You and I Are Too Old to Leave the Fight
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
This is just one reason why we need to take care of ourselves
The work I do is mostly about aging well, as it relates to ensuring that our last years are among our best. I focus on healthy habits so that we have options as we age.
That said, lately, for all the obvious reasons, I’ve been posting a few choice notes about what women’s lives were like barely a few decades ago. Those notes have gotten a LOT of eyeballs and comments.
Much more so, sadly, than my regular articles. But that’s the way of it; other Substackers who don’t post about politics can understand.
My first note called out someone who referred to journalist Rachel Scott’s professional, clear and well-prepared questions of Donald Trump as “strident.”
I said I am NOT F*CKING HAVING IT.
Some five thousand agreed, and another five thousand agreed with further comments about the same incident clarifying my stance on the issue. I am NOT HAVING IT when competent women are called strident. The other dog whistle was racist: “angry Black women.”
They have every damned right to be angry. So should we be. That is why we need to stand together.
Here’s another one:
Two thousand of you tagged this one, or re-posted it, and many many MANY of you wrote your personal stories. I read every single one of them and commented, I hope, on all.
Without going too far off the rails, the above doesn’t even begin to address the reality that too many of the above legal rights are still not available for many women of color. Or immigrants. I could go on.
Part and parcel of leading a powerfully-vibrant older/elder life is also being active in those areas which affect us, even if not directly (especially once we are past reproductive age).
At 71 and a Boomer, my sisters and I both older and slightly younger bore witness to some critical changes which led to opportunities and advantages that our mothers and theirs never had. Once “secured”- they weren’t- many of us, including our daughters, assumed that those were locked in stone. As I said, many of those are still not secured for non-White women.
The late, much-reviled-by-all-feminists Phyllis Schlafly did as much damage as she possibly could to all women everywhere, especially around the Equal Rights Amendment, first put forth in 1923. Religious and conservative organizations shot it down then and are clawing back every single so-called “right” we thought we had put in stone.
Sandstone, maybe, easily eroded by laziness and the lack of attention. Spend too much time following all the wrong things (OOOH Kim Kardashian!!!! really?) and the scaffolding you’re standing on will collapse.
DID collapse.
Because highly-motivated folks who really revile women are never done.
Many of us of an age hollered and yelled warnings about this over the last few decades. To those younger, we in our fifties and sixties we were already old women who just didn’t get it.
Yeah, we did. We lived it. We shouted warnings from the rooftops while younger generations sailed along assuming body agency and other key issues were a thing of the past.
For an update please see this.
Did you even know that female genital mutilation is NOT outlawed in all fifty states?
From that article:
And while at least 513,000 women and girls are living with or at risk of female genital mutilation, nine US states and the District of Columbia do not have laws prohibiting FGM. Of those that do have laws banning it, many do not outlaw girls being taken out of state to be cut.
Oh that’s not the half of it. Men can marry little girls, the finest way to legally practice pedophilia imaginable.
Girls are disproportionately affected by the absence of a solid legal foundation to challenge and combat harmful cultural practices such as child marriage, which remains legal in 37 states*. Over 300,000 minors – some as young as ten years old – were married in the US between 2010 to 2018. Girls account for 86% of these minors, with most wed to adult men.
Legalized pedophilia masquerading as Godliness.
That’s why the memes I’ve been posting have been tagged, not only by women close to my age but good men who are fearful for their daughters and all the female loved ones who stand to lose big, just like our country stands to lose big, if Vance gets a Chance and the Big Orange Turd gets to dump all over the United States as a puppet for every evil interest imaginable including overseas operators.
Project 2025 has a hope of effectively locking ALL women behind closed doors and used for breeding stock, pedophiles and other abusers and sent off to some handy workfarm/slaughterhouse when we can’t produce bodies to be sent off to war.
What a wet dream for a great many very evil people, including the women who sold us out.
My sisters of any age, those who were trying to sound the alarm, but most especially those of us who lived through the eras where the ERA was a distant bright hope and the ability to earn a living and have our own money was finally in hand like a trembling baby bird, now’s not the time to say I told you so.
That’s a waste of breath.
All generations forget. All generations see tend to see older folks as irrelevant and out of touch. All of them do. Sadly, it’s a harsh lesson for our younger generations when the trembling baby bird of body agency is snatched away. We older women lived it, and we most emphatically, along with many good men, do NOT wish to be re-imprisoned.
We are WAY Too Old not to throw our full weight in behind all the issues that affect women right here, right now.
The fact that we’ve lived it and can speak to it from personal experience is what gives our words power. You and I ARE relevant, and because of that we can’t sit back and watch the world go by.
Some of the comments I have gotten are from younger women who honestly had no clue that the lack of such basic rights was a reality for all of us just a few years ago. That’s not ancient history. That’s yesterday in real terms.
We owe every woman, every girl child of every color and culture our re-dedication to this issue at every level, local to federal. So while yes, my primary focus is on healthy aging, let me tease out one piece of that:
One of the four legs of the healthy aging stool is Have a Purpose. A reason to lace those sneakers up every day.
I can’t think of a better reason to lace up than to get out the vote, drum up support, help with donations and TALK to people about this.
If any of this matters to you, and it should if you’ve got kids and grandkids, then the issues deserve your attention. Doesn’t matter what you do: make calls, knock on doors, lick envelopes, donate money, secure donations. The issues have never mattered more.
I’m a writer so my greater skill is right here: I am taking a side step away from my primary lane to speak out to anyone who hasn’t already committed. You and I can’t afford to be “uncommitted.” You and I can’t afford to hold an administration hostage because of a single issue. The larger stakes are too high.
And before you take me to task about Gaza or whatever it is that so angers you (not without good reason, clearly), fellow Substacker
points out that the rise of neotoddlerism can cost us far more than we realize when we are so puerile that we cannot comprehend that deeply complex political issues ARE NOT SOLVED by riots and simplistic memes. They take time and patience and maturity.That’s why you elect mature politicians, even ones you don’t like just because they can’t solve your issue in three minutes flat.
So before I walk my dog and get to the business of trying to focus on the other stuff that I write about, here’s the invitation to those who aren’t active yet:
If you’re past sixty and are concerned about becoming irrelevant, may I suggest that you saddle up and ride into town because we need you. You lived it. You and I and all our sisters and mothers and ancestors lived it. Our good menfolk lived it.
It’s time to take up arms against an all-out war on women that never quit the field. The evil was just lying in wait. Doesn’t matter that we were right. The fight is on and you are needed. NOW.
Let’s not play around.
I will now return to my regularly-scheduled programming until the next time it makes sense to do a PSA for women’s rights. Until ALL women have those rights, we are all underfoot. Please. Do what you can.
If it serves you please consider
Thank you. Vote like it matters, because it really, really does.
This!
I’m almost 74. When I went to buy my first car in 1974 the man who was selling the car to me had to sign the note for the financing! JC Penney offered me a “Young Modern” card with a $50 limit if my father would co-sign it. I had just returned from the Peace Corps and was shocked; I thought I was fully an adult. But not in the US apparently. Didn’t matter I was a single woman supporting myself. I was angry then and I’m angry now. I will not go back.
CHEERING over here. Because you and I remember that as young women we COULDN'T GET A CREDIT CARD all by ourselves until 1974 without a male signing on. Young women think that's nuts — and it is, but it's a blink away in history. And now, those same young women have less rights over their own bodies than we did after 1973. We ALL have a huge stake in this election -- and I applaud your point that we must ditch the perfectionism in favor of the clear and crucial good. Your vote isn't a valentine letter, folks -- it's a chess move, a strategy to help build the kind of future you want for you, your kids, your grandkids, and onward.