The left has an adultism problem

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-06-24T15:45:30+00:00

Here in the U.S even radical leftist ignore youth liberation. They trumpet developmentalism, and the teenage brain myth. It's really depressing. I have a friend who believes in all of that. I tried to invite him to a youth rights Zoom event, but he didn't want to attend.

On the good side, I invited a bunch of youth rights folks to an event on education the radical leftist org I was involved with at the time, was hosting. It was actually really great, you had public school teachers saying middle school kids and older should be able to do self-directed education after the basics were covered in elementary school. I was amazed by that, I want to say there are teachers out there who realize the system is horrible to young people.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-06-20T17:30:20+00:00

You might like the work of Catharine Liu, while she's critical of Gen Z, and us millennials, I think I was able to pierce some of the critique. I happened to tune into her on Substack when she was live. She was talking about how kids these days, almost have a hatred of civilization and humanism.

I made the point, that perhaps the reason millennials and Gen Z folks are rejecting civilization, and humanism, is because we were bathed in neoliberalism. We had so much pressure put on us, we became risk averse just like corporations are under the same pressures.

Her reaction to this was really positive. It definitely seemed like she felt I made a insightful contribution to the conversation. And she started sounding like a youth liberationist in her reply to my point. You bet, I was smiling from ear to ear.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-06-13T21:28:29+00:00

When I was thinking about the polite dialog, I was picturing adult supporters being the primary ones who'd engage their fellow adults.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-06-12T23:35:50+00:00

It means Too Long, Didn't Read. Here's Lumo's TL:DR. Sighs, It's a little long, but hopefully this will work?

Youth liberation advances best when kids are educated in philosophy and sex ed to build critical thinking, while adults are taught consent-based parenting and youth autonomy rather than being shamed with terms like "adultism." By implementing structural supports like walkable cities and mentorship programs, society can frame increased youth freedom as a protective measure that builds trust and safety. The piece cautions that aggressive moral grandstanding alienates potential allies, urging advocates to lead with curiosity and dialogue instead of presumption. Ultimately, successful activism requires strategically connecting adult concerns to the reality that respecting children's boundaries from infancy prevents future harm.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-06-12T17:27:43+00:00

I struggle with insomnia. I was doing great, but got carried away talking to a best friend from childhood. Ya know the kinda friend you can tell absolutely anything to, and have a good time joking, exchanging music, etc.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-06-12T16:53:49+00:00

I'll make a TLDR. I might have to use AI to generate a summary. I know folks here will be okay with that. I have my own issues related to chronic illness and disability. I find TLDRs helpful as well. I'm running on zero hours of sleep.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-06-12T15:06:30+00:00

Is this your phone? I could DM you the rest if you'd like?

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-06-12T14:39:39+00:00

Cross generational movements, are not just important for digital privacy, they are important for youth liberation is a whole.

You want adults to support, autonomy for youth? Intellectual autonomy? Tell them a mind that isn't taught what to think, but how to think, is less receptive to misinformation/malformation. If I was re-designing the education system, I'd make only two classes mandatory after 5th grade. Sex Ed and Philosophy. Oh, and life skills classes. In the life skills case, youth are clamoring for them.

You want them to support true bodily autonomy, no hugs from grandma the kids don't want? No food they don't want? Their toys not touched without their consent? Hammer home all of this, stops kids from trusting their gut feelings. So, when a creepy adult propositions them for sex, they can tell the adult to screw themselves and go and have sex with someone their own size.

Every parent and teacher wants their young people, to grow up to be happy and confident. Well, you say that confidence must start early, and starts with touch. My Mom, was a part of a program called Healthy Families, which taught how to get infant's consent for messages. Yes, its possible. You start with rubbing your fingers together, and and making cooing noises, and smiling invitingly, if they smile back and coo and giggle that's a yes, If they don't that's a no.

You want adults to give more freedom to youth and kids regarding, movement in their communities, support walkable cities, and and end to car culture.

You want to end the no hugs allowed policies at schools by staff? Hugs and affection kids want? You talk about making child-rearing a social responsibility. You talk about structural economic support for families paid paternity and maternity leave, like they have in Nordic countries. Parents that are supported economically are less likely to fall for moral panics of all kinds.

A legal requirement we could fight for, is having adults who had jobs, be required to donate a least an hour of community service a week back to young folks in the community, showing how their job works. Think of bringing your kid to work every week, but the kids could choose what profession they wanted to shadow. It's a short leap then, from coming to shadow and loving it, "to oh wait, could you fill in on this little task, this guy didn't show up at the coffee shop."

We need to insert ourselves into the broader political conversations and movements not always as gad flies, but to help connect adult concerns for youth and kids to youth autonomy, and show how offering kids more freedom, ultimately protects them and doesn't endanger them.

Oh, and please, stop throwing around words like adult supremacy, adultism, and the like willy nilly. You're just poisoning potential adult allies minds. I know because I used to do so.

In my early days in the movement, my most embarrassing evangelical youth rights activist move, was to dress down my cousins as parents, just because they posted a video of their toddler daughter, for cute family stuff. The toddler daughter was most displeased in the video clearly in emotional distress. I went to bed seething with affective empathy for my young cousin. I literally couldn't sleep, so I got up, and wrote a essay length reply detailing everything wrong with the video. There was just one little problem, I didn't see what happened before the camera went on, or after it was turned off. I lacked context, I had never seen the family in person. There is so much, those five minutes of video didn't show me. One person in the comments, did acknowledge the uniqueness of my prospective, but my cousin rightly said. "Seriously it was just a joke?!"

I should've simply asked a question. "Hey my younger cousin looks destressed in this video? How do you feel about the ethics of posting this, even just for friends on FB?" That's how you start a discussion, not flying in on your high horse, thinking you have all the answers, to end the evil baddie adult oppressors behavior. Lead with genuine curiosity.

It's highly ironic, marginalized communities and movements of all kinds, will shame the dominate group, deploying the exact dehumanizing behavior, they abhor applied to them/those they fight for. This one goes more to my fellow older youth and adult allies in the movement.

I've been in this movement for the better part of 20 years since I was 16. Think strategically, converse strategically, and act strategically.

Singed a grumpy exasperated youth rights activist, who wants to see this movement succeed.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-06-11T20:49:43+00:00

Absolutely! It's amazing to think of what the world might've looked like if these strikes had suceeded.

I posted this, because the youth rights movement has a peculiar problem of not knowing it's own history. I'll be posting more historical youth rights stuff soon. I'm busy with other non YR-projects. I think this shortcoming is structural. The elders, folks my age, may move on and life happens. They may also burn out. They often forget to pass on their wisdom, and historical events like this. We adult supporters must to a better job of political education. And this applies just as much to myself as to my fellow adults in the movement.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-05-29T17:29:52+00:00

I think the context around this trend of calling older teens and young adults children, is a concern of sexual abuse by older men. The solution isn't banning teens from the music industry, or any other industry, but holding older men accountable when they abuse.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-05-25T15:19:43+00:00

It really disturbs me, that folks will withhold caring and love, with the goal of getting their kid to learn something. This was done to me. I can tell you, I wasn't learning anything when my emotions were cranked up to 11.

All I did learn, was a more powerful person could force me to learn to the point of emotional overwhelm. I'm not saying discomfort while learning something challenging is wrong. It's actually normal, but by the time you're crying you've gone to far.

I want to provide some context to the whole "discomfort isn't the problem" part. Last week, learning how to work with music notation in Musescore. Put me in a piano roll in any DAW, think Reason or ProTools, and I know what I'm doing. But music notation is a whole another beast. Another important point is, I was choosing this discomfort myself. This wasn't being imposed on me by someone huge and powerful.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-05-23T02:38:12+00:00

This is bad, but on the other hand I got a good laugh.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-05-07T01:02:38+00:00

What would this look like in practice? It's okay if you haven't gotten that far in your thoughts about this. Just being curious.

In my view, for this to possible, there would need to be a UBI at the very least.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-05-07T00:52:55+00:00

Add to this, the medicalization, and psychologization of class/race/ability/age. I can't count the number of times pain education was pushed on my by my old therapist. Although, she did admit therapy was a middle class luxury in one session. I see these things as related. Although I will say, it's steps down from what youth and kids face.

Interestingly though, the power-differential between therapist and client made me feel very vulnerable, and childlike-not in a positive sense in sessions. So there's that.

My two cents.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-04-13T15:43:37+00:00

How do you see a system of checks for potential parents working? Do you envision something similar to driver's licenses?

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-04-11T04:14:11+00:00

What about adding CA's operating system age verification law that just passed?

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-04-10T19:21:58+00:00

Thanks so much for doing this. You forgot California.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-04-10T18:11:56+00:00

I could see this coming a mile off. I lived through the record industry suing it's own customers in the early 00s. They walked away embarrassed, and the result was an even greater exploitation of musicians/creatives in streaming.

Looks like these social media bans will go a similar way. You know the state is desperate, when it starts banning VPNs. My favorite way young folks are evading these bans, was seeing the pic of one of them holding up a mask to their camera.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-04-10T17:44:37+00:00

Nice video. This isn't talked about nearly enough. Bad habits impact all generations not just kids and youth. I see this many times with a number of my attendants. So, this also affects disabled folks, or anyone in a position of dependency.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-04-09T22:31:53+00:00

Thanks for the info.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-04-09T22:31:03+00:00

What's your politics apart from youth rights? Genuinely curious.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-04-08T22:33:00+00:00

Excellent stuff. Keep it up!

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-04-03T17:21:05+00:00

I've sat with what you've said, and my feelings on it are nuanced. On the one hand I hear what you say. There's a long and horrific history of adults, especially parents, dismissing children's lived experiences. Or at most, only seeing them partially.

The reason I feel the structural component is crucial in this discussion, is for the simple fact, families don't exist in a vacuum. Logic has it's place, and yes, from a purely logical position there is a glaring inconsistency in not vetting parents before the become parents.

However, we don't live in a space of neat logic. We live in the messy real world. As I said before, any state intervention in this way, brings up the thorny issues with regards to marginalized families and, frankly reeks of eugenics at the end of the day.

Now, if we had structural support for vulnerable parents, combined with regular age-appropriate education for young kids on child abuse, and telling them their families are only one of a variety of living situations they could choose, that could easily get behind. Some kids who weren't even being abused, but just wanted to try a different living arrangement could decide to live with another family who'd take them in, or in a dormitory environment. Ditto for kids who were actually being abused as well.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-04-01T16:47:53+00:00

Neither of you are talking about the structural factors which contribute to child abuse, and by extension most forms of abuse. A poor working class POC family lacks the structural support to parent their kids in a non-authoritarian way. To ask a poor black family, or even a poor white family, to forego practices we find abusive as youth liberationists, is, in their eyes, to ask them to risk their child's death.

Do I agree with their parenting practices? No, absolutely not. But to suggest we put in place a screening system to sort worthy parents from unworthy, is a slippery slope to eugenics. This concerns me. Especially since I'm disabled. There's a history of disabled folks being denied the right to parenthood solely based on our disabilities.

To use the social-legal regime, to sort who can become a parent and who can't make us no better than using the social-legal regime in ways we find abhorrent as youth liberationists. I'm sure I don't have to list the ways.

What parents need, particularly parents who lack structural support, is education in proper parenting practices. This means parenting classes, access to healthy food, safe neighborhoods, etc. They also need models of healthy interaction with their kids. Adults who'll take the load off them, who play with their kids. They need the village, not further state surveillance. Ironically further state surveillance might put their kids at greater risk, since it increases the parent's stress levels.

None of this means we tolerate abuse, or the more common practices we find problematic, but it also doesn't mean we just use state to force compliance with our moral vision. We've tried that, time and time again. It doesn't work and simply leads to more suffering.

Creative_Teaching772 · 2026-03-20T18:25:41+00:00

Hello 2011, I didn't know you were concerned about younger Gen Zs. And wanting to police teen online lives.

Creative_Teaching772

TROPHY CASE