Passive Resistance

Children break the cultural bodily boundaries on a daily basis. They exert their sexual, physical, gritty nature and the world shames it. Since no exploratory sexual behavior, outburst, nose picking, burp, or fart goes without reprimand for the first six years of life, no matter how much it's encouraged by looser mores, children spend the next six years using each one of those things in pointed attacks of retaliation and resistance against anyone they see as a worthy target. Having absorbed shame for their bodily needs and functions long enough, they stand the message on its head and use them to cast shame on others. It doesn't matter if the target is a sexually active youth's distressed parent, an illness-faking student's easily swayed teacher, or a nation's policy against violence in its schools (as we'll soon see). Children will quite literally hold their breath until they pass out to make a parent bend to their will.

This commentary comes in light of a now-annual phenomenon in news. In the mix of reports regarding the effectiveness of Zero Tolerance in public schools, we're treated to a slice of absurdity disguised as comic relief. It seems something as innocuous as "disturbing class" in the right context, if expressed with enough disdain, is considered violence and can and will result in a kid's arrest. Not even a kid's intestinal gas can be tolerated, so long as he emits it derisively and obnoxiously enough. Disruption like that no longer warrants only disciplinary action, but a police cruiser, handcuffs, a booking, and a police record, because kid farts are weapons now, officially.

Sometimes the only way to lay bare a system's faults is to cause a passive stir like this and force the system to abide by its own rules. And seeing as kids currently have no rights to free speech, what other way do they have to voice dissent than to hurl their bodily needs like weapons at their captors?

The use of the body is resistance expressed through non-violence. It's the willful glorification of self-degradation because the system can't degrade them enough on its own. For certainly, their bodily functions, including sexual impulses, are the one thing a child truly does own. The mind can be bent many different ways, behaviors can be controlled and redirected, but the need to void, the need to shed, to have intake and output, is entirely theirs, and theirs to do with as they please. It's the one thing where if it were controlled, the powers controlling it would cease to have a living child to control, and therefore, cease to be in control. Passive resistance plays with an authority's ability to control in like manner.

So let's reexamine the power of a kid's body. The body is one way our kids express comfort with their peers. They use their body to produce kinesthetic, athletic, and scatological feats, and express early masculine or feminine identification. They use their body and its functions as learning experiences in pro-social behavior, human bonding, manners, and taking ownership for their actions. The body is as much a projection of personality and talent as it is a depiction of their health and well being. It's a source of great pride. More importantly though, a kid's body presents options to them--needs, desires, excretions--that can be delivered decisively anytime and place, command instant attention, and express personal control--the root of all individual sovereignty.

So let the kids be free to be gross.