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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