Agism: Cruel and Foolish Stereotypes That Plague Us All

Understanding the system of prejudice in America, in all its many forms, has become for many of us a preoccupying struggle of conscience in our age of political delinquency, hate-fueled vigilantism and lunatic terror.

From my perspective as a “senior,” I’m getting a better idea of how the American class system is built upon an enduring hierarchy of caricatures, or “isms” that are driven by largely negative imagery that is at once simple minded and savage. It’s also come clearer to me that all prejudicial stereotypes, from ageism, antisemitism and sexism to homophobia, xenophobia and Jim Crow all have at least one odium in common. They work to delete or obscure the one thing that our secular society is supposed to hold sacred above all else — the individuality, the personal character and the free agency of those who have been caught in their insidious nets. Prejudicial stereotypes are not unlike little prisons in which people unjustly serve life sentences, spending their time tunneling futilely to escape.

As a white male, I’ve directly known more about positive old man stereotypes — being distinguished and even sagacious — than about the negative ones. Of course, I know some people find me and my kind utterly distasteful for our color and gender and our culturally-bestowed power and privilege, but the heat of their dislike and wariness is largely an abstraction. Now, however, at almost 83, I’m feeling the constrictions of prejudice more directly, albeit of a watered-down kind.

On the scale of prejudice, I’ve got it very easy compared to women, people of color, the disabled and the poor. I’m gray-haired, gaunt in the face, wrinkled, seemingly frail and stooped from arthritis, not very fashionably dressed and not able to walk very far without a cane. But I’m still essentially who I’ve always been, even though I joke that the battery in my pacemaker has more energy than I do. I’m growing more keenly aware all the time, though, of being an object of what I laughingly call “oldism,” and, as such, objectified as obsolete, perhaps charmingly so, but still an object of worry, a potential nuisance, something of a danger to myself, and not a full person with my will power and self-determination intact. (Please, this is not an “Oh poor me” rant. I’m just trying to get at some of the symptoms of ageism.)

These negative projections I feel have mostly to do with how I am treated by strangers. Members of my cohort are often met with a jumble of begrudging deference, wariness, obsequious chivalry and barely disguised impatience. People of both genders look at me as if I might be a dirty old man haunting a restaurant, or someone on the twilight edge of senility, a wandering old fool who’s out on his own when he should be in a home. My older women friends with gray hair and various frailties usually don’t get the feigned deference I do. That’s replaced for them by a condescending faux affection that comes with words like “dear, darling, honey, sweetie,” patronizing words that buzz around them as if they were about to crumble in heaps to the ground.

Ageism is an additive prejudice. It compounds the pain of other kinds of categorical negativity. Everyone has suffered or will suffer from it. As a whole system, our age-graded culture is made up of largely negative stereotypes that are fundamentally degrading and complicated. To get a better glimpse of ageism at work take President Biden, Senator Feinstein and former president Trump.

Ageism plagues President Biden. Even the vast White House PR machine can’t overcome it. Verbal gaffs, stair trippings, and tisk tisking about his being 80 is about all we get. We hear virtually nothing critical about his policies nor anything positive about his values or his political adroitness. No one talks about the massive job development during his administration, or the low unemployment, or the judicial confirmations for lower federal courts, the racial gender and ethnic diversity of those serving in his administration, his careful handling of NATO and the war in Ukraine, the balancing act with China, the gigantic infrastructure funding, investments in the power grid and executive orders impacting climate resilience. But, as the American Psychological Association has noted, ageism is “one of the last socially acceptable prejudices.” And Biden gets it full force.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is 89, and one can observe she is physically compromised. She’s also automatically assumed to be incompetent. While I can’t imagine why anyone would want to serve in Washington at her age, it’s the 96 votes she’s missed since February this year that bother me, not that she’s got shingles, that she’s recently widowed, has to use a wheelchair, that her memory might not be what it used to be, or any other of the locust-like, anonymously-sourced accusations that are swirling around her. I’m also fascinated that her age has caused such a tremendously nasty stir at the moment. In their day, ancient male senators like Robert Byrd, Daniel Inouye, Patrick Leahy, Strom Thurmond, Ted Kennedy, Orrin Hatch and a long line of other men who served nearly 40 years in the Senate, including New Mexico’s Pete Domenici, never got the beastly innuendos of ageism from undisclosed and, I have to say, chickenshit sources that are currently directed at Sen. Feinstein. Ageism and sexism make a powerful compound poison.

And of course, hardly anyone speaks of the age of former president Trump, who’s now 77, and for millions of Americans is as unhinged as anyone in public office in our country has ever become. But his followers are outraged at the “age discrimination” he allegedly suffers when anyone even mentions his obesity, terrible diet, repetitious speeches, his Tourette’s-like out bursts of hate and status as a guy who has a whole makeup department at his disposal.

People who are old, and in their right minds, often focus on assessing their capacities and working to adjust their ambitions and expectations to the realities of their aging bodies and diminishing energy. It’s called common sense. The trick is not to internalize the subtle savageries about old people that come from the ageist strains in our culture. We know we are old. We know we may be wiser than we once were, and that part of our wisdom is understanding our changing limitations without shackling ourselves with the terrible caricature of being old and a geezer that our culture still refuses to confront and dismantle.

When Glenda Jackson, the much admired British actress and member of Parliament, died last week at 87, she was quoted in an obituary as having said “If I have my health and strength, I’m going to be the most appalling old lady. I’m going to boss everyone about and … generally capitalize on all the hypocrisy that society shows toward the old.” The best way for older people to do that is to guard our agency, our individuality, our experience and our ideas as the true and lasting treasures of our lives. And above all we must challenge the cruelty of hypocrisy-fueled hate at every turn so we never use it ourselves on anyone different or younger than we are.

*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it