Ageism has a woman's name

It's not that they don't address her formally; it's that they treat her like an idiot. Or worse, like a little girl. She, who has lost count of the decades she's spent working, striving, constantly adapting to a changing reality, has to put up with this pair of idiots who show her cowardly contempt. Yes, cowardly, because they certainly wouldn't confront someone with their same vitality, or even a man, no matter how big or tall. It's ageism, but also sexism, forming a repugnant mixture that falls like sticky tar on the women who suffer it. Imagine being sixty, seventy, eighty years old and having these young guys come along and lecture you. Or worse: telling you things as if you didn't understand, or as if you didn't touch, or as if you had no idea how the world works. Back then, you did enough educating the men around you, patiently and pedagogically showing them how they should treat you and other women. Putting them in their place, dodging them, and avoiding them when you sensed they were dangerous was something, but now, now that it's been so long since you took to the streets to protest the criminalization of adultery, now that you've stood up and, along with so many other women, entered offices, political parties, universities, government offices, and other institutions to win your own independence, now that it's been so long since you won the right to be a person, these pathetic fools come along and treat you with such contempt. Don't they have mothers? Don't they have grandmothers? Has no one ever taught them how to behave in society? It's not that you've become invisible, as they say happens when you get older. I wish they wouldn't even see you and would just leave you alone, but it's even worse. You bother them. You can tell by the way they look at you, the way they wrinkle their noses. It's not so different from what used to happen, when the burdensome nature of this non-reproductive stage turned you into a useless old thing worthy of being relegated to a corner. They laugh, like skunks, if you mispronounce a word when they serve you in any establishment; they speak to you slowly and shouting as if all old women were deaf and slow-witted, they tell you grandmother Without being able to answer "Grandma Auntie" because they'll still think you're crazy. If they have to come fix an appliance at your house, prepare yourself for a lot of explanations full of technical jargon, all to pave the way for the exorbitant price they're going to charge you. The last idiot who came addressed you in diminutives: "See that little snail, Grandma?" What should you do? Bite your lip and walk away, or you'll spend the whole day arguing and getting indignant. "What a disappointment," another one writes when you demand that he fulfill his obligations. Ageist and sexist emotional blackmail is what these kids often practice on you, because they think they have the right to take advantage of older women like you. Even more so if they find you alone.

Accustomed as you are to having to earn every scrap of independent freedom, you wouldn't mind continuing in the trenches, if it weren't for the fact that you wanted to enjoy a peaceful retirement where you no longer had to defend yourself. You're aware of your physical frailty—as you shouldn't be if it's unavoidable—but the fact that so many scoundrels try to take advantage of you, that's what truly outrages you and would drive you to take to the streets if your legs didn't fail you. Growing older isn't the problem; the problem is having to become dependent again, having to ask for help to defend yourself against the idiots who only understand the language of force when dealing with everyday crooks. Giving up the independence you've worked so hard to achieve is what makes you feel old, not in the years you've lived.