Old lady.... why is this still an acceptable insult

Yes, we do need to examine our attitude towards age that's exactly the point.

I find it profoundly irritating when people are insulting and then claim, with breathless naïveté "oh gosh I didn't mean fat/ugly/old in a negative way".

If you're associating age and gender with negative characteristics, such as bad driving, then you need to consider the prejudices you're revealing.

Sure maybe kids "pick out any quality that seems different if they want to insult someone" but if that quality was race or sexual orientation you'd correct them PDQ. Why not with age or gender?

I don't think we should ignore anything, I just think we really need to be careful not to assume that the use of certain words is really a problem.

The title of the thread is actually enlightening I think, "Why are insults like..."

Well, anything that someone uses as an insult is going to have an insulting quality, that's kind of the point. It's like little kids, they will pick out any quality that seems different if they want to insult someone, and it then becomes an insult. In another context the same thing might be seen as a compliment.

If being called old is seen as insulting, maybe we need to examine our attitude toward our elders?

I don't think anyone is seeking to control speech. Rather I think posters are thinking about how the use of language reveals society's underlying prejudices.

I agree, telling people they can't use "old lady" isn't always a particularly helpful way of tackling those underlying prejudices (although actually I think many people benefit from considering their unconscious bias), but I do think if we lived in a less misogynistic and ageist society a lot of the "poetic" or "just accurate" use of language you are defending would fall away.

Language is a symptom not the root problem I suppose. But that doesn't mean that words don't have an impact in perpetuating prejudice, and I think blithely ignoring your own use of language because hey you're just being poetic is unhelpful.

No of course not all stereotypes are offensive, but many are. And if you're using age and gender in a pejorative sense I think it's worth reflecting on what that reveals about your own biases.

But these examples are not all pejorative, that's my point. In some instances they aren't at all, but in others the problem is not the image it's that people are attaching a pejorative meaning to an image that ought to be neutral. In cases like that telling people that the image is offensive doesn't address the real issue or make it better. I'm inclined to think it makes it worse in the end.

The left in general has a real problem at the moment with attempts at controlling speech, and its often done with a sense of good intention, just this kind of thing, people feel its reducing bigotry. But it's having very detrimental effects on all kinds of fronts, and empirically it's utterly failed at reducing bigotry, which seems to be getting worse.

There is a real error about how language works in relation to the ideas we are expressing at work in this, and I think those who have been involved in leftist politics need to be very suspicious of our own natural reactions and assumptions, which have developed under this kind of thinking without it really being questioned much.

I met one of their grandmothers at a family event and was aware of the other surviving one too. They were at least 20 years older than us. We are so unalike that the grandmother we met declined to meet us on a second occasion. Actually, forget grandmothers, we met their mothers on several occasions and were nothing like either of them.

Young TRAs use boomer as an insult.

That is by no means restricted to trans privilege activists, and using 'millennial' as an insult is equally prevalent.

As a Generation Xer I sometimes feel like I'm stuck between two warring factions who, incidentally, are both happy to lump me in with their 'opposition' when it so suits.

We're an older lesbian couple — pretty radical and alternative and certainly nothing like their grandmothers

Did you know their actual, real life grandmothers or are you yourself applying a stereotype to what you think their grandmothers were like?

No of course not all stereotypes are offensive, but many are. And if you're
using age and gender in a pejorative sense I think it's worth reflecting on what that reveals about your own biases.

Do you use "gay" as an insult? Do you think generalisations based on race are also acceptable?

No, my point is that stereotypes, or generalisations, aren't necessarily a problem or offensive.

Everyone knows that not all old ladies fit the stereotype, little old dear with a structured handbag and blue hair, driving very carefully. No one thinks all old ladies are like that. No one even thinks they are all ladies, some are not lady-like at all. Your complaint that people are generalising these characteristics to all older women just doesn't stand up, so its not really a basis to complain about the image being used.

There is enough truth to it that we can recognise it as an image when it's useful. No one uses that image to talk about, say, Tina Turner, or Camille Paglia, who are both getting up there, and are well known. They might have used it at one time for the Queen Mother but they probably still knew there was a lot more to her than that.

None of it is what causes young women to be dismissive of older ones, or rude about it.

I think that's begging the question.

Is your point that something isn't a stereotype if it's accurate?

I disagree. Most stereotypes are accurate for a certain number of the class. That doesn't mean applying that generalisation to every member of the class is acceptable. Particularly when the stereotype is based on or is used to justify discriminatory views.

As far as I'm concerned, the problem isn't using it as a descriptor if it's correct, although I do wonder sometimes what the relevance is

When would it be relevant to use the descriptor "old lady" other than as a witness to a crime scene?

I think it's pretty unpleasant to try and justify discriminatory language as poetic or stereotypes as accurate.

I think that's begging the question.

I think it's pretty unpleasant to try and justify discriminatory language as poetic or stereotypes as accurate. Words matter

Yes they do.

I think it's pretty unpleasant to try and justify discriminatory language as poetic or stereotypes as accurate. Words matter.

I have a colleague who likes to describe our fellow, gay, colleague as "mincing around the office". I'm sure he'd say he was creating an evocative image or just being accurate, but y'know he's actually wildly homophobic and his easy embrace of stereotypes is part of that.

I don't know that I consider all of these offensive. Some are and are meant to be, or are disrespectful.

Others though are more like stereotyped, but still often true, observations. Someone who drives like a little old lady for example, that creates a very specific sort of image, I know just what they mean, and it's true many old people do drive that way, which is why I know and the image is so evocative. Or similarly, saying someone fusses like a little old man.

Does anyone really think that means all old ladies drive in an overly-cautious manner, or that all old men are fussy, or small? I don't really think so. I think it's more a kind of poetic expression.

Who says it's acceptable?
It's not always men as others have said.
It's ageism.
I've heard "drives like an old man" i.e. slowly, "drives like a pensioner" too. From women and men.

Yes I think there are some phrases that are such a part of the lexicon that we rather lose sight of their objective meaning.

Yes, Dh trotted something out about "small man syndrome" which I was appalled about not so long ago. He's not that tall himself ffs.

I notice a similar thing about men and height rather than age. eg "He's a horrid little man".

I don’t know. Irrespective of age, I always call a creepy man a dirty old man.

Of course there's nothing wrong with being an old lady - I'm not far off being one myself. As far as I'm concerned, the problem isn't using it as a descriptor if it's correct, although I do wonder sometimes what the relevance is. But what I really object to is when it's used as an insult.

I’m more than happy to be called an old lady as there are far worse things to be called.
I am old ( from a teenager’s point of view) and I’m a lady. So I just don’t worry about it.

Yes, I agree. I'm nearly 60 now and like a lot of women I've found confidence has come with age and that I am more comfortable with myself now that ever before, so ageism comes as a bit of a shock. But I remember how naive and lost I was in my teens and 20s and how complicated it's been to find my way to who I am now, so I try not to talk down to younger people. It was difficult the other day, though, when my 22-year-old niece said to me, seriously, that the worst thing she could imagine happening to her was having to have a filling in a tooth...

I agree ageism is pretty rife. I do think it goes both ways though. There's a thread at the moment that has a heavy emphasis on TRA's being too young and silly to know better.