Is the silencing and ridicule of older women necessary to keep women in their place?

Yes to the anger, I hear it from my friends too. I am not mellowing, quite the opposite. I don't know if motherly is the right word but I feel increasingly protective of young women in general and just furious at the crap that's ahead of them.

My pleasure Cat. I am facing the menopause right now so soon I'll be an old crone and no one will take any notice of me. I do think it's really important to notice older women and take account of their experience and the things they've lived through. They don't necessarily know more than younger women about everything but especially the generation above me lived through so much change and so much shit. Not being able to get a mortgage, losing your job if you were pregnant etc.
I've been finding getting older to he quite freeing. I don't give a shit what people think about me anymore. I embrace the way I look. Sometimes I make a bit of a grooming effort but mostly I just want to be comfy. The menopause sucks though

I still care, I still desperately want to be liked, but it's getting less.

Me too. You don't have to restrain yourself. If someone looks at you and thinks eh? it's gorgeously, deliciously, reassuringly, breathtakingly liberating to not fucking care.

Yy.
The worst thing a woman can do is not be likeable and not spend all her time faffing about endlessly trying to placate people.
It is utterly liberating getting older (I'm 45 yrs) and I couldn't give a shiney shite if anyone approves of what I think. I highly recommend getting older to all women.

I think you're right about that, Lentil. And I think it may be even more true for old ladies. "Angry" and "autonomous" - it's not what women, and older women are not supposed to be. People get really angry about any sign of non-altruism and anger in mothers and older women.

I wonder if that is because of the mother thing, actually? Once you are past a certain age, there is a strong assumption that you are a mother ('granny' = common term for all older women) and there is a huge set of assumptions that go with that, around sex, being there for others, being selfless, not having a right to your own, self-fulfilling life ... all sorts.

Being angry as a woman is one of the most gender non conforming thing you can do. It's literally the worst thing you can be 'an angry feminist', 'an angry lesbian'.

Calm down dear, no one likes frown lines.

... and thanks for the link to the BL archive.

I'm finding the 'becoming angry, recognising angry' comment really interesting, too.

Today 17:02 SentimentalLentil

It's almost like young women don't know where old women come from.

Exactly. No one is born aged 50. And although the world may change, humanity doesn't tend to.

And this:

I was having this conversation with a friend the other day about how we only just now feel like we've worked out that we're angry. Like we've had this feeling inside and haven't been able to tell what it is and we've just worked out it's anger.

You don't just suddenly become an angry person because you have a birthday. You become angry because of your lived experience. The accumulation of events where you see the same thing happening over and over.

It's really no coincidence that many women say I'm turning into my mother.

*green ham common lol! I love green eggs and ham. I mean Greenham Common Women's Peace camp obviously

I've been listening to the sisterhood and after oral histories on the British library website recently. They are all older women who were involved in the women's liberation movement. There are also a lot of older women talking frankly in the 'remembering the 80s collection including people who were at green ham common. It's really, really interesting hearing them talking about their lives, I've learned such a lot. There are intelligent and brave and I think more people should listen to them. Link here www.bl.uk/sisterhood

I've posted about this before but it's a constant battle I have with my mother.
She leads a trans group (Lordy only knows why, when asked her answer is always 'I like trans people' )
All of whom are trans women and most of whom are 'lesbians'.
When I point out that in her version of feminism she spends a very large proportion of her time literally making tea and cakes for straight men she just tells me to shut up.
The thing is is that she gets it!! She used to be a radical feminist, when we speak about it her POV is that all gender is contructed and that you can't change your sex, but we should just be play along anyway because it might upset them.

I spoke to her about the cotton ceiling and she was like 'I 100% get what your saying but I can't see why lesbians can't just lie and say it's because they don't fancy them for another reason'.
It makes me feel so rejected by her that she chooses the feelings of strangers over the rights of her daughters and granddaughters but I also understand that it's an internalised misogyny and it's sad because she obviously just thinks men are better than women which includes herself.

It's frustrating how many young women are "lost" to feminist causes for the reasons listed above. Until they're older. I know a few women my age (40s) only now getting involved in feminist activism, who were very much the "I get on better with men" types in their youth and who would've dismissed and ridiculed feminists. I feel a bit of grim "I told you so" (petty I know but they weren't very sisterly 20 years ago!) but also just what a loss their intelligence and energies were when they were worried about pleasing men.

Yeah I haven't mellowed as I've got older I've got angrier and angrier.

I was having this conversation with a friend the other day about how we only just now feel like we've worked out that we're angry. Like we've had this feeling inside and haven't been able to tell what it is and we've just worked out it's anger.
As I get older I don't care as much about being seen as 'attractive' so I feel more comfortable being seen to have my own opinions.
I feel really sad for young women when I see how desperate they are not to offend or say something out of turn.

P.S. I'm obvs not saying you thought that. I'm thinking more about where the ageism kicks in, and how it works/operates.

It's not surprising that it's older women doing these things. For a start, they probably have a long history of it. Women do an awful lot of the actual work in political constituencies and in political organisations. Very few of them make it to the more powerful and public roles in those organisations.

i think where the ageism comes in is a. the failure to realise a lot of those 'loveable older women, out campaigning' probably have a secure background in political organising and local campaigns and b. thinking 'bless' - which I'll bet goes through some people's minds and c. thinking, again, of those women as 'the acceptable, cosy face of this campaign', rather than as politically active, angry women.

I agree. It's very threatening to the patriarchy to have more experienced women passing down wisdom and warnings to less experienced women. The less that happens, the better for the patriarchy. In other words, listening to our grannies and mothers could be a feminist act ;)

If I was a person who benefitted from the patriarchy, or had been convinced that it was in my interests to take the side of men rather than women, it would be very tempting to try to sow as much disconnection and discord as possible between the different generations of women.

By the way, I've noticed quite a few 'intergenerational' threads on MN over the past couple of days.

On the other hand, I often notice in my local paper that whenever there is a local campaign, like save a library or opposed to houses being built, or whatever, there are almost always older women leading the campaigns or strongly involved in them.
I guess retired people have time in the day to do these things, but it surprises me (and pleases me) that these women are active, involved, being listened to, getting in arguments with councillors and the like.

Women discussing things is just so threatening

Absolutely. If it weren't, so many men wouldn't try to shut us up!

Yes cat this habit of everyone 50+ being in the same category of "over 50s" is incredibly daft. There is as much distance in time between a 50 year old and an 80 year old as there is between a 50 year old and a 20 year old. Yet no one suggests lumping 20 and 50 year olds together.

It 's as if you are relatively young and active when you are 49 years and 364 days. Then on day 365 you are suddenly an old biddy - never mind being kicked off the telly, it's zimmer frames and incontinence pads here I come....

Now, our expected life-span is, what, 80+? So that's 30 years just lumped together, while the years before that are child, maiden, wife, mother, etc.

So true.

who It does, anecdotally, seem to be specifically a Boomer generation thing, to demand respect for their age. My DM, a Boomer, told me she got an earful from a lady of your generation about Boomers attitudes and behaviour.

I missed being a Boomer by three years Scaredy . But too young to remember the war..remember playing on bomb sites though...

Another problem is that we lump all women who are 50+ in a category, as though the only years worth the consideration of close attention, and micro-categorisation are those that are pre-menopausal.

Now, our expected life-span is, what, 80+? So that's 30 years just lumped together, while the years before that are child, maiden, wife, mother, etc.

You can kind of see the archaism, which then is appropriated as sexism, in that: it's all about fertility and sexual availability.

I think we need to do conceptual work to 'fill out' those years and their reality and meaning for women. The figuration of all those years being just 'older women' - a kind of conceptual porridge - jsut doesn't fit the reality of women's lives. We are going to be working for fuck knows how long. We're going to be mothers for far longer, we live (and love) for longer.