My nieces, 3 and 5, are so smart. My brother and his wife are doing a lot to avoid the damaging things our parents did. That’s what I like best, all the cycle breaking going on these days. This is a direct result of therapy getting good and largely accessible/shared
I’ve been really surprised by urban high schoolers and college kids - their sense of style and affect is much more unisex and there’s a distinct apathy toward gender norms. Plenty of ostensibly “straight” young couples wearing clothes and behaving in ways what would have coded millennial youth as queer.
Most of the openly nonbinary people (they/thems) I’ve met are much younger than me.
Groovy. Gender roles are dead. Guess this might help explain why trans folk are seen as the big bad by boomer conservatives and rural folks.
There appears to be a punctuated rejection of more traditional gender roles in current youth. With the concurrent increased visibility of trans people, I can sort of see how someone who is under-informed and fearful of change might blame trans folks for this or perceive them as a threat. There’s no actual reason to think these are causal, but I can kind of see how one could end up seeing it that way.
Just spitballing, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around where the vitriol toward trans* folks comes from lately. Like yeah, bigotry and lack of understanding, but that kind of dismissal doesn’t lead to understanding or dialogue. Still not sure what is so scary about cultural changes, but there seem to be people who strongly feel that “the way things are/have been” is somehow sacred or important regardless of whether there’s objective rationale?
As far as whether trans* people necessarily follow gender roles, I haven’t really seen that to be the case in the circles I orbit. Especially since trans and nonbinary aren’t, like, mutually exclusive.
There is a lot of pressure to conform with gendered expectations in order to “pass” and receive medical treatment, but there’s also lot of exposure to how arbitrary and unimportant gender is as a social construct.
It’s an interesting topic. Are genders as a social construct meaningful in any way? And is there any sort of objectivity to it?
Duality might be a fundamental dynamic that is useful in many ways.
I mean it’s a bit like morality. Some people argue it is entirely subjective and others that there is an objective morality. Like if we’d run into aliens they’d also have the same fundamental morality as we do. Like a kind of math. What if that’s true in this case as well?
I’m an older millennial. My take on the GenZ entering the workforce: Super accepting of people of color, LGBTQ, vegan diets and green initiatives. Just really fun, pleasant people to be around.
I just changed projects recently from an office that skewed younger and it’s like I ended up in 2003 again. The office is just slightly older than me and it’s just a weird vibe…people randomly ranting about EVs and how they would never own one as if anybody asked; dancing around asking what my ethnicity is as if it matters, etc. Talking bad about Asians and then looking my direction and stopping mid conversation. Ranting about vegans like it’s physically hurting them. It’s disheartening. There’s no positivity and no small talk; it’s just dead silence unless you are hating on something that has no bearing on your life.
Like live and let live right? I am not vegan but I’m not going to complain about it, or equate eating meat with manliness. And even if I had issues with veganism, work isn’t the appropriate venue to be ranting about it.
I think the younger generations are finally shrugging off the apathy that plagued GenX and Millennials.
They’re engaged, interested in broad ranges of subjects, are more aware of other cultures.
I also see a greater sense of kindness and community.
Being born into a shit world that has only gotten more shit, instead of just making sarcastic jokes about it they protest and organize, plan and research.
I like this and wish it wasn’t so long coming.
Great job younger gens! Sorry you got the worst of this but I am more than willing to help put it all right once the boomers die off.
The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise.
Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters.
People have been complaining about kids these days ever since the invention of kids.
Just look at the Christian creation myth. One of Adam and Eve’s kids straight up murdered one of his siblings and then lied about it. Back in Adam and Eve’s day they never did anything like that. Heck, look at God. He put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, stocked it with everything they could ever possibly need or want, and gave them one rule. ONE RULE. And if they followed it they could stay there forever. Then He turns His back for FIVE MINUTES and what does He find them doing?
Children. Goblins, the lot of them. They’ve been successively lowering the bar below where their parents imagined it was in their day with every passing generation, and honestly I’m proud of us for it.
I think the fact that they seem to understand that the whole society we have at present is built almost entirely of bullshit… is going to work well for them changing things for everyone, even if all they do is not comply. They seem to understand, at least in some contexts, that appearances aren’t worth much if there’s no substance.
In a backwards sort of way, I think that young people are rightly skeptical. They’ve been sold truckloads of low quality bullshit from a young age (think like dumb videos that are obviously fake), and that encourages the development of a personal filter that many boomers lack. The forces at work plant the seeds of critical thinking.
Gen Z folks seem a lot less inclined to believe hard work under capitalism will get you anywhere and they have little company loyalty. Proud as fuck of them. 💖
Yep, employers under capitalism only understand leverage. Job hop, play multiple offers against each other, negotiate a higher salary and have the power to walk. It feels sleazy but it’s self preservation. It’s only as sleazy as their incentive to pay you as little as possible.
“Hard work” was the wisdom passed down but I think it came from confirmation bias. If your employer gives you good raises just to keep you, you’ll feel you deserve it instead of attributing it to a very good job market for workers.
It’s cool, we figure it out after a year or so in this environment (if nobody has told us.)
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