Allie Baer Chan

A person’s age is not an isolated category; rather, age difference is often a condition for cultural and social discrepancies. For instance, people of different ages are subject to different atmospheres and attitudes surrounding education, LGBTQ rights, religion, and globalism. With this in mind, the patterns that emerged through discussion on the Intergenerational Organizing Panel were not solely relegated to difference in age. The discussion took place between Hakima Abbas, a policy analyst and activist in Senegal; Simidele Dosekun, a publisher and PhD student at King’s College London; Leymah Gbowee, a peace-builder and activist in Liberia and Ghana; and Spectra, a Nigerian blogger and activist based in Massachusetts—four women of very different backgrounds, not only generationally but also in education, cultural background, familial status, and professional focus. In the course of the conference, many other distinctions emerged, mirroring some of the barriers to intergenerational organizing in real life. In other words, as these women discussed the importance of intergenerational organizing, some of the barriers to it, and how to go about it, the discrepancies that surfaced between them revealed as much about these topics as their words did.

A particularly interesting dynamic in the conference discussion was not a result of their different ages, which in actuality weren’t that different at all, but rather the different ways that the panelists oriented themselves in relation to categories of “young” and “old.” In fact, in our discussion following the conference, we found all the panelists to be fairly young. Spectra and Dosekun, the two youngest speakers, both discussed how important it was to bring in even younger generations. In comparison, Gbowee seemed to view these women as younger, feeling that she herself had to assume the role of the older woman, even though she had recently had experiences in Nairobi of being challenged by an older women, which she described in her book, Mighty Be Our Powers. Abbas also saw herself as an older feminist, especially in her role as a mother.

First of all, this relative positioning in regards to categories of age revealed that the binary of “old” and “young” does not and cannot exist. In class, we discussed how an important facet of feminism is to recognize and break down binaries, as Elizabeth Grosz attempts to do in her discussion of the mind and body; or Gayle Rubin in her discussion of the sex-gender system; or Hortense Spiller’s depiction of the black female body defined in opposition to the white female body. While people may not always realize it, the discussion of age is also often reduced to the binary of “young” and “old”, even though such a framework is particularly false in this instance. By the nature of age, and of people being born at different times, everyone is constantly aging, and no ambiguous marker can be made to divide the population into old and young.

Thus, not only is age a complete gradient, as the panelists pointed out, no individual’s age identification is static. Hakima Abbas pointed out that not only are she and Gbowee currently part of a generation defined as middle-aged; what is perhaps a more salient to their identification, is that their generation came of age in between two periods of cultural adjustment. While she described this generation as “weird”, Gbowee pointed out that the important role of the middle generations in connecting women across the movement, thus demonstrating the power of intergenerational organizing that can come from abolishing the age binary. Just as other binaries can be harmful in the way that they inscribe the body or force an individual into a certain performative role, the age binary can have a similar effect. Because people assume certain qualities of individuals because of their age that creates potential distance among activists, intergenerational organizing becomes more difficult, when in fact, as Spectra stated, activists are always looking for more support and community. As an example, one panelist pointed out that while LGBTQ rights are often thought of as a young people’s movement, it cannot be assumed that older women are homophobic. As Abbas emphasized, there have always been queer Africans, and there always will be queer Africans. Altogether, the various different positions of the panelists regarding age, both in the spaces they occupy and in the positions on the panel that they chose to assume, revealed how harmful the binary of old versus young can be.

Another interesting distinction between the panelists was how they are positioned professionally, and how this influenced their responses to the spaces intergenerational in which organizing takes place. While Gbowee and Abbas are both do activist work in Africa, Dosekun is a student in London, and Spectra maintains a blog in Massachusetts. The different professional spaces they occupy were made evident in how they responded to moderator Jimmy Brigg’s question about what spaces multigenerational activism can occupy. Because Dosekun has operated in more academic settings than activist ones, and Spectra has, as Gbowee put it, “figured out a way to do feminism and still benefit financially from it” in the cyberworld, their responses implied certain privileges that would not extend to all African feminists, especially not African feminists from all generations.

Amongst the younger panelists, social media and the internet came up a frequently; for instance, listservs like the African Feminist Forum, or even Spectra’s tweet: “Are there any other gay Africans in Boston?” But, as Dosekun herself asked before listing such spaces, who can access them? Younger generations typically make more use of social media and are more adept at using such technology, so such an exclusive platform can hardly be the right space for multigenerational organizing. Furthermore, there may be cultural boundaries in the accessing of technology, and one cannot assume that all the women who are interested in feminist activism have easy and regular access to the Internet.

Academic spaces also exist for intergenerational organizing, though these spaces are not only privileged but also very structured. Academia has only been accessible to a very narrow bracket of women, as they were barred from education during earlier epochs, and to earn degrees takes time and money. Evelyn Hammonds discusses this in “Black (W)holes,” when she talks about how, as an African American female scholar, she is a “hypervisible” token of educated Black women. Hammonds also links back to the panelists in pointing out that there can be a western voice assumed in education, as Spectra cites when she says that she felt judged for not knowing western feminism when she arrived at school. The space of academia not only structures the relationships in a certain way, but even structures the discussion of feminism, thereby limiting it, and silencing some while making others hypervisible. Furthermore, because it proscribes for the individual such a structured intergenerational relationship “teacher/student”, one can be sheltered from real problems facing intergenerational organizing.

Besides their younger age and different professions, Dosekun and Spectra also reside in the western part of the world, while Gbowee and Abbas still live and work in Africa. This fact surfaced in the discussion of the dynamic between older and younger feminists. Gbowee invoked a metaphor in which if an older woman asked a younger woman to carry her purse, regardless of who each was as an individual, it would be necessary for the younger one to do so. Spectra and Dosekun seemed resistant to this idea, and Dosekun invoked a distinction between respect and power in order to say that the older woman too has the responsibility not to abuse her position by asking the younger one to carry her bags in the first place.

This all occurred during a rowdier portion of the panel, though later on, in class, Gbowee spoke more of the specificities of the condition of many African feminists. She gave examples of women who have given everything to the movement, and have no financial cushioning, and reiterated the fact that in non-western cultures, respect for your elders is of the utmost imperative. In my own experience, being raised by one western parent and one eastern parent, I have witnessed this cultural difference firsthand. While in my father’s Chinese culture, respect for one’s elders is paramount, in my mother’s American culture, the young can feel entitled to certain things from their parents. The reprimand that my dad most commonly uses is “Don’t sass me,” a phrase that dictates children should speak respectfully and obey their parents regardless. This provokes laughter from my sister and me, who having been raised in the American tradition, found his language was funny, and felt our voices were beyond his control.

When it comes to organizing though, it is not merely a question of observation but also one of functionality—does the traditional eastern perspective of respecting one’s elders inhibit progress and multigenerational organizing? The fact of the matter is, in modern day training in many parts of the world, young people are being trained to use their voices. To stifle this freedom would invoke rebellion and alienation. However, there is definite value to respecting one’s elders beyond continuity and respect, but also in order to learn from the past, and appreciate current conditions. Different panelists placed responsibility on different groups to get to know the others and make space for the others. However, at the core, it is no one group’s responsibility. Abbas stated that both the younger generations of the future and of the present, and the older generations should learn to communicate with more effectively with each other as to learn from them, support them, collaborate with them, and remain relevant themselves. However, the panelists also pointed out that everyone will eventually be in the position of being the elder. Gbowee insisted that if people continue to exclude the older generations from their organizing spaces, and don’t recognize the need to hear stories of the origins of the movement, then nothing will ever change, and multigenerational organizing will be impossible. Just as my parents have combined their different cultures in order to raise my sister and me, different generations must also compromise in the face of globalization, so that they all feel the responsibility to listen to and appreciate the other side.

To break all of this down into its most salient features, it helps to look at the foundational idea of what it really means to be “multigenerational”. A “generation” is defined not only as “a group of individuals, most of whom are the same approximate age,” but also “having similar ideas, problems, attitudes, etc.” While most people probably immediately associate differences in age when they think about multiple generations, this can be reductive. In actuality, a generation encompasses far more differences. Our panelists differed less in age than they did in professional experience, cultural surroundings, and focuses within feminism. With all of these differences, and with all of the different “pockets” of African feminism, how can multigenerational organizing be possible? Here, the women of the panel all seemed to agree. Through documentation, passing on of herstories, mentorship, and self-expression on the one hand, and making new spaces and listening as an action on the other, these women emphasized that at its core, multigenerational organizing is about building relationships and speaking with each other, rather than at each other. Engaging in a “feminist dialogue” means that people are engaging in a dialogue of listening and acceptance. Gbowee pointed out that while there are many differences between these women, their commonality can be much stronger: they are all passionate for activism of their own choice, and they all have so much at stake—everyone wants the continuity and survival of the movement. Gbowee commented: “The world is a mess, we can try to make it better…but it’s not as effective as if you learn to listen and empathize, try to imagine what someone else’s pain is like before expressing your own.” Gbowee’s remark emphasizes a central point of the conference. Regardless of their differences, everyone at the conference was there for the same purpose—to listen and to try to understand. While there are problems with the privileging of the space in which the conference took place, and it was certainly not a hallmark of perfect listening, getting women from different continents and generations together to actually listen to each other is certainly a step in the right direction.