elements

I was reading the very interesting post at ontd_feminism on LJ about the It Gets Better project its problematicness in ignoring the many very real ways that for a lot of queer kids, especially queer kids also facing other oppressions, it doesn't always get better. That's an important critique, and one I agree with.

In the comments, though, some people are arguing that there is NOTHING about being a teen that gets better when you turn 18. tacky_tramp argued that one specific thing does get better, namely that a kid becoming an adult gains the legal right to control over their life, because in that one way childhood itself can be considered an oppressed class. People pounced on her, asking things like whether this means parents are oppressing their toddlers by not giving them steak knives. Really? Can't we have a nuanced discourse here? I mean, I know it's ONTD, but still.

I'm not yet approved as a member of ontd_feminism, so I can't share my comment there. But it bugs me enough to want to say it somewhere.

There is a very real difference, unacknowledged in most of our laws, between the ages of childhood in which it is nearly impossible for a child to know what is best for them (ie toddlers), ages when children can sometimes know what's best for them but generally don't have the maturity to act on it or distinguish that from other simple wants, and late childhood ages (adolescence) when children are in many cases the best arbiters of what is best for them, but are also going through developmental crap and maturity crap, and still in some cases really are not ready to be full adults. I have long believed that we should have some more nuanced laws around these distinctions of childhood. A teenager should not be legally the same as an infant, in terms of the rights they have in opposition to their parents.

All of this is assuming, of course, parents who have the best interests of their kids at heart, which isn't necessarily true regardless of the age of the kid. And for parents who believe that a kid's best interest is in being prevented from being/acting queer and going to hell at all costs, or whatever their personal issue with queerness, they have every legal right to do everything they can to break their child, apart from repeated and provable physical abuse, until that child turns 18 or runs away or believes they have no way out and takes their own life.

I don't believe the argument here is that it is oppressive for parents to deny their toddlers extra ice creams. The argument is that, when one is a teenager (the target audience of the video project), it's possible to be stuck in a legal bind in which one is not being actively abused in sufficient enough ways and with enough regularity and enough provability for the authorities to intervene, and yet the child doesn't have enough legal rights of their own to make their own choices to get out of that situation. The way out is to turn 18, and so stop being in the legally restricted class of people who are not yet adults.


This kind of thing happens to teenagers all the time, queer and not queer. I have a teen I care about very much right now in that kind of situation. Other adult friends of hers and I have looked into the legal issues, and, with the teenager, ended up deciding not to try to press for legal action to emancipate her from her parents because it would almost certainly fail, which would put her in physical danger of retaliation for making the attempt and definitely make the rest of her life while she has to live with her parents more difficult rather than less. This child is not, as far as she knows and has shared with us, queer, and this particular oppression of hers is entirely due to her legal status as a minor rather than the several other oppressed classes she is also a part of. This kid is literally counting the months until she turns 18 and is legally allowed to make her own life choices.

I get the arguments here, and I am no Dan savage fan, and I agree that the It Gets Better project is problematically simplistic. But I agree with tacky_tramp that there *is* some real oppression that applies to teenagers, particularly those whose ideas of what they want for their own lives are incompatible with their parents'. And in many cases, this goes even more for kids who are from exactly the oppressed-minority, low-income, unprivileged backgrounds that the ontd_feminism post is most concerned about. It's the kids who don't have the resources of a wealthy aunt who can pay to send them to a boarding school just so they can get out of their parents' house until they turn 18. It's kids who often don't have the social or financial resources to navigate the system even if it is a good idea to try to get them out, emacipated, into foster care, etc. (And having a sister who went through foster care, it's not something I'd push a teen toward without their full informed consent if it can at all be avoided; though many foster families are wonderful sometimes it's frying pan to fire with fewer options for further escape.)

Give tacky_tramp a break here. I don't think she is in any way arguing that a whole ton about the project is problematic, just as dan savage himself can be uber problematic (transphobia, fatphobia, and classism come to mind). But there is a real and legitimate oppression of teens in bad situations that does get better simply by their turning 18. My sister was able to flee her abusive foster home literally the day she turned 18, when she hadn't been able to prove to the family court monitoring her situation that anything was enough wrong to get out earlier. That was a real oppression, and it was because she was a minor, and that singular aspect of her life DID get better when she stopped being a minor.

Turning 18 did not negate any of the other issues she faced, or that any kid facing a cascade of oppressions faces. Turning 18 doesn't erase years of trauma, and it doesn't make a person rich or well-educated or no longer part of a discriminated-against ethnic group or any such thing. But it does help in an important and very real way, and if that sliver of hope is the difference that can keep a kid who is suffering alive, I'll take it.

What I would really like to see is a slew of responses within the It Gets Better project from people who are queer AND who face multiple oppressions telling their honest stories of "It gets better, in some ways, but I'm not gonna lie to you, kid." If I make a video, that will be my take. I think *THAT* does have the potential to be powerful, and to reach the kids who will be alienated by the privilege reeking from dan savage himself. The project was begun by Dan, but there's no reason we can't push it further.

I agree it would be even more awesome to see queer kids from a diversity of backgrounds do a project of their own, in their own voices, on this issue. But we can't do or decide that for them. That doesn't mean we as adults shouldn't be allowed to do anything.