Intersections of youth and other aspects of the kyriarchy

[sqbr]

naraht's post Adult privilege linking to The Adult Privilege Checklist has a great discussion in the comments poking at the various aspects of adult privilege and possible criticisms of the list. hl's response The Opression of Chilhood. In which I try for emotionless and hard analysis (and fail) got me thinking about intersections.

I don't have any major point, just some thoughts.

So:

• I think a lot of "why don't people pull themselves up by their bootstraps" classism/racism glosses over the fact that children REALLY can't do this. (Not that it's fair to expect it of anyone, but noone's going to deny it's stupid to expect it of say a baby)
  
• Control over sexuality and identity is a MAJOR issue for intersex children, and anyone else with an "abnormal" but functional body who is operated on without their consent "for their own good".
  
• The way children are forced into their parents ethnic/cultural values is a serious issue for interracial/international adoptees.
  

There's more along those lines, but if I wait until I have more to say I'll never get around to posting this :)

EDIT: Adult Privilege Linkspam and A Transformational Politic (bell hooks).

I find myself pondering the similarities and differences with the treatment of disabled people, especially those with cognitive disabilities.

Comments

[elf]

I've been pondering how much USan ageism, of the "legal-infants-until-18th-birthday" variety, ties into racism, especially on an international level. How third-world countries are treated as less-than-human because they "make" children work, or treat them as full members of society, before the legal age of adulthood.

There's an attitude that any culture, or cultural subgroup, that does *not* share white upperclass wealthy [male-dominant] [Christian] attitudes about children, is inferior; that failing to treat children as expensive ornaments that must be strictly controlled is a sign of a primitive and flawed culture.

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Control of children's sexuality is taken for granted to a terrifying extent. It's not possible to even have good conversations about the topic, because even admitting that children *have* sexuality is sometimes seen as a sign of perversion. Children's right to be sexual (whether gay, straight, bi, trans, cis, other, etc.) is pretty much nonexistent. And, as you say, that means anyone not leaning in the direction of the most privileged adult category gets an extra helping of "you don't exist and what's important to you is wrong or meaningless or both."

[elf]

Link to "A Transformational Politic" is broken; it starts with href=":http: and the extra colon means it puts a prefix that's the same as the journal it's being read in.

[hl]

Very interesting and true points!

One caveat. Many people do think/state that children should/could pull themselves up through education, though, as they don't admit that the environment those children grow up in will necessarily qualify that.

As an example, I was never very good at maths--I suspect that the usual 'math is difficult' cultural thing got to me, too--but I was always able to turn to my older siblings for help, so I was one of the best in my class, even if I didn't pay any attention at the time, or almost never studied: when I needed it, they were there to sit with me and explain in different ways until I got it. Not many children have college educated people--three, even!--at their disposal.

And so I was expected to understand by teachers, who never got to see me struggling, and consequently understanding was easier for me. And I was expected to go to college, and hold a better job at the end of it. Nothing of that is pulling myself up through effort alone, but people don't really want to admit it. If kids cannot pass classes with good grades, they're 'just not that smart', and 'they don't have a future'. (I had teacher who used those same words. -_-)

(Your link to A Tranformational Politic is borked.)

[yiduiqie]

I think a lot of "why don't people pull themselves up by their bootstraps" classism/racism glosses over the fact that children REALLY can't do this. (Not that it's fair to expect it of anyone, but noone's going to deny it's stupid to expect it of say a baby)

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in terms to Indigenous Australians. There's a certain infantalising, in a way, of Indigenous Australians, and at the same time there's a culture in mainstream Australia of expecting all Indigenous Australians to now be "okay" - like, no one denies the killing of/dispossession/Stolen Generation, but because it was "in the past" everyone is now expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and move on.