It honestly drives me insane whenever I see adults straight up invalidating minors relationships and how they express their attractions iufsydiufyugh

"Sweetie, you don't even know what love is. Your brain hasn't finished cooking yet." is the kind of shit that leads to telling queer children that their feelings are just a phase. Minors are just as capable of experiencing romantic attraction like adults do. I don't know why that's such a difficult thing to understand.

Like yes, children, especially teenagers, can misunderstand what kinds of feelings that they're experiencing. Children experience all kinds of hormonal development, but I've seen adults say that children can't experience sexual attraction either because they're too young to understand it. This is why sexual education in schools is so important. The reason why minors become so destructive in their relationships at that age is due to lack of education, emotional support, and resources.

I oftentimes see this cynical POV come from adults who still haven't unpacked their childhood trauma. They blame themselves for not listening to adults who shield them from sex and dating.... But it's actually the fault of their teachers and caretakers who refuse to nurture their feelings and how to safely navigate their relationships. There are several types of attraction, attraction isn't just a biological reaction, it's also a social construct. Maturity isn't required to know when you like someone or think that they're hot uidyftsgyjuigt

Whenever I see bitter, regretful adults tell kids that they don't understand what love is, they very rarely can explain what it means. Sometimes they even admit that they STILL don't even know what love is for themselves. How can you even police children's attraction and romantic expression if you can't even define what it is either??? Alloromantic and arospec children exist. I saw a polyamorous adult tell a 14 year old poly kid in their live stream that what they were experiencing was just sexual attraction.

But how can you tell that kids are just experiencing sexual attraction??? Some aces are minors, they could still experience romantic attraction, but lack it sexually. This rhetoric can hurt aros and aces and I've seen aphobic adults tell aro and ace minors that they're too underaged to experience attraction anyways. I've seen allo adults tell them that there's no use in identifying as ace, aro, or aspec identities because it's still somehow "damaging". Damaging how?!?! For using language that describes their lack of sexual or romantic attraction?!?! Their views on children's orientations is just so utterly dehumanizing.

Don't even get me started on the homophobia. Children internalizing that their feelings are just platonic is a symptom of comphet and internalized homophobia they haven't processed yet. When you tell them that what they're experiencing is wrong or too mature for their cognitive bandwidth, you're enabling queerphobic purity culture. Even if you're not intentionally doing so, or are a queer adult yourself. It's like you're telling a miniature version of yourself that you, yourself, are not allowed to define your orientation unless your brain is "fully developed".

But when does that happen? At 18? Apparently not, because 18 year olds are supposedly too stupid to define their own attractions too. At what age can people finally be allowed to explore the own depths of their emotions and their own relationships? You don't need any dating or sexual experiences to understand when you like someone, saying "you're in love" isn't that deep. It's just a romantic expression. Love is a social construct, it's an extremely vague emotion that could mean various things.

If you want to protect children from being hurt, preventing them from using harmless labels, dating, etc is not the answer. All of those problems could be easily resolved if you just teach them things!!! If you don't teach them these things or give them any autonomy, you end up having them become dysfunctional adults when they're older. That's why so many adults don't know how to date or have healthy relationships. It's because children aren't viewed as people with their own relationships and emotions.