For anyone interested in social justice issues, please learn about youth rights/youth liberation. The subjugation of children and young adults isn’t called out enough in mainstream circles! The justifications used to deny young people rights are similar to ones that targeted BIPOC, women, LGBTQ, people with disabilities, and people with mental illnesses.
Feisty. Touchy, excitable, quarrelsome, like a mongrel dog. [(American Heritage Dictionary, 1975)] “Feisty” is the standard word in newspaperspeak for an old person who says what she thinks. As you grow older, the younger person sees your strongly felt convictions or your protest against an intolerable life situation as an amusing over-reaction, a defect of personality common to mongrels and old people. To insist that you are a person deepens the stigma of your Otherness. Your protest is not a specific, legitimate response to an outside threat. It is a generic and arbitrary quirkiness, coming from the queer stuff within yourself — sometimes annoying, sometimes quaint or even endearing, never, never to be responded to seriously.
— Cynthia Rich, “The Women in the Tower,” Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging and Ageism, Expanded Edition (1991) by Barbara Macdonald with Cynthia Rich.
(Disclaimer: this is a post about white people. Specifically white people who toss aside white notions of aging for the sole purpose of gaining clout.)
I’m getting pretty goddamn tired of white queer people in their 30s and 40s using the genocide wrought by the AIDS crisis to justify crowning themselves “queer elders.”
It’s fucked up to fantasize that the AIDS crisis devastated the community so completely that you (random white 40 year old) have no choice but to take up the mantle of “elder queer.”
Newsflash: there are queer people who survived the AIDS crisis (some of whom are living with HIV/AIDS today) and are now objectively fucking old.
Young white people cosplaying as queer elders are doing Actually Old Queers no favors by pretending they don’t exist or are so vanishingly rare as to be unreachable and insignificant.
You are not an elder just because you are the oldest person in your friend group, or because you don’t know any Actually Old Queers. That’s not how age roles work for white people, and you fucking know it. (If you didn’t, you wouldn’t remark on how special you are for being a millennial elder.)
Is generational isolation a problem in queer communities? Yes, very much so. In the US, ageist power structures isolate Actual Old People from society. When ageism is compounded by other systems of oppression (such as cissexism and heterosexism), isolation grows more intense and complex.
The absence of Actually Old Queers from queer spaces is a serious social problem. And let’s be honest: a lot of online spaces (queer and not) are set up (intentionally or not) to exclude Actual Old People. Hell, a lot of physical space are set up to exclude Actual Old People. Ageism is a fucking thing, people.
The solution to this isolation and exclusion is not shrugging your shoulders and saying, “I guess that makes me, a white person in their fucking 30s or 40s, the queer elder now.” That doesn’t fix the problem (unless the problem is your own fucking ego).
If you actually value the role of queer elders, if you actually mourn the loss of intergenerational connection amongst queer people, fucking do something to address the isolation and exclusion faced by Actually Old Queers. Investigate why Actually Old Queers aren’t participating in the same forms of community as you are. Fix physical, technological, financial, and attitudinal barriers to participation. Work to make your corner of the community appealing to older people.
You can also figure out where Actually Old Queers are and meet them where they’re at. Hang out on their terms. Talk about their interests. Do what they want to do. If intergenerational connection is as important as self-proclaimed “queer elders” profess, then leaving your comfort zone should be worth it.
If, after years of studying the issue, you find that there truly are no Actually Old Queers in your specific geographic or interest-based queer community due to the AIDS crisis, then mourn them and organize in their memory. Don’t grave rob their status as elders. Wait your goddamn turn.
It wasn’t boomerswho made it impossible to survive on a librarian or gardener’s salary - it was rich people.
Plenty of boomers work as librarians, teachers, gardeners, and so forth, and are finding that as the cost of living skyrockets and corporations take over more and more of the world, that their salary is no longer able to support them.
And thus you have boomers - who understand how much you want to be a librarian because they also work as librarians - going bankrupt, losing their homes, drowning in debt, and dying because of unaffordable healthcare. And they get why you’re becoming an IT specialist instead of a librarian - because they! Know! That you can’t survive! On a librarian’s salary anymore!
On the flip side, the rich people sucking money out of every service and person they can! Aren’t! Always! Boomers! Tons of them are Gen X! And an increasing number are millennials! I haven’t seen a Gen Z billionaire yet but I’m willing to bet there’s a couple by now!
Oh, and it’s not like they “don’t know” how much people want to do these sorts of jobs - they do! That’s how they justify underpaying people, because it’s your passion, you don’t ~need~ to be paid a living wage for your passion.
You have more in common with poor boomers than you do with Kylie Jenner (born 1997). Go and talk to them. Organize with them. You’ll find they have a lot to offer once you stop dismissing them as rich old folks who ruined the economy.
Research shows that, contrary to popular belief, people’s political views don’t actually get more conservative as they get older. The label they give themselves may go rightward - a liberal may eventually call themself a moderate, for example - but that seems to be more about society itself moving leftward.
Like, Jolene may support expanding Medicaid but be wary of UBI, so she calls herself a moderate because she thinks you have to support UBI to be a liberal now. But her opinions on civil rights or abortion probably haven’t changed a lot since the Hippie 60s.
What I mean to say is, just because someone is old doesn’t necessarily mean they are a Republican who hates poor people.
I love when tv shows include actual older adults in a way that reflects real life. I’m watching a show with a whole episode set in a retirement home, where the elderly characters are extremely vulnerable and isolated and dependent on caregivers young enough to be their grandchildren that are patronising and condescending simultaneously. Losing friends, all the people that have experienced as much of life as you, the people that actually understand you is as awful as it is inevitable. It’s unbelievable how little this is shown in media when everyone has grandparents and parents going through it and one day all of us will. When people talk about being inclusive they always just seem to want slightly more variety in the attractive 18-30 year olds starring as sexy high schoolers. The whole point of inclusive media is that it’s meant to reflect the diversity of real life, but it’s very limited if the only stories being told are about the beginning of adult life.
Look, I’m a youngish person still trying to find my way (and I’m a lover of middle grade novels and animation, which is inherently young-skewing), but I thought The Kominski Method series starring Michael Douglas was very interesting in this regard, as well as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films. Heck, Up is one of the most beloved Pixar films for a reason, and the inherent tragedy of losing a spouse and trying to make up for a forgotten dream is a central part of that narrative.
I loved The Sarah Jane Adventures deeply as well for having late-50s to early-60s Elisabeth Sladen as not just a distant mentor figure for the teen characters, but for having her as an active character and participant in the action, with her own struggles and history to deal with. Like, there was an episode where it looked like she was developing dementia and it was heartbreaking,especially since it occurred so close to the actor’s real-life death to cancer.
Gravity Falls is also interesting in this regard - the older characters in that show are treated as sort of jokes through most of the first season, with a lot of focus on generations gaps and bodies changing in gross ways, as is common for children’s cartoons. But then around the end of Season 1-Season 2, we see a different side to them, and they become much more active in the plot. Much of the crazy stuff that people still talk about with that show centered around these 60+-year-old men with a lifetime of regrets, as much as the 12-year-old main protagonists.
Still, it’s important not just to show the bad, but the good about getting older - that you never stop changing, that you resort your priorities, that you get to see the fruits of your labor or find a new dream to work towards, that you can stay somewhat hearty and strong if you build good habits when you’re younger, that you have more time to do what you love.
Also, I do wonder if part of the issue is logistics - is it considered riskier to invest in productions that center older actors who are more likely to pass away or get sick during production? We’ve all seen how disruptive it can be when an actor passes away unexpectedly during a series, leaving their plot threads dangling. We saw what happened to Carrie Fisher - how much different would Episode 9 have been if she had lived longer and gotten the plot focus she deserved? Like, that doesn’t make it okay, but just thinking…
Weighing in on yet another round of “fan spaces are youth spaces” (aka “go home and knit, old lady” or “You’re old enough to be my/someone’s mom! gross!” )
Consider these thoughts:
There’s a whole set of interests and behaviors that you might become interested in as you grow from child to adolescent to young adult and take greater interest in the wider world.
You might like horses, or dolls. Or building models. You might play soccer, or follow baseball every summer and learn about box scores. You might follow the college football draft, or love a pop band. You might deeply admire a rock band and learn to play the guitar. You might love superheroes and see all their movies. You might love space opera and collect paperback books. Maybe you collect trading cards of your favorite team players – or movie moments. You probably get t-shirts and posters of teams, or media outlets. You might get deeply into a social or political cause.
Those are all expressions of interest in the world, all with associated social aspects, many with associated creative actions.
And then you get older. And here’s the thing about that list. The things on that list that are “for boys?” Are also “for men.” But the things on that list that are “for girls” or “for nerds?” Are only “for children.”
Adult men wear brightly colored team clothing and paint their faces without shame. They join fantasy football leagues and hang out online. They follow Phish (or continuously talk about how they did when that was a thing). They spend vast sums on tickets to bowl games. They get excited all over the internet about Geddy Lee’s greatest hits. They spend long afternoons on the golf course, playing very bad golf.
No one tells them to grow up
An adult woman who turns a childhood dollhouse into a beautiful scale model of a real Victorian home is “eccentric.” An adult man who builds a vast HO train layout in his basement is a “train enthusiast.” An adult woman who displays her favorite Bryer horses is “odd,” an adult man with a shelf of signed baseballs is “a collector” or even “an investor.”
Adult women making fanart of attractive movie stars is “creepy,’ while adult men decorating their garages with calendar art of scantily-clad very-young women is “just what guys do.”
Interests and hobbies that were feminine and are taken up by men become acceptable. When The Beatles were greeted with mobs of fainting teen girls, they were a “boy band.” When young men discovered them, they became Serious Musicians.
Over and over, across fields of interest, things that girls like are “toys and games and childish” and should be left behind by adults, while things that boys like are “hobbies and sports” that are lifetime pastimes. And acceptable “hobbies” for adult women? Most are things that could be coded as household chores, but generations of women have worked to turn into enjoyable pastimes: knitting, sewing, quilting. Home decor. Baking. Many adult women (myself included) enjoy doing those things in their free time and have elevated them to art forms. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re rooted in utility, while “men’s hobbies” are, by and large, rooted in leisure.
Look around you and follow the pattern. And then, before you ask “Why are adult women in fan spaces,” maybe ask “why do I feel like adult women don’t get to have fun?”
This.
(With the addendum; I come of the generation that built fan spaces. I’m not going anywhere. Deal.)
and another thing: no child should ever be made fun of for things they love especially by their parents
it should go without saying but apparently it needs to be said over and over and over again because every time i hear my mom tease my sister for playing wolfquest, every time i hear a teacher tease a kid for doodling, every time i hear a babysitter laugh at a kid explaining the plot of a show they like, it drives a fuckin stake through my heart because i was that kid once.
i was made fun of enough times by adults, by peers, for liking something and wanting to share it that i just. didn’t. anymore.
dont fucking tease kids for liking things. even if you think its cringe. ESPECIALLY. if you think its cringe. because the way you speak and act towards them when they are sharing themselves with you STICKS and they will think of it years down the line.
BE NICE TO KIDS. BE NICE TO KIDS. LISTEN WHEN THEY SPEAK TO YOU. BE. FUCKING. NICE. TO. KIDS.
I was a substitute teacher for a little while between grad schools, and one day I had a middle school math class for the morning. The work they were assigned wasn’t *especially* hard, and one little girl knocked it out in 20 minutes. She started drawing what was very obviously Sans Undertale, and when I noticed I wanted to be supportive, and had the following exchange:
“What’s that you’re drawing?”
*panicking* “It’s nothing, I’m sorry, I’ll put it away.”
“No it’s okay, I was just curious about it.”
“It’s nothing. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“You’re not in trouble, I just thought it looked like a character from a video game I like.”
Her face *lit up* the second I gave her the smallest bit of approval. She started asking me if I’d heard of various AUs for Undertale, and I tried to follow along as she explained her favorites. I obviously had to keep an eye on the rest of the class, answering questions and helping with algebra, but each time I passed her desk she had more things to tell me.
Anyway, it was very cute, but also a little sad how obviously starved she was for someone kind to talk about her stories with. Kids deserve to have someone in their corner, and it takes no effort at all to smile and listen if they have something they want to share. Preserve the earnestness you want to see in the world.
If a child is so afraid of getting in trouble that they don’t come to their parents when they make a mistake that could possibly put their health or even their life in danger, then those parents have failed.
If something goes wrong, and the first thing that child thinks is, “oh god, my parents are gonna kill me,” then the parents have failed.
If a child is afraid of their parents, if the child sees their parents as an active threat instead of a source of safety and guidance, then the parents have failed.
A parents job is to protect, to teach, to guide.
If a parent makes themself a danger to the child, in any capacity, then that parent has failed.
