Be skeptical of adults claiming that they support nuclear family, forced schooling, or other limitations on youth autonomy because these are needed to “protect youth from adults” because “otherwise adults will prey on/abuse/hurt them.”
If the issue were adults and their older age itself, wouldn’t the speaker themself be included in that “dangerous, likely to hurt kids” category? You ask them. Is this a self-admission? Are they saying they’re a child abuser? They say no (they always say no); they always have a thousand reasons and excuses and explanations to prove that maybe the Other Adults are Bad but no, not me, not us. Because the idea that they could ever possibly be a child abuser/assaulter themself is anathema to them.
You can also ask, what makes you different then? (Or what makes your best friends, fellow adult family members etc “exceptions” too, because they’re also the ones who always get a pass.) You might get a circular answer (“I just know,” “vibes,” “they would never”). Blaming psychology/biology (“I’m sane not a psychopath/narcissist,” “I’m normal unlike freaks/deviants”). Invoking normativity/power (“I’m a good [cishetero] Family Man,” “I’m a parent,” “I’m a Man Of God and Designated Virtuous,” “I am Trusted/Trustworthy by [state legitimization]”).
Let’s have another example. This doesn’t map onto adultism 1:1, but it shares several common points of origin and dynamics.
It’s extremely common for misogynistic cishet men to argue that the rape of cis women occurs because it is natural, because “male biological instincts” Just Make Them More Likely To Rape Because That’s Just How Things Are And They Can’t Control Themselves. This is pulled out when feminists argue about misogyny and rape culture as socially/environmentally produced forces which must be combatted to prevent sexual violence by cishet men towards women (“rape ISN’T about power, it’s about attraction/sex drive/Men Are Just Predators By Nature patriarchy is inevitable and you can’t stop rape”). This is especially common as a response to anti-victim-blaming/anti-stranger-danger activism. It is also used by queerphobic cishet men arguing that “biological maleness” = propensity to rape and inability to not rape–the old “gay men are predators,” or “trans women are a danger to cis women because their ‘biological maleness’ makes them.” These cishet men, under their own definitions, are also “biological males.” Are they saying they’re uncontrollably horny impulse-driven serial rapists too? They’re quick to reassure, no, they’re safe (and cis women need them for protection from Rapists).
This “protection” comes in the form of control, particularly domestic captivity through the institutionalized nuclear family. Financial control. Sexualized control. And psychiatric paternalism, coercion, violence, and captivity. Etc.
Which adults are these paternalistic fearmongerers invoking when they say we need to control children to protect them from predatory adults? Extrafamilial adults. Adults without legitimized authority over the child. Adults without much legitimized authority in general. Strangers. Queers. Deviants. Which people who were AMAB are these paternalistic fearmongerers invoking when they say cis women need Strong Virtuous Men to protect them from Male Rapists and need to stop going out at night/dressing “provocatively” so They don’t attack them? Strangers. Queers. Deviants. Anyone viewed as a threat to her who isn’t her normal, natural, cishet husband.
Predatory cishet men are not assaulting women and children because of “biology” or “nature” or “uncontrollable urges,” though they may peddle that lie to others or even to themselves. Uneven violence and ability to do violence are facilitated by power and enabled by ideological beliefs which consider these acts ethical, harmless, and/or necessary. Most child rapists are people with power over them, especially family members. Most rapists, period, are people with hierarchical power over the victim, and very commonly family members.
Their belief in the legitimacy of their control and their belief that they are entitled to violate their victims’ bodies and their belief that their victims do not deserve autonomy in the first place justify their assaults to them. When the victim is trans, additional dynamics of dehumanization, transphobic oppression, and disposability come into play. Cis women are supposed to at least be “valuable” by carrying out assigned domestic labor when married to a man. Children of a household are “valuable” for becoming future fathers/patriarchs or mothers/wives. Transness (both in the physically-transitioned sense and a broader gender positioning) mean the inability to provide value as a Good Man or a Good Woman in a nuclear family arrangement. Trans youth are frequently kicked out by their parents. Unhoused trans people (and other queers, and sex workers) experience the brunt of street harassment and sexual violence from strangers. These dynamics are also racialized under a white supremacist patriarchy, with whiteness designating value (and white cis femininity as necessary to control), and the colonized being positioned as disposable (with this also intersecting with internal and externally imposed gendered dynamics).
But these are not the types of scenarios a stranger-danger fearmongerer usually brings up to illustrate their point, because queers and sex workers and the homeless and the incarcerated and others excluded from the nuclear family are deemed worthless and unnecessary to even “protect,” and they don’t care at all about violence or abuse they experience, as it’s viewed as “deserved” or simply a fact of life resulting from being degenerate. And these challenge their narrative of the family as a mechanism which prevents sexual violence, because they were excluded for failing the family and being deemed sexual risks, and these assaults occur as a function of institutional oppression which are core to the Family/which the Family are core to.
There will be no truly effective feminism/youth liberation (“rape prevention,” “abuse prevention,” if that’s what you’d prefer to call it) which operates on the same paternal principle which is causing the problem in the first place. You will not be a protector or a savior. Your aid will not be charity condescendingly handed down from a position above. Helping youth and the gender-marginalized will not be yet another source of clout you can add to your credentials or your salary, yet another commodity to exploit. If you really are serious about stopping assaults/abuse, you will drop your pseudoscientific bullshit and your we-just-need-to-Heal-individual-abusers’-Hearts and your stranger-danger and your deviant-bashing and your we-just-need-more-criminalization/psych/prisons, and you will start putting all that energy into our self-led self-determined liberation projects.
