#ageism for ts

[hellsbellschime]

I never got the arguement that was like - oh this person was in primary school when you were graduating - like... congrats for discovering the concept of linear time you can now fuck off and stop bitching about a thirty year old dating a 45 year old. It's really these young teens online who are being infected with weird fandom ideologies, i recently saw someone complaining about a seventeen year old dating someone who had just recently turned 19, it's so weird.

LOL yes, like I’d get it if there was A. a large age gap and B. if the younger person were pretty damn young, like 25 or under. 

[janiedean]

1 I know that most of the ageist comments in fandom come from young teens who feel like adulthood is distant and inconceivable, and from younger adults who will probably grow out of it as they get older, but I still really struggle with it. I'm in my mid 20s, I've been in fandoms since I was about 11, and while I have other hobbies this one is such a big part of who I am and what I love. I'm scared of getting "too old" to be a part of fandom and the idea stresses me out and makes me deeply sad.

2 This is more personal, but one thing I'm afraid of in particular with getting older is that it might be considered weird or gross or creepy to still want to read and write NSFW fanfiction about characters. I don't know if there's an age where women are supposed to stop doing that and stop liking those sorts of thing. I hate that this all bothers me so much because I don't think other women over 30 or 40 are old, but I'm 25 and I'm terrified of getting older. I didn't used to be.

in order:

man: you’re never too old for fandom.

period.

when I got into fandom on english platforms I was sixteen, a lot of people were in their 30s/40s and I thought ‘oh wow great if they’re doing it now then it means I won’t have to give it up SCORE’, I never thought they were too old for it, and like.... this whole thing that at some point you get older than SOME YEAR and stop having fun is ridiculous. like, 100% bullshit;

other question: do you know any guys into sports? like, crazy into sports, who’ll go to most games of their favorite team or will buy cable to watch those games? probably you do. how old are they? going statistically: most guys from any age you know will do either of those things or be into sports, and if it’s not pathetic nor has an expiration date for them........ why isn’t it okay for you to read fanfic? yeah, exactly. again: my grandfather is NINETY and he watches the damned football game of his team every darned weekend come hell or high water and that’s also a hobby��and that’s also being a *fan*, it’s not like fanfic is qualitatively different just because it implies reading about people fucking;

‘reading nfsw’: people have sex at all ages. and as some post I reblogged a while ago said, there’s an entire pharmacological industry dedicated to make sure men are able to go at it even after they’re past their prime. and while this website has a hateboner for poor freud who was more right about a lot of things than tumblr likes to admit... human beings like to have sex and think about sex as a general thing. now, SOME don’t and NOT EVERYONE DOES ofc, but as a species... we enjoy sex. we have sex outside reproduction purposes because it’s fun. there’s tons of published erotica in the world written by both men and women for men and women of all sexual orientations and the likes. honesty, 50 shades of gray was a hit with middle-aged women or anyway women older than 25-ish - let’s not even discuss that it was a BAD FANFIC, but like.... people loved it so much they made three movies out of it. because people enjoy reading about sex. now, never mind that I think 50 shades is a terrible book and it’d be preferable to have best sellers about bdsm that don’t completely misunderstand it and that everyone would be better off reading henry miller, but like.... there’s qualitatively no difference in reading nfsw fanfic or 50 shades or henry miller if you don’t count that 50 shades is trash, henry miller is good and there’s fanfic which is entirely better than 50 shades and worse than henry miller but still way better sex than el james. so why the hell you reading nfsw fanfic is a problem if anyone can buy 50 shades at the supermarket?

spoilers: it’s not.

there’s no age where you’re supposed to stop doing something. you’re only supposed to stop doing things if you don’t enjoy them anymore, but like...... what, it means that people can’t have sex past X year then they don’t care about it anymore? I mean guys I can’t see myself stop liking springsteen at any time soon and if I was his age I’d go to his concerts still with my damned cane, so what? it’s a hobby like any other. 70 year old ladies who argue about opera all the time behind me when I go to the theater are also having a hobby and opera isn’t like, more dignified than fanfic because of god’s grace falling upon it or smth. the 70 year old lady will grumble that callas isn’t alive anymore, my granddad can watch football, you can read smut and the 70+ year old dude who goes to the rome comicon every year dressed as either gandalf or dumbledore or radagast or that kinda character also can do it and there is no expiration date, it’s not like the fact that it’s fandom stuff makes it sillier or whatever.

also: men watch porn at any age. if men can watch porn at any age, you can read porn at any age. like guys fuck’s sake women’s sexuality has been The Topic No One Discussed for centuries, now that we’re in a century where we can finally explore it in peace and talk about it we have to go around discussing expiration dates on caring about sex if we have a vagina? like hell. 

man, honest: there is literally no age of expiration. if one day you don’t care for reading smut anymore because it bores you then fine, it’s not your thing anymore. I mean, I liked the spice girls when I was eight, I didn’t anymore when I was eleven and now I listen to some songs once in a while out of nostalgia because they’re fun and it’s AAAH THE STUFF I LISTENED WHEN EVERYTHING WAS UNCOMPLICATED but like... the spice girls wouldn’t be in my top ten favorite groups ever. I’ve liked springsteen since I was eleven and never stopped, so it means that the spice girls were meant to expire and bruce wasn’t meant to and it’s fine, one was a thing I only enjoyed for a short while, the other I’ll enjoy for life. and like, bruce is more defining to my personality than the spice girls will ever be. so if idk fandom is your springsteen and dunno something else you did for a couple years but fell out of love with (idk collecting comic books or smth) was your spice girls then one expired because it wasn’t your thing anymore, the other will be your thing for longer and it’s fine because some things are meant to stick and others aren’t, but that’s... personal taste, not expiration dates.

and like: if you want to read smut at 70+, you can do it because you can still think about sex at seventy. being old doesn’t mean you MUST stop caring ;)

tldr: anon really I know it’s hard but tbh since I turned thirty I’ve done way more fandom stuff than before like outside writing fanfic or engaging online and I’ve had a blast. it’s all freaking bullshit that’s the usual rhetoric of wanting to dictate what women should like, go forth and enjoy your nfsw fic as long as you want to, it’s not biologically dictated ;)

[hellsbellschime]

so people are mad about yet another age gap relationship. this time between lucy hale and skeet ulrich which honestly good for them both and also i’m jealous imo my bi ass thinks they’re both fine as hell. but imo also there’s a huge difference between their age diff between 20 years (he’s 50 and she’s 30) and leonardo dicaprio dating 18-23 year olds or whatever his cutoff age limit is. like there’s clearly a very different dynamic with whatever they have going on because she’s a literal grown ass woman. as i said leo’s relationships feel very much rooted in power dynamics and ageism. idk i can’t see where people are getting the idea that lucy hale was groomed by skeet ulrich lol.

Yeah that’s a reach on that one, like yeah that’s a big age gap but Lucy Hale is 30, she can decide to date a 50-year-old if she wants, I think that’s hardly comparable to Leonardo DiCaprio dating teenagers. Not to mention, Lucy and Skeet are not outrageously more famous or more successful than one another? She’s a fully formed adult and he’s not really in a position to take advantage of her (at least on paper, i.e. like how Leo always dates 20-year-old nobodies despite the fact that he’s insanely rich and famous, obviously anyone can be manipulative or abusive but he’s not already in a position of power over her). If that kind of age differential isn’t for anyone that’s fine, but to say that she’s being taken advantage of is ridiculously infantalizing.

[hellsbellschime]

Okay, this talk of things you have no patience for in media reminds me of one that’s been bugging me - ridiculous age gaps between male and female leads. Has Tom Cruise ever had a love interest near his age? I was baffled recently watching Eurovision that I was supposed to buy that Rachel McAdams was only a few years younger than Will Ferrell. Maybe it’s because I’m older now and realize that contrary to what Hollywood has always told me, 35 and 25 don’t look that different.

Yeah I hate it too, it’s idiotic and weird and it places a premium on age that doesn’t really exist. It’s also idiotic because, quite frankly, while there are plenty of people who look just as good at 35 as they do at 25 (especially if they’re actors and have access to all of the skincare and fitness/health services that they have access to), however when the leading man is 55 then casting a 25 year old instead of a 35 or 45 year old woman just makes the man look even older. I legitimately just think it’s a narcissism fantasy, because the film industry is run by men and these men clearly want to believe that 25 year old women will still be interested in them when they’re nearly elderly, but if there were more equal gender representation in the industry I think that the perspective would change a lot. 

[hellsbellschime]

Speaking of ageism/Ageist. How come if a older woman gets with a younger man they are called a Cougar but men don't have a nickname for taking up a younger woman -- unless of course the woman turns out to be underage or their former stepdaughter. Like the only time I see men called out is if there is something very creepy about it. Like just like to see more stories about women dating a man younger than her but not be judged or shamed.

LOL I was gonna say the word for that is “creeper”, but your point is completely valid and the way that women who date younger men is fetishized whereas with men dating women it’s normalized is bullshit.

[hellsbellschime]

I looked up the show and the actors and at the time of writing, the male lead is 39 years old. Meanwhile the actress that plays his mother is 38 years old - but she will be 39 in a few months. A thing that this country tends to do with their casting is when they tell a story about rich people. The women who are cast to play the mother to their adult children, they tend to look younger than they should. While they cast age appropriate actresses to portray the mother from a poor family.

Uhhhh that really creeps me out to be honest, I don’t know if they’re trying to glorify the idea that if you’re richer then you are therefore more attractive or if it’s supposed to be a reference to creepy older men wanting to essentially buy inappropriately young wives, but either way I’m not living for it.

[hellsbellschime]

I was thinking about how age-ist the entertainment industry can be (I don’t know if it’s the right term for my example) and I remember this foreign show I watched last year where the actress playing one of the male lead’s mother was younger that her on-screen son. And I was shocked when I find out. In hindsight, explaining it, it probably is age-ist. Cause I can’t think of an example where the actor playing a father is younger than the actress playing his daughter.

LOLWUT. I’ve heard of insane age gaps or lack thereof in the entertainment industry, but someone playing the child of someone who is YOUNGER than they are is a new one JFC.

[hellsbellschime]

Oh yeah that it totally sick. I mean as I said I can see why a fossil would have such attraction for younger women in cases of vampire characterization, but it is true that many writers write specifically older men with teen girls for really creepy reasons. I do not get that fascination at all. And it shows in the casting in different ages too. You get a 40 yo or 50 yo actor and you get an actress in her twenties otherwise she is too 'old' for the role even if she is younger than the actor. wtf!

I agree that you can make a good argument for vampires being interested in younger women, but you could make an equally valid argument for vampires being interested in senior citizens, so it’s interesting that you always see one and not the other. And it’s actually really weird to me that this is such a common theme in entertainment across the board, because when you see normal people out and about you almost never see a fifty year old man with a twenty year old girl, and if you do it looks very weird.