Elder Sex, Not Gross, Its Life

I ran across a very enlight­ened col­umn enti­tled “Age Is No Bar­rier to Great Sex” by Elaine George on The Daily Tele­graph Web­site. Ms. George says:

“SEX is not just about pro­cre­ation, it is also for recre­ation — and this includes older people. …

Sex has a sym­bolic value which is inde­pen­dent of age. The only fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between peo­ple cur­rently in their 80s and those in their 20s is the decade they were born in. …

Older sex is often regarded as taboo by soci­ety. While sex itself is a sen­si­tive and pri­vate topic, sex between the elderly is often treated with trep­i­da­tion. Doc­tors are often embar­rassed and grand­chil­dren blush at the thought. …

Sex is the glue that keeps the emo­tional inti­macy alive. …”

All very good points. All points that I strongly agree with.

But the con­di­tion that I find most dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend, even though I believe that it is largely true, is “Older sex is often regarded as taboo by soci­ety.” A state­ment made in a com­ment to the post by a well-spoken 19-year old reader who signed under the name Megsi affirmed this sit­u­a­tion. Megsi started her (I am assum­ing her   ) com­ment with the following:

“My friends tend to always gross out when they find out their par­ents are still hav­ing sex and they don’t under­stand why it don’t freak me out, maybe it is the way my Mum has raised me.”

I feel obliged to say the Megsi sounds like young per­son who was raised by a won­der­ful mother and that she has an exem­plary atti­tude toward the sex lives of older people.

But her friends! How do such atti­tudes develop? Pop­u­lar media, TV and movies, have cer­tainly shown older peo­ple as more active sex­u­ally than they did when I was grow­ing up. But then there are still more than a few comics whose jokes are based upon an assump­tion that sex between older peo­ple is some­how humor­ous or even worse, repulsive.

This gen­eral atti­tude totally con­fuses me. I would think that younger peo­ple would want to believe that there is hope for a future life that includes a won­der­ful, plea­sur­able, active sex life. I would think that see­ing older peo­ple liv­ing a life that they enjoy as young peo­ple would be a sign that life as an older per­son is not all gloom and doom. We sure know it isn’t.

Hell, Pete Town­shend is 66 now. I bet he is glad he didn’t die before he got old. Mick Jag­ger is just about to turn 68. Keith Richards will be 68 at the end of this year. Eric Clap­ton is 66. Do young peo­ple think it is gross when they get up on stage and rock out? Some­how that is OK.

Soci­ety needs to cel­e­brate peo­ple being people.

Of course this means we older peo­ple need to accept that young peo­ple are peo­ple too.

Is Still Here & Still Here Too