\u201cHow Old is Too Old To Have Sex?\u201d was the title of a HuffPost Live panel discussion that I took part in last year. As I pointed out during the exchange, the question itself is profoundly ageist. We don\u2019t ask whether people age out of singing or eating ice cream, so why even pose the question when it comes to making love?<\/p>\n
I found moderator Abby Huntsman irritatingly perky and couldn\u2019t shake a slight sense of condescension. But my prickliness could probably be blamed on having just come across a quote from pioneering feminist Cynthia Rich, the first writer to connect sexism and ageism: \u201cAs younger women we learned early on to pride ourselves on our distance from, and our superiority to, old women.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huntsman did give boomer dating-maven Ken Solin a harder time than any of the women on the panel, and he was admirably forthcoming. I liked the other panelists too: sex educator Joan Price (who recommended me for the panel), sexuality expert Walker Thornton and physician Sidney Schwab.<\/p>\n
Soon after, I got a tweet, suggesting that our panel had busted the \u201ceew factor,\u201d and it got me thinking in a new way. The thought of Mom and Dad going at it definitely summons an \u201ceew,\u201d and I bet that\u2019s based in biology. But I think the shared aversion to the very concept of the naked older body is culturally constructed.<\/p>\n
In an essay called \u201cAgeism and the Politics of Beauty,\u201d Rich holds that physical revulsion (aka the eew factor) is a tool for oppression. Countless messages reinforce the idea that older bodies, women\u2019s in particular, are ugly. (Check out birthday cards intended for anyone over 40.) These reinforce a hierarchy: a young woman may not be pretty but, hey, at least she\u2019s not old. (This dynamic operates across many spheres. \u201cMy kid may be on the autism spectrum but at least he\u2019s not stupid,\u201d for example, or \u201cMy dad may need a scooter to get around, but at least he\u2019s not senile.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Old women are at the bottom of the heap, and dismissing their physical and sexual presences makes it all the easier to ignore their minds and ideas. This hierarchy maintains the status quo\u2014a capitalist patriarchy that profits hugely from the sale of antiaging products and regimens. Mainly to women.
\n
\nHere\u2019s how Cynthia Rich puts it:<\/p>\n
The principal source of the distaste for old women\u2019s bodies should be perfectly familiar. It is very similar to the distaste anti-Semites feel toward Jews, homophobes feel towards lesbian and gays, racists towards Blacks\u2014the drawing back of the oppressor from the physical being of the oppressed. This physical revulsion travels deep; it is like fear. It feels entirely \u2018natural\u2019 to the oppressor; he\/she believes that everybody who claims to feel differently is simply hiding it out of politeness or cowardice\u2026. Physical revulsion is an ideal tool for maintaining oppressive systems, an instant check whenever reason or simple fairness starts to lead us into more liberal paths.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarxist quackery,\u201d snorts my houseguest, Patrick. \u201cIt\u2019s about beauty. There\u2019s nothing more sensuously beautiful than an 18-year-old girl.\u201d This, after flaunting his cred by describing a long and passionate affair with a woman decades older than he, and how lovely parts of her body were. Which wouldn\u2019t have been a story worth telling, I pointed out, if it didn\u2019t counter the Playboy-pinup ideal.<\/p>\n
As Cynthia Rich points out, all marginalized people have heard that it\u2019s \u201cnatural\u201d for others to be physically repelled by them. Not that long ago it was considered un<\/em>natural for white people to befriend people of color, let alone marry them. This repulsion connects all the \u201cisms.\u201d Ageism just has a cutesy name for it: the eew factor.<\/p>\n Conventional thinking says that sex is the domain of the firm of flesh, and performance is measured in erections and orgasms. Writing about people with disabilities, activist Simi Linton says:<\/p>\n Over time, I came to understand that linking disability to a robust sexual life is among the more radical ideas that one can put forth. It is radical because it debunks the myth of the long-suffering disabled person, but is even more disruptive because it challenges accepted ideals of sexual prowess. [My colleague and I] were saying that pleasure isn\u2019t dependent on certain standards of performance, and on intact bodies. If disabled people can invent new definitions of sexual ability, the cultural norm is called into question. <\/p>\n I\u2019ll concede that the eew factor in ageism might be more a symptom of oppression than a tool for oppressors, as Rich put it, but I find her thinking very congenial. It supports the idea that sexuality\u2014specifically, invoking the image of a naked old woman\u2014is the most radical aspect of my message. I like it because, like Linton\u2019s work, it questions the cultural norm, and because it provokes discomfort, which always accompanies social change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cHow Old is Too Old To Have Sex?\u201d was the title of a HuffPost Live panel discussion that I took part in last year. As I pointed out during the exchange, the question itself is profoundly ageist.<\/p>\n