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Photo du rédacteurValérie Gillet

Being stuck on repeat



I'm 43 now, which I consider neither young nor old.


My age is starting to give me the privilege of experience, at least to some extent, but I'm also showing signs of older behaviours that I don't particularly like.


What I resent the most about older people's state of mind is the "stuck on repeat mode": repeating the same obsolete concept ad nauseam until everybody around you gets sick of hearing it.


I hate it when my 72-year-old dad does it with me every time we see each other. With age, he's become some kind of right-wing hypercapitalist boomer bordering on sexism who's opposed to anything resembling progressivism, whereas my mom used to nickname me Louise Michel every time I opened my mouth. Suffice it to say we're not on the same page when we talk politics and society. He's like a scratched record. I keep rolling my eyes and making sarcastic comments about him better shutting his mouth before anybody else hears his stinking opinions.


The truth is I love my dad more than anyone else in the world except my kids and I consider him a very clever person, but I'm ashamed of his inability to look beyond all his ready-made certainties about anything and everything.


And lately, I've realised I'm starting to do the same with my rabid feminism, my leftist views and my pessimistic vision of a self-centred world where everybody plays for their own team.


So yesterday, when my 15-year-old daughter wanted to have a discussion with me about inclusivity and feminism, I tried to ask her for her opinion more than giving her my own. It was hard but I tried. 😉


As for religion, feminism, politics, social media, music, and about anything else, we don't exactly disagree, but I'm far more radical than she is on some subjects and she's far more sensitive about questions such as race, gender, culture and colonisation than I am.


But for her sake and even if I'm a very opinionated woman, I won't become a "vieille conne" who can only see her narrow view of the world and her prism on major issues.


I'll keep opening my mind and talking to people who don't think as I do.


There's nothing worse than someone you can't agree to disagree with. Or someone who can only be surrounded by people who agree with them.


Those people obviously don't know what it is to be a left-wing intersectional feminist in a right-wing ultraliberal family they love to bits even though they have to take a break from talking to them sometimes... 😉

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