Parenting Is Not a Qualification for Talking About Youth Rights Issues, It is a Conflict of Interests

   Since becoming involved with youth liberation, I have encountered an attitude from a number of parents that has consistently left me baffled. They have expressed this attitude in a variety of ways that probably sounded like fine rhetoric to the person making the statements but which has consistently struck me as either disingenuous or betraying a deep lack of understanding of what youth liberation is really about. Here is a sampling of the sort of statements to which I refer: "As a parent I am on the frontlines of advocating for children while you are dealing with theory." (This might be less disingenuous coming from someone that attempts to put some sort of youth autonomy-centered philosophy at the core of their parenting, but alas this person was not such a parent.) "As a parent, I can speak to my child's need for boundaries and discipline." "You'll feel differently when you are a parent." These statements are not only a prime example of the authoritarian impulses of the people making them, they are also patently absurd upon reflection. This is because parenting is not a qualification for discussing the rights of youth, it is a conflict of interest.

   One is often seen as bolstering his case when he takes a stand despite having interests to the contrary. This is why the millionaire that supports higher income tax rates, the poor person that doesn't believe in government assistance for people like himself, the white person speaking out in favor of affirmative action programs for racial minorities, and the person of color who opposes affirmative action programs tend to be seen as either a.) lacking a true appreciation of their own self-interests or b.) acting from a higher and more noble set of values than immediate self-interest but never as c.) deeply corrupted by their own interests.

   There are also individuals who come to make a judgment about a situation as a more or less neutral party with nothing that she personally stands to gain or lose depending on the outcome of the situation. We think of the ideal judge and jury in a court case as having interests of this type. Their very neutrality can bolster their claims about a situation.

   Parents advocating for their "right" to arbitrarily punish their children and control their lives are not taking either type of stand. They are not taking a stand that goes against their self-interests and they are not coming to a decision about their values from a place of neutrality. Guardianship and minority give parents power at the expense of their children. There is therefore nothing especially noble or wise about parents arguing for the maintenance of these institutions in their current form - it is simply one example among many of powerful people attempting to protect their interests at the expense of those they have power over. Saying "As a parent I know what is best for my child" is no more noble than saying "As a slave owner I know that emancipation doesn't suit the Negro" or "As a logging executive I know that we don't need environmental regulation." Even if the statements were valid, we would be right to be highly suspect about the motives of the person making the claim.

   When we hear someone speaking of his or her role as a parent as a justification for beliefs about youth that many youth themselves would likely find oppressive or even abusive we should never accept that as good enough and we should never defer to their judgment on those grounds alone. If anything, that person's status as a parent should make us more suspect about his or her motives for supporting youth oppression. When discussing youth liberation, parenting is not a qualification. It is a conflict of interest. It is important that no one ever trick us into thinking of the position of a parent as necessarily pro-youth or even neutral. We cannot be bullied into silence by those whose class position vis a vis youth betrays their true motives for advocating for their continued oppression.

Youth Rights 101: How to Analyze Issues Through a Youth Rights Lens

   Previously I have posted about how youth rights is primarily a framing device as opposed to a set of hard and fast positions (i.e. youth rights supporters believe in this or youth rights supporters think that is wrong). As a framework for understanding issues related to young people, youth rights may not always give us a lot of easy answers (although sometimes it will) but it will lead us to ask certain types of questions that help us to understand an issue more clearly that we otherwise might have. This blog post isn't going to tell you how to come to the "youth rights position" on a given issue (as if there was only one!) but it will help you to learn to analyze everything from media representations of youth to legal issues involving minors to situations you observe in your daily life through a youth rights framework.

   First, ask yourself how young people are being framed in a given context. Are they portrayed as delinquent troublemakers up to no good? As helpless victims in need of adult guidance and supervision? As autonomous human beings with their own beliefs, values, and personality? Do youth speak for themselves or are others (parents, teachers, experts, etc.) primarily speaking for them? Are we being led to give the things young people say about themselves credence or are we being led to disregard their perspectives in favor of what someone older has to say ostensibly on their behalf? Documentaries in which adults speak about children without allowing children to speak for themselves in a way the viewer is led to believe are just as credible as adult viewpoints are an example of a problematic framing of youth in the media.

   Ask yourself if the solutions being proposed to deal with problems affecting youth deal with the systemic forces that endanger youth by depriving them of autonomy or if they simply reinscribe the adult supremacist logic which creates many of these problems in the first place. The vast majority of books, movies, television news reports, legislation, etc. that aim to tackle the problem of youth on youth violence and harassment (euphemistically termed "bullying") do little to solve the problem and sometimes even do a fair amount to make it worse. This is primarily because these "solutions" fail to take into account the structural forces which conspire to put youth into oppressive situations which they cannot choose to walk away from. Almost all adults have found themselves in a situation where they experienced alienation and unhappiness with the people around them whether it be at a university, a job, a place of worship, a community organization, or even an entire town. The reason that this sort of thing rarely drives adults to take their own lives or to resort to violence against others is not primarily because adults are more mature than youth are - it is that adults are more or less free to leave these situations and move on to one they are happier about. So "anti-bullying" programs which do not seek to ameliorate the lot of students by giving them greater control over their educational environment do little to actually address the problem.

   Another prime example of this phenomenon is how the issue of LGBT youth homelessness is framed, particularly within the context of the LGBT community. When LGBT people and their supporters speak about the tragedy of youth who are homeless due to rejection by their families on the basis of their sexuality and/or gender identity, the villain is always spoken of the in the vaguest possible terms. It's "homophobia" or "religious fundamentalism" or simply the fact that the young person's parents are bad. All of this is true, but it does little to address the problem of LGBT youth homelessness itself. There will unfortunately always be homophobes and religious fanatics among us. Hopefully there will be fewer of them in the future, but they are unlikely to become extinct any time soon. The reason that LGBT youth are in such a vulnerable position is not simply that many of them have parents who are bigots and fools. That is also true of plenty of LGBT adults who seem to do just fine for themselves. It is because of the legal, political, social, cultural, and economic forces which conspire to make young people without an adult patron essentially helpless in our society. There are almost no jobs where a young person without a diploma can earn a decent living. There are few social services that she is able to access on her own. Due to her age, she may not be legally allowed to sign the paperwork necessary to rent an apartment even in the very unlikely event that she comes into enough money to afford one. It is the evil of ageism even more than the evil of homophobia which works to incapacitate homeless LGBT youth and keep them in a dire situation. And what is worse, focusing solely on homophobia while ignoring institutionalized ageism virtually assures that the problem will never go away.

   Ask yourself if the discourse in play revolves around essentialist notions about young people.   Statements about the supposedly immutable, universal, and and essentialist characteristics that youth of a certain age possess are nearly everywhere in our society. They are so taken for granted in our culture that most people rarely if ever question them and will go so far as to label any deviation from these stereotypes as pathological - a child is "socially stunted" or "extremely gifted" for example. On the other hand, we take for granted that there is a great deal of variation when it comes to say, twenty-five-year-olds. Some are ready to have children of their own; some are not. Some are seasoned professionals in their chosen field; some are not. We don't pathologize these differences - we recognize them as a part of human diversity. We should apply this same attitude to youth and we should be highly skeptical in those instances where we see that it is not being applied. (For a great analysis of this phenomenon by a radical young person, check out this blog post.)

   Asking yourself these three questions is by no means all that it takes to analyze a discourse through a youth rights lens. For most of us interested in these issues - those of us who have read, researched, talked, and thought a lot about them - asking ourselves these questions is not something that we do intentionally when we hear someone make a comment about their children or watch a sitcom where youth are featured. It is rather akin to an automatic reflex. When you begin thinking about youth rights issues and using youth rights as a lens through which to analyze issues affecting young people, you will find that the opportunities to do so are endless. You will also find that most discourses centering on youth would make a lot more sense and do a lot more good if youth rights was a part of the average person's frame of reference.

Youth Rights 101: Why I Focus on Youth (Hint: They're Our Society's Most Oppressed Subject Class)

   Some people may wonder why I focus so disproportionately on youth issues. After all, young people are not the only people oppressed, either collectively or individually, in our society. Structural forces and individual prejudices often conspire to keep women and people of color from being as successful as many white males. Heterosexism is still inscribed into our nation's law codes and animates the belief systems of many people. The situation of disabled and elderly Americans bears many similarities to that of youth (albeit with some key differences). People of size are increasingly scapegoated under the guise of a "war on obesity" that conveniently doubles as a war on them. Rural people are oppressed both by the condescending attitudes of non-rural people and the very geographic realities of rurality. The poor economy is an increasingly oppressive force in the lives of more and more Americans, including those who would have once been known as middle class or even wealthy. And individuals of all demographic groups are oppressed by the military, medical, and prison industrial complexes as well as social mores which prize conformity over critical thinking and individuality. So why focus on youth?

   I focus on youth because minors are the only group of individuals in our society that almost everyone - left or right, religious or secular, educated or ignorant, authoritarian or libertarian - is openly comfortable treating as a subject class. Youth are the only group of people in the United States for whom there is widespread consensus that segregating them from the rest of society, denying them legal rights, keeping them economically dependent, and turning arbitrary authority for them over to other people is not a necessary evil but the best possible way we individually and collectively can hope to relate to them. I focus on youth because the ills of sexism, racism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, sizeism, rural oppression, poverty, and the military, medical, and prison industrial complexes are complicated and exacerbated by the status of minority. I focus on youth oppression because it is taken for granted and therefore invisible despite its ubiquity.

   I focus on youth because the critical theoretical eye that has problematized the idea of biologically essentialist gender roles and racial identities has not problematized much of the ageist pseudoscience surrounding discourses about child development. I focus on youth because those who decry the warehousing of our elders and people with disabilities in nursing homes and assisted living facilities do not draw parallels with the warehousing of our youth in schools and other institutions. I focus on youth because most libertarians see no contradiction in talking about arbitrary and oppressive state power on the one hand and using the phrase "parents' rights" on the other. I talk about youth because a commitment to human liberty and social justice demands youth liberation and those who claim to support human liberty and social justice rarely acknowledge this. I focus on youth because there is a more organized effort in our society to extend liberty and dignity to animals than to human children. I focus on youth because ageism is one of the greatest unexamined black marks on American society in the early twenty-first century. I focus on youth because if I don't few people will. And as long as all of these things are true I am a radical youth liberation supporter first, last, and always.

Youth Rights 101: What Is Ageism?

   Youth rights supporters talk a lot about ageism as it pertains to young people. Ageism affects the elderly as well (sometimes in similar ways, sometimes in different ways). Ageism, like all other prejudices, doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is gendered, it is sexed, it is raced, it is classed, and it is experienced differently by people according to body size, disability, and physical appearance. It manifests in different ways depending on the cultural context of an individual's community (i.e. ageism looks different in India than in the United States; it looks different for a rural Southern youth than it does for one in New York City). However, ageism is a universal feature in the lives of young people because it is systemic and institutional. It is also a nearly universal feature of most individuals' conception of the world in most societies. But what is ageism? How do we know it when we see it? How do we name it when we experience it? How can we identify ageism so that we can take steps to purge ourselves of its influence on our words and actions?

   Ageism, like almost all other prejudices, manifests itself in different ways. Much as there are different ways to be sexist, racist, ableist, classist, sizeist, and heterosexist, so there are various ways to be ageist. Much as racism or sexism, to take the most familiar examples, are not just one thing but many things and may manifest in different ways in different contexts, so ageism has many dimensions. These types of ageism may overlap with one another in places but they are all distinct enough phenomena to deserve mention. For the purposes of this post I will only focus on the ways in which these types of ageism affect young people but many and possibly all of them could be applied to senior citizens as well. 

·         Normative ageism – Normative ageism is perhaps the simplest kind of ageism to understand. It is much like garden variety sexism and racism in its manifestations. It is simply the assertion that individual capabilities, interests, strengths, weaknesses, and the ability to exercise rights is tied in an uncomplicated way to age. Generalizations about “all teenagers” or “typical children” as well as statements prescribing normative behavior solely on the basis of age (i.e. “preventing teen pregnancy,” “stopping underage drinking,” etc.) fall into this category.

·         Cultural ageism – Cultural ageism involves the attitudes taken by members of one generation towards another generation which devalue their mores, technology, pastimes, entertainment, etc. only because it is different than that which the previous generation is used to. Instead of judging generational differences based upon universalizable values and/or standards of quality (which can be a healthy hedge against relativism) cultural ageism judges one generation by the standards of another in such a way that the one being judged always comes up wanting. Examples of cultural ageism include complaints by older people about the popularity of video games or the common trope that young people today are too sexually promiscuous. Another side of cultural ageism can involve valuing the pastimes typically associated with younger people less than those typically associated with older people simply because the pastimes of older people are deemed more respectable and mature. For instance, taking a middle-aged man’s collection of stamps more seriously than a child’s collection of toy cars could be a form of cultural ageism.

   

·         Paternalistic ageism – Paternalistic ageism is the idea that minors (and sometimes even young adults who have outlived minority status) require older adults to make choices for them and to dictate their actions because, the thinking goes, they are too immature to exercise their own judgment and their autonomy is not worth respecting. Laws and practices forbidding people under a certain age from choosing their own home environment, watching “too much” television, fraternizing with the individuals of their choice, and choosing what academic subjects to pursue are examples of paternalistic ageism.

·         Pedophobic/ephebophobic ageism – Pedophobic ageism denotes a fear and hatred of children while ephebophobic ageism denotes a fear and hatred of adolescents. These types of ageism encompass the ideas that young people are perpetual troublemakers, dangers to their communities, always up to no good, and a burden on their teachers, parents, law enforcement officials, and the rest of their communities. The ideas that teenage hormones are out of control, that gang violence perpetuated by youth is a constant menace to all communities, that young people dress too provocatively, that small children are unruly and in need of constant supervision no matter what their behavior suggests, and that utilizing any means necessary to control and instill obedience in youth is a worthy goal are common manifestations of pedophobic and/or ephebophobic ageism. Perhaps the most pointed and notorious example of ephebophobic ageism is the existence of “troubled teen” residential facilities (also known as gulag schools, torture schools, behavior modification facilities, and youth residential programs). Young people sent to these facilities are generally subject to extreme psychological and physical abuse directed towards them with the intention of making them more obedient and amenable to adult authority. The ideology driving these programs is that of youth as dangerous miscreants who must be turned around and made to respect adult authority by any means necessary.

·         Economic ageism – Economic ageism refers to the myriad ways in which young people are discriminated against in the labor market and in terms of government assistance. Economic ageism affects minors but also those in their twenties and sometimes even those in their thirties. Economic ageism is a complex phenomenon which is worth discussing in far more detail than I can cover in a post of this nature. However, it is worth pointing out some key examples here. The prevalence of unpaid internships for young people as a substitute for meaningful employment, the skyrocketing costs of college tuition, laws forbidding individuals under a certain age from working, laws keeping young people from controlling the money they earn, and the push for more and more formal education in order to break into the middle class are all examples of economic ageism.

·         Scientific ageism – Scientific ageism denotes the ways that biology, psychology, and psychiatry are used to perpetuate ageism. For example, studies on the “adolescent brain” which perpetuate stereotypes about teenagers as being impulsive, foolish, and immature are a form of scientific ageism. Research on the “developmental stages of children” also often fall into this category, as does much of the social panic surrounding the contested idea that young people are reaching puberty earlier than before and that this is necessarily harmful as it supposedly causes them to mature beyond what is “appropriate” for their years. Psychiatric diagnoses which seek to pathologize the behavior of young people (i.e. attention deficit disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, etc.) are examples of scientific ageism as is the currently faddish obsession with childhood obesity. Scientific ageism uses the discourses of science to legitimate a political project aimed at denying young people their civil and human rights. This has precedent in the ways in which scientific discourses have been used to provide justification for sexism, racism, heterosexism, sizeism, classism, and ableism (issues discussed in more detail in this post).

·         Puritanical ageism – Puritanical ageism is often (although not exclusively) religious in nature and its chief aim is preventing young people from engaging in the use of intoxicating substances, having consensual sexual experiences, or consuming media with violent, sexual, or other controversial themes. Recently, with the new obsession with childhood obesity, puritanical ageism has expanded to encompass a concern with what foods young people choose to eat. Puritanical ageism is a phenomenon of both the left and the right.

·         Sentimental ageism – Sentimental ageism is sometimes marked by the overly romantic ways in which many adults view youth. Children are seen as innocent, sensitive, closer to God and nature than adults, pure, asexual, and cute. Sentimental ageists often tend to view children as less complex than other people and to see them as fundamentally “other.” Sentimental ageism is harmful in large part because it involves discounting the actual thoughts and feelings of actual children in favor of an idealized version of children and childhood. Sentimental ageism of this variety is not as commonly directed at adolescents. However, it sometimes manifests in the sentiments of adults who find teenagers to be necessarily more creative, playful, and able to learn than older people. Sentimental ageism is also operating any time someone refers to childhood as “a golden age” or “a carefree time” or to adolescence as “the best years of one’s life.” In addition to the utter falsity of these statements – as evidenced by the fact that many individuals are quick to acknowledge that their youth was not among the best years of their lives – such statements serve the purpose of delegitimizing youth oppression and trivializing the concerns of young people. Sentimental ageism of this sort is perhaps the most pernicious variety of ageism because it generally serves as an excuse for not acknowledging young people as an oppressed class due to the logic that children and teenagers are on the whole content with their lot and that the double standard actually serves their happiness.

·         Personal ageism – Personal ageism denotes an attitude held at the individual level which places more value on relationships with and opinions held by older people than those held by younger people. It can manifest outside of the family by ignoring or negating the contributions of younger people in a variety of business, educational, and volunteer settings. It can also involve a refusal to form friendships based on equality and mutual respect with younger people. It can manifest within the family when family members take the preferences of older family members more seriously than they do the preferences of younger family members. Personal ageism involves the attitude that the only proper relationship between a minor and an older person is that between an authority figure and a subordinate or between a mentor and a mentee. It precludes the possibility of genuine respect and reciprocity across generational lines.

·         Institutional ageism – Institutional ageism refers to the ways in which educational, legal, familial, religious, political, social, cultural, medical, economic, and other entities discriminate against young people on the institutional level. The status of minority, guardianship, compulsory schooling, the juvenile justice system, status offenses, legal age restrictions, and behavior modification facilities are all manifestations of institutional ageism.

   Ageism is a complicated phenomenon and these are just a few of the most common ways in which it manifests. However, when you see these types of ageism in action you can rest assured that ageism is indeed the phenomenon that you are observing.

   What do you think? Are there other examples of ageism you can think of? How do various forms of ageism work to legitimate the oppression of youth? I can't wait to hear your observations in the comment section!

No One Has All the Answers But At Least We're Asking the Right Questions

   When one chooses to publicly identify with a cause that most people do not support or even have much understanding of, she will find that others frequently begin asking her where exactly the borders of her philosophy are and on what side she would come down concerning various complicated hypothetical situations. This is frustrating to youth rights supporters because none of us have ever claimed that we have all the answers about anything. To paraphrase Richard Farson, it is impossible to be a truly great parent in a society fundamentally organized against youth and parenting, like all other human relationships, is a dilemma to be lived as opposed to a problem to be solved. While youth rights supporters can propose many more concrete solutions in the realm of politics, economics, and the law than in the realm of intergenerational relations, there are still controversial issues which pose a challenge to youth rights theory and call into questions the limits of support for youth liberation. This is true of all ideologies and belief systems (think of the hand wringing within the feminist movement about how the movement should handle the issue of sex selective abortion). It in no way fundamentally discredits youth rights as a philosophy or a movement. So while none of us has all the answers, what I do know beyond a shadow of a doubt, what all of us know as youth rights supporters, is that almost no one outside of our movement is even asking the right questions about the ways our society has chosen to relate to young people.

   Every major framework that our society uses to understand young people is deeply flawed. These frameworks may have some redeeming features, but they are fundamentally beyond reform. This is because what all of these frames share in common is the idea that children and adolescents are passive entities who exist in any meaningful sense only in relation to the adults in their lives. Whether they are there for adults to "educate" or "protect" or "punish" or "control", they are not perceived as autonomous agents in their own lives and interpersonal relationships. They are always painted as profoundly other. Where almost all adults are concerned, things are done to and for youth, rarely done with youth, and never done by youth (unless they are teenagers and they are doing drugs or playing hooky from school or engaging in sexual activities that adults disapprove of, in which case they are a social problem to be pathologized and controlled and this goes double for female youth, poor youth, and youth of color).

   What does this have to do with the kind of questions that most adults are prone to asking about youth as opposed to the questions that youth rights supporters of all ages ask about youth issues? Well, the frame through which we analyze an issue greatly affects the type of questions we will ask regarding that issue. Thanks to the LGBT rights movement, the frame for dealing with LGBT people has gone from "How do we cure homosexuality, transsexualism, and bisexuality?" to "How do we support individuals with minority sexualities and gender identities?" There are plenty of similar parallels in other movement histories and you are probably thinking of some right now as you read this.

   One of the most striking examples of this dichotomy is within the realm of mainstream education policy discourse. The questions that experts in the field primarily ask treat students in the K-12 school system as the absent referent in a policy discussion which one would think would center their voices, concerns, and lived experiences. However, this is the exact opposite of how most discourses in education policy deal with young people. Very little critical analysis is paid to the effect of zero tolerance policies, the lack of due process, and other forms of oppression faced by almost all youth within American schools. (You can read more of my work on student rights here.) Very seldom do those in the education policy world ask themselves how teachers, administrators, and others can help students to learn the information that is most relevant to them in a setting that feels comfortable to them. Instead all of the questions asked are about how to raise test scores, how to handle "disciplinary problems," and how to get parents (never the students themselves) more involved in determining the direction of the student's education.

   Another example of this phenomenon at work is in the realm of the sensationalized treatment of the "school bullying" issue. Now, were the behavior many "bullies" direct at young people directed at adults it would be termed "assault" or "battery" or "harassment" and so the term itself is infantilizing. Additionally, the frames proposed by adults (and some youth) to deal with the problem of school harassment and violence overlook the structural features of the environment which create the problem in the first place. Youth on youth harassment and violence within the K-12 school system is systemic. It is not an outgrowth of normal child development or supposed adolescent immaturity. It is an attempt by members of a subject class to exert control within the context of a deeply oppressive environment. If you put most adults into a situation they did not choose to be in, with people they did not choose to be with, doing things they did not choose to do, with no due process rights, without a financial incentive in the foreseeable future, with authority figures they had to constantly grovel before in order to gain permission to eat, drink, use the restroom, or get up from their desks, I would be shocked if their behavior was much better than that of many youth within our school system. There is a simple solution to youth on youth harassment and violence within our schools. It is to make our schools less oppressive and restrictive and to allow students a choice in the matter of whether or not they go to school and where they go if they do choose to attend. It involves doing this in a way that is sensitive to the unique needs of poor, rural, inner city, disabled, LGBT, and other marginalized youth. It would be quite an undertaking, but it would solve the problem in time. Instead politicians, principals, parents, and even some youth propose hokey school assemblies on why it's wrong to make fun of people in wheelchairs or why reaching out to those who are left out of the popular clique is the right thing to do. While this is ineffective, it is rarely very harmful. However many people concerned with this issue actually make the situation worse by proposing zero tolerance policies against "bullying" that are so vague that they penalize youth acting in self defense, make the schools more oppressive and dangerous places to be, and strip students of even more due process rights. Confronting the problem of youth on youth harassment and violence requires a radical paradigm shift that most parents and teachers are uncomfortable with so they fall back on "solutions" which reinscribe the oppressive circumstances they were ostensibly set up to ameliorate. Hence adults ask how to force students to by nicer to one another as opposed to asking why adults are forcing students to be around people they don't want to be nice to in the first place.

   So as you can see, youth rights supporters don't have all the answers to problems affecting young people in our society (although we have come up with some fairly good ones). What we are doing is the difficult work of deconstructing ageist paradigms which lead us to make unwise assumptions about youth and to make harmful decisions on their behalf.

The Roundup

This is a new regular feature that will highlight recent content (and sometimes content I've just recently discovered that might be older) from around the web that has a youth rights angle.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the following posts may or may not reflect my own views in whole or in part. My views may or may not in whole or in part reflect the views of the authors whose work is presented below.

Now let's get to the roundup!

This piece in Politico by youth rights intellectual Mike Males offers a wonderful critique of the recent Supreme Court decisions Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs.

Good news about internet privacy for students in Delaware.

Strong words from a millennial about the oppressive social and economic circumstances faced by members of her generation.

A great example of the way in which anti-drug hysteria and ageism collide to endanger youth.

Hooray for strong, capable six-year-olds.

A German court does the right thing by defending youths' right to bodily autonomy.

A piece detailing some of the horrific ways parents violate their children's privacy by using new technology.

Ageism: A Pillar of Ableism

   Several years back I began reading and learning about disability rights issues. As is the case with my interest in LGBT, women's, people of color, social justice, youth, and other issues, I was particularly drawn to the highly theoretical critical work that many disability rights theorists have been producing since the late twentieth century. One viewpoint I found repeatedly represented in this body of work (and which I have also heard expressed multiple times by my friends with disabilities) is that one of the primary pillars of disability oppression is the way in which people with disabilities, regardless of age, are treated as if they were forever children. My friend and fellow youth and disability rights advocate Matt Stafford has written about the ways in which parents and others use the institution of guardianship in order to exert undue influence in the lives of people with disabilities who have passed the age of majority. Another friend who is a youth and disability rights advocate has spoken with me about how the doctors they work with will refuse to talk respectfully and directly to them about their medical issues despite the fact that my friend has no cognitive impairments and even recently graduated from law school.

   Disability rights advocates have long sought greater rights and autonomy for all people with disabilities, including individuals with cognitive and communication impairments. They have challenged our entire society, especially the institutions set up by the non-disabled to manage people with disabilities, to view disabled persons as being as deserving of autonomy and dignity as everyone else no matter what mental or physical limitations or differences they may possess. In doing so they have not only greatly improved the lives of disabled people, they have also laid the theoretical groundwork for a compelling defense of youth liberation.

   Disability is a complicated issue. There are various types of disabilities and there are various frameworks for understanding the rights of disabled people and even disability itself. However, every serious advocate of disability rights will agree that centering the autonomy of disabled people is important and that all too many people believe that an inability on the part of disabled people to function according to the standards of non-disabled individuals justifies their lifelong infantilization. Of course, the reason that many people feel comfortable with denying rights and autonomy to persons with disabilities on these grounds is that we already have a widespread precedent within our society of using this as a pretense to deny rights and autonomy to children.

   The implicit assumption behind the actions and belief system of every judge that casually turns over guardianship of a person with cognitive disabilities to another adult, of every parent who believes they have an undisputed right to make medical decisions for a disabled adult son or daughter, and of every legislator who defends the corralling of disabled individuals into oppressive and even abusive institutional settings are not only ableist (although they are that). They are also profoundly ageist.

   The way our society treats minors has set the precedent for what we believe is the ideal way to relate to those whom we perceive (rightly or wrongly) as lacking the capacities of the average adult human being. We deny them bodily autonomy. We ignore their needs and preferences in the realm of education. We segregate them in various institutions where they are rarely permitted to interact in a meaningful way with the rest of the world. We deny them the right to their sexuality, either alone or partnered. We turn their decision-making authority over to various institutions and family members without asking them what they prefer in the matters which affect them most. We deny them opportunities for meaningful work. Finally, we expect them to react with gratitude for the nearly endless oppression they live under because first and foremost we view them as a burden who should feel fortunate that anyone wishes to fool with them at all. No wonder so many people believe that relating to disabled individuals this way is the best that can be done for them. It is the only way our society believes that we can relate to minors. Thus nearly universal acceptance of the oppression of youth opens the door to tolerance and even admiration of the oppression of disabled people of all ages. Of course, no one calls it oppression even though by any reasonable definition it is.

   It is important for disability rights advocates to recognize the link between youth and disability oppression. Ageism does much of ableism's heavy lifting and it is important to recognize that in order to combat the pernicious influence that ableism plays in the lives of disabled individuals. It is also important for youth rights advocates to recognize that support for youth liberation logically necessitates support for the disability rights movement. Allowing anyone in our society to be denied liberty, justice, and equality sets a precedent whereby doing this to any other group of individuals becomes much more widely accepted. We best protect youth and people with disabilities when we protect their rights and not when we pretend to protect them from themselves.

Why People That Ought to Know Better Condone Youth Oppression

   As a youth rights supporter, one notices that many otherwise intelligent, right-thinking people are deeply and often casually ageist. While sometimes this is couched in quite possibly sincere concern for youth well-being (however problematic that may be) much of it actually expresses open hostility towards children and older youth. Many wise people who by no stretch of the imagination could be considered radical youth liberationists have said that you can tell a lot about the character of a person or a society by how they treat children. What one quickly realizes is that for all of our talk of liberty, justice, and equality, most Americans are still quick to mistreat those with no social, political, economic, or legal power simply because they can.

   The reasons for ageism towards youth are nonetheless more complex than simply noting that power and privilege corrupt adults. Refusing to acknowledge ageism serves many practical and psychological purposes for adults. In this post I am going to explore these purposes in more depth in order to help all of us recognize them when we fall into these erroneous patterns of thinking.

   First of all, denying young people the full measure of their humanity makes life much easier for the adults tasked with taking care of or otherwise involving themselves with the youth in question. When adults convince themselves that young people don't really know their own minds or are incapable of experiencing meaningful emotions or cannot express concrete preferences about things that matter to them, it makes the job of a parent or teacher or babysitter or nanny much easier. Instead of engaging in the difficult task of helping youth to make wise decisions about the world that take their needs as well as the needs of others into account, this way of thinking allows adults to simply manage young people. In a society as profoundly organized against youth (and to a lesser extent mothers and other people caring for children) it can be profoundly difficult to adequately meet the needs of the very youngest youth in particular. This type of objectification of children is a way for parents, teachers, and others to feel okay about the decisions they are tasked with making on children's' behalf.

   Secondly, denying the ways in which ageism oppresses children is a way for most adults to avoid facing the traumas and injustices of their own youths. When one recognizes the extent of the injustice that most of us faced as youth at the hands of teachers, parents, relatives, and other adults it is almost always profoundly distressing. We are forced to recognize that at best some of these individuals were deeply misguided while others were perhaps downright sociopathic. In order to preserve our pristine image of these individuals, we pretend as if our suffering did not matter or that it was even for our own good. Many adults thereby perpetuate the cycle of youth oppression because they refuse to acknowledge that the injustices that affected them when they were younger were indeed injustices that ought not be repeated.

   Another reason that many otherwise intelligent, reasonable people believe that ageism is acceptable (while most other types of prejudice are not) has to do with the ways in which the psychiatric, medical, psychological, educational, political, artistic, and legal establishments legitimate ageist attitudes. This is not to make the bizarre claim that these institutions are actively conspiring to oppress youth. It is to say that even the well-educated and successful among us are formed by their social context and thereby usually perpetuate narratives about childhood and adolescence that are taken seriously primarily because they confirm the prejudices of most people in our society. The myth of the "teen brain" (which has been refuted in depth by psychologist Robert Epstein) is just the latest in a long line of attempts to justify the oppression of subject classes with pseudoscience. Today it is primarily fat people and young people whose bodies and minds are deemed deficient as a pretense for denying them rights. In days past (and to a lesser extent today) it has been women, people of color, people with disabilities, the elderly, poor people, and LGBT people. The idea that children are somehow deficient in their reasoning capacities, that children go through distinct developmental stages that are tied in an uncomplicated way to age, and that young people lack the cognitive capacity for self-determination serves a political agenda that makes our society in some ways more convenient for adults to live in with children but less just for children themselves.

   So, having seen the fallacies which cause otherwise intelligent, just people to embrace ageism, how do we give up our convenient fictions about young people and embrace a more just social order? Does giving up ageist prejudices mean that the lives of adults will become unlivable? Not at all. The mother who worries herself sick because of the idea that her children need constant supervision, the school teacher who is fed up with playing the role of police officer as much as the role of educator, and the million other adults charged with the task of playing the proverbial judge, jury, and executioner to young people would all be more and not less liberated than they are today under a radical youth rights regime. But in a society in which adults are charged with total responsibility for young people, objectifying and oppressing them makes carrying out this responsibility much more convenient. The current regime which oppresses youth and the adults in their lives is also not a norm that one can unilaterally opt out of, making the current cycle of youth oppression so vicious and difficult to break.

   However, whatever our age or relationship to youth, we can begin pushing for a society that is less oppressive for youth, parents, teachers, and everyone else with a stake in the welfare of young people. We can recognize that the impossible choices we are forced to make in our dealings with young people are primarily the consequence of an unsustainable and irrational social order. We can recognize the psychological and practical needs that our prejudices towards youth fulfill and we can then choose not to give in to them. If we are currently (or previously have been) subjected to ageist oppression we can learn to see this as a reflection on our society and not on ourselves. But only by recognizing where the appeal of ageist discourses and beliefs lies can we begin to undo the fabric of ageism and age apartheid.

Youth Rights 101: What Is Youth Rights Anyway? How Is It Different From Other Philosophies About Youth?

   This post is intended to serve as part of a series on the basics of youth rights theory. When I joined the youth rights movement, I found very few resources available to offer basic insights into the central tenets of youth rights philosophy. This section of the blog is intended to serve as an introduction to the ideas and attitudes that permeate youth rights theory.

   "Youth rights" can be difficult to pin down. The term itself is vague (although no vaguer than most terms used to describe more established social movements and philosophies). Youth rights is difficult to pin down primarily because there are a number of philosophies similar in some respects to youth rights that ultimately differ in critical enough ways to distinguish themselves from youth rights. There is also a great deal of ideological diversity within the youth rights movement itself. Those differences may be highlighted in more depth elsewhere on this blog, but this post is intended to focus on the commonalities that make us youth rights supporters as opposed to something else. Youth rights is, like feminism, first and foremost a frame for viewing issues (in this case issues affecting young people). It emphasizes the prevalence of ageism as a key prejudice affecting the lives of young people. It problematizes institutions like the family and compulsory education which are central in the lives of youth. It calls into question assumptions that most thinkers about childhood, education, and the family take for granted about children's capacities. Most critically, youth rights thinkers tend to regard child abuse and child protectionism as two sides of the same coin.

   In the words of philosopher Howard Cohen, "Child protection has been concerned with the quality of care of the child, and therefore with the fitness of the caretaker. It has not been concerned with fundamental questions about the nature and limits of adult authority over children. It is the sense that the ways in which adults control children and make decisions for them are themselves a part of the mistreatment and oppression of children which is absent from the ideology, and is ignored by the government when it becomes involved." To paraphrase psychologist Richard Farson, we believe that we best protect youth by protecting their rights. That which undermines the right of young people to autonomy and self-determination (even under the misguided assumption that it is for their own welfare) demeans, oppresses, and endangers them. Child abuse and child protectionism are two sides of the same coin.

   Youth rights supporters believe that youth don't usually need protection from themselves - they need protection from the social, political, legal, economic, and cultural forces that make them a subject class. We recognize that, as has been the case with people with disabilities, when youth need protection it is usually from the institutions such as schools, the family, and social services agencies that were ironically enough set up for the purpose of protecting them. This is because it is impossible to truly protect someone within a framework that denies them liberty, autonomy, and self-determination and thereby deprives them of the ability to meet their own needs and desires and to protect themselves.

   This isn't to say that there aren't some worthwhile things being done from child protectionist perspectives and that sometimes youth rights advocates' goals may not overlap with those of other people concerned about the welfare of children. They often do. Many non-youth rights child advocates care deeply and sincerely about children's welfare much as we do and there are of course times we will be working together for some of the same things. But it is to say that unlike most people concerned with youth issues, we are working within a tradition which centers concerns of autonomy, liberty, and rights while calling into questions many fundamental assumptions about child development.

Attitudes and policies which silence and stifle young people (even under the assumption that it is for their own good) contribute to young peoples' oppression and abuse.

The Works That Made Me the Youth Rights Supporter I Am

   Before I knew there was such a thing as a youth rights movement I wanted to read books about it. As a high school senior I remember searching in vain for books on Amazon that proposed new ways of thinking about childhood and the rights of young people. I didn't know then that most of the best books on this topic are currently out of print and often hard to find. I also didn't know where to look for excellent youth rights resources outside of books.

   That's why I would like to take this opportunity to introduce my readers to the works of youth rights theory that have influenced me and allowed me to grow as a thinker and writer dealing with youth rights issues. I hope that all of you will seek them out and allow them to take you on a journey as well.

   The first book of youth rights theory I ever read was Richard Farson's Birthrights. A psychologist and father of five, Farson's 1970s era tome made him a radical's radical in the movement for children's liberation (as it was then often called). Since reading the book for the first time I have reread it on multiple occasions. With its clear, simple language, Birthrights is incredibly accessible to readers of all backgrounds and ages and also the most radical and comprehensive call for youth liberation that I am aware of which has been committed to paper. The first time I read Birthrights I found it both incredibly easy to get through and amazingly disconcerting. I was also impressed with the richness of the theory. Farson sees connections between the liberation of youth and the liberation of women, people of color, LGBT people, and people with disabilities which are as relevant today as they were in the 1970s. Every youth rights supporter owes it to themselves to read this amazing book.

   Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex is principally known as one of the seminal works of second wave feminism. It is also a seminal work of youth rights theory. In the chapter entitled "Down With Childhood," Firestone reveals the many connections between women's oppression and the oppression of children. In just thirty pages, Firestone offers a radical critique of the ideology of motherhood, compulsory education, age segregation, children's forced asexuality, children's economic dependence, and oppression affecting children within the family. Firestone's work should serve as a wake up call to any youth rights supporter who doesn't see the important ways in which feminism is linked with youth liberation and any feminist who doesn't see children as an oppressed class and who overlooks the ways in which contemporary ideologies about childhood work to oppress adult women. This chapter is why I refer to myself as a Shulamith Firestone youth rights feminist.

   John Holt's Escape from Childhood has been rightly critiqued by many within the movement for Holt's problematic belief that children who choose to live with and depend economically on their parents should have to abide by their rules while children who are economically self sufficient are entitled to greater autonomy. Read this book anyway. Holt is often viewed as a simple advocate of homeschooling while his more radical views about youth liberation are ignored by most people who profess an interest in his ideas. This is unfortunate, because one cannot truly appreciate any of Holt's ideas without understanding the deeply subversive ways he saw children and childhood. Like Birthrights, Escape from Childhood is highly accessible and yet full of incredibly rich theoretical insights.

   Howard Cohen's Equal Rights for Children is probably the least accessible book on this list, at least for those without a background in academic philosophy. Nonetheless it is well worth your time if you have a serious interest in youth rights theory. Cohen's views can be best summarized by this quote: "Child protection has been concerned with the quality of care of the child, and therefore with the fitness of the caretaker. It has not been concerned with fundamental questions about the nature and limits of adult authority over children. It is the sense that the ways in which adults control children and make decisions for them are themselves a part of the mistreatment and oppression of children which is absent from the ideology, and is ignored by the government when it becomes involved." Cohen's work on child agents is also essential to a theoretical understanding of how to make rights for the youngest youth work in practice.

   John Taylor Gatto's book of essays Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling is brilliant in some places (especially the first chapter) and incredibly off key in others (especially the last chapter). Gatto is a former award-winning public school teacher who chose to use his platform as New York State Teacher of the Year to offer a radical critique of the modern American school system.

   Most people who write parenting blogs, including those who think of themselves as avant garde advocates for children, tend towards the smug and self-righteous. That is unfortunate because parents even more than the rest of us need good role models when it comes to treating those younger than ourselves with respect. This is why I love the Demand Euphoria blog. The author is a mother to two preschool-aged children and writes about her experiences as a parent with honesty and insight.

   Cevin Soling's documentary The War on Kids is as brilliant a resource as any I am aware of dealing with the issue of youth oppression within the modern school system. It touched on every aspect of schooling I found oppressive in my own childhood and it is recommended for anyone that wants to know what K-12 education is really like today for most youth.

   Samantha Godwin's legal philosophy paper entitled "Children's Oppression, Rights, and Liberation" is one of the most important works of radical youth rights theory to come out recently. It is also the only radical youth liberation work I am aware of that examines youth rights through the lens of legal philosophy.

   I hope you find this list of works helpful in your quest to gain a deeper understanding of the youth rights movement. These works have collectively made me the youth rights supporter I am today and I hope that any of you who choose to explore them gain as much from encountering them as I did.  

On Jonathan Krohn and Ageism

   Those of you who have watched cable news of late or follow conservative movement politics may be familiar with the name of Jonathan Krohn. Krohn first rose to some prominence in the conservative movement in 2008 with the success of his self-published book "Define Conservatism" which came out when the author was thirteen years old. Since writing the book, the author went on to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and appeared on numerous television and radio programs. Now seventeen years old, the author has renounced some of his former political views and is once again making the political talk show rounds, now to position himself as a more moderate thinker who has evolved on a number of key issues including same-sex marriage and the role of government in ensuring access to healthcare. You can read more about Krohn's life and philosophical transformation here.

   I have followed this story with a great deal of interest because of what it says about a number of issues central to my youth rights advocacy - youth political disenfranchisement, how the idea of distinct developmental stages as applied to youth subverts youth achievement, how narratives about youth incapacity and ignorance serve an agenda of adult supremacy, and how all of us are encouraged as we age to distance ourselves as much as possible from the beliefs, ambitions, and feelings of our younger selves. Krohn's story provides the most striking example of the way these dynamics play out in practice that I have seen in the mainstream media in quite a while.

   The only actual interview I have seen with Krohn took place recently on the The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, a political talk program on MSNBC. What I found interesting (if unsurprising about this appearance) was how quick O'Donnell was to chalk Krohn's political conversion experience up to nothing other than the fact that, at thirteen, he was apparently too foolish to think seriously about politics. O'Donnell's comments were almost without exception condescending. As the interview progressed, it became strikingly obvious that Krohn was more well-read than O'Donnell himself. In interviews such as this one, Krohn himself seems eager to chalk his previous political views up to nothing more than youthful naivete. Says Krohn here, "It’s a thirteen-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a thirteen-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were twelve or thirteen. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough.”

   In these comments one sees that even someone as thoughtful and intelligent as Jonathan Krohn or Lawrence O'Donnell can fall prey to logical fallacies surrounding ageism that are so prevalent within our culture that they are taken for granted as common sense. The problem is that they simply don't apply in the uncomplicated way that Krohn and O'Donnell seem to think that they do. It would be convenient for all of us if people under a certain age exhibited political immaturity but upon reaching the age of majority suddenly developed seamlessly rational and coherent political views. Instead the political, social, cultural, and economic views of people of all ages often change over the course of their lifetimes in messy and unpredictable ways. In middle age, Arianna Huffington moved from the right to the left after beginning her career writing for conservative publications like The National Review and serving as the token Republican on Comedy Central television programming. There are also examples of young people whose political involvement largely reflects their adult perspectives. Clearly if we are uncomfortable with disenfranchising the young it cannot be because they sometimes change their minds - this happens to many adults and not all young people hold views that are at odds with their later belief systems.

   The line that Krohn was conservative solely because he was inundated with conservative political talk in Georgia also strikes one as slightly disingenuous. Krohn did not have his political conversion experience as a result of leaving the state. And many people find themselves fairly unmoved by the political climate of their immediate environs, even as a child. (I was one of them.) Additionally, most adults are influenced to some degree or another by the political atmosphere of their communities.

   It is obvious from reading Krohn's writing and listening to him speak while he was in his early teens that he possessed a political sophistication and breadth of knowledge that few Americans of any age possess. Even though he may be a more sophisticated political thinker at seventeen than at fourteen, he was still a more sophisticated political thinker at fourteen than most Americans ever are.

   The truth is that when most people see intelligent and politically engaged individuals under the age of majority, they become uncomfortable. Suddenly they are forced to reconsider the wisdom of a society that keeps someone who may be more mature, well read, and sophisticated than themselves socially, economically, legally, and politically powerless. In order to ensure that we do not draw from our own memory banks in order to question the oppression we ourselves experienced as youth, we are taught to distance ourselves as much as possible from our younger selves and to regard views held prior to adulthood not as one set of many perspectives we hold throughout our lives but as inherently deficient and immature. Thus the logic of age apartheid is maintained.

   After watching the interview on the Lawrence O'Donnell program, I sought out information about Krohn's book on Amazon. While I flipped through the book briefly, what I found even more interesting were the reviews that the book had garnered from Amazon readers. The reviews largely fell into two categories: those claiming that Krohn's book was mediocre due to his youthfulness and those claiming that Krohn's book was so sophisticated that a person of his age could not have written it. Amazingly, some reviewers seemed to hold both perspectives simultaneously. Only one reviewer seemed to engage in a non-condescending manner with the substance of the writer's ideas.

   Reading these reviews I was struck by the enormity of Krohn's courage (or maybe his naivete regarding human nature, a trait present in some individuals of all ages). When you write a book at fourteen years of age you cannot win. If the book is unexceptional or poor, many people will blame it on your age. If the book is edifying and worthwhile, many people will believe that you could not possibly have written the book or that the ideas in the book are not truly your own. Almost no one will engage with the substance of the ideas in the book, the driving force which prompted you to write the book in the first place.

   Ironically, most adults claim that they want youth to be creative and to excel to the best of their abilities at whatever they undertake. The Amazon reviews of Krohn's work (seemingly all written by adults) put the lie to this canard. Adults don't really want youth to excel to the best of their abilities when it is threatening to adult sensibilities. Adults want youth to hew to stereotypical age-based scripts in such a way that it doesn't make the adults themselves uncomfortable about young peoples' political, social, legal, cultural, and economic disenfranchisement. Rigid ideas about the developmental stages of youth serve a political purpose at least as much as they serve a pedagogical purpose. When we do encounter an indisputably talented young person, we label them a prodigy in order to assure ourselves that they are so freakishly outside the norm that they pose no threat to age-based segregation and oppression. (Interestingly, Krohn is partially ethnically Jewish and in many ways, Jewish Americans and African-Americans seem slightly less uncomfortable with youth excellence than other American ethnic groups, an observation also made by Shulamith Firestone in her youth liberation and second wave feminist classic The Dialectic of Sex. In a similar vein, it is also worth noting that for at least part of his youth Krohn was home-schooled in keeping with one of Firestone's other observations that contemporary schooling retards rather than promotes young peoples' development.)

   As Krohn ages and continues to change ideologically and personally, perhaps he will realize that it wasn't a stark contrast between middle schoolers and the rest of us that gave rise to his political transformation as much as the fact that we are all in a lifelong state of flux regarding our beliefs, values, and personality. (When I was younger I used to think that by the time I was in my mid-twenties I would finally arrive at a stable place ideologically and that my previous state of flux was due to my immaturity. My subsequent life experiences have not borne this hypothesis out.) But I wouldn't count on it. After all, the impulse within our culture to discount and distance ourselves from the perspectives of our youth is hegemonic and serves a convenient set of political purposes in the context of a society largely based upon age apartheid and youth disempowerment. It is time for all of us to raise our respective consciousnesses about the manifest ways in which this phenomenon affects us individually and collectively. And when we do we might realize that when we were younger than we are today, we were not as different or as "other" as we are led to believe that we were.

Jonathan Krohn today at seventeen years old.