I never understand why age is considered a negative by some people, as if the more you experience not just of life but of how your needs and challenges are different at different stages of life, and the more people you meet and learn from, and the more political and economic eras you live through, somehow results in less awareness of life rather than more.
When I was twenty I would undoubtably have been all for replacing sex with gender. I'm sure I would have seen it as the next step in undoing sexsm.
When I was twenty I hadn't seen how opportunities and power accrued to men because society is structured to make their lives easier at the expense of ours.
When I was twenty I hadn't noticed yet just how men feel entitled to my time and attention.
When I was twenty I hadn't seen the degree to which women making feminist or really any political statements in public are attacked and vilified and dismissed to a far greater degree than men.
When I was twenty I thought that politicians, cultural leaders and business leaders being mostly men was just the end of an old era and women would be equal in a decade or so.
When I was twenty I thought men listened to me because I had things to say, not because they liked hanging out with a twenty years old female body.
When I was twenty I thought men appreciated women who had sex with them and wouldn't have sex with women they didn't like or respect or value as people
When I was twenty I hadn't had much exposure to older women as equals and hadn't heard them talk about the challenges they faced that i had not
When I was twenty I hadn't had the experience of making myself smaller and compliant to meet the expectations of a partner who would never be satisfied because the problems he saw in me were projections of his own demons
When I was twenty I hadn't met people who fit fairly traditional social stereotypes for class, sex or race and got to know them as friends and discovered they had insights I didn't into cultures and contexts I had very shallow ideas about
When I was twenty I hadn't lost people to illness or suicide
When I was twenty I hadn't seen good friends tear each other apart in toxic divorces
When I was twenty I hadn't seen female friendship groups shrink into the spaces around childcare while their husbands and partners maintained their hobbies and trips.
When I was twenty I hadn't seen people who held views I found awful on some things do things I admired in other areas
When I was twenty I hadn't seen movements for change play through from best of intentions to same old problems because people are more complicated than theory
When I was twenty I had never seen the impact of being a carer
When I was twenty I hadn't had the experience of supporting men who didn't fit society's idea of manhood only to find those men felt juat as entitled to my support and were juat as blind to me as a human of equal value as the men they claimed to be different to
When I was twenty I hadn't had no money
When I was twenty I thought i knew everything! Now I'm much older I know I hardly know anything and the only way to get somewhere is to do it with lots of people together not one vision for everyone.