Tag: sexism

staroidi:

How I Teach Men Not To Talk Over Me: from one feminist to another, when basic respect is lagging and conversations are impossible

I’ve done this to several men, and they catch on rather quickly. You’ll be able to have a conversation right then and there, and it works long term too – they might’ve forgot their manners by the time you talk to them again, but by repeating this, they’ll eventually learn to let you talk without you having to do this at the start of every convo. Source: I have a very stubborn older brother, who eventually learned too.

1. When they interrupt you, stop talking. Don’t try to raise your voice or battle them. Be completely quiet and wait.

2. Ignore everything they’re saying. Do not actually listen – just wait until they shut up. Don’t make a point of anything they say, do not answer to anything they say, do not refer to anything they say here. Literally do not listen a single word. Let them rant as long as they want.

3. When they finally shut up and wait for your reaction, say: ”I wasn’t done talking.”

4. Start over whatever you were saying when they interrupted you. I don’t care if it was a 10-minute explanation of rocket science. Start. Over. Repeat you original thought, but do not add anything related to what they just said while talking over you. That gives them the idea that it’s okay to interrupt you, you’ll still listen and pay attention and they’ll get their point clear without having to listen to yours. (It’s especially funny when you get done and they expect you to keep going talking about whatever they talked over you. The face when it sinks in that you didn’t listen a single word is glorious.)

5. If they interrupt you again, return to step 1. If you find yourself repeating the cycle over 3 times, tell them: ”you’re not letting me speak. Either you listen and wait for your turn, or our conversation ends here.” If they try to make excuses, laugh it off or keep interrupting, end the conversation. Prove them that if they wont let you speak, they’re not worth your time.

Why does this work? First, because sometimes talking over is internalized and men don’t actually notice they’re doing it. Being vocally called out makes them realize it and pay attention to it – especially if it happens more than once. Secondly, by refusing to aknowledge anything they say when they interrupt you, they’ll soon realize they will not get their own point across if they keep doing that. Peoole and especially men have the need to be heard and paid attention to when they talk – when you make it clear that by talking over you, they will not have your attention, they’ll learn to wait until you’re done, because they know that’s when you will be paying attention and actually listening.

Go my darlings. Have some actual conversations where your point of view is just as valid as his. Demand the basic respect of being heard. You can actually have some interesting conversations with men when they’re forced to listen too, when being louder is not going to make them feel like they’re dominating the conversation or winning the argument.

jumpingjacktrash:

men, if you absolutely MUST hit on strangers, here is how to be a gentleman instead of a creep:

  • never ask for her number. give her yours.
  • don’t try to get her to say she’ll call you. just say “i’d like it” or “i hope you will.”
  • NO TOUCHING. a handshake on parting if you’re really getting along, maybe. don’t linger.
  • brief, friendly eye contact to show you’re being forthright: good. staring into her soul like you think you’re a harlequin romance hero: fucking terrifying. you look like you’re working out a wine pairing for her liver.
  • give her compliments that are about her as a person, not her anatomy, and keep it g-rated. imagine there are kindergarteners watching. “you have a wonderful smile” = good. “daaaamn, looking fine” = bad. “nice tits” = *buzzer noise* *trap door opens* *machine noises and screams*
  • if she declines your number, you can set it down on a nearby surface if you think the refusal is pro forma, but don’t ever try to push it into her hand.
  • you may attempt to converse with her before offering your number. don’t be a phony, just make small talk.
  • don’t pretend you’re not hitting on her.
  • PERSONAL BUBBLE PERSONAL BUBBLE
  • if she doesn’t engage with your small talk, or gives off uncertain body language, or you can’t read her, back off. bring it to a polite close and go away, whether you leave your number or not.
  • if she does engage, be aware that she may simply be enjoying the social interaction without being sexually or romantically interested in you, and be okay with that. don’t pretend you’re okay with it. be okay with it.
  • you might make a friend instead of getting a date. do you realize how cool that is? it is very cool. friends are important. even hot friends who don’t want to date you are better than not making friends. accept this. embrace it. join the human race. rejoice.
  • even if everything goes pefectly, and she’s super duper into you, do NOT try to take her somewhere more private. it’s not that she doesn’t know her own mind, it’s that you don’t know her well enough to be sure everything’s copacetic.
  • and finally, don’t assume you’re always safe and women can’t hurt you. being an asshole is not a gendered trait. give yourself an out as well.
  • don’t do any of this if you’re in a position with leverage over her, whether you’re her coworker (you don’t have to be her superior to have leverage!), her dad’s golfing buddy, in a job that gives you more social clout (say, it’s a base town, you’re military and she’s a townie), or just her ride home. do not hit on women you have power over.
  • no, not even in that situation you’re thinking of. no exceptions.
  • no, not even if you’re head over heels in love and think she’s the One. get to know her as a person, and you might grow closer over time. but if you hit on her from a position of leverage, you are no gentleman.

sarahviehmann:

kaerya:

claryfairhild:

i’m so done with the way girls in twenties are treated. i’m so done with people who literally create timetable for us. 20- 24  find a guy, 24-26 make him propose to you, 27-29 get married. i’m so done. i’m do not want to get 2 a.m texts from my best friend who is freaking out that she is gonna die alone. i do not want see my 20 years old friend wasting her time on some guys who are not even interested in her. i do not want see us falling for every nice guy who does not look creepy. i do not want to see girls get sad or paranoid just bcos they do not fill in the schedule. you are ok. you should enjoy your life at its fullest and one day you will find 10/10 so do not pursue 6 just because you do not want to be single. it is ok and one day you will find someone. do not split your love with people who does not deserve it. keep it for yourself and when time will come you will know. i know it hurts. i know you wish u could just open part of yourself and release the buzzing love. but not every kind of love is romantic. show it to your family, friends, plants, yourself.

Not a real criticism, just an expansion really, but …  it’s not just the timetables we need to get away from, but the goal itself, I think.  “One day you will find someone,” sounds comforting, but the reason it doesn’t lay fears to rest is because we are all smart enough to know it’s not necessarily true.

My aunt is over sixty, never married, and never, so far as I am aware, ever even had a great romance.  She dated a lot, but never clicked and now seems to have given up.  My mentor is over seventy, divorced her asshole husband more than half her life ago and has never found anyone since.

We all know women (and men) like these.  And because we know them, we know that “one day you will find someone,” is just … hogwash.  Because sometimes you just … don’t.  Or sometimes you do, but he turns out to be a cad.  Or you do and the universe rips you apart in the most unfair way possible.  And because society has us so fixated on finding “our other half” or whatever, we view these women as cautionary tales.

But … 

My aunt trains dogs.  Her schipperke is the national champion for his breed.  She spent so much of her life as a librarian, nurturing the love of books in kids, myself among them.  I ride horses because of her, and it’s one of the very few things I do that makes my soul feel at peace.

My mentor is one of the best criminal defense attorneys in her state.  She has devoted her life to fighting to ensure that everyone gets a vigorous defense.  Because of her countless people have had the opportunity to turn their lives around.  Because of her, they’ve had a life to turn around.  Because of her, the prosecution and the police in her jurisdiction are forced to behave ethically and adhere to the rule of law.  She’s still, even now fighting to abolish the death penalty.  It’s because of her that I am pursuing the life I am.

These women’s lives are not nothing.  In fact they are a whole lot of something, and it makes my heart hurt that I ever, in my dark 3 am’s, thought of their lives as something to be avoided at all costs.

So love your family, your friends, your pets, your gardens.  Love your job or your hobby or your raison d’ etre, whatever it is.  Love sunsets and the smell of rain and yourself, and don’t love these as something to do as a placeholder until the buzzing, romantic love comes, but love these as things worth loving all in themselves.

It’s fucking hard some days.  The dark 3 am’s still come sometimes.  But most days, I am so much more at peace knowing that I am not incomplete or waiting, but that my life, if it ended today, is worth it because of the platonic, familial, friendship love I have shared.  And if the other kind does come someday, that’ll be nice, but it won’t make any of the others less.  It’ll just be caramel sauce on a sundae–tasty and wonderful, but the sundae was perfect without it too.

I needed this today.

jumpingjacktrash:

tchtchtchtchtch:

earlgraytay:

humanfist:

earlgraytay:

I think you’re being a little uncharitable here. I was raised Mormon, and since Mormons are hyperconservative and patriarchial, men used to say things like this a lot. When men say “I didn’t realize how bad things were for women until I had a daughter” (or something along those lines)”, they’re being literal. They (usually) don’t mean “I completely ignored my wife’s struggle but now that I own a small girl-child I must Protec”, they mean “I literally have not seen some of these problems in action before and now I’m seeing them happen to someone I love in gory detail”.  

Imagine for a second you live in Zimbabwe and don’t follow American politics much. You hear weird news coming out of the USA every so often, but mostly it’s just background noise. Then Trump gets elected, and suddenly every day there’s some new crazy shit happening in the US. You hear about it and you’re like ‘this can’t be real, can it?’ But of course, it is real, and the more you look into it, the more you see it’s fucked up. 

This is kind of like that. Speaking as a trans man who transitioned early in adulthood– there are a lot of things women* just don’t talk about around men, because it’s socially taboo. Things like, say, periods.  Or why you need to be buying all that expensive makeup and clothing. Or the ways that girls/women bully other girls/women and how it can fuck you up. Or menopause. Or why you’re afraid of walking home alone at night. Or abuse and/or sexual assault that’s happened to you in the past.

Sometimes it’s because women don’t feel safe talking to their male partners about it. Sometimes they think it’ll hurt their male partner to hear about it. Sometimes, it’s just that it’s Not Done– it’s as socially wrong as taking off your pants in a restaurant. 

If you’re lucky, you have a good partner, you’re both willing to step outside the gender role box you’ve been assigned, you feel like you can tell them anything and you’re right, and your partner takes you seriously when you tell them and doesn’t get grossed out or go “bzuh? That’s batshit insane, it can’t be real”. A lot of people– especially people in conservative/patriarchial societies, but even egalitarian people in lefty parts of the country can fall into this mess– do not feel like they have this kind of safety with their partners. They feel like they can’t discuss the problems they’re having with their partner, because their partner is a Man/Woman and you Don’t Talk About These Things, it’s Not Done. 

So if you’re a man– even if you are a good man, even if you’re kind and empathetic and care about other people and try to treat other people right– there’s a good chance you’ve never been exposed to the full brunt of the ~female experience~. It’s entirely possible for a man to grow up with no sisters, a mother who doesn’t talk about these things with her son, and no female friends until you start dating in earnest, without hating women or ignoring their problems. It’s then entirely possible that your parther won’t talk about the problems she’s having, because she’s still relating to you as A Man as much as she’s relating to you as Her Partner. Socialization is a hell of a drug.  

Speaking as a trans man again… a lot of the problems that women have are not immediately obvious to the naked eye. I’m not saying ‘women don’t have problems’. I’m not saying ‘sexism is over’ or ‘feminism is unnecessary’. But if you never go clubbing**, don’t ask your coworkers about their salary, don’t watch much TV, and don’t talk to women about Taboo Topics… you’re never going to realize just how deep the rabbit hole goes, just as much as our hypothetical Zimbabwean isn’t going to realize just how bad Trump is as a president.

And then you have a daughter. Your daughter has not yet learnt that you don’t talk to men about Taboo Topics, and you’re her dad. She trusts you with everything when she’s tiny, and even as she gets older, she knows you’re one of the people who unconditionally love her, no matter what. You see her getting hit with all the misogynistic messages women get hit with every day and how it changes what she feels safe doing. You see her struggling with misogyny and bullying and ridiculous beauty standards. You see her dealing with the basic biological functions that women usually have under control by the time they’re getting married but are a scary mess when you’re a young teenager, the gross boys and men who treat young girls like shit, the way she gradually absorbs sexist toxicity and stops believing she can do anything she wants. If you’re  unlucky, you see the fallout that comes from her being assaulted. 

And it’s in your face, in a way it might not be with your wife. The misogyny that happens to young girls is much more blatant and terrible than the misogyny that happens to grown women (grade-schoolers are not known for their subtlety). What’s more, you’re seeing it all happen in real time- you’re seeing a girl who’s cutting herself down to size to fit society, not a woman who’s already done it. So it’s entirely possible that a man won’t realise the full extent of misogyny until he has a daughter, without that man being a shitheap in any way. 

…I’m not saying that this is right or good or the way things should be. This is the very definition of ‘male privilege’– you have the ability to ignore bad things in the world that other people don’t get to ignore, just because you’re lucky enough to be a cis man. That is a bad thing. It needs to stop happening. It is a tragedy that men and women are not taught to communicate properly with each other, and it’s not women’s fault that they don’t feel safe talking about dangerous things with men. That is also a bad thing that needs to stop happening.

But at the same time, men saying “I didn’t realise things were bad for women until I had a daughter”… it’s not necessarily “hurr durr I didn’t realize women were people until I had a daughter because I’m a horrible person who ignores what women say :V”. It can mean “wow, I didn’t realise just how much of a problem misogyny/sexism was until I had a daughter, because there are things I didn’t know. Now that I know the full extent of the problem, I’m going to change the way I act about it”. 

Stop assuming the worst of people, ffs.   

*(Speaking in broad terms here, just assume the tag “cis” usually-but-not-always goes here. Trans people do tend to relate to gender/their partner’s gender a little differently.)
**(As An Sperglord, it confuses me just how much feminist discourse is about the club scene and why it’s bad. It seems disproportionate to the amount-of-a-problem-it-is.) 

Or why you need to be buying all that expensive makeup and clothing.

Is it ok if I ask why here? Because I still don’t know.

Yeah, of course! It’s not the end of the world not to understand things.

OK, I’m trying not to assume that you work in tech, but… you know That One Tech Guy who wears nothing but free company T-shirts and cargo pants and won’t shave or cut his hair? The guy who’s brilliant and could easily get promoted if he wanted, but no one is willing to promote him because he looks like a hobolo and training him to dress professionally would take too much time when there are equally qualified people who already know how?

If you’re a woman and you don’t wear makeup, or you don’t shave your legs (which is much more of a hassle than shaving your face, for the record), or you don’t have A Wardrobe (rather than, like, 1-3 Outfits and a week’s worth of basics to pad them out, like most men seem to), people are going to treat you like you’re That One Tech Guy, regardless of how you perform or behave. People see women who don’t wear makeup as lazy and sloppy, women who don’t shave their legs or armpits as Making A Statement and being gross in the process, women who don’t dress in a variety of outfits as poor or lazy… 

So if you want to get anywhere in life as a woman, whether in your career or your personal life, you have to have many clothing and wear at least some makeup. 

There are exceptions to this rule- for example, a lot of blue-collar jobs are just fine with women not wearing makeup, because they expect female workers to be ‘one of the boys’ and hyperfemininity is a detriment there. And of course there are plenty of guys who like women without makeup, and so on. But in general, if you’re a woman who’s not working in an industrial setting, you need to perform some level of femininity to be taken seriously. 

(And of course if you perfom too much

femininity, people will think you’re stupid and shallow and vapid, but that’s a whole nother ballgame.)     

This is a good explanation which holds in many places, but this is really dependent on local culture. Around me quite a lot of tech guys match your description of That One Tech Guy and don’t have much trouble getting promoted. I’m a woman in a non-tech job in a tech company and I dress however and almost never wear makeup and it’s fine. (Sometimes women in tech complain that there’s actually a pressure on them not to dress too nicely/femininely or wear makeup because it doesn’t fit the culture. Which is also bad, but also demonstrates how impeccable grooming isn’t always the norm.) So it’s not just industrial settings that don’t have super high feminine grooming standards.

for a long time i’ve wanted to object to the sentiment framed by the screenshotted tweet, but never been quite sure how to phrase it, and also it’s generally a bad idea for a man to object to feminist venting. not because i’ll get jumped on (i will, but so what) but because it’s rude and contrarian to jump in all I Am The Fact Police when people are upset, especially if you’re a representative of the group they’re upset at.

at the same time, though, i think promoting the idea that people are worse than they really are creates an oppressive atmosphere and keeps people from being proactive or forming coalitions, and in the end it mostly helps the oppressors.

so i want to chime in with @earlgraytay here and say, yeah, it’s not that decent guys don’t care about women’s problems, it’s that you just do not understand how deep the rabbit hole goes until you see a six year old girl try to go on a diet.

Why any slightest discomfort of woman is a municipal-to-national-level tragedy and requires immediate action, but a death of a man, such as me, will be business as usual, no eye blinked. How is this just and fair. How how how how how.

the-real-seebs:

theunitofcaring:

Everybody matters. You matter. It would matter if you died, and it matters that you’re hurting, and it sounds like right now you’re hurting a lot. 

I assume, since you’re on tumblr, which has many deficiencies but not a shortage of different perspectives on gender relations, that you’ve already seen analysis to the effect that our society denies women agency and denies men inherent worth – we treat women like they can’t accomplish anything and are fragile and need protecting and can’t really hurt people and will not produce anything of value, and we treat men like they are only as valuable as the things they produce, and matter only if they earn it through hard work, and earn value by providing it to other people. Both of these things suck. 

I am assuming that you have seen posts saying that, because there are lots of them, and that they have not made you feel any better, for the same reason that “some people get too much attention, and some get ignored, and it makes sense for many people to focus on the first problem” is not very reassuring to someone who is desperately lonely, and “some people are drowning, but some don’t have enough access to water, and it makes sense for many people to focus on the second problem” is not very reassuring to drowning people. Sometimes you need someone to care about your problem – not to contextualize it, not to explain how it is the offspring of another problem which lots of people care about, not to describe how the opposite of your problem is also a source of suffering, just to care about your problem and go “holy shit how awful”.

So, yeah. Holy shit, that’s awful. Our world did not tell you “you have likes and dislikes, and they matter. You have feelings, and they matter. You deserve to be happy, and you deserve to be valued, not for the things you accomplish but for the person you are.” Our world did not tell you “people ought to treat you well, whether you have “earned” it by being successful or not.” Our world did not tell you that ‘successful’ is a ugly contrived complicated painful thing that many people cannot reach no matter how they try, and that you are just as valuable if you never reach it. Our world did try to convince you that it was heroic to kill people and heroic to die for people; it did try to convince you that if you were successful then you would be loved; it did try to convince you that the people who were hated for being ‘losers’ deserved it. It did present all kinds of variously fucked up ideals of men who were valuable, and promise that if you contorted yourself into them then you’d be valuable too. 

Holy shit. That’s awful.

I’m so sorry, man. I’m so sorry. You deserved better. You deserve better. You matter, and have always mattered, and will always matter, and there is an entire universe that did its best to convince you otherwise and that is awful and I hate it and I wish it hadn’t been that way and I wish that it would stop.

I don’t know what it would have helped you to hear. But if you know – maybe tell it to someone. Maybe find a guy – not just a kid, I don’t think this only hurts boys in their formative stage, I think it hurts men every minute of their lives – and tell him whatever you needed to hear while the universe was yelling the exact opposite – and then it’ll be a little bit better.  

TUOC continues to be a pretty excellent example of why I think humanity is actually sorta cool.

vulgarweed:

antilla-dean:

recentlyfolded:

doctornerdington:

mizjesbelle:

unreconstructedfangirl:

justgot1:

cricketcat9:

plaidadder:

shad0wspinner:

inkskinned:

how terrifying, to be aging and girl. at 18 i was told by men that i was “the perfect age,” and i still thought it was a compliment. is it because at 20 i figured out how sharp those words were. i felt old at 21, felt like if grey hairs came and my spine cracked i was done for. how scary. i am reminded constantly by “realistic” ideas in fantasy novels that i should have five kids.

my life feels short. like it is squeezed into my twenties. like at 30 i become ghost, just another mother or hard worker or both, just another background character. like if i am not settled and making a difference by 27 i should just give up already. is this something men feel? like a clock is painted on their back, one hand warning: your beauty is something you are valued for and it is something you cannot get back.

and why was i only beautiful, i wonder, at 18 on a riverbank. i’m told often my childish face is a blessing. that i shouldn’t want to look older. one told me i was a trap falling: “you look young but you’re not” he said to me, “it kind of led me on”. am i not young? 

maybe i am wrong. maybe it’s just how we all feel, getting old, like time is slipping from us. maybe men do worry that they will be alone forever if they don’t settle by thirty, maybe it’s even because they think they’ll turn ugly. maybe we all squish our lives into that incredibly young decade. what do i know. i’m still learning.

I’m almost 25 and I’ve been feeling this a lot lately.

As a 48 year old lesbian, I offer my perspective on aging, and you all can take it or leave it.

Our understanding of our own aging is very much conditioned by the priorities of straight men, who in the aggregate understand beauty and femininity, indeed women in general, in literally superficial terms. Most of the ads you see for anti-aging products, for instance, focus on its *visible* symptoms: graying hair, wrinkling skin or discolored skin, sagging breasts, changes in body shape, etc. These are the symptoms of female aging that men perceive, and they are the ones that the cosmetics and the larger anti-aging industry therefore target. (Men do have their own anxieties about visibly aging, mostly related to hair loss and body shape; but they are not, for instance, generally terrified by the appearance of wrinkles, unless they work in the entertainment industry.)

But aging is not just something that happens to everyone else’s perception of you; it is something that happens in your own body, at levels deeper than anyone else (especially anyone male) is ever likely to perceive. From my POV the really important thing about aging is how you feel. Your body is where you live; it is for you. Aging is inevitable, but it can to some extent be intentional, in that you can (to some extent; all this is limited by the amount of time and money available to you and the healthfulness of the environments you have lived in and how you did in the DNA lottery) choose to do things that will help preserve the things about your body that make YOU happy to be living there–things like flexibility, strength, and the smooth functioning of your major organs. Generally, if you’re healthy, you don’t think about any of this stuff at 18 or 25; but when you are 40, you will start to take more of an interest as you come to understand how important all of this is to your own ability to enjoy life.

So that sucks, as does menopause, which is the unacknowledged referent of a lot of cultural anxieties about female aging. But the point I want to make is: one of the worst things that the phenomenon described so evocatively by the OP does to girls and young women is to make them so anxious about their own bodies that they are unable to enjoy and appreciate their youth while they have it. And that is theft. It really is. I miss youth, but even more do I regret the fact that when I was young I was so fucked up by cultural obsessions about female beauty that I was unable to fully enjoy the body that I had then. I did not appreciate its many excellent qualities, and it was a long time before I allowed myself to accept and act on its desires. At a time when I was beautiful, I thought I was fat and ugly, and that because no man would ever find me attractive, I was doomed to loneliness and isolation. After I met Mrs. Plaidder, her conviction of my beauty eventually passed into me. As a result, I enjoyed my life in general a lot more in my 30s than I did in my teens. I’ve enjoyed my 40s more too, apart from the cancer and the current catastrophe. Age does actually bring experience and knowledge and, to those able to profit from it, wisdom. You do gain, even as you lose.

Catullus, yelling in Latin verse at his lover Lesbia, asks her venomously, “cui videberis bella?” By whom will you be seen to be beautiful? It’s a question that still poisons our sense of self and our understanding of our own possibilities. By myself, asshole, she should have replied; and so may we all, at any age. 

Long post, but – my three cents. At 67 I don’t feel old and/or ugly. In fact, I really enjoy myself. I’m happy with how I look – because I got over the brainwashed way we see ourselves. As plaidadder said: “even more do I regret the fact that when I was young I was so fucked up by cultural obsessions about female beauty that I was unable to fully enjoy the body that I had then.” BTW, plaidadder – you are STILL beautiful, trust me.  The American cult of youth and they way of evaluating women’s beauty as inevitably liked to age is fucking TOXIC. I now live in South America; was complemented ( in a non-creepy way) by two guys less than half my age last week, grey hair & all. Love it here. 

You will never feel as old as you do in your late 20s to late 30s. Seriously. Western culture makes the passing of youth into a tragic death and that’s – so fucking sad. Once it has passed and you can no longer reasonably think of yourself as young, no matter how desperately you try to hang on to it – you find yourself in a whole other country, you realize that you’ve lived on one side of a mountain all your life and told there’s nothing beyond it only to discover that there is, in fact, an entire world on the other side. Don’t believe the lie. 

I enjoyed this post. I also lacked the clarity on culturally imposed bullshit to enjoy my youth and beauty, and at 47, I have good days and bad days. I’m looking forward to one day not giving a flying fuck what anyone thinks about my body. I’m embarrassed and a little ashamed to report that I’m not there yet.

What I like about getting older (I’m 46.) is that the less “attractive” I become, the more I get to fill that space with things I choose.  The more invisible I become as a person with whom someone may wish to have sex, the more I can just wear clothes that I like and think are pretty, the more I feel free to let my hair have no real “style.”  I wear flat shoes that I think are cute.  I wear the same earrings I’ve worn for twenty years.  I get to choose to present myself as eccentric or artsy or sloppy or outdated without much commentary from the peanut gallery, because nobody is concerned any more with my fuckablity.  And without the constant input, I have more room for my own opinion.

Not that I’m there all the time, but I’m sure there a hell of a lot more often than when I was in my twenties.

One of the things I love best about tumblr (and there are many, many things) is that here I have found a circle of middle-aged and older women who are kind and wise and brave, and are willing to share their experiences and to mentor younger women through aspects of aging. I’m 40, and I feel like I am beginning a journey into a new phase of life with a tribe of women beside me. It is so hugely valuable. ❤️

Well, at 67, I can tell you that finally no one is looking at me like a tarted-up slab of meat with a vagina. Of course, I’m easy to mistake for a little old lady now, my hair having come in a disorderly charcoal grey after my chemo. But that’s a fun stereotype to work (some years ago the teens I was working with described my personal style as “granny goth”), and it also lets you comment and converse with other people with impunity: no one really worries if their kid shares a word in the store with “that granny” and when someone is unspeakably rude, you can just fire right back at them and they actually, sometimes, demonstrate at least momentary guilt. I dress for my own comfort—although I believe one can demonstrate respect by dressing nicely for things like meetings or travel, I tend to mean beyond what simply amuses me that I am clean, relatively ordered, and have all body parts covered that would cause arrest in my local jurisdiction. 

The rest of it? Fuck that noise; I’m old and I haven’t got time for that shit.

Just to chirp in (45). One of the many gifts of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival was the intergenerational community of dykes. So first, as a dyke, I wasn’t around men a lot who were telling me how unfuckable I was. So aside from the general socialization, inside stepped a ton of bullshit. But also, at 21 I was hanging with wyms who were 40, 50, 60. I was seeing all of these older women in their fullness and glory and sexiness and intelligence and BEAUTY and like everything that happened there, I realized the head trips about aging were a lie.

These women, who embraced being crones, were EVERYTHING. I wanted to be them. And as I age, I remember their power, their gorgeousness. I aim for it with all my might.

Unlearning lies is such hard work, but patriarchy spends a lot of energy reviling things that are powerful.

I can’t believe all the wisdom in these posts above. you GO. I am so in love with all y’all.

There is so much women are not only not taught, but flat-out LIED TO about aging. Even within fandom, a space that is very much women-driven, occasionally you come across someone trying to pressure older women to bow out because our mere presence makes some people uncomfy (and sometimes by “older” they mean over 30, never mind the 40+, 50+, 60+ women speaking up here).

Because we are not taught to respect older women as sexual beings, as beings with our own interests, our own passions, our own weaknesses, and our own right to take up space and be fully present even though we are no longer sexually desirable (to SOME) and might not be willing or interested in taking up a “mom/grandmom” role.

When I was in my 20s I was doing a lot of music writing and one of my biggest role models who I sort of knew personally was Deena Weinstein, who was doing exceptional work on metal culture – very little studied in academia at that time – and she was doing it as a (at the time) very rare visibly middle-aged woman at metal shows banging her head off to Cannibal Corpse. (She is not “detached.” She’s in the mosh pit. She loves the fuck out of it, and it shows.) Lots of people were lining up to tell her in one way or another she ought to be “acting her age,” whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. I looked up to her as the giant badass she is.

A few things they don’t tell you about aging, that I know at 48 (and I know to some people here, I’m still a baby, and that’s OK)

1. Menopause is real and for some people perimenopause takes years. Holy shit. It’s as big an upheaval as puberty – but, like puberty, it’s not a disaster it’s just a shift. Respect it but don’t fear it. Most of all, don’t fear talking about it honestly.

2. Being sexually invisible to strange men is a fucking blessing, especially if you take public transit every day. What a gift to actually be able to read in peace most of the time. Don’t dread this!

3. Judgmental opinions of trivial people become a lot more obvious for what they are, over time. 

4. Your interest in sex might decrease. OR IT MIGHT NOT. IT MIGHT EVEN INCREASE. In a culture that is horrified by the sexuality of older women, consider who is served by the assumption that loss of libido is a thing that always happens. (Or that it should.)

5. You ARE still the same person you were at 17, at 24, at 39, etc. You’re just a little bit MORE that same person. 

6. You have the right to discuss and write about any age you’ve passed through. You own your experiences and you can do with them as you will, creatively. You have been a child, a teenager, a young adult, a middle-aged person – you have memories that you are always entitled to draw upon, for any reason at any time.