Kids are up to no good! They’re not turning into little clones of me! They’re watching the communist tik tok and listening to weird music and doing gender and getting all fruity with each other!

No but really. It seems that a decent subset of American historical oppression is targeted at children as well as minority groups. That may be a controversial thing to say, and I’m not at all equating how awfully we treat kids to chattel slavery. Idk it’s a half-formed and new thought but bear with me.

The history of this nation can in part be traced by the history of its attempts to subjugate and assimilate all populations. Everyone must adopt a specific and endorsed American way of thinking, set of morals, and inherent beliefs. From manifest destiny to policing “ethnic” hair into the modern age, all will be assimilated. And after generations upon generations of war, expansion, torture, eugenics, colonization, and forming a society of round holes were all square pegs who fall out are ground to dust, we’re closing in on that dream of assimilating all. There will always be horrific racism against American-born people of Latin, Middle Eastern, East Asian, Any Asian, et. all descent, but many Americans do view the national population as a blob of varied ethnic backgrounds unified by core American belief systems.

But there are two intruders to this “harmonious” system. The first are immigrants. We all know how they have been and currently are treated; to go into much detail needs its own dedicated post. But they are from the outside world, not to be trusted, speak funny words and eat weird food, and are viewed with varying degrees of suspicion.

The second set of newcomers to this system are our own children. Younger generations have always mystified and confused the old, perhaps even since the dawn of settled civilization. They’re different, and that makes them terrifying. Societally, youth and their culture is viewed as an existential threat. Few if any people consciously recognize this, so let’s examine how children are treated and understood. I’m going to list out a sample of practices and attitudes that Americans use in relation to their own young. Pay close attention to the number of entries that depend on children having absolutely no say in the course of their own lives, or so little that it’s basically an illusion.

  • Residential schools. :amerikkka: had them too and in abundance. This was more of a cultural genocide than really anything to do with kids in the modern sense, but it perfectly exemplifies attitudes to both the foreign and the young. The right people need to be raising children. The wrong people (ethnic and sexual minorities, mostly) could instill the wrong values into kids after all.
  • Child Brides (Someplace Under Neith). About half of the country still permits child marriage in some form or another. Children are coerced by parents and their pedophile “fiancées” into signing forms and abruptly being legally fucking married to a man two or three times their own age. The great state of Wyoming defeated a measure that would have alleviated this barbaric practice earlier this year. All over the country, any attempt to end the practice of child brides is met with massive opposition from the religious right. Religiously justified pedophilia isn’t an issue for some faraway and “uncivilized” peoples, it’s a massive problem right here at home.
  • The overall criminalization of youth culture. Curfews and cops in schools and skate park closures and prosecuting children as adults (leading some literal children growing up, getting old, and dying behind bars). I’m not saying that closing down a skate park is as evil as a DA working to get a child sentenced to an entire life inside prison. But I am saying that all of these points paint a mosaic. Anywhere children act independently of direct adult supervision it’s suspicious at best.
  • Moral panics. Are your kids doing something weird? It’s definitely Satan. During the '80s, there was perhaps no better way to keep your kids from having sex than playing Dungeons and Dragons, but it was actually Satan. Heavy metal? The men who sing it look scary and my kid is singing about fighting dragons or whatever the fuck, so that’s bad. Hip-hop? Black teens are into it, and that’s definitely double trouble. Graffiti is damaging public property and an indication that a kid might be part of a gang, so it’s actually a felony to paint a fucking wall. Kids are using the internet, they’re using phones, they’re using myspace and facebook and tiktok and snapchat and smoking the Devil’s Lettuce! It’s all different and scary from what I’m used to and what I remember from my own childhood! Gotta ban tiktok, let’s ban vapes, let’s raise the smoking age to 21! We’ll keep military enlistment at 17 or whatever, because what better way to mold your child into a weird and psychologically damaged machine that having them join the literal army?
  • Speaking of, the absolutely fucking weird obsession American parents have over their kids’ sex lives is revolting. Navigating our sex-crazed society is challenging, and even the most well adjusted child/parent relationship would present challenges in terms of how to best counsel and help the kid figure it all out. Most American parents are not well adjusted and loathe to think of their teenage children developing any sexuality at all. A large chunk of it is religious, of course. I think an under-appreciated factor is that if a kid is going through puberty and soaked through with hormones and wanting to have sex, it’s unmistakable that they’re almost an adult.
  • The Troubled Teen Industry (The Last Podcast on the Left). Teens are moody, withdrawn, developing independence, and are really becoming their own people. Fortunately for the American parental control freak, there is an entire industry dedicated to pathologizing and “treating” the human maturation process.
  • Children are basically parental property. It would always be difficult to codify what rights a parent has over a child even in the most enlightened society. America took the easy way out and decided that kids basically get nothing. With a parental signature, children can be married or become child soldiers as discussed above. Based on my anecdotal and personal, but deeply troubling, observations, it’s basically impossible to get a court or judge to remove a child from any bad family situation. There is a deep, deep resistance to taking kids away from their parental/owner figures no matter how horribly they’re being treated.

That’s a sample. I’m sure many societies have many such issues with their kids. I don’t know to what intensity some or all of this behavior is present elsewhere in the world. The overall vibe I felt in Germany and the Netherlands when I visited is that youth culture doesn’t seem quite as smashed in and shoved into a play-dough machine as American at least.

I don’t have a conclusion here really. This post was basically me talking to myself to try to articulate this feeling I’ve had for awhile. We spent decades screaming about Soviet brainwashing, even making movies about an allegorical alien race coming to steal our brains. We were really screaming into the mirror.

  • MaoistLandlord [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    The kids are out here with their stiletto knives, combing their hair, and menacingly snapping while approaching me from the alleyway. They must be sent to Doctor Pedd O. Phil’s Youth Recalibration Camp in the deep woods of Idaho.

  • I wish I could afford a therapist just to talk about the bizzare bs my parents put me through. I went to one once before my parents pulled me off their insurance but I was in such a bad mental space I couldn’t put anything into words. It really felt like I just wasn’t alive until I finally left. Like my entire teen years and into my early twenties was a write off, I was a zombie that only very recently got to experience being alive.

    • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      2 years ago

      :fidel-salute: Sounds like you’re describing my life comrade. It does get better. There are therapists that are willing to charge on a sliding scale for people who can’t afford normal rates/insurance that actually covers anything mental health related. Its worth trying to find one when you’re ready. I finally did in my early 30s and it was pretty life changing for me.

    • AbbysMuscles [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 years ago

      I can relate all too well to that feeling of zombification. It was a combo of homeschooling/undiagnosed gender dysphoria for me, but you have my deepest sympathies. Are you doing any better, or at least less shitty, these days?

      • I’m still dealing with the issues of not really socializing with people as a teen but I’m doing as good financially as I ever have. I’m saving money and have a loose plan on getting a small home so I’m not having to pay rent anymore and then I want to save up for my own gender affirming surgery and stuff.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    There’s basically no way for kids to exist outside of home or school that isn’t criminalized. Kids can’t be in malls alone. If they go to the park nextdoor nazis will call the police on them. All the skate parks are shut down and skating is illegal in some places. It’s not common, per se, but there are horror stories of police arresting parents because they let their eight year old walk down to the cornerstore. Or their twelve year old. Or they left a 14 year old “Unsupervised”. Kids being outside at all is considered extremely suspicious. People are terrified of kids being kidnapped or crimed, totally ignoring that violent crime is down and the source of child abuse is almost always family members.

    They can get arrested and jailed for minor disciplinary infractions at school, doubly so if they’re a minority. Zero Tolerance policies put bullied kids in an impossible situation where they can’t fight back and the administration generally doesn’t intervene until someone is seriously injured or dead.

    It’s all very fucked up and inhuman. Ironically most of what I know about the Trouble Teen/Kidnapping and Torturing Children industry comes from survivors talking about their experiences on TikTok.

    • ivygroup [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      2 years ago

      horror stories of police arresting parents because they let their eight year old walk down to the cornerstore.

      This sounds like a GenX meme shared in a facebook group

  • ssjmarx [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    100% correct, no notes.

    I have a theory that part of the function of the “where is your child now?” stuff that really curtailed kids’ freedom in America in the second half of the twentieth century was a reaction to the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam movements. Both were prominently participated in by kids, the anti-war one especially, and when society goes from letting kids have a significant portion of the day to themselves in between school and supper to basically forcing them to go from one controlled location straight to another with no in-between, all of that potential youth-lead political organization falls apart because it doesn’t have anything to support it anymore.

    I don’t think it was the primary driver - after all most kids weren’t joining the Students for a Democratic Society - but it is a relevant secondary reason. The primary driver was almost certainly “property values”. I remember one of my only interactions with the HOA where my parents lived concerned plans for a playground being voted down based on the logic that children playing outside would somehow lower everyone nearby’s home value (they also made the equally-bad argument that teens would hang out at the child’s playground to smoke). Multiply this interaction by a million HOAs around the country and eventually even the kids whose parents don’t demand that they come straight home still end up going home anyway because there’s nowhere else for them to go.

    • AbbysMuscles [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 years ago

      …part of the function of the “where is your child now?” stuff that really curtailed kids’ freedom in America in the second half of the twentieth century was a reaction to the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam movements.

      God dammit I think you’re on to something

      lower everyone nearby’s home value (they also made the equally-bad argument that teens would hang out at the child’s playground to smoke).

      God damn mother FUCKING hoa bullshit. I hate them I hate them I hate them so fucking much little elected clans of dukes ruining everything even for those of us who do manage to buy a home

      • ssjmarx [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        2 years ago

        I remember that argument was when I learned that my parents were NIMBYs. It was honestly a shock, they’re lib but I has assumed they would want a playground in the neighborhood considering that at that time there were six kids in the house with absolutely nothing to do inside walking distance.

    • AbbysMuscles [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 years ago

      I think I’ve seen that name in passing, but skimmed over it because at first glance it sounds like abolishing children in an anti-natalist sense. I should read up on it.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        2 years ago

        Yeah, I can see that! But it’s actually theory about how children constitute an oppressed class denied autonomy, rights, and protections they deserve because of the bizarre notion that parents can do anything they want to their kids as long as they don’t hit them, or in a lot of places hit them hard enough to break bones. I think it has a lot of validity. We can protect kids without dictating every aspect of their life through violent coercion like our society does now.

        Actually, there’s some overlap with other kinds of domestic abuse there; Abuse victims can’t leave for economic reasons, so the abuse continues. Kids can’t leave because cops will run them down and kidnap them and turn the over to abusers, and taking a kid in to give them a safe place to sleep and protect them from their family might get you charged with felony kidnapping. Just fucked up.

        • AbbysMuscles [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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          2 years ago

          I need to read up on this. Issue is that I would have even more pent-up rage and absolutely no outlet. Adults can be helped in some form - a couch to crash on, help finding a job, whatever. But if I took in a child running from that situation I’d just end up in prison and the kid would end up back in their abusive situation.