In With the New, But Out With the Old?

It’s just a New Years’ saying that affirms that what’s coming up is, we hope, better. But the sentiment in much of our culture sees “old” as even dreaded enough to say more broadly “out with it.”

I remember that I was somewhat amused when I heard a twenty-nine year old gay man genuinely bemoan the fact that he was about to turn thirty. The specter of that age looming over him, he said, made him “feel old.” So, he told us, he needed to get some things done and find a partner before that happened — and while he “still had a chance.”

To those of us who are quite a bit older, and who'd never go back to thirty again, unless it was guaranteed that we could take with us all we've learned from our experiences since, there’s something sad about feeling “old” at thirty.

I’m not sure what “feeling old” even means. But it’s not meant positively. I know that’s so, because we take the statements, “You don’t look that old,” or “You don’t act that old,” as complements.

Though the cult of youth is especially strong in gay male circles, it’s just another one of those larger cultural values our conditioning has internalized in us. Idealizing youth enables our consumerist economic system to sell youthfulness by marketing cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, physical fitness, clothing styles, and a lot else. It even helps sell the chemicals that alleviate our depression over “feeling old.”

We know what this does to those who are elders in our communities. As one said to me, we’re no longer seen.

Elders often get shunted aside, taken less seriously, ignored, left out of our identities, stereotyped, and made the butt of jokes. Since LGBTQ communities idealize youth, our elders often withdraw from activities, denying us their experience, expertise, and support, and providing few visual models of what it could be like for those who are younger to “grow old” as LGBTQ people.

How many of the heroes of liberation movements have disappeared because it's clear they are unwanted at times like today's backlash when we need them most? They've heard too often that “old” means outdated.

But it’s a greater tragedy for our youth, those like that twenty-nine year old who saw nothing positive about joining the ranks of those “over the hill” thirty-somethings.

Not only does it deny us all the history our communities need to define ourselves so that we can actively and effectively engage our culture's ongoing prejudices. Not only does it deny us the voices of experience we need to develop the broader perspective on current events which only those who have been through similar events before can give us. Not only does it deny us those who can be our wise leaders, advisors, and mentors.

But it promotes stereotypes of growing old, especially oppressive stereotypes used against us such as the elderly LGBTQ person as someone who will somehow prey on youth. When our male elders do appear among youth, we might still dismiss them as “chicken hawks,” or “dirty old men.”

And in her sixties Patricia Nell Warren, of Frontrunner fame, wrote of older lesbians who are tired of “just being ignored” or made to feel unwelcome at women’s events “where pheromones are in the air.”

Most acutely in the gay male community, an ageist caste system seems to rule male social and sexual lives. Few older men are able to ignore the stigma of this blatant ageism in order to be seen among us. And if they’re wealthy enough, they might replace their aging looks with conspicuous spending.

If our elders were to stay in touch, we could know that there is life — even vital, exciting, active, and fulfilling life — as we all age. We might begin to see that the life of our elders is even something to be desired.

It’s no wonder that many young LGBTQ+ people, especially gay men, see little positive future in their natural aging process. Not only do older LGBTQ+ people abandon their old haunts and leave them to youth, no longer dancing, laughing, playing pool, just hanging out, or stimulating the conversation. They thereby leave us only with stereotypes.

If it’s only the negative stereotypical images of aging we hold, then, what future does that model for those who are younger and must face the fact that they too are doomed to inevitably age? If all that’s valued is youth, then why not devalue one’s future? Why not think only of the present and expect all else to be downhill? Why not practice unsafe sex since there is nothing to look forward to anyway?

If it’s bad to be old, then what does that do to the self-esteem of us all as every single one of us, without exception, inevitably moves to that wretched place? If it’s that bad to age, then why not commit suicide when problems mount up now? It’s not going to get any better than this youthful experience, we’ve been told.

We, as our whole culture, still need a revolution in our thinking about age in order to have healthy youth. We need our elders with us in the places we live, work, and play. We need them to fight against our ageist prejudices with all the passion they have used to fight against homophobia and transphobia.

We need to confront our deeply ingrained ideas of aging and prepare a healthy, positive strategy for our own aging. We’ll have to talk with each other about how we feel about growing older and why. 

Somehow in order to save our youth we need to begin to celebrate our elders. We need to end the jokes, the stereotypes, and the put-downs. We need to consciously cross generations in all that we do.

It means all of us will have to contradict the larger culture again. We’ll have to really see that the American cult of youth is nothing but classist consumer mythology.

And before we grow any older ourselves, even before we turn thirty, we’ll need to affirm the positives of “old.” It’s what one book-lover meant when he said “Read old books to get new ideas and new books to get old ones.”