Okay. Let’s talk about age.
No, not about age play. I enjoy coloring books as much as the next person. About age. Specifically, my age.
Blogging is a wonderful leveler, in that each of us us represented by an arrangement of words on a screen. We invite others to form opinions on us based on the details of these arrangements. We are completely self-edited, faceless if we choose to be, ageless, our own perfect creations of grammar and vocabulary and ideas. But face to face, at a play party, at a club, at a class, over a meeting room table, the range of things I can self-edit drops like a clumsy mountain goat.
I am young. I will do a timeline a bit later in this entry, but I want to make my point entirely clear before I continue to expand upon it. The consistent practice of making judgement calls about a person’s level of experience, the validity of their decisions, or the boundaries of their intelligence based upon their age or appearance is harmful to that person’s emotional well being, and consequently harmful to the wellbeing of the scene as a whole. I’m using topic sentences in blogging now. Look what college does to a person.
I have a good scene friend I met two years ago, at an all night play party the night before my senior thesis review. That night we went out to breakfast straight from the party, and I went straight from there to my thesis show, which lasted all day. Recently he told me that he’d been inspired by me that night because, and I quote, ‘I thought to myself, if this young kid can party all night and go straight to work the next day, then damn it, so can I!”
When I meet new people in the scene, especially older people, and especially older men, there is this glance. I’m probably being overly sensitive here, but I swear they all do it. It’s a mix of appreciation, apprehension, and indulgence. It’s the indulgence that gets my goat, the patronizing smile. Like I’m so cute and young, and gosh, I’ve never held a singletail before, and gee golly, I’d never thought that my crazy personal sex life could be intellectualized . . .
Fuck. Off.
I am 24 years old. I came out to another person about BDSM when I was 18. I had my first scene when I was 19. I joined my school’s kink group when I was 19. I effectively joined the New York scene when I was 21. Grand total, six years.
This isn’t actually such a long time in the scene. My personal development is dependant on my willingness and ability to develop, and I have both willingness and ability in abundance. Most people don’t actually get to where I am, where my friends are, until later in their lifespans. There are many people in the scene who are older than me that I am smarter than when it comes to kink. In many cases I have actually been ‘out’ longer than them. But I get the patronizing looks, and I get the offers for lessons, and they don’t. They have to ask. Perhaps they consider having to ask a curse, but I would consider it a blessing. If there’s one thing that gets me steamed, it’s unsolicited advice from someone I don’t respect.
The misconception that young people are stupid consistently destroys potential growth for both young and old alike. The phrase has one too many words. It’s not “young people are stupid,” it’s “people are stupid.” Some people are stupid, and some people are not, and although more time on this earth means more time to gather knowledge, we do not gague people by assessing the number of facts they have stored in their heads. Although spending more years alive means more emotional experiences to draw from, the depths that those experiences create are not what draws us to people. We get drawn to the platform that supports those depths: a person’s smile, their sense of humor, their interests, their speech, their self awareness.
I was a different person six years ago, and I will be a different person six years from now. So will you. We consistently associate youth with change, but the truth of the matter is that change is ongoing, and never outgrown.
Then there’s the idea that my decisions are meaningless precisely because I’m young, because I’m subject to change. What kind of self-limiting bullshit is that? You know you’re grown up when you don’t change your mind any more? Dear god, let me never reach such a narrow minded, confined and idiotic place in my life.
I can say I don’t like bottoming, and well meaning, patronizing, fuckfaced older folks will pat me on the arm and say, “Oh, well, you never know.” Yes, I want to say to them, I know that I never know. Neither do you. Do you get that part of the equation?
And then there’s the idea that because I’m young I don’t play with x, y or z. I can’t do such and such a scene yet, because I’m not skilled enough. I’ve never heard of this or that or the other thing.
Look. Unless “the other thing” is some sort of reference to a 70s pop star, I probably know what it is. Unless it’s a dance that was popular the year before I was born, I can probably do it. And the gaps in my knowledge do not exist because I’m young, they exist because I’m human. So are you, by the way.
If you’re going to be the kind of person who accords respect to tops based upon how well they know how to hurt you, you will probably like me. I know plenty of ways to hurt people. It is commonly assumed that I do not, because I am young, but in reality the only limitations my age places upon me in terms of play have to do with being broke and not able to buy toys because I still have student loans to pay.
And then let’s talk about the fuckupery of according respect to a scene member based upon the intensity of their play. What kind of logic is that? That’s like saying that you respect The Rolling Stones more than The Beatles because The Rolling Stones are louder. Respect isn’t about what people do in the scene; it’s about how they do it. I have young friends who have been in the scene just as long as me, who don’t get the respect I do because they don’t have the balancing factor of being intense players as a weapon to carve out a place for themselves. God help you if you’re perfectly content with a light spanking now and then. The patrionizing smiles will probably drown you.
The logic behind all of this, of course, is that the longer you work at something the more you learn about it, and the more you learn about it the more you can do with it. The common thought is that as people in the scene grow more they push more limits. They become more intense players, approach more edges. Okay. A) Not everyone into BDSM is looking for edges. Some people, believe it or not, are just looking for a good time. Some people will choose to explore much smaller scopes than other people. And B) This process is deceptive, in that it appears to be time-based, but is actually effort based. Interest based. Self based!
Or in other words, holy fuck, how many times do I have to say it? It’s not what you do. It’s how you do it.
My age does not define who I am and what I do, it informs who I am and what I do. Being young in the scene should not make me automatically unlearned, or flighty, or even attractive. I don’t want to be associated with people who make those judgement calls about me, but I consistently find people doing just that. That harms my personal reputation, it harms my opinion of the other person, and it harms the attitude of the scene. We’re all about respect here. Let’s accord it appropriately.
