I can see reasons for adding age, but also see a lot of baggage from the hetero world on this app (classism, artificial scarcity, heavy focus on very specific body types and skin colours, etc) that I worry it would just end in furthering the ageism that’s already prevalent from communities that actively avoid trauma/therapy work 🤔

@millan would u mind describing how ageism and communities that avoid therapy work connect? I kinda don’t always see a lot of ageism in the queer community but that’s my specific perspective + area.

Why would you like to see age on profiles?

@kulbs id say for me because there’s some limits on what ages I’d chat, date or be friends with fully (mostly in a younger than me sense). but ofc I guess it would be best having an option to show age rather than everyone be forced to.

@izzzz no one under legal age here, free yourself from the mindset of age maybe? Honestly so great just chatting to others based on a shared interest than getting hung up on demographics.

@izzzz Sorry to answer with an entire 📖 but there’s a few things overlapping. I called it hetero world but it’s really patriarchy and capitalism. We see patriarchy enforced through all major abrahamic religions and its intended to create a hierarchy everyone who falls under it. Similar to patriarchy, capitalism assigns a value to all objects. Once a level of (perceived) scarcity takes place, those at the very top have a much greater chance of acquiring and retaining power than those at the bottom. And because patriarchy views women as objects and femininity as a resource to be bought and sold, we’re all assigned a certain value in society based on a number of factors including our age. Ageism is about some ages, in tandem with other values, being given more power than others. And I find that without unpacking our own trauma from these systems, we’re going to continue bringing the same broken power structures into queer spaces 👀

@millan I appreciate the lengthy message and the line of thought. I just don’t think being mindful of ages is always connected to broken power structures from history of the hierarchies that are in place. Sometimes it’s to be mindful of the differences that do exist. And power dynamics that exist too. And not everyone prefers to talk just about anyone just for hell of it too.

@izzzz Thanks for mentioning that, my reply was a holistic answer to your question of how ageism is prevalent on a systemic level that we often don’t think about daily: in workforces, dating pools and who we give a voice to in western culture, but I agree it’s not directly tied to your initial topic on having individual preferences and wanting to view it publicly for more transparency. Appreciate having an in depth chat on here stranger ✌️ take care

If knowing a person’s age is that important to you, you could always just ask.