MODELS OF CONSENT:
A) "An enthusiastic 'yes' without fear or confusion."]]> Consent is an extremely basic and crucial concept. Elsewhere I've written that "anything negotiated consensually is ethical". Possibly an overstatement -- but if so, not by much. As I understand it, consent is the very foundation for ethics.B) The Antioch policy
C) Creating safety for a partner to say "no"
D) "Willingness"
E) Under what circumstances does a person say "yes"?
F) Safe words
G) "Power play" and "equality play"
My sense is that most philosophical discussion about consent has revolved around sex. I was first introduced to the concept of consent by Paul Edison and Moira Bowman (or was it Jeannie LaFrance?), who were at the time associated with the Portland Women's Crisis Line (and/or Bradley-Angle House). I explored the concept further while working with the Reed College Rape Awareness Project. Later I discovered other models of consent being created by the BDSM community.
In this particular essay, I'm most interested in exploring the concept of consent as it may be used by Youth Liberation. I am not interested in exploring issues of sexual consent for youth at this time. I am mainly concerned with non-sexual scenarios: e.g. when a parent wants their son/daughter to do or not do something, but their will is in conflict with that of the youth. While my starting point for discussion will be sexual models of consent, I intend to abstract general principles.
MODELS OF CONSENT:
A) "An enthusiastic 'yes' without fear or confusion."
The first definition of consent that I learned was this: Consent is an enthusiastic "yes", without fear or confusion.
It's useful to think of consensuality as being a continuum. On one end of the continuum you have perfectly consensual interaction, on the other end you have force (rape in this context). The definition of consent presented above is an ideal. "Yes" is seldom going to be overtly "enthusiastic", and there's usually going to be a little bit of ambiguity because people haven't talked through every detail -- but still, there's an intuitive sense of which direction an interaction is leaning in. The ideal is worth articulating, in part, because it represents something to aspire toward.
B) The Antioch policy
During the early nineties, students at Antioch college -- grappling with the issue of date rape on campus -- created a written policy regarding consent. In essence, they said that it was a man's responsibility to explicitly ask for permission at each step along the way toward having sex.
A strength of this model is that it deals with the fact that date rape often isn't a matter of sudden, surprise assault -- there's a point at which the woman doesn't want to go farther, but the man presses in. Consider this data collected by Karen Rapaport & Barry Burkhart (quoted by Robin Warshaw in her 1988 book "I Never Called It Rape", pp. 96-97):
ACTION COMMITTED AGAINST WOMAN'S WISHES
AND PERCENTAGE OF MEN WHO HAD DONE ITKissed her: 53
Placed hand on her knee: 61
Placed hand on her breast: 60
Placed hand on her thigh or crotch: 58
Removed or disarranged her outer clothing: 42
Removed or disarranged her underwear: 32
Touched her genitals: 37
Had intercourse: 15
The data, of course, is out of date -- what I want to focus on here is the structure of the information. Personally, I think it's rather ingenious, walking through a serious of steps toward a point that can be identified as rape. I include this table to help illustrate that coercion tends to not be a simple matter of disregarding one "no" -- but rather of pressing past multiple boundaries.
The Antioch policy has been much criticized, on several accounts. (1) It puts the entire burden for communication upon the man; what responsibility does the woman have for speaking up? (2) It is potentially awkward to have to explicitly, verbally negotiate each "next step" in a sexual encounter; isn't there room for non-verbal cues? (3) The model doesn't acknowledge even the possibility that a woman may be a sexual initiator, potentially violating a man's boundaries. (4) The model fails to acknowledge sexual encounters between people of the same sex.
Despite these problems, I think that the Antioch model is valuable, in that it presents an additional model of consent, and furthers discussion.
C) Creating safety for a partner to say "no"
Saying "no" can be hard. When things are beginning to not feel alright, it can be difficult to speak up and break the flow of what's happening. As the person being hurt, you may be sensing that things are starting to go wrong -- but you're hoping that you're imagining things, hoping that the situation will right itself without having to say anything. Speaking up may lead to the other person getting defensive, it may lead to an argument. And then what may have been a generally OK time, is entirely spoiled. So you wait -- and as the situation gets progressively worse, it becomes increasingly difficult to speak up: you'll have to explain why you waited so long, both to the other person and to yourself.
Saying "no" gets easier when you do it more frequently. When "no" isn't so uncommon, it doesn't seem like such a big deal -- either to the person saying it, or the person hearing it. Saying "no" also gets easier when the person hearing it encourages you to say it, and has demonstrated that they won't react defensively or angrily.
Toward the goal of making it feel safer to say "no" for my partners, I've developed a set of personal principles about how I want to be receptive. These are five ideas that I make a point of communicating:
D) "Willingness"
So far, it's been assumed that one should be aspiring to an ideal consent: "an enthusiastic 'yes' without fear or confusion". In terms of one's personal relationship to sex, there is an implied principle: "I should only be sexual if I am truly feeling sexual." This can be more difficult that it seems at first. When you stop and really check your emotions, you may find that there is complexity: part of you is interested in sex, but part is feeling depressed, part is just tired, part is thinking about other things. Should you really only have sex if you're 100% enthusiastic?
In the context of women healing from sexual abuse, authors Ellen Bass and Laura Davis offer up an alternative model in their book "The Courage To Heal" (p. 254):
WILLINGNESSOne of the most pervasive myths about sexuality is that you have to feel desire or excitement to enjoy making love. Loulan exploded this myth in her revised version of the female sexual response cycle. Previous models of women's sexual response cycle (Master and Johnson, Helen Singer Kaplan) cite either desire or excitement as the necessary starting point for sex.
In Loulan's model, the sexual response cycle begins with neither of these. It begins with the willingness to have sex. Willingness simply means that you are willing to enter into the sexual realm with yourself or another person and to be open to what you might find there. Willingness is an attitude. It doesn't commit you to anything more than beginning.
The concept of willingness as a legitimate entry point for sexual activity makes sex much more accessible to women who don't experience desire. It means you can have sex even if you're not feeling physical longing, emotional excitement, or desire of any kind. This is a radical and liberating approach to female sexuality.
The reasons you are willing may vary. You might be willing because you want the pleasure sex brings, because you know you will enjoy it once you get started, because you want to work on sexual issues with your lover, or because you want to practice making love to yourself.
For many women, the idea of willingness is a tremendous relief. Instead of asking yourself "Do I want sex?" or "What's wrong with me that I don't feel desire?" you can ask instead "Am I willing to begin?" The concept of willingness gives you the permission to explore sexually from exactly where you are. Instead of trying to generate desire out of nowhere, you can simply say, "Yes, I'm willing to try."
"Willingness", in my opinion, is a good addition to our thinking about consent. It gives us a more sophisticated and accurate picture of how decisions are actually made. My one concern about this model is that over time, when you're with a partner, and if you're not actively pursuing some sort of healing work, it can begin to squeeze out checking in with your emotions. "Willingness", in my opinion, is best decided on a case-by-case basis -- rather than as a matter of policy, which emotionally prevents saying "no" in the future.
E) Under what circumstances does a person say "yes"?
A great deal of the discussion about consent revolves around saying the word "no". Slogans decry "No means no!" and "What part of 'no' don't you understand?"
But "no" is only half of the puzzle. It also helps to know what a person really means when they say "yes". How does the individual you're interacting with decide "yes"? Does YES mean "I enthusiastically agree"? Or "well, you have the stronger opinion, so I'll follow your lead"? Or "I can't explain why I feel like I do, so I'll just do what you suggest"? Or "I feel defeated because you won't stop arguing, so I surrender"?
No means no -- but if a person isn't very good at asserting themselves, and is likely to cave in to whoever has the strongest will -- perhaps "yes" should not be accepted at face value. "How do you decide 'yes'?" can be a very enlightening discussion.
F) Safe words
The community of people who play with Bondage/Discipline, Domination/Submission, and Sadism/Masochism (BDSM) has survived serious political attacks from feminist activists, and legal attacks from the mainstream culture... In large part because of these attacks, BDSM activists have developed a lively discussion about consent that rivals that of anti-rape activists and sexual abuse survivors. As a popular slogan goes, BDSM play should be "safe, sane, and consensual".
The BDSM consent model works like this: two (or more) people negotiate about what activities they want to engage in and what their boundaries are, in a non-sexual setting; when the "scene" begins, no further negotiation need occur; however, there are "safe words" with which a person can stop or slow down the scene if it's getting out of hand.
Advantages of this arrangement: It allows the people involved to avoid formality while they are playing, and go more with their feelings and intuition. In many feminist dialogues, there has been a sense about sex that it should be very gentle; this model embraces the notion that sexual rough-housing and wrestling can be very satisfying for both parties -- if it's what they're looking for. It allows for role-playing where one party gets to be playfully saying "no" without stopping the action -- until they say the predetermined safe word. The safe word model seems to promise that you can do anything you want sexually -- so long as you can negotiate for it beforehand.
Of course, there are also difficulties with this model -- which have been commented on even from within the BDSM community. (1) It can be difficult keep D/S dynamics out of the negotiation period -- particularly if one or both of the parties involved are hungry for play. (2) When one is doing pain play and is flooded with endorphins, the mind can go away, and it can become very difficult to collect oneself enough to say a safe word. (3) Doing D/S play for prolonged periods, such as weeks at a time ("24-7"), can wear down a submissive's sense of self so that it's very difficult for them to get back to a place where they can truly negotiate with their play partner in an egalitarian fashion. (4) When the person doing the dominating stays in their role for a long time, they can become sloppy about paying attention to the person they are playing with, risking doing real harm.
These are significant issues. In addition to physical risks, there are psychological risks involved with BDSM that aren't seen as much in "vanilla" sex. One needs to take a great deal of responsibility for oneself entering into "contracts". BDSM has been likened to an extreme sport, such as football, skydiving, or bungee jumping: there are risks, but a person who is conscientious about safety can also have a lot of fun.
G) "Power play" and "equality play"
[Here I may be digressing from the topic of "consent". Consent, in essence, is about the moment in a decision-making process where a person says "yes" or "no". Here I'm making a move to talking about the larger process of decision-making. For a decision to be made, someone has to make a proposal -- someone has to initiate. We tend to recognize consent when an explicit question is raised: do you want to do this or not? But for the vast majority of the time, things are in motion already -- someone has initiated a script or agenda of some sort that is playing out. How do we understand the role of the person who is "steering" a situation?]
The BDSM model of consent is interesting here because it offers us another option to consider. Most people won't be interested in trying the activities that it was developed to deal with. However, I think that there is a reason why people who are interested in egalitarianism should not simply dismiss this area of thought...
People involved in Domination and Submission talk about "power play". For "doms" there is a pleasure in getting to say how things are going to be, getting to be in control and have your way. For "subs" there's a pleasure in being taken care of, not having to make decisions, getting to relax and simply experience what another person provides for you. Doms and subs are well served by "switching", exchanging roles and getting to see what the other person experiences.
...Note that D/S need not be sexual, nor involve any sort of pain play. It can be as banal as picking someone in a large group to be the "designated control freak" who will figure out what restaurant everyone will go to for dinner, who'll see to it that the necessary steps happen to make the plan work. It can be likened to dancing: who's going to lead, and who will follow?
"Vanilla" folks often look at "power play" askew -- why would anyone want to engage in dominance and submission? However, from the D/S perspective, normal social interactions are drenched in power dynamics -- most people who claim to be egalitarian simply don't acknowledge them -- and probably can't even see them. Engaging in "power play" helps teach one to see the often subtle power dynamics in daily life. "Power play", then, is nothing so special -- it's merely doing what happens in daily life, but conscientiously.
Given how ubiquitous D/S dynamics are, it might be more accurate to think about egalitarianism as "equality play". We'd like it to be the norm, but in reality it takes some conscientiousness to make sure that all parties involved are equally determining events. I offer up D/S play, and "switching" in particular, as a way to help train egalitarian-minded people to see the power dynamics at work around them.
SUMMARY
Consent is well-imagined as a continuum, with an ideal consent on one pole, and coercion on the other. An ideal consent might be expressed as "an enthusiastic 'yes' without fear or confusion".
In the context of sex, there are a great many points where consensuality can be checked on the way to intercourse. It's useful to begin seeing many small boundaries: touching a knee, touching a breast, removing a piece of clothing, etc. Each of these boundaries is an opportunity to check how one's partner is feeling.
It can be challenging to break a silence and say that something's not right. Much can be done to create a safer environment, where a sexual partner will feel comfortable speaking up.
It should be recognized that people generally, at any particular moment, have a number of thoughts and feelings going through their minds. So long as these are noticed and considered, a "willing" rather than "enthusiastic" yes is perfectly adequate.
It's good to know what a partner's criteria for saying "yes" are. To what extent are they motivated to advocate for their own desires, versus prone to passively following another person's will?
With advance negotiation, almost any activity can potentially be engaged in, in a consensual fashion. Safe words are a useful tool in this "advanced" sort of play -- however, they are liable to break down if the pain or time spend "in scene" are too extreme.
So long as events are in motion, there is a decision-making process. Who is the main person initiating and guiding the situation at hand? Intentionally playing with the roles of "lead" and "follower" can help train one to see these power dynamics.
Consent only tends to be noticed as an issue when a question is articulated, or when a problem arises. All of these ideas are geared to helping make one more aware of when to check-in with a partner about consent. Consent tends to be assumed -- but a safer path is to intentionally discuss it.
[Note to self: Loose threads... I could have dealt more with the topic of "non-accommodation". I could have said more clearly that "power is about decision-making". I probably should have said more about threatening contexts, e.g. a boyfriend who hits the wall or kicks cats. I'm tempted to say something about how I think that while masculinity plays a role in rape and battery, the better part of the phenomena can be attributed to boundary, consent, and entitlement issues.]
]]>THE "PURE" FORMS OF YL
In my essay "Three Types of Youth Liberation: Youth Equality, Youth Power, Youth Culture" (07.30.03) I described what I feel are the most "pure" forms of YL.
YE, YP, & YC each attempt to describe the plight of youth and propose a solution. Three aspects of how they go about doing so contribute to their "purity": (1) Their solutions do not make YL an adjunct of another movement. (2) They claim to address the needs of all youth, rather than just a subset of youth. (3) They are not constrained to a single issue, but rather suggest principles for social change that could, one supposes, be applied to many different issues.
To say that these three philosophies represent YL in its "purest form" does not mean that they are somehow "perfect". Each of them has shortcomings.
None of these three necessarily deals well with the unique issues of girls, youth of color, queer youth, street youth, etc. Consequently, they may all be legitimately criticized for having a bias toward serving straight, white, middle-class, male youth.
Furthermore, for each of these philosophies there are issues that are less easily addressed than others. For instance... Youth Equality, with its emphasis on civil rights, has a difficult time addressing power relationships within the family that aren't legally actionable. Youth Power, with its emphasis on confronting adult authorities, may be a difficult sell to parents and other adults whom we might like to enlist as allies. Youth Culture, by focusing largely on youth getting to express their "true nature" via alternative institutions, lacks motivation to undertake the undesirable (but necessary) work of watchdogging the actions of adult authorities.
HYBRID YL PHILOSOPHIES
In addition to the "pure forms" of YL, a wide variety of hybrid philosophies exist. I will now identify and discuss four categories of these:
There are several political philosophies that have the potential to be friendly to YL. These include:
Each of these philosophies has its own analysis of how abuse of power comes to exist -- and thus can make an appeal to youth interested in YL. Socialism sees adult abuse of youth as the result of capitalist interests. Anarchism, with its strong association with anti-police activism, has a natural appeal to youth (especially street youth) who have been persecuted by the police. Libertarianism, with its emphasis on personal freedom and limiting governmental intervention has an appeal to youth who feel that adults have created too many laws regulating their lives. Activists who work to promote and maintain a healthy democracy can recruit youth by talking about the need for "youth voice" in the schools and in society at large.
For the most part, each of these movements does not see adultism as an independent phenomena. They see mistreatment of youth as a function of whatever problem they are already working against: capitalism, organized government itself, overactive government, or democracy that is inadequately inclusive.
A YL that bases itself upon one of these political philosophies is derivative, and maintains at least a psychological tie to the broader movement. In practical terms, it may be valuable to have access to the adult movement's intelligence and physical resources. However, there is also the risk that when there is turn-over in the adult leadership, sympathies will dry up and youth interests will be dropped from the agenda. When YL is merely an adjunct to another movement, you can almost guarantee that it will be a ways down on the priority list.
[Note: I'm tempted to add Liberalism to the list of political philosophies here. By "Liberalism" I do not mean "Democrats", but rather the philosophy created by Locke and others upon which the U.S. was founded. If it were added to the list, then Youth Equality would also have to be seen as a derivative form of YL, rather than as a "pure form". However, my gut sense is that this is not the case...
Because Liberalism represents the form of government that currently exists, there need be no effort to install a new system. If YE subscribes to Liberalism, but Liberalism already exists, then YE is not at risk of merely being an adjunct to an adult social change movement. It seems to me that YE's autonomy as a movement means that it should not be lumped in with these other movements for a change of government.]
2. YL as one project of a psychotherapy movement
I have seen several psychology-based movements pick up Children's Rights as an issue. These include:
Within the Co-counseling community, there is an active discussion about adultism as one of the oppressions that generate "distress". I cannot prove this, but I see certain buzzwords in the writings of Tony Harris & Jacob Holdt and John Bell that suggest they come out of a Co-counseling background. Alice Miller is a good example of a Freudian thinker advocating for Children's Rights (e.g. "For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence"). For an example of psychohistory, see Lloyd DeMause's classic essay "The Nightmare of Childhood" (collected in "The Children's Rights Movement: Overcoming the Oppression of Young People", eds. Beatrice Gross & Ronald Gross).
One of the troubles with psychotherapy movements is that they are not geared for doing social change work. Their theories may have explanatory power -- but forming activist groups falls outside of the realm of therapy work.
...Is therapy that helps one deal with the psychological consequences of adultism -- but doesn't address the institutions that cause this suffering -- a kind of social change activism? Is an analysis of adultism without a program for social change still YL? In my opinion, the answer to both questions is "no". Nonetheless, the spirit of YL is strong enough within these psychotherapeutic movements that they're worth mentioning as a form of YL hybrid.
3. YL from the point of view of a particular subset of youth
There are several subsets of youth who have a clear history of youth rights activism (that I know about). These include:
Again, I want to emphasize that being a "pure" YL organization -- one that addresses issues faced by all youth, rather than just a subset -- does not make one superior. A YL movement that addresses only the "pure" issues is failing to care for the needs of a great many youth.
[I'm not sure whether or not to include students in this list. My gut sense says "no", that students belong in the next section, the one about issue-based activism. Perhaps this is because school attendance is nearly universal. School attendance is currently part of what it means to be a typical youth -- going to school puts you in the majority, rather than in a minority.]
4. Single-issue activism that furthers YL's cause
A "pure" YL group tends to have some sort of "Bill of Rights" or laundry list of agenda items that it wants to pursue -- even if it can only practically pursue one issue at a time. To an extent, having that big vision is what really and clearly makes a group Youth Liberationist.
However, having lots of agenda items does not necessarily make one an effective YL organization. Being instead a single-issue group allows focus, and makes it easier to create a coalition of like-minded activists who might not agree on any other points.
Here are a few single-issue projects that might overlap with YL:
For instance... Home-schooling might be an issue of youth escaping the oppressive school environment -- or of parents seizing further control of their children's lives. Anti-police harassment may be about police picking on youth -- but it may also be about how the police treat people of color or the homeless. Teen abortion rights may be approached as an issue impinging upon young women's rights -- or it can be seen as part of protecting all women's rights. School reform and prohibiting spanking can be done for motives that are either liberationist or protectionist.
Deciding whether a particular single-issue campaign should be considered "pure" or "hybrid" may be impossible for an outside observer. If a campaign has described its goal narrowly enough -- that is, in a way that may appeal to many people, without regard to their overarching ideology -- then ideological motives may well be invisible. You'd have to be on the inside of the group, listening to people talk about their personal reasons for being involved, to figure out how to classify it.
CLOSING
To summarize... There are organizations that embody a "pure form" of Youth Liberation. These groups can be recognized in part because they (1) advocate a multi-issue agenda, (2) address issues that are experienced by all youth, and (3) operate independently of adult organizations whose main focus is something other than the needs of youth.
In addition to "pure" YL groups, however, we need to recognize that a variety of "hybrid" organizations exist. In this essay I looked at four types of hybrid:
It seems to me that we need both "pure" YL organizations -- which articulate a broad and general vision of social change -- and hybrid organizations, which are well-suited to specialized work. The danger of hybrid philosophies that we must beware of, however, is that the "parent" philosophy may overwhelm YL -- either diverting YL activists to its own cause, or simply jettisoning youth when the adults in charge lose interest in them.
]]>1. YOUTH POWER
This is a good thing. It creates "severability". There's a core YP framework -- but then there are several useful add-ons. If you disagree with one of them, that's OK -- it can be jettisoned without harming the other pieces.
The other useful aspect of thinking about several frameworks rather than just one, is that it makes my job of juggling all the pieces much easier. There's less chance that I'm going to forget to talk about something important, if my subject areas are narrower.
I've written I-don't-know-how-many outlines that try to sum up all the topics that I would like to cover in my lifetime. This organization of information, however, is slightly different. Rather than listing everything, I'm just going to describe several main chunks that can be removed without hurting the whole. ...They're like modular components. They're built to complement each other -- but can all function independently.
1. YOUTH POWER
The stripped-down Youth Power framework, I believe, has to include these components:
I think that you can talk about the power relationship between adults and youth without defining where the line between adults and youth lies. Still, it's an awfully nice to be able to explain what you mean when you use the terms "adults" and "youth".
You can pursue the goals of YP without putting any strictures on adults who want to help. However, if you're concerned about well-meaning adults nonetheless taking over formerly youth-led organizations, this can be a useful bit of theory.
There are a variety of ways of understanding what "oppression" is. There has to be some comparison between different models here. Still, however you explain why adultism happens, it doesn't change the fact that it does happen.
A framework is different from a strategy or a position. It's a theory which allows you to understand the world -- it's a lens that you look through. Here are several topics worth writing about that wouldn't belong in the frameworks that I've described:
However, at the same time we must avoid projecting a "false otherness" onto youth. There are few ways in which youth are actually unique. Youth have common cause with several vulnerable adult populations:
HOW TO ARGUE THAT YOUTH AND ADULTS ARE IDENTICAL
One way of conceptualizing age differences, the current way, is to think of adults as "normal", the average or standard human being. The Youth Equality (AKA "Youth Rights") movement accepts this premise. Their argument is that youth and adults should be treated as equals. The problem, then, becomes one of minimizing the differences between youth and adults.
How do we do this? Rhetorically, there are just a few ways to go.
(1) You can argue that youth are underestimated -- that youth in general are more competent, intelligent, and responsible than they have been given credit for. You can draw upon anecdotal evidence, or you can appeal to scientific studies (such as those of Mike Males).
(2) You can point to youth prodigies. The argument could be that prodigies represent what most youth would become if they weren't oppressed. Or, on the other hand, the argument could be that we must remove oppression because it would wrong to stand in the way of prodigies, even if there are few of them. That is, punishing the exceptional few for the failings of the many is wrong. [John Stuart Mills used a strategy like this to argue for the equality of men and women in his book "The Subjection of Women" (1869).]
(3) You can point to the flaws of adults -- their stupidity, cruelty, and misbehavior -- and argue that youth are at least no worse. It's hubris on the part of adults to deny youth rights; the burden is upon them to prove that youth should be excluded -- and the burden of proof has not been met.
(4) You can argue that certain rights are innate, regardless of qualification. For example: adults can believe that the earth is flat and still vote -- there's no IQ test to vote -- that's because it's meant to be a right that one possesses simply for being a participant in society.
IF RIGHTS ARE BASED ON AN "AVERAGE" PERSON, A LOT OF PEOPLE SUFFER
The "average" human being isn't necessarily so average. The U.S. began with the notion that only white, adult, wealthy, heterosexual men should enjoy the full privileges of citizenship. Rights have been extended to more and more groups -- but we continue to imagine those men as the standard people, whom all others deviate from.
This thinking gets expressed in some very practical ways. Let's consider differences between men and women for a moment... Light switches are placed at a height on the wall that is based on the average man's height. In medicine, for a long time (this may have changed by now), the "average" body temperature was based on men rather than women. While not all women are pregnant, nearly all women have the potential -- yet, this is seen as a mark against them in a male-dominated workplace -- rather than as an aspect of life that is simply accepted and accommodated.
It seems to me that rather than imagining the fixed characteristics of a single, average person, we should carefully consider the variables inherent in the human condition, and then construct society so that a range of differences are all considered "normal". [I'm supposing that we are able to build society anew, which isn't possible -- but this is a useful perspective if we are interested in transforming what-is into what-could-be.]
...In a village that is struggling for survival, in which all the townsfolk may starve come winter if adequate food is not stored away, it is understandable that the weak may be cut off. But we do not live in that village. We have wealth and abundance in the U.S., and if people starve, it is largely due to how wealth is distributed -- concentrated into the hands of the few. Transforming society to one that is more just, then, has a great deal to do with redistribution of resources...
This is a fairly traditional Marxist line of argument -- but here I want to diverge somewhat. I want to bring in the key concept of "accommodation". I want to say that if our society is not in a state of desperate poverty, then surplus should be dedicated first to re-shaping institutions to be inclusive of the needy -- not simply redistributed among the totality, as if all people are identical. [I may be doing an unfairness to Marxism here. There is that principle of "each according to their need"... But I want to get very specific here about what needs we are dealing with. And I am not arguing for an abolition of capitalism -- merely setting limits on how much one person is permitted to take for themselves, meanwhile taking away from the rest of society.]
IMAGINE AN ADULT WHO IS IN ALL WAYS LIKE A YOUNG CHILD
As a thought experiment, can we construct an adult who is in all ways except appearance a facsimile of a young child? My sense is that if we do so, we will be better able to get a grasp of what variables society must provide for -- what variations among human beings must be considered "normal", and be accommodated for.
I also want to take this route because I believe we must be vigilant about how we imagine difference. We must continually compare different groups against one another in order to ensure that we are not inventing "false otherness".
...For instance, men in the U.S. during certain periods have imagined women as being more morally virtuous, more poetic, irrational -- yet, in other countries women are viewed as the more pragmatic sex, and the notion that women are irrational has fallen into disrepute, and the idea that women are inherently more noble is quickly slipping away.
...Along these lines, I reject the notion that youth are uniquely zestful, playful, energetic, irresponsible. There may be subcultures among youth that embody these qualities -- but to posit that they are part of youth's essential nature is a case of "false otherness".
That all said, here is the meat of the essay -- constructing an adult that is philosophically identical to a young child:
(1) dwarf
Let's get this one out of the way. There are adults who are very short. The wikipedia entry for the word "midget" says everything I would want to:
"In the 19th century, midget was a medical term referring to an extremely short but normally-proportioned person (e.g., with growth hormone deficiency), and was used in contrast to dwarf, which denoted disproportionate shortness. Like many other older medical terms, as it became part of popular language, it was usually used in a pejorative sense. When applied to a person who is extremely short, midget is now considered derogatory. The word dwarf has generally replaced midget even for proportionally short people, and the term little person is also sometimes used. According to the Little People of America, the human definition of this term is stated as such 'a medical or genetic condition that usually results in an adult height of 4'10" or shorter, among both men and women, although in some cases a person with a dwarfing condition may be slightly taller than that.'"
Building a society that accommodates the needs of little people (e.g. lower light switches, easily opened doors, lower urinals, etc.) will also benefit youth.
(2) impoverished
A young person is born without (a) home, (b) money, (c) clothes, (d) food. In these respects, a young person is essentially impoverished -- even homeless. Creating a social safety net that deals with needs of the extremely poor would also benefit youth.
(3) immigrant, non-English-speaking
Youth are much like newly arrived immigrants from an alien culture, who don't understand the culture or know how to navigate its institutions. Learning to survive here requires an orientation to American customs and systems. Like adults for whom English is a second language, youth are born without the ability to articulate themselves -- though they quickly gain the ability to conduct at least basic communications. [Being born to parents might be likened to being brought to America by a host family, as an exchange student.]
(4) disability
There are many forms of disability. One can lack a sense, such as sight or hearing -- this is not the case for most youth. One can have limited mobility, e.g. needing a wheel chair -- or lack motor control to the extent that a full-time care-giver is required. This is the case of the newborn or the toddler.
There are also a variety of mental disabilities -- these are a thornier issue. It's more difficult (for me at least) to sort out how society ought to accommodate adults with mental disabilities -- but looking at how competency is tested, and how care-givers maximize independence is an intriguing starting place for further research. There are impulse-control disorders, "developmental disorders" that impair reasoning, and other mental issues that lead to what we understand as incompetence. ...What humane options for dealing with incompetency among adults have been developed? ...And how can one ever prove one's competency once the label has been applied?
(5) suggestibility
The quality of young people that I'm least able to find an analog for, which is perhaps most uniquely belonging to youth, is their lack of experience. Youth are impressionable / malleable in a way that adults generally aren't simply because they are experiencing things for the first time. As much as I criticize the notion that youth are empty containers just waiting to be filled with knowledge, there is a way in which this is also true -- at least in terms of there being a vulnerability to manipulation. How important is this? I'm not sure.
CLOSING REMARKS
I feel like I probably should have started with the metaphorical section first, comparing youth to other social groups. It's easy enough to say this: There are few ways in which youth are unique. Youth have common cause with several vulnerable adult populations...
I think I've got a good concept, criticizing the notion of the "average" person and replacing it with a notion of "normal variations". I think "accommodation" is an incredibly key term here -- one that has potential for reshaping the YL dialogue about equality. However, until I have a better sense of how vulnerable adult populations are / should be accommodated, I think my argument is a bit weak.
...I'm also pleased with the concept of "false otherness". I could probably go farther with that.
Hm. I also notice upon re-reading this essay that I didn't talk about variations among human beings that have practical consequences, versus those that are of purely social significance. Skin color, for instance -- apart from the significance that people project upon it, I can't think of any practical difference it creates. Pregnancy, on the other hand, is a prime example of a practical difference with significant consequences. [In the same way that Susan Moller Okins has coined the term "false gender neutrality", I think we could talk about "false age neutrality" -- badly ignoring age differences that do exist.]
]]>...I find myself wondering if there's really a point to me setting up deadlines at all with YL... Are they really part of my "fantasy life"? It would have been nice to have been able to give myself a booklet as a birthday present -- but when I start getting close to the cut-off date, it just seems stressful. And what's the point of that?
...I think I should probably write out a "Notes on Writing" version of the "Notes on Making Art" document at some point... I mean, look at me -- this has been a ridiculously productive month: creating sculptures, writing essays, doing research... Can't I just trust myself to keep creating (and working towards a greater perfection) simply out of love for the work?
]]> I hereby officially nix my goal of getting a Youth Lib booklet done by Nov. 1. It's not gonna happen. I need to do more research in order to feel comfortable writing some of the bits that I want to go in this thing. And, I have an essay in my head that occurred to me last night that's important and needs to be written while I've got it here. ...I'll keep pursuing the booklet -- it may well be my focus again in November -- but I'm axing the deadline....I find myself wondering if there's really a point to me setting up deadlines at all with YL... Are they really part of my "fantasy life"? It would have been nice to have been able to give myself a booklet as a birthday present -- but when I start getting close to the cut-off date, it just seems stressful. And what's the point of that?
...I think I should probably write out a "Notes on Writing" version of the "Notes on Making Art" document at some point... I mean, look at me -- this has been a ridiculously productive month: creating sculptures, writing essays, doing research... Can't I just trust myself to keep creating (and working towards a greater perfection) simply out of love for the work?
]]>YOUTH LIBERATION OF ANN ARBOR
Around 1970, the organization "Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor" was formed.
My first exposure to the existence of this group was probably via the book "Encyclopedia Brown's Record Book Of Weird And Wonderful Facts" by Donald J. Sobol (1979):
"When Keith Hefner of Ann Arbor, Michigan, was 15, he formed Youth Liberation, Inc. The group championed kids' lib.Among other things, it supported giving children the vote and the right to divorce their parents and get alimony.
Somehow it failed to catch on.
When last heard from, Keith was fighting the battle alone.
'I'm not giving up on this yet,' he said."
(pp. 33-34)
Since that first discovery, I have found three other books that talk about Youth Liberation, Inc.:
...I've been told, via Adam Fletcher of freechild.org, that Keith Hefner is still involved in YL work of some sort (although it's changed in nature). I believe I've also seen a history of the organization online -- possibly by Hefner -- that I need to hunt down again.
RICHARD FARSON AND JOHN HOLT
Around this same time period, two adult authors published their own YL manifestoes:
Holt and Farson merit being called the "fathers of the movement" -- their books, I believe, are the enduring inspiration for the YL variety of Children's Rights. No others have been as influential -- but I've found a few leads for other authors that I need to hunt down.
Laura M. Purdy has published a book titled "In Their Best Interest? The case against equal rights for children" (1992). It's a philosophy book, and is dense as convoluted, as such books often are -- and despite being anti-YL, is surprisingly fair. One of the real benefits of this book, for me, is that Purdy identifies a bunch of authors whom she describes as "Youth Liberationists". Based on her footnotes, I think I'm most interested in hunting down:
Another lead I've found was in the "International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family", under the heading "Children's Rights":
"In 1959, the United Nations approved a modest but much-cited ten-point Declaration of the Rights of the Child. In the early 1970s, writers John Holt and Richard Farson both promulgated bills of rights for children, as did New York attorneys Henry Foster and Doris Jonas Freed."
...I haven't heard of Henry Foster and Doris Jonas Freed before. I can only guess that I haven't run across their writings before because they did not publish full books. If they were attorneys, however, I may be able to track them down in legal journals, at Lewis & Clark college's law library.
RE-EVALUATION COUNSELING / CO-COUNSELING
"Re-evaluation Counseling", also known as "Co-counseling" is a form of peer-counseling-based therapy. It was founded by Harvey Jackins, a friend of L. Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology), and has been described by some as a psychotherapeutic cult. Nonetheless, "RC" has done a great deal to promote the concept of "adultism".
Jackins' first book was "The Human Side of Human Beings". I would cite the date -- but once again, the actual book is misplaced in my collection. The "Fundamentals of Co-Counseling Manual (Elementary Counselors Manual)", however, is at hand -- it was first published in 1962.
My understanding is that when the various liberation movements of the late 60s hit, RC leadership seized upon the oppressions of racism, sexism, adultism, etc. as things that people would need healing from -- they used interest in oppressions to promote the RC "community".
RC does not involved in social change activism (as far as I am aware) -- but promoting the idea that youth are oppressed is a contribution to YL. Youth are encouraged to do co-counseling themselves, and at least for several years there was a publication titled "Young and Powerful".
FROM 1990 TO THE PRESENT
Prior to the existence of the internet, it was extremely difficult to find YL writings. Youth-run organizations typically couldn't publish books and didn't receive news coverage -- so they simply disappeared from history when they folded. Pre-1995, finding a YL pamphlet was a very precious find indeed. My two prized publications that I found during this period are:
NCRA folded. Two more national organizations have appeared in its wake: Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions (ASFAR), and the National Youth Rights Association (NYRA).
Here is what the NYRA site says about the recent history of YL:
"The youth rights movement first utilized the internet to help the struggle in 1991, with the creation of the Y-Rights listserv mailing list. Two members of that original internet presence, Matthew Walcoff and Matt Herman, began a non-profit organization out of that mailing list known as AS-FAR. Not too long after AS-FAR was founded, a Rockville, Maryland high school student named Avram Hein began a youth rights group called YouthSpeak. At the same time, a third youth from Canada, Joshua Gilbert, was starting a youth rights organization for his country, CYRA. Walcoff, Hein and Gilbert all met through AS-FAR, and decided to start a non-profit corporation to help unify the youth rights movement, which at that point consisted of almost a dozen different groups around North-America and the world. They eventually joined with Herman and created NYRA, the National Youth Rights Association. By June, 1998, NYRA was incorporated as a non-profit benefit organization with intention to lead the Youth Rights political movement in the United States.]]>(http://www.youthrights.org/whatwevedone.shtml, accessed 10.13.05)
I want to make a distinction between "defining" YL and "characterizing" it. A definition, as I understand it, is going to set down boundaries so that you can decide whether a particular thing falls within the category of "Youth Liberation" -- or whether it does not. Characterizing, in contrast, only attempts to identify the most important features of a thing. It describes the heart of a thing, rather than its boundaries.
At present, I see three key features that will need to be discussed:
Youth Liberation is a subset of Children's Rights. At present, it looks like there are two main threads within Children's Rights: protectionism / paternalism which seeks to defend youth without enabling them to independently access their rights, and Youth Liberation which emphasizes autonomy and youth being granted civil rights on an equal basis as adults. At this point I don't know to what extent there are more radical and more conservative versions of autonomy-based Children's Rights. My suspicion is that even among those who advocate youth autonomy (rather than dependence upon adult protectors), Youth Liberation's inclusion of youth activists still sets it apart.
So if there are a number of branches underneath the heading of "Children's Rights", there are also a number of branches of thought underneath the heading of "Youth Liberation". I've written about the main trains of thought elsewhere -- Youth Power, Youth Equality, and Youth Culture. However, I need to mention that there are further flavors. There are those that arise out of the struggles of a particular minority group -- e.g. youth rights being championed by girls, black youth, queer youth, street kids, etc. There are also flavors of YL that arise from schools of political thought -- e.g. anarchism and libertarianism. [Most YL thought draws upon liberal political thought, whether or not it realizes it... There's also plenty of room for flavors of YL to arise out of Marxism or Socialism.]
...Oh, I suppose there's also room for psychotherapeutic flavors of YL. Co-counseling is the strongest variety for that -- but Shulamith Firestone and Alice Miller might arguably be presenting Freudian versions of YL. [Sort of like how Nancy Chodorow presented a Freudian vision of Feminism, or Luce Irigaray presented a Lacanian vision (Lacan merely being a disciple of Freud, I suppose).]
Although I specifically don't want to go into discussing all these varieties of YL, I feel that it's important to at least mention that there is a diversity of schools of thought.
Another reason why I need to mention this taxonomy is in order to explain a discrepancy: I use the term "Youth Liberation", but most contemporary youth activists are using the term "Youth Rights". Minimally I need to point out that YL is not a consensus umbrella term. I'll probably justify myself by pointing to the term "Youth Liberation" as a historical touchstone. ...I'm tempted to go into an in-depth explanation of how the "civil rights" and "oppression/liberation" models differ from each other -- but this is best saved for a the booklet on different types of YL. [Still, I think the time for writing at least of an exploration of "Why YL instead of YR" is just about upon me. At least so I have something down on paper to return to later.]
...As you can see, the taxonomy section of the booklet is giving me the most grief.
I've been figuring that I would structure the booklet around the three characterizing features of YL. That means four essays, thus:
And with that, I think I have a working outline that I'm comfortable pursuing now:
I. THE CIVIL RIGHTS MODEL
II. THE YOUTH MOVEMENT'S FOCUS ON CIVIL RIGHTS
III. RIGHTS ALONE ARE NOT ENOUGH
IV. ISSUES OF RESPECT AND DIGNITY
V. THE MOTIVE BEHIND ADULTISM
VI. JUSTICE TAKES CONSTANT EFFORT
VII. THE ROLE OF CIVIL RIGHTS WITHIN A LARGER STRUGGLE
VIII. AN ALTERNATIVE: THE "OPPRESSION / LIBERATION" MODEL
LIMITS OF THE "CIVIL RIGHTS" MODEL
Since the emergence of modern Youth Liberation thinking in the early 1970s, the movement has largely worked within a "civil rights" model. Winning civil rights is an important part of fighting adultism -- but it is only one piece of the picture. Adult oppression also manifests on an interpersonal level, which is difficult (if not impossible) to address by just changing the law.
Organizations that focus on legal struggle are vital to the movement. However, at times they seem to suggest that rights are all that is needed for Youth Liberation. For the well-being of the movement, it's important that they come to understand the limits of the "civil rights" model.
I. THE CIVIL RIGHTS MODEL
The "civil rights model" is a set of beliefs about the nature of justice, and how to go about fighting injustice. It is common within most minority movements, and particularly within Youth Liberation. I will try to summarize the key ideas:
* The "civil rights model" grows out of ideas found in The Declaration of Independence: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness".
* The word "Men", as originally defined, was understood too narrowly. Today, we would replace it with the word "people". The work of broadening inclusion in "Men" is ongoing. Much progress has been made toward including blacks and women -- now youth should be included in the vision of justice as well.
* We live in a society of laws. Justice requires that all people should be treated the same under those laws.
* Any law that does not treat youth as "equal" to adults, is unjust. The struggle for justice is a matter of rewriting civil rights laws to include youth, one law at a time.
* On an individual level, the injustice of treating someone unequally is called "discrimination".
* Because the equality of human beings should be "self-evident", we explain discrimination primarily as a result of misconceptions, "stereotypes". [Note: this use of the word "stereotype" differs from how psychologists understand the term.]
* Public education is an effective means of fighting discrimination. After their stereotypes have been debunked, most people will stop treating youth unjustly.
* While not universal, there's a common sense that progress is inevitable -- the truth will finally become "self-evident" to all.
II. THE YOUTH MOVEMENT'S FOCUS ON CIVIL RIGHTS
The influence of our nation's founding documents on Youth Liberation is fairly obvious. Richard Farson, John Holt, and Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor -- arguably the founders of modern Youth Liberation -- each presented their visions of change in a "bill of rights" format.
Today, 30 years after the publication of Youth Liberation's seminal works, the "civil rights" model remains strong. Consider this passage from a National Youth Rights Association statement titled "What is Youth Rights" (Resolution 00-L):
"The organization deals only with civil rights -- freedom from oppression or discrimination by government, business or other powers -- rather than entitlement rights. We do not deal with issues like the quality of education or health care young people receive."
It seems to me that the "civil rights" model dominates the movement. This is worrisome. There are aspects of oppression and aspects of Justice work that the model addresses only poorly. I will proceed to examine its faults under the following four section headings:
III. RIGHTS ALONE ARE NOT ENOUGH
Getting a moral right turned into a legal right is only a first step toward justice -- not the final achievement of equality. Besides the law itself, at least three other issues are important: enforcement, the complaint process, and defense against the law being overturned.
Without enforcement, a law is just a piece of paper. Suppose you go to a restaurant, and then the owner throws you out just because you are young, thus violating your right to freedom from discrimination on the basis of age. The existence of that right is going to be meaningless unless there is some agency to contact, that will investigate your case and make a judgment about whether or not the owner is guilty. But then, what good is a judgment if there isn't also a punishment -- a fine or imprisonment? The owner still gets away with their crime unless there are police and a prison system to back up the adjudicating agency's decision with force.
Even if all of the necessary government agencies are in place -- and they're adequately staffed and funded -- it still won't do a young person much good if they don't know that they have a right, and how to navigate through the complaint process. Very few victims of discrimination actually decide to pursue justice; even fewer have the necessary documentation to demonstrate that they have a case; of those, only a minority actually win their case and get some form of reparations -- and the process may take months or years to complete. It's important that these laws do exist; but they don't seem to be a very efficient means of combating wrongful behavior...
If a good pro-youth bill is passed into law, that's not necessarily the end of the story. Laws get repealed, or their effectiveness is eroded away over time by opponents' amendments. Abortion rights are a good case in point. Thirty years after the Roe v. Wade decision, abortion opponents continue the fight for repeal. They've created many legal exceptions (e.g. requiring parental consent for minors), and made it more difficult to access the services that are permitted (by intimidating doctors, so that few are now willing to provide the service). Youth rights activists should anticipate continuing legal opposition, even in the afterglow of a legal victory.
From its writings, the current Youth Liberation movement seems unaware of these issues. As much as winning new rights, I think we need to be concerned with making sure that enforcement agencies are willing to prosecute age discrimination cases, and making sure that these agencies are adequately staffed and funded for the job. We need to put a great deal of effort into educating youth about what their rights are, how to document a case of discrimination, who to contact, and how to navigate through the complaint process. Finally, we need to recognize that youth rights are going to remain controversial for some time to come. If we win new rights, we need to be prepared to defend our victories.
IV. ISSUES OF RESPECT AND DIGNITY
Not all injustices can be dealt with by law. The law can prohibit (or license) activities like voting, driving, drinking, and marriage. It's equipped to address harms that can be easily documented: like being fired from a job, or struck in a way that leaves bruises, broken bones. What it cannot easily deal with is subjective feelings.
One of the main ways that youth suffer at the hands of adults is by constantly being disrespected and denied dignity. The law protects essentially all of this behavior as "free speech" -- but a youth movement that ignores it is failing to deal with some of the issues that "sting" youth most of all.
In the public domain, we see defamation of youth in news coverage, TV sitcoms, magazines, and movies. Youth are commonly portrayed as fundamentally flawed beings: stupid, reckless, dangerous to themselves and others, laughable for their foibles, lamentable in their tastes.
Interacting on a personal level, parents' and teachers' attitudes toward youth often range from belittling to punitive. Being in a position of authority, these adults feel that they are entitled / obligated to stand in judgment of youth -- freely expressing their disapproval, doling out lectures, and attempting to coerce the youth to their will. While so sensitive to rudeness from youth, most adults seem entirely blind to their own disrespectful behavior.
Among themselves (or even in the presence of youth), many adults feel free express their naked bigotry toward youth: ridiculing youth culture (e.g. dyed hair, piercings, music), commiserating about how awful their own children are, joking about how "we should be able to lock them up until they're 18".
Most youth are used to the idea of not having civil rights. The fact that they won't be able to vote or apply for a driver's license until a certain age can recede to the back of their minds; disrespect, however, is not so easy to forget. It's perhaps the aspect of adultism that most impacts upon quality of life. It is a major failing of the "civil rights" model that it is unable to meaningfully address these issues.
V. THE MOTIVE BEHIND ADULTISM
To fully understand adultism in the U.S., we need to look at the history of how adults have treated youth...
At the beginning of the 20th century (and before), youth were viewed as the property of their parents. Like animals or slaves, much of youths' value was as exploitable farm labor. Just as the owner of a mule or the owner of a slave could inflict pain to discipline their possessions, so too have parents been entitled to use corporal punishment on their children. Strides have been made toward treating young people better, but vestiges of youth-as-property remain visible today in laws that prohibit running away, and in the description of legal independence as "emancipation".
The essence of treating youth as property is this idea: that adults should command, youth should obey. Government, schools, the family -- in almost every institution where adults and youth interact, we see the "command / obey" relationship manifested. I believe it is the fundamental dynamic of adultism. Adults don't simply have mistaken ideas about youth; they have a stake in adultism -- they personally benefit from being in positions of control (whether or not they realize it).
People working within the "rights" model don't seem to talk much about the actual history of adultism. It could be attributed to optimism: looking forward to a time when youth are full-fledged equal citizens, they see the present as "a glass half-full". The problem I see with this is that it can lead to very inaccurate ideas about adultism. In a future where our utopian bills of rights have all come to pass, then perhaps the nature of adultism could be reduced to "discrimination". However, looking back at the past, it seems absurd to sum up the injustices as "treating youth as if they're different from anyone else". The youth-as-property model of the past has not yet been defeated. Adults still maintain and promote the "adults command / youth obey" relationship as what's natural and necessary. It seems to me that we need to acknowledge this, rather than "discrimination", as our main problem at present.
Being in control, getting your own way, is its own benefit. There are lots of ways to rationalize and justify it. An adult can feel that they have young people's "best interests" at heart, and deserve power because they're better qualified than youth to make decisions. On the other hand, they could justify control by putting youth down, finding (or inventing) all sorts of faults in their character, depicting the latest generation as worse than any before. It seems to me that the best way to describe the negative things adults say about youth, is as a sort of propaganda, meant to justify adult power.
People working within the "rights" model tend to discuss bigotry and defamation in terms of "stereotypes" (or "prejudice"). These are some typical recommendations that I've heard in anti-adultism workshops: avoid ever making generalizations about youth; make no assumptions about a person before you get to know them; avoid "either / or" thinking. ...In themselves, these may or may not be wise ideas. As ways of avoiding adultism, however, they seem to me very much beside the point.
"Rights" model advocates tend to ignore the roots of adultism and adults' personal stake in maintaining control. They act as if "discrimination" has no history (except that it's been going on for some time). They act as if "stereotypes" are just the result of mistaken thinking. If the movement cannot accurately describe the origins and motives of adultism -- its cause -- how can it hope to effectively challenge the problem?
VI. JUSTICE TAKES CONSTANT EFFORT
Youth Liberation's founding thinkers described their visions of justice in the form of bills of rights. The format seems to suggest that Justice will be achieved only after all the principles that it describes have been passed into law. Once that's done, Youth Liberation activists will be out a job.
I think this is a false idea. Imagine a time when all the best possible laws have been put into place. Even then, the world will continue changing. Year-in and year-out, there will still be new inventions, new celebrities and politicians, powerful people saying stupid or cruel things, events and public debates that keep newspapers publishing and the six o'clock news on the air. We can do an enormous amount toward eliminating adultism -- but we be trying to "put ourselves out of a job". Youth need to always be prepared to weigh-in on issues. Youth should aim at becoming permanent participants in society's decision-making processes.
I think the bill of rights format also suggests to many people that social change work will be a steady march forward -- that once a point on our agenda is won, we can just move on. As discussed earlier, this is unlikely to be so. Youth Liberation is controversial, and if there are victories, they will have to be defended against erosion or repeal for years to come.
Most of our efforts, however, probably won't be about winning ground. The opponents of Youth Liberation are strong and aggressive. We keep on having to defend against new attacks, exhausting ourselves just to protect the rights that we've got at present. Realistically, the better part of the movement's energies will probably go to this end.
VII. THE ROLE OF CIVIL RIGHTS WITHIN A LARGER STRUGGLE
To summarize: As a model for achieving justice, the notion that "all we need is civil rights" is flawed...
* It ignores the need for good enforcement agencies, educating youth about how to use the complaint process, and defending good laws after they've been passed.
* It fails to address bigotry and defamation -- which also hurts youth -- because it is protected as "free speech".
* It ignores the history of youth being treated as property and adults' interest in maintaining the "adults command / youth obey" relationship throughout society.
* ...Consequently, it wrongly identifies "youth being treated differently from other citizens" as young people's main problem, and promotes advice that has little bearing on adultism's real cause.
* It implies that once rights are won, permanent justice will have been achieved.
Winning civil rights is still important -- it's just not the *only* battle that needs to be fought.
Organizations such as NYRA probably shouldn't change their current mission statements. If they are going to work on legal issues, then they'll probably be most effective by keeping their focus narrow -- not trying branch out to address every issue at once. [Even attempting to address all legal issues may be too broad of a focus, to be really effective.]
Youth Rights organizations can shift their perspectives while still working on the same projects. A better model of how to bring about justice can only make the movement stronger. In the following section, I'll discuss what I think is the best alternative to the "rights" model of justice and social change.
VIII. AN ALTERNATIVE: THE "OPPRESSION / LIBERATION" MODEL
[Note: This is as far as I got when I was writing back in 2003. Following this point, it's just notes to myself and alternate paragraphs. -- Sven, 10.12.05]
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* Society is made of groups with conflicting points of view.
* Justice is an ongoing process, in which different groups each attempt to negotiate for their own best interests, hoping to arrive at deal that is felt to be fair by everyone involved.
* At various points in history, one group has gained the upper-hand over another, benefiting from an arrangement that is not fair to others. A historical relationship where one group has power over another is defined as "oppression".
* The motive behind oppressive... XXXX is simple self-interest.
* Laws -- along with courts, police, and prison systems -- are tools for asserting control over a population. Whether the laws are fair, or enforced at all, has a great deal to do with what group's members are in positions of power.
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Some Children's Rights authors have discussed the historical oppression of youth, using the word "oppression" in a fairly loose, but evocative sense. I mean to use "oppression" here in an almost technical sense, linking these issues to an alternate political framework. Alison Jaggar, in her book "Feminist Politics and Human Nature", explains the difference:
"Earlier feminists used the language of "rights" and "equality," but in the late 1960s "oppression" and "liberation" became the key words for the political activists of the new left. [...] The change in language reflects a significant development in the political perspective of contemporary feminism. [...] [O]ppression is the imposition of unjust constraints on the freedom of individuals or groups. Liberation is the correlate of oppression. It is release from oppressive constraints. [...] Oppression is the *imposition* of constraints; it suggests that the problem is not the result of bad luck, ignorance, or prejudice but is caused rather by one group actively subordinating another group to its own interest. Thus, to talk of oppression seems to commit feminists to a world view that includes at least two groups with conflicting interests: the oppressors and the oppressed. It is a world view, moreover, that strongly suggests that liberation is likely to be achieved by rational debate but instead must be the result of political struggle." (pp. 5-6)
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The concept of discrimination is meant to be used in the context of applying laws to the citizenry. It is a stretch to use it in a social context, not treating a person as if they are the same to everyone else. Why do people do so? Stereotypes? Stereotypes are frequently described in incredibly passive terms: bad mental photographs, overgeneralizations, making assumptions before you get to know someone, "either / or" thinking. While some adults may not fully understand their own motives, adultism is motivated.
Why do adults treat youth so badly? I don't find the "rights" model's explanation convincing. It only identifies one form of mistreatment: discrimination. Within it's original context, discrimination means not treating everyone the same under the law. The concept can be stretched to cover social situations, like youth not being treated with respect equal to that of adults -- but it's still not a good fit for all aspects of adultism.
NYRA Mission Statement
"The National Youth Rights Association is dedicated to defending the civil and human rights of young people in the United States. We believe certain basic rights are intrinsic parts of American citizenship and transcend age or status limits. As the world's leading democracy, the United States should not lag behind other nations in granting first-class citizenship to its young people."NYRA aims to achieve its goals through educating people about youth rights, working with public officials to devise fitting policy solutions to problems affecting young people and empowering young people to work on their own behalf."
This mission statement was adopted by the NYRA Board of Directors on Tuesday, January 25, 2000.
]]>This is the ultimate goal of YP: for youth to be able to control their own lives when they choose to. YP advocates share an interest in "equal rights" with Youth Equality ("Youth Rights") activists -- but do not place the same weight on youth receiving governmental treatment identical to adults. Instead, YP asserts that youth and adults both have a right to control their bodies -- and that it is wrong for either individuals or governments to use coercion. Justice is not based upon equal, non-discriminatory treatment (accommodating needs for care-giving is encouraged!) -- but rather upon respecting control.
1. Powers properly reserved for the individual
YP builds its philosophy upon principle that a person owns their own body. They have a right to say who will touch it or not touch it, whether it will stay still or be moved, whether it will be altered in any way, or destroyed. They have a right to a bubble of personal space and to owning property -- which will be treated as extensions of the body.
From these basic principles, we derive many freedoms. For instance, the right...
While YP has a strong vision of what freedoms should be guaranteed to the individual, it does not take individualism to an extreme. We live in a society, depending upon each other for survival, and have an ethical obligation to contribute to the common good.
Maintaining the well-being of society could be achieved through a variety of social structures, including (for instance) small locally-based collectives, as anarchists advocate. YP, however, is committed to the existence of a fairly large scale government, with the power to police its citizens. While creating such a government creates the strong risk of governmental oppression, it is deemed a necessary counterbalance to the tyranny that parents are able to enact within the privacy of their homes. YP relies upon there being a government structure that creates a public sphere which youth can escape into -- a government that can overpower individual parents, should they abuse their power.
The existence of an organized state government means giving up some personal freedom -- particularly in terms of contributing taxes. However, YP expects this loss to be counterbalanced by valuable services that increase safety. A government has the power to imprison persons who do violence. It also has the power to offer free monetary welfare, food and clothing and shelter programs, health care, and public transportation. Youth, being born with nothing, are essentially an impoverished people. To the extent that a government confronts poverty, youth become less vulnerable.
[Note: Politically, YP finds common cause both with persons in poverty and persons with disabilities. Youth are born impoverished, and born with significant physical and mental disabilities. Society should not treat rich, able-bodied adults as the standard human beings -- it should strive to accommodate these variations.]
3. The nature of the group "adults"
Within the society of all human beings, adults have organized themselves into an organization, and established a government that excludes youth. While there is a biological basis for recognizing a group called "adults", "adulthood" is an artificial categorization projected upon natural differences. YP, thus, understands "adulthood" primarily as membership within an organization.
Consider the various ways in which adulthood looks like an organization:
Because adults as a group have power over youth, it is desirable to be adult, and undesirable to be a youth. Youth -- and the qualities, mannerisms, and interests associated with it -- is stigmatized. Both youth and adults attempt to minimize being stigmatized by being seen as too youth-like.
Strategies for dissociating oneself from childhood include: (1) denial of membership ("I'm not a kid!"), (2) choice of peers (a ninth-grader avoiding eighth graders, trying to hang out with tenth graders), (3) contrasting oneself against others ("you're such a baby!"), (4) emphasizing other "superior" identities (e.g. manliness), and (5) passing as an adult (using a fake I.D., smoking, etc.).
Why is there no political conversion, youth renouncing their former allegiance to other young people, when they become adults? Because most spend their entire youth attempting to dissociate themselves from other youth, looking at "kids" from the point of view of adults, not including themselves in the category.
[Once "adulthood" is viewed as membership in an organization, it becomes possible for people to analyze and protest its policies. They can cease to identify with the group uncritically, instead becoming "conscientious objectors" within the group.]
4. How adult oppression is organized
All varieties of Youth Liberation share an anger toward three things: (1) unfair rules/laws, (2) youth being forced to do things against their will, (3) disrespect. The different forms of YL can be distinguished by how they understand the relationship between each of these issues.
YP views the family as the fundamental institution of adult oppression. Parents commanding youth, youth expected to obey -- is a model for adult-youth relationships that is elevated into law by an all-adult government that was created primarily by parents, and serves their interests. While parents may sometimes feel justified in commanding their children because the government sanctions this behavior, it does NOT make sense that parental behaviors are merely an imitation of how the government deals with youth.
Disrespectful portrayals of youth are viewed as a form of propaganda that supports the adult supremacist power structure. Parents commiserating about their kids, news items that portray the current generation as being morally worse than previous ones, scientific studies that demonstrate the biological inferiority of youths' brains, TV ads and entertainment shows that portray youth as ridiculous or needing serious moral guidance, government campaigns that encourage adults to closely supervise youth -- all these things justify and reinforce adults' belief in the rightness of what they do. There is a feedback loop involved here -- but it does NOT make sense that adult control originates with "stereotypes" or "misconceptions"... These beliefs didn't just passively spring into existence -- they were created, and there is a strong motivation for adults to continue creating them.
5. Power in the hands of parents
The original motivation for adult's command/obey relationship over youth is simple self-benefit. To a large extent, the relationship continues due to tradition -- but even if the tradition were stopped, adults would still have an interest in getting what they want. It is pleasant (though not ethical) to be able to impose your will whenever you want, and very convenient when you have agendas that you're trying to pursue.
YP does not pretend that youth and adults are identical. Youth, particularly during the early years, require care-giving: physical support, education about how to access society's services, and financial support. It requires conscientious effort to avoid coercion, and even the best parent is likely to occasionally find themselves in an impossible situation when dealing with toddlers. However, best efforts should be made to respect a young person's will, even when they are a toddler -- and as the youth masters communication, there should be no excuses. Note that there is still ample room for parents to non-coercively influence youth with opinions; it is coercion, and actually going against a youth's will that is prohibited.
YP recognizes parents' default right to custody of their offspring. However, parents ought have no power to detain a youth, should the youth want to sever the relationship. Leaving the parents home, and severing their economic obligation ought be dealt with as two separate steps. Parents, by having compelled a new person to come into existence, become financially obligated to provide them with a minimal means of survival. The relationship is not reciprocal: youth, having entered into existence without consent, are not obligated to obey their parents or financially support them.
6. Power in the hands of adult government
When the command/obey relationship is not entered into consensually, and a person is not allowed to leave it at will, this is the essence of treating a person as human property.
Parents have elevated this notion that youth are their property to the law of the land. We can see its logic in laws that prohibit youth (like slaves) from running away, that give parents permission to inflict physical pain as a means of discipline/punishment, that enable parents to "disown" incorrigible youth, that hold parents responsible for controlling their offspring.
However, because adults have organized themselves into a government, youth are not merely viewed as the private property of parents -- they are also viewed as a the collective property of all adults -- a "valuable resource" to be managed. At times, the government and individual parents come into conflict -- the government intervening in situations of abuse, removing the children. This is not a case of youth being given control over their own bodies and lives -- nor even violence being truly prohibited. Violence is merely being regulated; the collective intercedes when its property is going to be damaged by the private owner.
The adult government cannot be trusted to police itself. Opinion about what standards parents should be held to is likely to shift and change; but given how powerful a lobby parents are, there is a strong chance that they will not shift in youths' favor. Individual parents' interest in being in control is likely to be expressed in law again and again. In order to win positive changes, and to fight off new attacks on youth rights, youth activists must be vigilantly engaged in the political and legal systems.
7. Power in the hands of youth activists
It is in adults' self-interest to preserve control over youth; there is no reason for them initiate giving youth more power. Youth must demand their rights. The only way to win is to fight.
YP advocates forming "direct action" activist groups on the local level, to watchdog city, county, and state governments, responding to attacks on youth rights, and (when possible) initiating pro-youth legislation. These organizations must draw their support from the youth community itself, and should therefore host events that raise awareness among youth of relevant legal issues and foster discussion (partly as a means to develop new activists). Such activist groups must also pay attention to more than just the written law -- they must make sure that there is adequate funding for enforcement agencies, that such agencies are doing their job, and that youth actually know how to access these agencies and navigate through their systems.
Even if we reach a plateau of youth rights, a "youthtopia", the potential for adults to express self-interest again will always remain. In order to maintain justice, youth must always have a place "at the table", participating in the perpetual negotiations about how to juggle fairness for multiple parties.
8. Goals of the youth power movement
There is a great deal of overlap between YP's goals and the goals of other YL branches. Why YP advocates these particular goals, however, is a distinguishing feature.
YP's focus is on creating the means for youth to escape situations of suffering/abuse at will, without the help of adult mediators. [This does not mean that YP is against the existence of adult-run youth welfare agencies.] YP views violence against minors as the epitome of adult oppression, and generates its list of goals by imagining what would help a youth escape:
I. HOW HUMAN BEINGS SHOULD BE TREATED
II. A GOVERNMENT THAT PROVIDES FOR JUSTICE & WELFARE
III. THE GROUP "YOUTH"
IV. THE NATURE OF ADULTHOOD
V. THE ORGANIZATION OF ADULT OPPRESSION
VI. ADULT ABUSE OF POWER - WITHIN THE FAMILY
VII. ADULT ABUSE OF POWER - WITHIN THE GOVERNMENT
VIII. WHAT DEFENSE AGAINST OPPRESSION REQUIRES
IX. ADVOCACY THAT DOES NOT RECREATE OPPRESSION
X. SHARED INTERESTS IN ENDING OPPRESSION
I just finished writing a multi-part essay on the "Youth Power" framework. [See the appendix for an overview.] It was a big enough concept that I didn't want to get stuck on outlining beforehand -- so I just worked off of a long list of notes. Now that I'm done, the first thing my mind wants to do is go back and reorganize all this material. I don't have time right now to do too much editing -- but I thought that I might at least sketch a new outline. Here is the overview:
I. HOW HUMAN BEINGS SHOULD BE TREATED
II. A GOVERNMENT THAT PROVIDES FOR JUSTICE & WELFARE
III. THE GROUP "YOUTH"
IV. THE NATURE OF ADULTHOOD
V. THE ORGANIZATION OF ADULT OPPRESSION
VI. ADULT ABUSE OF POWER - WITHIN THE FAMILY
VII. ADULT ABUSE OF POWER - WITHIN THE GOVERNMENT
VIII. WHAT DEFENSE AGAINST OPPRESSION REQUIRES
IX. ADVOCACY THAT DOES NOT RECREATE OPPRESSION
X. SHARED INTERESTS IN ENDING OPPRESSION
The biggest changes are the addition of " A GOVERNMENT THAT PROVIDES FOR JUSTICE & WELFARE" and " SHARED INTERESTS IN ENDING OPPRESSION". I also split what was previously "THE NATURE OF YOUTH" into two sections: "HOW HUMAN BEINGS SHOULD BE TREATED" and "THE GROUP 'YOUTH'". The other sections have perhaps been re-titled and rewritten somewhat -- but their essence remains the same.
B. THE NEW OUTLINE
Here's the new outline, in full, for my essay-in-progress, "The 'Youth Power' Framework":
I. HOW HUMAN BEINGS SHOULD BE TREATED
1. The fundamental "right" is ownership of one's own body.
2. Treating a person well means conscientiously respecting their right to consent or not consent in matters that concern their body.
3. It is unethical to treat any person as if they are human property.
4. Collectively, society has a responsibility to provide services to people who are impoverished or vulnerable to abuse.
II. A GOVERNMENT THAT PROVIDES FOR JUSTICE & WELFARE
1. YP presupposes the existence of an organized, democratic government.
2. YP advocates socialized services, a form of socialism.
3. There should be government-sponsored services that provide for the welfare of the needy. (e.g. Welfare, housing, food, clothing, healthcare.)
4. There should be laws that prevent oppressive treatment toward minority groups.
5. There should be well-funded agencies that enforce protective laws.
6. There should be some form of taxation that creating a pool of wealth, used to maintain justice enforcement agencies and social services.
III. THE GROUP "YOUTH"
1. "Youth" is a group whose members are characterized by: (1) being under 18 years of age, (2) living in the parents' house, and (3) being economically dependent.
[2. Youth are persons.]
3. Youth and adults are not identical.
4. Youth require care-giving. This does not justify granting adults absolute power.
5. Babies and fetuses fall outside of Youth Liberation's purview.
IV. THE NATURE OF ADULTHOOD
1. The line between adults and youth is artificial.
2. Adulthood is a membership organization.
[3. The implicit "mission statement" of the adult organization is this: "maintain control over youth".]
4. Both adults and youth try to dissociate themselves from childhood.
5. Members of the group "adults" can refuse to identify with the organization, and challenge its structure.
V. THE ORGANIZATION OF ADULT OPPRESSION
1. Adults oppress youth.
2. The family is the fundamental institution of adult oppression.
3. The all-adult government elevates the order of power within the family to a societal level.
4. Negative beliefs about and caricatures of youth are propaganda that supports the order of power.
5. "Ending" adultism would require a transformation of culture as well as laws.
VI. ADULT ABUSE OF POWER - WITHIN THE FAMILY
1. Adultism is motivated by self-benefit: the desire to be in control.
2. The essence of control is to treat youth as if they are human property.
3. Parental tyranny inevitably produces situations of violence against minors. This is the epitome of adultism's harm to youth.
VII. ADULT ABUSE OF POWER - WITHIN THE GOVERNMENT
1. Adult authorities cannot be trusted to maintain fair and just institutions on their own.
2. Adult government must be kept in check by direct participation and activism initiated by watchdog groups.
3. The potential for injustice cannot be eliminated.
VIII. WHAT DEFENSE AGAINST OPPRESSION REQUIRES
1. Youth need the means to escape suffering / abuse at will.
[2. Youth must have access to socialized services in order to lessen dependence.]
3. Youth need to be able to escape suffering without having to ask adults for help.
4. In all decisions that effect youth, youth should have direct participation in the decision-making process, or sole control.
5. To win these freedoms, youth must band together into activist groups.
IX. ADVOCACY THAT DOES NOT RECREATE OPPRESSION
1. Most oppression comes in the guise of "protection".
2. Adult allies pose a threat of cooptation.
3. It is important that actual youth be the voice of, and in control of, YL organizations.
4. There is more to being a YL advocate than just being a youth.
X. SHARED INTERESTS IN ENDING OPPRESSION
1. Oppression is a historical relationship between two groups, where one group has control over the other.
2. Adultism is an oppression -- comparable to racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, etc.
3. Youth have an interest in eliminating other oppressions because youth is itself a diverse group.
4. Other liberation movements have an interest in furthering the cause of youth liberation because adultism is one of the strongest models of the command/obey relationship.
5. While Youth Liberation may be encompassed within the goals of humanism, the need for youth activists who specialize in fighting adultism remains.
C. NOTES ON THE NEW OUTLINE
The goal of this essay is to describe the sub-variety of Youth Liberation that I call "Youth Power". Consequently, what I need to keep asking myself with each section is "Does this contrast YP against Youth Equality and Youth Culture -- or am I making statements that would hold true for all three flavors?" Here are a few notes about what I think of each section at present:
I. HOW HUMAN BEINGS SHOULD BE TREATED
Identifying my principles for "right treatment" is pretty fundamental. It gets at a theory of human nature... I worry that I haven't gone far enough into exploring the implications here. I should refer back to Alison Jaggar's work... Youth Equality comes out of the political tradition of liberalism; that implies presuppositions about rationality. Am I falling into similar pitfalls? Or have I escaped them by creating a standard of "right treatment" that need not be earned? ...Do I need to say anything here about what punishments are appropriate for people who violate the principles?
II. A GOVERNMENT THAT PROVIDES FOR JUSTICE & WELFARE
This section feels almost ridiculously basic -- and yet, I think that it does a good job of contrasting YP's views against Republicanism and Anarchism. I think that YL is committed to there being a government, and depending on its authority as a means to escape being trapped under the power of individual parents. A while back I started realizing that YL has an interest in socialism; as I started digging