Youth liberation and the reification of innocence

[PorcelainLark]

Among the more pro-contact orientated MAPs, many tend to side with the perspective known as youth liberation. It seems obvious to argue that statutory rape laws are limitations on the freedom of youth, so it's understandable why pro-contact MAPs tend to take this position. However, in my opinion, there are some underlying issues with the youth liberation approach.

A central figure in youth liberation, is the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who argued that, because human beings are innately good and can only be corrupted by society, children's innocence is very important to preserve. In order to do this, the guardian of a child would avoid the use of corporal punishment and force in the parenting and education of children. As far as possible, the child was meant to be free.

This view romanticizes innocence and mystifies childhood. Just as adults are fallible, so are children - the free, undirected action of a child is not necessarily, any morally better than the directed action.

This is why I would prefer to say children can make mistakes that they can also learn to understand. The danger of youth liberation is that it unwittingly sustains the idealization of innocence, which impoverishes children's ability to learn and understand.

[FairBlueLove]

Maybe I'm missing a point, but isn't your argument based only on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's position? I don't know, but isn't youth liberation broader than this?

Could you please elaborate further on this particular aspect?

[PorcelainLark]

Maybe I'm missing a point, but isn't your argument based only on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's position? I don't know, but isn't youth liberation broader than this?

Could you please elaborate further on this particular aspect?

It's the underlying belief that self-direction is necessarily preferable to paternalism (a belief which isn't really separable from youth liberation) that I take issue with. Rousseau's justification is a precursor to other less obvious examples of these anti-paternalist beliefs. For example, the idea of "grooming" violating the autonomy of youths, since the groomer may lead the youth to a decision they wouldn't otherwise make. The youth is characterized as exploited when they are "groomed". In contrast, consider the idea of ars erotica, i.e. that sexual pleasure is an art that can be taught as opposed to something that has to be learned individually, by self-directed exploration of each generation. In other words, I think adults can help youths understand their own desires to a significantly greater degree than most youth liberationists believe.

[FairBlueLove]

Thanks for the clarification! I see your point, and I concur with it.

[CLover36]

Sort of through undirected mass education perhaps? Maybe using gamefication models of education with multiple tracks?

[RoosterDance]

I don't know about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but the Youth Liberation stuff I've been reading hasn't been extolling "innocence", but rather the freedom to make their own choices, while us older generation help guide those choices. They call not for anarchy, but for personal responsibility. Here's a passage I like quoting from this one article:

I recently spoke at a conference of the Childhood Sensuality Circle (one of three California organizations promoting sexual freedom) on the subject of sexual freedom for young people. Some people asked me if sexual freedom for young people could be bad. One woman wondered if children could take care of themselves or whether they would be hurt and exploited by adults and should therefore be restricted "for their own good."

I answered that adults who exploit kids and adults who restrict them are both doing the same thing: ignoring their rights. One hundred years ago, a similar situation existed regarding child labor. In the late 1800s, children were often forced to work up to sixteen hours, six days a week. To stop that, state legislatures and Congress ruled that people cannot work until they are fourteen or sixteen.

Nobody considered the child's right to work. First young people were being forced, and now they're being denied. One way or another, they aren't being allowed to make the choice for themselves. The basis of youth liberation is escape from control by exploitation and undue restriction.

[PorcelainLark]

I don't know about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but the Youth Liberation stuff I've been reading hasn't been extolling "innocence", but rather the freedom to make their own choices, while us older generation help guide those choices. They call not for anarchy, but for personal responsibility.

Fair enough. With respect to the issue of innocence, I'm mostly concerned with how it's a conceptual precursor to the two relating issues of "grooming" and whether sexuality is something innate.

I feel like there's this thing that happens where people use the freedom of children as a reason not to explain sexuality to them (i.e. they'll naturally grow into it, no need to rush the process). This is why I've said before that my position is more sex-positive paternalism than child liberation. I think there's something lacking in sexual education, an intersubjective element, that is rooted in these biases against premature sexuality and in favor of preserving innocence, that quite easily gets framed as respecting children's autonomy.

For example, a heterosexual woman could understand a heterosexual girl's desires, to the extent that the woman may have a clearer idea of what the girl wants than girl knows herself. There isn't necessarily a good reason why the girl's desires should be self-discovered as opposed to being taught. In general, most calls for liberation (whether in the context of youth or in other contexts), have this central idea of authenticity which I want to question. Is the so-called "groomer" in the wrong because they violate the authentic sexuality of a youth?

Self-understanding isn't limited to the experiences that come from free (i.e. exclusively internally based) choices. That's my motive.

I wrote this thread to explain the motivation for an essay I'm writing about Spinoza regarding the tabula rasa versus innate view of human nature. The tabula rasa view takes human nature and self-understanding to only being derived from experience, whereas the innate view is that there are qualities that are already there. In this context Spinoza and Rousseau are at odds in terms of what progressive education involves. To quote again:

"Accordingly, one of the central tasks of education is to disrupt irrational fears and desires, and by promoting the reordering of ideas, reshaping the students’ conception of the good life so that they may pursue long-term happiness rather than the temporary pleasures advertised in their surroundings. An initial step toward achieving this, from the perspective of the teacher, may be to arrange for an environment where students are not torn by many powerful passive affects but where many of the temptations and threats of everyday life are kept at bay or approached in a structured and methodical way so that students may learn to break chains of associations that cause them to suffer. This is what Spinoza talks about in 5p4s where he encourages us to “take special care to know each affect clearly and distinctly” so that in this way “the affect itself may be separated from the thought of an external cause and joined to true thoughts.”To reiterate, this means that the cause of distress may be understood to be an inadequate concept of the good rather than the perceived inability to attain (and to hold on to) these goods. If this is so then it appears that child-centered and student-centered education faces a serious problem insofar as the teacher is encouraged to turn to the children or the students, asking them what it is that they want." - Dahlbeck's Spinoza and Education.

The other thing is that I think I might have put off Julia from participating in the forum by talking about this stuff, so I wanted try to explain my perspective in way that would be civil. It felt like the elephant in the room I needed to address.

[RoosterDance]

I suppose I agree with your assessment, but I still haven't really seen anyone arguing otherwise. Like, even with anti's, I've never seen anyone imply that "grooming" and "learning on their own" are diametrically opposed.

[PorcelainLark]

I suppose I agree with your assessment, but I still haven't really seen anyone arguing otherwise. Like, even with anti's, I've never seen anyone imply that "grooming" and "learning on their own" are diametrically opposed.

Fair enough, I've only come across when arguing with the occasional anti-contact youth liberationist. Really, it's more about my interest in Spinoza. I was interested in Spinoza first, and the topic of youth liberation came up later.

[MemeticTheory]

Youth-lead liberation(YLL) ???
also..I was thinking of the concept of Wilhelm Reich's 'SexPol" which I will copypaste the google AI basic info below...?

SexPol clinics and pamphlets...?

AI Overview
Learn more
Wilhelm Reich's "Sexpol" movement, which he developed from 1927-1933, focused on combining his sexological work with his communist political convictions, particularly among working-class youth, and involved activities like setting up clinics, teaching sex education, and publishing pamphlets, including "The Sexual Struggle of Youth".
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Sexpol Movement:
Reich's "Sexpol" movement emerged from his belief that sexuality and sexual repression played a crucial role in the production and reproduction of class structures and hierarchies.
Working-Class Focus:
Reich's work and political activity, including Sexpol, primarily targeted working-class communities, particularly youth.
Practical Activities:
Reich engaged in practical activities like setting up clinics in working-class areas, teaching sex education, and publishing pamphlets to promote his ideas.
"The Sexual Struggle of Youth":
He even established his own publishing house, Verlag für Sexualpolitik, to publish his pamphlet "Der sexuelle Kampf der Jugend" (later translated as "The Sexual Struggle of Youth") after the Communist Party of Germany delayed its publication.
Conflict with the Communist Party:
Reich's views on adolescent sexuality and his involvement in a conference promoting it led to the Communist Party announcing that it would no longer publish his material.
Freud's Response:
Sigmund Freud also distanced himself from Reich, canceling his contract with the International Psychoanalytic Publishers to publish Reich's "Character Analysis," likely due to Reich's stance on teenage sex.