my manifesto for the evening; clasp your hands and sing.

[aamcnamara]

(No, I still haven't written on the novel. That's my next task. People keep asking me good questions!)
(This is related to my previous post.)

mrissa asked me here about my strong identification as a teenager, and whether I thought it was personal or something generational.

I got a little off-topic--short answer: I think it's mostly personal--and it turned into an interesting introspective thing for me, so I'm posting it here and linking in a comment.

This is my answer.

I have always wanted to be taken as an equal by the people I look up to.

Part of that has been wanting to grow up, already, so that I can be an adult. But part of that is also knowing that I can't hurry time, and that people know I am young, and that I want to be a part of the community now. And I don't want to be a part of the community on false pretenses, even if I could get in that way, because that feels like lying, and to be a member of the community you have to tell the truth.

And it's all mixed up with the times when people have thought I'm stupid or lying because I'm a kid, and my righteous anger to show them that kids (and teens) are in fact smarter than you realize, sharper than you think, and will not let you off so easy this time. And with having chosen to go from homeschooling to school with my age-peers, rather than skipping grade after grade to find somewhere the academics were challenging, because I wanted to have friends.

In other words, I think it's probably a personal difference [between me and mrissa on this subject], but in any case, thanks for the opportunity to think about just why I have that strong belief. It'll be interesting to see what happens when I am not, in fact, a teenager any more. (If every generation does this, maybe I understand more about how older generations of fans act than I thought I did.)

[Related to shadesong's post: In general, though, I think that today's generation of fans can find more geeky friends--it's more okay to be geeky in a lot more places today, and there's also the Internet--which allows them to own their geek pride, but at the same time, there's no getting around the fact that they're teens; and sometimes the adult programming just doesn't give teens what they want. Often, perhaps.]

Comments

[ckd]

I found this post really interesting, because of what I remember of my teen years (and I'm not quite so old and decrepit as to have completely forgotten them) I see similarities to both your experiences and mrissa's in various ways.

I had way too many "OH HAI KIDDO U R SO CUTE WHEN U TRY TO TALK" moments when I was younger, made worse by the fact that I had a pretty young-looking face even for my age, so your righteous anger sounds familiar. On the other side, once I got to college and was participating on various mailing lists and newsgroups I had people mistaking me for a postdoc when I was still a teenaged undergraduate...not because I was trying to be deceptive, but because what they saw of me was distilled down to my ability with written communication and that was something I was good at.

The grade/age discussion (where you stuck with age-peers and mrissa skipped a grade) is particularly amusing, because I skipped 1st grade, repeated 3rd grade to get back into a group of my age-peers, bumped up a couple of grades (but just in math) starting in 6th grade, and eventually started a year in 9th grade and ended it in 11th.

I may or may not be one of the people you look up to (I suspect not, actually) but based on what I'm seeing from you in this discussion I'd take you as at least an equal.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I had way too many "OH HAI KIDDO U R SO CUTE WHEN U TRY TO TALK" moments when I was younger, made worse by the fact that I had a pretty young-looking face even for my age, so your righteous anger sounds familiar.

I am still getting these now.

[ckd]

I wish I could be surprised to hear that.

Unfortunately, I don't think my technique for lowering the frequency of those moments (namely pogonotrophy) would work very well for you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Not even if someone had been saying "Jehovah"? Oh well. Sigh.

Seriously, I'm pretty sure that the level of femme in my personal presentation contributes some to this, though of course not all. But the thing is, I think it's important for people to learn to deal with a wide variety of gender presentation from intelligent people who have a lot to say. If I get people to perceive me as smarter (or tougher or more competent or, yes, older) by looking less femme than I actually am, I reinforce the idea that smart/tough/competent/etc. women are not like that, when I actually am. Better that they should have to deal with the idea that I am a femme woman who can troubleshoot their experiment design and critique their story--it may be harder for me at the time, but it needs doing. (Other aspects of gender presentation come with other social assumptions that need undermining, too, of course, but not the same ones.)

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

I am glad that there are people like you who challenge those perceptions, because that is a very worthy point.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

"...not because I was trying to be deceptive, but because what they saw of me was distilled down to my ability with written communication and that was something I was good at."
Oh, the Internet. How I love it.

Your path through the educational system sounds something like I suspect mine would have if I hadn't been homeschooled for a while first and then switched schools eight times in the next five years, more or less.

The list of People I Look Up To is ever-shifting. It used to mostly consist of my sister. Currently it contains lots of writers. (Variations on "look up to" have ensued.) There are many many worthy people who are not on it, too. Which is to say, you are not specifically on it, but I am still pleased that you'd consider me an equal.

[ckd]

At least an equal, and possibly better than that. There were certainly times that I was firmly convinced that I was the dumbest person in the room at Fourth Street.