YouthLib

link to all volumes of "NO! Against Adult Supremacy"

TL:DR: My abuse was not worse just bc I happened to be a kid at the time

I was abused when I was 11-14. I will not talk about the details or type of abuse in this post as that is not a conversation I am ready for.

I hate the fact that if the exact same events happened to me today or when I'm 40 they would be considered "less bad". I hate that there is people out there who have simlar expriences to mine but their's is consider "less bad" than when they were older.

It feels insulting that part of the pain I feel is put down to the age I was at the time. It's insulting to adult victims to say there expriences are lesser than mine due to age. That is my fellow surviours, they have felt my pain and I theirs.

Drawing lines like that between surviours hurts our ability to build community and solidarity. It also encourages unhealthy coping mechanisms like trauma comparision. (Trauma comparision is when you compare you're trauma to others to put yourself down due to the idea you don't have a right to be in pain bc others have it worse. Its an unhealthy belief a lot of surviours struggle with).

The age I was at the time has nothing to do with my pain. My abuse caused my pain, not my age. I would feel the same pain if it happened at 19 or 30 or 40 or fucking 96.

Disclaimer: This is not to put down survivors who feel their age did play a part in their trauma. My anger is not with any one indvidual's story. My anger is with the idea that the abuse of children is always worse than the abuse of adults.

A vintage underground graphic novel/comic collection from 1975, about kids' liberation and related subversive topics. Work by Larry Welz, Willie Mendez, Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith, Trina Robbins, Justin Green, Johnny Chambers, Julie Wood, Bob Inwood, and Sally Cruishank. This is the original printing from 1975, published by our very own Last Gasp Press back in the day. And you can color it!

the following pages were uploaded by @keikikahuna on baraag, and the full book can still be purchased here! it'd be so awesome if the rest could be scanned and shared!

download link: https://annas-archive.org/md5/8083c68d89de429de502a36f7304890f

Anyone have any experience talking to friends or family with children about youthlib stuff? How did you approach it, and how'd it go over?

I've seen several terms, including "childism," "adultism," and "misopedia." What term do you think best describes this particular manifestation of ageism?

cross-posted from: https://rqd2.net/post/6065

This was originally a comment on a different post, but I think this is worth fleshing out into its own post.

And I apologize in advance for the length of this post, I hope I am making my position clear.

I think one reason many people are turned off from youth liberation is that they conflate it with MAP activism, and MAPs are, in popular opinion, abusive monsters that need to be ostracized from society, if not outright exterminated. The blatant falsehood of this statement and of this conflation aside, one thing that anti MAPs fail to recognize is that the sexual liberation of children is only one aspect of their liberation. Children deserve to be liberated from the shackles of the nuclear family paradigm, from the prison that is compulsory state (or state approved) schooling, from the bigotry directed towards them for no other reason than them being children.

That being said, in my opinion, sexual liberation of youth is an indispensable aspect of their total liberation, and this is something that, in my experience, many youth liberationists balk at.

Children deserve autonomy and respect in all aspects of their life. Yet when we say that this includes their ability to engage in sexual activity with whomever they wish, including adults, many people will revert right back to making patriarchal statements about how youth are too innocent and naive to consent to sex, or pull out the same pseudoscience about brain development that they otherwise condemn in order to suggest that children are too immature and stupid to consent to sexual activity with anyone other than perhaps their peers. This, to me, belies both an incomplete view of liberation and a worldview still tainted by puritanical Christian ideas about sex.

Now, I think it goes without saying that sexual abuse of children is reprehensible. But so is the sexual abuse of adults, and adults are not broadly desexualized because some of them suffer from sexual abuse. And other forms of abuse against children are also reprehensible, but I have not seen youth liberationists suggest that children should be segregated from adults in any other contexts besides sexual ones.

It is hypocrisy to say "youth should be liberated and treated as equals to adults in all respects" them turn around and say that they cannot truly consent to sex except in particular circumstances. This, to me, echos how radical feminists often suggest that women are incapable of consenting to sex with men.

I will once again state: this is still only one aspect of youth liberation, and matters like deconstructing the power of the nuclear family and the current "education" system, and generally taking steps to ensure that youth have greater legal, social, and political autonomy are also critical. But their sexual liberation cannot be neglected or dismissed.

(Edits were just to format the post and make it easier to read)