Ageism and transphobia
How can it be ageism if the majority of older people refuse to acknowledge trans people as human beings?
When we olders were growing up, trans people were largely closeted. Thankfully, this is no longer the case, and many of us have embraced the idea of gender fluidity. Others have not, just as many young people are racist, sexist, and transphobic. It’s a question of ideology, not age.
11/12/19
Boomer is now an insult
On TikTok, the hashtag #OkBoomer has received over 10.3 million views. It features memes making fun of boomers for being behind the times, closed-minded, rude to baristas, and more. Many of these videos include a song called “ok boomer” by peter kuli & jedwill, which has lyrics that savagely dunk on Baby Boomers.
Submitted by Rich at the Don’t Act Your Age podcast.
Yep, they’re ageist, and they’re hateful.
10/26/19
“Our democracy today is dominated by the old, And young people are getting a bad deal."
from Paul Kleyman, editor of the Generations Beat Online newsletter:
What’s so odd about Astra Taylor’s screed against the old in the New York Times (Oct. 20, 2019) is that, aside from its blatant and unjustified ageism, this old, white male would otherwise heartily agree with many of her policy prescriptions, from ending gerrymandering to fighting climate change to her plea for “universal access to college and medical care.” Yet, in promoting reduction of voting age to 16, she strangely assigns blame for the disenfranchisement of youth to “a hoary establishment [that] hoards influence, curtailing young people’s ability to effect change.”
Rather than identifying reasons for intergenerational common cause, Taylor riddles her tale with exactly the kinds of contradictions observers of old-age politics would expect from an argument based strictly on vilifying a broad demographic bogie.
Taylor indicts even “liberal” elders, notably centrist Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-CA, as being “dangerously blasé about the future.” But only later invokes the youth appeal of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT. At one point Taylor, age 40, sidelines her disdain the presumably undue political sway of “people not long for this earth.” Then later she dons an editorial gray wig, calling on “those of us who are older, if not wiser” to joining young activists “to support forward-looking policies, and we also need to protest.” Is she completely unaware of elder activists like the Raging Grannies protest groups or, say, Medea Benjamin, 67, relentless leader of Code Pink?
More significant, though, is that for all of Taylor’s apparent research on such areas as youth economics, she has failed to dig into the looming retirement crisis facing the United States. She lacks knowledge that the proportion of ethnic/racial elders will double by 2040 to four in 10 seniors in the U.S. Gerontology experts have shown that while the sorely outdated federal poverty line sets elder impoverishment, at 9.7%, lower than the rest of the U.S. population, the official level fails to include exploding expenses elders need to make ends meet, such as out-of-pocket health care costs, the growing rent burden for seniors, and the price of maintaining older family homes on fixed incomes (especially for older women). Using the Elder Economic Security Index, UCLA’s Health Policy Center, for instance, has shown that half of those 65-plus in California are either in poverty or struggling in some ways to meet their needs.
For all of Taylor’s anger over elder “affluence,” her age-based opprobrium is woefully deficient of areas with cross-generational impacts, such as persistent age discrimination for older workers, the rising homelessness among those over 50, or the massive hit on homeownership across age groups, detailed in the book, Homewreckers, due to the exploitation of Great Recession foreclosures by, yes, older billionaire investors—some now heading key financial Trump cabinet posts. Most egregiously, though, Taylor seems oblivious to the quiet crisis of unaffordable senior housing and related lack of long-term eldercare coverage in the United States.
What’s even more dismaying is that the editors of the New York Times “Sunday Review” so eagerly enlarged Taylor’s logically flawed and stunningly ageist article as the week’s top story, covering almost three illustrated broadside pages. Why did the paper abandon their usually prudent editorial judgment? Well, the news media do love the provocateur, and even in the steely glass tower of the Times, provocation does drive readership.
For a different viewpoint, read the recent Boston Globe essay, “Contrived Generational Wars Disguise the Failure of the American Dream,” byMargaret Morganroth Gullette.
Other recommended reading: The Generation Gambit: The Right’s Imaginary Rift between Young and Old (FAIR, March, 1977). It describes how right-wing individuals and organizations created the myth of intergenerational conflict in order to justify and give cover to their reactionary agenda – thirty years ago.
10/24/19