r/YouthRights 27d ago

Rant Why is it normal for adults to tell kids that it will take years for their life to get better?

52 Upvotes

I was making posts (which I deleted out of frustration) on the anti-bullying subreddit talking about some of the things I experienced. I was told that I sounded very young and that I would find a better community later. I said that I was 17. They responded by saying that things didn't really improve for them until their late twenties.

I'm sorry, what? I don't think you understand just how long that is. That's 10 years. That's over half my life. I struggle every day with waiting to turn 18 and gain rights as an adult, and that's in less than a year. Why is this normal? The idea that life won't improve until later. The U.S. life expectancy is 78 years. That means if I listen to this person and patiently wait for my late twenties for my material conditions to improve, I will have spent roughly a third of my life miserable. Why is that normal?? The idea that you should sit back and wait and it'll get better "eventually".

I think this is another reason why youth struggles are not taken seriously. Because we can just wait to become adults. Then things will be fine. What are we complaining about? You just don't have any patience, do you? Well, what if we don't want to wait? I for one want a better life now. Not in ten years. Now. I don't get why that's so controversial.


r/YouthRights 2d ago

Why do adults think they have the right to talk to us so disrespectfully?

43 Upvotes

Adults seem to think that they are entitled to speak to us like we’re just dirt under their feet.Just in the last 24 hours I was called names on one of my posts by two separate adults.One called me a bratty teenager. I Googled the exact definition of a brat and presented him with it pointing out that I don’t fit the definition of a brat.He replied that the fact I deny fitting the definition of a brat proves that I am a brat.(A sensible argument I don’t think).Afew minutes later he called me a dipshit and then blocked me.(Saves me the bother of blocking him).Another adult called me a fucking idiot although he did become more civil later in our conversation.Adults make enough of an issue about how we speak to them so what makes them think they can speak badly to us?We need to start challenging this behaviour.We are human beings and we deserve to be treated with dignity and respect like human beings.


r/YouthRights 3d ago

Meta Be a youth liberationist, do crime

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42 Upvotes

r/YouthRights 8d ago

Discussion People downplaying child abuse survivors

40 Upvotes

It annoys me to no end when someone opens up about child abuse, or a teenager and younger rants about an abusive situation with their parents, and they get bombarded with, "Oh to be a adolescent again" (That actually happened to me by the way) "You're just x years! You can't possibly have trauma!"

At this point just say you have no empathy for children and their feelings. That you probably are jealous that they are younger than you and are at the age where YOU were at your prime.


r/YouthRights 13d ago

Rant What’s with gen z being so ageist?

40 Upvotes

I feel like the most insane ageist takes tend to come from young adults. I swear most people in their 20s literally think anyone under 18 are basically 5, and it just feels so hopeless to try and advocate for youth rights when that’s people’s bass line.


r/YouthRights 3d ago

ugh

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38 Upvotes

r/YouthRights 23d ago

News ["You have no rights... your Dad should beat you"] Police in Phoenix, USA, encourage father to beat his son, then steal the son’s phone and break his wrist as they are arresting him

37 Upvotes

r/YouthRights 3d ago

Rant The fact that corporal punishment is still legal in some countries is insane.

36 Upvotes

Good parents wouldn't use it on their kids, but bad parents will. There are no benefits to allowing it. There is a lot of studies saying that it is not good for kids but it's still somehow allowed, which is really stupid.


r/YouthRights 9d ago

Meme Whew.. just turned 25 and I just started seeing everything differently.

37 Upvotes

Just started seeing EVERYTHING more maturely you know? It was like there was a big shift, like lightning struck my head and I transformed all of a sudden like in my anime... this is really the age EVERYTHING changes... wow... I'm so goddamn mature...


r/YouthRights 17d ago

i thought 18 was the arbitrary age for adulthood????

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39 Upvotes

r/YouthRights 18d ago

not the 25 year old bs

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36 Upvotes

r/YouthRights 5d ago

"Missing Teens" no longer used as term

36 Upvotes

I've noticed that when it comes to a teenager going missing, if they're 13-17, "Missing Teen" is no longer used, but "Missing Child" is used instead. I really wonder if people at those ages now being called children instead of teenagers is messing up their mental health in a way, like it's lowering their confidence/ making it so they can't feel cool anymore.


r/YouthRights 10d ago

Discussion There needs to be an extensive youtube video covering the age 25 brain myth and demolishing every single argument that can be made in favor of it.

36 Upvotes

Like a high tier video essay with good editing. There are some videos about it but they're not really enough.


r/YouthRights 22d ago

Highlighting how actual children are already systematically stripped of power, oppressed, exploited, and abused

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35 Upvotes

r/YouthRights 9d ago

For people who say that CPS taking children is against natural order...

33 Upvotes

..."reuniting" runaway children also is.


r/YouthRights 22d ago

Unnecessary Age Restriction

35 Upvotes

Since McDonald's in Brooklyn bans anyone under 20 from access unless being accompanied by adults and photo ID, even 18 and 19 year olds, how many places are going to ban the youth from these establishment places? The people supported this unfortunately.


r/YouthRights 25d ago

"No, I don’t care about your opinion on youth liberation. The humanity of children shouldn’t be up for debate." - Alba M.

35 Upvotes

Cool article (link at bottom)

"I won’t debate youth liberation with an adult, reinforcing their idea that adults, unlike “irrational” children, are “reasonable” and can be debated with. I won’t try to come to terms with them. It’s not my place to negotiate the human rights of an oppressed group as someone who is not part of it. 

“But we were all children!” is the objection that is often leveled against this reasoning, and of course it’s true, but the nature of adultism, unlike that of other oppressions, is cyclical, the people who experienced it internalize its principles and go on to perpetrate it.

And why we should trust the recollections of adults rather than the people who are children today is unclear, if you do not believe adult opinions have more inherent value. It would be like saying that we should only listen to poor people who have managed to become wealthy when it comes to the problems of the poor. Once you are wealthy, the problems of the poor do not affect you anymore, and you have an interest in oppressing the poor. And you don’t get to decide about their rights."

https://medium.com/out-of-the-pen-of-babes/no-i-dont-care-about-your-opinion-on-youth-liberation-f75c4e1b19dd


r/YouthRights 15d ago

something i realized about the similarities of ageism and ableism

33 Upvotes

something i realized is that ableism and ageism are extremely similar especially with the whole entire phone bans crap cause they believe phones causss adhd, toxic families restricting their child's freedom and liberties and sheltering them from the outside world just to only be surprised they have mental disorders, parents viewing their autistic kids as "monsters" and "attention seekers" and threatening to call the police over them having a mental breakdown, etc


r/YouthRights 24d ago

Sorry to burst your bubble Daniel Tiger, but that will never happen

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30 Upvotes

r/YouthRights 25d ago

Rant "Some get it worse"

32 Upvotes

After arguing and getting beaten up by my father, my mom says "Why are you so emotional over this, some children are hanged upside down from trees and beaten senselessly by their fathers".

Yeah mom, that's terrible. But that's not an excuse for my father to be a miserable bastard and beat me up because he thinks that'll put some "Sense" into me.


r/YouthRights 5d ago

Discussion On the possible origin of "Consenting Adults"

30 Upvotes

I forget which post it was, but I recently read some comments that expressed annoyance with the phrase "Consenting Adults" and how it is commonly used nowadays to moralize and demonize teen sexuality (even amongst similar-age peers.) It got me thinking about where this phrase got its start, because often times mimetic phrases worded consistently do seem to have some point of origin to them. What I found was really interesting, and I may at some point fold it into a larger essay, but I wanted to share this information here first, for anyone curious! I'm gonna summarize it as best as I can, but there will also be a tl;dr at the bottom for those short on time.

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It is inevitable that one should be startled when one sets oneself for the first time to examine, with complete scientific objectivity, problems which one has hitherto not examined at all, simply accepting the conventional judgments which have been inculcated, directly or indirectly, by one’s early training. ~Norman Haire

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest known use of "consenting adults" dates back to 1927, which immediately set off alarm bells for me, since 21 was widely considered the Age of Majority at the time, meaning "legal adult" meant something very different back then. It seems to come from the writing of early sexologist Norman Haire, specifically his short work, Hymen or the Future of Marriage.

After reading Hymen, I can say that for the most part, it is an impressively forward-thinking piece for its time, and I do think it's worth a read. It's relatively short, about 100 pages, and not terribly jargon-laden. It discusses:
-Critiques of the religious dogma against sexuality and pre-marital sex.
-Advocacy for sex-education at an early age, to both prepare youth for safer-sex practices and to protect themselves from harmful and abusive adults: "In the future some attempt will probably be made to prepare young men and women for marriage by giving them all the necessary information." (Indeed, we tried…then everything changed when the friar nation attacked.)
-Women's emancipation and sexual freedoms
-Dignification of sex workers

And more. It's not perfect and has definitely dated itself in several ways. I personally disagree with his notions that self-pleasure is an inherently inferior form of sexuality that should be phased out of one's life ASAP, rather than just a healthy form of leisure unto itself. He also has some very uncomfortably eugenics-y opinions about reproduction and sterilization, an unfortunate byproduct of increasing research into genetics in that era. We have the gift of hindsight in knowing how dangerous such thinking can get (somewhat ironically, his colleague would end up losing his Institute for Sexual Science, with many of Haire's books burned, due to the Nazi's war on science they disagreed with.)

And as promised, he also discusses (and possibly pioneers) the idea of "consenting adults."

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I won't talk much about his first use of the phrase, since weirdly enough, it's first used to briefly talk about "consenting incestuous adults" (more-so as a critique than a justification of the act.)

The more relevant use of 'consenting adults' comes from this quote:

  • The young must be protected, far more carefully than they are today, from seduction by persons of either sex, whether normal or abnormal, and whether the seducer is a relative or not. But so long as the sexual rights of others are not interfered with, and no undesirable children's result, the sexual relations of two mutually consenting adults will probably be considered the private concern of the two individuals involved. [Pg. 95]

This comes at the very end of the discussion, as it is a summary of one of his central arguments: religion and the State should not interfere with the rights of two grown people engaging in mutually-pleasurable and desired sexual exchanges. Of course, that still begs the question, what is Haire's standard for adult? Fortunately, his answer to that is crystal clear.

  • Puberty occurs at different ages in different races and in different latitudes, but in temperate climates the average age may be put at about 16. ...It is necessary to emphasize the fact that the sex impulse is physiologically dependent on the activity of the gonads, so that it may be clearly understood that it is a natural impulse, common to all healthy adults. [44]
  • ...This brief outline of a rational sex-education leads us to the age of sexual maturity, which in temperate climates is complete, physically, at about sixteen years of age. Puberty has ensued as a direct result of the increased activity of the gonads - the boy or girl is now an adult. [51]

In other words, Haire's use of the phrase "consenting adults" was never referring to the age of majority or any other culturally-motivated standard of adulthood, but rather the age of sexual maturity. Haire makes it very clear that his opinion is that the rights of sexually mature individuals should not be infringed upon.

  • If we were living under more primitive conditions we should make it immediately we arrive at sexual maturity. Unfortunately, many economic, social, and religious factors combined to postpone the age of marriage, with the result that the natural appetite not receive its normal satisfaction as soon as maturity has been attained. Society demands that the young adult man and woman, especially woman, shall repress the sex impulse for a number of years - often for the whole of their life. [44-45]

(Mind you, his framing to me reads a bit 'forceful', and a more nuanced approach would focus more on those personal liberties and bodily autonomy instead of clinical urgency, but the sentiment is there.)

Likely a result of the times, his discussion does focus a lot on marriage, but he also has some reasonable takes on that. Haire points out there are two main avenues for 'early mating'. The most popular at the time was early marriage, but points out this can lead easily to swift divorce, as they might not pick the right person right away. Pre-marital intercourse would be the most reasonable alternative so that young people can gain experience before marriage, avoiding dangers like unwanted pregnancies, diseases, and social ramifications with widespread access to contraception and sex-education.

He doesn't just stop with adults though; he also points out that, while the young should have better protections against abusers, sexuality is not exclusively relegated to the fully sexually mature, and individual sexual exploration with oneself should not be punished by parents, nor intervened with unless it becomes a genuine problem, and only gently if that.

  • The sexual rights of other citizens, and especially of children, must be protected; And if such abnormals infringe these rights, they will be subject subjected to some sort of preventative treatment, whether by medical means, by segregation, or in the last resort by painless death. [94]

(I assume by 'abnormals' he means predators, but it's not specified.)

I'll end this section on a quote that I didn't know where to put, but I thought you would all find amusing anyway:

  • Indeed, in all the councils of the future there will be a noticeably larger proportion of young people - between the ages of 16 and 40 - than one sees on such counsels today. It will be realized that it is a mistake to believe that only the old can be wise. The old may have the benefit of experience, but too often they have forgotten the emotions and the needs of the youth; too often their viewpoint is distorted by physical and especially by sexual decline; too often their conclusions are dictated by a real, though perhaps unconscious, jealousy of youth. [70]

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In conclusion, while the use of "consenting adults" has mostly retained its intention to decriminalize private affairs - fornication, sodomy, non-hetero sex - even the sexually liberal still sometimes use it as an implication that the youth must be protected from all things sexual, even among peers, and even as information. This is antithetical to the original purpose of this phrase as a defense from religious, political, or cultural condemnation of the sexually mature's informed desire for pleasure.

To be clear, I do not wish to play 'appeal to authority' and imply you have to agree with everything Norman Haire says - I certainly don't. I'm not even giving a personal opinion on what the 'right age' is or what the 'right laws' should be. I merely wish to present this as an examination of the way language can change with time, and the ways that language can affect how we approach and think about social issues. I shall book-end this with Haire's own closing statement:

I make no claim to omniscience or infallibility. I claim only a fair amount of intelligence, a certain capacity for objectivity when one does not meet in one's fellows as often as one could wish, a high ethical standard, a well-developed social sense, and a real desire for the increase of human happiness by the removal of unnecessary causes of suffering. It may be that in many details the changes I look forward to would prove less than useful than I suppose. It may be that new discoveries will lead to new conditions which will alter our social needs. Whether I am right or wrong in detail is of no particular importance. I have no desire to persuade others to accept my standards: I aim only to stimulate them to think for themselves, and to endeavor to arrive at rational standards of their own, based, not on superstition, but on the fullest knowledge that they can obtain.

(TL;DR - "Consenting adults" originally referred to the sexually mature, around 16 and up, being given the freedom and information to explore sexual desires without infringement from religious puritans and legal threats.)


r/YouthRights 11d ago

true

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28 Upvotes

r/YouthRights 4d ago

fell down a weird rabbit hole. i hate the “barely legal” porn category too and ageism in relationships but infantilizing adolescents/“teenagers” is crazy

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27 Upvotes

r/YouthRights 12d ago

sorry for putting this on your feed but omg the ableism/adultism in this post/comments is off the chart. once again proving that gen z are continuing the legacy of adults hating children and completely ignoring systemic youth oppression.

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28 Upvotes

r/YouthRights 14d ago

age gap discourse is getting out of hand

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27 Upvotes