I know adultism isn't as well-known as a form of bigotry as others like misogyny or racism, so I wanted to spend a post talking about it and explaining what it is and how it affects people and our society.
Adultism is a form of ageism, which is discrimination based on age. Ageism focuses on both the young and old, because people are marginalized for being old, but adultism is an umbrella term focused specifically on how our youth is treated. It's similar to exorsexism in that exorsexism is a form of transphobia, but nonbinary and abinary people are even more marginalized compared to binary trans people and can be oppressed by our own community in that way--- being discriminated for being young is ageism, but the elderly still have more rights than children and behave as their oppressors, so there's a specific label for youth.
How are children discriminated against for their age? It's very common to see children as subhuman in our society. For example, physical and emotional abuse towards children is very normalized and legal in most places. Spanking is a form of abuse and I'm not going to use this post to get into why that is. It's also very common to belittle and speak over children-- "the adults are talking" when a child wants to tell an adult something, but if the child is busy or speaking they're expected to drop everything to pay attention to the adults. "When I say something, you do it" being expected to blindly follow authority without explanation is oppressive. It sounds awfully similar to "you wouldn't be punished if you didn't resist," does it not? Children are effectively seen as the property of their parents as well. Whether or not they get access to human rights such as bodily autonomy and privacy is essentially a gamble, crossing their fingers and hoping that they're born to good parents who allow that. Behaviors adults participate in such as dictating how children dress or modify parts of themselves (such as giving them piercings when they're too young to consent themselves or not allowing them to style/dye their hair certain ways) are limiting freedom of expression.
Our adultist system also permits for the abuse and oppression of children to be upheld. Parent's Rights Activists are a great example of seeing children as property as they believe they have a right to know about and control every aspect of their child's life even if it sacrifices the well-being of the child. The many censorship laws and rules being in place are more than just censorship, they're a sign of oppression and doubting the intelligence and capability of children. Kids, specifically teenagers deserve access to resources regarding sex education, substance usage, violence and injustice in the world, our current political climate, and other things that get censored. They also won't die if they here the word fuck,, there really is no good reason to age-restrict profanity to the point of needing ID verification to access it. Kids younger than teenagers can also hear these things and have these conversations, though at a more age-appropriate level and they shouldn't have unrestricted internet access-- but the censorship laws aren't really about protecting children, if you haven't caught on yet.
It's difficult for children to escape abusive situations. Even in situations that are legally recognized as abusive such as sexual assault and physical abuse to the point of bruising and/or bleeding, they still aren't always taken seriously and can be blamed on the child for not obeying or "asking for it." Children are often restricted to only being around their parents outside of school (which is also an oppressive and harmful space made for conditioning, but I'll speak on that in a later post) so they don't really have many places to go if they're being abused. Isolation is an abuser's favorite tool, and being a child can be extremely isolating. It certainly doesn't help that children are often painted as dramatic and incapable of knowing what's best for them. Systems that are put in place to help harmed children, such as the foster care system, can also be flawed and harmful--- I haven't experienced it myself nor have I done an adequate amount of research on it, but I do know that many foster children end up being sent to homes where they face (more) abuse, aren't valued because they aren't their "real" kids, are more likely to be put into trafficking and are kicked out of the system and essentially lost if they're still there once they turn 18. There's also a general stigma that foster children are "bad kids" even though they were the ones being harmed. Basically, the options for children being abused and seeking help out of that is not great.
Like other forms of bigotry, adultism also helps to uphold other ways of oppressing people. To go back to Parent's Right Activists, they tend to target the LGBTQ+ community by wanting to out and "fix" LGBTQ+ kids and paint LGBTQ+ adults and allies as abusers, groomers and/or sexual predators. Autistic children are often sent into therapies like ABA in order to "fix" them, aka learning that their autistic traits are inherently shameful and they need to hide them instead of learning to accept themselves and figure out ways they can accommodate their disability. I believe d/Deaf children have had similar experiences with being forced to learn how to speak, though I'm not as educated on that. Intersex children are often operated on to assign them to a specific binary sex even when they are perfectly functional and healthy as naturally intersex, and surgeries can literally be detrimental and cause permanent damage to the body. Adultism also merges with misogyny as people targeted by misogyny growing up have their bodies sexualized by adults and other children who've been raised to treat others that way, with these people being expected to do things like shave and being banned from clothes that are "too revealing" as if covering extra skin has ever stopped a rapist and a child wearing clothes is an invitation for sex. It can aid in fatphobia as naturally chubby or fat children can be denied meals or forced to overwork themselves in order to lose weight even though they don't need to and are often just hurting themselves. The list goes on, this entire blog is dedicated to pointing out instances of adultism after all.
And finally, another way we can see that this is oppression is the fact that children get treated similar to how other marginalized groups get treated. Teenagers being given dirty looks and told to leave places for loitering and being seen as more likely to commit crime because of their age mimics racial profiling and the assumption that certain racial groups, specifically black folks in public are more likely to be stealing. Children are expected to just take what their oppressors give to them because its their biological place and they should be seen and not heard, a song women have had sung to them all throughout history. Children are devalued and mocked for their brains not being fully developed and are considered stupid, irrational and idiotic for it, which is what the mentally ill and disabled are viewed as all the time. The list can go on.
This oppression is why we have the children's rights and youth liberation movements, but explaining those and what they mean will have to be a different post.
