The comic response to this cult of nubility<\/a> on YouTube is Amy Schumer\u2019s brilliant alfresco lunch party with Tina Fey and other comediennes as they celebrate Julia Dreyfus\u2019s \u201cLast Fuckable Day.\u201d These women sardonically pretend to be glad to shuck the youthful life-phase of the casting couch. But it means they may never work again. Other women are more explicit about why they are not celebrating. I paraphrase their attitude: \u201cNow I can see the sexually-tinged relationship diminishing. It\u2019s not all gone, but I already feel excluded and anticipate more of the less. I\u2019m not old, just too old. I don\u2019t like it, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s good for my job or career.\u201d Neglect can be career-breaking.<\/p>\nIt can also be heartbreaking. Many women complain about becoming socially and sexually invisible. A therapist writes me, \u201cIn fact, I have been hearing the same plaint from my women patients (midlife and beyond) who seem almost wistful that they have never been sexually harassed. They are hurt, wounded in their femininity.\u201d And as they are left behind, they think it\u2019s their fault.<\/p>\n
Women who complain about not getting wolf whistles any more make a mistake: they don\u2019t attribute the new neglect to ageism. As a feminist activist, I want women to complain about the new invisibility, but not because they find it personally unflattering. (Myself, I\u2019m happy enough to have my threads of gray, and I have a lover at home who likes them. But I\u2019m not in the workforce, I am free of that tyranny.) Many women cannot see, as C. Wright Mills instructed us to see, that this personal problem is a social issue. Indeed, a cause.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s not trivialize or misinterpret age-related neglect. To overlook others is a prerogative of masculine power. Being excluded comes from the same kind of masculinist, self-centered attitude\u2014\u201cWhat\u2019s in this relationship for me?\u201d\u2014that brought about the #MeToo movement. It\u2019s the same kind of obtuseness: \u201cWhat do her feelings matter? What feelings?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nMisogyny brings the bad attention, and misogyny doesn\u2019t end as women get older, it simply takes different forms. The other side of harassment and rape is indifference and disregard or even contempt. First they approach you for the wrong reasons; then they ignore you for the wrong reasons.<\/em><\/p>\nSome women do steam ahead in middle age; they get the respect and financial progress that experience ought to bring. They cost employers more as their salaries rise with time, but they survive capitalism\u2019s ageist race to the bottom.<\/p>\n
Others, however, become the butt of \u201cmiddle ageism,\u201d as it should really be known. Middle ageism says that a person is worth less in the workforce because of her age\u2014worth less visually and sexually, but also socially, intellectually and, bottom line, financially. Such demotions may lead us to feel shame for aging past youth. On this charge, we are all innocent: no one can become younger.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey flee from me who sometime did me seek.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nRead this line by the poet Thomas Wyatt angrily, not nostalgically. Angrily, because being ignored without suspecting the reason may affect your job performance. Middle ageism is a stressor. Shame and humiliation can lead to ill health, depression and despair.<\/p>\n
Men can be vulnerable to a similar kind of punishment as they age. Younger men can be seen as sons worthy of being mentored\u2014by men who could never see younger women as daughters. But even \u201csons\u201d age out. Depending on the field (Silicon Valley, IBM), this can start at 35 or at 50. Middle ageism is destructive to society. It constitutes a vast dehumanization of people, men and women, in their middle years.<\/p>\n
Still, a huge gender gap yawns. Women are considered \u201ctoo old\u201d for the workforce ten years younger than men, on average, if we look at the ages when most men and women sue through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for job discrimination.<\/p>\n
The female victims of Trump, Roy Moore, Cosby, et al., are naming the perpetrators. Some of the guilty apologize and leave their positions; others are fired and shamed. But ageist sins of omission are harder to deal with than overt, biased words and deeds. This form of ageism can be invisible. Your best friend may not observe that you are ostracized at meetings. No one but you will see the shadow falling over the boss\u2019s eyes when you appear, instead of his formerly bright smile.<\/p>\n
The answer is not, I would argue, to encourage older women to act or look sexier. If we imitated Jane Fonda\u2014in Spanx and push-up bra at the Oscars this year, at age 80\u2014it would not change the attitude of the bad old boys who lurk in the offices and job sites. It isn\u2019t more sexualization we want in the workplace. We want to be recognized for what we know and can do. We want the masculine cult of youth to change from within. This is an issue of equal treatment in the workplace.<\/em><\/p>\nAs Liza Featherstone suggests in her recent Nation<\/em> column, \u201cAsking for a Friend,\u201d one way to respond to the silenced and excluded treatment as an individual is to organize with allies (women friends, gay friends and male friends). Men can be allies. Not every male gaze is fixated on women\u2019s secondary sex characteristics. In my book, Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People<\/em>, I suggested a coordinated campaign by small groups, who help the overlooked woman get recognized. \u201cJanine has the experience we need here,\u201d says the friend you\u2019ve planted, turning toward you. \u201cJanine, what do you think?\u201d<\/p>\nYour allies could separately, quietly, step up to the cis-boss who is sending you to Coventry, report your latest good idea or finished project and mention that you seem not to be getting the attention you deserve. \u201cIn fact,\u201d an ally says, \u201cI notice that the longer-hired women are never at the staff lunch. Isn\u2019t that odd?\u201d The EEOC has ruled against the bosses who say they need \u201cyoung blood\u201d or want \u201cyounger and peppier\u201d employees, and the discriminated-against can get monetary damages. Warning the boss about middle ageism can be seen as a friendly gesture.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s too soon to call out the perps of these subtle forms of sexist ageism. Creating anti-ageist awareness has to be a collective process as well as thousands of individual campaigns. And the first step has to be much more storytelling. The media must publish women\u2019s and men\u2019s narratives, bravely describing the pattern of ugly behavior in detail: how a boss ignored or dismissed them, found a way to demote them or an excuse for not giving them a warranted raise. These narratives must quote the age-related or gender-related hate speech that occurred and tell how the person felt about it. Only when many speak bitterly in chorus about their feelings and their hardships, as #MeToo proves, can change happen.<\/p>\n
The #MeToo movement is causing male employers to ask themselves whether employees are disturbed by their unwanted attentions. #MeTooAgainstAgeism, my new hashtag, could teach employers to perceive their unwanted inattention. This bias may be so widespread (and mean, stupid and harmful) that outrage over it could prove unstoppable.<\/p>\n
#MeTooAgainstAgeism can be a shorthand for imaginative resistance.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2018 Margaret Morganroth Gullette<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The #MeToo movement is mainly about work situations, and so it should be. Being treated like a skirt\u2014or a headless skirt, depending upon the level of vileness\u2014by a male boss or peer can ruin a workplace…even a life.<\/p>\n
Read more The Workplace Needs #MeTooAgainstAgeism<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":null,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":null,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4524"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5226,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions\/5226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}