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!

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.