Why do we defend the rights of youth? Among the numerous reasons, we’ve had enough of the testimonials.

So many young people come to us with their accounts of their lives at home and school. To what many people would dismiss as dramatic teenage whining, we listen. Unlike everyone else in their lives, we take them seriously. Why would they be the liars, but their parents and teachers are necessarily telling the truth? Their ages? Obviously a poor factor there. What else? Oh, you mean age was the only reason? Well, in that case, your theory is faulty, so let’s go with that the young victims are truthful.

Each year, over 2,000 children and teens die at the hands of their parents, and 350,000 more are severely abused. Why don’t we hear about this? Because, God forbid, the media or politicians make any statements pointing out fault with the traditional family. Instead, they’d rather pretend the greatest dangers to a kid are that he watches Dragonball Z and plays Mortal Kombat, and conveniently ignore that his father beats him every night. And, of course, only the former will be called into blame when he shoots up his school someday.

Young guys get hauled off to spend the night in jail because they shoved their mothers, as the police have no interest in the abuse the mother was causing beforehand, and simply tell the young victim that she had every right to do it.

Girl is forced into a psychiatric ward because her parents insist she is crazy, and the ward takes their word for it rather than testing her. The reason she is having these issues, most likely the psychological torture her parents put her through for years, is unimportant to these people.

Corporal punishment remains a legal parenting tool, even for teens. People don’t want to believe parents would hit their kids for reasons other than discipline. They’ll pretend the girl getting brutal swats from a belt on a regular basis because she disagrees with her father’s political views doesn’t exist.

And the abuse only breeds more abuse. The abused grew up with this distorted idea of love, so this is what they give, as they become abusive spouses and parents themselves. They believe their children are theirs to do as they wish with, just as their own parents believed of them. And the casualties are numerous and societally overlooked.

Don’t forget the infamous behavior modification facilities. Parents can just ship their kids off to these places if they don’t like their behavior. The facilities institute “tough love” measures to “cure” teens of undesirable behavior, but most of these places are unregulated and utilize potentially deadly restraint practices, and brutal disciplinary measures. Dozens have died, and hundreds more come out psychologically damaged. Why must they endure this? They have no trial. Their parents merely signed a form, and off they went. But does the media care? No. They’re more interested in Barack Obama’s priest’s anti-American remarks than the suffering of innocent American teens.

So it’s up to us to make the change. Once we get the voting age lowered and empower youth to realize they are entitled to the same human rights as adults, that they do not have to live as oppressed children but as capable young citizens, then we can see some real change. Kids are abused because their abusers believe them to be inferior and subhuman, and no one cares enough to tell them otherwise. Kids are property, and they believe the extremely dangerous and lethal excuse that this is for their own good.

So next time you think youth don’t need rights or that their suffering is petty, you seriously need to take a closer look. Prepare to be appalled. Prepare to be unable to sleep at night knowing the prevalence, wondering what’s going on with the young voiceless residents in your neighbor’s house. This can’t continue.

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Interesting article critical of women.  Basically makes the case that women are crazy and inferior to men (and written by a woman to boot).  I find it interesting not because of the central argument of the article, but some of the evidence she provides and what implications it has for youth rights.

Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true. Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men’s 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal. Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving.

She prefers to focus on the fact that women get into more accidents, but I think the more important gender imbalance is the riskier driving habits of men and the fact they are far more likely to be in a fatal auto accident than women.  This is exactly the claim made against teen drivers.  Why don’t we ban men from driving?  Or require restrictions on their licenses?  Maybe men should have a limit on how many people they have in the car while driving.  Or we should limit what hours they are permitted to drive.

The theory that women are the dumber sex — or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents — is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. Men’s and women’s brains not only look different, but men’s brains are bigger than women’s (even adjusting for men’s generally bigger body size). The important difference is in the parietal cortex, which is associated with space perception. Visuospatial skills, the capacity to rotate three-dimensional objects in the mind, at which men tend to excel over women, are in turn related to a capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning, the grounding for mathematics, science and philosophy. While the two sexes seem to have the same IQ on average (although even here, at least one recent study gives males a slight edge), there are proportionally more men than women at the extremes of very, very smart and very, very stupid.

So men’s brains are more advanced than women’s.  Men have a higher capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning.  Why then are women allowed to vote?  Or do many other tasks in society?  Arguments about youth’s deficient brains have spurred the passage of many anti-youth laws.  Why don’t we as a society care about those same brain inequities between men and women?

Clearly the arguments for anti-youth rights laws are hollow.  They are after-the-fact justifications for people’s anti-youth bias.  If their arguments are to be believed then we must turn the clock back 200 years and deny rights to a whole host of other groups in society.

The real answer though is that none of this matters.  Women were not granted rights because their brains were determined to be sufficiently advanced enough to warrant suffrage.  Curfews on blacks were not repealed because they proved they could handle the responsibility of being out after dark without committing crimes.

These laws changed because we are all human and fundamentally equal before the law.  No one “deserves rights” we have them innately.  They are common to us all and are inalienable.  To deny rights to youth is as unjust as denying them to women.

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Tomorrow is our primary here in Maryland, and other than the usual presidential candidate and delegates to pick out, it seems we are also to vote on Board of Education At Large.

I could look up information on these people, see what they promise to do. And I will. Just one problem. Really, I’m in no position to decide on elected officials who’d be in charge of schools. I’m no longer a student, and neither is any member of my family. So how am I affected?

Trouble is? The people affected the most, the students themselves of course, have no say in the matter. They’re too young to vote. So we’ve got older people who may have no connections to the school system whatsoever, having no real idea about what goes on, picking how who runs things there, while the students, the ones who have to live with whatever happens, the ones who know way better than any of us, are forbidden from having any say.

Something is seriously wrong here!

Lower the voting age, perhaps? Or is that too easy of an answer? *grin*

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The following is a transcript of this video.

Politicians and public interest groups are always looking to protect youth. They have a long list of so-called bad guys that they believe are a danger to young people. Even if in all this, they ignore the very many actual dangers youth face every day. Maybe there are things they find much more important than the well-being of young citizens. But then, who’s going to help young people? Who really cares about them? I’ll tell you who.

That’s us! We’re the National Youth Rights Association, or NYRA for short. I’m Katrina Moncure, secretary of NYRA and board member. There I am holding my cat, Midnight.

Anyway, NYRA has many goals. We want to lower the voting age to 16. We want to lower the drinking age to 18. We want all youth curfew laws abolished. Those are our major goals, but we have lots of others, too.
(more…)

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Tom from SSDP gave me a head’s up about an excellent op-ed in the New York Times today written by Anya Kamenetz.  She basically makes the Epstein argument that we should create competency tests to grant rights to youth younger and in a more flexible fashion.  Specifically she mentions voting, drinking, and credit card ownership, but it seems she is interested in the whole list of adult rights that youth are currently denied.  I am very intrigued and supportive.

A snippet:

We should hasten the enfranchisement of this generation, born between 1980 and 1995, by lowering the voting age to 16.

Age thresholds are meant to bring an impartial data point to bear on insoluble moral questions: who can be legally executed, who can die in Iraq, who can operate the meat cutter at the local sub shop. But in a time when both youth and age are being extended, these dividing lines are increasingly inadequate.

Legal age requirements should never stand alone. They should be flexible and pragmatic and paired with educational and cognitive requirements for the exercise of legal maturity.

Great to see youth rights again splash across the NY Times editorial page.  We were last there (unless I missed something) in September with Mike Male’s great op-ed about adult drug use.  Ironically, Mike might have a problem with Anya’s op-ed actually.  Beyond his general skepticism about competency tests in general (NYRA is neutral on them) I’m sure he’ll take issue with this bit:

Driving laws provide the best model for combining early beginnings and mandatory education. Many states have had success with a gradual phasing in of driving rights over a year or more, starting with a learner’s permit at age 16. The most restrictive of these programs are associated with a 38 percent reduction in fatal crashes among the youngest drivers, according to a study conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

According to Mike’s own study into the effectiveness of the graduated drivers licensing program in California he found that it actually hurt overall traffic safety.  Most studies that rate the effectiveness of graduated driver’s license programs (and most all teen related stats) look only at teens and forget that teens are not an insular demographic.  These studies focus exclusively on whether 16 and 17 year olds are helped by graduated driver’s licenses.  Males was curious whether going through such a program actually made people better drivers once they exit the program and turn 18.  What he found is quite interesting:

Is California’s teen-driver law — the nation’s strictest and touted by safety experts as a national model — really hazardous for the state’s teen drivers?

A study I conducted raises that possibility. Published in the National Safety Council’s Journal of Safety Research, it found, as did previous researchers, that California’s graduated licensing law was associated with fewer fatalities among 16-year-old drivers (down 20% through 2005). But that reduction was more than offset by the increased death rate — up 24% — of 18-year-olds, whose driving records researchers have neglected to study. The latest figures also indicate higher-than-expected fatalities among drivers aged 19, 20 and 21 who were licensed under the new law. The death rates of 17-year-olds changed little.

I e-mailed Males about Kamenetz’s op-ed, so I’m sure he’ll go educate her.

Kamenetz seems like a good ally to have though.  I’ll be sure to add a link to Anya’s blog from One and Four and Age of Reason.  Jason is putting together a youth rights meet up in NYC next month, maybe we can convince her to show up.  I’ll open communications with her in a bit.  Just need to find her e-mail.

Yay youth rights!

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According to the most recent issue, it seems ASFAR’s ‘zine, Youth Truth is ceasing publication. After eight years it is sad to see it go, but truth be told, Youth Truth has been on life support for at least half of that time. It had become a one person endeavor (and it showed) filled mostly with news links. Even so, the publication quality was always impressively high and it was nice to see a solid youth rights publication (regardless of content) in print. NYRA has the full archive in print at our office and accessible online at the Youth Rights Network. Susan’s reasons for giving it up after all this time:

Its circulation is minuscule, its cost is prohibitive (for ASFAR’s budget anyway), its contributors have dwindled, and its editor is burned out.

The exact problems I identified six years ago and sought to solve with my suggestion that Youth Truth become a joint project for the movement as a whole and benefit from NYRA’s involvement, membership and support. An arrangement that most certainly would have saved the publication and made it far more relevant. ASFAR was stubborn however and decided not to take the offer and not to make any real changes to YT until the $2,000 a year price-tag (as of 2002 at least) became too much to bear. It is a shame.

But I’m not writing this to say “I told you so” or kick someone when they are down. I just think it is appropriate to mark the end of a publication that has been formative for the few hard core youth rights supporters who have read it and subscribed over the last eight years or so.

I also think some of Susan’s final words were worth noting and worth drawing attention to:

The realization that this is the last issue of Youth Truth, at least for awhile, has made me think about how to sum it all up for our readers, our supporters, our opponents, and the American public at large.

I keep thinking of a comedy sketch I remember from an early Saturday Night Live episode — I think it was performed by Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman, and John Belushi. It took place in a medieval times, in a doctor’s consulting room that doubled as a barbershop, where a worried mother brought her ailing daughter for treatment. After reciting some mumbo-jumbo about the patient’s imbalance of bodily “humors,” the doctor prescribed the only treatment he knows: bleeding. As the girl’s condition declined throughout the skit, the doctor kept up the treatment. If she’s still sick, she must need more bleeding – what other answer could there be? After the inevitable outcome, at the end of the skit, the medieval doctor remained convinced he’d done all he could for the poor girl, and the mother dutifully paid the bill.

It’s human nature. We develop certain beliefs or ways of behaving in life and cling to them because they are all we know. We ignore evidence that contradicts what we think we know, and keep using the same techniques to solve all our problems, in all situations. When disastrous consequences ensue, instead of re-examining our old assumptions, we tend to conclude that we just didn’t use the same old strategies soon enough, or strongly enough… because to admit that there might be another, better way, we’d have to admit that we might have been doing the wrong thing all along.

With a few brief respites, we as a society have been pursuing the same ways of dealing with children for over a century now: tightening restrictions, punishing, demanding ever more conformity and obedience, infantilizing adolescents and even young adults.

And year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, we still hear the same old complaints. Kids don’t appreciation, they don’t behave, they don’t learn. They spend too much time on frivolous pursuits. They have no work ethic, no respect. They don’t understand the value of a dollar. They’re impulsive. They don’t understand risk. They don’t look ahead to the future.

And year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, adult society responds with more of the same.

Out adult population has all grown up in captivity; it is all they know. The cage in which we expect children to remain becomes even smaller, as we heap ever-harsher punishments onto their feeblest attempts to escape. Are we doomed to a never-ending battle between the desire of adults to control and the need of youth for freedom and self-determination?

Must we bleed the “patient” to death before we stop?

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First, look at this news story.

It was early last month when Jane Hambleton of Fort Dodge found the bottle under the front seat of her 19-year-old son’s pride and joy.

Her next move was a call to The Des Moines Register’s classified advertising department:

OLDS 1999 Intrigue

“Totally uncool parents who obviously don’t love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for 3 weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.”

The son soon found himself on foot. And the meanest mom on the planet became the target of accolades from across Iowa and beyond.

Hambleton, 48, a disc jockey, said she has fielded more than 70 telephone calls from emergency room technicians, nurses, school counselors and even a Georgia man, who wanted to congratulate her.

“The ad cost a fortune, but you know what? I’m telling people what happened here. I’m not just going to put the car for resale when there’s nothing wrong with it, except the driver made a dumb decision,” Hambleton said. “It’s overwhelming, the number of calls I’ve gotten from people saying, ‘Thank you, it’s nice to see a responsible parent.’ So far, there are no calls from anyone saying, ‘You’re really strict. You’re real overboard, lady.’ ”

Steven Hambleton, a freshman business major at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, obviously was not one of the callers. And he didn’t feel much like talking when contacted Tuesday.

“I don’t think you can print” his response to the ad, his mother said. “He’s very, very unhappy.”

Jane Hambleton described her son as a great kid who does excellently in college and is active in church. But she’ll stick to her guns, even though Steven Hambleton said that the bottle of alcohol wasn’t his, and that someone else had left it in his (former) car.

For the record, Mom believes him.

But she and her husband set two rules when they bought the car at Thanksgiving: No booze, and always keep the car locked. The car sold within two weeks, but Hambleton said she will continue the ad for another week - just for the feedback.

“A couple in Hubbard bought it for their 19-year-old son,” she said. “I told the kid when they were leaving, ‘Do not have any booze in that car. And if you do, don’t hide it under the front seat.’ “

When you are finished vomiting, come on back here for commentary.

Basically some self-righteous mother decided to sell her 19-year-old son’s car because she found an alcohol bottle in it. If that weren’t enough, the ad she put in the newspaper to sell the car explicitly stated she was doing this to get back at him, that he had “violated her car rules” so she was punishing him.

So let’s review. No indication that he was actually drinking and driving. She saw something in his car she didn’t like and decided he wasn’t allowed to have it anymore, so she sold it, something he loves (and who can blame him, I love my car, too!) behind his back and without his consent. She found an alcohol bottle, so she decided to make his life hell.

If only it stopped there! Because of the little ad she put, explaining what she was doing and why, a lot of people decided to call her up and congratulate her! She was being this big bad “tough disciplinarian” on her (adult) son, so everyone thinks she’s some kind of hero. At first, I thought this was just a lot of media exaggeration, until I went to the article itself and saw the comments. I’m still having trouble keeping my lunch down after reading that.

So what does this mean? It means it is socially acceptable to publicly humiliate a teenager. I mean, what if this woman had done this to her husband instead of her son? Would you be congratulating her? Might be some, but there’d be a lot more people probably complaining to her that she had no right to do something like that to a “grown man”. That would probably not even be newsworthy. But humiliating your son gets you national commendations.

I mean, I can’t imagine how he feels right now. His mother betrayed him, stole and sold something he loved, and now the whole state and beyond is laughing at him and saying he deserved it, that his mother needed to be strict with him. Betrayed by a loved one, lost a major cherished possession, and publicly humiliated and called out.

And what for? Because there was a beer bottle in his car and he’s under 21? Has our society gotten so hysterical over the thought of anyone under 21 even being near alcohol that this sort of widespread mocking is called for? I mean, if he was actually drinking and driving, maybe, but it was not stated if he was in the article, and it would have said if he had, so I’m going to assume he is innocent of that.

This is the power parents have over their children, even ones over age of adulthood. It is appalling. It is inhuman. Worst of all, it is a disgusting perversion of the concept of love in our society. To love is to make someone miserable based on your own personal morals? Well, if that someone is under 21, then yes, I guess it is.

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