The Kids Are Alright

This piece was originally published by F.O.E. (Freedom of Expression) Literary Magazine, here, in response to their invitation for Alberta authors to submit work about the current state of muzzling and censorship we’re experiencing from our wannabe fascist government.

Reprinting with permission from the editors.

By seventh grade, I’d already kissed my fair share. Most of us had. Once our emerging hormones suggested replacing Kick the Can and Grounders with Spin the Bottle and Truth or Dare, kissing became ubiquitous in play. Quick pecks on the cheek and maybe the lips in grades five and six, but Jr. High ushered in a new and exciting era. The first time I kissed a boy with tongue was at Amy’s 13th birthday party. Here’s an equation: five girls + five boys + seven minutes in heaven. Do you know that game? It’s where you take someone of the opposite sex (we weren’t allowed to think outside the binary back then) into some closet or another, any dark and confined space, for seven minutes and just… see what happens. You could chew on the tension in those cramped cubbyholes, those dusty crawl spaces, and we did. We gnawed on the tether until it frayed and snapped. Some of us went farther than making out. Feel-ups and finger bangs were most common; some even went all the way. Me, I lost my virginity a whole year later at 14, and I was late to the party.

I know it sounds young. It is young. But youth doesn’t preclude sexuality. One might balk at how parents of 13- and 14-year-olds could let this happen, but here’s the truth: children are by nature curious, uninhibited, and they have bodies. They have genitals. They feel pleasure. As tempting as it is to plug your ears and go “la la laaaa”, it’s a dangerous thing to pretend otherwise. And yet this is where we find ourselves: living in fear of who might be lurking in the shadows ready to groom and abuse our children, pointing the finger at teachers and books and queer peopleinstead of the real threat: the billionaire pedophiles and the creeps online. Books cannot groom. Books do not have hands; they cannot abuse. If anything, books protect children from becoming prey to real predators by educating them.

And protecting children should be at the top of any healthy society’s list of priorities. But this basic human contract has been co-opted by loud and well-funded missionaries, looking to convert anyone who’ll listen. Groups advocating for the removal of books from school libraries, or the stripping away of trans rights, do not care about protecting children. They are using children as bait to draw in people less inclined toward critical thinking. Because anyone with an ounce of thinking skills should be able to figure out the real issue here in Alberta today, which I’d argue is nothing more than simple bigotry. No librarian or teacher is trying to show pornography to children. No drag queen or queer author is trying to turn children gay or trans. Reading widely and from different perspectives will change our children. It won’t make them gay, it won’t make them depraved, but it will make them into deeper, more empathetic and critical thinkers. And to a wannabe fascist society, of course this is the real threat. Reading opens hearts and minds; fascism locks them up and throws away the key. Reading cultivates empathy and fosters imagination, and such wondrous things cannot flourish in a society, or with parents, whose main goal is ultimate control.

Kids push boundaries every step of the way, the only things that really change as they get older are the stakes. And of course, the stakes are higher when the behaviour is riskier, which is much more likely without proper education about consent, contraception, cyber safety, respect, boundaries, etc. So, we might as well educate them and give them the knowledge and resources to explore safely, since they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, regardless of and sometimes in direct spite of their parents. And in some unfortunate cases, parents are the precise people children need to be protected from. Hatred, racism, homophobia, and transphobia are just a few reasons rendering some parents grossly ill-equipped to make these kinds of decisions for their children. So, how about we collectively relax our own ideas of supreme control over our kids and let the professionals do what they were trained to do: in this case, select what books are appropriate for what age groups and deliver age-appropriate sex education curricula. In this post-truth world, many trust their weird uncle on Facebook more than highly educated experts, and I think that is largely to blame for this descent into the human right atrocities we’re seeing in Alberta and the wider world today. 

To continue on in this fashion of repressing children’s curiousity about their bodies, pretending gender and sexuality variations don’t exist, shaming kids into thinking pleasure is sinful, sheltering them from the reality of sex, all of this does so much more damage than any one of them picking up a book about the existence of a queer person or god forbid, an adolescent feeling pleasure. It is ridiculous to pretend children do not have bodies, it is bigoted to deny queer people of their lived realities, and it is abusive to treat our children as property to control rather than autonomous humans with agency, bodies, and minds of their own. Children are our dependents, yes, and they are vulnerable. They need our support, guidance, and love. But they also need independence. Secure independence is a crucial part of growing up and without it, without the freedom to safely explore their worlds, both inner and outer, they lose out on the very experiences that will make them into empathetic, curious, understanding adults.

I know some find it uncomfortable to think of children as their own sovereign people, but they are. And like any sovereign people (whether their sovereignty is afforded to them or not) there will be varying predilections and occupations, and some of those will be sexual, even from a young age. I honestly don’t remember not being sexual. I was always a horny little thing, forever rubbing up against furniture and lordy don’t even mention blankets and pillows. My grandma had “the talk” with me by the time I was eight years old. Never once did I think boys had cooties, and I walked around perma-confused about my feelings for girls. I’m still pretty sure I was in love with one of my close girlfriends and when our play escalated into clothes coming off and dares to kiss each other in sensitive places, let’s just say my confusion abated, got swallowed up by desire. Not all children will be this way, but I was. And I know I’m not alone. This is one of many normal, healthy, valid ways to be an adolescent. Of course, I’m saying this now with the gift of hindsight. Shame is hard coded into my conditioning too, and to even admit any of this feels like a social taboo. But fuck that. A young person’s sexuality is not pornographic, it is not an invitation or a justification for unwanted touch, nor is it perverted or depraved. Why do you think the game ‘doctors’ is such an age-old fascination for children? To shame them for their curiousity is to shame them for being born at all.

The kids are alright. They could be better. If social media didn’t have their self-worth in a stranglehold, if their own parents and the wider world didn’t shame them for having a sexuality at all, especially one outside the hegemonic standard, if the Earth wasn’t crumbling below their feet, if our society wasn’t tipping toward fascism, they would probably be great. But they are alright. They don’t need protection from this particular monster, because it doesn’t exist, but of course children will always need protection. The dangers of this world are real. But they are not books. They are not queer people. The danger is in being distracted by this fearmongering nonsense while people with power or an internet connection prey on the vulnerable. So, here in Alberta especially, it is time to stand strong and united against those trying to take away the basic rights of our children, of our queer and gender-diverse family and friends. If you have the chance to nudge even one person away from such hate and bigotry and toward love and acceptance, you must at least try. If any of us are to have a fighting chance of surviving in this fucked up province, in this fucked up world, it’s gotta be together, and it’s gotta be now, before this shitshow gets any worse.

If you want to do something, the Coalition of Alberta Libraries is a good place to start.