Every day that I have the presence of mind to remember it, I am so grateful and so excited and so relieved to be a legal adult. I can associate with whoever I like, with no fear that I will bond with them only to be barred from seeing them later. I can read any book I like. I have access to the whole internet, the glorious internet—I don’t stay up at night agonizing over personal worries or ideologically important empirical questions that could be resolved with a simple google search. I can keep in touch with long-distance friends without anyone reading my messages (besides zuck), so a friend moving away is no longer a devastating loss of intimacy. My medical information is now confidential, and if I need to see a doctor, no non-medical personnel will be present without my consent. If I have a concern, the doctor typically responds by giving me information related to that concern rather than empty reassurances. In many different situations I am now presumed to be at least somewhat rational and interested in information rather than empty comfort.
I don’t struggle to make people see my ideas as serious. Some people think my ideas are bad, some good, but they typically engage with the content of what I say. When people listen to me talk about serious topics, I am not called cute, and people don’t say “we’ve got a future president on our hands!” or otherwise explicitly condescend to me while ignoring the content of what I’m saying. When I disagree with someone on an important and interesting topic, what I say is never dismissed out of hand as rebelliousness, and they cannot forcibly confine me to my bedroom or physically attack me in retribution.
I cannot be legally confined to my house or school without cause—if I don’t want to be somewhere, I can leave. No one can prevent me from using the toilet when I need to.
If a piece of clothing is intolerably uncomfortable or hurts me, I can throw it away and get a replacement within a day or two, if that’s important to me. If I know that an unnecessary-seeming thing is actually crucial to my comfort, I can get it.
I have no relationships where “obedience” is considered a virtue. I have no relationships that I did not choose and that I am not allowed to break off.
I can have sex if I want to. I can’t be prevented from ever being alone with people I might want to have sex with.
If I want a job, I can apply to one, opening up a whole world of purpose and fulfillment. I am not unilaterally prevented from doing anything that allows me to build up wealth or contribute value to society in an official way. If my potential is being wasted, it’s not because there’s a rock-solid legal barrier which explicitly singles out people like me and shuts off every avenue available to them all at once—there are lots of ways I can try to remedy the situation.
I can vote. No one has access to my bank account but me. I have private possessions. If someone steals something valuable of mine, the courts will probably treat it as a theft.
If someone hits me, God forbid, I am now legally permitted to attempt to leave them.
This wasn’t the case for most of my life. It wasn’t even the case for most of the span of my lifetime during which I was more or less the same person I am now.
***
Not all of these items will be relatable to everyone, but some of them do apply to everyone who was raised in the US, whether you were fortunate enough not to have noticed, or otherwise.
Not all of these items are in the same category. Some of them are legal injustices, some are cultural, some maybe are just sort of circumstantial. This post shouldn’t be interpreted as implying four-year-olds should be treated like adults. This isn’t a policy proposal but an exercise in gratefulness and righteous anger and not forgetting the people who don’t have the things you take for granted.
With that said, many of these items point to things which are considered basic human rights, crucial for living a full life in a democracy. I cherish these rights. I’ve lived most of my life without them, and it was terrible, and I’m still baffled as to why that isn’t a major political problem. If you see these rights as crucial now, why don’t you see them as crucial for fourteen-year-olds?
Like women once were, many children and young adults are conditioned into accepting their lack of basic rights. Many of them are also unable to speak up and demand their rights for fear of punishment. Don’t think that makes their rights any less important.
Tommy Crow is a UW Madison economics graduate, philosophy club founder and speaker, and proud former teenage runaway. She writes about religion, youth rights, and academic philosophy at medium.com/@tommycrow.
This essay was originally posted on Tommy’s Facebook feed.
“Just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.” Toni Morrison
Mr. and Mrs. Twenty were in handcuffs, griping to the cop for being so mean. As usual, the cop replied, “If you don’t like the laws the cops enforce, get them changed.” What are they supposed to do, clone themselves so they can be more numerous on Election Day?
The next day, there was a session of the State legislature, and as members walked into the joint, they found on the front steps, dead cops and a letter, saying, “You have until sunset to repeal the underage drinking laws, or more cops will be exterminated tonight.”
Members clenched their teeth and vowed, “We shall NEVER give in!”
The next morning, sure enough, more dead cops were piled on the front steps. This continued until members figured it would be better to lose a percentage of their federal highway grants than to lose all of their law enforcement goons.
That evening, Mr. and Mrs. Twenty were hiking into town to celebrate the end of an unforgivable hate crime, when they happened to meet that cop.
“WHAT? That was YOU TWO running that operation? What’s the big idea?”
They replied, “That’s exactly what you said to do. You said to get the laws changed.”
Truth 1: That is what it would take to make most of those no-good, rotten punks swallow up all of their hatred, malice, bigotry, insanity, hypocrisy, stupidity, wickedness, greed and lies and finally start voting for liberty and justice for all. It will take a lot to make them stop this hate crime against somebody else because they will also wind up having to impose tougher DWI measures on themselves, which isn’t fair because they “Can drive better drunk than teenagers can sober!”
Truth 2: Most victims of unjust laws do little or nothing to change those laws. They’ll spend thousands of dollars to flee the country during Spring Break for the sole purpose of drinking alcoholic beverages where enemy goons cannot touch them, but they won’t invest a few pesos to send legislators postcards with nasty messages. (“Having wonderful time. Glad you’re not here, pothole!”)
Truth 3: You are not fighting back by drinking too much. Look over the chessboard for legal moves. Address lawmakers, “Why should I join the National Guard to protect your life and your property when you won’t even vote to protect my right to liberty? After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hundreds died waiting for the National Guard troops to rescue them. It could happen in our State, and if you suffer and perish waiting, it serves you right, pothole!” Like a rapist who does not expect anybody to be angry with him, who thinks he need only say ridiculous nonsense, (“There, there. I don’t want to hurt you, I only want to rape you.”) they figure they need only vomit forth their absurd nonsense and the victims will be okay with it.
This makes me cringe on how careless (most) people are about children/youth rights.
Many people quite literally think of youth as subhuman. Even the most basic rights such as freedom of speech, the right to private property, and physical safety are denied to those we deem subhuman.