Category: Youth Rights

Yeah!

Final Boss Defeated

June 27, 2011

And by final boss, I mean the Supreme Court has rendered its verdict in Brown v EMA, formerly known as Schwarzenegger v EMA. This was the case where California has been defending its ban of selling M-rated video games to people under 18. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. On November 2, 2010, day of the oral arguments, we NYRAnians rallied in front of the Court in defense of youth rights and free speech. And Usiel gave this amazing speech, of which I totally shot the video! And after that it was just a matter of waiting and seeing…

And today came the verdict at last…

7-2, in favor of EMA. Two dissenters were Stephen Breyer and (surprising absolutely no one) Clarence Thomas.

WE WON!!!!

Check out the official document here!

I’ve been retweeting a lot of remarks and articles today in response to this ruling, so here’s a nice roundup.
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Laziness Is Universal

June 14, 2011

Now for a sleepy, groggy, snooze-button-hitting edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Really really getting tired of the trope about teens being lazy, always sleeping in on weekends, not wanting to get up for school, etc. Everything from so-called “teen experts” (who are invariably adults who are so astoundingly self-righteous they think they know teens better than teens know themselves and make a career of it) to Windex commercials mocks teens for – gasp! – still being in bed after sunrise.

Are you people really so goddamn thick? EVERYBODY sleeps in! You do, too, unless you’re one of these people who gets up at 5am every morning to jog or something. In which case, you may notice you’re mostly alone when doing this. This is not normal behavior. Sleeping in until you absolutely have to get up for school or work, or sometimes later, is the normal behavior. Sleeping on weekends until your body decides it’s tired of being in bed and wants to try movement again is what is normal. For all ages. When you deride teens for doing this, you’re deriding them for normal behavior. Why?

Oh, right, you’re the adult, so against any logic or awareness of the world outside of your prejudices, you simply must look down on teens and scrutinize them and marginalize them and make damn sure they don’t feel welcome in Your World. You know, because you’re mature apparently.

This has been Day 22 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 11.

Culture Is No Excuse

May 12, 2011

I hereby decree…

Your cultural traditions are NO excuse for harming others!

In the New York Times today was a piece by Nick Kristof about female genital cutting, and after glancing at Feministing’s mention of it, found a piece from two years ago in American Prospect, Rights Versus Rites.

Rights Versus Rites is about the debate about female genital cutting. That’s right. Debate. As in there’s a side that’s all for it. Seriously, go read it. It’s long and horrifying, but read it.

Okay, seeing as the practice is still going throughout Africa, despite little victories here and there where small areas decided “meh, let’s not do this anymore, seems harmful”, of course it has supporters and lots of them. How do they defend it? Why, with the well-worn: “It’s our culture!”
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You’re Doing Your Own Laundry

April 26, 2011

Dear Future Husband and Child (if you’ll ever exist):

You’re doing your own laundry. I will not do it for you provided you have the physical capability of operating the washer and dryer. In your case, child, I’ll do it for you since you won’t be able to for the first several years, being too short. Once tall enough to be able to reach the control and understand simple operating instructions, it’s your job and no longer mine.

I mean, even being single and childless now, it’s pretty disgusting how seldom I do laundry. I rewear stuff quite a bit between washes. Now imagine if I had to do it for both of you, as well!
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No Sugar for Students

April 6, 2011

Dear Overzealous Anti-Sugar School Official,

Awww, isn’t that cute? You hear that sugar is evil and want to keep kids away from it. You’ll go to any ridiculous lengths to keep them from buying it themselves!

What’s this? You soooo badly don’t want students drinking anything other than water ever that you’ll bully stores into not selling anything to them? Stores that, I might add, have no connection to your school whatsoever? Oh, well, isn’t that just lovely. I mean, that’s totally justified seeing as the students aren’t people or anything and as their principal, I believe they are officially your own property! Goodness, why stop at dictating food and drink choices? But I digress.

Or, wait a minute. That’s not right. I’d say that students are PEOPLE. And as real individual people, they belong only to themselves. You aren’t even their parent. All you do is act as administrator of the place they’re forced to spend several hours of their day whether they like it or not. Does that make them constitute your property? And doesn’t the idea I even have to ask that question raise concerns over whether you should be teaching or even being near any children ever?

So sugar is just sooooo bad for children that it’s abuse if an adult were to allow a grain of it to touch the child’s lips. Is that what you believe? No, moron, I’ll tell you what’s abuse. The abuse here is dictating the living shit out of every little thing a child does, denying her the choice of what food and drink she consumes, and preventing her from exercising even the tiniest bit of economic autonomy just to buy a goddamn bottle of juice if she wants it!

In short, go die in a fire. Or at least stay away from kids. You’re a thousand times worse for them than sugar ever could be.

Wishing You Great Pain,

Katrina

Interference

December 29, 2010

Oh, my good God…

Mother Sues McDonald’s for ‘Interfering’ With Kids

Happy Meals just got a little more expensive for McDonald’s: the fast food chain has been sued by California mother Monet Parham for using toys to make her two young daughters want nutritionally unsound Happy Meals…

Parham, mother of a six-year-old and two-year-old, said in a CSPI press release that: “I object to the fact that McDonald’s is getting into my kids’ heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat… what kids see as a fun toy, I now realize is a sophisticated, high-tech marketing scheme that’s destined to put McDonald’s between me and my daughters… I want McDonald’s to stop interfering with my family.”

Owwwww! My head hurts! Soooo much concentrated stupid!

*clutches head*

*takes ibuprofen*

Sigh. Okay, feel a little better now.
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#16tovote on the 16th – Myths and Facts

December 16, 2010

Starting this past February, I’ve been running a little Twitter campaign called #16tovote on the 16th, where we tweet about lowering the voting age throughout the 16th of the month. Today is the eleventh run of the event, which has grown a little since it began, though its success varies month to month, hardly a linear progression.

Anyway, the idea is that there are a lot of tweets on this specific day in support of lowering the voting age, and all tweets must use the hashtag #16tovote. This way, I can watch the search results for the hashtag to see who and what has contributed to the event. Fairly simple. Yet even so, I often find myself having to clarify the same things constantly, to bust some myths that don’t want to be busted. Such as…

Myth: The #16tovote hashtag is for use only on the 16th.

Fact: The #16tovote hashtag is for use whenever, for any tweet about lowering the voting age. The event #16tovote on the 16th of course is special in that it specifically uses the hashtag because of the emphasis on voting age tweeting. Sort of how even though Thanksgiving is about eating turkey, we still eat turkey throughout the rest of the year.
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Just Add Alcohol

December 14, 2010

You know what’s annoying about the drinking age? Aside from the fact that it exists? It’s like a go-to excuse for all sorts of other ageism against young people.

There are many hotels out there that will not let you check in if you are under 21. Hell, Holiday Inn Express’s website will even tell you point blank on their hotels’ pages the minimum check-in age. What’s often the little excuse for having this ridiculous rule? “Oh, we don’t want there to be underage drinking parties!”

Well, the logic there crumbles easily. Most parties with alcohol have at least a few people 21 or older around, mostly since they’re the ones who supply the alcohol to begin with. And if they have the 21+ people for that, chances are those people would be the ones checking in. As long as you allow anyone under 21 to stay at your hotel at all, even families, you run the risk of having underage drinking on your premises. Please. These rules don’t attack underage drinking. They attack youth independence.
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Stop Torturing Teens? That Is SO Democrat!

December 8, 2010

And now for a partisan, torturous edition of…

YOU SUCK!!!!

I realize the Republican Party seems to exist for no other reason than to stop the Democrats from doing whatever it is they’re doing, no matter what it is. To be fair, Democrats do the reverse as well, but not quite as much, considering almost no Republicans in Congress or Senate seem to ever vote the “Democrat” side of an issue, while Democratic Congressmen and Senators do so quite a bit. And it’s pisses ordinary Democrats the hell off! But I digress.

So, as part of the Republicans’ agenda of don’t-fucking-let-anything-pass, now they’ve effectively stalled legislation to get teen behavior modification facilities some much needed regulations. HR 911 passed the House and then it’s been in a Senate committee to see if it’ll get put to a full vote before the Senate. We NYRAnians met with the chair of that committee, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), to help move it through the committee. The senator agrees with our position on it. The trouble was some pesky Republican Senators on that committee who seemed to have some qualms about some of what this anti-torture school legislation is asking. Seriously, go to the above link to read Alex’s piece about it in Huffington Post. These Republican Senators have a problem with things like forcing school to do things like, oh, NOT withholding food or vital medical treatment from students as therapy.
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Kids at Christmas

December 7, 2010

I almost don’t think I should write about this since I’m sort of repeating stuff I’ve said quite a bit already. But, screw it, here’s another!

Right now, I’m at work and getting ready to send the first batch of NYRA’s holiday cards (yay!) and have 97.1 streaming online, the DC version of the generic Clear Channel light rock station that carries that annoying Delilah show in evenings and in December plays 24/7 Christmas music (with a few Chanukah songs thrown in here and there so they can pretend they’re all inclusive). I love Christmas music, I’ve been over this many times, yet there are several songs, which I’ve also mentioned before here and here and here and here and here, which are awful and keep getting played for some reason. Two of the worst are “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”. While the latter thankfully doesn’t seem to be getting played quite as much this year, the former is of course getting played over and over.
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