To get peed off with ageist comments on social media.

[Helendee]

I don't personally bother to enter debates online as generally I can't be arsed but I have several friends who are a similar age to me (early fifties) and I must admit we tend to look it!
Anyway I have noticed that they receive a lot of nasty, comments about their being old, stupid old bag, old witch etc if their opinions aren't popular.

I just feel that ageism is tolerated by society far more than other -isms.

Is it just me?

I find these sort of comments really funny. Because young people seem to think getting old is a personal failing and indicates carelessness on the part of the speaker.

I totally agree Margaret and would react accordingly should it be directed at me lol. It just amazes me that ageism isn't jumped on and seems to be almost acceptable.

It's so wrong. It's also wrong to be ageist towards younger people too which I see quite a lot of through my work.
People should just be kind to each other!

MargaretTatyer "Because young people seem to think getting old is a personal failing and indicates carelessness on the part of the speaker."

So, so true.

Ageism has annoyed me for a very long time. I had hoped that by the time I hit "un certain age" myself, it might have abated slightly. It hasn't.

Mumsnet is really bad for ageism. I challenge it a lot.

Yes. I also see ageism against the young. Casual 'jokes' about millennials and, on occasion, blatant discrimination.

I really hate the way the ends of the spectrum are pitted against each other - a way to divide people.

Ageism against older women is particularly horrible, though. And it's worse than ageism against older men because women usually haven;t acquired the actual capital to blanket ourselves against it.

I think the most insidious form of this is when it's disguised as sympathy. See all the threads on here complaining about somebody being a prick, who happens to be anything over 50, cue loads of comments about how they probably have dementia, and a general portrayal of anyone even slightly elderly being completely helpless and infirm of mind and body without any indication in the OP that that may be the case. It's a patronising assumption to make.

There's a sort of assumption that when you retire, you suddenly have nothing to say, nothing to contribute and are pretty worthless really. It's either that older people become 'old dear' and are patronised or that they're ignored.

What a waste of experience, knowledge and wisdom.

Thanks for all replies. The fact that there are only a few sort of confirms my point... imagine the outrage if it had been a thread about my friends being verbally abused because of their sexuality or race.

Ah well this old bird has knitting to do and Murder She Wrote to watch and yes that is for real. 😀

I deleted a few people after Brexit for forwarding a piece blaming old people and holding the referendum the week when the young were at Glastonbury. One of the guys was in his late 50s.

I hate it too when someone complains about some spiteful and difficult relative and out chimes the you don't know how long they will live and ends up the person is not yet 60 and working full time.

However, I do agree with the poster above who says the same is said about 'generation snowflake'

I hate that 'generation snowflake' epithet. It makes me feel violent. So bizarre that many of the people throwing it around are probably 'my' generation. Grrr.

It is wrong, but I get called a whiny millennial child ... people of all ages are nasty.
I will admit that people my age see the web as 'our domain' sometimes and this means that older people are treated like intruders who don't have a place there.
Again I don't agree with this treatment.

Whilst I agree ageism is wrong the older generation aren't exactly innocent either.

I think there tends to be a lot more ageism directed at women than men.
This week, alone, I've seen:
"Old bag"
"Dried up bint"
"Stupid old hag"
This is all directed at any woman who has had the temerity to be over the age of 40. What I find interesting, though, is the same people hurling these insults around would die of shame if they were accused of homophobia or racism but ageism seems to be totally fine. Even seen as hilarious banter.

'Snowflake' makes me really cross. It's a stupid term which most people misuse.

However, and I'm struggling to think of a way of wording this, I do think that some posters on MN deliberately derail and get deleted threads which they consider ageist because the OP has said something along the lines of 'an elderly woman on the bus' without any malicious intent. I don't think this is helpful or useful for educating other posters about ageism.

And when a poster has a problem that she actually needs help with, abusing her and shutting her down for inadvertently using that phrase isn't in the spirit of MN, IMHO.

The thing is, people dismiss older women with such a comment unthinkingly. This is a predominantly female website and it is depressing to see women dehumanising older women that way - as though it's not their fate they are writing/reinscribing as they do it.

Older women are really penalised in a patriarchal culture. the routine discrimination against older women - in culture, in the workplace - is quite horrible, and quite difficult to call people out on. It's palpably worse than any ageism men come across.

And it is a feminist issue because it is all part of the many ways that women are dehumanised and subtly prevented from 'full personhood': subjected to sexualisation-for-men when younger (and either penalised for being 'too sexy', 'not sexy enough', 'not conforming to male ideals of beauty' when younger; subjected to all sorts of weird double think or 'non-personhood if a mother; rendered invisible and subject to a particular age-based misogyny when older.

It's massively annoying. And it is very depressing when I see it reproduced by women ourselves.

Mind you, I also see women who are mothers reproducing some of the particularly depressing patriarchal tropes about mothers on here, too. Particularly a willingess to condemn/judge other women for not managing to achieve the quite unrealisable and often contradictory target of an idealised 'mother'. So it's perhaps not surprising to see a lack of political reflectivity around the issue of (gendered) ageing.

Makes me laugh actually, because they all think it won't happen to them.

It will.

I came of age during the tail-end of second phase feminism. I used to sell copies of magazines called things like 'Crone' and read a lot of feminist books on the subject of gendered ageism. I'd read about feminist communes set up for older women. There were so many feminists fighting this. So much female energy spent on trying to make the world better, or at least less difficult, for the coming generation.

And here I am, and it really is still here.

It's demoralising.

I just ignore it and think to myself that the youngsters consider getting old is an option.

Who am I to say, time will tell 😀

I guess that one thing I'm a bit sad about is that there don't seem to be any groups, or movement, I can join to fight this. There isn't a mass, energetic fightback.

That demoralisation is quite effective.

To make you feel better it works both ways, I can't tell you the amount of times I've been belittled or not respected at work in favour of the older (usually) man in the room when I know far more about the topic being discussed. People have even said things like 'you're so capable for someone so young'.
Us youngsters are in solidarity with you (I'm not even young, mid 30s, I'm just short and look young!).

*Makes me laugh actually, because they all think it won't happen to them.

It will.*

Revenge is a dish served cold!

Flying

Yes always makes me howl laughing when mil threads turn to 'could it be early onset dementure' when the mil is 51 hilarious

Yes. i think I spent my youth being belittled and dismissed because I was young, next came being ignored and dismissed as a mother, and now ignored and dismissed because I'm an older woman.

It's insanely annoying.

I think MN has a great deal of ageism.

I challenge it frequently.

But it is pervasive, eg the idea that once you're a middle aged woman you need to dress differently and expect to become invisible, or you'll want a different sort of gift, or only enjoy certain sorts of night out or activity.

I don't actually mind pausing to consider if someone could be showing signs of dementia (nor extending greater tolerance to people who may have conditions that affect their cognitive functioning). It's no different to considering if there is some form of developmental delay or additional needs when it's a child behaving conspicuously.