I recently reread Alex’s piece from 2007 about that old show Kid Nation (which I wrote about a few months later), and how, before the show ever aired, adults got all up in arms about “oh noes, this show is abusive toward those kids and forcing them to take care of themselves, exploitation!” Something they seem to only ever say when the kids shown are competent and independent, and something they are quiet about when the kids are being abused and actually exploited.

Movie called “Dolphin Tale” came out this past year. I haven’t seen it, but I just gathered it’s based on a true story. My supervisor told me she was going to see it in theaters, and mentioned that, even though it’s based on a true story, she doubts the 12-year-old boy depicted in the film really played at any part in it.

Why would she say this? Well, her son is 12. Maybe she believes him to be incapable of anything great and certainly unable to make independent decisions. Maybe she likes it that way.

Similarly, I’ve actually seen complaints about, of all things, Dora the Explorer! Oh noes! How dare the show depict a 5-year-old girl wandering around… without adult supervision?!

And, of course, let’s not forget… Home Alone. Eight-year-old Kevin is accidentally left home when his family leaves the country, and during this time he must protect his house from burglars. Then later in the sequel he’s in New York City by himself and again managing himself just fine, and ends up rescuing a toy store and a children’s charity from the same burglars. Even though these two movies (I don’t consider any later “Home Alone” movies to exist, it’s not Home Alone without Macaulay Culkin!) are beloved classics now, sure enough, you’ll find no shortage of people who feel personally offended that these films depict a prepubescent child successfully taking care of himself and fending off two burglars without adults around to oversee and take care of him, save for the old man with the shovel and the bird lady who come to the rescue when the burglars do have him cornered. Even where movies with adult heroes are significantly less realistic, Home Alone will get picked apart, because how dare John Hughes suggest a heroic independent child?!

And there’s the people who are even offended that Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson are smarter than their parents.

The list goes on. And it’s not even just fictional characters, as even real youth who show courage and independence or great skill are often derided, and assumed to be neglected or abused.

But if these people are so disturbed by this? Good! Let’s keep disturbing them!

I was born on a Friday, so whenever my birthday lands on a Friday, that year’s calendar matches up (or mostly matches up if a leap year) to the 1983 calendar.

Hey! My birthday was a Friday this year! So 2011 and 1983 match up!

This year also has the same calendar as 2005.

So, today, December 28, 2011, is a Wednesday, just like December 28, 2005 was.

I feel like that date rings a bell…

I feel like the days leading up, once Christmas was out of the way anyway, I was putting something together and fixing it up.

And on this day, six years ago, it went live…

Of course! You’re looking at it!

HAPPY 6TH ANNIVERSARY, EIGHT MINE FORTRESS!!!!

But we all know that story, so it seems appropriate to hear the song among Christmas music. It’s funny how often this can happen.

If you’re a fan of The Sopranos, you know that one of the characters’ nicknames is Big Pussy, usually shortened to just Pussy. So thinking of the show, you might find yourself talking about things that happen, saying “pussy” a lot, and someone overhearing this who’s not familiar with the show might be like “what?!” I’ve had that happen a couple times!

Crap about how adults keep trying structure children’s play, making it all about and led by them, rather than just letting the children do it any way they want. Whether it’s “productive” in any way or not.

Totally agree. I found this part interesting, too:

3. Play isn’t just for children. The idea of play is closely related to imagination, inventiveness, and that state of deep absorption that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi dubbed “flow.” Read virtually any account of creativity, in the humanities or the sciences, and you’ll find mentions of the relevance of daydreaming, fooling around with possibilities, looking at one thing and seeing another, embracing the joy of pure discovery, asking “What if….?” The argument here isn’t just that we need to let little kids play so they’ll be creative when they’re older, but that play, or something quite close to it, should be part of a teenager’s or adult’s life, too.[4]

It brought back memories from college. A few times, I inexplicably carried around with me a miniature playground ball. And the looks and remarks I got were interesting. Of course, I threw it at a few of my friends’ heads and they weren’t too happy, but usually I was just strolling around campus, bouncing it around, or tossing it to people I knew and they’d toss it back. I was the first arrival at one of my classes and the teacher interrogated, “Why do you have a ball?” And I said, “For fun.” And he mulled this over and remarked that it’s perhaps therapeutic.

Therapeutic! Ha! Why must there be a reason? I just felt like having ball with me! It was fun. That’s reason enough.

Such boring and unimaginative people! Don’t have real fun. The desire has been squeezed out of them in a world that demands productivity at all times. And those who do have some unexplainably fun seem weird or immature. They’re just jealous!

One popular and of course overplayed song is Elton John’s “Step Into Christmas”. Not bad.

Then I noticed something about the song I never noticed before.

The first line of the song is… “Welcome to my Christmas song!”

…

Um, thanks, Elton! I guess.

You see, that’s the kind of lyrics that really makes you think.

Even if just thinking he should go back to Chef for more help with them.

But now, we have long since harnessed electricity and made it light our rooms as well as do a zillion other things. It’s not some crazy supernatural idea anymore. It’s not something only perhaps some divine power can do. It’s something that through many discoveries we’ve found how to do ourselves, that such a power already exists in the natural world.

Then there’s the electromagnetic spectrum. We can only see visible light, but of course the spectrum is a hell of a lot bigger than that, with all the microwaves and infrared, and on the other side ultraviolet and ionizing radiation. But we have little to no way of knowing these invisible wavelengths are there without special technology. Before such a thing was known, if the idea of undetectable waves flying around were suggested, you’d seem crazy, like you’re believing in things you can’t prove. Although, as we now know, more accurately that statement would be “things you can’t prove YET”. Up until that point, the idea of such invisible energy was perhaps… a supernatural concept.

All that said, I do tire of religious people using “there’s so much in the universe we can’t explain” to essentially mean “so there must be a God!” Um, no shit there’s so much we can’t explain. Earth is the only part of the universe we know all that well and can live on (as of right now anyway), and even here on our own planet there’s so much undiscovered. Even as far as we’ve come, we’ve barely even left tiny scratches in the surface of all there is. But that doesn’t translate to “God did it”. It translates to “we just haven’t discovered it yet”.

But with that said now, hey, they might be right in a way. God and souls and afterlife and all that jazz could just be more stuff we haven’t discovered yet, even if vastly different from how we imagine it. They don’t violate the laws of physics but rather exist in some area yet undiscovered in it, such that, based on what we know now, it seems supernatural and impossible.

And that’s our instinct, isn’t it? That what is yet unreachable is divine. The Greek gods lived atop then-unscalable Mt. Olympus. Some gods live in or are the sun. We humans see uncharted territory, places we cannot go, and wonder there is something amazing there. We imagine alien races far out in outer space. So we pay NASA billions to check that shit out! What was once some nocturnal chick named Selene who likes to rape sleeping shepherds we now know to be a big orbiting rock on which we’ve walked and into which we’ve stuck our flag.

It’s Chief Wiggum saying “What IS your fascination with my forbidden closet of mysteries?”

It’s like Mt. Olympus could have been called Schrodinger’s mountain. Until anyone got to the top to see what’s actually up there, it could house the gods, right?

Of course, while it’s incredibly silly to assume we know all the universal forces there are or know the only forms they can take, it’s also incredibly silly to pretend we know anything specific about any forces yet undiscovered, such as, say, how these forces expect us to live our lives. Might there be some personal God-like being that cares about us individually? Sure. But lacking any tangible evidence to go by, this knowledge or theory is really only any good as a personal feeling, nothing that really, well, involves anyone other than yourself nor is a very stable thing into which to put any faith.

It’s why I’m not an atheist. Though mainly it’s because of my way of thinking, that supernatural just means “not discovered yet” and that everything has a scientific mechanism. I read the Harry Potter books and find myself wondering the underlying scientific basis of their magic spells, despite the fact that it being “magic” implies there isn’t one. Despite the fact that for the spells to work a certain way, there must be! Gah, confusing!

My theism comes from acknowledging that God, like all other theorized but not proven concepts, most likely does exist in some form, mostly since, as said, we only know a tiny tiny tiny bit about the universe and what’s even more ignorant than believing in things that don’t exist is insisting there is nothing more than we know. There will be shit in 500 years that we can’t even imagine now, that if suggested now would seem utterly ridiculous. Hey, who knows how long before we can travel through dimensions, discover warp speed, and bust our way into heaven and God/Buddha/Vishnu/Zeus/Galen/whatever will be like “finally!” Or not. But what now is only hypothesized or assumed to be a delusion might be in some way real. We just haven’t found it yet. We probably will. Along with lots of other neat stuff!

Including Flying Spaghetti Monster, of course!

Yes, you ARE racist/sexist/ageist/homophobic/etc.

You just don’t know it.

Wait, what? What am I saying? If you were bigoted or prejudiced, wouldn’t you be aware of it? Wouldn’t it be obvious?

No. Doesn’t work that way. Most prejudices (except for ageism I guess, since that one is still socially acceptable) today are unknown to those who hold them. It’s unconscious.

The idea of white being the standard or male being the standard is so ingrained in our society, so laced in culture and attitudes and language, that it’d be a miracle not to adopt even the slightest unconscious belief that non-white and/or female is somehow “other”.

So don’t take offense to this. In fact, it’s through challenging these assumptions that we can seek out these harder to extinguish bugs of bigotry. Take it as a suggestion, not an insult. True, it is sometimes used as an insult, and that’s not right, nor is someone who points out a possible prejudice in you always necessarily right. In the long run, you do yourself a favor examining yourself for personal unseen prejudices, before it settles in too much.

Let’s take sexism for example. Let’s say you’re part of a group of people, mostly male, let’s say six guys for every one girl. And you generally like most of these people, but some of these people you find really goddamn annoying. You find them hostile or rude or demanding or ignorant. Oh, and the majority of these annoying people just happen to be girls. In a group where girls are outnumbered by guys six to one.

Okay, you’re probably thinking “it has nothing to do with them being girls, it’s because they are hostile/rude/demanding/ignorant!” Perhaps. But are you really saying that very few or none of the guys in this same group are equally hostile/rude/demanding/ignorant? Seems unlikely.

Or… are you more forgiving of guys when they exhibit these traits?

Or do you not notice it as much?

Or perhaps you have involuntarily different visceral reactions to an unhappy guy and an unhappy girl?

Perhaps, unconsciously, you believe when a guy is displeased and saying so, he has valid reasons, but when a girl does, it’s most likely just her own personal issues and she should shut up already?

Perhaps even the most sound arguments are to you only so sound and rational when said by a tenor, baritone, or bass, while unsound and crazy when by a soprano or alto?

Again, the key words are “involuntarily” and “unconsciously”. I’m not saying you’re thinking about it. The whole point is you aren’t thinking about it. And even self-identified feminists (of any gender) make this mistake all the time. I know I do. And why not? We live in a culture where we’re directly or indirectly taught that any time women complain or are unhappy, it’s never because we have an actual reason, but because we’re just being hysterical or are on our periods or want jewelry or babies or some other ridiculous dismissal, while men are the paragons of rational thought.

As for ageism, I wrote last year about how just because you’re a youth rights supporter doesn’t mean you can’t still be ageist. Even the most self-identified radical youth rights supporters I’ve known have been ageist in some way. In some cases, they rationalize it away, but in other cases, well, it’s to be expected, since we grew up in the same anti-youth society as everyone else and received all the same messages that the young are always inferior to their elders, that their elders are always right. As youth rights supporters, yeah, it’s our job to challenge these messages, but it’s silly to pretend we haven’t absorbed any of them and downright negligent to not challenge those that got through.

This day and age, sure, people “know” you’re not supposed to be a bigot. But it doesn’t take much to realize they don’t want to be bigots only because they don’t want to be called names, not so much because they care about not being intolerant of people because of their sex or skin color or age or whatever in and of itself. But whether or not you carry the label of a bigot or not, doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do and what you try not to do. You can call yourself a feminist (or at least a non-sexist or equalist or whatever) all you want, but when a group whose leadership is mostly male over time finally gets some female leadership, yet most or all of those female leaders just happen to be hostile or incompetent, and must be thrown out because they’re so hostile or incompetent, when over time the leaders you’ve had the most friction with just happen to be female despite the group being mostly male… yeah, I’m not buying it. Sorry.

Not an insult. Just work on that. Be aware of it.

But if you don’t… THEN you’re an asshole!

Matilda is a little telekinetic genius who is stuck with a family that decidedly hates her. Seriously, day she was born, her parents were for some reason pissed and didn’t want her. From then on she’s pretty much neglected entirely. It’s okay because she’s a genius (whether because her neglect meant she had to take care of herself or because of some hardwired gift, it’s unclear, maybe both) and made herself some pancakes instead of the canned soup her mom left for her.

Anyway, she teaches herself to read, gets herself to the library by herself at age four, and the librarian, instead of calling the cops because a little four-year-old is out walking around by herself, helps her find some books. Then she tells her dad she’s supposed to be in school, because she wants to learn more and actually interact with other kids. Her dad refuses until tyrannical headmistress Trunchbull shows up and mentions she has a school, and the dad figures the school seems abusive enough for the daughter he hates.

Matilda is all happy and gets to the school, only for a girl with pigtails that annoy Trunchbull to get THROWN OVER THE GODDAMN FENCE BY HER HAIR! And is unharmed somehow. The kids say they try to tell their parents about what happens there but the parents don’t believe them, in what is surely Ron Clark’s wet dream. And that makes sense, considering any parents who send their kids to that school obviously hate them and are probably glad they’re being hurled over fences and put into the “chokey”. Except the pigtail girl mentioned her mom thought the pigtails were “sweet”. Did mom intend for Trunchbull to lose her shit over the pigtails and throw the girl over the fence then? Because this mom must be one of the parents who sent her kid to that school because she hates her. After this fence scene, the teacher Miss Honey is undoing the girl’s pigtails to help preserve her safety. And on a later day, Miss Honey is AGAIN undoing the same girl’s pigtails, which means this poor girl after getting thrown over the fence over the pigtails, is still being sent to the school with the same damn hairdo! Maybe she thinks if her mommy thinks the pigtails are sweet enough, she’ll stop hating her and send her to a real damn school, so she’ll risk life and limb keeping the goddamn hair that enrages Trunchbull. And it’s worth noting that all these kids who have parents who clearly really fucking hate them and are sent to a school where they are horribly abused all seem to be, well, pretty normal nice kids.

That’s where Miss Honey comes in. We find that despite the over the top oppressive atmosphere in this school, she maintains a bright happy friendly classroom (which she covers up whenever Trunchbull approaches) and treats her students wonderfully. It’s wondered why she’d choose to teach at such an oppressive school until we later learn she’s Trunchbull’s stepniece, and that she can’t bring herself to leave behind her students for Trunchbull to abuse, that she wants her class to be the kids’ respite from the oppressive principal and the batshit crazy negligent parents all those kids obviously have if they were sent there to begin with. In a way, she’s like an ultrasaccharine version of Galen. The night after first meeting Matilda, she goes and visits her house and tell her parents how awesome she is, only for the parents to of course not care. She and Matilda are like best friends from here on out. Though I wonder how often Miss Honey makes a point to visit her students’ families like this, especially knowing full well these families are full of assholes who sent their elementary school age kids to a place like that.

Much of Matilda’s actions throughout the movie was from when her dad said that when a person does something wrong they must be punished. The narrator even makes a point that he said “a person” rather than “a child”. So she pulls some pranks on her parents for being dickholes. She later resolves to get even with Trunchbull for how she’s treating the kids. Oh, and later it’s found out she has telekinetic powers. Though, interestingly enough, much of what she does and what happens with her is aside from that.

Matilda stands up and supports Bruce when he’s forced to eat that gigantic chocolate cake, giving him confidence to do it as if a fun challenge rather than a vomit-inducing punishment, in defiance of Trunchbull. She and Miss Honey break into Trunchbull’s house to steal back the teacher’s old doll, only to be nearly caught and killed because Trunchbull is fucking crazy. Seriously, she throws kids over fences and out windows and puts them into a narrow pipe full of rusty spikes and has a dart board in her office with pictures of the kids on it and openly talks about how much she despises children (despite having obviously of her own free will chosen the teaching profession). And likely murdered Miss Honey’s father.

Then Matilda realizes she’s got the telekinesis and promptly uses these abilities to fuck with Trunchbull. After this six-year-old girl just waltzes out of the house after dark, and her parents don’t notice or care, but her brother asks where she’s going, only to then fling a carrot at her (which she stops in midair with her Jedi magic and sends it right back at him), she wanders over to the Trunchbull house when it’s all horribly windy and steals back the doll and, all from outside through the window somehow, fucks with Trunchbull’s mantle clock and moves her furniture and burns her painting in the fireplace and replaces it with that of Miss Honey’s dad. Trunchbull knows it’s Matilda because she happened to find her lost hair ribbon outside and threatens her the next day, only for Matilda to remotely write on the chalkboard pretending to be Miss Honey’s dad, and Trunchbull loses her shit even more until all the kids finally are empowered to stand up to her and they hurl their lunches at her and chase her off the school grounds and she’s never seen again, and Miss Honey takes over school and house. Yay!

Then at the end when Matilda is visiting Miss Honey her parents show up to take her away because they’re running from the cops, and Matilda refuses and asks Honey to adopt her, a request granted without hesitation, and in a rather satisfying line, Matilda states she’d had the adoption papers ready ever since she was “tall enough to xerox”. Her parents think for a minute and then sign the papers and Matilda is free from their asshattery and now living happily ever after with Miss Honey who actually loves and respects her.

Interesting thing about Miss Honey is that, in real life, she’d be all kinds of demonized! Even though we obviously know she’s good, she fits so many “descriptions” of a child predator. I say “descriptions” in quotes because it’s what you hear from people who know very little about child abuse but are more interested in fearmongering about it than actually giving a crap about kids. Matilda’s parents do not like or trust her. Matilda sneaks away from her family to go see her. Matilda breaks into someone’s house with her. She’s *gasp!* friends with her student! And at the end when Matilda’s mom, after the adoption request, asks why Miss Honey would want to adopt an annoying little brat like her, and Miss Honey says “because she’s a spectacular child and I love her!” Because Miss Honey just has to be bad news if she openly defies this child’s parents (parents’ asshattery not important), invites this child to her house alone, talks to her like a human being instead of a servant or property, and gives her love and respect and *gasp!* autonomy!

And it is Matilda’s autonomy that gives her power, moreso than the telekinesis. It was her autonomy (even if a result of negligence) that allowed her to leave the house and seek the library and information. And it was respect for this autonomy, despite being only four at the time, that prevented the nearby adults and the librarian she spoke with from calling the cops or someone because this little kid was walking around all alone, despite being perfectly fine. It was her autonomy that allowed her to practice the telekinesis and then leave to go terrorize Trunchbull that night. It was her autonomy that granted her the knowledge that her family life was awful and that she should get out when she can, so she had the adoption papers ready all that time! Had she been forcefully kept inside and unable to interact with anyone else (well, moreso than she was in some ways), she would probably not only have not gotten away but wouldn’t have seen getting away as even an option.

I mean, I’m not saying four-year-olds should just be left alone to wander streets. Or, actually, depends on location I guess. And the individual four-year-old. Though the amount of autonomy and sense Matilda had and was inadvertently permitted is more than even kids eight or even twelve years old often get. And kids that old can certainly keep themselves safe fairly easily. Then again, how safe can an innocent little twelve-year-old be when out there are perhaps teachers or other adults who know them, who are much nicer than their parents and treat them with the respect they do not get at home? Only by holding kids inside against their will, treating them like crap, and not caring about any abuse their parents dish out can we be totally sure they’ll be safe.

Goodness, I can see the second person not wanting her couch cushions stained but lighten up!

Oh, have I mentioned the first person is the young daughter of the second person?

Yet somehow that makes a difference here.

And there’s excuses for such different treatment. Had the spiller been the close in age sister or friend of the screamer, we’d have little trouble seeing her behavior as problematic, going nuts on someone for a small accident. Yet when the spiller is a child and the screamer her mother? Suddenly it’s all about “teaching her what she did was wrong”. And if there were a third person seeing or hearing about this scenario and dared to speak up saying “goodness, it was just an accident, not the end of the world” then would come the well-worn “don’t interfere with how I deal with my child!”

It’s considered virtuous perhaps to intervene or speak up, even if a total stranger, when you happen upon someone treating another in a harsh or abusive way. When it’s an adult treating a child in a harsh or abusive way, however, then the “correct” thing to do is ignore it and stay out of it.

In public, we see angry verbally-abusive parents and their small hurt teary-eyed offspring so often we don’t even notice it. How often have these children been called brats or spoiled or annoying or any other such nasty words by their parents and any other adults whose job it is to nurture and care for them? I mean, I’m not saying it’s really all that avoidable. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve said nasty things to my little brother now and then, but apologized right after. Trouble with many small children is they are treated this way so much they have no expectation of being treated better. And doing anything to give them that expectation, such as the simple act of sticking up for them when they are being treated harshly, is considered a sin against the sanctity of parental rights.

I mean, what if you saw a husband and wife in the grocery store, and the husband was repeatedly calling his teary-eyed wife a bitch, saying she was spoiled and annoying? People probably still wouldn’t intervene, but they’d be rightly horrified. And this is a scenario that we don’t see nearly as much, despite many husbands having these exact or worse negative feelings toward wives, because it is so socially unacceptable. But if this occurred in the home while there’s a visitor, the visitor might step up and try to get the husband to knock it off. It would be seen as cruel rather than “understandably frustrated parent”. And the upset wife would be justified in being upset, and just seen as a “spoiled brat” who probably is just upset nobody bought her ice cream.

And with all the hubbub about school bullying, especially when it comes to gay students, adults certainly don’t like kids being harsh and abusive toward each other and certainly want to intervene. Of course, any desire to intervene is based more on desire to control young people than to want to protect them from harm, even if they might genuinely believe the latter. Yet the adults retain the right to be harsh and abusive towards kids themselves, usually rationalizing it with something about protecting them or teaching them right from wrong. Funny, the aforementioned abusive husband should probably be taught right from wrong since, adulthood notwithstanding, he seems to not know that.

With that, I suppose we’ll just file common decency as something else that is withheld from children for no reason other than preserving adult superiority and the child as degraded humanoid property.

Been talking to new fellow NYRA Board Members Kathleen O’Neal and Samantha Godwin about this. Is it useless, perhaps even harmful, to work on “less serious” youth rights issues when there are more serious ones?

For example, a few times in NYRA we’ve discussed campaign finance laws, that limit the financial contributions minors can make to political candidates. From a fairness standpoint, obviously, this is wrong because your contributions should not be limited just because of your age. From another standpoint, well, if this rule were changed, would it really make that much of a difference to youth as a whole? Wouldn’t the only youth helped at all be those already economically privileged enough to be giving huge amounts to political campaigns?

Thing is, the system that blocks youth from contributing to campaigns just because of their age is the same oppressive ageist system that enables curfews. What sets it apart, despite affecting very few youth and not seeming to have much benefit, is that it’s probably a relatively easy battle. Chipping away at the oppressive ageist system, even the most seemingly unimportant chips, still cuts away at it, still is a victory against it, still proves it can be attacked and wounded, even if it’s barely a paper cut. Are there more important battles? Absolutely. But none of our youth rights battles stand alone, at least not if we make clear they do not. After all, a desire to see youth equally able to contribute to campaigns comes not from wanting to see candidates better funded but because of the simple issue of equal access and opportunity, something the oppressive ageist system denies to youth, even if this is hardly one of the worst denials.

Many of our issues get pegged as “trivial” actually. Not sure I can even think of one that hasn’t been! We get asked if it’s really so important that 20-year-olds can drink legally. Is it really so important that 17-year-olds can vote? Hell, I’ve heard that about behavior modification, perhaps one of if not the most horrific legal youth rights violation there is, mostly because it’s something that few youth actually go through (though I counter this with, even if few youth in the grand scheme of things actually get sent to these places, ALL youth are at risk as long as these places remain an option for parents and the state!).

I don’t think fighting smaller, easier to win battles harms our overall strategy. I think it helps in a way, mostly through morale, proves to ourselves and our supporters this is winnable. I do think we need to always keep our grander goals in mind and never let our talking points cloud it. I do think, for example, when arguing against curfews, we should avoid making arguments along the lines of “that’s the parents’ decision, not the government’s”, because, honestly, we don’t think the parents should really get to decide that either!

As I mentioned in my recap of the Brown v EMA victory, many saw our battle over the right to buy mature-rated video games to be a trivial issue and not worth our effort. Does it really matter that a 16-year-old can buy Grand Theft Auto unimpeded? Honestly, yes, yes it does. Because, as I concluded with, when discriminatory restrictions are placed, regardless of the seeming unimportance of what the restriction is on, particularly when the restriction has no compelling safety interest, and when violation can lead to serious penalties, it is no longer trivial. Also, youth rights issues do not each exist in a vacuum. They are not independent of each other, and though most people often think so, might fail to see a connection between a restriction limiting a game purchase and one that, say, prevents teens from working in that game store, and it is our job as youth rights activists to make sure people see that connection, that it’s all part of anti-youth oppression.

That is not at all to say a 16-year-old prevented from buying a video game and one who is physically coerced to practice her parents’ religion are equally oppressed, hell no. The latter is unquestionably a worse situation. Just that, while obviously different manifestations, they are symptoms and results of anti-youth oppression all the same, and we should be saying a big loud NO to all of it.

The smaller issues should not be ALL we work on either just because they are more winnable. We can work several fronts at once and be always mindful of and speak about how they are inherently connected. We should be stopping the video game bans AND helping youth be emancipated from horrible parents. We should be taking down ageist store policies limiting teen entry AND shutting down behavior modification facilities. We should be removing restrictions on youth political contributions AND ending corporal punishment at home and school. Because while ignoring the more dangerous youth rights violations in favor of smaller easier battles is wrong, looking only at the most serious while letting smaller ones slip by also looks very silly on our part and actually reduces our own seriousness about the cause.

Of course, in order to work on the trivial and the non-trivial, especially as trivial is very subjective, we must always be very clear when speaking out on these that they are part of the grander scheme of anti-youth oppression, not to pretend any of them stand alone and be sure none of our talking points, regardless of short-term expediency, imply this. Because seeming radical or fringe doesn’t matter as long as we obviously know our issue, have a good strategy, and take it very seriously ourselves. Our issues are only as trivial as we allow people (and ourselves) to think they are.

Edit: Alex wrote this six years ago making similar points. Though my entry is obviously better.

This has been Day 77 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 11.