Ageism in the Age of Sex Positivity

Nobody Knows Everything So Everybody Just Shut Up & Listen!

Let me state for the record, that I do not believe that it matters which side of the age “divide” the calendar says you’re on. There’s plenty of knowledge, insight, and experience to go around. The age of a person does not have a direct correlation with experience, information, and opinions, so any person of nearly any age has something of value to add to the ongoing and ever-evolving topic of the sex-positive community. What matters is how we communicate those valuable qualities and how we receive them. I have a motto: Style Points Count.

This is not to say that I, my words, or my actions are always the height of style or have many points to count. I do make an effort, though.

Because of the year during which I was born, I’m technically a straggler at the ass end of the Baby Boom. I have some but not many values or habits that are unique to that birth demographic, but my angst resonates more with Gen-X. Being two or three years too early to be a Gen-X-er officially, I qualify for the straddle sub-demographic called Generation Jones. As in, keeping up with the Joneses. I spend a lot of time wondering how so many people my age got so damn old while still so young. I’ve been wondering that for about 30 years, which is about as long as I’ve been wondering why porn has been so freaked out by the non-heteronormative, physically diverse, racially variable aspects of the consensual sexual spectrum.

It's not just a porn phenomenon. It exists within the sex-positive world at large, as well. How can it not? The sex-positive world at large is made up of human beings, who are tragically flawed and mortal. Even with the best of intentions, we will eventually fuck up. We will accidentally use the wrong pronoun, deadname someone, or make a joke only funny to ignorant white people. Alas for those BIPOC who are brave enough to enter what is largely ignorant white people space, there are a lot of us, and we have a lot to learn. Unsurprisingly, there is a percentage of ignorant white people who have no intention to learn anything from anyone who doesn’t fit their comfort color because they have not wrapped their minds around the fact that not everyone sees the world through the eyes of whiteness. Most of the world doesn’t.

What does any of that have to do with ageism?

It’s another form of “other-ing” that stands in our way of learning. It’s a bad habit from generations long past that has become a tradition that I think all living people would benefit from abandoning. Whether we view older people as deserving reverence by virtue of their not being dead or worthy of scorn for being less than youthful in appearance, we have denied them their individuality as well as their archive of personal experiences, insights, observations, and opinions.

A lot of people use a lot of words to say very little. When you find someone who uses their words to communicate with and not just fill time and space, you’ve found a treasure. During my time muddling through what has increasingly been referred to as the “sex-positive community,” I have found that those who speak words of value come in a wide range of ages, skin tones, genders, sexual attractions, weights, heights, kinks, and belief systems. Older folks within the sex-positive community may (or may not) have a fair amount of history that less experienced, often younger, members can gain insight from. Some of the very people who made it possible for today’s sex-positive freedoms, structures, publications, performances, and activities to exist are in their decidedly adult years. On the other hand, it has been those new to the community and more in touch with youth culture that has helped us all gain increased awareness of safety and how unrealized “isms” keep us from building a stronger community.

It’s been a rough ride at times, with police busts of dungeon and sex parties, arrests of professional dominants under assault or prostitution charges, thrown fists and rocks while walking down streets, no words to describe feelings or identities in spite of an intrinsic human need to be free and express our true selves, play spaces becoming available and then closing unexpectedly... and then there have been the sometimes heated arguments within various elements of the overall “community” about who belongs, who doesn’t, what is abuse, what is consent, what is proper etiquette, and so many other important details.

Likewise, those who’ve spent less time on the planet often have experiences and insights that those of us who were fighting on the frontier of sex positivity decades ago need to appreciate. Unlike the Boomers and Gen X-ers, Millennials and Zoomers grew up in a world that may not have been sexually healthy, well-adjusted, or even more positive, but it did and does have the internet with its ability to bring like-minded people together even when hundreds or even thousands of miles separate them. There are also locations where sex, kink, relationship, and related topics and activities can be engaged in and learned about. We didn’t have those when I was 20.

For those of us who are “older” activists, these are our children, sometimes literally and sometimes the result of our social interventions on some level. My experience within the sex-positive community overall is that the average 20-something who identifies within it has far more confidence and better information than I had at the same age. I have no idea what it’s like to grow up with a mom who isn’t totally uptight and ruthless in her body criticisms existing within a society that endorsed her message and would not condemn her tone. While those mothers still exist, I think their numbers are dwindling as we become increasingly aware of how harmful those behaviors and ideologies are.

We are in a feedback loop of growth with each generation and each individual we encounter within it. How much we can learn from each other depends on how much we can shut up and listen; choose our words with thought, accuracy, and compassion; and acknowledge that we all can, and many have contributed to the overall good of this thing we call the singular “community,” although it is actually innumerable communities and micro-communities coming together in at least theoretical solidarity.

While still learning who we ourselves are, we are still strangers to one another. Strangers trying to learn how to use our words to communicate and who often indulge in bad habits we don’t even realize we have. Like judging the different communities as lesser or greater depending on our unexamined prejudices. Like judging one another as totally out of touch with reality due to being older. Like judging one another incapable of having a wealth of experiences and knowledge while still young.

No wonder we quarrel sometimes. We have so much to learn from each other if only we’ll start taking turns talking and listening instead of doing them both at the same time or refusing to do either. Okay. Your turn…