From: coren@speed.osf.org (Robert Coren)
Subject: Re: Age-ism and the gay community
Organization: Open Software Foundation
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 20:29:31 GMT

Well, I didn't need a filter based on my first name (which would turn
up a number of false positives anyway) to spot this one. :-)

In article <1992Dec20.123132.19229@reed.edu>, nelson@reed.edu (Nelson
Minar), cherished friend and sometime cuddle-mate, writes:

> Presbyphilia (thanks, Steve, for the great word) seems to tread across
> some deep-seated social taboo that I don't understand. What is so
> titillating about the idea of an intergenerational relationship? They
> seem perfectly natural to me. Why is it shocking?

There may be "power" issues here. Notice how many people go off the
deep end about the idea of sexual relations between "children" and
"adults"; I think that in the societal mind this may extrapolate
without a whole lot of difficulty to similarly unthinking horror at
the idea of a relationship between an older and presumably more
"powerful" man and a "callow youth". Some of that supposed power is
economic; there's a stereotype involving a rich old man and a
beautiful young one, in which the younger one trades on his "looks".
The assumption is that the older man craves youthful beauty, but is
unable to attract it on his own intrinsic "merits", and that the
younger one puts up with the sexual attentions of the older because he
gets material profit out of it.  The term "chicken-hawk", with its
imagery of predator and prey, is demeaning to both parties. This
ugly stereotype has its heterosexual counterparts; cf. "sugardaddy"
and "gigolo".

But Nelson refers primarily to negative attitudes among his
contemporaries toward his interest in older men. This is partly, I
guess, because it doesn't correspond to their tastes, and the idea of
sex with older "trolls" strikes them as icky, so there must be
something weird, or even icky, about Nelson for desiring it. This is,
to a large extent, a manifestation of immaturity, in that the
recognition that others' tastes need not match one's own is one that
comes through experience. Of course, it's also reinforced by the fact
that Madison Avenue and Hollywood constantly remind everyone that youth
== beauty == desirable.

> Robert is noticeably older than I am

to those who notice such things! :-)

> he's in his mid to late 40s

Not quite ready to claim "late". :-)

[I can make this joke because I am not, and Nelson knows full well
that I am not, "sensitive" about my age.]

> We met at the con, and we
> hit it off, and it has been so very nice.

It has indeed, and it is. I can tell an amusing little story here,
because I think it's instructive about how my own thought processes
have changed.

In 1976, I met a young man at a dance held at the (long-deceased)
Boston Gay Men's Center, and we were quite taken with one another. At
home afterwards, in the course of various physicalities :-), he
mentioned that he was a freshman at UMass, and I experienced some
private misgivings, thinking "what am I doing with this 18-year-old
kid?" As I soon found out, he was actually 21, and as I was 30, the
difference between our ages was not much greater than the difference
between mine and John's (John and I had been lovers for a little under
3 years at the time, and I had never thought of him as being a whole
lot older than I). It still felt to me like he was considerably my
junior. (We're still friends, BTW, and at 37 he should seem like a
contemporary, but because of that history he feels "younger" in a way
that Steve Dyer, say, does not.)

I don't recall feeling any such misgiving with Nelson. It seemed
perfectly natural that I should find him attractive, and I wasn't any
more surprised that he found me so than I would have been about
anybody else there, in all their wide variety of ages. It just felt,
and feels, right. And because, as things had developed, we had had a
fair amount of conversation before I ever laid a hand on him :-), I
knew we had plenty of common ground.

> I've actually lied about Robert's age to avoid having to deal
> with a possible negative reaction. I felt bad about it: it seems a lot
> like changing pronouns so someone doesn't think you're queer.

This surprises me, and disturbs me a bit. I'm with Jess when he says,
in response to the above:

| This you must resist with all your might; it's an awful
| self-distortion no matter how practical and analgesic it
| may be to shade the truth.

And, indeed, why mention my age specifically unless someone asks? It
might be appropriate to say "older" if it helps elucidate whatever it
is you're saying about me :-), and if anyone says "how much older?"
they damn well better be able to deal with the answer.

> 
> In contrast, no one on motss has ever been obnoxious to me about the
> difference in the ages between Robert and me. No one said a thing at
> the con, nothing negative on motss, nothing in mail.

Nor to me. Even he whom we do not name has not cited us as evidence
of the correctness of his prejudices. :-)

>Why is so little written on this topic?  Most of the writing
>I've seen about older gay men is depressing ageist crap.  I
>haven't seen anything at all about intergenerational
>relationships.  There are lots of issues: how can it be that
>no one has written about them?

Read "Joseph and the Old Man", by... oh damn, what is his name?
[Somebody here is bound to know.] It's a short novel about just such a
relationship, and its aftermath when one of the lovers dies. Not at
all "judgemental".

Elsewhere in his reply, Jess writes:

| Besides, young people have to talk about everything, which
| can be very tiresome; later on, understanding is a matter of
| glances or wry smiles.

Well, I find I still like to talk about things; I think the kind of
non-verbal "understanding" Jess is talking about comes from long
*shared* experience, and not necessarily from age per se.

| Young people want to *know* things,
| whereas anyone who's old knows perfectly well such things
| *can't* be known

What things are those? I'm still prepared to explore the unknowable;
you never know when someone else's experience, however long or short,
will shed new light.

| raises their eyes to heaven and looks
| forward to a good dump more than to a good fuck.

Humph! Well, maybe I just haven't reached that stage yet. :-)

| There's no doubt the consumers of gay male
| porn go more than a bit overboard with bodies and bare
| chests, not to mention shaved balls and waxed assholes.

Maybe the *producers* are going more than a bit overboard, here. They
would no doubt respond, "This is what sells", but if it's all that's
available, of course it's what sells.

| >Bear
| >magazine seems to have a few models who are over 30, but
| >still nothing like what I'm interested in.  There has to be
| >erotica/porn featuring "older men" - but where?
| 
| You could supply it, maybe.

Umm... I was under the impression that Nelson was talking about
visuals, here, and he forgot to bring his camera the last time he
visited. :-)
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