I am so fucking tired of writing this same fucking post. SO TIRED. And yet,
it keeps being necessary. PLEASE STOP MAKING IT NECESSARY.
PREVIOUSLY ON THIS SAME FUCKING TOPIC: Older and middle-aged women are not a monolith.
The media is not a reliable reporter on feminism. Ageism against older women is a powerful tool of sexism. Youth is privilege. Devaluing the accomplishments and contributions of women because of their age IS NOT OKAY EVEN IF THEY ARE OLDER THAN YOU. The third wave did NOT invent
"sex-positive" feminism. Generation is not a reliable predictor of politics -
your Morally Righteous politics are not an indicator of your generation's moral righteousness. Your apocryphal women's studies program where all you ever did was pay homage at the crusty shrine of Susan B. Anthony is NOT representative of professional women, second-wave feminism, or academic feminism, and it is tough to think that is the case unless you also think you are the center of the fucking world. Which, allow me to set your Very Concerned mind at ease, you are not.
PLEASE STOP. PLEASE.
What strikes me as most bitterly appropriate is that in every single round of young/third-wave/more-silenced-than-thou feminist outrage, the Awesome Young Things do exactly that which they decry "older" feminists - and can we stop with that utterly sexist terminology please? Middle-aged professional men are not referred to as "older," and labeling the female half of their cohort this way simply reinforces the patriarchal notion that the only valuable time in a woman's life is that of peak hawtness/fertility, and everything even approaching the end of that time frame is practically decrepit - for doing.
AYTs handwring over the exact same phenomenon over and over again - "OLDER" FEMINISTS WERE MEAN TO US - without posing any new solutions, while at the same time manipulatively claiming that they're "opening a discussion" or "looking for meaningful solutions" or whatever bullshit. This is exactly the behavior they are so concerned about when veterans of the '70s and '80s feminist fights wonder over and over again why young women are hesitant to identify as feminists.
AYTs actively engage in other oppressions (and sometimes sexism), equating "of less kyriarchal standing" with "morally and philosophically lesser." Then they attempt to devalue ALL feminists from ALL previous generations by dismissing all feminist history as racist/classist/heterosexist/cissexist, thus conflating legitimate critique with outright erasure of WoC/working class/lesbian/trans* feminists. Because Second-Wavers promote kyriarchy, dontcha know, and we've loudly and cheerfully put our sins on them, we can't possibly be, say,
using disabilist language and justifying it with our "anger." AYTs with ageist biases get to the loudest bullhorn they can and call attention to their already-overexposed grievances with uncool non-Third Wavers. They do so in response to ageist, overgeneralized complaints about them to WaPo articles in which Boomer feminists ignore young feminists. This is the exact same tactic. If middle-aged women shouldn't do it, neither should young women. Isn't that how we feel about double standards? *crickets*
AYTs lump women by age group rather than philosophical affiliation, therefore implying that the year a feminist is born is more important than her feminist philosophy. Which is totally wrong when middle-aged women do it to dismiss Third-Wavers, even though it is completely acceptable to erase all but the most mainstream and privileged feminists out of the Second Wave.
I've argued it before and will probably have to do so over and over again, but using the Wave system as anything other than broad historical terminology is inherently ageist and dishonest. When Gen Y-ers claim "sex-positive" feminism as our own, we contribute to the inherently sex-negative idea that sexuality belongs only to the young. A 25-year-old radfem has far more in common with a 50-year-old radfem than she does with a 25 y/o liberal feminist. And on, and on, and on. SO JUST STOP.
I am so tired of being spoken for by these other young women. I am so tired of them perpetuating ageism in the name of ending "erasure," as if we won't be erased by that same ageism in a few decades. I am so tired of the unquestioning acceptance of the salacious, petty interpretation of "women's issues" in the mainstream media. I am so tired of the continued dismissal of marginalized communities within feminism, to whom mentors and foremothers are particularly important. I am so tired of the disingenuous pretense that there aren't huge numbers of young women who constantly engage in the "I'm not a feminist, but..." dance, or that what's way more important than the negative effect INAFB could have on our political future than whatever I am doing with MY activism.
This is, at its heart, an issue of self-interest. Everyone feels their opinions are valuable, and in exchange for that value there should be an opportunity to be heard. And that's fine. I don't think feminism requires total selflessness in order to be philosophically valid; in fact, I think it's vital that women of all ages have the confidence of our convictions, and grab onto whatever entitlement we have to speak out. But I do take issue with cloaking self-interest as a haughty rebuke of other folks' self-interest. I don't pretend to have a solution to the INAFB problem, or the problem of feminist activism being devalued across the board; however, I find it fairly self-evident that one does not solve those problems with the use of the fundamentally dishonest rhetoric which kick-starts every one of these completely boring and exhausting discussions. Please, stop.