Category: Youth Rights

Yeah!

You’re a Douchebag

December 11, 2012

So let’s say you’re a parent of a – gasp! – teenager.

And this adolescent offspring of yours – gasp!- has opinions.

This fact somehow makes life just so awful for you. That who was once a helpless baby totally dependent on you is now behaving more independently of you. Probably even gets angry sometimes.

And you just get so frustrated. And you must vent to other parents of teens. And then come the gems. Whether it’s how lazy they are or how disobedient they are or the ever popular “they think they know everything!”

Yeah…

You’re a douchebag.

Okay, okay, parenting is hard. You want to share your frustrations with others who are likely going through the same or who have been at least sufficiently conditioned to sympathize with you.

Doesn’t matter. You’re a piece of shit.

You’re insulting not only your own children but other people who happen to be their same age. And why? So you can look “cool” in front of other adults. Oh, aren’t you so witty and clever? You’re taking shots at people over whom you have total legal and economic control. My, you’re so brave, you should get a medal!

And for that, you are a douchebag. Not enough people tell you this, but you need to hear it. That makes you a terrible person. Your “ugh! teenagers!” whining is significantly less mature than you insist these teenagers are. You completely disregard their personhood and basic right and need to be respected. You trivialize everything about them and make it all about you. Therefore, you are a piece of shit douchebag.

Have a nice day.

Of Marriageable Age

December 9, 2012

Child marriage. It’s a gross human rights violation. Little girls being betrothed to men two or three times their ages because their fathers signed a form.

And then you get the stats about it. Where they list the percentages of people in a certain location who are married below a certain age.

Except that age is 18.

Yeah…

I don’t think so.

Don’t expect me to believe a 17-year-old choosing to enter into an equitable marriage is the same thing as an 11-year-old being sold to her 35-year-old cousin to be raped on her wedding night and forbidden from learning or having a career or doing anything other than serving her husband and pumping out tons of babies. Just… no. The latter is the one that is, you know, actually a serious human rights violation. The former is just someone well past puberty entering into an “adult” lifestyle sooner than people feel comfortable with.

And that’s not something that just gets solved with a “make sure no one under 18 can marry!” law. Age restrictions don’t cure anything. In fact, the aforementioned 11-year-old girl’s situation is pretty obviously bad in ways that go lightyears beyond her age. She’s in a society where it’s seen as acceptable to treat women that way at all. Making that all begin seven years later would mean her body is more ready for the baby-making, but that’s about the only difference. The fact that marriage in that society means being a husband’s property, and thus regularly raped and forbidden from outside activities, is a serious fucking problem which needs to be addressed head-on, and in doing that, the marriages of early-pubescent girls will likely stop, or at least there’d be no profit for anyone in it.

But if that’s too complicated, at least stop using 18 at the age under which marriage is a Serious Problem. At least lower it to 15 or something, and quit acting like marriages of girls who are only “children” because society says so are something to shriek about. And if marriage is so daunting that someone who entered into it has ruined their life or chances or something, the problem there is with the marriage itself, not the age.

The Need to Learn

December 6, 2012

If you’ve seen some of my recent posts, you know I’m all about school reform and questioning the idea of compulsory schooling in general. There are people doing the same in all corners, including the unschooling community, doing so for their own different reasons. My reason is simply the rights of the student.

However, with many voices on this subject, you get many talking points. And as with any collection of talking points, you get some that are just plain stupid.

For the moment, I’ll focus on one.

“Why do I need to learn X? When am I ever going to use it?”

I admit it. That drives me up the damn wall. Well, truth be told, there are some times it’s a valid question. My brother is in third grade, and just like I had to in third grade, they’re making him learn cursive handwriting. He told me this and I was like “WTF? Why?” Come on, have you seen anyone write in cursive? There are some. And it is annoying as shit, because you can’t fucking read it. Not as quickly and easily as printed letters anyway. That seems to be one of those things they only continue to teach and require because adults just like the idea of children learning it, probably out of some ridiculous nostalgia.

But that is an exception, and there are a few others. The anti-school crowd, however, has a way of taking the “need to learn” idea to strange new levels. As in, they question the “need” to learn things like math, history, and science! Or at least certain portions of them.

“Why would I need to know algebra?!”
“Who needs to know the structure of the cell?!”
“How could I need to know about the French Revolution?!”

This goes beyond being anti-school. This is anti-intellectualism. This makes the subject matter itself out to be some sort of enemy, when what’s supposed to be the problem is the coercive mandatory nature of how it is being taught. Not to mention that some reasons I’ve seen from these people as to why certain (all?) subjects are “useless” are really fucking stupid.

I could go into why these subjects are in fact important, that even if they aren’t mandatory school subjects one should still learn them some way or another. History is important because to move forward as a society and human race, it helps to know where we’ve been. Developing good math skills has advantages just about anywhere. And scientific literacy may save your life some day, as that is what governs things like health and nutrition, among much more. And I’ll throw in language skills, so that people will actually be able to understand you, saving you and others much frustration.

Should someone stand over you and force you to memorize and practice these subjects under penalty of jail? Hell no. But that doesn’t mean learning these things isn’t still a good fucking idea anyway!

And even if it being a good idea is questionable, why exactly is extra knowledge being treated like a bad thing?

Dear Tide Parents

December 3, 2012

Yeah, you, the parents in the Tide commercial griping about your college grad triplets being unemployed and living with you.

Fuck you.

While I’ll certainly agree they should be doing their own laundry, besides that, quit your bitching.

First of all, if they’re unemployed and recently out of college, chances are the alternative to living with you is homelessness.

Second, it’s hard to find a job immediately after graduation, especially depending on what they studied. I didn’t have a job for 14 months after I graduated, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. And I studied science! And even if they do have a job, depending on where they’d live, it’d probably take a while before they’d have enough money for moving out to be feasible.

Third, your idiotic complaining is just more “let’s make fun of millennials as being lazy and entitled”. There’s this cute little assumption that making these snide remarks about teens and twenty-somethings is somehow helpful, but it isn’t. It so isn’t. It’s rude. It’s bigoted. And it just makes you assholes.

So shut your cry-holes, “mature” adults!

A Girl with a Book

October 29, 2012

And now here’s an education desiring edition of…

Here’s to You!!!!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, Malala Yousafzai!”

She’s the 15-year-old Pakistani girl who campaigned for her right to go to school. And then she was shot. Because nothing terrifies Islamic extremists more than the mere idea of an educated girl.

In response to the assassination attempt, there’s been much interest in the right to an education, that all children should have that right. Some even have said those of us in countries like the US or UK should be very glad we had that right. Even, as some made a point to add, if we did not appreciate it at the time.

Oooh, boy, here we go.

Trouble with painting this in such a way is that it pretty much silences concerns over the quality of the education or, of course, the rights of students in those schools that they should apparently be so glad they’re being forced to attend every day. Really, it’s a cousin of the age-old “there are starving children in [piece of crap location] who’d be happy to have that!” as a reason someone (read: some child) should eat food he does not like.

But here’s a question. Is it really so much better to be forced against your will to attend school than to be forced against your will NOT to attend school?

Well, it is. But it’s far better for the decision to be your own!

Yousafzai’s rights were being violated, absolutely. And she fucking rocks for all she’s done to fight for her right to attend school, something withheld from her because she has the wrong set of genitals. But the issue is that her educational choice to attend school was blocked because of oppression. It’s not just a “school is wonderful” deal. It’s freedom of educational choice.

As such, it’s ridiculous to use something like this against students who are in school against their wishes, that they should be grateful. Their educational desires are still being violated, even if they are the opposite desires as those of Malala Yousafzai and others fighting for the right to school. Their grievances are still being ignored and seen as unimportant, just like Yousafzai’s have been by those in power.

So when it comes down to it, it seems for many, Yousafzai is only the heroine she is because she’s being a good girl (by Western standards) and wanting to live the “correct” life of a child by being in school. To her Western fans, she’s fighting for what they are comfortable with, that a 15-year-old girl belongs in school because that is just the way things should be.

While, you know, the radical Islamists think 14-year-old girls should be uneducated and forced into marriages, because that is just the way things should be. Radical Islam is considerably worse, absolutely! I mean, it’s obviously much better to be educated and only marry if and whom you want. I even recognize that, for girls in that part of the world, education is their only escape from being forced to stay home and hidden from society, to be told only what their families want them to know, to be nice and ignorant for the man they’ll choose for her, because more knowledge means it’s less likely she’ll good and submissive. But when it comes to what is or isn’t right for a 15-year-old girl, the West and Islamists alike seem to think anyone other than that 15-year-old girl should be the one to decide that, unless her decision is in line with what they think she should be doing anyway.

This is about a young person being blocked from the educational choice she has made, regardless of how we or anyone else who isn’t her feels about that choice.

Parental Instincts

September 30, 2012

All parents love their children, right? All parents want what’s best for their children, right? All parents would do anything to protect and help their children, correct?

You really believe that?

I mean, I’m sure that truly does describe a lot of parents. It’s certainly a cute sentiment. But when you look hard enough, it’s far from universal, and assuming it is leads to a lot of ridiculous assumptions.

If unconditional parental love were truly so universal, why are so many children killed because they did not meet some standard?

Why are infants in some societies killed or left for dead because they happened to be female, an act to be found anywhere from the ancient Greek myth of Atalanta to some modern-day Asian societies, and plenty of times and places in between?

Why are many children and teenagers throughout the world killed by their parents or other relatives because they “dishonored” their families in some way, such as having sex out of wedlock, being gay, disavowing the family’s religion, or some other stupid reason?

Even in modern-day USA, you find this behavior. When Nebraska had a loophole in their safe-haven law (which allows for newborn babies to be left at hospitals or other places to be put into foster care) in that it did not specify an upper age limit, parents were traveling in droves to Nebraska to abandon their children, some of them in their upper teens!

You get the accidental deaths of small children that one might wonder just how “accidental” it truly was. I mean, these theoretically could have been accidental. Hanlon’s razor and all. But if it were intentional, would it look any different?

Look at all the kids and teens in foster care because their parents were abusive or negligent. Look at all the homeless teens, a disproportionate number of whom are LGBT, left without a home or family because that family shunned them.

Look at the teens sent off to behavior modification facilities to be tortured. While many parents who do so do it without knowing the place is abusive, well, bullshit. What, you don’t learn what you can about a place before sending your kid there? Many places with plain as day allegations of severe abuse are still getting kids sent there. The parents either are stupid and didn’t bother to properly research the place. Or… the torture is exactly what they sought. They not only wanted their child sent away; they wanted their child to suffer.

With all this and so so so much more, how is it possible for anyone to continue to entertain any notion that unconditional parental love is a natural universal thing? Clearly it isn’t, because societal and cultural expectations keep taking priority. Or even just plain selfishness, instability, or whatever else. Or some bizarre sense of doing the kids a favor.

I’m not saying unconditional parental love doesn’t exist. Of course it does. It is widespread. But it is not universal or guaranteed. And requires a lot of rechecking the definitions of “unconditional” and “love”.

Education Policy

August 27, 2012

Education policy can go to hell.

Really.

You know what it is, when politicians and “experts” and whatever other adults get together and talk about education policy? Exploitation.

True, this is something I’ve talked about before. But even beyond what I wrote there, it goes so much deeper.

I just saw a Facebook posting by a nice organization called Our Time, sort of a youth rights org geared primarily at young adults. It was a little cartoon showing Chinese and Indian students studying hard (due to their countries supposedly investing more in education) while the American student is just listening to his iPod and chewing gum. They proceeded to ask whether education should be made a bigger priority here like in those countries, asking those who didn’t think so to explain in the comments.

So I did:

I’m wary of simply comparing ourselves to other countries without taking a good hard look at what the cultural and other differences actually are that result in the findings, or even whether the right aspects are being measured. Too often the political solution to wanting to compete with other nations not only fails to truly look for what’s being done differently (and when it’s a cultural thing, it’s not something any political decisions can do anything about anyway), but it usually translates to “work our students harder” which leads to third graders getting six hours of homework every night, and other egregious ways the lives of those under 18 are being made to have no other meaning or importance than their schooling. Behind the global comparisons and hand wringing over education policy (where only adults are discussing it) are the REAL individual lives of the students who are at their mercy.

It was while I was typing that I had a realization. Several realizations actually.
Continue reading “Education Policy”

Tanner Upstaged

August 13, 2012

Now for a feminine pubescent edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Anyone who says anything along the lines of “Girls today are starting puberty at younger ages!” And goes on to treat it like some utter catastrophe. A serious problem for today’s kids. Something we must absolutely do something about to protect little girl innocence! Eeeek!

*facepalm* *sigh*

Oh, concern trolling, such a frequent opponent to youth rights feminism!

Okay, time for some unpacking of bullshit.

1. Not only is the claim that the age of female puberty is steadily getting younger questionable, but those shrieking about this “problem” often either don’t specify ages or the ages they do specify, usually around 10 or 11, are still within the normal range of puberty (ages 8 to 16). And even so, they’re usually talking about onset, which is the development of breasts (which doesn’t exactly happen overnight), as opposed to first period, which is often a couple years later. Breasts budding at 10 or 11 means the period shows up around 12 or 13, which is totally fucking normal! And even the ones who get their periods at 10 or 11 might be earlier than average but it’s not abnormal, and for every one of them, there are girls who start it at 14 or 15.
Continue reading “Tanner Upstaged”

Making Sure They Behave

June 28, 2012

Ever notice that the most common thing anyone tells a child is “behave!”? Is he/she behaving? Are they being good? Are they doing as they are told?

Because that’s the single most important thing ever regarding children, of course! 🙄

The trouble there is the expectation that this person is going to descend into “insufferable little bastard” mode at any moment.

It goes beyond that, of course. The other day I saw this article in the Guardian about cops stationed in school, and how this – surprise, surprise! – leads to students being arrested for the tiniest offenses, such as putting on perfume or not picking something up off the floor fast enough. They’re stationed there over constant concerns that, even if unlikely, some student might shoot someone, and you just can’t be too careful!

So the cops are a good thing, right? They just need to exercise better discretion and not arrest students for drawing on a desk or other stupid shit like that?

Yeah… I don’t think so.
Continue reading “Making Sure They Behave”

Protect the Squeamish Ageist Adults!

June 21, 2012

Nothing like sitting through an R-rated movie being played on basic cable, with half the dialogue either changed or silenced because of “offensive language”. When I think about it, it’s really offensive to me that it’s censored at all. How stupid do you think I am, that I can’t handle the word fuck? That you need to protect my gentle ears from hearing it.

Oh, what’s that? I’m 29 so I’m not one of the people being protected by this? Well, I must be, because it’s still censored. I’d have to either watch this movie on a premium movie channel (which I don’t get) or rent or buy it. Hmm. Maybe it’s a marketing move in that way. Even though I have no real interest in buying the movie anyway.

Ah, but the official reason is that the censorship is to “protect the children” from hearing these naughty words.

First of all, as I say frequently, so what if they hear (or say) these words?

Second of all, it’s interesting what words are and aren’t okay. Watch Forrest Gump on TNT. They have to blur out the “Shit Happens” bumper sticker, yet in a few scenes the N-word is said and is visibly written in the background, totally uncensored. An almost meaningless word for feces is unacceptable, yet they greenlight a racial slur? Um, racial slurs are the ACTUAL bad offensive words! Should they be censored? No. But if censoring offensive things is the idea, you’d think that’d be the first thing!

Third of all, my 8-year-old brother and I were watching Family Guy recently, and there was one line where a word was bleeped. He promptly turned to me and said “I know what he said! He said fuck!” Yeah, even the people you’re hiding the words from totally know what words go there. So… fail.

And… how many children do you know who have been contacting the FCC complaining that something on the TV was too mature for their fragile little minds? Oh, there are children who buy into the “bad words are bad for kids” thing. Hell, I grudgingly admit that when I was 11 I was sort of one of them. The reason wasn’t that I actually believed that, though. I only held the idea because I knew such a belief was pleasing to the adults around me. It was prior to my realization that my age kept the adults from respecting me no matter what I did, that beliefs like this just made them happy I was being their lap dog. And so many kids buy into that at their peers’ expense. But that’s what it comes down to. The desire to please adults is why some kids are against “swear words”, not that they have some personal conviction (well, some might).

No, the people who scream back and forth over appropriateness of media content is entirely adults. It is the supposedly mature adults who can’t handle the idea of kids hearing someone say “bullshit” or seeing an accidental half-time show nipple slip. You know who can handle it just fine? The kids themselves!

Seriously, that nipple thing. Everybody has nipples! Half of them have the dreaded baby-feeding female nipples! They need only look down to see nipples. Children are only a few years past being the ones feeding from those nipples, and I hope somebody told the little girls they’ll be growing those things before too long. Censoring body parts? Do these complaining people not shower, because they might realize they have these evil parts? And the ones who are parents, how did that happen, as that happens through having sex which involves – gasp! – being naked!

Conveniently, it seems it’s only adult nudity they’re (usually) all that pissy about. Interesting.

Let’s be honest. There is no censorship that protects children. It only protects adults. Or, no, not really. It protects no one.

And the “protect the children” thing is just an excuse anyway. They only say that because “hide words and things that make squeamish adults cry” sounds less noble. Maybe we should stick to calling it what it is.

In other news, a Michigan legislator just recently got in trouble for saying “vagina” on the House floor. And people think teens aren’t mature enough to vote?!

This has been Day 29 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 12.