Equal Rights to Kids

Blender Dumbass
March 08, 2025

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#kids #children #equality #equity #humanrights #freedom #ageism #paternalims #philosophy #politics #freerangekids #letgrow

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Overton Window is a range of political ideas not too extreme to consider right for discussion. Anything outside of the Overton Window is automatically too strange, or too extreme to even think about. Yet the window isn't fixed. It is constantly moving both in position and size. Ideas that were outrageous just a few decades ago, are commonplace today. And some ideas that were commonplace a decade or so ago, are now considered too extreme to even bring up to debate.

The direction of the Overton Window in relation to time could be thought of as a movement toward the left, in the current very simplified way people look at politics. The right, or the conservatives are absolutely obsessed with what once was in the past. They say "Make America Great Again"... "Again": because once it was good, apparently. And now it is no longer good. The entire idea of the right wing is to move backwards in time. Move the Overton Window into the direction of anti-progress.

While on the other side the left is moving into the future. Into new ideas. Into trying to achieve a state of near-utopia. In the past people were extremely bigoted and separated by tribalism. The left is trying to fix this. They are trying to make people stop being tribal. While creating new types of tribalism ( mainly "Left" vs "Right" ) as a result.

In any case, the Overton Window can give us an understanding of where we are now in time. And imagining ideas outside of it, which are considered too extreme, either to one side or the other, can let us imagine worlds either in the past or in the future. Which is an extremely cool tool for those who writes science fiction.

I made this graph the other day. Trying to imagine those ideas outside of the Overton Window. I didn't just winged it. I thought about the way it should be for quite some time. And here is the graph itself.

As you can see, the Overton Window is in the center in yellow. And there is a line of "progress" that is extended from it both towards the right and towards the left. You have your typical discussions inside of the Overton Window, like: race, gender, feminism and gay rights. And you have your extreme ideas, like: Business Supremacy, Racism, Pedophilia and Total Control over the population on the right. And Children Rights, Zoophilia, Pedophilia and Necrophilia on the left.

Ah... I presented this graph in some chat rooms on matrix. And people quickly realized that I put the same thing both into extreme right and into extreme left. Which should not make any sense whats so ever. Yet if you look into the descriptions I attached to both of them, they are described completely differently and are completely incompatible with one another. This is because the version on the right requires a lack of something, while the version of the left requires that very same something to exist. This something being: Children Rights.

This sparked and incredible debate over the topic of Children Rights. People were understandably furious ( I mean, it is outside of the Overton Window after all ), and they were spitting out so much bigotry toward the young ones that I don't know how those people could be fighters for freedom of any kind at all. Some of them were not as bad. But those people probably didn't really understand what I am going for.

Framework to understanding what I am going for

Once upon the time owning a human being was "normal". The United States of America, which was born on the ideals of "freedom" still had a huge problem with slavery. And it didn't help that slaves Americans were using, came mostly from Africa, making them look very different from the people of America and therefor justifying the slavery on some wibbly wobbly philosophical ground.

When slavery was being abolished, some time later, those who didn't want to give up their slaves, apart from using the straight arguments, of their business crumbling down without unpaid workforce, used also arguments that could have hit some softer people better.

They said things like: "Slaves aren't ready for free life, because they were never free. And setting them free will just kill them.". And others were alluding to Slave's intellect being below average. Which is pretty much the same argument but coated in science. Even to this day white supremacists use the slight observable average IQ differences between races as a sign of white people's superiority or something.

When Slavery was abolished, women didn't have any rights to vote, or do anything really, but sit at home and care for the kids. So rightfully they were outraged. In 20st century advancements in both pharmaceuticals, hygiene and through activism, gave women the ability to demand equal rights. Yet men were not ready to give up.

A lot of them pointed out that women's menstrual cycle messes up their hormones just enough to make them absolutely irrational. And therefor giving the men a sort of advantage with making decisions. The argument basically was the same as with slaves: They don't understand what they are doing. Therefor they cannot be granted any freedom.

This is called Paternalism. A justification of limiting person's freedom based on apparent lack of understanding from that person. Freedom is completely incompatible with paternalism. And paternalism only drives us toward slavery.

Fast Forward to 2020s and organizations like Let Grow, Free Range Kids, Europian Youth Forum, National Youth Rights Association, Freechild Institute for Youth Engagement and others are pushing for children's rights.

I brought up this concept with the graph I made. And the arguments people game me against children's rights mirrored the arguments against abolishing slavery and arguments against equal rights for women: They don't know what they are doing. They are too stupid. Therefor they cannot be granted any freedom.

Think about it, because it's going to get emotionally charged soon...

So... Equal Rights to Kids

If you spent more than a little bit on this website you know that this topic is very important to me. I spend 6 years of my life making one movie and then another which are there to promote Equal Children's Right. And I'm currently working on a game that is set to do the same.

All of this came out of my personal conundrums as a child. My personal experiences of not being taken seriously. And what gave a lot of fuel to the fire was my realization that the laws that were there to "protect me" were completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting what I and my friends at the time were.

I often talk about a girl not too younger than me who got pregnant at a very early age from a guy who was in his 20s. You know the kind of stuff that would turn stomachs of people sick because of how utterly insane that is for them. But for us, for the kids around her, the fact that people took it that seriously. The fact that they were screaming "rape" was absolutely insane. We knew it wasn't rape. We knew the girl. The fact that the law shoved words into our mouths without our consent. The fact that the law insisted it was rape even though we were completely on the other side of it made us all sick to our bones.

It felt like slavery!!!

Today I look at the sheer child-abuse that adults are allowed and sometimes required to do to "their" kids and my stomach turns. Just look at that story of a mom being arrested because her boy walked on the street alone. What kind of a sick world we are living in when stuff like this happens?

This has to end. This has to end!!! We cannot keep treating people like slaves because we think that we are smarter then them. If indeed you are smarter than somebody else ( which is not a guarantee in a any situation ) the only thing you can do is maybe to give that other person an advice. There is Freedom of Speech for that. Or help that person if that person consents.

Kids will consent to help. Don't think that they will not. If they feel like they need help they will call you. Babies cry for that. Their cry is a way to call you. It is their way to say: "Somebody Help!!!". But a lot of time what parents do to kids is not help. It is straight up child-abuse. Forcing a child to do this or that. Child abuse! Forcing a kid to go to a potentially dangerous school, and forcing the kid to memorize information the kid doesn't want to memorize: Child Abuse!!! Shoving words into the child's mouths, instead of asking the child's opinion ( which is what the law does ): Child Abuse!!! When child actors work their asses off and their parents are the ones getting paid: Child Abuse!!! Age verification laws: Child Abuse!!!

Yes there is also the regular Child Abuse and I understand that most of the stuff that I'm complaining about is there to help mitigate it to one degree or another. But we are abusing kids way more to do that. Which is not solving anything. If anything it just increases the amount of abuse. A real solution would be something where no abuse is present.

I have no solution like this. I don't think I am smart enough to come up with the good enough law. But I know that if we give kids their equal rights we lessen abuse by an incredible margin. It is not going to be 100%. But it will be so much better than it is right now.

Problems

The main issue with freeing the kids, is that kids cannot vote. This is not un-doable. With slaves, slaves could not vote. But there were enough non-slaves that agreed that slaves should be freed. So it passed through. With women rights until some point in time women couldn't vote too. But there were enough men, who agreed with women. And now women can vote. Something like this has to happen with children's rights too.

The other issue is that trying to talk about children's rights automatically makes somebody labeled as child-abuse advocate. I hope by this point in the article you understand that it isn't true. Advocating for children's rights is advocating against child abuse. Yet as with the story of the girl that sparked this in me in the first place, it allows for something that people might call child abuse. This is why the graph I drew, which I talked to you about in the beginning of this article, contains the concept twice. Only one of which is actually abuse. Yet, even trying to talk about this, might get you misunderstood. Notice how I'm trying to avoid the P word here, just so the algorithms will not auto-flag this article as some kind of rape propaganda.

I think the best course of action is subtle and step by step. We should start with what Lenore Skenazy does on Let Grow. As in promote laws that are not too on the child's side. Which are easier for adults to agree to. And then from that move to better and better laws.

This is gonna be some crazy bootstrapping... If you know what I mean...

Happy Hacking!!!