the people who deliberately misunderstand youth liberation really piss me off as an adult who was once a kid who wanted to run away and, while literally running away from home, realized they had nowhere else to go but back home. nowhere. no where! the only place i could go was back home to my abusive parents. youth liberation is creating a society wherein i, as a child, would have had a safe place to go that was not my home, where i could prioritize my and my brother's safety.
youth liberation is what helps children get the medical support they need, even if their parents are neglectful.
youth liberation educates the child so that the child has the necessary language to speak on their own behalf, as an agent of themselves with autonomy over themselves.
youth liberation demands we treat all children as what they are: future adults, who at all times have the right to autonomy over their body, and a right to a life free from abuse and exploitation. it would deny parents the ability to force (in the case of intersex "correction" surgeries) or deny medical care, deny them the ability to isolate and control their children through regulated forms of education like in homeschooling, and would instead give that power to the child and the child alone.
youth liberation is not only about preventing abuse before it happens, by demanding that children are treated with respect and as full agents over themselves, it is also about creating a supportive society that allows children to escape abusive situations to a community-based safe space.
everyone trying to argue youth lib is about "letting pedophiles hang out with children" are not only engaging in some of the most deliberate bad faith possible, they're purposefully ignoring the fact youth liberation would also protect and prevent child sexual abuse, which relies upon children being - to a certain extent - trapped, with no ability to leave the situation they're in themselves, at the hands of statistically family members, relatives, family friends, known babysitters, etc. children can only be trapped if they have nowhere else to go.
csa also relies on poor sex education - in fact, every single assault i faced was due to me not having been taught that what i experienced was assault at all. i was raised in an abusive home, and i came to earnestly believe that a relationship with a man necessitated my allowing him to use my body however he wanted, because that's what i saw growing up. my parents were poor educators, only giving us books they purchased about sex education for kids for us to read alone.
youth liberation is necessary, and any who tries to paint youth lib as evil, as a "pedophile" movement, is choosing to view the collective desire of abused kids and former kids who were abused - their desire for a better world where their abuse wouldn't have happened - as something destructive and negative and that's just disgusting to me. youth liberation now.
