Suzanne Moore - young women should learn from older generations

Glad to hear it, arabella, I know it was a bit of a tangent for this topic, but I thought an interesting one anyway.

I was listening to the reports of Dominic Cummings evidence to a Parliamentary committee where he talked about wanting government to pay millions to set up a new kind of experimental science finding agency for very blue sky thinking type stuff. Dom kept saying how great it would be to get really young early career people in to work on these ideas. The sort of work he envisaged being going out to find the problems then to find a disruptive novel way to solve them. Massive failure rate of solutions to problems would be a marker of success etc.

I do get the need to think outside the box. Great. But middle aged me is listening thinking, why would we pay zillions for young people to reinvent the wheel, try out things that haven’t worked before but are new to them, and in general based on less experience of life so maybe naturally with less awareness perhaps of some of the social impacts of the solutions they are finding- or which problems should be researched.

I’d say innovation is more likely to arise from mixing people up together, not from listening to any one group in isolation. Ideas seem to happen for example when really specific experts in their fields look together for transferable problems and solutions that can then apply in different fields. MDT working etc etc. It didn’t seem convincing that just being young of itself would give any special insight in the way Dom seemed to think.

It was all this, die young stuff, kill me if I'm still doing rock n' roll at 50, etc.

Now we have this tendency to elevate young activists and such, as if they are more advanced because they are young.

It just begin to create an atmosphere where there is no sense of value of the knowledge of the elder.

That’s more or less where the article gets to, arabella, it’s somewhat depressing but there is sort of a happy ending!

It’s a long read, you’ll need a cuppa or maybe something stronger.

According to research by Dean Keith Simonton, a professor emeritus of psychology at UC Davis and one of the world’s leading experts on the trajectories of creative careers, success and productivity increase for the first 20 years after the inception of a career, on average. So if you start a career in earnest at 30, expect to do your best work around 50 and go into decline soon after that

I think there’s been a long history of wedges between older and younger women. It’s a fascinating topic, but depressing as hell.

I think in relation to this that it's interesting to look at the ages of people making important contributions in different areas.

In mathematics people tend to make their biggest mark in their 20s, even early 20s.

History, philosophy, and literature are typically much different, people create their best work not earlier than middle age.

We don't encourage any kind of respect for elders at all. the dominant message tends to be they are out of touch with progress. If you belive in that idea of inevitable progress over time, that makes sense. Young people embody the emerging World Spirit. And a lot of people do implicitly believe that.

The baby boomers are the first generation to really take up that idea, which their parents did not believe in, they taught it to their kids. We're three generations down the line and now seeing the fruit of that perspective. The boomers have in many cases moved on, but it's too late, that ball is well down the alley.

I'm not going to have another rant, but it seems even if we want to be political women are expected not to put themselves first, have to be understanding of young women, have to be understanding of sex workers, have to be understanding of the whole effing world, but nobody, absolutely nobody thinks they should try and understand women.

"You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation."

Agree, agree, it isn't a deliberate tactic, it wasn't for me, it's conditioning, desire, survival instinct etc Plus in my case vanity.
I thought I was a feminist, but I didn't really become one until I gave way less of a shit about what men thought of me.

Rabbit I think I agree but I don't think it's a deliberate tactic for many.

I had behaviours that I learnt from very young, through positive reinforcement. I didn't even realise I did them until I had kids of my own. I said oh DD is doing X where did she learn that? And DH looked baffled and said you!!

There's also the issue that if you're het then getting off with boys is pretty high on the agenda so you ignore crappy stuff so you can hang out with them/ not put them off by exposing yourself as a girl/ woman who has opinions and therefore may be a PITA.

and what they're being fed as the the best, good conscience thing to do it is everywhere. EG sex work is work. Why reduce employment for women? These women here are happy! They actually have power over men. It's empowering to be sexually desirable. University has support if you want to give it a try etc.

But in the end I think loads are still thinking, experiencing life as a female, seeing what blokes can be like, etc etc and one day will say fuck this.

A lot of women on these boards say they had no time for feminism until they had a baby.

Today's girls will get older and question more as every generation has before them.

It's also that young women survey the ground, see where the power lies, come to learn that it lies with men, not older women, and act accordingly. So it's about self preservation and self-promotion to those who have power and influence. I'm not being critical of - I did it myself to a certain extent, I see that now - it's necessary to appeal to men and ignore older women if you're ambitious and you want to get on, but also because it's a survival instinct. Obviously there are anomalies- women working for women, but it's less common.

At my DD school they have done reports on historical women they find interesting, doing the suffragettes, and there is a board with women they feel inspired by.

It is a girls school though...

Older women are demonised in our society because we are much more outspoken, at least that's some of the reason.

The male gaze says yuck not fuckable any more.
Society tells young women that growing old and not fuckable is the worst of the worst.

But then again, do we really know what girls and young women think? Or are these assumptions ageist as well?

Many women were 'cool girls' when young.
Many women are scared to speak out about certain things, it's not surprising the young don't much either

When have young people ever listened to young people?