Comandante Condom

I have a plan. We create an AI character, a middle school aged boy whose nom de guerre is Comandante Condom. This, however, will be the only sexual reference in the educational campaign. (Will that alone get him banned?) Comandante Condom’s program is free puberty blockers on demand. His manifesto argues that capitalism (if this sounds too left wing we can blame instead “elites”) has created an epidemic of early puberty, depriving youth of their right to a traditional (family values) childhood. Youth should have a choice about when to undergo puberty. (Smooth is beautiful; if you believe that, as I think many of us do, it should provide some motivation for you to consider with favor the merits of this program. But this will not be an explicit rationale for it.) I actually believe in this program. But if you don’t, that’s fine. There is not chance the program would be implemented. The intent, rather, is to provoke a discourse among youth about agency. Youth are mostly pro-trans, and puberty blockers are a trans issue. However, Comandante Condom will not reference trans as a rationale for his demand. The rationale will be strictly limited to health: that the dysfunctional conditions of contemporary life (pollution, climate change, unhealthy diet) have caused puberty to migrate to lower and lower ages, and that this burdens youth with choices and demands they should not have to bear unless they agree to bear them. It will be emphasized that no young person should ever be required to use puberty blockers. But those who would prefer to delay puberty, for whatever reason, should be provided the option to do so. (One reason to delay puberty might be to experience it along with a group of friends rather than in isolation, as is currently the norm.) Again, I believe this program, if enacted, would be beneficial to youth. But even if you do not share that opinion, it does not follow that you should not support this intervention. There is no possibility whatever that an actual program of free distribution of puberty blockers on demand would result from this campaign, nor is enacting such a program the actual aim of the campaign. Rather, the aim is to provoke discussion of youth agency around issues that are adjacent to sexuality, but a discussion sufficiently differentiated from youth sexual behavior to evade the relevant social taboo. The goal, in other words, would be to generate a demand among youth for agency in matters of developmental health that implicate sexual behavior only indirectly. hugzu ;-p