The GENERATOR

[NOTE: This document was added to the blog on May 16, 2005]

This is another "exploration" essay, in which I mean to explore everything I have to say on a topic. It is not meant to be a polished product that an audience will read.

My prompt this time is a paragraph I wrote as part of an outline for the proposed arc, "Youth Are Nobody's Property -- Except Their Own". Here's the quote:

1. Youth Are Nobody's Property -- Except Their Own The current YL movement focuses on winning rights identical to those of adults, based on the "all men are created equal" principle. However, property doesn't have rights of its own -- and youth are still essentially property. ...There couldn't be a meaningful Civil Rights movement til decades after the Emancipation Proclamation. In this essay I intend to discuss the various things that are inherently, inalienably owned by youth: their body, name, friendships, movement, time/labor, education, a portion of what's held collectively by society, and access to resources that have been made available for the public good (etc.).

People are not property. It is wrong to treat them as if they are.

Youth are people. It is wrong to treat them as if they're property.

And yet, youth are treated like property.

Looking back into history, we see that adult society has viewed youth as the property of their parents -- property that parents are entitled to control as they see fit. This is a history that continues into the present day. Standards of what's acceptable treatment have improved; yet the essence of youth being dealt with as if they are property remains...

[That was just a good four paragraphs that popped into my head -- not really what I'm going for in an exploration. Let me back up and try to explain at a meta level what it is that I want to deal with in this essay.]

1. Reexamining the essay arc

I want to write an arc of essays, the central theme of which is property. Well, not just property, but youth-as-property: (1) as their own property, (2) being viewed as the property of parents, or (3) as the property of adult society as a whole (which conflicts with parental ownership rights at times).

In taking this route, I'm building upon my previous essay "Property and Ownership". I'm attempting to replace the Oppression / Liberation model (Op/Lib) with a Property & Ownership model (P&O). Whereas Op/Lib compelled me to define oppression, then show how adultism met the criteria for inclusion, I think P&O is more immediately intuitive. I might be wrong. Maybe I need to include the theoretical essay on "what is property?" in this arc -- but I think my chances are at least better, at being able to avoid this than the "what is oppression" essay. "Oppression" is such an abstract term. People may not understand P&O in all its detail, but we do at least have daily interaction with the concept of property.

Just so I can stop going back and forth, referring to this outline I wrote, I'm going to copy over the proposed chapter headings to this essay now:

1. Youth Are Nobody's Property -- Except Their Own
   
2. Emancipation: Reclaiming Ownership of Oneself
   
3. Adult Supremacism: The Idea That Youth Should Be Adults' Property
   
4. How Parents Maintain Control of Their Human Property
   
5. "Adulthood" Is Membership in an Organization for Property Owners
   
6. Ageless Being: Transcending Childhood, Adulthood, and Old Age

A few paragraphs up, I sort of condensed my topics down to three: youth as the property of (a) themselves, (b) parents, and (c) society. These topics correspond to chapters 1, 4, and 5 in the arc's outline. So are the other topics really called for?

The "Emancipation" topic is meant to sort of say: "Hey! Whereas youth should be their own property, adults do not recognize their right of self-ownership. I'm not going to go so far as to say that guardians are unnecessary -- because they are necessary. There is a biological reality of being unable to care for oneself. The need for care is perhaps exaggerated (I could go into that), but it's still real. So, if I'm forced to acknowledge this, how does self-ownership play out? You get full control as soon as you ask for it. But there also has to be the means to access partial control when you need to get out from under a bad guardian. In that sense, I'm advocating reworking what it means to be a guardian. There is a parallel with the three needs of youth (physical care, social navigation, and economic patronage): the three roles of guardians (physical caregiver, guide/advisor, financial patron)..."

It seems like in this proposed essay, I'm going in a few directions... I'm (1) talking about what it means to be a parent who doesn't act like an owner, and (2) setting forth my 2-point condensation of the YL agenda. There's also a topic in here, (3) about what it would mean if "emancipation" genuinely reflected youth taking possession of themselves, rather than the watered down version of freedom that exists now... This might require me to go into a discussion of the various types of artificial age lines.

...Now that I discuss that "emancipation" essay, I see that I'm also trying to go in a few directions with the "youth are their own property" essay: (1) replacing the civil rights model with the property ownership model, (2) a list of what youth rightfully own. I might also need a little discussion about (3) what it means to own a thing. [Later addenda: (4) contrasting ownership of oneself with ownership by a parent or a slave owner.]

2. Listing what youth own

In terms of talking about what youth rightfully own, I don't really have this list well defined yet. A few years back I came up with what I thought were the five essential freedoms. That certainly seems relevant here:

1. freedom to control one's own body
   
2. freedom of movement / association
   
3. freedom of speech / thought
   
4. freedom to access necessary resources (medical, food, shelter)
   
5. ability to participate in decision-making processes that affect one

I also recall brainstorming a list of things that a youth owns several months ago in one of my small notebooks. I'll try to find that now. ...OK, here it is: an entry from October 9, 2002. I'm going to copy it in here so I have this...

1. This is your name; you get to choose it; you get to call me by mine.
   
2. This is your room; I don't get to come in here without your permission; you keep and decorate it how you want.
   
3. This is your body; you can cut your hair, pierce or tattoo yourself like you want; you can drink, smoke, take drugs.
   
4. These are your clothes, wear what you want.
   
5. This is the house we live in, we can move; you can go live elsewhere.
   
6. This is the city I brought you to -- you could live elsewhere.
   
7. This is the school -- there are others or unschooling.
   
8. This is the money you have, this is what I have, here's how I choose to give it to you.
   
9. I am housemate, cook, financier, ride -- you can be emancipated.
   
10. This is your food -- you can eat what you want, carnivore, vegan.
    
11. This is my religion, you can choose your own.
    
12. You have friends -- you're free to choose them, it's OK to have sex.
    
13. You can choose the words you use and swear.
    
14. This is your safe word -- I have to listen with special ears.
    
15. (?) I don't have the right to hit you or call you names.
    
16. (?) You can say "no"; it's not OK for me to force you.

The context of this list was that I was imagining an annual "Youth Liberation Day": a day every year (for parents as much as youth) where the parent physically walks around and names ownership, affirming youths' right to choice. It's a sort of ritual, intended to make sure that the youth is clear about their rights, and reminding the conscientious guardian about what they're aspiring to. Perhaps it would have it's own holiday date each year, or maybe it would be set to the weekend before the youth's birthday. ...It's more practical than a bill of rights, which fails to specify who has to do what. It's also an opportunity for grievances and objections to come up.

I think these two lists are the main relevant work that I've done on self-ownership previously. However, there might also be something relevant in my "Property and Ownership" essay. In Part IV, "Persons As Property", section C, "Powers of Ownership Applied to People", I examine the following areas:

1. Permission to touch.
   
2. Staying put.
   
3. Moving things.
   
4. Physical alteration.
   
5. To destroy or create.

...Prior to my discussion of "Control of Your Property", I address "Defining Self: The Owner of Property". The central idea of that first section is that you are a geographical point in space, one with a point of view, and that all your possessions are extensions of your body, as if they were attached by invisible strings. Perhaps this suggests that I need to talk a little bit about what it means to call youth "owners" before I an go into the specifics of what property they own. I'm also thinking that my notions of owning are very rooted in primal ownership of one's body. Other aspects of ownership may be more difficult to explain.

3. Trying to integrate the lists

A trial paragraph:

...Suppose that you and your body aren't one and the same thing. Suppose that you could look at your body from the outside. This object, your body, is your possession. What's it mean when something is your possession? Four things: (1) other people have to get your permission before they touch it; (2) when you put it somewhere, you can expect it to stay put; (3) you get to decide if it's going to be moved, and where to; (4) you get to physically alter the thing.

[I'm dropping the "destroy or create" item. "Destroy" leads into questions of suicide, which are morbid, but also covered by "physical alteration". "Create" deals with pregnancy; but it's not relevant here unless you assume that you can impregnate a slave woman and own her offspring. If instead I only want to deal with the right to be pregnant, and the infant once born belongs to itself, then this is covered by "physical alteration" again.]

[From the "freedoms" list, this covers items 1 and 2. I might be able to tie the later three items (speech, society's resources, a vote) to owning physical property, but it would be more of a stretch... Perhaps more about controlling one's property when it exists within a communal space?]

...Let's try reorganizing the "rights within the family" list, now putting it under the headings from the "Property and Ownership" essay.

1. freedom to control one's own body
   
2. freedom of movement / association
   
3. freedom of speech / thought
   
4. freedom to access necessary resources (medical, food, shelter)
   
5. ability to participate in decision-making processes that affect one

I also recall brainstorming a list of things that a youth owns several months ago in one of my small notebooks. I'll try to find that now. ...OK, here it is: an entry from October 9, 2002. I'm going to copy it in here so I have this...

I. Permission to touch.

15? I don't have the right to hit you or call you names.

2. This is your room; I don't get to come in here without your permission; you keep and decorate it how you want. [Note: Space as an extension of the body.]

II. Staying put.

[Note: Identical to list under "moving things".]

III. Moving things.

5. This is the house we live in, we can move; you can go live elsewhere.

6. This is the city I brought you to -- you could live elsewhere.

7. This is the school -- there are others or unschooling.

IV. Physical alteration.

3. This is your body; you can cut your hair, pierce or tattoo yourself like you want; you can drink, smoke, take drugs.

4. These are your clothes, wear what you want. . [Note: Clothes as extensions of the body.]

The following items are similar to the "freedom of speech / thought" -- they're about having the right to believe differently.

10. This is your food -- you can eat what you want, carnivore, vegan.

11. This is my religion, you can choose your own.

13. You can choose the words you use and swear.

The next two items seem potentially like ownership issues -- but they're more tenuous. Naming yourself could be about decorating one's body, but it also seems like a freedom of speech issue. Having sex is about movement (association) and altering your body (sexing it), but also about communally held space, since sex intrudes into other people's space / bodies.

1. This is your name; you get to choose it; you get to call me by mine.

12. You have friends -- you're free to choose them, it's OK to have sex.

The remaining items seem to have more to do with how the parent decides to comport themselves. They're about things owned by the parent that they nonetheless commit to giving to the youth. Precisely how much a young person is entitled to, out of a parent's holdings, is an area I don't want to go into.

8. This is the money you have, this is what I have, here's how I choose to give it to you.

9. I am housemate, cook, financier, ride -- you can be emancipated.

14. This is your safe word -- I have to listen with special ears.

16? You can say "no"; it's not OK for me to force you. [Note: A commitment of time and attention. Uh-oh... I haven't even touched young people's ownership of their time / attention!]

Grrr... Trying to rework these old materials is getting frustrating.

Other ideas. I could go through multiple permutations in talking about ownership. I could explain what it means to own an inanimate object, making the leap to (1) ownership of one's own body from there. [From there, (2) ownership of "extensions of one's body".] Then I might talk about (3) the bubble of personal space that surrounds a person (who is not in motion). Then I might talk about (4) the right to move one's body through communally held (or unowned?), public space. Then I might talk about time and attention, how you get to (5) control your expenditures of energy. I might end with a discussion about "public" spaces that are owned by someone / some group; this raises issues about youths' right to be acknowledged as existing, therefore (6) stakeholders in the ownership of society's resources.

...This begins to sound more like an essay about boundaries (where you end and I begin) than about property rights per se. Does that undercut my effort to replace "civil rights" with a "property rights" model? Not necessarily. It just means that I have to play up the fact that who owns a particular thing is often contested.

Perhaps this discussion of boundaries has a meta-level that I should discuss first: what it means to own (1) an inanimate object; to own (2) physical space; to own (3) expenditures of energy. What this does is collapse the topics of personal bubbles and public space, and collapse ownership of the body, its extensions, and public property. I probably want to address each of these topics separately, but not at the meta level.

This sounds increasingly like a full essay on the nature of property. Damn!

4. Simplifying the list of what youth own

Alternatively, I could simplify and use the list from the outline essay:

1. their body
   
2. name
   
3. friendships
   
4. movement
   
5. time/labor
   
6. education
   
7. a portion of what's held collectively by society
   
8. access to resources that have been made available for the public good

This list covers most of the important issues, at least in a symbolic way. If I wanted to be exhaustive, I could get a lot more specific, talking about spanking, sex, tattoos, etc. See, I could emphasize the ownership angle, or the list of things that you have a right to control angle, or the context of family angle. ...The context of family angle is probably the most concrete and specific (which I like) -- whereas the ownership angle seems to lean toward the theoretical ("what is property?").

Perhaps I could tweak the family angle by contrasting "this is what your parents think they own" vs. "this is what you own". However, in doing so, I'm neglecting to discuss what youth properly own out of society's holdings. Apparently, in order to talk about property (which is basically a control issue), you have to talk about the opposing parties that may all claim control. Thus, understandably, I'm getting confused when I try to talk about what parents claim as their property (which rightly belongs to youth) at the same time that I talk about what society at large claims (which rightly belongs to youth).

...Does "society" need to be further broken down? Is there an important distinction to be made between what store owners claim, police, schools, city government, and federal law makers? I'm beginning to think that in these public settings, what I need to address foremost is this: youth exist; they are participants in society; they are not simply potentialities that will someday exist. [This then leads into a discussion about democracy, the principle that all participants in a group have a right to a say in its decision-making processes.]

So, maybe I need two essays: (1) what youth own within the private, family home, and (2) what youth own relative to society's holdings / resources. [School might be such a specialized setting that it requires its own essay... Grrr.]

It feels like this might be an easier tack to take. But it's not elegant. In the first essay of the arc, what I want most of all is to say that I'm going to talk about ownership of property as it pertains to youth. I have to talk about what it means for adults to think that youth are their property. I have to talk about what it means for youth to be held as collective property by adult society. I need to talk about what it means to own your life. If I am not someone else's property, then I own this body; I own at least a bubble of space around it -- people don't get to touch me (e.g. sexually) or hit me (if I don't want them to); it's my right to get piercings, to get tattooed, dye my hair...

The point here is that the rights derive from owning yourself. If someone else owned you, they would get to determine these things. To own a thing is have the right to control it. You get to do with your person what you want (so long as you're not violating the legitimate rights of others to the same). You can alter your body, you can pursue careers that other's don't approve of, you can do things that other's may feel are immoral. You own your body, you own your personal space (as well as a portion of communal space), you own your energy. Because these things are yours, when other people try to take control of them, they are violating your rights. They are violating your property rights. These things are yours.

[As a thing, you have a right to move your body around. But you are not only a thing, you have energy and a right to spend it how you choose. So, as a combination of not having to be where you don't want to be, and getting to put your energy into your own interests, you get to choose your destiny: a career, whether or not you go to school -- or heaven / hell, for that matter! It's OK to choose to go to jail...]

At the societal level, adults as a collective think that they own you. Society has decided that while parents are the primary owners of minors, everyone else together as a group also own you somewhat. It's a shared ownership arrangement -- which easily results in conflict between individual parents and the state when they disagree about which one of them should be in control at any particular time.

My big point here is to compare civil rights and property ownership. I don't have to list every single right that you have. If you see the comparison with ownership of property, then I can leave the rest to your imagination. "Every single thing that you own" is a different essay. OK, I've finally found a conclusion that will be useful in this essay: it's not so much about the specifics of what is owned (though I do need to identify the parents, state, and youth as conflicting claimants) -- this essay is to be about the civil rights model vs. the property rights model.