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

Perhaps older women are born at the age of 55 like Robert Robinson.

Hmmm wonder if I'm considered older or young still?

I'm 41 not (yet) married / had a child but I do find myself worrying about & giving advice to the under 25s at work...

However my 50 / 60 something colleagues like to give ME advice.

Mainly like, don't trust men!

... and we are not creative, productive and autonomous.

I think the potential for autonomy is quite threatening.

Yes, Sentimental, much like 'mothers', it seems to be hard for people - even women - to connect that before we were mothers, and older women, we were women! And still are! Older women is a multiple identity.

I think some people regard 'older women' as a different species, unchanging, homogenous. We are X age (this will be imprecise, and just signifies some kind of alterity to the age of the thinker/speaker) and we do Y (insert weird shit that the thinker/speaker considers themselves in rebellion against).

What older women are not: revolutionary, disruptive, anti-establishment, thoughtful, incisive, self-aware, in solidarity with others who are oppressed ...

Yes ollena, I'd dearly love to see the youth of today chaperoned a bit more. Maybe a gang of old mumsnet codgers could start handing out dance cards and life tips in the toilets of nightclubs?

It amounts to an amazing act of self-willed forgetting when you discount that life-experience. Liberalism suggests that we should take all opinions equally seriously, and my particular brand of feminism tells me to be aware of power imbalances - including the power balance that can inhere between generations, with older people often accruing more power than younger people have acquired - but there is a tendency to dismiss that learned experience.

The result can sometimes seem like watching a wheel being re-invented again and again.

It's sad because I remember reading all this as a young woman. Even my post about losing a type of cultural memory is something I read in my twenties, written by a woman, writing about the impact of cultural, social and political minimising of older women.

... and then you think of the learned experience that never even makes it to the written page or cultural record.

But I think there is a huge issue about women and work here. One reason for the sidelining of older women is that caring responsibilities often impact on work and the accrual of cultural and economic power. That means that, come the period we call 'older' or 'old', women just don't have the clout that older men have.

What's more, those caring responsibilities pile up. They don't diminish. When i think about 'entering public space as an older woman', I realise that it's hard - I'm busy! Busy with a lot of things that don't necessarily mean I have a lot of money (and economic power). So the cycle continues.

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

You'll be shocked and amazed to discover that there hasn't really been any study done in to the role of older women and the menopause in our society but I remember hearing about this and it's totally fascinating.

www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/after-menopause-killer-whale-moms-become-pod-leaders-180954480/

I don't think it is just men who don't like older women.

Considerable real life experience is often just dismissed by younger women as delicate ego, knows nothing. As demonstrated on this thread.

On that note lets have a little recap on driver ages and their involvement in accidents.

Why are men so scared of us?

Because we can see right through them.

Tamatoa - that's basically what Jane Austen era balls were, isn't it?

OP - I agree completely with your thoughts. (And I'm another former "get on better with men than women" )

Why were women who lived alone and knew a bit about herbs so dangerous that they had to be denounced as witches, for example?

As well as age = not giving a fuck so much, I think there's an overlap with sexual desirability. Older women are often treated similarly to lesbians, because they are not in the market to sleep with men. That is, they are marginalised, ridiculed, deprived of a voice.

Why are men so scared of us?

Bring back old women! Can you imagine night clubs, with all the parents of the young folk sitting around the edges, judging any lewd behaviour harshly.....vetting any men you want to dance with the young women. I think sexual assaults would stop overnight.

maybe a nod in the direction of considerable real life experience is appreciated occasionally though I won't hold my breath on that

Not on MN anyway!

That's exactly the pattern identified in the MIT women faculty report from 1999 FlaviaAlba. Younger women don't usually see as much of a problem - but as they get older, they gradually amass enough data to realise the pattern.

web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html

No one is makig stuff up about what you said.

Your comment about the war was really odd

They say when ever no one is left alive that remembers the last big war there will be another one, please never die?

I'm not sure how else to interpret that in context of the rest of your posts other than you think that older women are important simply because they remember the war.
Which is weird.

I think you have something. I'm not sure anything but experience can teach some things though - it's a mindfuck to realise that women aren't equal, don't have equal pay, promotions, respect and are likely to be targets of violence just because of their sex.

When you're still in your idealistic youth maybe you tend to assume things aren't as bad as all that and blame choices people have made instead?

So, in summary older women are one homogeneous lump and can be generally ignored. 👏👏

Wow, must remember to agree with everybody or get a load of shit made up about what I said.
Women in the media may well be silenced on general issues, I'm no targuing with that, the Weinstein case shows all women are being silenced in life, but older women being silenced IRL for being older women? Just not happening, no more than any other group. Older women getting upset because nobody is listening, in many cases the problem is with their ego and expectations of grandeur purely based on their age.

.

And obviously the men of the boomer generation Are notorious for their open minded thinking when it comes to the young

The term old wives tales is derogatory itself.

Scaredycat- has every single older (baby boomer?) woman you've encountered been vile to you? And absolutely everyone else been all sweetness and light to you? Seems highly unlikely to me.

Yes, I think that's the point Bitter

Well one I'm only 30 so using me an example of the 'type of attitude' you're talking about is misplaced in this context.
And I just thought your comment about the war was really really odd. Asking someone not to die because they might remember the war is plain bizzare and implying that that's the worth of Germaine Greer, 'let's keep her around as her memories of something that ended when she was five will be a deterant for another war' is very patronising.

Also no one implied you weren't clever, but you do seem extremely young.