Being a Child, and the Politics Thereof
So someone on Facebook posted the question WHICH CONSPIRACY WOKE YOU UP??
And people were replying with their initial confrontations with entrenched ideologies. Situations where the masks got ripped off and they saw things as they actually were and got radicalized over it.
For me, it was adulthood. I was a child. The ideology was that adults had wisdom, from being alive longer and getting more mature. We didn't know what they knew and hadn't developed mature responses yet, so therefore they had a different social status than we children did.
I was willing to buy into that, but I was also watching and observing, because that's what you do universally at that age, you know?
FIRST GRADE
Our teacher goes out of the room, telling us she'll be back in a few minutes. Another woman enters the room. Doesn't speak to us. Goes to our teacher's desk, opens the drawers, and begins rummaging in them.
"Excuse me", I say, "but that's our teacher's desk and you should not be in here".
She gets angry. "Who are you? Look, I am an adult. You do not get to question adults. We know what we're doing. You have no right to speak to an adult that way!"
I am angry too. Rules are rules. They should apply to everyone equally. Principles are principles. They want us to learn these things. To behave, to understand the meaning behind obedience. It was wrong for someone to say because they were an adult the rules were different. And it wasn't her desk.
HORIZONTAL OPPRESSION
Horizontal oppression is when some members of an oppressed group push down others in that same group, to differentiate themselves from them and claim that they're special and should not be thought of or treated like the rest of that group, instead of fighting against the whole group being thought of or treated in a disparaging manner.
I did some of that as a child. On the one hand I hated now unfairly we as a group were spoken of by adults, as if we were all thoughtless, unempathetic and unconcerned with anyone other than our individual selves, unable to grasp the importance of a social structure and the importance of rules and playing within them, short of attention span and unable to look forward to the long term consequences of our actions, and so on and so forth. I thought that was grossly unfair and untrue. But at the same time, most kids were reconciled to living as kids and mostly only measured their behavior against how other kids would respond and value it. And a lot of adult criticisms of childrens' behavior did have some validity, not enough of us were taking it all seriously. And I was, and wanted to be seen as doing so.
Since this is a gender-centric blog, let me say at this point that the girls were a lot more inclined to care about what the adults thought of us, while the boys seemed to only care what other boys thought of them. So the boys seemed to me to be more short-sighted and also to live up to the worst descriptions that the adults made of children in general. So my children's libber attitude fed into my feeling that I was not so much like the other boys and fit in better with the girls. The boys thought so too, saying derisive and hostile things about my alliance with adult authority. Teacher's pet, or various forms of intimidated weakling wimp who let the teachers push me away from doing things they didn't approve of, as if I were afraid to be like the boys instead of preferring to not be like them.
But for the moment, let's focus on children's lib issues. I wanted to be a citizen. I was willing to do my best to play within the rules, to color within the lines as it were, in order to be taken seriously and given a chance to express my opinions and cast a vote.
SIXTH GRADE
Kids were encouraged to submit an exhibit to the fair, either hard science or social science, and I did mine in social science with the subject "The Hows and Whys of School Rules" and found newspaper articles about the election candidates to the school board and what they stood for, and detailed the process. I interviewed school officials about rules and how they were established. My thinking at the time was that we, the students, should be involved in the process. But this was just my attempt to get a sense of how the structure worked.
In the same timeframe I had an issue with my Reading teacher, who was an authoritarian who rubbed me the wrong way whenever she spoke to us. Kids that age often circulated a piece of paper on which they'd write something like "Sign here if you think Karen is stupid" or "Sign here if you think we should get pizza for lunch" or whatever. I made one that was addressed to the principal of the school and said we don't like how this teacher speaks to us, she is disrespectful of us and insults us. I saw it later with a lot of signatures, but it was still being passed around at the end of class when the bell rang and I never got it back. I tried starting again from scratch and getting signatures during recess but the kids realized I was serious about actually turning it in and wouldn't sign.
A lot of school systems nowadays have, instead of PTA, PTSA, i.e., Parent Teacher Student Assocation meetings. That is as it should be, although not having been to one I don't know to what extent they take the students seriously. They should. We are coerced into being in school, so we are there involuntarily. The system is only somewhat set up for our benefit; it is also a babysitting service that lets our adult parents be in the workforce. And it is aimed at training us to fit in and be used to an organized environment such as we'll face as employees, and to get used to adjusting our expectations to the point that we just accept whatever they throw at us. And to get us used to being in a system that doesn't consult us and controls us.
HOME
I got spanked at home. My attitude when I didn't feel like it was deserved was along the lines of "I know where you sleep. I won't forget this. You want to push this and keep doing this? Lizzie Borden dealt with her parents, you know, and like I said, I know where you sleep".
I know a ridiculous number of people who were spanked as kids who go around saying things like "I got spanked as a kid and it didn't hurt me none so it's good". Maybe I'm an outlier. I never felt my parents had that right. I was always willing to discuss stuff with them, and yeah I also made mistakes but who doesn't? Adults make mistakes too. I didn't mess up upon purpose so why should I ever be punished that way?
COMPLEXITY
We can't just free the children and treat every person of any age as a sovereign citizen and proceed to a society in which every person regardless of age is regarded identically. A four month old baby can't express wants and opinions and desires on the same basis and also is significantly more dependent on other people taking care of them, and doing so successfully regardless of whether they cry at the time.
So children's lib makes us confront the limitations of a simplistic "same as" versus "oppressively different categorization" division. At the same time, most fourth graders and the overwhemling majority of 16 year olds do not benefit from the status of childhood as it limits and restricts them. So it isn't an either-or proposition, to either completely negate the notion that children are different fromn adults or else continue to treat children as we currently do.
And if there's any oppression that might be older and more fundamental even than the oppression of women in our society, and might be the model used for subsequent oppressions, it's childhood.
-----
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, is also being published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It's expected to be released in early 2022. Stay tuned for further details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
comments at Dreamwidth -- https://ahunter3.dreamwidth.org/83842.html#comments
And people were replying with their initial confrontations with entrenched ideologies. Situations where the masks got ripped off and they saw things as they actually were and got radicalized over it.
For me, it was adulthood. I was a child. The ideology was that adults had wisdom, from being alive longer and getting more mature. We didn't know what they knew and hadn't developed mature responses yet, so therefore they had a different social status than we children did.
I was willing to buy into that, but I was also watching and observing, because that's what you do universally at that age, you know?
FIRST GRADE
Our teacher goes out of the room, telling us she'll be back in a few minutes. Another woman enters the room. Doesn't speak to us. Goes to our teacher's desk, opens the drawers, and begins rummaging in them.
"Excuse me", I say, "but that's our teacher's desk and you should not be in here".
She gets angry. "Who are you? Look, I am an adult. You do not get to question adults. We know what we're doing. You have no right to speak to an adult that way!"
I am angry too. Rules are rules. They should apply to everyone equally. Principles are principles. They want us to learn these things. To behave, to understand the meaning behind obedience. It was wrong for someone to say because they were an adult the rules were different. And it wasn't her desk.
HORIZONTAL OPPRESSION
Horizontal oppression is when some members of an oppressed group push down others in that same group, to differentiate themselves from them and claim that they're special and should not be thought of or treated like the rest of that group, instead of fighting against the whole group being thought of or treated in a disparaging manner.
I did some of that as a child. On the one hand I hated now unfairly we as a group were spoken of by adults, as if we were all thoughtless, unempathetic and unconcerned with anyone other than our individual selves, unable to grasp the importance of a social structure and the importance of rules and playing within them, short of attention span and unable to look forward to the long term consequences of our actions, and so on and so forth. I thought that was grossly unfair and untrue. But at the same time, most kids were reconciled to living as kids and mostly only measured their behavior against how other kids would respond and value it. And a lot of adult criticisms of childrens' behavior did have some validity, not enough of us were taking it all seriously. And I was, and wanted to be seen as doing so.
Since this is a gender-centric blog, let me say at this point that the girls were a lot more inclined to care about what the adults thought of us, while the boys seemed to only care what other boys thought of them. So the boys seemed to me to be more short-sighted and also to live up to the worst descriptions that the adults made of children in general. So my children's libber attitude fed into my feeling that I was not so much like the other boys and fit in better with the girls. The boys thought so too, saying derisive and hostile things about my alliance with adult authority. Teacher's pet, or various forms of intimidated weakling wimp who let the teachers push me away from doing things they didn't approve of, as if I were afraid to be like the boys instead of preferring to not be like them.
But for the moment, let's focus on children's lib issues. I wanted to be a citizen. I was willing to do my best to play within the rules, to color within the lines as it were, in order to be taken seriously and given a chance to express my opinions and cast a vote.
SIXTH GRADE
Kids were encouraged to submit an exhibit to the fair, either hard science or social science, and I did mine in social science with the subject "The Hows and Whys of School Rules" and found newspaper articles about the election candidates to the school board and what they stood for, and detailed the process. I interviewed school officials about rules and how they were established. My thinking at the time was that we, the students, should be involved in the process. But this was just my attempt to get a sense of how the structure worked.
In the same timeframe I had an issue with my Reading teacher, who was an authoritarian who rubbed me the wrong way whenever she spoke to us. Kids that age often circulated a piece of paper on which they'd write something like "Sign here if you think Karen is stupid" or "Sign here if you think we should get pizza for lunch" or whatever. I made one that was addressed to the principal of the school and said we don't like how this teacher speaks to us, she is disrespectful of us and insults us. I saw it later with a lot of signatures, but it was still being passed around at the end of class when the bell rang and I never got it back. I tried starting again from scratch and getting signatures during recess but the kids realized I was serious about actually turning it in and wouldn't sign.
A lot of school systems nowadays have, instead of PTA, PTSA, i.e., Parent Teacher Student Assocation meetings. That is as it should be, although not having been to one I don't know to what extent they take the students seriously. They should. We are coerced into being in school, so we are there involuntarily. The system is only somewhat set up for our benefit; it is also a babysitting service that lets our adult parents be in the workforce. And it is aimed at training us to fit in and be used to an organized environment such as we'll face as employees, and to get used to adjusting our expectations to the point that we just accept whatever they throw at us. And to get us used to being in a system that doesn't consult us and controls us.
HOME
I got spanked at home. My attitude when I didn't feel like it was deserved was along the lines of "I know where you sleep. I won't forget this. You want to push this and keep doing this? Lizzie Borden dealt with her parents, you know, and like I said, I know where you sleep".
I know a ridiculous number of people who were spanked as kids who go around saying things like "I got spanked as a kid and it didn't hurt me none so it's good". Maybe I'm an outlier. I never felt my parents had that right. I was always willing to discuss stuff with them, and yeah I also made mistakes but who doesn't? Adults make mistakes too. I didn't mess up upon purpose so why should I ever be punished that way?
COMPLEXITY
We can't just free the children and treat every person of any age as a sovereign citizen and proceed to a society in which every person regardless of age is regarded identically. A four month old baby can't express wants and opinions and desires on the same basis and also is significantly more dependent on other people taking care of them, and doing so successfully regardless of whether they cry at the time.
So children's lib makes us confront the limitations of a simplistic "same as" versus "oppressively different categorization" division. At the same time, most fourth graders and the overwhemling majority of 16 year olds do not benefit from the status of childhood as it limits and restricts them. So it isn't an either-or proposition, to either completely negate the notion that children are different fromn adults or else continue to treat children as we currently do.
And if there's any oppression that might be older and more fundamental even than the oppression of women in our society, and might be the model used for subsequent oppressions, it's childhood.
-----
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, is also being published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It's expected to be released in early 2022. Stay tuned for further details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
comments at Dreamwidth -- https://ahunter3.dreamwidth.org/83842.html#comments