From: nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Age-ism and the gay community
Date: 22 Dec 92 11:33:30 GMT
Article-I.D.: reed.1992Dec22.113330.1888
Reply-To: nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar)
Organization: Reed College, Portland, OR

Unfortunately I'm about to go in Houston for two weeks. I hope to have
net access there, but I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up with motss.

In article <1992Dec21.202931.19993@osf.org> coren@speed.osf.org (Robert Coren), who is really very kind, says:
>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.

Yes, I think this is a partial explanation of what's going on. And
when you have a culture that encourages the notion that only youth is
desirable, and lays on top of that negative stereotypes about
"sugardaddies" and "chicken hawks", you end up with an unfortunate
situation.

>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.

Strangely enough, I think we agree on this :-) The question remains,
though: how do you convince other people that this is the case? Is it
worth the trouble? Is it really a lot of trouble, or am I making a
bigger deal of out of things than is reasonable?

>>I've actually lied about Robert's age to avoid having to deal
>>with a possible negative reaction.

(I'm not sure if I was clear when I wrote it originally. It bugged the
hell out of me that I fudged Robert's age.  It reminded me exactly of
the sort of crap I used to do to avoid letting people discover that I
am gay. I'm over the gay closet thing, and I'm happier, so now the
thing to do is get over worrying about what people think about the
ages of the people I chose to fraternize with.)

>Why mention my age specifically unless someone asks? 

It comes up surprisingly easily. For example, it's frequently useful
to mention John, and that the two of you have been together for almost
twenty years. Or that you own a house. Or that you have an established
career. All of these things make it clear that you've been around
longer than most of my peers, and in the case of John it puts a lower
limit on your age that's considerably higher than what is expected.

I could choose to not mention any of these things, but I'm not willing
to sacrifice that much out of fear of what people would think.

>if anyone says "how much older?" they damn well better be able to
>deal with the answer.

This is true. And any person I feel close enough to to be describing
my romantic interests is also a good enough friend that they shouldn't
really have a problem.

I feel like mentioning a few examples of reactions that bug me:

I was sitting in the coffee place here at Reed two weeks ago, talking
about Oliver Sacks' book "Seeing Voices". I mentioned something about
the author being quite attractive. "Gee", my friend said, "yeah, but
he's so old!"

I watched "Salut, Victor" (a film about two gay men in a retirement
home) a couple of days ago with a gay friend. For some reason, I made
a humourous comment along the lines of "yeah, and if you weren't with
me I might have met someone nice at the theatre." My friend said
"yeah, but it was a pretty old crowd."

These statements carry the implicit "why would you possibly be
interested in men that age?" And for some reason, I'm not yet
comfortable confronting their prejudices.

If similar statements were made to me on heterosexist lines, something
like "what do you mean, there were only men there", I know exactly
what I'd do - I'd say "yep, ain't it great being queer?" But for some
reason I'm not so courageous with challenging age stereotypes. I'm
getting there.

On the other hand, in the crowd I watch Star Trek with I'm pretty
vocal about my attraction to Patrick Stewart. No one seems to act like
this is in the slightest bit weird. I think it's because Patrick
Stewart has acquired the status of a sex symbol (did you see him in
that black strike team uniform? Sigh.) But he doesn't look
particularly old: if he weren't almost bald he could pass for thirty.
And baldness seems to occupy a weird niche of sex appeal.
                __
nelson@reed.edu \/          Days go by, endlessly pulling you into the future