Slipping through my fingers
Disconnected replies to M[a]me du Toit's musings on how we're socializing teenagers:
I. Activists tend to argue (often implicitly rather than explicitly) that your gay/feminist/ethic-ness constitutes your entire individual identity, so when someone leaves the fold, it casts doubt on everything some people around them think they are. Hence the spazzy accusations of sell-out. My own solution is to begin mentally composing my grocery list when such people start ranting at me (Optional: shamelessly ogle them if they're cute). Pointing out that championing non-conformist behavior has to cut in all directions doesn't seem to have much effect. II. I think one big point that can't be made too often is that we're never going to make anxiety go away. Letting people forge their own identities means that we're all going to feel a tension between the pull of the group and the pull of our idiosyncrasies. At this point in time, everyone's so exhausted by developments since the '60's, a lot of people seem to have this idea that if gays and feminists just shut up already, children could grow up without questioning themselves. I think that's a projection. Developing strong personalities, in nuclearized families, while moving around the country at will, is not compatible with effortless self-assurance that one is always doing what's best. Personal liberty means living with internal conflict, in addition to the external conflict with the values of those who live differently. III. Someone in this skein of blogs referred to our culture as "sexualized" recently. That's not an original locution, but it caught my attention more than it had before, and I saw it as curiously apposite. Like the way Hamlet calls Ophelia "beautified." We have a real tendency to act as if life were intrinsically clean, safe, affable, and pleasant when--boom!--sexual maturation descends on a teenager and spoils the party. It makes life complicated, and man, that just isn't fair. I'm not saying we need to...I don't know...be more like Brazil, or anything. But I do think it odd and sad that when something like the Janet Jackson breast incident happens, you don't have people just expressing indignation at the violation of community standards--that part's justifiable; you have people saying, "My word. How can I possibly begin to explain what just happened on television to my child?" As if tits were agents of disillusion in and of themselves. None of this is to be taken to mean that parents should watch Debbie Does Dallas with their kindergartners, or that teenagers should just be indulged in the guise of nurturing their individuality. And it certainly doesn't mean social-welfare programmers should be feeding school kids prefabricated political agenda. But it's not hard to see how children hit teenage and are completely disoriented by the fact that what's running through their heads isn't always explicable. IV. While parents understandably want to believe that the changes they like in their teenagers are evidence of maturation and those they don't are just passing phases, and while a lot of the teenage personality is in flux, it simply isn't true that they're at t = 0 in terms of identity formation. Encouraging teenagers to experiment when they can't know what could result is ridiculous, especially when it goes behind the backs of parents. But--maybe you have be gay to recognize the distinction--there's a difference in mien between the youngster who just wants to shock her parents and the one who's gained a shaken but unashamed sense of who he is. Since the job of saying, "Who knows? Maybe you'll wake up tomorrow and decide you like girls after all." is already filled many times over, my own inward thought on the matter is, "Good for you, bro. You're already alive to the world."
I. Activists tend to argue (often implicitly rather than explicitly) that your gay/feminist/ethic-ness constitutes your entire individual identity, so when someone leaves the fold, it casts doubt on everything some people around them think they are. Hence the spazzy accusations of sell-out. My own solution is to begin mentally composing my grocery list when such people start ranting at me (Optional: shamelessly ogle them if they're cute). Pointing out that championing non-conformist behavior has to cut in all directions doesn't seem to have much effect. II. I think one big point that can't be made too often is that we're never going to make anxiety go away. Letting people forge their own identities means that we're all going to feel a tension between the pull of the group and the pull of our idiosyncrasies. At this point in time, everyone's so exhausted by developments since the '60's, a lot of people seem to have this idea that if gays and feminists just shut up already, children could grow up without questioning themselves. I think that's a projection. Developing strong personalities, in nuclearized families, while moving around the country at will, is not compatible with effortless self-assurance that one is always doing what's best. Personal liberty means living with internal conflict, in addition to the external conflict with the values of those who live differently. III. Someone in this skein of blogs referred to our culture as "sexualized" recently. That's not an original locution, but it caught my attention more than it had before, and I saw it as curiously apposite. Like the way Hamlet calls Ophelia "beautified." We have a real tendency to act as if life were intrinsically clean, safe, affable, and pleasant when--boom!--sexual maturation descends on a teenager and spoils the party. It makes life complicated, and man, that just isn't fair. I'm not saying we need to...I don't know...be more like Brazil, or anything. But I do think it odd and sad that when something like the Janet Jackson breast incident happens, you don't have people just expressing indignation at the violation of community standards--that part's justifiable; you have people saying, "My word. How can I possibly begin to explain what just happened on television to my child?" As if tits were agents of disillusion in and of themselves. None of this is to be taken to mean that parents should watch Debbie Does Dallas with their kindergartners, or that teenagers should just be indulged in the guise of nurturing their individuality. And it certainly doesn't mean social-welfare programmers should be feeding school kids prefabricated political agenda. But it's not hard to see how children hit teenage and are completely disoriented by the fact that what's running through their heads isn't always explicable. IV. While parents understandably want to believe that the changes they like in their teenagers are evidence of maturation and those they don't are just passing phases, and while a lot of the teenage personality is in flux, it simply isn't true that they're at t = 0 in terms of identity formation. Encouraging teenagers to experiment when they can't know what could result is ridiculous, especially when it goes behind the backs of parents. But--maybe you have be gay to recognize the distinction--there's a difference in mien between the youngster who just wants to shock her parents and the one who's gained a shaken but unashamed sense of who he is. Since the job of saying, "Who knows? Maybe you'll wake up tomorrow and decide you like girls after all." is already filled many times over, my own inward thought on the matter is, "Good for you, bro. You're already alive to the world."