Suzanne Moore - young women should learn from older generations

[ArabellaScott]

In the Telegraph today.

'It’s 2021. It’s time to reclaim the streets, reclaim our rage, reclaim our history and make some more. I don’t care what this wave gets called. It’s time for a tsunami. '

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/can-turn-moment-movement-women/?fbclid=IwAR17A6AutjtkJmI7uKeHqUN7x-rEnZL3mk2ELS6dYUVv4Du9TNB-rZKT2SU

This is great!

I thought so!

Excellent

Great article - and in the open to all today Telegraph

Brilliant, thanks Arabella

Well judging by the actions of those runing the Reclaim These Streets goup with thousands of members, this will be ignored.

Not only is there routine ageism and NAM, but women are being booted out of the group for talking about women facing sex discrimination because this makes AMAB persons claim transphobia. Not posting articles from Nordic Model Now because it means you are listening to SWERFs and so on.

Am beginning to think that older women, or rather women of any age who want to focus on women and the discimination and violence they face because of their sex should just get on and do what they want.

Sometimes I think feminist mothers of daughters are so worried about alienating their daughters that they are putting the family relationships above what needs to be done.

Why?

Many young women are actively hostile to older women. Maybe older women just need to accept they aren't going to be liked by their daughters all the time, and this is one of the times that their politics should come first.

I seem recently to have heard of a lot of children going 'nc' with their parents/mothers, stumbledin. I was reading that it is becoming more and more common. A horrible thing to happen to a parent (I'm sure there are often good reasons for children to do so). Maybe it's the fear of that?

I dont know but it seems to be part of a trend in parenting that says anything young people say must be affirmed. Dont challenge.

Even the infamous LOL - why did everybody assume it was Cameron(?) who was wrong rather than young people not knowing WtF they are talking about. It's one thing coming up with something new but not knowing the real meaning of things and then just assuming your tiny teen brain can "assign" its real meaning it really dangerous.

Politics is boring. Oh I'm so sorry I'll dumb it down to the level of a ten year old. And yet at the same time the 10 year old would be outraged to communicate with a young relative who is just learning to form words. I'm getting really worried we wont be able to do anything soon, because to do instantly makes all those who cant feel they are being shamed / bullied.

There was an article in something in the FT going on about how employers need to learn how to be employers to milleniums and made it sound like they were permenantly in therapy. Dont criticise, dont point out its their first job and they might have to work their way up.

Its like Uber cabs. Young people go oh it gives me freedom and old fashioned cabs are so expensive. showing they are unable to put 2 + 2 together and realise that getting what they want means they are forcing people to work for shit wages.

There is now 2 or 3 generations of people who went through an education system that encouraged them to think Women's Liberation is old fashioned and not relevant, that you dont listen to old people, and that in their shiny new world what you wish for is true ie you can change sex.

When have young people ever listened to young people?

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Well I think most of us have been girls and young women, and I do recognise some of the things i did and said at the time as congruent with some of the younger women around today.

Some of the things amaze me because I had more gusto and courage.

Some of the things embarrass me because I had a more shallow and less nuanced understanding.

I've always been a feminist but j
I feel like I didn't get hit hard in the face with it until I had kids. Having been a woman who lives as an adult without children for a decade and with children for another decade, the issues and differences in experience are so completely unlike each other that I'm not surprised there are such huge gulfs between feminist understandings.

I just could not have had the ... immersive?! ... overwhelming, relentless, merciless, difficult, crushing, exhilirating, moving, frustrating reminders of my sexed body before pregnancy, birth and child raising. It also took a whole to sink in. It has only deepened since then!

From a recent article in the new scientist - hope it's legible.

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 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.

@SmokedDuck

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.

This article seems on point for that www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/work-peak-professional-decline/590650/?fbclid=IwAR0rhTvqdSLGMCwAgApyu_VsqX8ibZmZbtBFv9_h-t3pIQHEpkKTnOZD2iw

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.

The baby boomers are the first generation to really take up that idea, which their parents did not believe in

Is that true? Hasn't 'progress' been part of our cultural narrative since - oh, at least the Enlightenment?

Don't know if I want to click on that link, Sophocles, I'm a bit scared I've peaked without ever even getting anywhere!

Maybe we can haz a succession of peaks with declines in between? [hopeful]

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.