Hi Q -
The language in these discussions is a technical language, it has been built up in disciplines to describe certain phenomena. And the recoil that folks feel when being asked to examine their own oppression has also been explored in these fields. I have been in a field where everyone was speaking the same language, had learned the same ideas around examining oppression, identifying how we participate in systems of oppression, using language that had been developed in the social justice movements and then onwards in the universities. Age is an area that gets examined just as sex, class, race, gender, sexuality. What you are talking about in terms of being open to co-creating the discussion rather than trying to for instance win over a person or win an argument i believe is true across the board. what i tire of though is having been able to share some basic social justice knowledge in common, so that we could then have interesting conversations, with fellow co-workers, community organizers and friends and fellow students. what was definitely true of these communities was that differences within a group could be explored fruitfully, and folks were willing to examine themselves for how they may create a culture of respect or clique. coming into medical school culture is a bit of a shock that way. and so the dialogue starts way over on the other side close to dominant culture - hegemonic culture. and the social location of the group does happen to be economically advantaged, young, to a great extent balanced in sex these days, but not very gay and quite white - age and other social locations do play into the analysis of how likely there is a group's cultural support for truly relating across those differences. because i'd say in the long run that the person with the more mainstream position will have the stronger position. so darwin wins over evolution, and you had the power to be able to walk away. if a person walked away because you were talking darwin and they believed in evolution, the cultural support would be against them - that could be a real character flaw! but walking away for darwin is o.k. so power plays out in every little interaction. and youth holds sway when in youth culture. i can't think of micro-interaction examples. except that i've seen the older people be described as unfriendly for being in small group and not be willing to preface with 'i don't know, but' they were direct and don't excuse their answers. i think they asked another class-member to clarify something when the person gave an answer that was really sloppy, like "i don't know, it's whatever', and when the group leader was also getting into that kind of what i'd call defiant/scared to be different teenager way of brushing off any true discussion, he intervened. and then i heard about how he was rude and aloof. i think there's a function of age going on there. and the confidence one gets from being out in the world, being in a career, having a family, and not being aware of the importance to some group dynamics to support an air of indifference and disinterest.