16:00 - 17:00

If ageism is addressed at all, it is often perceived to affect older people and the elderly only. But ageism concerns all of us: everyone is assigned an age at birth. Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto refuses to fight ageism by reproducing capitalist arguments of value or heterosexual notions of linear time. 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.

Simon(e) van Saarloos is the author of Playing Monogamy, Take ‘Em Down: Scattered Monuments and Queer Forgetting, and Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto. They also work as a curator and artistic collaborator. Van Saarloos is based between Amsterdam and Berkeley, California.