"Hi, I'm Mike. I just moved here from New Hampshire. I'm 21 and I like older men. Can I buy you a drink?"
Chances are that if you are an undergraduate, you'll identify with the first statement; and if you are an older person, you'll recognize the second.
Both of the statements were said to me within the last few years. For me, they put into sharp perspective the problem of ageism in the queer community.
Ageism, defined simply, means discrimination against others based on age. In the U.S., this kind of discrimination often means that much more favorable attention is given to the young than would necessarily be warranted by their accomplishments. One finds a glorification of youth in the media, especially in advertising, where the less-likely-to-be-spoiled complexion or the more attractive body is held up as an exemplar to which others, whatever their age, should try to aspire.
In the straight world, this results in the glorification of young female models, the younger the better. In the gay male community, this means that one finds greater attention to young men based on bodily qualities than on wisdom or other qualities. In the lesbian community, attraction because of youth seems--in the necessarily limited experience of this male writer--to be less pronounced.
The young, in return, receive all this adulation by despising those who give it: the old. Probably because of all this societal attention to them, many young people become distrustful of those more than a very few years older than themselves, and they may come to believe, because they are the center of so much attention, that they have the answers to all the world's problems. Or, because they find themselves being inspected and admired for their perfection, they may become tense and resentful in the presence of older people, and--what particularly bothers me as an inhabitant of a campus with many younger people--may make no attempt to understand the motivations of those older people who like to be amongst younger people.
I remember my own experience in 1990-91 in Men Oriented Men (MOM), an LBGC-sponsored discussion group in which I was definitely the oldest regular participant, though there were frequent visitors in their thirties. Anyone who could get into Furnald and the now mostly unused Lounge was officially welcome. I did not open up as easily as did some of the participants, and it was only in March '91 that we finally got around to a discussion of ageism.
I found that many of the younger students initially thought I was there to try to pick them up, though I never did (or tried to) and actually only found one of the eighteen or so regular participants romantically "interesting." What surprised me profoundly was hearing the pain, the stories of exploitation and manipulation (by the young of the older as well as vice versa), the unrequited love and the alienation these students--my friends--felt from their culture and their families and even from each other. And some fantastic beliefs were revealed, one of which was that a vast majority of older men had AIDS and had to be avoided on that account. And more than one of the discussants that night said that he expected an older man to make the first approach, and that he would often respond positively.
This cultural pursuit of youth, and its negative impacts, is especially unfortunate in an academic environment. One of the underlying premises of the University is that it is a place where those younger people who desire to learn come and mingle with those who are older and accomplished, learning from their successes and mistakes. The University should also be a place where the young are exposed to mature minds that will help them nurture new ideas that will themselves become the source of future learning and ever newer ideas.
I am not brilliant enough to be able to offer any solution to the problem of ageism and its near-sibling, inter-generational conflict. I only hope that by attempting to put the problem on the table, all of us, no matter what our age, may be able to talk more openly about ageism and see what insights emerge.
- John P. Rash
Teachers College