Curson wrote: Sat Nov 08, 2025 1:01 pm
Cunny Defender wrote: Sat Nov 08, 2025 12:23 pm
If you can, try not to use age-specific language such as adult, child, or minor.
How we can use language in our favor; don't say 16-year-old girl; instead, say 16-year-old woman. Don't say consenting adults; say consenting individuals, and so on. These are all ways that will help in normalizing youth sexuality. Language has power; if we can blur the distinction between "adult" and "child," it would only help us, since people will never accept "child" sexuality; therefore, we should change their language in our favor
I mean, teens already are already blurred between the lines of child and adults since they are inherently neither, but closer to adults since they are trending toward adulthood. Some teens even faked their age to do stuff adults could normally, which I would argue makes them capable enough to be treated as adults.
“I mean, teens already are already blurred between the lines of child and adults since they are inherently neither”
Idk about that. I never bought into the idea that there was some special inbetween period thats neither childhood or adulthood. People will say “teens arent children or adults” then treat teenagers like children or adults. And the teens will act like either children or adults. I mean, what definition of child are we using? If we are talking legally or socially, then yes, teens are inherently children in most modern day western countries. If we are talking physically, it depends on your definition of adult. If your defintion is “capable of producing biological offspring”, then I agree with that definition. I don't know why nature would evolve for a “non adult” to be capable of getting pregnant and having a family, especially since “non adults” getting pregnant and having children is apparently so disastrous and life destroying, yet the default age for girls to get pregnant and start a family is 8-14, at least in the modern age. Surely if it was so disastrous and impossible and deadly nature would have zero evolutionary benefit to have evolved for this trait, let alone in the vast majority of the female population? And if all the 8-14 year olds were dying or having their baby die during childbirth because they are too physically fragile and too naive to take care of their offspring and periods in under 18s are just supposed to be for decoration, then why didnt toddlers also evolve to get their periods? What is the evolutionary purpose of under 18s getting their periods if it is apparently so useless and deadly is my question. Even appendixs serve, or at least served a function and have only become useless more recently. But periods have been evolving to come at lower and lower ages, which if it is awful, seem to be reverse evolution?
Yes that means that some early bloomer 8 year olds will be included in this definition of “adult”, but I dont see a problem with that, because I dont see why adults have to be treated like an entirely different species than children in the first place. If it were up to me, being an adult would just be a physical descriptor, like being black or white or short or tall, it wouldnt come with all this extra baggage and expectations. Just because the 8 year old is physically an adult doesnt mean she should be kicked out the house and forced to work a 9-5 job and pay taxes, because I dont think that should be the case for anyone regardless of age. I think that people should be treated based on their capabillities and the needs of the community around them. I see alot of parents get really pissy when their kids, espcially teenagers, try to have the bare minimum of independce or autonomy, then the teen gets labled as “revellious” because he doesnt want mommy spoon feeding him or wiping his ass and the mom throws a bitch fit “if you want to be grown so bad ill show you the real world” and kicks the kid out and leaves them to suffer and starve. I have many problems with this, but my main problem is why “being grown” implies you deserve to suffer on your own with no support or assistance. If he was 18, or 25, that wouldnt be ok either. Alot of people will only have a problem with this behavior because he is legally a child, but I dont see why this behavior from the mom would be acceptable at any age. You can say that its worse for a child since they cant get full time jobs legally, but a child can just go to the police or an orphanage, an adult wont have that same social and legal support. Its a just a cruel thing to do, period, but people act like it would be valid if he was even a day over 18 because “hes an adult he knows what hes doing”. How is he supposed to know what hes doing if for the past 18 years his only purpose was to “be a kid” and the all the adults actively made sure he didnt know anything about the “adulthood”??
If a 10 year old is fully capable of living alone and wants a shot of independence, to me, she should be allowed to try. If she fails she can just move back in, if she likes it and doesnt kill or injure herself in the process, why should she be stopped? And if a 30 year old is struggling to live independently, she shouldnt be kicked out on the streets and forced to be homeless. Ik people will say the independent 10 year old idea is radical and crazy, but riddle me this, if the 10 year old does the research on how to live independently, and they are given the supervised choice to live independlty with parents to easily fall back on and check on her if she doesnt like it or cant handle it, and she proves the adults wrong by being fully capable of managing herself, and she actively prefers it to living with her parents, not because her parents are “abusive” or “neglectful” but because she simply likes the freedom, then what is the reason to prevent her from doing this? Because other 10 year olds cant handle it? But shes proven that she isnt like the other 10 year olds, so why should she be restricted because she is more advanced then her peers?
Like to me, things should be based of inherent capability, not age. Which dont directly correlate on a 1:1 ratio. Even babies are underestimated, we have American parents saying they wont potty train their healthy neurotypical child till 4/5 because potty training before that would hurt the child since they arent “ready” and there “too young”, yet even newborn babies can be potty trained to almost completely with “elimination communication” and the average non American child is potty trained at around 18 months, so if you can even teach a newborn baby to poop in the potty and literally every child putside of America can handle potty training before the age of even 2 without any “trauma”, I don't get how your 4 year old is somehow “too young” to handle it, or why teaching someone how to not defecate on themselves and sit in their own feces is considered “too dangerous” to teach. They claim that potty training a child before 4 “removes their autonomy”, as if being forced to shit yourself and sit in your shit and being completely dependent on the parent/adult to get change your diaper and wipe your ass gives you more autonomy than being able to just get up and use the toilet whenever you feel like it and wipe your own ass and take care of your own shit??? They also say they wont potty train thwir kid because its taking away their childhood? As if an inherent part of childhood should be shitting yourself and sitting in your urine and feces for as long as possible until the adult can be bothered to teach you a basic life skill?
To be honest, idek what it means to “be an adult” or “be a child” be 98% of it just seems to be arbitrary legal and social concepts that have only recently sprung up in the last 200 years as a response to industrialization and like 2% of it has anything to do with actual physical development. And even the physical stages of growth are arbritrarily classified and constantly change depending on the time period and culture. They say that teens arent phsyically adults because they arent finished with puberty, but there are plenty of under 18s who are finished with puberty, even more so now since the puberty rates are dropping, but they are still classified as non adults, and as a matter of fact, are classified even younger than before the puberty rates where as low, despite being more likely to be done with puberty. They say that 18 and older is adult because they are done growing, but wisdom teeth can take up to your mid 20s to grow, which means by this same definition, a 24 year old isnt an adult if he is still in the process of growing his wisdom tooth. They say that 16 year olds arent adults because of “brain development”, but the brain “devloping” at 25 is a myth, the brain devloped and changes your entire life, and even if the brain stagnating at 25 WAS true, that would mean that a 50 year old is developmentally only 25 years old, so if they got with a teenager this age, it wouldnt be a huge mental difference of decades, but of less than a decade since his brain stopped at 25. And even if the puberty thing where true, that no one before 18 was finished with puberty and being done with puberty is 100% a sign of adulthood. What do we constitute as being an adult” anyways? Being able to work a 9-5 and carry around a briefcase? Is a 16 year old incapable of working a full time job despite looking and acting identical to his 18 year old friend because he has acne and is a couple centimeters shorter? And all the things associated with childhood. I will see a child or teen expressing a normal ass basic human emotion and the adults will be like “thats a part of being a child” or “hes doing that because hes a teen”, no, hes doing that because he is a HUMAN, adults have those same emotions idk why we have to act like having or expressing basic ass emotiona is a “child” or “teen” thing. Like we have created all these frustrating and arbritrary cultural and legal expectations over shit that doesnt even really matter in the modern age due to technogical advancements.
Even the way children and teenagers “act immature” has alot to do with how they are raised to me. They are only allowed to interact and learn from peers and artficially restricted from being close with anyone older and younger than them(anytime they try to interact with adults they are labled as “grooming victims” and if they are friends with younger kids they get called pedos
), and the adults that are allowed to interact with them, like parents and teachers, actively encourage said immaturity because it is “being a kid” and discourage whatever is arbritrarily defined as maturity because they arent “being a kid”. The minors are sheltered and pretty much their only life expierence is just school(but to be fair, your only life expierence as an adult is work unless your privilleged enough to travel), you arenr allowed to trach them or allow them to develop any real life skills because then you are “parentifying” or “adultfying” them, even basic ass life skills necessary for survival like cooking a damn meal, ive heard antis whine about how the kid is being “groomed” into “acting grown”. So the kids are forced into an artificial state of dependency by antis, then antis complain that the kids are too dependent to do anything. Its a self fulfilling prophecy. And im fully aware that that while age isnt a 1:1, a baby isnt going to be able to work a 9-5 while a 15 year old obviously could, but like with the potty training example, even literal infants are underestimated and artifcially forced to be more dependent and ignorant than the naturally would be by the adults around them. Which is strange because I was under the impression that adults were supposed to teach children about life and yknow, raise children, but now adays, adults teaching children about life is “adultfying” or “parentfying” or “grooming” them and “destroying their childhoods/innocence”, and our job as adults is instead, to force kids to be as ignorant and dependent on adults as much as possible for as long as possible and to lie to them or hide basic facts to “persevere their innocence”. Modern day western parenting seems less about raising future functional adults and more about keeping kids ignorant and dependent on them as much as possible for as long as possible. But this isnt to glaze the concept of adulthood and only hate on the concept of childhood, because I have just as many problems with the way our society conceptualizes adulthood as they do childhood.
child = allowed to have fun, but only in the strict and narrow ways we allow it, allowed to experience joy, have emotions, rely on others, but absolutely no agency allowed whatsoever even if you have demonstrated being able to handle said agency and we wont teach you anything that would be actually important because your job is to “be a kid”.
Adult= no having fun, except for in the strict ways we allow you to, you have the freedom to be a wage slave for the next 50 years , and we wont help you with anything and will leave you to suffer because “your grown now”, any expression of basic human emotions or desires means you are being childish and need to “grow up”
And these drastically different social and legal worlds are so fucking arbritrary, if the law changed tomorrow and made 13+ legal adults, all of a sudden, innocent little 16 year old children would be shamed for not acting “grown” instead of “acting grown”. If it were based on werher you reached puberty or not, a flat chested 12 year old would be shamed for acting grown and a 10 year old with budding boobies would be shamed for not acting grown. If it were based on finishing puberty, a 17 year old with acne would be shamed for acting grown and a 13 year old who started her period at 8 would be shamed for not acting grown. My point is, that is completely fucking arbritrary no matter how you look at it, yet society worships the standards of “the child” and “the adult” like it is anything more than a constantly changing non linear cultural standard. If it were up to me, I would get rid of the concept of “child” and “childhood” and “adult” and “adulthood” entirely, ik that is radical but idc thats my opinion
), and the adults that are allowed to interact with them, like parents and teachers, actively encourage said immaturity because it is “being a kid” and discourage whatever is arbritrarily defined as maturity because they arent “being a kid”. The minors are sheltered and pretty much their only life expierence is just school(but to be fair, your only life expierence as an adult is work unless your privilleged enough to travel), you arenr allowed to trach them or allow them to develop any real life skills because then you are “parentifying” or “adultfying” them, even basic ass life skills necessary for survival like cooking a damn meal, ive heard antis whine about how the kid is being “groomed” into “acting grown”. So the kids are forced into an artificial state of dependency by antis, then antis complain that the kids are too dependent to do anything. Its a self fulfilling prophecy. And im fully aware that that while age isnt a 1:1, a baby isnt going to be able to work a 9-5 while a 15 year old obviously could, but like with the potty training example, even literal infants are underestimated and artifcially forced to be more dependent and ignorant than the naturally would be by the adults around them. Which is strange because I was under the impression that adults were supposed to teach children about life and yknow, raise children, but now adays, adults teaching children about life is “adultfying” or “parentfying” or “grooming” them and “destroying their childhoods/innocence”, and our job as adults is instead, to force kids to be as ignorant and dependent on adults as much as possible for as long as possible and to lie to them or hide basic facts to “persevere their innocence”. Modern day western parenting seems less about raising future functional adults and more about keeping kids ignorant and dependent on them as much as possible for as long as possible. But this isnt to glaze the concept of adulthood and only hate on the concept of childhood, because I have just as many problems with the way our society conceptualizes adulthood as they do childhood.