#medium repost

[aronarchy]

Why we don’t like it when children hit us back

To all the children who have ever been told to “respect” someone that hated them.

March 21, 2023

Even those of us that are disturbed by the thought of how widespread corporal punishment still is in all ranks of society are uncomfortable at the idea of a child defending themself using violence against their oppressors and abusers. A child who hits back proves that the adults “were right all along,” that their violence was justified. Even as they would cheer an adult victim for defending themself fiercely.

Even those “child rights advocates” imagine the right child victim as one who takes it without ever stopping to love “its” owners. Tear-stained and afraid, the child is too innocent to be hit in a guilt-free manner. No one likes to imagine the Brat as Victim—the child who does, according to adultist logic, deserve being hit, because they follow their desires, because they walk the world with their head high, because they talk back, because they are loud, because they are unapologetically here, and resistant to being cast in the role of guest of a world that is just not made for them.

If we are against corporal punishment, the brat is our gotcha, the proof that it is actually not that much of an injustice. The brat unsettles us, so much that the “bad seed” is a stock character in horror, a genre that is much permeated by the adult gaze (defined as “the way children are viewed, represented and portrayed by adults; and finally society’s conception of children and the way this is perpetuated within institutions, and inherent in all interactions with children”), where the adult fear for the subversion of the structures that keep children under control is very much represented.

It might be very well true that the Brat has something unnatural and sinister about them in this world, as they are at constant war with everything that has ever been created, since everything that has been created has been built with the purpose of subjugating them. This is why it feels unnatural to watch a child hitting back instead of cowering. We feel like it’s not right. We feel like history is staring back at us, and all the horror we felt at any rebel and wayward child who has ever lived, we are feeling right now for that reject of the construct of “childhood innocence.” The child who hits back is at such clash with our construction of childhood because we defined violence in all of its forms as the province of the adult, especially the adult in authority.

The adult has an explicit sanction by the state to do violence to the child, while the child has both a social and legal prohibition to even think of defending themself with their fists. Legislation such as “parent-child tort immunity” makes this clear. The adult’s designed place is as the one who hits, and has a right and even an encouragement to do so, the one who acts, as the person. The child’s designed place is as the one who gets hit, and has an obligation to accept that, as the one who suffers acts, as the object. When a child forcibly breaks out of their place, they are reversing the supposed “natural order” in a radical way.

This is why, for the youth liberationist, there should be nothing more beautiful to witness that the child who snaps. We have an unique horror for parricide, and a terrible indifference at the 450 children murdered every year by their parents in just the USA, without even mentioning all the indirect suicides caused by parental abuse. As a Psychology Today article about so-called “parricide” puts it:

Unlike adults who kill their parents, teenagers become parricide offenders when conditions in the home are intolerable but their alternatives are limited. Unlike adults, kids cannot simply leave. The law has made it a crime for young people to run away. Juveniles who commit parricide usually do consider running away, but many do not know any place where they can seek refuge. Those who do run are generally picked up and returned home, or go back on their own: Surviving on the streets is hardly a realistic alternative for youths with meager financial resources, limited education, and few skills.

By far, the severely abused child is the most frequently encountered type of offender. According to Paul Mones, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in defending adolescent parricide offenders, more than 90 percent have been abused by their parents. In-depth portraits of such youths have frequently shown that they killed because they could no longer tolerate conditions at home. These children were psychologically abused by one or both parents and often suffered physical, sexual, and verbal abuse as well—and witnessed it given to others in the household. They did not typically have histories of severe mental illness or of serious and extensive delinquent behavior. They were not criminally sophisticated. For them, the killings represented an act of desperation—the only way out of a family situation they could no longer endure.

- Heide, Why Kids Kill Parents, 1992.

Despite these being the most frequent conditions of “parricide,” it still brings unique disgust to think about it for most people. The sympathy extended to murdering parents is never extended even to the most desperate child, who chose to kill to not be killed. They chose to stop enduring silently, and that was their greatest crime; that is the crime of the child who hits back. Hell, children aren’t even supposed to talk back. They are not supposed to be anything but grateful for the miserable pieces of space that adults carve out in a world hostile to children for them to live following adult rules. It isn’t rare for children to notice the adult monopoly on violence and force when they interact with figures like teachers, and the way they use words like “respect.” In fact, this social dynamic has been noticed quite often:

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority” and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person” and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

(https://soycrates.tumblr.com/post/115633137923/stimmyabby-sometimes-people-use-respect-to-mean)

But it has received almost no condemnation in the public eye. No voices have raised to contrast the adult monopoly on violence towards child bodies and child minds. No voices have raised to praise the child who hits back. Because they do deserve praise. Because the child who sets their foot down and says this belongs to me, even when it’s something like their own body that they are claiming, is committing one of the most serious crimes against adult society, who wants them dispossessed.

Sources:

“The Adult Gaze: a tool of control and oppression,” https://livingwithoutschool.com/2021/07/29/the-adult-gaze-a-tool-of-control-and-oppression

“Filicide,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filicide

[cairafea]

my favourite genre of seventeen is when they're straight up lying

ref:

[elizakai]

so apparently this drawing like. got eradicated by the tumblr void because the original post is gone…so here it is again bsisndn💔🙂‍↕️

[datshitrandom]

Klaine moments by episode | 3.01 The Purple Piano Project

[halo2rat]

[storiesfromthegrave]

Follow the source link to 23 gifs of NIKHIL PARMAR in the tv-series Foundation (season 1 / 2021). NIKHIL PARMAR (born 1990) is a British actor of unknown Indian descent, known for his roles in Foundation, the Rig, and Brassic. These gifs were made from scratch, please don’t claim them as your own. This gif pack is free. Trigger warning: guns.

Please consider donating to my kofi!

[the-bite-of-87-lol]

I see you friend of mine liking ALL of my posts (/poz)

Also because I feel like it *tosses my lovely art on the table*

[t4tcecilos]

- but I am always swinging at somebody I cannot down -

@cherrifire’s dtiys!! this was so fun i loved making it :]

[pinkibot]

Decided to do something for @tracobuttons’ Sam gathering this year! My first time ever participating in one, so have my Sam from my spirit medium AU :)

[paintings-drawings-sketches-ohmy]

Just finished this delightful pangolin for the wonderful @dragons-and-yellow-roses !

As always, $5 from the sale will go to the pangolin crisis fund to help keep these amazingly weird little creatures around

[aronarchy]

Let’s Talk about Toddlers and Consent.

Nov 6, 2021

My daughter can be very, very affectionate. Tight hugs, big kisses, tickles, holding hands, sitting in my lap, you name it—if this kid feels like cuddling, she wants ALL the cuddles.

But she has also been, from the get-go, very much determined to be in control of how and when that affection happens. Maybe she’s in the middle of something and doesn’t want to be disturbed; maybe she’s feeling overwhelmed and being touched is overstimulating; maybe she just doesn’t feel like hugging or kissing right now. She has absolutely no worry about hurting anyone’s feelings when it comes to that stuff.

The first time she set that boundary verbally, she was barely two. I had asked to tickle her and she had giggled and said yes, but after a minute she grabbed my hand, pushed it away, looked me dead in the eye, and said very firmly, “Mama, STOP.”

And you know how I felt about it?

So. Damn. PROUD.

I have always encouraged that. Whether she says no when I ask, or tells me to stop because she changed her mind after saying yes, I tell her, “Okay, then I won’t hug/kiss/tickle you. Thank you for telling me you don’t want that.”

Now that she’s getting a little older, I routinely ask her: “Who makes the rules about your body?” “Who makes the rules about someone else’s body?” It’s a routine part of our lives at this point, and she knows that she makes the rules for her body and no one else’s, and that she and no one else makes the rules for her own body.

Now, not everyone likes this. Some people have felt deprived of those messy baby kisses, overeager toddler hugs, and now, almost-four-year-old squeezes and hand-holding. They get sad when they have to say goodbye without a hug, or hurt when she spurns their kisses.

To that I say: Suck it up and deal.

She is absolutely not wrong for deciding that affection should be on her own terms, and nothing makes me more upset than when relatives push back against this.

“Don’t you want to give me a hug? I won’t see you again for a while!”

“Aw, you don’t want to give me kisses? Don’t you love me?”

“I’m so sad, can’t I just have one of your big hugs to make me feel better?”

NO.

“It’ll make [person] feel bad if you don’t [perform specific act of physical affection]” is a guilt tactic I’m not okay with using.

Same with “It’s just [type of physical affection], it’s not a big deal.” “Don’t be uptight, it’s just tickling.” “It’s only a hug, it won’t emotionally scar her.”

I will never give my daughter the message that she owes someone physical affection, or should be okay with her boundaries being crossed if it was “not a big deal” or “nothing was meant by it” or “they’re just playing” or whatever.

I know it’s meant innocently. But if you grow up hearing “You can’t say no to being touched if the intentions aren’t bad,” then you eventually internalize that.

They’re “Just Playing,” so you’re a prude if you tell them to stop touching you.

“It’s not even a big deal,” so you’re a bitch if you get mad about being groped.

They “feel like you don’t love them” if you reject their physical advances, so you get guilted into things you don’t feel totally okay with.

Yes, familial and platonic touch are very different from romantic and sexual touch. But the message is the same—“Regardless of whether you want to be touched, these acts of affection are expected from you, and you’re wrong to refuse them.” You don’t think that message gets internalized, and applied to other relationships?

We teach very young children that they don’t have bodily autonomy, and then we’re surprised when they grow up not understanding consent. It has to start young.

It starts with asking permission—“Can I hug you?” “Can I have a kiss?” “Do you want the tickle monster to get you?”

It starts with setting an example on enforcing boundaries—“Mommy needs some space right now, can you please stop climbing on me?” “I don’t really feel like a kiss, I don’t feel good right now. How about a high-five instead?”

Most importantly, it starts with giving your child permission to say no, and always, always respecting that “No.”

My goal is for my daughter to be so accustomed to her “no” being answered with a full stop—no attempts at persuasion, no guilt, no “it’s not a big deal”—that the idea of someone NOT listening to “no” is completely foreign and jarring. I want her to be shocked and appalled at the audacity of anyone who tries to touch her without her permission.

I want her to see persistence without consent as a MASSIVE RED FLAG, and that’s not going to happen if I start off by teaching her as a child that she owes physical affection to people who love her.

I’m trying to teach my daughter that she always, ALWAYS has autonomy over her own body, no matter who she’s with or how much they love her, and that I will always have her back against anyone who dares to disrespect that.

[artsycloudysleepy]

what's this?? an actual post on my blog?? scandalous /silly :0

DO NOT REPOST.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

one in a million when i watch smthing in the horror genre and don't end up disappointed to/and/or pissed off about it so like "also yeah i liked it. ooo" is like relative to that an off the charts rave review of media of the millennium. also i did think about mh a lot along the way so would recommend its affect/effect if you like mh's horror too

[aronarchy]

"life as a 22 year old mother of 3" "life as a married 19 year old couple" *video of mother daughter and grandma making reference to how they were both moms at like 16* *21 year old girl flex video about how she's a mother of 4* *couple whose entire personality is having 10 kids before turning 30* "married my highschool sweetheart at 18 and now i have 8 kids at age 25" "what i do in a day as a 19 year old housewife"

[peace-and-light-poetry]

What the Mirror Shows

She hated mirrors Not for what it was, of course not But because of what it showed

Mirrors showed what was true Thus, her reflection hid no secrets It showed what she had seen

She saw her reflection glaring, sneering, and snickering at her Bloody and covered in bruises Horrifically marred, almost to the point of death

To put it simply, decay was what she had seen

In every mirror, she had seen decay Seeing that image mock her again and again Yet, she never brought herself to destroy them

The mirrors showed what she wanted to deny And what many others didn't seem to see Mirrors showed the truth

Quietly, she begged them to stop tormenting her

For she didn't want to admit it She didn't want to see it for herself The decay

The mirrors knew that She knew that And she hated the idea of facing it.

[mintpink-neon-too]