Response to criticism of freaksexual essay
As I am sure will be obvious from the following, I have a lot of sympathy for the position that younger poly-folk are marginalised.
I doubt that I will have any more success communicating why I've come to this belief than Raven or Ceoli did, but since this post specifically addressed a blog post on the subject that I think is spot-on, I'm going to speak to that.
Ok..........
I just finished reading a long essay from one of the links Raven posted - a Freaksexual site.
http://freaksexual.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/age-and-polyamory-organizing/
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Overall however it was full of numerous contradictions and some questionable assumptions. The overall tone comes across to me as aggressive and confrontational.
Are you aware that this is a very cliched response to the objections of a marginalised group?
http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org/glosario.html#maestro addresses this in the context of racism, but it happens in the context of feminists being described as 'shrill', and so on. Do you think it is reasonable for the priveleged to determine what is the appropriate tone, or level of expressed frustration or anger, for those that feel marginalised? Why would that be?
But the riff seems very tied to the current cultural norm of "I want it NOW, I want it MY way, and YOU are in my way !"
Do you understand that adopting the position as being able to describe something as "the current cultural norm" might itself be an ageist statement? If you see this is an objective assessment of the way that things are, do you understand that those people who don't have the same privelege as you do might see things differently? Is there any room in this understanding of "the cultural norm" for people who are actually marginalised, and are frustrated or angry or aggressive about it? Do you think that there could ever be a situation in which you were "in the way", or are you the only reasonable judge of who is in the way or not?
It's mostly about talking and not so much about listening.
Do you think it is reasonable to tell someone who says that their voice is not being heard that they should do more listening? Do you think that the person who has more authority and privilege should be the arbiter of who should talk and who should listen?
Now, this may itself sound 'age-ist',
Why are you using quotes there? Do you disbelieve that ageism exists? Do you think you could defend the position that people don't judge other people based on prejudices about their age? If not, do you think that you get to be the person who decides what is appropriate judging and what isn't?
I'm one O dem damn hippies ! So my perspective and experiences kind of go back to a lot of the beginnings of these social awarness causes. But things WERE different then. We didn't have books and professors then to just lay it all out in nice, neat little packages (designed and edited by who knows who). We had to build it, figure it out as we went.
Does this sound at all self-congratulatory to you? Being neither old enough nor American, I am not very familiar with hippy culture. I'd be very surprised, however, to learn that "social awareness" began in the United States within a specific recent generation. Do you think you can explain why your generation was so exceptional, if you do believe that? Would that explanation be able to be non-ageist?
But one thing that was different is that we didn't think we had all the answers.
Who are you responding to here? I'm pretty sure that Pepper doesn't think that he has "all the answers". There's probably someone of my and Pepper's generation that does think so, but it would be really weird to hold that person up as our representative. Is there any chance you're creating some straw man to attack instead of dealing with the actual conversation underway?
So bottom line - I don't see this being anything at all about 'marginalization'. If it is, it's obviously self designed & perpetuating.
Do you think it is reasonable for the person with the authority and privilege to be the one who decides who is marginalised and who is not? I suspect that if you think that through, you'll realise that might be a bad rule.
It is really encouraging that many young people have expressed how welcome they feel on this thread. Yay! But, I'd like to close by mentioning that *even more* might do so if it wasn't up to them to write a post like this (or like Raven's many posts). A great way to be an ally is to take on the job of calling out other people on their marginalising behaviour, instead of leaving it up to that marginalised group to do so.