{"id":6463,"date":"2021-03-18T09:11:54","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T13:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=6463"},"modified":"2021-03-18T12:52:31","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T16:52:31","slug":"the-possibilities-even-where-our-darkest-fears-reside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2021\/03\/the-possibilities-even-where-our-darkest-fears-reside\/","title":{"rendered":"The Possibilities Even Where Our Darkest Fears Reside"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My new talk, \u201cStill Kicking\u2014Confronting Ageism and Ableism in the Pandemic\u2019s Wake,\u201d debuted earlier this week at n4a, the national conference of Area Agencies on Aging\u2014to rave reviews, yay! Here\u2019s a look at some of the ground it covers:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Remember the early messaging about the virus? \u201cDon\u2019t worry, it will \u2018only\u2019 infect the old and the ill.\u201d&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;is the lethal, global impact of ageism and ableism, two forms of prejudice we talk about too little and too late\u2014for which the entire world is now paying dearly.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After COVID struck, there was a lot of hand-wringing, as there always is around anything age-related, with a lot of people saying the pandemic is making ageism and ableism worse. Here\u2019s a different way to think about it: the pandemic isn\u2019t making ageism and ableism worse, it\u2019s exposing what\u2019s been all around us all along\u2014and giving us a historic opportunity to build on that awareness.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It doesn\u2019t take much head-scratching to realize that much of our fear about aging is actually about how our minds and bodies might change as we move through life. That\u2019s not ageism, it\u2019s ableism. It\u2019s not actually about age: plenty of youngers live with disability and plenty of olders do not. It\u2019s the misguided belief that being nondisabled is \u201cnormal\u201d and that leading meaningful, desirable lives means staying youthful, able-bodied and able-minded. Only the well-off can pursue this goal, which segregates us, sets us up to fail, and fills us with needless dread.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The intersection of ageism and ableism is where many of our darkest fears reside.&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Illness<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Incontinence<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indignity<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It\u2019s also where we encounter\u2014<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in direct proportion to those fears<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014the potential for personal liberation and collective activism.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When an acoustic neuroma destroyed most of the hearing in my left ear, I caught myself thinking, \u201cAt least it\u2019s sexy, brain-tumor deafness instead of sad, old-person deafness.\u201d&nbsp; Which makes me both ageist <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;ableist. So is the title of this talk\u2014\u201cStill Kicking\u201d\u2014although at least it\u2019s on purpose. Using \u201cstill\u201d to modify an ordinary activity (like working, or driving, or having sex) is an ageist habit because why would people stop? It\u2019s ableist because why sort people according to whether or not they can kick?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Systemic discrimination is a formidable obstacle. But it is real, which makes it easier to tackle than something nonexistent: the imaginary failings which these systems created and need us to believe in.&nbsp; We are not broken. We are not special. We are not lesser. We are perfect. Or, as a Buddhist friend gently corrected, \u201cWe are perfectly imperfect.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of us lucky enough to grow old\u2014a privilege denied to many\u2014will age into impairment of some kind. People age well not by&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">avoiding<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&nbsp;chronic illness and disability but by adapting to them.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are&nbsp;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">billions<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of us. Fifteen percent of the world\u2019s population is disabled. Half of us are no longer young. Our numbers are growing.&nbsp;Medical advances mean that more disabled people are reaching adulthood and beyond.&nbsp;All over the world, people are living longer: population aging is a permanent, global, demographic trend. We won\u2019t make the most of those longer lives without confronting ageism and ableism in the world around us, starting between our ears. Nor will [we] be as effective as these turbulent times demand. Let\u2019s join forces.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My new talk, \u201cStill Kicking\u2014Confronting Ageism and Ableism in the Pandemic\u2019s Wake,\u201d debuted earlier this week at n4a, the national conference of Area Agencies on Aging\u2014to rave reviews, yay! Here\u2019s a look at some of the ground it covers: Remember<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2021\/03\/the-possibilities-even-where-our-darkest-fears-reside\/\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Possibilities Even Where Our Darkest Fears Reside<\/span><span class=\"meta-nav\"> &#8250;<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6470,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[79,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-voices-views"],"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\/6463","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6463"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6480,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6463\/revisions\/6480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}