And with that generalising and discriminatory line, how is the stance here on age-ism?
I always felt that was a real hard one, but only the old and the young suffer from it, but also gain from it, and making generalisations based on age is often very well-put.
Even though there's babies who can talk and elderly who walk marathons, a lot of times age is a good indicator of someone's mental and physical capabilities.
I'm not really sure how I feel about it right now. There's loads of positive and negative representations of children and the elderly in works of fiction. I don't really feel things are as problematic in that direction. And, furthermore, I can't allow my own experiences to guide me, because apparently I've
always come off both exceptionally young and old, simultaneously. The current age range is pretty much 12-40. I wish I were kidding about that one.
On the other hand, I have noticed that people often completely change how they talk to me based on my stated age. I won't change how I'm acting at all, but when older people think I'm their age, they sympathize with me, share their experiences. When I mention or otherwise indicate precisely how old I am, they immediately start telling me not to worry--basically, they start going "oh, okay, she doesn't know anything, it's just youthful nerves."
And, similarly, I think a lot of folks assume that kids/old people are either a. endlessly annoying or b. angelic or c. incapable before they get to actually know anything whatsoever about the person in question. That's not such a good idea. I really tend to dislike dehumanization.