Need advice. My partners 13 year old has started using words like Thot ( for a laugh ) , one of many alt/right things she's picking up from friends. How would you deal with this ?

Submitted by Glenarchist in AskRaddle

It started with Cutie-pie, huge fight over getting rid of his alt-right ass from her screen. Then it became anti-trans talk , now, this morning she says her and her friends call people thot for a laugh. We have tried explaining about fascism, it's history, it's meaning but nothing seems to get through. We have denied youtube and internet but she still gets access cos of her ass-hole dad, when she sees him. We're sort of at our wits end here. Anyone had similar experiences or ideas on how we could handle this going forward?

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PerfectSociety wrote (edited )

I don't think your approach is very good praxis nor is it effective. You're basically denying her any kind of individual autonomy and it sounds like it's only backfiring. Perhaps you could share some leftist youtube channel that has the same kind of tone that pewdiepie has? I think teenagers are attracted to obnoxious vulgarity and breaking social norms. So perhaps offer her a leftist outlet that does that. I don't know of many examples, but perhaps others like can pitch in some examples of obnoxious, vulgar leftist channels that might be really attractive to teenagers?

If it makes you feel any better, when I was 14 and 15 I had extremely sexist and ablist views of people. I was also pretty racist and homophobic. I was kind of a classic alt-right, MRA, anti-feminists, feminists are ruining society and good cultural values like marriage, women favor their own sex and this is killing men, women have too much power and they shouldn't have as much autonomy as they do, etc... Yeah I was a real piece of shit. I generally tried to keep these views to myself with the occasional slip, but honestly I just grew out of it as I learned more. I don't think anyone could have forced me out of that mentality. It had to come from myself through learning and absorbing knowledge on my own terms. I think part of it was that I didn't really see how these horrible views had severe life and death consequences for the people in my life whom I was close to - my mother, friends of mine who were African American, etc... As I got older and I realized the real implications of these views and the harm they had on real people, I assessed them more seriously and was disgusted with them, which is how I abandoned them. I started gradually cleansing myself of these horrible views from the age of 16 and I had gotten rid of them completely by the time I was 17. By 18 I was a Social Democrat basically and was fully supportive of all races, women, called myself a feminist, etc...

And now (many years later) I'm a Post-Left Anarchist. Lol.

u/ziq - do you happen to know of any obnoxious, vulgar leftist channels that might be attractive to teenagers as an alternative to pewdiepie? Similar style, but different political orientation? I honestly think that would be the best solution for OP's 13 year old.

EDIT:

Also, OP, do you think part of this behavior from your 13 year old is a rebellion against you trying to teach her leftist values? I'm not trying to criticize or sound judgmental, I'm just asking. If you or your partner have been trying to teach her leftist values then it's not surprising that she's trying to adopt the opposite to provoke and piss you off or to feel like she has her "own thing" and not just what her parents have. I think teenagers desire to build an identity strictly separate from their parents just to feel like they have an identity. This is why I decided that when I have kids, I'm never going to talk to them about my politics unless they ask and even if they do I'm going to give disinterested or just brief answers without much elaboration - keeping the subject intentionally distant. And this includes my actions in front of them as well. The reason why is that my concern is they'll try to adopt the opposite just during their teenage years as a rebellion.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I think part of it was that I didn't really see how these horrible views had severe life and death consequences for the people in my life whom I was close to - my mother, friends of mine who were African American, etc... As I got older and I realized the real implications of these views and the harm they had on real people, I assessed them more seriously and was disgusted with them, which is how I abandoned them.

I feel like this element is significant. I'm not sure how one could reproduce this experience for their children generally though.

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PerfectSociety wrote

I think people would have more success simply providing leftist outlets for children's desire to be obnoxious, vulgar, and othering. But you'd have to provide it as an option for them. If you try to force it on them, I don't think it'll work. The desire to shit on other people can be satisfied with a leftist youtube channel that shits on conservatives or something idk.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I feel like being obnoxious and othering are not values I'd like to reproduce as much as any other right-wing value.

I think the process of 'othering' is very close to the process of dehumanisation, which I suspect is the fundamentally fascist mode.

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PerfectSociety wrote

Doesn't bashing the fash require dehumanizing them? I mean, wouldn't it be harder to bash them if we had empathy for them? I feel like you can't get away from othering, you just have to use it when it's useful but understand when it's not.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote (edited )

I prefer looking at it this way.

Allowing for all forms of human life that don't depend on the dehumanisation of others is a basic general rule that I think is useful.

I'm not sure it's possible to escape othering in such a large world, but putting all of our energy into tending towards sharing the world, a world in common, is a good move, and I think maybe part of that means being strong enough to crush a fascist even though they're human.

But I do think that we need to trouble the whole concept of humanness in various ways also, but that goes beyond the scope of this comment! It is why I made f/Humanness though.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Ironically, othering and alienation are central to the revolutionary identity & experience, particularly on the left & post-left.

Without othering, we'd be doomed to subsumption into liberalism, which is itself another system of othering.

#otherception

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I don't think that othering is equivalent to differentiating, which it seems you're talking about here.

I think of the other as something relatively opaque, and there are quite a few consequences of that.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Sure, but it can be a fine line between othering & differentiating, especially with the social conditioning we are all privy to from dominant society that predisposes/biases us toward both depending on the context.

I don't disagree with you, I guess I'm just thinking out loud about all the nuances. :)

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ziq wrote (edited )

I've never watched pewdiepie so I'm not really sure what style he has. Americans seem to rly like the chapotraphouse brocialist podcast tho.

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PerfectSociety wrote

I was thinking of chapo, but not sure if it's "childish enough" for a kid to get hooked onto it and give up pewdiepie.

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MHC wrote

Just give a good lived example!

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Glenarchist OP wrote

We do. We're both vocal and active Antifa anarchists. The only place this could be coming from is either right wing kids at her school or more likely, the kids are learning it from youtube.

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JayGrym wrote

I hate to say it but there's likely not much you can do that you aren't already doing. Teenagers like to rebel against their parent's core beliefs. Don't give up, just keep it in mind.

Another alternative is to turn these new ideas they have back on them. Example: They like calling people thots for laughs? Call them a thot in front of their friends. Embarrassment is a parents best friend sometimes lol

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MHC wrote

You are not directly in control of the YouTube and school environments. Show your openness towards nudity. So take your family on vacation to a nudist resort. Or work as an artist's model.

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betterletter wrote

My younger brother went through a fash/"libertarian" phase when he was 14-15. Its normal for kids to be edgy shits. He's completely grown out of it and a vocal leftist now.

Blocking/censoring things will only provoke the behavior though, live by example, dont go full "re-education" on your stepdaughter.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

you're being too authoritarian, as PerfectSociety has explained, and its backfiring. You may have tried to enforce you views too hard by now though, so there may be no "fixing" this behavior for awhile.

Instead of asserting your views as dominant with your kid, you need to subtly incentivize them to come to the views you want on their own

This is hard, and it's also why I have no desire to be a parent lol

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ziq wrote

I told my sister to stop letting her kids watch pewdiepie or he'll teach them to be fashes but she says "he seems like a very nice man to me".

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