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imomusOne of the problems with liberal mantras like rights and freedom is that they're meaningless unless you specify rights to what and freedom from what. Once you get into the habit of specifying rights to and freedoms from, things get more murky, more complex, because not everyone agrees on what it's desirable to have a right to, or a freedom from. Bush told us that Bin Laden hated freedom, for instance, but one of Bin Laden's stated goals was the desire to free sacred sites in Saudia Arabia from the proximity of American troops. They both believe in "freedom"; the difference comes in what they think we need to be free from.
It's the same with rights; the important question is not "do you believe people should have rights?", but what you think those rights should be to. That's where the differences, and therefore the politics, come in. The default liberal position in the West is that children have a right to non-agency, rather than a right to agency. In other words, contrary to previous centuries and other cultures which see children as smaller versions of adults, we maintain that they need protection. That word, though, also requires a qualifying from, and in general we think children need protection from work, from sexuality, from intoxication, from punishment and from agency. The problem with that view (which clearly has a lot to recommend it) is that when children do become actors on the stage of society, they have a ghostly, problematical status. They're there, but not really there, people but not really people.
We saw in The search for clean cotton and pure childhood some of the contradictory knots this attitude leads to; outraged by a violation of Uzbeki children's perceived right not to work, some British consumers banned cotton from Uzbekistan, apparently oblivious to the fact that the well-being of all Uzbekis depends on the cotton harvest, and that a ban would hit the welfare of Uzbeki children (along with all other Uzbeki citizens) by hitting the Uzbeki economy.
A similar ambivalence emerged in responses to the death of Michael Jackson; while Joe Jackson emerges as a villain in most biographical accounts for having made Michael work so hard so young, most commentators agreed that Michael Jackson, by starting so early, had packed more experience (not to mention money) into his six decades of life than most of us will fit into eight. He did this by eradicating the barrier between childhood and adulthood which liberals take to be sacred; Michael Jackson was both a hard-working adult all his life, and a child all his life, and both of those options defy the liberal belief that a clear barrier -- a barrier on either side of which attitudes to agency reverse -- should stand somewhere between the ages of 16 and 21. (Jackson also avoided the physiological token of that transition barrier; his voice never broke.)
At the beginning of John Ware's TV essay, shown last week on BBC 2, The Death of Respect (available to those outside the UK here), CCTV footage showed kids throwing stones at firemen at the scene of a blaze. "Why don't you just turn a hose on them?" Ware asked a fire superintendant. The man replied that once upon a time they would have done just that, but now "If you turn a hose on a young person, that's assault... I have a sense of responsibility in my actions, I have a sense of what I can and can't do. That isn't reciprocated by the child or young person. They're secure in their belief that they are untouchable." Later, the documentary raises the Bulger case, in which children murdered another child. The theme (apart from the right-wing motif that "the country is going to the dogs") was that children can act as badly as adult criminals, yet enjoy a state of legal non-responsibility. This legal protection -- based on a conception of them as ghostly non-agents, not responsible for their actions -- actually becomes a danger to a society in which children are acting, in fact, pretty much the way other citizens -- including criminals -- act.
I've noticed a similarly negative attitude to the agency of children in some reactions to a young style blogger called Tavi, "the new girl in town". My sister drew my attention the other day to Tavi's elegant and articulate fashion blog Style Rookie, where Tavi describes herself as a "a tiny 13 year old dork that sits inside all day wearing awkward jackets and pretty hats, scatters black petals on Rei Kawakubo's doorsteps and serenades her in rap. Rather cynical and cute as a drained rat. In a sewer. Farting. And spitting out guts."
Tavi has appeared on the cover of Pop and Love magazines. She isn't just a model, though; for Love she interviewed conceptual artist Jordan Wolfson, managing to edit a 4,431 word interview with him down to 208 words. She also impressed the bloggers at The Moment.
But while one coterie applauds Tavi and delivers her the fame she so obviously craves and deserves, others express doubts. When Tavi scored a feature in New York magazine aged 12, writer Jessica Coen said: "We're not sure if a 12-year-old is actually doing all this or if she's getting some help from a mom or older sister (some of the photos of her were definitely not self-shot)." Comments ranged from "when I was 12 kids were drinking and smoking weed" to "totally not 12... Tavi is around 10 and the person writing her blog is in her 20s". Later coverage in New York was more positive after Coen received a comment-lashing from people (many of them 12 year-olds themselves) demanding to know why a tween couldn't write well and have cool style. T Magazine was only marginally more respectful: "Not bad for a 12 year-old," wrote Elizabeth Spiridakis in a feature entitled Post Adolescents. "As an almost-30-year-old style blogger myself, I have to ask: Whom will I envy next? Kindergartners?"
While others see Tavi's age as the most interesting thing about her, Tavi herself sees style as a way to transcend age. "I like creating characters," she told T Magazine, summoning images of Cindy Sherman or Sophie Calle. "Example: I’m wearing a long sweater, glasses and a colorful blazer. I am a 23-year-old living in D.C. and I like to visit quaint coffee shops. My mother died when I was 3, and my father remarried this woman who is always buying me perfume I never use."
Australian fashion blog Frockwriter pinned the liberal dilemma in their Tavi coverage: "Now look I know David Jones is doing his darndest to head off at the pass any future underage model scandals – by banning runway models under the age of 18. Some have applauded the decision. But what is one to do when cashed-up, tech-savvy kids are getting onto the net posting pics of themselves in their latest outfits?"
It's a ticklish issue: do kids (like french muslims wearing veils) have a right to be seen, or a right to be not-seen? How, amidst the universal self-mediation of the internet, do you prevent children from asserting their agency and beginning the kind of work they'll no doubt be doing all their lives? And why would you want to?
It's the same with rights; the important question is not "do you believe people should have rights?", but what you think those rights should be to. That's where the differences, and therefore the politics, come in. The default liberal position in the West is that children have a right to non-agency, rather than a right to agency. In other words, contrary to previous centuries and other cultures which see children as smaller versions of adults, we maintain that they need protection. That word, though, also requires a qualifying from, and in general we think children need protection from work, from sexuality, from intoxication, from punishment and from agency. The problem with that view (which clearly has a lot to recommend it) is that when children do become actors on the stage of society, they have a ghostly, problematical status. They're there, but not really there, people but not really people.
We saw in The search for clean cotton and pure childhood some of the contradictory knots this attitude leads to; outraged by a violation of Uzbeki children's perceived right not to work, some British consumers banned cotton from Uzbekistan, apparently oblivious to the fact that the well-being of all Uzbekis depends on the cotton harvest, and that a ban would hit the welfare of Uzbeki children (along with all other Uzbeki citizens) by hitting the Uzbeki economy.
A similar ambivalence emerged in responses to the death of Michael Jackson; while Joe Jackson emerges as a villain in most biographical accounts for having made Michael work so hard so young, most commentators agreed that Michael Jackson, by starting so early, had packed more experience (not to mention money) into his six decades of life than most of us will fit into eight. He did this by eradicating the barrier between childhood and adulthood which liberals take to be sacred; Michael Jackson was both a hard-working adult all his life, and a child all his life, and both of those options defy the liberal belief that a clear barrier -- a barrier on either side of which attitudes to agency reverse -- should stand somewhere between the ages of 16 and 21. (Jackson also avoided the physiological token of that transition barrier; his voice never broke.)
At the beginning of John Ware's TV essay, shown last week on BBC 2, The Death of Respect (available to those outside the UK here), CCTV footage showed kids throwing stones at firemen at the scene of a blaze. "Why don't you just turn a hose on them?" Ware asked a fire superintendant. The man replied that once upon a time they would have done just that, but now "If you turn a hose on a young person, that's assault... I have a sense of responsibility in my actions, I have a sense of what I can and can't do. That isn't reciprocated by the child or young person. They're secure in their belief that they are untouchable." Later, the documentary raises the Bulger case, in which children murdered another child. The theme (apart from the right-wing motif that "the country is going to the dogs") was that children can act as badly as adult criminals, yet enjoy a state of legal non-responsibility. This legal protection -- based on a conception of them as ghostly non-agents, not responsible for their actions -- actually becomes a danger to a society in which children are acting, in fact, pretty much the way other citizens -- including criminals -- act.
I've noticed a similarly negative attitude to the agency of children in some reactions to a young style blogger called Tavi, "the new girl in town". My sister drew my attention the other day to Tavi's elegant and articulate fashion blog Style Rookie, where Tavi describes herself as a "a tiny 13 year old dork that sits inside all day wearing awkward jackets and pretty hats, scatters black petals on Rei Kawakubo's doorsteps and serenades her in rap. Rather cynical and cute as a drained rat. In a sewer. Farting. And spitting out guts."
Tavi has appeared on the cover of Pop and Love magazines. She isn't just a model, though; for Love she interviewed conceptual artist Jordan Wolfson, managing to edit a 4,431 word interview with him down to 208 words. She also impressed the bloggers at The Moment.
But while one coterie applauds Tavi and delivers her the fame she so obviously craves and deserves, others express doubts. When Tavi scored a feature in New York magazine aged 12, writer Jessica Coen said: "We're not sure if a 12-year-old is actually doing all this or if she's getting some help from a mom or older sister (some of the photos of her were definitely not self-shot)." Comments ranged from "when I was 12 kids were drinking and smoking weed" to "totally not 12... Tavi is around 10 and the person writing her blog is in her 20s". Later coverage in New York was more positive after Coen received a comment-lashing from people (many of them 12 year-olds themselves) demanding to know why a tween couldn't write well and have cool style. T Magazine was only marginally more respectful: "Not bad for a 12 year-old," wrote Elizabeth Spiridakis in a feature entitled Post Adolescents. "As an almost-30-year-old style blogger myself, I have to ask: Whom will I envy next? Kindergartners?"
While others see Tavi's age as the most interesting thing about her, Tavi herself sees style as a way to transcend age. "I like creating characters," she told T Magazine, summoning images of Cindy Sherman or Sophie Calle. "Example: I’m wearing a long sweater, glasses and a colorful blazer. I am a 23-year-old living in D.C. and I like to visit quaint coffee shops. My mother died when I was 3, and my father remarried this woman who is always buying me perfume I never use."
Australian fashion blog Frockwriter pinned the liberal dilemma in their Tavi coverage: "Now look I know David Jones is doing his darndest to head off at the pass any future underage model scandals – by banning runway models under the age of 18. Some have applauded the decision. But what is one to do when cashed-up, tech-savvy kids are getting onto the net posting pics of themselves in their latest outfits?"
It's a ticklish issue: do kids (like french muslims wearing veils) have a right to be seen, or a right to be not-seen? How, amidst the universal self-mediation of the internet, do you prevent children from asserting their agency and beginning the kind of work they'll no doubt be doing all their lives? And why would you want to?
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irre-spouse-ability
Date: 2009-08-31 10:54 am (UTC)http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8226196.stm
erik
rotterdam
Re: irre-spouse-ability
Date: 2009-08-31 11:05 am (UTC)The ironies really swarm in this tale: the girl -- incredibly brave -- wants agency and as a result gets put under state care. She wants freedom and therefore has it taken away. She wants to be responsible, and the Child Protection Agency says it's "irresponsible for such a young girl to make a two-year solo trip around the world".
"The judges agreed, ruling Miss Dekker would face mental and physical risks if she were allowed to go ahead with her planned record attempt." If only they were as concerned about the Dutch teenagers being sent to Afghanistan (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4673026.stm)!
Re: irre-spouse-ability
From:Re: irre-spouse-ability
From:(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 11:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 11:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
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From:Boy A
Date: 2009-08-31 11:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 11:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 12:04 pm (UTC)I don't have kids, but I do have a rabbit. I'm a very indulgent "parent" to this rabbit, which is a very aggressive alpha male. He has free range of the house (and, daily, the garden) although he actually damages the infrastructure quite a lot, gnawing wallpaper and shitting everywhere. He also bites humans. When he does that, I mop up the blood, swearing, but never retaliate. Clearly, if it came to outright conflct, I could annihilate my rabbit in seconds. But I take his "diminished responsibility" so much for granted (together with the knowledge that punishment doesn't really work on rabbits) that I let him emerge from conflicts thinking that he's the boss and has taught me a lesson.
And the thing is, at some point -- because I don't retaliate, despite being "objectively" so much stronger -- the rabbit really is the alpha male in the house. My refusal to retaliate, based on the perception of his diminished responsibility, makes him, for all intents and purposes, the strongest animal in the house, and the dominant male. Only my sense that this objectively isn't so makes me continue to let him get away with this. Oh, and the hilarious cuteness of Pok's sense of self-importance.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 12:41 pm (UTC)In bunny's case, the responsibility is transferred onto you, the owner. In some senses, that's (presumably) the law, but it's also what happens when you don't retaliate -- you're saying "the buck (ha!) stops here" and taking it upon yourself to transfer the rabbit's responsibility to you.
It seems to me that the question is only partly whether children should have diminished responsibility, and how far that should go. The other part is: to whom should that responsibility be transferred? Who should decide what rights and protections they have and don't have?
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 12:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:Don't care for care-giving
Date: 2009-08-31 12:47 pm (UTC)I recommend revoking carrot privileges. Bunnies don't understand physical punishment but they understand biting the hand that feeds them. That's a pretty basic Pavlovian response.
I might mention that I can totally identify with your situation. I'm too aware of the diminished responsibility POV to be able to properly reprimand animals or children under my care. Which is why I don't plan on having any children unlike other similarly afflicted people who choose to disregard their handicap and instead churn out an army of entitlement and obnoxiousness that the rest of us must support financially and bear mentally.
Re: Don't care for care-giving
From:(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 12:49 pm (UTC)The problem is that the world is full of sadistic motherfuckers who ruin this for the rest of us. If we make it legal to turn our disobedient children, then there are always asshole parents who will turn their children out because they tire of feeding them. If we make corporal punishment legal and acceptable, there are always parents who will take great joy in beating/abusing their children and not having to answer to anybody for it.
I think it comes down to this: if we safeguard children from abuse, legally, they take on greater power. If they take on greater power, they can use that power to do things that are bad, and stymie our efforts to prevent those bad things from happening. But if we take that power back from them, then we're just back to that massive power imbalance of yesteryear, and the abuses it generates.
At the end of the day, it's much harder for a child to beat me up than it is for me to beat up a child. I'm all for mitigating that power imbalance, even if it means that the "child" category becomes solidified, and potentially claustrophobic for its inhabitants, in the process.
Of course, drinking/smoking/voting age bullshit is pointless.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 12:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 12:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 01:05 pm (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
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Date: 2009-08-31 01:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-08-31 09:38 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 03:27 pm (UTC)There was a website called savetoby.com that was just a guy threatening to kill, cook and eat a rabbit called Toby if he didnt receive $50k by a certain date. It made the original owner of the site something close to $25k. Don't be surprised by the extents people will go to make money, even if it means "employing" a 13 year old girl.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 03:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-08-31 03:31 pm (UTC)I often have the fantasy of starting my life again as a child with all the knowledge i have now. After seeing an exhibition last week about the widespread early 80's phenomenon of gypsy pre-teen car hijackers and bank robbers in spain, I played the fantasy all over imagining using my legal inmunity for those purposes, as well as messing with young girls big time, and raping my kindergarten teachers among other fun things. But of course, I thought, how would I get away from parental control?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 03:56 pm (UTC)Oh Slime Slime! How could you!
(no subject)
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From:kuma-san
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-08-31 04:14 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: kuma-san
From:(no subject)
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Date: 2009-08-31 03:54 pm (UTC)and with regards to sex and drinking...
I'm thinking the age to drink (most places 21) and to have sex (18 is adult),,,
is too old. Its fostering an artifical barrier and keeps 'people' in a state of childishness. So when they go off to college they can act like idiots.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 04:24 pm (UTC)In Mexico, for example, the drinking age is 18, but it is not enforced. Teenagers 13-17 can very easily buy alcohol or cigarettes in stores, and yet all too often keep acting like teenagers well into their 20s.
Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that our society doesn't encourage some highly desirable qualities of childhood, so we tend to throw tantrums and act irresponsibly (the presumably undesirable qualities).
Playfullness should be encouraged uncritically, children are still far ahead.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 05:30 pm (UTC)? (I think your example mirrors US, except the laws are enforced: but I drank and smoked when I was under 21 as do most kids)
I think my point is, that in a society (US) that is so heavily policed... we end up with little ability to self monitor. Or consider what is actually fun, considerate and useful.
Is places that the policing is left more up to the community and individuals, people naturally begin to act with more humanity...
when I was in Germany during highschool, I of course hung out and enjoyed drinking with German teenagers, I was amazed at how they acted so different then teenagers in america. The focus was not on getting "shit faced" it was more, having a good time, enjoying a good beir, and it was integrated with the family, and community.
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From:As Foucault said, we are the new Victorians
Date: 2009-08-31 06:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-31 07:58 pm (UTC)Bunney
Date: 2009-08-31 06:57 pm (UTC)Bad BunBun ! You need a taoist exorcist !
Poor momasu !
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 02:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 05:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 06:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 06:19 am (UTC)She gets my vote
Date: 2009-09-01 08:05 am (UTC)