What do you think?
Rate this book
No! Against Adult Supremacy Anthology
A collection of articles and artwork from the zine of the same name, No! Against Adult Supremacy covering all kinds of subjects.
319 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2016
9 people are currently reading
187 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 7 reviews
October 25, 2019
Excellent collection on youth liberation and thought provoking material on adult supremacy in parenting and education! Highly recommend!!! It gave me lots of hope and validation for experiences I had with my peers when I was younger.
October 1, 2024
Content warning: pedophilia
Everything was going so well for this good. I bought it because I wanted to find a good book that condemns ageism and the oppression of children. And I thought this was the right fit.
Until I read the essay “Harmful to Minors” by Liz Highleyman.
That essay just straight up defended pedophilia by asserting that adults having sex (AKA molesting) teens is somehow good for teens. Like HOW THE FUCK DO YOU COME TO THAT CONCLUSION!? WHAT KIND OF FUCKING ASSHOLE JUSTIFIES THIS SORT OF VILE SHIT?!?! And worse off that essay was a book review for a book that basically defends pedophilia, which is “Harmful to Minors” by Judith Levine.
Here’s an actually good book review that calls out the book for this disgusting assertion: https://immerautonom.noblogs.org/book...
I don’t understand how this anthology can have so many good writings that I love, and for some reason include this vile piece of garbage. I don’t understand how they can condemn youth oppression whilst defending one of the most vile forms of youth oppression in the world. That’s not just hypocritical, it’s evil. I don’t know who was responsible for including that essay but fuck them too and I hope they never go anywhere near minors. Same for your Liz. Fuck you too. And fuck you Stinney Distro for promoting that piece of shit essay. I hope no one buys your work ever again.
I have never been so mad over a book in my whole life till now. Really. I regret every cent I spent on this shitty book. And I can’t believe everyone somehow fawning over this piece of shit. There’s a free pdf of the thing on archive.org if you want to see it for yourself. Read the essay and you’ll be just as mad as well.
Everything was going so well for this good. I bought it because I wanted to find a good book that condemns ageism and the oppression of children. And I thought this was the right fit.
Until I read the essay “Harmful to Minors” by Liz Highleyman.
That essay just straight up defended pedophilia by asserting that adults having sex (AKA molesting) teens is somehow good for teens. Like HOW THE FUCK DO YOU COME TO THAT CONCLUSION!? WHAT KIND OF FUCKING ASSHOLE JUSTIFIES THIS SORT OF VILE SHIT?!?! And worse off that essay was a book review for a book that basically defends pedophilia, which is “Harmful to Minors” by Judith Levine.
Here’s an actually good book review that calls out the book for this disgusting assertion: https://immerautonom.noblogs.org/book...
I don’t understand how this anthology can have so many good writings that I love, and for some reason include this vile piece of garbage. I don’t understand how they can condemn youth oppression whilst defending one of the most vile forms of youth oppression in the world. That’s not just hypocritical, it’s evil. I don’t know who was responsible for including that essay but fuck them too and I hope they never go anywhere near minors. Same for your Liz. Fuck you too. And fuck you Stinney Distro for promoting that piece of shit essay. I hope no one buys your work ever again.
I have never been so mad over a book in my whole life till now. Really. I regret every cent I spent on this shitty book. And I can’t believe everyone somehow fawning over this piece of shit. There’s a free pdf of the thing on archive.org if you want to see it for yourself. Read the essay and you’ll be just as mad as well.
June 3, 2024
A really good book.
It's a collection of a journal / magazine articles so it's all nice a swift; all the writing makes its point and then leaves. Given that it's a collection of terse, short pieces it's able to cover a load of territory - queer children, black children, damaged children, incarcerated children etc and a bunch of adjacent subjects - school-to-prison pipeline, anarchist approaches to looking after children, etc.
Difficult to pin down precisely the overriding subject - it's a broad church, with different takes on what 'adult supremacy' might mean - but possibly the overriding theme is that of what autonomy for children might look like. Or perhaps - given that the subject is children but the audience is largely adults - the aim is to provide resources for older people to mitigate power imabalances in inter-generational relationships (in the broadest sense of relationships).
There's also a lovely range of writers - some are very academic, and some are less likely to live amongst literati, and that's really important - can't emancipate the young people without also breaking down class boundaries.
The writing lists towards anarchism, politically, and that's for good reason - anarchism has a strong core of anti-authoritarianism and seeks to dismantle power relations, moreso than elsewhere in leftism. Questions like 'what is the duty' of care are given serious attention - ideas towards providing environments for young people that don't inhibit their interactions with adults, ideas for cultues that are not so keenly stratified by age, like ways to have child-inclusive meetings.
Much of this is controversial and the book has a clear sense of undoing generational trauma - the capacity of families to re-visit trauma upon children. Authoritarian parenting is read its last rites.
And on that - for each essay here, there may well be a book-length work I'd happily read; I'd certainly like to read something on the history of authoritarian parenting, and how that looks in different cultures at different times. The book lists towards being US-centric but there's a few vignettes on non-US approaches to child liberation, like the wee piece on Zapatista families.
One of the most striking ideas for me is the idea of allo-parenting - child-rearing done by communities rather than the 1/2 parent hierarchy. Again, there's something else that could've been said - urban living tends to inhibit allo-parenting but plenty of smaller, rural communities would have a less stratified parent -> child relationship (ie, more like community -> child). That's not so much a criticism because there's so many great ideas and critiques here.
A very good book that I'd probably recommend to any anti-natalists (like me) because it gives a framework for having decent relationships without needing to centre parenthood as an adult identity. I'd also recommend to any parents or parents-to-be because it offers a huge raft of notions that could help dis-establish the parental-authoritarianism (and also teacher-authoritarianism) that blights and traumatises a great many adults.
It's a collection of a journal / magazine articles so it's all nice a swift; all the writing makes its point and then leaves. Given that it's a collection of terse, short pieces it's able to cover a load of territory - queer children, black children, damaged children, incarcerated children etc and a bunch of adjacent subjects - school-to-prison pipeline, anarchist approaches to looking after children, etc.
Difficult to pin down precisely the overriding subject - it's a broad church, with different takes on what 'adult supremacy' might mean - but possibly the overriding theme is that of what autonomy for children might look like. Or perhaps - given that the subject is children but the audience is largely adults - the aim is to provide resources for older people to mitigate power imabalances in inter-generational relationships (in the broadest sense of relationships).
There's also a lovely range of writers - some are very academic, and some are less likely to live amongst literati, and that's really important - can't emancipate the young people without also breaking down class boundaries.
The writing lists towards anarchism, politically, and that's for good reason - anarchism has a strong core of anti-authoritarianism and seeks to dismantle power relations, moreso than elsewhere in leftism. Questions like 'what is the duty' of care are given serious attention - ideas towards providing environments for young people that don't inhibit their interactions with adults, ideas for cultues that are not so keenly stratified by age, like ways to have child-inclusive meetings.
Much of this is controversial and the book has a clear sense of undoing generational trauma - the capacity of families to re-visit trauma upon children. Authoritarian parenting is read its last rites.
And on that - for each essay here, there may well be a book-length work I'd happily read; I'd certainly like to read something on the history of authoritarian parenting, and how that looks in different cultures at different times. The book lists towards being US-centric but there's a few vignettes on non-US approaches to child liberation, like the wee piece on Zapatista families.
One of the most striking ideas for me is the idea of allo-parenting - child-rearing done by communities rather than the 1/2 parent hierarchy. Again, there's something else that could've been said - urban living tends to inhibit allo-parenting but plenty of smaller, rural communities would have a less stratified parent -> child relationship (ie, more like community -> child). That's not so much a criticism because there's so many great ideas and critiques here.
A very good book that I'd probably recommend to any anti-natalists (like me) because it gives a framework for having decent relationships without needing to centre parenthood as an adult identity. I'd also recommend to any parents or parents-to-be because it offers a huge raft of notions that could help dis-establish the parental-authoritarianism (and also teacher-authoritarianism) that blights and traumatises a great many adults.
Read
July 26, 2025this was an ok collection of short essays on topucs that were somehow related to children.
most of these essays had nothing to do with challenging adult supremacy and some of them were quite ok with actully reinforcing it.
I found valuable the essays that were actually written by children, I learned about Sudbury schools, and I read some cool essays. but many of these texts did not really advocate for children, but for their parents (especially those focusing on how to have parents more engaged in activism), one of the essays was discussing how children should be raised as to be able to have power (anarchism has left the chat), and I have to say I was really disappointed by some very clear ableist and speciesist statements in these texts.
I don't regret reading it, but I will definitely have to read other books to actually gain more understanding of the youth liberation movement.
most of these essays had nothing to do with challenging adult supremacy and some of them were quite ok with actully reinforcing it.
I found valuable the essays that were actually written by children, I learned about Sudbury schools, and I read some cool essays. but many of these texts did not really advocate for children, but for their parents (especially those focusing on how to have parents more engaged in activism), one of the essays was discussing how children should be raised as to be able to have power (anarchism has left the chat), and I have to say I was really disappointed by some very clear ableist and speciesist statements in these texts.
I don't regret reading it, but I will definitely have to read other books to actually gain more understanding of the youth liberation movement.
August 19, 2024
Some of the essays were really good, some were meh. The first half of the book is a 5 the second half like a 3.5
May 20, 2025
An easy read and a good anthology, bringing together a variety of voices on how forms of cultural domination are reproduced against children and how they can be pushed back against.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 7 reviews