Thanks so much for this! I am old enough now (early 60s) that I am perceived as an "old" person, or a "senior citizen" by people who don't know me. I've been called "young lady" a few times, and it's obvious that the speaker has good intentions and believes they are being kind, but it definitely carries that connotation that they are giving me permission to pretend I'm not old, because it's such a sad, horrible thing to be. What's interesting to me is that I never got called "young lady" when I was younger, even though I identified back then as a cis woman. My appearance was what was referred to back in those days as "androgynous," and I was once in a while called "sir" by people who, on closer look would suddenly get embarrassed and say something like "I mean ma'am. I'm so sorry." It's weird how people get those initial first cultural clues, because even when I wore the official "baby dyke" uniform, I had big breasts, which I neither flaunted nor hid. Now that I'm old (which to some extent, tends to erase gender in many people's impression), I get called "ma'am" (or "young lady") way more than when I was younger. I think maybe one reason the "young lady" thing is common is because the person saying it is not only trying to compliment you by pretending you don't look "old," they are also trying to reassure you that even though you're old, you are still a "lady." For people still subscribed to the myth of binary gender, this is, I believe, intended as a way of telling you that you are still recognizable as the gender you are assumed to be and value being. I feel like a living experiment about how cultural socialization leads people to perceive and interact with strangers.
Thanks for sharing, LC, and for your kind feedback. That's really interesting that getting older tends to erase gender in people's impression. Like people think gender is only relevant for people in their 20's and maybe 30's who are looking to date with a goal to marry someone of the "opposite gender" and start a family. Once you age out of the relationship escalator of binary gender, you're no longer seen as available in that system.
I've been surprised by the large number of people who think I'm not interested in dating or a relationship if I say I'm not a man or woman (nonbinary). As if my gender identity was only useful in context of dating.
The myth of binary gender (as you put it so well) just gets stranger the more closely I think about it. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Yeah, I think you're onto something with the dating idea. Old people are very often perceived as asexual unless they are overtly hypersexual. Our culture is so committed to the conflation of sexuality with gender that it makes sense that seeing a person primarily as "old" (and therefore not someone who exists in a sexual context) means much less attention on their gender. So it makes sense that the opposite would apply to non-binary (and agender) people since many cis people are likely to assume the absence of gender (as they understand it) to indicate the absence of sexual and/or romantic interest as well.
Yes, that resonates a lot with me. Thanks for this great straightforward explanation of something I've been pondering but didn't understand. I think this is really helpful.
I'd love to write a future post about the conflation of sexuality and gender. Would it be alright with you if I quoted from your comments here (with your name and a link to your newsletter)?
When I still identified as a cis woman, I felt it incredibly bizarre to be called “young lady” even though I was a young woman. It’s such a loaded phrase!
Thanks Rey for covering this topic so well. I've been called "young lady" since my 40s or 50s when wrinkles and white hair made their debut. It was only after reading your and your readers' comments that I was able to speak up without offending. It has taken me a few decades.
This month, when the hairdresser finished cutting my hair, he told me I looked younger. I told him I liked the cut, thanks, but I like being old. Then he gave me a hug.
By the way, we old folks are respected in Colombia, South America where I recently visited. Upon arriving at the airport, we are immediately escorted to the front of the customs line. Seniors have priority at the airport: the govt workers look for us, pull us out of line and get us through security as quickly as possible.
I suspect people in the US mean well when they call me young. But it's really an insult. Slowly I am learning not to insult them back, but to enlighten.
Thanks so much for sharing! I really appreciate your perspective and how you are able to enlighten people how to be respectful, not dismissive or insulting, towards old people. Thank you!
I've also thought about this a lot. I think a more scientific question we should ask is, if you remove the martial imperative--what makes someone doing something like aikido better or healthier than any other activity for a person over a given age? I'm no longer sure that's the case--I've met 60-70 year old runners and ultramarathoners etc. who put most aikido practitioners to shame when it comes to their vitality, endurance, and strength. I think to see someone who's 70+ and doing a martial art with this feeling is actually extremely rare. There are people practicing, but most of them feel quite creaky to me. To reach this unusual level, I now believe you need to do a lot of things to cultivate this power, vitality, or energy, or however you want to say, beyond showing up and following a practice, whether or not most teachers will ever tell you that, unfortunately..
As far as martial arts go, I personally now believe that some of the so called Chinese internal martial arts and related qi gong practices are much better at cultivating this in a deeper internal way, and have very thorough methods to develop them--also resulting in genuine internal power. For the most part, I now believe there isn't actually a lot of "ki" or "aiki" in most aikido, in any style; more just external body mechanics. For someone who is teaching these things in a more accessible way and building the bridge to develop them in a way I've never seen anyone do in the official aikido community, in any style, I highly recommend going to a Dan Harden seminar, it's fairly paradigm shifting. He's been recovering from chemotherapy lately unfortunately, but it seems he's doing pretty well and I've heard he'll give a seminar in Oakland sometime in the next few months. Remarkable individual that changed the way I think about practice in a well defined way:
I think how one practices is pretty important to doing a martial art with that particular feeling. It's interesting to hear of 70 year old runners doing well in endurance and strength. I, personally, am never going to be a runner. :) The last time I ran was only around a few blocks and I got dizzy and had to sit down haha.
Aikido certainly isn't for everyone, and I don't spend a lot of time intentionally cultivating internal power. It's more about the physical and social engagement with others for me. Having that goal of practicing well, not just practicing, and following the best examples you can find, feels important.
Thanks for recommending Dan Harden - I'll check him out. I'm not in Oakland anymore, btw - I'm on the east coast most of the time these days.
Agreed, I pay more attention to how a person does an activity vs the label of "I do X" and what that's supposed to mean nowadays..easy to forget or confuse in the modern world.
Yeah, I don't run much either--except trail running-that's more natural, concrete is pretty hard on your knees--but walking and hiking is as good or better I think--my point was more these are foundational human activities we've been doing for the past couple million years or so as humanoids--using our legs and carrying weights is something we're just evolved to do, and in natural settings..so I think that is tapping into something important. You got dizzy?! Maybe it was how you were breathing?
I agree physical and social engagement is the most important thing at the end of the day, everything else is kind of details and what interests or motivates us individually.
Ah, you're back East--he actually lives in Boston, so that should make it more easy theoretically. He's a bit of a character, but so are most people who reach a certain level or have that kind of ability and charisma, not that I need to tell you that...
I think if you went to one of the seminars you'd get a lot useful out of it--one of the most fascinating parts of his seminars is that it includes everyone from current and former aikido and budo people, to scary looking MMA people, to people who have never done a martial art (seriously!) When I did one of his seminars over a weekend, I never fell hard, never felt any harsh force enacted on my muscles by any person--and yet my entire body was tired by the end of it in a real whole body very satisfying way. Intelligent people will get a lot out of the ideas. Speaking of longevity of the body, I'm pretty sure by this point taking hard ukemi is not much better than running hard on concrete in many respects..after going this seminar and doing some different things in yoga and Chinese arts where the emphasis is on more slow detail and careful body mechanics, it kind of upsets me how little attention is paid to many of these things in aikido and the Japanese arts in general, I think a lot more unnecessary injuries could be prevented if that were the case--I actually feel much stronger and injure myself much less now that I'm almost 40 than when I was in my 20s or early 30s.
Thanks for sharing your experience learning more about body awareness. That's very interesting to hear about.
I enjoy walking and hiking in nature quite a lot and find it rejuvenating.
I find it interesting to consider how to bring in ideas about nuanced body mechanics from yoga and other disciplines to aikido. I've tried to encourage people to do ki exercises with their feet actually shoulder width apart (two fists between the feet, like in yoga). But the interesting thing is, maybe people tried it and maybe they didn't, but it didn't stick with anyone. Maybe in yoga since the focus stays on these improvements instead of switching to how to be effective in self defense people can concentrate on that more. But then, pretty much the whole point of aikido is to work with other people and modify what you're doing to work with their body too.
Yes, I think solo training, whether through yoga and/or other internal exercises from martial arts, is pretty much essential to get to a deeper result and feeling; basically all masters in every art report doing it extensively, whether or not it is part of official curriculum. It will help you do more with other people. Sort of like we need to mentally reflect and develop our conceptual powers as mental beings in addition to actually talking to people to test them out and reformulate, they inform one another in a feedback loop but are separate processes.
I also like this guy, by all accounts he’s amazing, and there are a lot of interesting and deep ideas just in this one video (turn on Eng captions):
I am turning 48 on NYE, and I do admit that I regularly say I am 47 years young or even with my dad, I say he is 82 years young. It is interesting to read the perspective on this in context with much rationale for ageing.
I feel I am perhaps conditioning myself by the phrase age is just a number when I say 'years young' instead of old, despite absolutely embracing age with grace and being grateful for my 47 years of age or old now, as when I was 'younger' I was so chronically burnt out. A thought-provoking read and a possible reframe to consider here: I shall have to look at myself more deeply regarding age. Maybe I will say I am 48 years old with grace on my next birthday.
I do become nauseous, too, when I am told, 'Sure, you are only a young 'un', which is a phrase used here in Ireland a lot. There is a skin-crawling effect within it, almost on par with 'good girl.'
Thanks for sharing, Pauline! I hope you are less chronically burnt out now.
"young 'un'" is a phrase I haven't heard in the US, but I wonder if it's similar to "young lady" or "good girl" because of the similar power dynamic. These are both things I associate with a parent or grandparent saying to a child, for example. So when it's used for an adult that's trying to enforce a power dynamic on a relationship where one doesn't exist.
Thanks so much for this! I am old enough now (early 60s) that I am perceived as an "old" person, or a "senior citizen" by people who don't know me. I've been called "young lady" a few times, and it's obvious that the speaker has good intentions and believes they are being kind, but it definitely carries that connotation that they are giving me permission to pretend I'm not old, because it's such a sad, horrible thing to be. What's interesting to me is that I never got called "young lady" when I was younger, even though I identified back then as a cis woman. My appearance was what was referred to back in those days as "androgynous," and I was once in a while called "sir" by people who, on closer look would suddenly get embarrassed and say something like "I mean ma'am. I'm so sorry." It's weird how people get those initial first cultural clues, because even when I wore the official "baby dyke" uniform, I had big breasts, which I neither flaunted nor hid. Now that I'm old (which to some extent, tends to erase gender in many people's impression), I get called "ma'am" (or "young lady") way more than when I was younger. I think maybe one reason the "young lady" thing is common is because the person saying it is not only trying to compliment you by pretending you don't look "old," they are also trying to reassure you that even though you're old, you are still a "lady." For people still subscribed to the myth of binary gender, this is, I believe, intended as a way of telling you that you are still recognizable as the gender you are assumed to be and value being. I feel like a living experiment about how cultural socialization leads people to perceive and interact with strangers.
Thanks for sharing, LC, and for your kind feedback. That's really interesting that getting older tends to erase gender in people's impression. Like people think gender is only relevant for people in their 20's and maybe 30's who are looking to date with a goal to marry someone of the "opposite gender" and start a family. Once you age out of the relationship escalator of binary gender, you're no longer seen as available in that system.
I've been surprised by the large number of people who think I'm not interested in dating or a relationship if I say I'm not a man or woman (nonbinary). As if my gender identity was only useful in context of dating.
The myth of binary gender (as you put it so well) just gets stranger the more closely I think about it. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Yeah, I think you're onto something with the dating idea. Old people are very often perceived as asexual unless they are overtly hypersexual. Our culture is so committed to the conflation of sexuality with gender that it makes sense that seeing a person primarily as "old" (and therefore not someone who exists in a sexual context) means much less attention on their gender. So it makes sense that the opposite would apply to non-binary (and agender) people since many cis people are likely to assume the absence of gender (as they understand it) to indicate the absence of sexual and/or romantic interest as well.
Yes, that resonates a lot with me. Thanks for this great straightforward explanation of something I've been pondering but didn't understand. I think this is really helpful.
I'd love to write a future post about the conflation of sexuality and gender. Would it be alright with you if I quoted from your comments here (with your name and a link to your newsletter)?
I would be honored! Thank you!
I definitely see your point about age. I feel a similar way when someone calls me big guy. I'm thinking....but I'm not big.
Ah, that's another interesting example of a person calling you something that isn't right. Thanks for sharing that, Troy!
When I still identified as a cis woman, I felt it incredibly bizarre to be called “young lady” even though I was a young woman. It’s such a loaded phrase!
Yes, "young lady" feels somehow worse to me than just simply gender. Loaded is a great way to describe it! Thanks for reading!
Thanks Rey for covering this topic so well. I've been called "young lady" since my 40s or 50s when wrinkles and white hair made their debut. It was only after reading your and your readers' comments that I was able to speak up without offending. It has taken me a few decades.
This month, when the hairdresser finished cutting my hair, he told me I looked younger. I told him I liked the cut, thanks, but I like being old. Then he gave me a hug.
By the way, we old folks are respected in Colombia, South America where I recently visited. Upon arriving at the airport, we are immediately escorted to the front of the customs line. Seniors have priority at the airport: the govt workers look for us, pull us out of line and get us through security as quickly as possible.
I suspect people in the US mean well when they call me young. But it's really an insult. Slowly I am learning not to insult them back, but to enlighten.
Thanks so much for sharing! I really appreciate your perspective and how you are able to enlighten people how to be respectful, not dismissive or insulting, towards old people. Thank you!
I've also thought about this a lot. I think a more scientific question we should ask is, if you remove the martial imperative--what makes someone doing something like aikido better or healthier than any other activity for a person over a given age? I'm no longer sure that's the case--I've met 60-70 year old runners and ultramarathoners etc. who put most aikido practitioners to shame when it comes to their vitality, endurance, and strength. I think to see someone who's 70+ and doing a martial art with this feeling is actually extremely rare. There are people practicing, but most of them feel quite creaky to me. To reach this unusual level, I now believe you need to do a lot of things to cultivate this power, vitality, or energy, or however you want to say, beyond showing up and following a practice, whether or not most teachers will ever tell you that, unfortunately..
As far as martial arts go, I personally now believe that some of the so called Chinese internal martial arts and related qi gong practices are much better at cultivating this in a deeper internal way, and have very thorough methods to develop them--also resulting in genuine internal power. For the most part, I now believe there isn't actually a lot of "ki" or "aiki" in most aikido, in any style; more just external body mechanics. For someone who is teaching these things in a more accessible way and building the bridge to develop them in a way I've never seen anyone do in the official aikido community, in any style, I highly recommend going to a Dan Harden seminar, it's fairly paradigm shifting. He's been recovering from chemotherapy lately unfortunately, but it seems he's doing pretty well and I've heard he'll give a seminar in Oakland sometime in the next few months. Remarkable individual that changed the way I think about practice in a well defined way:
http://www.bodyworkseminars.org/the-method.html
I think how one practices is pretty important to doing a martial art with that particular feeling. It's interesting to hear of 70 year old runners doing well in endurance and strength. I, personally, am never going to be a runner. :) The last time I ran was only around a few blocks and I got dizzy and had to sit down haha.
Aikido certainly isn't for everyone, and I don't spend a lot of time intentionally cultivating internal power. It's more about the physical and social engagement with others for me. Having that goal of practicing well, not just practicing, and following the best examples you can find, feels important.
Thanks for recommending Dan Harden - I'll check him out. I'm not in Oakland anymore, btw - I'm on the east coast most of the time these days.
Agreed, I pay more attention to how a person does an activity vs the label of "I do X" and what that's supposed to mean nowadays..easy to forget or confuse in the modern world.
Yeah, I don't run much either--except trail running-that's more natural, concrete is pretty hard on your knees--but walking and hiking is as good or better I think--my point was more these are foundational human activities we've been doing for the past couple million years or so as humanoids--using our legs and carrying weights is something we're just evolved to do, and in natural settings..so I think that is tapping into something important. You got dizzy?! Maybe it was how you were breathing?
I agree physical and social engagement is the most important thing at the end of the day, everything else is kind of details and what interests or motivates us individually.
Ah, you're back East--he actually lives in Boston, so that should make it more easy theoretically. He's a bit of a character, but so are most people who reach a certain level or have that kind of ability and charisma, not that I need to tell you that...
I think if you went to one of the seminars you'd get a lot useful out of it--one of the most fascinating parts of his seminars is that it includes everyone from current and former aikido and budo people, to scary looking MMA people, to people who have never done a martial art (seriously!) When I did one of his seminars over a weekend, I never fell hard, never felt any harsh force enacted on my muscles by any person--and yet my entire body was tired by the end of it in a real whole body very satisfying way. Intelligent people will get a lot out of the ideas. Speaking of longevity of the body, I'm pretty sure by this point taking hard ukemi is not much better than running hard on concrete in many respects..after going this seminar and doing some different things in yoga and Chinese arts where the emphasis is on more slow detail and careful body mechanics, it kind of upsets me how little attention is paid to many of these things in aikido and the Japanese arts in general, I think a lot more unnecessary injuries could be prevented if that were the case--I actually feel much stronger and injure myself much less now that I'm almost 40 than when I was in my 20s or early 30s.
Thanks for sharing your experience learning more about body awareness. That's very interesting to hear about.
I enjoy walking and hiking in nature quite a lot and find it rejuvenating.
I find it interesting to consider how to bring in ideas about nuanced body mechanics from yoga and other disciplines to aikido. I've tried to encourage people to do ki exercises with their feet actually shoulder width apart (two fists between the feet, like in yoga). But the interesting thing is, maybe people tried it and maybe they didn't, but it didn't stick with anyone. Maybe in yoga since the focus stays on these improvements instead of switching to how to be effective in self defense people can concentrate on that more. But then, pretty much the whole point of aikido is to work with other people and modify what you're doing to work with their body too.
Yes, I think solo training, whether through yoga and/or other internal exercises from martial arts, is pretty much essential to get to a deeper result and feeling; basically all masters in every art report doing it extensively, whether or not it is part of official curriculum. It will help you do more with other people. Sort of like we need to mentally reflect and develop our conceptual powers as mental beings in addition to actually talking to people to test them out and reformulate, they inform one another in a feedback loop but are separate processes.
I also like this guy, by all accounts he’s amazing, and there are a lot of interesting and deep ideas just in this one video (turn on Eng captions):
https://youtu.be/EYqVgU3PY44?si=ZbF4UVvnoaNDNOBH
I am turning 48 on NYE, and I do admit that I regularly say I am 47 years young or even with my dad, I say he is 82 years young. It is interesting to read the perspective on this in context with much rationale for ageing.
I feel I am perhaps conditioning myself by the phrase age is just a number when I say 'years young' instead of old, despite absolutely embracing age with grace and being grateful for my 47 years of age or old now, as when I was 'younger' I was so chronically burnt out. A thought-provoking read and a possible reframe to consider here: I shall have to look at myself more deeply regarding age. Maybe I will say I am 48 years old with grace on my next birthday.
I do become nauseous, too, when I am told, 'Sure, you are only a young 'un', which is a phrase used here in Ireland a lot. There is a skin-crawling effect within it, almost on par with 'good girl.'
Thanks for sharing, Pauline! I hope you are less chronically burnt out now.
"young 'un'" is a phrase I haven't heard in the US, but I wonder if it's similar to "young lady" or "good girl" because of the similar power dynamic. These are both things I associate with a parent or grandparent saying to a child, for example. So when it's used for an adult that's trying to enforce a power dynamic on a relationship where one doesn't exist.