by Colin Hyde

I think it is right to call a youth, a youth, because a youth is a youth. Because a youth isn’t an adult, it would not be right to call them that, and because a youth is not a child, it isn’t right to call them that.

There are a number of good reasons why the world likes to refer to a youth as a “child”. It’s because they need special protection. It shouldn’t bother anyone for the law to keep referring to youth as children. But when addressing them, we shouldn’t, for the important reason that it is demeaning.

A big story here is about sex, mostly as it concerns the young female, and it is also about economics, and it is also about exposure to other adult things. The female child between the ages of 13 and 16, no, female youth, really trainee adult, should not engage in sexual activities, primarily because their bodies are not fully prepared to carry and birth children. Male youth don’t need similar protection in that area because their contribution from conception to parturition is but a moment. Really, as it relates to sexual activity, his exclusion from the prize is largely to make him share in the frustration of postponement.

One reason for referring to youth as children is to announce loud and clear to predatory adults that they should keep away from their circles. There are some stiff laws aimed at keeping adults out of youth’s space, and here the “child” designation is essential, in the world of the female youth.

There is an overreach in the European world, where this protection is extended full scale to male youth, as regards their interaction with the adult female. It’s hard to understand some of these young male/adult female stories coming out of the US. The male youth needs no protection from getting pregnant. And “face” in the society is more than enough punishment for the majority of cradle robbers.

Educator Ms. Sandra Coye keeps pointing out that dis ya world is far more advanced than the bifo world. In the old Belize, a young teenager who just graduated from primary school was on par educationally with the average adult. Many young teenagers who had shown some excellence in primary school were employed as trainee teachers, and while they learned and taught, they earned a stipend. Today, graduating from primary school only qualifies you to go to high school. Indeed, the education needs for a person to survive in this modern world are infinitely greater than they were 50 years ago.

But the necessity of higher education shouldn’t keep the trainee adult too far from the world of work. And this is especially critical for the youth in a less developed country, like ours. This sponge has had the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest Belizeans. A few decades ago, one of Belize’s greats, TC Vernon, told me he feared for the future of Kriol children because they were divorced from the world of business. He said Mestizo children were in the marketplace from an early age, engaged in the world of business – negotiating, bartering – while Kriol children were insulated, growing up in a world where they were being taught to be employees.

The brain of the teenager, young adult, is not hardened to handle drugs and heavy alcohol. Okay, the brains of some adults can’t handle such stuff, but the youth’s brain is much more vulnerable. There isn’t a single legitimate study that defends youth doing drugs and drinking heavy alcohol. But it is unlikely that a little wine or beer could permanently impair a youth’s wiring.

One area where the child designation actually endangers youth is the protection the law gives them when they get involved in serious criminal acts. The law calls them children, and they are punished differently from adults. This fact makes youth attractive to criminal adults, who use them to do their dirty work. Is the age seven or eight when the Catholic Church says we are capable of committing sin? Well, seven or eight is more than five years younger than thirteen.

We can see the intent in referring to budding adults as children. But “children” is so, so insulting to the trainee adult. And the daam thing is that they know we are lying. Fibbing with children who are true children is not only okay, it is necessary because the vast majority of them can’t grasp all that is around them. These are the ones who most need the belt when they reject being spoken to.

I would like our media to refer to our trainee adults as youth, except when it is a matter with the law. There are no children in high school bands, sports clubs, or their debating teams. Children don’t go to proms. They are youth, and we must protect them with everything we’ve got, while not diminishing them by calling them children. Please, I’ve never met a 15-year-old pikni. And neither have you.

All guys need to thank Atlantic

I think it’s Mr. Spoonaz, that serious activist against PUP corruption in their 1998 to 2008 years who later became very disgruntled with the party he had helped win with his activism, who declared the Atlantic ad with the basketball hound being dictated to by his technically gifted wife to be the worst case of p——whipping (his word) he had seen in his life. It is some rough scene in that ad. Hmm, if there is any consolation for the bullied brother, he is not alone; every male who already get di sense of the new world order is in his corner, crying and empathizing with him.

But something that was or wasn’t planted has sprung up. I say, the Atlantic architect was no favorite among Belizean men for showing us up at our worst. Of course, everyone thought the script writer was a woman. Haha, if it was, the joke’s on her. If the architect is a male, maybe that brother is no taffi, maybe he is a master of the psychology. Wala, everyone is now seeing that woman for the wicked so-and-so she is. And those of them who have a gentle streak are coming over in droves to our side. They can’t stand seeing that young man being handled like a school boy.

Women with hardened hearts, you mostly have to let those ones go because there isn’t much you can do there; but women who have the tender side, on looking at the ad, on seeing themselves for what the new vicious anti-male world has made their breed become, are seeing themselves in the glaring light, and they don’t like what they see. With them, the cheer, give it to him girl, bully his backside, changed to, that battered boy is a woman’s son, he could be mine, and it is now, our fight is being dominated by bully women, it was never about reducing our brothers to—wimps.

Hooray, goodwill always triumphs over bad. Men, with the encouragement and love of kind women, will soon be free to be men again. Beleaguered brothers will soon be able to raise their voices against the domineering ones without fear of any consolidated backlash. Aha, next time an innocent guy says, Babe, I need to go out and pay the water bill, if one of them who didn’t get the message dare says, You don’t need to go out, he’ll feel safe to get in her face and say, What, I don’t need to go out? You are my ma or something? You know, when I hooked up with you I was warned that all women live to control up a man. Well, not this one, Babe. Jos like dog, when I need to go out, I go out.

Aha, all the thanks go to Atlantic!