prohibition to even think of defending themself with their fists. Legislation such as “parent-child tort immunity” makes this clear. The adult’s designed place is as the one who hits, and has a right and even an encouragement to do so, the one who acts, as the person. The child’s designed place is as the one who gets hit, and has an obligation to accept that, as the one who suffers acts, as the object. When a child forcibly breaks out of their place, they are reversing the supposed “natural order” in a radical way.

This is why, for the youth liberationist, there should be nothing more beautiful to witness that the child who snaps. We have an unique horror for parricide, and a terrible indifference at the 450 children murdered every year by their parents in just the USA, without even mentioning all the indirect suicides caused by parental abuse. As a Psychology Today article about so-called “parricide” puts it:

Unlike adults who kill their parents, teenagers become parricide offenders when conditions in the home are intolerable but their alternatives are limited. Unlike adults, kids cannot simply leave. The law has made it a crime for young people to run away. Juveniles who commit parricide usually do consider running away, but many do not know any place where they can seek refuge. Those who do run are generally picked up and returned home, or go back on their own: Surviving on the streets is hardly a realistic alternative for youths with meager financial resources, limited education, and few skills.

By far, the severely abused child is the most frequently encountered type of offender. According to Paul Mones, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in defending adolescent parricide offenders, more than 90 percent have been abused by their parents. In-depth portraits of such youths have frequently shown that they killed because they could no longer tolerate conditions at home. These children were psychologically abused by one or both parents and often suffered physical, sexual, and verbal abuse as well—and witnessed it given to others in the household. They did not typically have histories of severe mental illness or of serious and extensive delinquent behavior. They were not criminally sophisticated. For them, the killings represented an act of desperation—the only way out of a family situation they could no longer endure.

- Heide, Why Kids Kill Parents, 1992.

Despite these being the most frequent conditions of “parricide,” it still brings unique disgust to think about it for most people. The sympathy extended to murdering parents is never extended even to the most desperate child, who chose to kill to not be killed. They chose to stop enduring silently, and that was their greatest crime; that is the crime of the child who hits back. Hell, children aren’t even supposed to talk back. They are not supposed to be anything but grateful for the miserable pieces of space that adults carve out in a world hostile to children for them to live following adult rules. It isn’t rare for children to notice the adult monopoly on violence and force when they interact with figures like teachers, and the way they use words like “respect.” In fact, this social dynamic has been noticed quite often:

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority” and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person” and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

(https://soycrates.tumblr.com/post/115633137923/stimmyabby-sometimes-people-use-respect-to-mean)

But it has received almost no condemnation in the public eye. No voices have raised to contrast the adult monopoly on violence towards child bodies and child minds. No voices have raised to praise the child who hits back. Because they do deserve praise. Because the child who sets their foot down and says this belongs to me, even when it’s something like their own body that they are claiming, is committing one of the most serious crimes against adult society, who wants them dispossessed.

Sources:

“The Adult Gaze: a tool of control and oppression,” https://livingwithoutschool.com/2021/07/29/the-adult-gaze-a-tool-of-control-and-oppression

“Filicide,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filicide

#repost of someone else’s content #medium repost #Alba M. #purity culture #ageism #adultism #youth oppression #childism #child abuse #parental abuse #youth rights #youthlib #youth liberation #parricide #nuclear family abolition #anarchism #note: I would consider reevaluating the demonization of adults who kill their parents too #many victims remain entrapped well into adulthood #there are still a lot of issues of economic dependency and control especially for young adults #and I don’t think such a totalizing power imbalance engendered in childhood is so easily levelled #even if an adult does become financially independent #likewise for adult victims of intimate partner abuse: also structurally made difficult for them to leave #even if not criminalized to the same degree #anti-abuser aktion

[random-thought-depository]

Opposition to attempts to confine minors to a carefully curated bubble where things conservatives don't like to talk about aren't talked about should be centered on advocating for the freedom of minors to experience pleasure on their own terms and learn on their own terms, not on a binmenist opposition to "coddling."

School library book bans and V-chips and the like aren't about making the experience of being a minor more congruent with the preferences of actually existing minors. You can tell by looking at how minors react to them (see, e.g., every teenager who's ever lied about their age to access a porn site) and how the adults pushing them in turn react to those reactions (with punishment, increased attempts at control, and more-or-less zero receptivity to feedback from actual minors). They're about trying to use selective exposure to information to shape the personality of minors to values-align them with conservatism; they're petty tyranny, not coddling, and insofar as this adult-directed control-centered personality-shaping project involves some "coddling" that's one of the least bad things about it. Opposition to this form of petty tyranny should be centered on advocacy for minors, not attempts to values-align minors with a different adult-centered political project; it should center solidarity with the actual minors who resent and resist this form of petty tyranny, not catering to adults who think reading Maus at 12 or sneaking into an R-rated movie at 13 builds character.

Note: this also means the proper reaction to things like "I'm a minor and I think I need to be protected from seeing somebody's Wincest Omegaverse fanfiction" is one that centers "you don't get to give up important rights on behalf of your entire demographic group and you also don't get to take away my important rights," not "I must defend my adult rights and superior older generation culture from those awful puriteens!"

#youth rights

[youth-rights]

When everyone seems to have a damaged, unhappy "inner child," it is time to examine and change the treatment of children on a massive scale.

#mine #youth liberation #youth rights #adultism #ageism #childrens rights

[library-fae]

its wild to me that i can have conversations with people who will genuinely say "it’s the parents fault for taking it (children) into public and expecting everyone else to be happy to tolerate it"

do you just expect kids not to be in public?

no one knows how to exist as a community anymore

communities are loud, kids are loud, people are loud

is it hard when kids are screaming? yeah, but id never say they shouldn't be there

same with when people are having public breakdowns, talking loudly, "loitering"...

why are we so mad at fellow humans for existing in spaces

#.faeposting #youth liberation #youthlib #youth rights #community #community building

[queeryouthautonomy]

It's time to fight back!

LGBTQ+ folks and allies, our rights are under attack. The ACLU, which tracks anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the nation, has identified over 400 bills currently making their way through state Congresses and Senates. We must stand together against these horrific policies for the good of all queer people.

On March 31st, 2023, Queer Youth Assemble is planning protests across the nation to center youth voices and allow all queer people and allies to make their displeasure known.

Join us at marches in over 30 states (with more joining up every day!) as well as Washington DC. Turn up in large enough numbers so that legislators know that we will not stand for this.

Read and sign our List of Demands!

Find a march near you! Tumblr masterpost of marches can be found here!

Donate (we are raising money for transportation, organizing expenses, free masks, and ASL interpreters!)

Follow this page for updates and to see state marches featured.

To learn more, send an ask here or email [email protected]!

Find us on Instagram and Tiktok—@queeryouthassemble!

#queer youth assemble #march for queer and trans youth autonomy #queer youth #queer pride #queer #trans healthcare #trans rights #trans #us politics #protest #psa #youth rights #lgbtq #don't say gay #trans day of visibility #signal boost #politics #transgender #lgbt #lgbtqia #nonbinary #healthcare #gay rights #human rights #activists #activism #events

[sparksinthenight]

My letter to Biden about KOSA

You can use the following letter as a template to send to your representatives. Or you can write your own letter.

Dear President Biden,

My name is ______ and I am a ______ in _____. I am writing to you to ask that you please oppose the Kids Online “Safety” Act. This act harms children, especially queer or abused children , and allows children to be indoctrinated into their parents’ worldviews.

Children, especially teenagers, deserve the freedom of the current internet. They deserve to listen to many different viewpoints, to hear the stories of many different people, to learn about many different experiences. They deserve to meet many different people and learn from them. They deserve to interact with many different forms of art expressing many different viewpoints. This allows them to form their own ideas and opinions about the world and become their own people. It broadens their horizons and makes them more open minded.

If parents are given control over what children learn about on the internet, then many parents will ensure that their children are not exposed to any views that contradict their own.

This will make it so that future generations can no longer learn more than and become better than older generations. The only thing making our society progress is younger generations learning more and becoming more accepting than older generations.

LGBT+ children under KOSA will often be stopped from accessing resources that help them learn that being LGBT+ is okay. Many children won’t be able to go against their parents’ homophobia and learn to love themselves. This will lead to many mental illnesses and suicides.

Also, abused children often go to the internet to access resources that teach them that what is happening to them is bad and they deserve better, and to access resources that help them escape. Their parents of course will not allow them to access these resources under KOSA.

Thank you for reading my letter and please take my concerns to heart.

Sincerely,

#stop kosa #kosa #kids online safety act #child rights #lgbt rights #lgbt+ characters #lgbtq rights #lgbtq+ rights #lgbtqia rights #lgbtqia+ rights #child abuse #the internet #internet #children’s rights #kids’ rights #youth rights #youth liberation

[solarpunkjesusfan]

Thinking about that time in APUSH when the teacher was trying to teach us a lesson about how bad the past was and instead taught himself about how much pressure is put on US high schoolers.

He gave us an account of a typical weekday of a 16 year old girl working in a textile factory in Lowell Massachusetts. We were then to write down our schedule on a typical weekday and compare.

My comparison concluded that she had more of a social life, more free time, actually had a boyfriend, worked fewer hours, slept less, and could get around more independently than I could.

Most other students reached similar conclusions but many of them also slept less than her. (I slept 8 hours, she slept 7, and many of my classmates slept 6 or less) I simply slept more because there was never any caffeine at my house and I couldn’t physically push myself to power through. I paid for this by working 10+ hours on homework every weekend.

After grading our homework he came back the next day with such a look of pity and said something along the lines of

“I had no idea it was this bad. It wasn’t like this when I was 16. I’m so sorry.”

This was over 10 years ago. If that teacher is still teaching APUSH he probably doesn’t do that assignment anymore.

I don’t regularly talk to any high schoolers, but I do keep up with current events. I don’t have a perfect idea but from what I can tell all the problems that were there when I was 16 are now way worse plus a whole pile of new horrific problems, some of which probably cross the line into being straight up human rights violations.

It wasn’t like this when I was 16. I’m so sorry.

#apush me off a cliff #apush #ap us history #rant post #text post #high school #history #abolish homework #school #youth rights #youth liberation #public school

[ihhfhonao3]

Absolutely love watching the evolution of a “cringe content” YouTuber (as in, someone who does “commentary” on “cringe”) go from shitting on gen z to shitting on gen a.

All the comments are the same. Always. “As a part of this generation, I’m sorry for what we’ve done,” “as someone who is gen _, we do not claim them,” “as someone who is (age), I’m sorry for what we have done”

STOP. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. DON’T BE SORRY JUST BECAUSE OF YOUR AGE. DON’T LET PEOPLE CONVINCE YOU THAT YOU’RE WORTH LESS BECAUSE OF WHEN YOU WERE BORN. YOU’RE BEING INDOCTRINATED. AND IT WILL NOT END IF YOU PARTAKE IN IT.

Why does it never end. Why does nobody ever learn that your age is not always an indicator of who you are as a person. Why is it so normal to beat down on literal children. What did they ever do wrong

#childism #youth liberation #youth rights #gen z #gen alpha #cringe culture is over #cringe culture is ableist #cringe culture is dead #cringe culture is stupid

[hyperlexichypatia]

This post reminded me of it, but my partner has observed that in contemporary gender discourse, maleness is so linked to adulthood and femaleness is so linked to childhood, that there are no "boys" or "women," only "men" and "girls."

This isn't exactly new -- for as long as patriarchy has existed, women have been infantilized, and "adult woman" has been treated as something of an oxymoron. Hegemonic beauty standards for women emphasize youthfulness, if not actual neoteny, and older women are considered "too old" to be attractive without ever quite being old enough to make their own decisions. There may be cultural allowances for the occasional older "wise woman," but a "wise woman" is always dangerously close to being a madwoman, or a witch. No matter how wise a woman is, she is never quite a rational agent. As Hanna K put it, "as a woman you're always either too young or too old for things, because the perfect age is when you're a man."

But the framing of underage boys as "men" has shifted, depending on popular conceptualizations of childhood and gender roles. Sometimes children of any gender are essentially feminized and grouped with women (the entire framing of "women and children" as a category). In the U.S. in the 21st century, the rise of men's rights and aggressively sexist ideology has correlated with an increased emphasis on little boys as "men" -- thus slogans like "Teach your son to be a man before his teacher teaches him to be a woman."

Of course, thanks to ageism and patriarchy (which literally means, not "rule by men," but "rule by fathers"), boys don't get any of the social benefits of being considered "men." They don't get to vote, make their own medical decisions, or have any of their own adult rights. They might have a little more childhood freedom than girls, if they're presumed to be sturdier and less vulnerable to "predators," but, for the most part, being considered "men" as young boys doesn't really get boys any more access to adult rights. What it does get them is aggressively gender-policed, often with violence. A little boy being "a man" means that he's not allowed to wear colors, have feelings, or experience the developmental stages of childhood.

This shifts in young adulthood, as boys forced into the role of "manhood" become actual men. As I've written about, I believe the trend of considering young adults "children" is harmful to everyone, but primarily to young women, young queer and trans people, and young disabled people. Abled, cisgender, heterosexual young men are rarely denied the rights and autonomy of adulthood due to "brain maturity."

What's particularly interesting is that, because transphobes misgender trans people as their birth-assigned genders, they constantly frame trans girls as "men" and trans men as "girls." A 10 year old trans girl on her elementary school soccer team is a "MAN using MAN STRENGTH on helpless GIRLS," while a 40 year old trans man is a "Poor confused little girl." Anyone assigned male at birth is born a scary, intimidating adult, while anyone female assigned at birth never becomes old enough to make xyr own decisions.

Feminist responses have also really fluctuated. Occasionally, feminists have played into the idea of little boys as "men," especially in trans-exclusionary rhetoric, or in one notorious case where members of a women's separatist compound were warned about "a man" who turned out to be a 6-month-old infant. There's periodic discourse around "Empowering our girls" or "Raising our boys with gentle masculinity," but for the most part, my problem with mainstream feminist rhetoric in general is that it tends to frame children solely as a labor imposed on women by men, not as subjects (and specifically, as an oppressed class) at all.

Second-wave feminists pushed back hard on calling adult women "girls" -- but they didn't necessarily view "women" as capable of autonomous decision-making, either. Adult women were women, but they might still need to be protected from their own false consciousness. As laws in the U.S., around medical privacy and autonomy, like HIPAA, started more firmly linking the concepts of autonomy with legal adulthood, and fixing the age of majority at 18, third-wave feminists embraced referring to women as "girls." Sometimes this was in an intentionally empowering way ("girl power," "girl boss"), which also served to shield women (mostly white, mostly bourgeois/wealthy) from criticism of their participation in racism and capitalism. But it also served to reinforce the narrative of women as "girls" needing to be protected from "men" (and their own choices).

I'm still hoping for a feminist politic that is pro-child, pro-youth, pro-disability, pro-autonomy, pro-equality, that rejects the infantilization of women, the adultification of boys, the objectification of children, the misgendering of trans people, and the imposition of gender roles.

#youth rights #ageism #feminism #sexism #intersectionality #capitalism #body autonomy #bodily autonomy

[your-local-ruebit-hole-detective]

“Kids don’t need the same rights as adults, their brains aren’t as sophisticated”

hm. Hm. Gee. Gee bud, it almost seems like you maybe, I don’t know, stumbled into one of the biggest historical justifications for oppression that we know of. I don’t know, that just sounds sort of familiar. Gee.

#childism #youth rights #youth liberation

[sigynsilica]

Yeah anyway kids should be tax exempt as in sales tax and also income tax should not apply to minors

We're right back to "no taxation without representation"

If they can't vote, the government shouldn't be able to take their money

#youth liberation #youth rights #leftism #taxes #social justice #human rights

[aronarchy]

[image ID: Facebook post by Songbird Schwarz

I often think about how gross it is the way we’ve normalized kids hating school. Like to the point of fear and avoidance. “Lol he’s pretending to be sick to stay home.” “She was so happy it was a snow day she jumped for joy.” “Hahaha he’s hiding under the bed to avoid going.”

It’s... It’s not funny. It’s actually really gross the way we make kids sit a desk all day to be force fed dry as hell information and make them ask if they can use the bathroom, for 7-8 hours a day. 5 days a week and then go home with oppressively unfair amounts of homework.

And then we laugh - we LAUGH - at how much they hate it. It’s become a cultural touchstone. To shake our heads and chuckle while kids try to scheme ways to get out of it.

That’s… That’s bad.

And then we ask adults to do the same with work.

/end image ID]

#repost of someone else’s content #facebook repost #child abuse cw #ageism #adultism #child abuse #anti school #anti capitalism #school abolition #youth rights #youthlib #youth liberation #(I think the connection—designed to train for tolerating workplace abuse—was made explicitly in its original formation? #don’t quote me on that though)

[caustic-light]

A thing about groomer discourse ya’ll really need to fucking understand

is that neither the threat we queers pose, nor the accusations made against us are actually about harming children.

We are a danger because the existence of queerness threatens the monopoly of violence adults have over children under a patriarchal hegemony, which is then twisted into rhetoric about harming children, and the accusation made as a response is that by harming children we must be sexual perverts and therefore worthy of being cast out. It’s 100% circular, harm to children is only a middle stage to make it sound palatable to more people. The idea of a class of groomers who are out to abuse your precious widdle kids serves to make the loud part quiet that is “if those people exist, we will lose the monopoly of violence over young people.”

There is no groomers here. They are a rhetorical trick made up in the same way as stranger danger, pedo panic and the lavender scare.

Going “no, you are the groomer” does nothing but validate these dogwhistles and integrate the ideas of sexuality as abuse and abuse as shorthand for sexuality into our own understanding of youth and sexuality and boy lemme tell you, this don’t end well. 

#youth rights #adultism #queer liberation