Language is important for new movements such as youth rights. We are given the very difficult task of presenting very new ideas to a skeptical public, and as with anything else, very new concepts require new terms to describe them. For example, concepts such as sexism weren’t around forever, and were only created at the birth of the women’s rights movement, thus in 1965 the term “sexism” was born. Heck, even racism isn’t that old a term, dating back to the ’30s as a term to describe Nazi theories.

There are many different terms that have been suggested to describe many different aspects of the discrimination faced by youth, many obscure and little used, but generally agreed upon (by those few who actually care). But the term most important to the movement, what to actually call anti-youth prejudice, lacks any clear consensus. The Coke and Pepsi of our youth rights world are Ageism and Adultism. Personally I prefer ageism.

The difference between the two is a fairly nuanced debate, so if you find your eyes glazing over having gone this far, I recommend you amuse yourself courtesy of Joe Cartoon. For those of you who are still here, I’ve got plenty of fascinating reasons why I think ageism is the best name for our very own “-ism”.

First and most important, the only people I hear use the term adultism, are adults. It seems like more of a clinical term, or a professional word, its not intuitive. It just seems stuffier, like you need to be some professor of liberation theory to get into it. Ageism just comes naturally to people. Why am I being discriminated against? Because of my age. Oh, ageism. My focus is always on the outreach side of things. Ageism just makes sense to people and doesn’t need much explanation. So I don’t need to spend time defining the term, I can just jump into describing the idea. Everyone knows racism and sexism (discrimination based on race and sex) ageism, discrimination based on age, makes sense.

Its the term I used back in high school when I was first thinking about these concepts not having read any social science essays or treatises. It just seemed like a natural choice. In my travels and discussions with youth from all over, most use the term ageism if they’ve given the matter any thought at all. Why wouldn’t they? Who would really piece together by themselves the term “adultism”?

The answer: professional youth workers, and liberation theorists (all adults). Figures, adults always have to complicate things. Of course if any adult is thinking about discrimination against youth enough to necessitate coining a word, then they are pretty damn alright. Ya know, as far as adults go. One group, (around longer than NYRA btw) who uses the term adultism is Youth on Board, a group I really should get to know better. Their thoughts on the issue:

The way our society is structured, older people have more power than younger people do. In general, adults have access to more resources and information than young people. In contrast, young people have fewer resources and rights. This creates a power dynamic we call “adultism.” Adultism is a term applied to any behavior, action, language, or limitation placed on young people’s rights that does not afford them the respect that they deserve as human beings. It is often predicated on the belief that, because someone is young, they lack intelligence or ability.

You may be wondering why we use the term “adultism” to describe an age-related attitude and behavior pattern. The truth is, the term “ageism” was already taken. Ageism is discrimination based on age, especially against middle-aged and elderly people, as defined by The American Heritage Dictionary. Adultism differs from ageism in that adultism is targeted at young people.

The fact they have to explain why the use the term adultism as soon as it is introduced seems to be an obvious strike against the term right away. But moving on to their chief reason, that ageism is already used to describe discrimination against the elderly. They are right of course, elderly rights folks have a longer and more extensive history of using that term than the youth rights movement does. However I don’t think we should just cede the field and go off and make up new words.

Using the same term the AARP and elderly rights activists use isn’t a bad thing, I think its very much a good thing. It recognizes that we are really on different sides of the same coin. I think long term, and I hope to one day make common cause with those who fight ageism on the other end of the spectrum. Using the same language helps to bring us closer together, create mutual understanding on both sides. Using adultism I fear accentuates the “otherness” about youth, and youth rights, that we are trying to fight.

A prevalent theme in the multitude of social justice oriented groups out there is to see the connections between various fights against oppression and unite rather than divide us. I think using adultism divides us from potential allies.

Plus it brings us into territory of ageism and “reverse ageism” which isn’t at all how I want people to think of things. If we aren’t proactive with it now, then the senior activists (without any malice I’m sure) will succeed in cementing in people’s minds the idea that the real victims of ageism are seniors and that us youth rights punks are part of the oppressive youth majority whining about “reverse ageism” akin to some white power groups. We need to reclaim the term before its been fully taken away, and assert right from the beginning that seniors and youth are fighting the same battle on different fronts.

Some thoughts of NYRA members from the forums when this issue was brought up like a year ago:

Jason:

I think part of my opposition to the term adultism is that I don’t really think being an “adult” means much of anything. People above a given age aren’t all the same and their defining characteristics break up into lots of different factions that shouldn’t be unified by the terms we use. That’s just what I think offhand though.

Chris:

Every time I read the word “adultism” I cringe. It sounds like we’re fighting discrimination against adults. And, in truth, we are. We’re fighting age-based discrimination and our fight IS the same fight as that of the AARP, even though most people on both sides haven’t recognized that yet. It’s fine to say “youth right” or “elderly rights” or whatever, but it all comes down to the same thing: age-based discrimination. Any form of it is wrong. I truly hope that one day NYRA and the AARP can stand side-by-side to fight all forms of ageism together. We’re all fighting the same war, just different battles.

So, there’s no problem with using the same word as the AARP because we are fighting the same thing: Ageism.

The concept of calling it “adultism” is, to me, much like the way that people commonly refer to bigotry against white people from blacks as “reverse-racism.” WTF? It’s not reversed, it’s just racism, plain and simple!

And not to mention the fact that I, as an adult, find the term “adultism” to be a bit insulting. As if all adults are lumped into the same category as “the enemy.” There are many GOOD adults fighting the YR fight and it’s unfair to us to use a term that insults OUR age group while at the same time claiming to be against age-based discrimination. Youth shouldn’t be “anti-adult” any more than adults should be anti-youth. Both ideas are very very wrong!

Andrew:

Yeah, I’m feeling the same way as ya’ll.. Besides that, it makes it out to seem like we’re more hating toward adults and etc. with the term adultism.. ageism just seems like we’re tired of being kicked around..

I just think that it takes a lot of hubris for adults to seek to define this in a way that youth themselves don’t. Well meaning, incredibly evolved and informed adults to be sure, adults who are better than 99% of the population absolutely, but adults none-the-less (ones even older than me, *gasp*). In all my experiences, the term I hear most from youth is ageism. So damn it, that’s the one I’m using.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 12:20 am and is filed under Youth Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.