"There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is nothing: but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, peple will shrug up their shoulders and say, 'His memory is going."
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In a realist frame (which most gerontologists use), ageism is different from racism and sexism because we all get old, unless we die first. Not many people become black or female. In a discursive frame, this is important to, because we are constructing something a 'old person' that we know we have some likelihood of becoming but may not be now. This is different from most constructions around gender and race(but not all of course) where we are either in a relatively stable position of being in that category or outside it ( ... )
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This issue of being 'other' or not to the group you're studying is also interesting in terms of what you can get away with as a non-group member academic. I hardly ever get called on being a (relatively) young person researching later life, whereas if I was a non-disabled person researching disability, I would constantly have to justify my position. That, I think, is to do with how very unpoliticised later life is, compared to disability circles which, in academia at least, are highly politicised and almost standpoint theory. The exceptional political older person like Barbara McDonald (highly recommend her 'Old Women, Ageing and Ageism' which is about the intersection of homophobia and ageism) and the Grey Panthers, are not well known or influencing academic discourses (McDonald's book is out of print, unfortunately).
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