Too young to have an opinion?

On Tumblr, I came across an animated photoset of the Internet-famous girl Astorice containing scenes from the anti-"slut shaming" video she became famous for. The comments to it went basically like this:

Person 1 (Idiot): Doesn’t she seem a bit young to be talking about something like this…?

Person 2: She’s obviously old enough to see it happening and to form her own opinions about it. Substantive discussion and critical thinking should never be discouraged, no matter what the age of the person. I watched her vids back when she was making them too, and she’s sharp as a tack.

Person 3: If she can figure it out why can’t everyone else?

Person 4: Why is it OK for kids to have conventional opinions about sex, but when they espouse unconventional ones, somehow they’re “too young” to be talking about it…

My response, when I reblogged:

The problem is: to most adults, kids aren't really fully human. To most adults, children are just these... things, like parrots. It always surprises most adults when they express any opinion that differs from those they're expected to parrot, because it surprises these people that children are thinking, feeling human beings rather than human-shaped parrots.

There are other reasons as well. Critical thinking is not taught in schools, and there's a reason for that. Society cannot stand free thinkers, critical thinkers, because they question everything. They point out society's flaws and foibles and demand they be addressed. The sleeping zombie hordes do not like being bothered by those of us who are awake.

And so most adults are just these human-shaped parrots, parroting the beliefs of their party, their pedophile priests, the patriarchy, or whatever other source they follow. Most adults have had their free will beaten out of them by the system. It not only surprises most adults that children aren't born that way, it also frightens them. In fact, it terrifies them. So the sins of the father (systematic ignorance, stupidity, and herd conformity) are visited upon the sons and daughters.

It terrifies them even more when it becomes obvious that the child is not being beaten down by the system. This is why the voting age is 18: because by then, the system has beaten the free will out of most people. If we lowered the voting age to, say, 13... I daresay we'd benefit enormously from the kinds of things kids would vote for. After all, most adults - especially those in power - have consistently proven that they don't give a shit even about the present, much less about the future.

There is never an excuse for murder.

So I came across this post (link). Relevant quote:

Pennsylvania is preparing to execute Terrance “Terry” Williams, a man who suffered years of physical and sexual abuse by older males, eventually killing two of his abusers while in his teens.

Mr. Williams, known to his friends and family as “Terry,” is on death row for a crime he committed three and one-half months after his 18th birthday. On that tragic day, Terry and another teenager killed a man. As the sentencing jury heard, Terry also committed another killing five months earlier at the age of 17. What the jury did not hear was that both of the men had sexually abused Terry, and both crimes directly related to Terry’s history of sexual abuse by older males, which began when he was six years old.

I reblogged, commenting:

My thoughts on this: okay, so he was sexually assaulted. This gives him motive. But it does not excuse murder. I wouldn't give him a death row sentence for it, but I get so fucking tired of the bullshit that murder is excusable EVER. I don't care if you were raped, or your child was raped, or even if a child of yours was tortured and then murdered... sad as those things are, they do not excuse murder. You kill someone, you go to prison, END OF STORY.

Related to this, why is there a sex offender registry but not a registry for people who have committed murder? It's like society is saying "it's absolutely forbidden to rape someone, or even to flash your junk at them (seriously, some of the shit people get on the sex offender registry for is just absurd), or even to piss in the bushes, but if you murder someone and we let you out of prison, well that's alright."

Really, what the fuck? People have had their whole lives ruined by being put on the sex offender registry for completely stupid reasons having nothing to do with sex or nudity or indecency, some people being put on the registry just for BEING ACCUSED of a sex crime without a conviction (and, in some cases, without even enough evidence to go to trial, or with the charges dropped because the charges were ludicrous), unable to get jobs or housing because their name is on the sex offender registry (not to mention genuine one-time offenders trying to rehabilitate) and here we have murderers and accused murderers let off on technicalities just running free.

I think if we're going to ruin people's lives for committing a sex offense, or just being accused of one, we should at least do the same for murderers.

Because honestly, it makes no fucking sense at all to make excuses for murder. "Oh, he willfully attacked someone and willfully murdered them, ending their life on earth and any chance of growing to regret their mistakes, but it's alright, the victim sexually assaulted the murderer." FUCK. THAT. NOISE.