The increasing infantilisation of older adults

[Artaxerxes II]

I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it, but there was a leak of the Young Republicans’ local leaders group chat where they posted the kind of stuff that you’d expect on 4chan’s /pol/ and /b/ rather than on a conventional boomercon GOP chat: Anyway, I’m not talking about the group’s racism or sexism as much as how starting with Vance, there has been a bizarre effort to infantilise the people involved, as shown by how those adults are referred to by Vance and other MAGA folks as “kids”:

https://xcancel.com/allenanalysis/statu ... 3302200564

https://xcancel.com/bchepren/status/1979691641180188892

This linguistic choice, while superficially benign, is deeply symptomatic of a broader cultural tendency: the progressive infantilisation of adulthood in contemporary political discourse. What might seem like a gesture of leniency or compassion in fact reveals a larger transformation in how maturity, agency, and responsibility are understood in late modern societies.
Calling grown men in their twenties and thirties “kids” functions as a moral shield. It allows political actors to reframe agency as immaturity, transgression as inexperience, and accountability as cruelty. In rhetorical terms, infantilisation becomes a way to neutralise both criticism and moral responsibility without resorting to explicit censorship. It situates the politician as a paternal figure rather than an ideological ally, shifting the dynamic from solidarity to guardianship. The gesture is thus not an expression of empathy but a form of ownership: Vance positions himself as protector, arbiter, and moral authority over those he calls “kids.” Such language doesn’t simply soften condemnation; it reaffirms hierarchy under the guise of benevolence.

This rhetorical move works because it resonates with deeper social transformations that have blurred the boundary between youth and adulthood. Over the past few decades, the structural preconditions of traditional adulthood—stable employment, affordable housing, and family formation—have steadily eroded under neoliberal financialisation. The result has been the emergence of a new social category: the “permanent adolescent,” someone suspended between dependency and autonomy. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified this process by normalising both economic precarity and state intervention into private life. As Giorgio Agamben and Byung-Chul Han have argued in different ways, this normalisation of dependency functions as a new form of social control: a “biopolitics of care” that redefines compliance as responsibility and obedience as maturity. In such a climate, the infantilisation of adults becomes culturally legible and politically useful.
What is particularly striking is how this tendency transcends the traditional left–right divide. On the progressive left, infantilisation often appears in the rhetoric of “safety” and “trauma,” which assumes that individuals are too psychologically fragile to encounter certain ideas. On the populist right, it manifests through appeals to “innocence” and “protection,” in which the purity of “our children” or “our boys” becomes a moral justification for censorship and paternal authority. In both cases, the subject’s agency is withdrawn in order to legitimate control, and the language of compassion becomes indistinguishable from the logic of discipline. Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality—power exercised through the management of life rather than the threat of death—helps illuminate how both sides now govern through care. What differs is not the structure of control but the aesthetic of its justification.

The irony is that the populist right once defined itself as a movement of free speech absolutists, positioning itself against progressive moral paternalism. That rhetoric has now largely collapsed. Instead of defending unpopular speech as a universal right, figures like Vance now excuse it by appealing to immaturity, effectively replacing liberal freedom with conservative tutelage. Freedom of expression becomes a conditional privilege granted to those deemed capable of “adult” speech, a category determined by political affiliation rather than principle. This is not a defense of liberty but a subtle form of gatekeeping. In this new paradigm, the state or its ideological representatives decide who qualifies as a responsible adult and who remains a child in need of guidance.
The conceptual backdrop to this shift is the long-standing Western ideal of childhood innocence, a cultural fiction that scholars such as Philippe Ariès and Jacqueline Rose have shown to be more about adult fantasies of purity than about real children. To call someone “innocent” is to define them as incapable of moral agency and thus in need of protection. That logic has now migrated into adult political life. When Vance calls his supporters “kids,” he is extending the protective discourse of innocence to adults who are politically useful to him, effectively suspending their accountability while reaffirming his own authority. In this sense, innocence becomes not an ethical quality but a political instrument, invoked selectively to protect allies and condemn opponents. After all, I doubt JD Vance would consider an 18 yo owning PIM as "kids being kids".

This produces what we might call a regime of conditional adulthood, in which maturity is not a biological stage but an ideological status that can be revoked or withheld. Political allies can be indefinitely infantilised when convenient—excused as misguided or naive—while political enemies are denied innocence altogether and held to impossibly high standards of culpability. The same culture that excuses thirty-year-olds for hateful speech as “kids being kids” will treat a teenager expressing dissent as a dangerous adult. This inversion reveals that “age” has become a political technology, a flexible marker of moral worth. Power now decides when individuals are considered mature enough to be held responsible, and that decision is deeply ideological.
Infantilisation thus transforms what was once derided as “cancel culture” into something more insidious: parental culture. Both rely on the withdrawal of agency in the name of protection, and both depend on the rhetoric of care to obscure the exercise of authority. The political subject is no longer a self-governing adult but a dependent moral child who must be protected from harm, temptation, or error. In this way, coercion is rebranded as benevolence, and censorship becomes a form of love. Foucault’s insight that modern power operates not by forbidding but by fostering is crucial here: infantilisation doesn’t silence dissent through fear, but through the promise of safety.

The deeper crisis, then, is not simply political hypocrisy but a cultural erosion of faith in adulthood itself. Liberal democracy presupposes that citizens are capable of self-rule, of managing freedom responsibly without paternal supervision. As Hannah Arendt warned, the health of the public sphere depends on individuals willing to appear in it as autonomous actors. The growing distrust of adulthood undermines that foundation. If citizens are viewed as too fragile, too naive, or too childlike to handle freedom, then democratic participation becomes a performance managed by parental elites. What replaces it is not tyranny in the traditional sense, but a form of moral daycare—authoritarianism disguised as compassion.
The Vance episode, though minor in itself, reveals this transformation in miniature. His rhetorical protection of adult subordinates under the label of “kids” captures the wider logic of a society that no longer believes its members can be trusted with moral agency. The political infantilisation of adults reflects a civilisational turn toward managed dependency, where both freedom and responsibility are mediated by paternal authority. To resist this trend requires more than defending free speech; it demands reclaiming adulthood as a political condition—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s words and actions without seeking refuge in innocence. The true contest ahead may not be between left and right, but between those who still believe in the possibility of adulthood and those who have quietly abandoned it.

[Learning to undeny]

Well said. I thought Nitter was dead BTW

[Phaino]

I think you are noticing a valid pattern, though I think your framing is distinctly political, when IMO it's more cultural and biological.

We are much quicker to physically mature in terms of being sexually fertile, due to increased nutrition, dietary changes, possible hormonal disruptions, etc. However, we are also much slower to age physically because of modern medicine. Skincare, suncream, botox, all can rapidly slow signs of physical aging.

We are almost heading towards extended adolescence, where the twenties are still considered to be part of one's youth. The extended period of higher education for the average person might also contribute here, there are some people who have not worked a day of their life until they hit the early or even mid 20s, living expenses paid for as they pursue their university degrees. Psychologically, such people will be less mature. I don't think it's just a political scheme, young adults truly are less mature than their 1900s counterparts on average, but I don't think this is a bad thing.

Our life expectancies are also increasing rapidly. There's potential for some born in the 2000s to live 150 years, perhaps more. "Youth", being in one's 'spring', is rather flexible as a construct. It makes sense that as we live longer, the period considered to be 'youth' also expands. If 150 does indeed become the new normal, not 80, it would be rather odd to live a bit over a tenth of your entire life in youth, maybe a quarter in middle age, and the rest of your life as elderly.

Roughly 1/3rd of your life being youth intuitively makes sense to me, we divide age that way as is, with youth, middle age, and senior life. The average US life expectancy is 78.4, let's round down to 78, and use 1/3rd. That means that, numerically, "youth" should expand to at least 26. And, this is all assuming current life expectancy, which we know will only continue to grow.

[Curson]

I don't really feel infantilized at all. I feel like I'm being held back from doing what I want by people who feel strongly opposed to something off of their own feelings. Whatever happened to the pursuit of happiness?

[AtosW]

In a way i'm all for it. The more the word "pedophile" is over-used, the definition is watered down, and that's ultimately good for us.

[G@yWad69]

In a way i'm all for it. The more the word "pedophile" is over-used, the definition is watered down, and that's ultimately good for us.

Yes I agree. If everyone is a pedo, no one is a pedo. And the more age gap relationships between young legal adults and older adults is critized, the more it will get defended, and people will have to start questioning whats so special about the nagical number of 18 and why all their arguments in support of age gap relationships between legals spund the exact same as pro C arguments between minors and legal adults. So yeah, if your 36 and dating a 24 year old, your a pedo. Welcome to the club, the more the merrior. It would be foolish of us to stick with the strict clinical deifnition of pedophillia-sexual attraction to pre puberty kids, first of all, since we want to de pathologize our attraction, and obsessing over clinical labels doesnt help with depathologizing, and second, because the more broad the label and the more it gets thrown around as an insult, the less seriously people take it and the more people to band together under the same label. Also when it comes to age gaps, its no longer just adults into minors that are being descriminated against, its also older adults into younger adults, so we would be assholes not to include them just because of the special magical number of 18, obviously we have it worse since the cops are NOT on our side, but the cops wont arrest an older adult doing anything sexual or romantic with an 18-30 year old, but still, if your a middle aged adult and a teliophile instead of a mesophile, antis will be on your ass. One thing I am really rooting on to help us is simple boredom. If everything is pedophillia, and everything is grooming, and everything is molestation, eventually people will be like “all this so called “abuse” and “trauma” yet everyone is still able to function and our hysteria is making it more miserable than just letting kids get “””groomed”””” The tabloids can only he so sensational for so long. “Monsters” can only be so scary and disgusting for so long until people get desensitized and stop gaf. And if literally everyone gets labled as a “monster”, people will literally HAVE to stop caring in order to have a functioning society

[Curson]

In a way i'm all for it. The more the word "pedophile" is over-used, the definition is watered down, and that's ultimately good for us.

Yes I agree. If everyone is a pedo, no one is a pedo. And the more age gap relationships between young legal adults and older adults is critized, the more it will get defended, and people will have to start questioning whats so special about the nagical number of 18 and why all their arguments in support of age gap relationships between legals spund the exact same as pro C arguments between minors and legal adults. So yeah, if your 36 and dating a 24 year old, your a pedo. Welcome to the club, the more the merrior. It would be foolish of us to stick with the strict clinical deifnition of pedophillia-sexual attraction to pre puberty kids, first of all, since we want to de pathologize our attraction, and obsessing over clinical labels doesnt help with depathologizing, and second, because the more broad the label and the more it gets thrown around as an insult, the less seriously people take it and the more people to band together under the same label. Also when it comes to age gaps, its no longer just adults into minors that are being descriminated against, its also older adults into younger adults, so we would be assholes not to include them just because of the special magical number of 18, obviously we have it worse since the cops are NOT on our side, but the cops wont arrest an older adult doing anything sexual or romantic with an 18-30 year old, but still, if your a middle aged adult and a teliophile instead of a mesophile, antis will be on your ass. One thing I am really rooting on to help us is simple boredom. If everything is pedophillia, and everything is grooming, and everything is molestation, eventually people will be like “all this so called “abuse” and “trauma” yet everyone is still able to function and our hysteria is making it more miserable than just letting kids get “””groomed”””” The tabloids can only he so sensational for so long. “Monsters” can only be so scary and disgusting for so long until people get desensitized and stop gaf. And if literally everyone gets labled as a “monster”, people will literally HAVE to stop caring in order to have a functioning society

As much as I have come to this realization myself aka "everyone is a pedo, no one is a pedo", I'm pretty worn down by all the naysayers on the Internet criticising age gaps and driving them into secrecy just because they want everyone to be as miserable as they are.

No one seems to understand love can find each other in different ages. They all just focus on young women getting taken advantage of and oh no this guy is so old he must be evil and all that.

Whatever happened to getting to know strangers? Friendliness? Reserving judgements?

I'm sick of this shit. Everyone is so stupid.

[BLueRibbon]

In a way i'm all for it. The more the word "pedophile" is over-used, the definition is watered down, and that's ultimately good for us.

Yes I agree. If everyone is a pedo, no one is a pedo. And the more age gap relationships between young legal adults and older adults is critized, the more it will get defended, and people will have to start questioning whats so special about the nagical number of 18 and why all their arguments in support of age gap relationships between legals spund the exact same as pro C arguments between minors and legal adults. So yeah, if your 36 and dating a 24 year old, your a pedo. Welcome to the club, the more the merrior. It would be foolish of us to stick with the strict clinical deifnition of pedophillia-sexual attraction to pre puberty kids, first of all, since we want to de pathologize our attraction, and obsessing over clinical labels doesnt help with depathologizing, and second, because the more broad the label and the more it gets thrown around as an insult, the less seriously people take it and the more people to band together under the same label. Also when it comes to age gaps, its no longer just adults into minors that are being descriminated against, its also older adults into younger adults, so we would be assholes not to include them just because of the special magical number of 18, obviously we have it worse since the cops are NOT on our side, but the cops wont arrest an older adult doing anything sexual or romantic with an 18-30 year old, but still, if your a middle aged adult and a teliophile instead of a mesophile, antis will be on your ass. One thing I am really rooting on to help us is simple boredom. If everything is pedophillia, and everything is grooming, and everything is molestation, eventually people will be like “all this so called “abuse” and “trauma” yet everyone is still able to function and our hysteria is making it more miserable than just letting kids get “””groomed”””” The tabloids can only he so sensational for so long. “Monsters” can only be so scary and disgusting for so long until people get desensitized and stop gaf. And if literally everyone gets labled as a “monster”, people will literally HAVE to stop caring in order to have a functioning society

As much as I have come to this realization myself aka "everyone is a pedo, no one is a pedo", I'm pretty worn down by all the naysayers on the Internet criticising age gaps and driving them into secrecy just because they want everyone to be as miserable as they are.

No one seems to understand love can find each other in different ages. They all just focus on young women getting taken advantage of and oh no this guy is so old he must be evil and all that.

Whatever happened to getting to know strangers? Friendliness? Reserving judgements?

I'm sick of this shit. Everyone is so stupid.

I would suggest consuming less of the media that is really upsetting you.

While Mu Forum was offline, my mental health improved dramatically because I wasn't reading the bad news in our News subforum every morning.

Now I'm making a point of reading negative MAP stuff in the afternoon/evening only, and focusing more on trying to befriend cute boys at work.

[G@yWad69]

In a way i'm all for it. The more the word "pedophile" is over-used, the definition is watered down, and that's ultimately good for us.

Yes I agree. If everyone is a pedo, no one is a pedo. And the more age gap relationships between young legal adults and older adults is critized, the more it will get defended, and people will have to start questioning whats so special about the nagical number of 18 and why all their arguments in support of age gap relationships between legals spund the exact same as pro C arguments between minors and legal adults. So yeah, if your 36 and dating a 24 year old, your a pedo. Welcome to the club, the more the merrior. It would be foolish of us to stick with the strict clinical deifnition of pedophillia-sexual attraction to pre puberty kids, first of all, since we want to de pathologize our attraction, and obsessing over clinical labels doesnt help with depathologizing, and second, because the more broad the label and the more it gets thrown around as an insult, the less seriously people take it and the more people to band together under the same label. Also when it comes to age gaps, its no longer just adults into minors that are being descriminated against, its also older adults into younger adults, so we would be assholes not to include them just because of the special magical number of 18, obviously we have it worse since the cops are NOT on our side, but the cops wont arrest an older adult doing anything sexual or romantic with an 18-30 year old, but still, if your a middle aged adult and a teliophile instead of a mesophile, antis will be on your ass. One thing I am really rooting on to help us is simple boredom. If everything is pedophillia, and everything is grooming, and everything is molestation, eventually people will be like “all this so called “abuse” and “trauma” yet everyone is still able to function and our hysteria is making it more miserable than just letting kids get “””groomed”””” The tabloids can only he so sensational for so long. “Monsters” can only be so scary and disgusting for so long until people get desensitized and stop gaf. And if literally everyone gets labled as a “monster”, people will literally HAVE to stop caring in order to have a functioning society

As much as I have come to this realization myself aka "everyone is a pedo, no one is a pedo", I'm pretty worn down by all the naysayers on the Internet criticising age gaps and driving them into secrecy just because they want everyone to be as miserable as they are.

No one seems to understand love can find each other in different ages. They all just focus on young women getting taken advantage of and oh no this guy is so old he must be evil and all that.

Whatever happened to getting to know strangers? Friendliness? Reserving judgements?

I'm sick of this shit. Everyone is so stupid.

I agree. Humanity pmo. At least the juvinelle humans have nice butts ig, but I wouldnt be too upset if the sun explodes and wipes us all out. But I think everything even remotely deviant being labled as lItErAL PeDoPhIlLiA by antis is one of our winning stratigies. I used to correct people when they used pedophillia wrong “Ageplay isnt pedophillia, dating a 20 year old at 30 isnt pedophillia, liking hisoka doesnt make you a pedophillia, wearing frilly dressess isnt pedophillic, prefering short women isnt pedophillia, blah blah blah” but then I realized, who am I doing this for? If antis start using the correct definition of pedophillia, which they wont, because it will leave their favorite buzzword basically useless and wont stir up enough drama and paranoia, how does this benefit me? By further pathologizing and isolating pedophillia and pointing antis to the “correct” group to target their hatred and misery? I thought about and have since changed my apporach. Yes, ageplayers are all pedophiles, 30 year olds who fuck 20 year olds are pedophiles, women who wear lolita fashion not only cater to pedophiles but are also pedophiles, men who date women under 5’8 are pedophiles. Big pedo controls all the politics and churches and every person in power, from Kamala Harris to Trump is a big ole pedo. hebephiles and ephebophiles are pedophiles, im a pedo, your a pedo, he/she/wumbo is a pedo. Spongebob is a pedo who took an underaged minor(Pearl) to prom on a date and now Pearl is a grooming victim suffering from life long crippling trauma.

Everyone is a grooming victim and everything is grooming. All men are pedophiles, and all women are also pedophiles who only hate on male pedos because they are jealous of their dominant and alpha pedo energy and want to horde all the minors to themselves. We are all pedophiles pedoing together on our great big pedo earth eating pedo food and drinking pedo water being watched over by pedo God, who got his underaged pedo girlfriend pregnant(the virgin mary, who was under 18 at the time of her pregnancy with Jesus, a fun fact pedo hating pedo christians always seem to forget) and gave birth to pedo Jesus.The antis want to kill all pedos? Great, they need to start with themselves first, considering literally everyone and everything is lItErAl PeDoPhIlLiA according to them. Mothers are the biggest pedos of them all, considering they keep producing an endless supply of pedo babies and raise pedo children that grow up into pedo adults. The only way to completely erase pedophillia is to erase humanity, and as I said in the first three sentences, maybe that wouldnt be such a bad thing. But yes, that is probably the only “fun” thing about moral hysterias, watching bigots get so paranoid about being “one of them” or being “infiltrated” they turn on each other and destroy their own movement do to their increasing hysteria. They get so paranoid about THE PEDOS!!! That they see pedos ans pedophillia everywhere, not that they are wrong, since minor attraction and youth sexuality is a normal variation of human sexuality, lol

[Supermario]

In a way i'm all for it. The more the word "pedophile" is over-used, the definition is watered down, and that's ultimately good for us.

Yes I agree. If everyone is a pedo, no one is a pedo. And the more age gap relationships between young legal adults and older adults is critized, the more it will get defended, and people will have to start questioning whats so special about the nagical number of 18 and why all their arguments in support of age gap relationships between legals spund the exact same as pro C arguments between minors and legal adults. So yeah, if your 36 and dating a 24 year old, your a pedo. Welcome to the club, the more the merrior. It would be foolish of us to stick with the strict clinical deifnition of pedophillia-sexual attraction to pre puberty kids, first of all, since we want to de pathologize our attraction, and obsessing over clinical labels doesnt help with depathologizing, and second, because the more broad the label and the more it gets thrown around as an insult, the less seriously people take it and the more people to band together under the same label. Also when it comes to age gaps, its no longer just adults into minors that are being descriminated against, its also older adults into younger adults, so we would be assholes not to include them just because of the special magical number of 18, obviously we have it worse since the cops are NOT on our side, but the cops wont arrest an older adult doing anything sexual or romantic with an 18-30 year old, but still, if your a middle aged adult and a teliophile instead of a mesophile, antis will be on your ass. One thing I am really rooting on to help us is simple boredom. If everything is pedophillia, and everything is grooming, and everything is molestation, eventually people will be like “all this so called “abuse” and “trauma” yet everyone is still able to function and our hysteria is making it more miserable than just letting kids get “””groomed”””” The tabloids can only he so sensational for so long. “Monsters” can only be so scary and disgusting for so long until people get desensitized and stop gaf. And if literally everyone gets labled as a “monster”, people will literally HAVE to stop caring in order to have a functioning society

I think I worked this out for us. This happens when you haven't supported another MAP in a way that they understand.

You have to be really clear and concise with them.

They like short sentences.