#youth liberation

[elhopper1sm]

Unpopular opinion but the reason being a teenager sucks is less to do with hormones and social cliques and more to do with the fact adults fucking hate teenagers. The fact that adults expect teenagers to be able to take on adult responsibilities yet don't deserve rights of an adult. They don't see teenagers as human beings and they aren't prepared to see kids with their own formed identities and humanity. Teenagers are so sexualized and seen as needing to take on more and more adult responsibilities. Yet when they want rights and humanity they are denied. The years your brain spends wanting nothing more than to form an identity are being taken away from you. Teenagers are essentially being kicked out of social spaces unless they have an extra 40 dollars lying around anytime they want to go out. Teenagers being kicked out of the mall just for existing or groomed into the school to prison pipeline. And now creating legislation to keep them off the Internet. Our society hates teenagers. And does everything we can to hurt them. The fact that anyone makes it out of their teenage years without trauma is a fucking miracle frankly.

[uncanny-tranny]

Children don't matter because they are "pure" and "innocent" and "untouched by sin."

Children matter because they are human beings. We should not be associating children with purity because it is dehumanizing rhetoric. It isn't about saying that children are not pure, but that we should be treating them as equals because we recognize they are people, not because they are "purer." Children should never have to be "pure" to be treated as people.

[stormy404]

something i don't see talked about enough is the fact that parents having constant surveillance over "their" children is normalized by our society

like seriously, parents will go install the Super Panopticon Kid Safe Parental Controls 2000 that sends their kid's internet history, recordings of their calls and texts, every file on their phone, and exact geolocation to the parents.

and if you ever point out that this is more likely to endanger kids than protect them, people suddenly bombard you with a thousand comments about how children are too stupid or immature to have the most basic privacy in their life.

[gorillawithautism]

i genuinely don't think "teen rebellion" would be a thing if we treated kids like people

[librarycards]

this obsession with physically birthing one’s “own” biological children, to the extent that other forms of kinship are understood as anything from pathetic to outright objectionable, is really fucking creepy. beyond the bizarre fixation on offspring not as other people to care for, but physical extensions of oneself and one’s supposed “genetic identity”, there is a sinister, bioessentialist current to this obsession which marks all non- and post-biological forms of family making as deviant - a deviation from “good” and “natural” kinship.

Suffused with ethnocentrism, nationalism, and cisheteropatriarchal privilege, this model of what it means to be close to one another cheapens deliberate, autonomous care, and turns to a “family” model that casts children as debtors and parents/~elders~ as lords, whose genetic proximity imbues them with the ability to preside over “their” children even after they reach adulthood via coercion (guilt, shame) and force.

[cpntredbeard]

[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

[sigynsilica]

I believe we aren't going to see substantial progress in the fight against child abuse until we start viewing children as people group. More specifically, until we stop viewing children as a parent's property, and start listening to their voices in the same way we'd listen to any oppressed class.

I'm sick of dancing around the issue, especially in front of parents who get offended when other people "try to tell them how to parent their kids". You know what, I don't want to make friends with people who think it's okay to treat other people as your property, for any reason.

Children aren't legally allowed to own property, even though they can legally earn money at fourteen.

Children who can cognitively process algebra are allowed to be denied healthcare if their guardian disapproves.

In many states, children are allowed to be intentionally hit if it leaves no substantial harm on their body.

It is considered morally neutral to hate children.

Children constantly have their experiences, perspectives, and worldviews tokenized because "they'll understand when they're older"

In many states, children are not even allowed to choose what name they are called by.

And don't give me the "their brains haven't fully developed yet! They could make bad decisions!"

Listen. Adult people with intellectual disabilities can own property. They can still get healthcare if their nurses or assistants deny them healthcare. You're not allowed to spank someone with an ID or slap them if they do something you don't approve of. If they earn money or other assets, it is legally their own. And I think anyone who unironically claims to hate disabled people will be flagged as an ableist.

The fight for disabled rights is far from over. That's not the point I'm making. The point is that it isn't about whether someone's brain is fully developed.

They don't care about the kids. They care about controlling the kids. They view children as their physical possessions.

[stackslip]

also begging lots of people to actually interact with children of all ages and talk to them like real people and pay attention to what they're saying and let them gush and vent to you and treat them like the human beings they are. and observe how many of their issues come from being locked in hellish systems in which their autonomy is nul, they're dropped into the crab bucket that is school, and they often have no recourse or choice in trying to reclaim their agency or escape abusive circumstances bc even the best parents will encounter no resistance from their community were they to decide to cut their kids' access to food, security, medical assistance or privacy. many will even defend invade their kids' privacy. it's wild how so many people recognize they were traumatized by their childhoods and will then condescendingly eclare that children are incapable of rational thoughts or decisions and that depriving them of freedom of movement or contact with the outside world is an ideal solution to any conflict between them and their kids. and how many won't even like. take five minutes to listen to an eight year who's excited about pyramids and is ecstatic at the fact that SOMEONE listens to them and asks questions and doesn't dismiss their interest. or affirm a 14 year old when they talk about their distress and real suffering rather than going "you'll get it when you're older". or consider that a 12 year old might actually have something valuable to say about life or have knowledge/understanding an adult does not.

[anarchistin]

When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed.

"Do they expect students not to be anarchists?" he said. "What else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up."

— Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

[taviamoth]

every time i see people discuss violence against children with cutesy names like 'spanking' i want to burn something. that is violence. against a child. who trusts and loves you. is smaller than you. cannot live without you or escape. cannot fight back. dickhead

[elhopper1sm]

Even if Minimum wage jobs were just for teenagers that wouldn't justify such low wages. Call me crazy but if a child can work like an adult and puts in the amount of effort and responsibility of an adult and is expected to work as intensely as an adult would. They should get paid like an adult actually. It's so weird how in this country children are expected to face the burdens of adulthood and be ok with having none of the rights of adulthood.

[uncanny-tranny]

Little things adults and older people can do to help younger people and children feel included, safe, and respected as an equal individual:

Ask before touching the young person - even for hugs. Ask before you take pictures of them, and let them see photographs of them before they are printed or sent to others (even family).

Apologize when you are wrong

Ask for a young persons thoughts on a subject, then engage with them after they have spoken

Demonstrate behaviour you want to see from them (see: apologizing). Say "excuse me," say "thank you," say "please" to them

Validate their feelings, even if they don't know how to express them just yet

Remember that this is the first time they've been alive, and that you've had way longer to "figure it out"

These are some things I wish other adults remembered when engaging with young folks. We so often forget what childhood felt like and how unfair it all was because we were often awarded freedoms as adults that we never had as children. These kids are equal to adults, and they deserve the same courtesy, respect, kindness, and understanding we give to other adults.

[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.

[ihhfhonao3]

I’m a firm believer in the passive and small acts of activism.

You’re actively fighting capitalism by resting and taking a break. You’re actively fighting homophobia by wearing a rainbow pin to signify to others your allyship. You’re actively fighting climate change by air drying your hands after washing them. You’re actively fighting childism by letting a minor talk to you about how they’re doing. You’re actively fighting oppressive systems by simply existing.

There have always been others like you, and there always will be others like you. Your existence is rebellion. As long as you’re alive, conservatives and bigots have lost.

You’re a rebel. You’re a warrior. You’re a fighter. And you don’t even know it.

[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