A Conference Presentation and a Distillation of Why I Am an Unapologetic Radical Youth Liberationist

Jackson Howard Wagner, me, and Alexander R. Cohen. Great friends and comrades.

   Back in November, I had the privilege of attending the wonderful Applied Philosophy Workshop at Bowling Green State University. On Saturday, November 3, 2018, I gave a presentation at this conference entitled "In Defense of Liberated Young People: A Critique of the Protectionist Developmentalist Position." The talk went really well and I could tell that folks were nodding along and understanding the message that I was trying to convey. The information that I presented was mostly taken from the Master's thesis that I wrote on this very topic (and which I am proud to say was given the honor of "passing with distinction" from my graduate committee) as a graduate student at San Francisco State University. My wonderful youth liberationist friends and comrades Alexander Cohen and Jackson Howard Wagner were there and they really helped to make this conference presentation a truly wonderful experience.

   After my presentation, a graduate student at Bowling Green State University was tasked with delivering a response to the material. At first, I thought he was raising some good points that I wanted to respond to, but he closed his remarks in a dismissive and flippant way by saying "What if teenagers are running off to the mall in their bikinis to get tattoos on their faces?" I had five minutes to respond and this is basically what I said after setting a timer on my iPhone.

   "The presenter that we just heard from raised some good points and I want to thank him for his response. However, he said one thing in particular that I wanted to respond to. He talked about teenagers in bikinis going to the mall to get tattoos on their faces. Well, I know a lot of young people and I don't know any that are clamoring to go to the mall in bikinis to get facial tattoos, although I suppose that that would be their right if that is something that they wanted to do. But here is what I do know about. I know about youth that are abused within their homes physically, emotionally, and/or sexually by their families and are returned to those very families when they attempt to run away. I know about youth who have been sent by their parents to gulag schools for behavior modification that traumatized them for life. I know about youth who are not allowed to express their gender or sexuality within their family and as a result they are oppressed and abandoned with no options. I know about youth subjected to medical procedures against their wills who have been traumatized for life by that. I know about youth who are bullied or mistreated in schools and do not have the option to choose other educational institutions. I know about youth who are in schools that are just not a good fit for them and where they are just not thriving as they should be and they do not have the option to make a change. I know about youth subjected by family members to behavior modification programs which traumatized and pathologized them. I know about youth who were denied freedom of conscience in reference to religion and spirituality, which is such a sacrosanct value in our society. I know about youth indoctrinated into racism, sexism, heterosexism, and cissexism by their families. I know about families that want to break up loving relationships involving youth because of the partners' ages, race, or sex. So, I do not know about teenagers in bikinis at the mall getting facial tattoos but that is what I do know about."

   After that statement, everyone clapped and I sat down, knowing that I had given the right response to my interlocutor's words. We cannot allow youth rights issues to be trivialized. They are too important not to do so.

Me and my wonderful host, Kathryn Gonda, at the Bowling Green State University Philosophy Conference.

Youth Oppression, Popular Culture, and 1980s Nostalgia

   Recently I saw the movie It and it struck me just how far we as a culture have fallen in terms of honoring and allowing for youth autonomy. I have never really been struck by the 1980s nostalgia wave like some millennials seem to be. Perhaps it is because I was born in the late 1980s and so my childhood was largely colored by the tropes and trials of the 1990s. But the outpouring of love that millennials who were too young to experience the 1980s heap on movies like It and shows like Stranger Things leads me to believe that something else may be at work as well.

   Perhaps all of this nostalgia for the 1980s (as depicted in the popular culture) is a sign of a repressed yearning for the sort of wild childhood that most of us never had but desperately wanted. We all wanted to grow up in the sort of world where youth had spontaneous adventures that were not micromanaged by adults. Much as humanity longs to return to a mythical Garden of Eden that surely existed in the past even if no one has ever experienced it, younger millennials long for a time before permission slips, zero tolerance policies, hall passes, curfew laws, and a general culture of fear and anguish around unaccompanied minors robbed them of their ability to create meaningful worlds with other youth without the ubiquitous presence of adult gatekeepers and chaperones.

   You can see this impulse at work as well in the excitement which Game of Thrones fans express in reference to the character of young Lyanna Mormont. Lyanna is the head of the House Mormont, a title which she took on at ten years of age. Her house's sigil is the bear and Lyanna lives on Bear Island. She is portrayed in the show as a competent, wise, and brave leader who calls the shots militarily in the context of an always threatening world of war, winter, and intrigue. Game of Thrones fans love Lyanna partially because she is such a striking emblem of youth empowerment. The same can be said for other fan favorites on the show such as Bran, Sansa, Arya, and Shireen - the show being known and lauded among fans for its depictions of strong youth characters.

   It is oftentimes instructive to look towards the popular culture that is most resonant at any given time for clues to elements of the zeitgeist that one may otherwise miss for lack of an obvious cultural calling card. I for one have long thought that Americans' increasing cynicism regarding the political establishment could have been predicted long before Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz learned this lesson at the hands of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders simply by noting the popularity of Veep, House of Cards, and Scandal - shows in which the president and those around him or her are depicted as venal, corrupt, self-interested, and vain. On a similar note, I think that the popularity among adults of shows featuring strong and empowered young characters speaks to both a sense of regret about our own childhoods and anxiety surrounding the way that we continue to raise our children today.      

How Ageism Destroys the Family, How Youth Rights Can Heal Our Broken Family Bonds

   When we speak of youth rights and the benefits that will accrue to people of all ages when we live in a more anti-ageist society, we tend to focus mostly on the many horrible abuses against youth that will be prevented. Teachers won't be able to abuse their power so easily, violating the rights of their students and sometimes even jeopardizing their futures. Parents will no longer be legally allowed to assault and batter their children. Youth will be able to consent to or refuse medical care of all kinds on their own terms. People will no longer be arrested for consensual sexual activity simply because of their age or the age of their partner. Young people will no longer be denied the right to work and keep their own money. Governments and parents will no longer unilaterally dictate to youth where they must attend school. This list could go on and on and on.

   All of these things are good and important. All of them are a major part of why I am a youth rights supporter. But I'm not just a radical youth liberationist because I believe that the worst abuses against youth will be curtailed in a society with less ageism. I am also a radical youth liberationist because I believe that youth and adults, parents and children, teachers and students - will have more meaningful, sincere, loving, and respectful relationships in a pro-youth society than they currently do today.

   In this particular post I want to focus on the the parent-child relationship although much of what I say could apply to other adult-youth relationships. But I am focusing here on this particular relationship because it tends to be lifelong and of paramount importance to all involved. Therefore, it will also be the adult-youth relationship most dramatically affected by a reform in society's attitudes towards childhood and adulthood.

   This satirical article from The Onion caused me to begin thinking about all of the ways in which ageism hurts children and their parents as individuals and as a family unit. While I laughed at the piece, it brought up some uncomfortable truths that I have noticed my entire life. Although we tend to see these trends as normal, we shouldn't - they are a symptom of ageism and the dysfunctional relationships that ageist ways of thinking produce.

   Personally, I have always had a close relationship with my parents and my aunt (who has lived next door to my parents my entire life and has been much closer to a third parent than a relative where I'm concerned). They know about my friends, my romantic relationships (with both men and women), my political views, what hobbies I enjoy, the people in my life I can't stand, and my aspirations for the future. When I go to the doctor I want their input about what questions I should ask him. I like them knowing my friends and the people I date. I even like them knowing that I've made some choices they wouldn't make themselves and that I believe some things they don't agree with because I want the people in my life that I'm closest to to know and love the real me.

   Over the years I have realized that such a relationship between parents and their children is incredibly rare once children reach their teenage years and that the relationship rarely fully recovers even once the child is an adult. This should sadden us greatly - most people that choose to have children don't do so because they want a distant relationship with people they know little of substance about. They enter into such a relationship with the best of intentions, only to watch themselves and their children grow more distant from each other as the years pass.

   Since graduating from high school and becoming a legal adult, I have watched people I otherwise respected and admired go to pathetic lengths to avoid their parents finding out things that even casual acquaintances knew about them. One ex-boyfriend went to considerable trouble to hide his sexual relationship with me from his parents despite the fact that we were both extremely responsible about preventing pregnancy and STDs, were well into our twenties, and had dated for quite a while. One friend has refused to tell her parents that she is a transsexual despite having taken hormones for years and looking in every way like the woman she has worked hard to become. Other friends have taken pains to keep their parents from knowing that they hold religious, political, or other views which their parents do not share. These families are by no means extraordinarily oppressive or abusive - they would be regarded by most people as normal families and yet in the context of any other important human relationship, keeping secrets of this nature from people one loves would be seen as extremely problematic, even dysfunctional. So why does this happen and why are we, individually and collectively, willing to tolerate it?

   Almost every institution in our culture sends parents and children alike the message that their relationship is supposed to be an adversarial one. Parents are supposed to perform parenthood by laying down rules, punishing their children when they transgress them, and generally seeking to "keep their kids in line." Children are supposed to perform their role (both as minors and later as adult children) by attempting to subvert these rules, sneaking behind their parents' backs to do things their parents disapprove of, and keeping secrets from their families. If parents and/or children aren't following this script, we perceive something as being somewhat "off" about them despite the fact that the script itself is inherently oppressive to both parties and makes no sense if the goal is to foster open, honest, loving relationships among parents and children.

   This is where youth rights comes in. Youth rights supporters do not believe in double standards - a list of things it is necessarily okay for adults to do but necessarily wrong for younger people to do. We do not believe in a parent-child relationship where parents have to give permission for everything their child does as a minor and then give approval for the child's adult decisions only if it matches the parents' expectations. We don't believe that children are quasi-property whose decisions always reflect on their parents. We do believe that the hypocrisy, cynicism, and disingenuous nature of the current model of parent-child relationships serves neither parents nor children.

   Basically our society tells young people that they're weird if they have more than an acquaintanceship with their parents. If they really let their parents in on their feelings and beliefs as they do with their friends, they're doing something wrong. Similarly, parents are taught that if they aren't freaking out at even the slightest suggestion of sexual activity, drinking, drug use, swearing, anger, or disagreement of any kind coming from their offspring (often even after the children are adults themselves!!!) they are failing to perform the role of parenthood responsibly. This model, while widely prevalent in American culture, sets children (including both minor and adult children) and parents alike up to fail. It encourages repression and insincerity in what should ideally be a relationship forged around the concept of unconditional love. The good news is that, as dismal as the situation is, we can do better.

   Young people, when possible (and I know it always isn't), have to insist that their parents love them for who they really are, not who they pretend to be around their families. This, of course, is not by itself enough. That is because in our society parents still have the power, money, and social capital that their children lack. So it is chiefly up to them to unlearn the antagonistic model of parenting taught in our society and instead begin to see their children of all ages as equals - people whose choices they may not always agree with but whom they are prepared to love, accept, respect, and support anyway.

   It is important to note that there is a precedent for radically reinventing family relationships in our society through a combination of political/legal/economic and sociocultural reform. Feminism did not destroy the relationships between men and women, husbands and wives, whatever certain individuals on the far right may claim to the contrary. Instead it made these relationships more mutual, more voluntary, and perhaps in many ways more loving. Similarly I believe that the youth rights movement will ultimately strengthen parent-child relationships as opposed to destroying them.

   As a youth rights supporter, I believe in abolishing guardianship because it is a terrible injustice when youth are forced to stay in family situations that prove unfulfilling or even intolerable simply because of a legal construct known as custody. I want youth in abusive and oppressive situations to have the option of getting out of those situations without being forced into something worse. I also want youth in positive family situations to know that even then they have rights over themselves that no adult, including their parents, can violate. These legal and political changes will be important, but they aren't the whole story.

   I also want these legal/political changes to be accompanied by changes in attitudes that ensure that parents would be less oppressive and abusive towards their children, even if they could, because their consciences would tell them that this is wrong and the messages they received from society would be that their children should be treated with respect for their autonomy. The same social changes which would make it easier for children to distance themselves from their families would also hopefully make this distancing less necessary.

   As a radical youth rights supporter, I don't just want to demolish guardianship, minority, compulsory education, status offenses, and all of the other evils blighting the lives of youth. I also want to replace them with more sincere and loving connections between parents and children, students and teachers, adults and youth in general. As movements for the rights of women, people of color, LGBT people, senior citizens, and disabled people have learned again and again over the years, it isn't enough to change laws. We must also change hearts and minds. Sometimes this may be easier than changing laws and other times it may be harder. But it will always be necessary if we truly want to create a society where neither adults nor children are oppressed and both are free to pursue the healthiest relationships that they can, including across generational lines and within the family. Youth rights is both child liberation and parent liberation.

Mama and me.