Commentary about overlapping oppressions

Harry’s Place carries a story about Afgahn women and girls defying Taliban acid-attacks and continuing to attend school. I link there for two reasons. Firstly, the story itself deserves to be publicised – it is, as they say, inspiring. The second one is to comment on the discourse that they develop around the story, fitting into the ongoing feud between the ‘decent left’ and the ‘anti-imperialist’ left.

For those who don’t keep up with lefty politics, the basic issue is this: when the armed might of the most powerful countries in the world is deployed to bomb the hell out of some third-world country so as to remove a bunch of unhinged hate-filled maniacs who reside there, who should be ’supported’, who is the ‘lesser of two evils’?

Down with Childhood, Part 3 of 3 – Sex and Love

So this post is supposed to be about the institution of childhood as a separate section of society, and in particular the idea of special protection for children, from exploitation and from risks, and so forth. I’ll admit I’m not at all certain of myself here. I’m going to try to articulate the anti-childhood position, but I’m still wondering if it’s correct. In fact, this has been a very difficult post to write. I keep getting the urge to back away from what Firestone is saying and scream ‘please don’t arrest me!’ The strength of the emotional resistance is immense – but then Firestone would probably say that’s the evidence that we’re getting near to something important.

The pro-childhood position is something like this: many things require consent, and are otherwise a violation. But children lack the maturity required to give meaningful consent, and so doing such things (sex, work, sex work, cosmetic surgery, living alone, etc.) is necessarily a violation of their rights to integrity and safety.