Qoyote's DDR Adventures

roblox rolls out their age group system, and you can no longer talk to any adults on the platform. you can only talk to people in person, i.e. your parents, who are horrid. now you're back at square one, being helplessly abused. to make it worse, you're homeschooled, as I was. you can't reach out to anyone at school for support either.

or maybe you're not homeschooled, and you ask your pronouns to be used at school. it goes well for a while, and you feel some relief.

then your state passes a bill that requires forced outing. your teachers report to your parents that you've been trying out a different name and pronouns.

they pull you from school, send you to boarding school or conversion therapy, and force you to attend private schools in the future that match their values.

you are entirely under their control. you could've made connections with other adults, ones willing to help you out. to treat you like a human, give you access to life saving care. and it's stripped away, you're alone, and everything feels hopeless.

there's some kinds of child abuse a lot of society wants to completely get rid of, and other kinds where it's a shame but the family's their master, what can you do? it's okay to make sacrifices to get rid of sexual abuse because you can blame it all on the Other, the shadowy pedophile hiding in human skin (who never seems to be a parent for some reason). it's okay to get rid of physical abuse because nobody wants to see the marks. but anything else, like what OP described? no, no, it's their religious freedom, it's their rights as parents, 18 years of sealing a child in a bubble until they suffocate on their flaws can't compare to a single flash of violence.

and even if i'm wrong and the first two really are that much worse, it's not like the current movement's doing a lot to fight it! three of my friends lost their virginities before kindergarten and one was almost murdered and those are just the ones i know about, and none of the perpetrators (all in the family) have faced any consequences for that. unless something drastic changes, they never will. but oh no some marginalized artist with 3 followers draws things that gross me out, and two high schoolers with a two year age gap are in love. that's way more important!

because it was never about helping children. it's about getting that cheap high off punishing people for breaking a social rule. it's about people protecting the image of youth and innocence and the idea of what childhood should be instead of the kids they supposedly represent. and yes, it's about trauma survivors seeing their trauma everywhere. look, i get it. i fucking get it. once something reminds us of it, we can't see clearly. and we need to hurt the people that did this to us. but you have to recognize that, and make sure you understand the real situation before you hurt someone yourself.

“college is absolutely nothing like this” “why are we writing four people on the team scoring a hat trick in one game” “so tech work is nothing like this, hope that helps!”

About what "Protect the youth" has become. Idk what it was like in other countries and I know that it very likely could have been stricter than it was in my country back then. But generally:

He was like "When I was 16, there were two kinds of adult content: Horror movies and explicitly depicted sexual content. The first made me have nightmares, the latter (as in what you could get in video rental stores) generally wasn't of much interest to me because it wasn't something I, as a 16 year old, could relate to. And other sexual content that was interesting (and/or helpful) WAS freely accessible. So whenever I saw an "18+" label somewhere, I just completely ignored that content because I knew it wouldn't be interesting at all to me.

But NOW, what's declared 18+ is even an excessive amount of swear words in streams! NOW, when I see an "18+" label, I don't know if it's horror movies that'll give some 16 year olds nightmares, if it's completely unrelatable porn, OR if it's educational sex ed, a 20 year old talking about their really healthy relationship with their partner (that includes intimacy), education about consent in BDSM (which affects 16 year olds as well, there's no age limit to curiosity), a live stream of wholesome musicians who happen to drink a couple of beers during kind of therapeutic talks, or simply people who aren't puritans and say "fuck" a lot! An 18+ label isn't worth anything anymore!"

And yeah... That's just it.

People who talk about body changes during their (first!) puberty are even labelled adult content. Even though puberty very much happens BEFORE adulthood. It's helpful content for minors. And it's labelled "adult" to "protect the youth".

and it encourages people to imagine this magical line where a kid becomes an adult, like we're all pokemon and we turn into completely separate people and instantly gain life experience on a certain date. the way some people talk about kids like they're another species, you'd think they spawned in when they were 25 instead of living MOST OF THEIR LIFE SO FAR as a child. it stops people from empathizing with kids. it makes it acceptable to say shit like "i hate when kids eat where i eat" like that isn't an INSANE thing to say about any other group. it's the reason people ask parents what their kids want instead of talking to the kid who's right there. makes people forget that kids grow up to be adults.

it's not just a parent thing. it's not just a christian thing. it's not just an advertiser thing. it's not just a "illuminati that has a concerning amount of parallels to antisemitic stereotypes" thing. those groups have a lot of responsibility but most of us do these things too.