Inspired by
this post about aging:
I think seeing people in their 20´s and 30´s as “old” is pretty unhealthy... Let people enjoy being young adults, stop making teenagers anxious that their life ends the minute they hit twenty, or adults feel like they can’t have fun anymore.
Yeah, like...there are changes that tend to happen as you get older, and power dynamics to be aware of. But there isn’t this clear line between Being Young and Being Old, where you become a Grownup with the same tastes and needs (or lack thereof) as All Other Grownups.
The world is controlled by grownups...but by conventionally minded, privileged grownups.
The progression we're taught to expect is that young people get along with each other, but not with adults. And then they grow up into conventional adults and enjoy a world designed for and controlled by people like them.
But to the extent that this narrative applies at all, it's only to conventional, privileged people who fit comfortably into mainstream society.
An unconventional young person finds the world frustrating on two levels: the grownups in charge don’t understand or accept them, but neither do most people their own age. Such a young person finds pressure to be “normal” doubly crushing: not only do they find conventional grownup roles impossible, they also can’t fit into “proper” roles for people their age. The only way to find happiness is to accept themselves and find other like-minded misfits.
And such a young person doesn’t suddenly become a conventional adult who is happy to fit entirely into the mainstream. It often gets easier once they get older, partly because the world is designed for grownups (if not ones like us) but partly because we generally have more ability to control our own lives and avoid, say, toxic parents or stifling social environments. Forcing ourselves to be Normal is just as impossible and soul-destroying for misfit adults as it is for misfit teens.
Saying that unconventional grownups are pathetic and predatory, or even just boring, is damaging to us and to the young people who will grow into us. They need to see that they have a future, that they can become adults and still hold onto who they are, and what they need. Yeah, being unconventional or even disprivileged doesn’t make the power dynamics between older and younger people go away, and that’s something we need to be careful of, but being older doesn’t make all the other distinctions go away either.
Signed, a 39 year old queer, disabled, nerdy weirdo who hasn’t stopped being all those other things just because I’m pushing 40.
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