So apparently today the thing that has me screaming is living in a society built on hurting kids.
Not just child sexual abuse.
Every kind of harm & exploitation.
Why am I not having kids? Well, one reason is that I feel like there are plenty of kids in the world *already* for me to worry about, & there will always be more.
Maybe this is part of what upsets the right wing folks when childless people are concerned about the welfare of kids.
You're not supposed to worry about "other people's kids" (otherwise known as human beings with their own rights).
At BEST you're only supposed to worry about your kids, but even then, you're supposed to worry about competing for things, not their fucking well-being as individuals.
You're not supposed to look at a child & see a person. You're supposed to see *property*.
A childless adult concerned about the rights & needs of children has no "skin in the game" in their minds. If you *aren't* a child, & you don't have children of your own, then how does it affect you if children are suffering?
It does actually affect me in a number of ways, but even if it didn't, what the fuck? Is the question they are asking "why do you care about human beings?" or is it "why do you think children are human beings?"
Trick question! It's both.
But goddamn. Hurting kids is just so fucking NORMAL in our world, & it has to stop.
We don't need age verification online (a surveillance ploy). We need to stop normalizing the abuse & exploitation of children in every area of life & culture.
Keeping a kid off the Internet doesn't fucking protect them from the predatory adults around them. In fact, it may make them more vulnerable than ever.
I mean, I love my parents & I know they have always loved me, so how tf were they so convinced that they needed to *"break my will"* as a child?
Because breaking a child's will is just what you do, that's why! You break them down. You teach them their "no" means nothing. You teach them they aren't even allowed to say "no". You punish every act of independence & forbid their anger. You demand that they always obey & "respect" adults without question.
You know, normal, healthy shit.
I'm sorry that this happened to you. or to any kid. It wasn't my experience. And I made sure it wasn't my kids experience. I consciously constantly give my kids the agency that was appropriate to their developmental level. Interestingly I also got heavily into dog "training" methods that also are all about the dog's agency. You can kind of look at the two main dog "training" methods and see that raising kids mirrors those two ideas. I do scare quotes around "training"
Because the view of those in the positive reinforcement + agency side is really that it's more like dog relationship building. Yes there's learning going on, but it's really important that the dog *trusts* you and wants to be with you.
Same for kids really. And broken in the same ways for dogs and kids. The whole "breaking down" and brainwashing and creating learned helplessness thing is right there in the dog training manuals for the other side.
In fact, it'd be a great thing to write an explicitly Anarchist dog training manual, and teach people about human Anarchy ideas through dog training.
@dlakelan
Yes! When I got my dog, I started looking up how to train her, & I was pretty sickened by the Cesar Milan style stuff. I was thinking "I'm getting this dog for companionship, not to have something I can control!"
Fortunately, yeah, there are alternative approaches.
I honestly think that going through all that dog training literature paved the way to me identifying as Anarchist. along with some very useful posts by @HeavenlyPossum
@artemis I got this too. I had in recent years assumed it was because of the autism - all my differences assumed to be malevolence - but maybe it’s most kids now.
A conversation I've broached a couple times with parents is when they get a bit snippy about their kids’ attitude. Like kids these days should be more grateful and hard-working or whatever. Look at the fucking world! How do you expect kids to be 1950s teenagers in this!
It's so beautiful when you can give someone the kindness & support that is lacking in their lives. And being an adult that kids *genuinely* see as safe is no small feat when they aren't accustomed to feeling safe.
@artemis you know, what really gets to me is that all these adults who are demanding age verification for the Internet are the ones who grew up without it and think they turned out normal.
You know, the kids who knew where the forbidden porn mags were hidden in the woods.
@artemis
The number of times I've said that you shouldn't beat up children, and that doing so only teaches them that violence is how to solve problems, only to be asked "do you have any children?"
No, but I remember being one. Unlike every freaking adult around me, who grew fully formed out of stone like a LOTR dwarf, apparently.
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