On 'extraordinary' young people
Decouple achievement from age and question success - feminism is a lifelong learning process
Image credit: Ani Hao. Image description: Francis Alÿs’s work comments on failure on multiple levels, including that of art as a “useful” discipline and partnerships for their imbalance in participation.
When you’re interested in and seek out really smart young people, many of whom demonstrate leadership qualities and are driving progressive change in different areas, you naturally become impressed; age seems like a compounding factor that highlights their achievements and throws them into sharp relief.
That’s not a natural thought; that’s something that I, along with many others, have internalized from years of reading about accomplished icons and legends, famed for their experience and awards. Young people on the other hand, are largely written about mostly for their underemployment and addiction to social media (the addiction narrative seems less true and more like a trope when you consider that social media is essential for all components of young peoples’ lives).
Not that it would be too hard to particularly fault young people right now for just trying to stay afloat. In my line of work and social circle, I gravitate more towards politicized, leftist young people. This belies the fact that many young people aren’t declaredly political at all, but attempting to survive in a world that seems to demand ever-younger rising stars, Instagram-type influencers, and increasingly, public political discourse and activism. What’s a kid gotta do today in order to gain some social capital and some better-paying gigs? You can imagine.
There is a wider phenomenon of expecting young people to lead extraordinary lives today that I, like many other well-intentioned people, may buy into and feed. Journalist Rainesford Stauffer explores how the incessant pursuit of a “best life” has put unprecedented pressure on young adults today, across personal and professional lives. Her forthcoming book about this subject in the US, An Ordinary Age, is available for pre-orders.
In an essay about the death of the dream job, Stauffer writes, "People know that they aren’t the ones who have failed just because they aren’t finding fulfillment in their careers — that shouldn’t always be a job requirement, anyway. Instead, it’s the system that’s failed them; a system that aligns income and job titles with ambition and worth, and puts the burden on employees to orient themselves around work while chipperly reminding them that’s not all life is about.”
An extreme manifestation of both dream job and best life culture is publicity ambition. Perhaps this is what a survival instinct looks like in late stage neoliberal capitalism: a Hunger Games style approach to success and achievement in life through vicious pursuit of and competition for proof of accomplishment and merit: awards, interviews, mentions, sponsorships, partnerships, fellowships. Profiles, covers. A Black Mirror episode of a public rating system and a black hole of endless likes. For many of us who cannot hope to get famous, we probably at least hope for institutional recognition at some point in our lives. We know that our careers and bank accounts also depend on this.
Age based achievement lists propagate a culture of simultaneously existing fear, anxiety, pride, and gratitude. 40 under 40 and 30 under 30 lists continue to float around the interwebs today. And while they may seem like they throw young people a bone - don't they shine a light on underrepresented, emerging, and exciting young voices and talents? - in reality, most prizes and awards lists still disproportionately skew white, towards men, and never reveal the underlying truth behind all achievement: how much class, gender, and race privilege do you have in order to actually receive recognition for your work?
Age lists, and any other kind of award, are based upon a social currency called relevance. The platforms who create these social devices, whether they are companies, organizations, non-profits or agencies, need this relevance to keep their institutional stature. Institutions are powerful, and it is glaringly obvious how much so when they can "make" a young person's career with one single affiliation or award.
Age based achievement lists also promote the cultural myth that we are supposed to know what we want to do with our lives early on, and be damn good at it. And that by virtue of being good at something, we will just “naturally” receive recognition for that. How much anxiety does that produce for someone in their 20s, who is just trying to get by financially, living in the worst climate change hellscape and feeling powerless about systemic change? How much insecurity does that cause for the 60 year old who is finally able to switch careers and has to contend with open derision and slammed doors? And why is work the place that we're supposed to find meaning?
In late neoliberal capitalism, work is inextricable from the self. And for artists, this is even more so the case, although I would hope that more artists would be critical of neoliberalism. So much of our art is personal, it is impossible not to feel insecurity when you are unable to even get published, a film made, a photo sold.
Image credit: @lizandmollie. Caption: Just a few gentle reminders: You are more than what you make, you are more than your level of productivity, and you are more than a specific title or job. During times of economic uncertainty, it’s easy to focus all your energy on work. Make sure you’re taking a step back now and then to remind yourself of everything else about you and your life that matters.
I think of Octavia Butler, who gained widespread recognition later in life and only made it to a New York Times Bestsellers' list after she died. She truly was a talented science fiction writer. She embodied some rare quality that seemed prescient and future-facing, while simultaneously time-traveling into the past - not only in her fiction, but in her understanding of herself and of life.
Who am I? I am a forty-seven-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer. I am also comfortably asocial—a hermit. ... A pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.
- Octavia E. Butler, reading the self-penned description of herself included in Parable of the Sower during a 1994 interview with Jelani Cobb.
Butler didn’t support the arrogance of the young nor that of the elderly. For example, Butler often said she’d written Kindred in response to boasts by college students that they would never have stood for the treatment their enslaved ancestors underwent. Nisi Shawl writes in a loving tribute to Kindred, “But from the perch Butler offers her readers in the viewpoint of Dana, whipped, starved, and worked half to death, we see the harsh impossibility of rebellion and even, at times, its counterproductiveness. Survival is the paramount value in Kindred for both hero and villain… Choices will sometimes be made under pressure, in fear of annihilation and memory of assault.”
I write about and report on young feminists because young feminists are underrepresented as strategic, resourceful, and ultimately, successful, agents of progressive social change. These are harsh times of incredible danger, violence, and destruction, and I believe that we have to fight for a different future than the path we’re on promises us.
But, as some of my friends like to say, this is a slippery slope. I am the first person who will bring up the defiant and uncompromising youth-led movements of our times, but I also simultaneously recognize that we cannot mythologize young people as if they are miniature icons, as if their learning process isn’t in flux, as if age has anything to do with achievement, as if achievement has anything to do with human worth. And as if young feminists aren’t also part of a generation that is facing economic, environmental, and political devastation - and must do anything and everything to get by.
Ultimately, young feminists have lessons to teach others, but they also have lessons to learn. One of my favorite feminist lessons is simply that learning is a lifelong commitment. Feminism is a lifelong commitment. As Sara Ahmed wrote in Living a Feminist Life, feminism is homework. You have to take it home with you, interrogate yourself, and truly live out your feminist ideals and beliefs. As a lifelong commitment of learning, feminists don’t have the luxury of “making it” to a place where they can simply spool out advice, theory, and wisdom without the necessity of self-interrogation and humility. So if you ever get that slippery and elusive award, or a particularly flattering institutional seal of approval, don’t forget to read and listen to other young feminist thinkers, readers, and writers, and see the simultaneous beauty and terror of inevitable change in everything that you thought you knew.
5 recommendations for young feminists
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was transphobic again. So this is a timely reminder to re-read Sisonke Msimang’s essay, All Your Faves Are Problematic. Msimang talks about the pitfalls of celebrity feminism and #blackgirlmagic, the nuance of globalization and what becomes flattened when globalized, and reiterates that transphobia is not feminism, not now or ever.
Different agendas, one goal: how different activist communities came together to #EndSARS in one of the greatest social movements in Nigeria's history. One of the most prominent activist communities in #EndSARS was its young feminist and LGBTQ-led groups, and Mariam Sule paints moving portraits the queer and feminist organizers actively leading in protests, despite the unfolding trauma and violence.
The South Korean film industry is currently undergoing what many are calling a “female film new wave” with more and more women working behind the scenes and moving into the director’s seat. At 2020's London Korean Film Festival, a new generation of female creators are tackling sexual violence through cinema and dismantling patriarchy in the industry.
Vanessa Nakate is a young Ugandan climate activist who was cropped out of a photo of climate activists by Associated Press, thereby showing only white faces. Vox interviews her here about her work in climate justice activism, the letter she wrote to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, and the latest climate crisis challenges in Uganda. "There is no climate justice if it isn’t global, and if it doesn’t include everyone. If it is only going to be justice in the Global North, then it isn’t justice at all."
Anti-militarist feminists in the US are campaigning against Biden’s military cabinet headed by Michèle Flourney. The U.S. military is a fundamentally misogynist force that enacts gendered violence around the world. Putting a woman’s face on pro-war policy and empire is not feminist and it’s not progress. “To think about feminism as a movement that secures the rights of women, but then disregard the rights of women who shouldn’t be bombed, shouldn’t be living under the consequences of U.S. interventionism, to negate their experiences—it isn’t really feminism.”
Ani Hao is a young feminist writer, journalist and media consultant. She reports on young feminist activism and youth-led social movements globally.
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