this is such a source of anger for me in particular because so many restrictive policies are justified as being about "protecting children". oh we'll ban them from social media but we won't ban them from the fucking military. absolutely not they can't be trusted to consent to transition healthcare but yes let's have them in the goddamn army!!
i'm like. i will not believe a SINGLE WORD YOU SAY about protecting children until you listen to what human rights and children's rights campaigners have been saying for decades and stop recruiting children into the fucking army. why do you listen to the people trying to ban them from instagram and not the ones wanting you to raise the military recruitment age to 18, huh?? worried about running out of naive cannon fodder?
it's also just weirdly invisible as a problem! so normal to us that we don't realise it's weird and completely hidden to non-brits! when i lived in ireland i remember talking to irish quakers about it and i was astonished at how many of them, who were active in peace movements and demilitarisation movements, did not even know that their next-door neighbours were recruiting that young. like ???? it makes me feel insane that this is just so hidden away
Fifteen years and seven months, for the non-Brits. That's how old you have to be to start the application process, which is just so timed so that you can then go to Assessment at 15 years and 9 months, so that you can start Army Foundation College bang on your sixteenth birthday. My brother-in-law went that route and now in his 40s it feels really obvious that his whole adult self has been defined by what the military made him into, he's never had a chance to be anything that wasn't first and foremost someone's dog.
taking this out of the replies bc it feels important that people know it:
the standard contract you sign when you join up is 12 years. 12 years' dedicated service in the Armed Forces. if you join up at not-quite-16, you will be legally tied to serve in the Armed Forces until you are twenty-eight years old.
you can get out of that service contract, with difficulty, from four years. you have to have been in active service for at least three years. you may owe them money in lieu of service. this still cannot happen until you are already in your 20s.
a child who is 15 years and 7 months old cannot legally have sex, vote, drink, drive (they can get a provisional licence at 15 years and 9 months but can't sit the driving test until they turn 17), smoke, or buy paracetamol. they will not be able to use social media after spring next year (thanks, kier). they cannot open a bank account or sign any other legal paperwork without a responsible adult cosignatory. they cannot leave school, because they are not viewed as capable of deciding their future responsibly at 15.
except, apparently, if that future is a binding legal contract to serve in the armed forces for nearly as long as they've been alive.
I don't think enough people realise just how insidious the child recruitment in this country is. and while we're making all this handwringing fuss about how we can't let the youth have mobile phones or Twitter or access to adult content in case they're traumatised by it, there's a hell of a loud silence around sending them into a system designed to traumatise the conscience and individuality out of you.
