Playground: Gathering with Simon(e) van Saarloos ‚Age assigned at birth‘

If ageism is addressed at all, it is often approached as affecting older people and elderly only. But ageism concerns all of us, at any moment in life: everyone is assigned an age at birth. Author Simon(e) van Saarloos starts with an experience of childhood sexual abuse, and moves on to dissect the ways in which constructions of “age” and “youth” function to support and reproduce white supremacist patriarchy. Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto refuses to fight ageism by reproducing capitalist arguments of value and heterosexual notions of linear time. Age segregated education, age related voting rights and age determined access and consent, take linear time as naturally determined and mapped onto the individual body. When refusing the coloniality of progress, should we abolish the category of age altogether?