Repicturing Minors

Minor is the term used to isolate young human beings apart from humanity. A minor is not human in the eyes of the law. They exist in some designation at the junction of being an animal and a piece of property for which others have specific rights to and are expected to perform specific duties on. A minor is little different than a piece of furniture--the property of it's originates by default, but with the added restriction that, unlike furniture, it can not be completely done with as its owner sees fit. For instance, a piece of worn furniture that no longer serves its usefulness can be taken out back with an axe and be done away with at it's owner's discretion without fear of social reproach. A minor, though still a piece of property, has been granted by society a right to exist and a right to be taught things--but other than this, shares more in common with the piece of furniture than with human beings--at least to the law.

The fact that a minor is technically a human being isn't one wasted on most average people, regardless of what the law has determined. The fact that the time period covered in a young human's life for which they have been set aside from humanity as minors is quite a length of time whereby many alterations in the individual appear as they develop. There are virtually miles separating a five year old and a 15 year old, and yet both are considered to be minors according to the official, legal, so-called agreed-upon definition of their existence. The miles that exist between them developmentally have been compressed back together by the force of law like a spring, so that what once seemed to stretch a 10 year developmental separation by nature, now seems to span a matter of moments.

Kids who exist between the age-determined social cultures, the proverbial 10 year old who no longer finds his preschool fascinations as fascinating but is not granted access to more mature forms of expression, spend years of their lives inevitably stuck in coast. This is what youth rights advocates call "infantilization." There's a constant expectation for kids to act half their age.

All being minors by definition, if they were to fail to distinguish themselves--in other words, fail to socially develop beyond the early childhood stage at least socially so that a 16 year old was still living the typical lifestyle of a seven year old, it wouldn't be hard to imagine society neglecting to notice. Minors, being non-human entities by definition, would not develop the way human beings are expected to. Minors would be infants from birth to the day that society "agrees" they are fit to be counted into the human clan--in most cases their 18th birthday. They are children. It's what's expected of them. And from 0 to 18, the term minor fails to recognize their developing capacity towards maturation as an adult and instead regards them as perpetual infants--helpless and about as removed from the adult as possible.

They are born and they get bigger. At no point does the law recognize that a minor can make even simple decisions for themselves. They need mom to lay out a pair of clothes in the morning and button their shirt, regardless of whether they are toddlers scrambling about on all fours or high school seniors about to assume their role in society.