aesmael

There's a case in Canada where it appears, absent testimony to bolster charges of abuse, a Mormon leader has been charged under a law banning polygamy instead.

lost_angelwings showed me some news about this last night, in which it was claimed prosecutors had been reluctant to invoke this law for fear it would get overturned when challenged. Naturally I found myself hoping it would be removed because of this trial, and hopefully these suspicions of abuse gotten to the bottom of more directly.

Unfortunately I did not realise just how strict the law in question is. Yet another obstacle forcing reconsideration of life plans, and more immediate reason to hope it is struck down.

"Why do you want to X?"
"Because my friends are and participating with them will provide us with shared memories and socialisation which will serve to further strengthen the bond of our friendship."

It seems contradictory to me, even hypocritical, that children are taught they ought to want to do things with other children but that they ought not do something because their friends are. I think what people are really after is ostensibly to teach from a young age the ability to recognise harmful or undesired actions and be in possession of the capacity to refuse participation in these even in the face of social pressure.

Except that parents or other authoritative people in a young person's life tend to want em to acquiesce to the pressures they place on em to engage in activities they approve of and to avoid those they disapprove of, often without particular reference to whether the person in question shares this desire. So we end up with apparently contradictory messages, such as that excursion in primary school in which teachers were insistent that I come join the other students in watching a video on why conformity is bad, rather than being off doing my own thing. I found that hilarious.

A certain degree of cooperation is necessary, so far as I can see, to keep a society functional, but I do not recall being taught this. Instead we get the message that we should do as everyone else is expected to, but not do what everyone else is doing, and thereby be anything we want to be.

Let's turn this around. Instead of[1] teaching people to resist peer pressure, let's teach people not to exert social pressure to coerce participation from the unwilling. Why must the onus be always on the victim to avoid being victimised? Why not teach people not to abuse the power and influence they have over others?


[1] As well as, really, but I like having a corrective footnote

    The main character in a story I am writing was the child of a polyamourous triad and I find myself stuck for how to refer to family members. I was mostly having problems referring to her non-biological parent, but other terms would help too.