Gerontophilia: Notes on Elder Rights and Ageivism

Maggie Kuhn (1905-1995)

Founder of the Grey Panthers

I recently expressed support for elder rights in a post on gerontophilia and the beauty of old age. Now someone has emailed to ask if I would expand upon this, explaining the reason for my personal interest in this subject ...

Just to be clear: I don't myself have any involvement with any elder rights political movement or activist organisation. I admire her, but I'm no Maggie Kuhn.

However, in my capacity as a full-time carer for a woman in her nineties during the past thirty months, I've gained an insight into some of the issues faced by senior citizens; including vulnerability to abuse and the way in which cultural and social perceptions of age, disability and dementia, can impact negatively on the lives of those deemed to be over the hill at best, or useless eaters at worst.
    
And I've witnessed how even those who genuinely seem to care and should know better - medical health professionals and social workers - still behave in an outrageously patronising manner towards their elderly patients and clients.

It must be terrible to be marginalised due to the presence of a few grey hairs and wrinkles. But to also be infantilised and talked down to as if one were a child - or talked about as if no longer even present - must greatly intensify one's sense of disempowerment and humiliation. 

Diminished physical or mental capacity and an inability to use the latest technology, doesn't make someone an idiot or any less deserving of respect and a little kindness. Nor, on the other hand, does old age necessarily make any wiser, sweeter, or more innocent. The elderly have all the same vices (and virtues) as everyone else and should be accorded all the same rights.        

I'm sympathetic, therefore, to the concept of activist ageing and interested in the thinking that is said to underpin it - ageivism - even though, philosophically, I obviously have problems with any ideology that refers to principles of identity and social justice.

As I said, I'm no Maggie Kuhn: and I'm certainly no Issi Doron either. I just want us all to be able to see something beautiful in old age (even if that something is death).           

Note: readers interested in Israel Doron's ageivism project can visit his website by clicking here.