“We  see our job first as documenting the links that tie bodies to policies, and importantly,  we see these ties as both punishing and supportive; the question is for whom are policies  punishing and for whom do policies provide consistent support? Our second job is to theorize  the implications of the loss of state support for people, their families, and their communities. To this end, we ask how relationships with policies and the state form  (constrain, expand, inspire) the subjectivity of individuals—a task that diff ers somewhat from that of the philosopher, political theorist, or anthropologist.  With social psychological theory as our guide (Lewin, 1935), we look to the person as well as the environment to ask, how do you know what you want?” (P. 15-16).” -McClelland & Fine, 2013

This week’s reading left me with more questions than answers. Where do we draw the line between liberation and freedom and crime and pedophilia? I completely understand that teenagers have desire and attraction and can attest to that personally but I still find the territory this article treads in to be a bit confusing (convoluted).

Having been a society that previously had children working in factories or one that still follows religions and cultural values where humans enter adulthood a lot earlier than what the “state” allows, how do we define what is okay and what is not? There are certain age differences that I personally consider to be concerning but I’m sure that maybe in another time period no one would have batted an eye at that. At what point did we as a society decide that 18 was the age that separated children from adults? Furthermore, how do we allow youth to have sexual expression while still regulating behavior that we have decided is wrong such as child brides, child pornography, human trafficking of minors, and more? Even using the word “allow” makes me uncomfortable because who are we to decide what someone can or cannot do with their own body.

Adding to this that black and brown youth, queer youth, immigrant youth, non-binary youth, neurologically atypical youth, Muslim youth, and other youth that don’t fit society’s cookie-cutter-mold, are at a much higher risk especially when they fall into more than one of the afore mentioned “categories”. How do we make the world safer for them without simultaneously making it more difficult for them to express themselves? Expression not just in gender identity and performance or sexuality, but expression of who they want to be and what they want to do in the world which reminds us that this desire to live and live boldly goes “beyond the heart, mind, and genitals” (p. 16).