pearwaldorf:

thievinghippo:

(First, I’m sorry this took so long to answer, anon! Life has been a bit overwhelming the last couple of months.)

I’m happy to delve into this a bit. Aging and such is something I think people need to talk about. Otherwise it can be scary sometimes. So for anyone curious, I will be turning 40 on my next birthday. 

A little background. I’ve been part of fandom since I was 24 years old. Back then, fandom was a little different and instead of tolerating older fans, we embraced them. I remember going to a Harry Potter conference in 2007. I went to a fanfiction panel that had five women on it, all in their 40s and 50s. They were so happy and confident in their place in fandom and their friendships. It was absolutely beautiful to see.

I remember thinking I hope that’s me some day. Now, of course, things are different. I regularly see posts making fun of people over a certain age for still being in fandom. 

We’re all going to get old some day. There’s no stopping that. But getting older doesn’t mean you suddenly lose interest in the things you love. You might have less time to geek out about them, but you’re not gonna lose interest. 

I think the key is finding yourself little corner of fandom. Find some people around the same age as you. (For me, I consider ‘same age’ anyone over thirty. There is no upper limit.)

Then basically, once you have this corner, it’s time to say ‘fuck it.’ That might sound harsh, but I refuse to let anyone take away something that makes me happy. Gaming and reading and writing fanfic brings me a ridiculous amount of joy. It’s helped me make friends from all over the world. 

Do not let anyone take away your joy. You have just as much of a right to be in fandom as anyone else. And anon, you’re always welcome in my little corner of fandom!

Listen, nonnie. I have been in fandom since I was 14? 15? and I turn 36 tomorrow. This is a thing that has been part of me for more than half my life. 

I don’t know how old you are, but when I was first starting out in fandom, it was considered a grown-up pursuit. Sure there were places for under 18s, but the people who ran the mailing lists, wrote the newsgroup FAQs, and paid for archive hosting fees? All adults. It was… I don’t want to say unusual for younger people to be in fandom, but it was made clear that you behaved respectfully in community/adult spaces. Or you pretended (very badly) to be an adult and the actual adults overlooked it.

It was super helpful to me as a young-un to have older female fans to look up to, and know that I could be an adult (whatever the fuck that means) and still have room for hobbies and interests I loved. It was also helpful, just as a person, to have a network of older women who were invested in my well-being but not necessarily involved in my day to day life to turn to. I am grateful for my fandom aunties, and I hope I can be there for younger fans the same way.

I feel like a lot of the “Ew adults in fandom” bullshit comes from younger fans who can barely conceive of reaching 30 as a non-abstract thing, and suffer from deep misapprehensions of what adult life is like. Yes you have to deal with stupid things like insurance and taxes, but you also have so much more freedom to enjoy the things you love. I am also irritated by so many heteronormative presumptions these people seem to have: you get married, have kids, and become so incredibly boring nobody wants you in fandom anyways. Not everybody gets married or has kids, and neither of those things makes you boring, you make yourself boring. 

So find yourself some friends to grow old with, and stick to them like limpets. If you can’t, find new friends. I have found that in new fandoms, I tend to gravitate towards people my age and older, even if I don’t know it at the time. If you’re enthusiastic and kind, that’s honestly all most people require to start talking. There is room for you in fandom always, no matter what age you are.

silks-stuff:

sniperct:

lierdumoa:

spiderine:

tzikeh:

cricketcat9:

People over 50, demonstrating endless patience explaining things to young people who never ever in their entire life knew or spoke to these definitely non human aliens, people over 50. 

BTW, in a few weeks I’ll be 69. Is it the time yet to weave a cocoon, shrivel up and die? I decided not to, since there’s still much smut on AO3 to enjoy, and the YOI movie did not come out yet, and then there’s that, you know, other thing… that three letter word starting with s…  

I get that the asker may honestly have no idea about… let’s call it “middle-life sexuality.” I mean, the asker is statistically most likely to be an American teenager, and fuck knows (ha) that our country is TERRIBLE at sex education. So them not knowing anything about it doesn’t surprise me; they likely don’t even know much about how their own body works.

But this isn’t a question about people over 50 feeling sexual attraction or wanting to read/write porn; it’s a question about whether women are recognizably human once they’re no longer youthful. It’s misogyny right down to its core.

I don’t blame the asker. They’ve been soaking in it their whole life.

I wonder what they think they’ll do when they get older, regarding both sex and fandom. Like the people who say “you’re too old for fandom” – do they think they’ll ever be too old for fandom, or sex? Do they truly believe that at a certain age they themselves will flip a switch and never want sex again, never write fanfic, and only be interested in work and children and shit? Is it that they don’t think they’ll ever age, or are they simply afraid that this is what will happen to them?

Did people forget about all the STD outbreaks happening in Florida retirement communities?

telesilla:

No and no. The only feeling you have after you hit 50 is a deep feeling of utter contempt for the young.

Okay, maybe I should tone down the salt, because it’s just possible you don’t really know how ageist and rude this is.

First, I’m going to answer this like it wasn’t rude. People over 50 are…people. They fall on the same sexual spectrums (gender and orientation and all that good stuff) that people under 50 do. Obviously people change as they age—emotionally, mentally and physically,—but trust someone who’s been in fandom since 1995 and has been sexually active (in one way or another) since 1976, plenty of older people read and write porn, and plenty of them look at attractive people and think “yeah she could get it.” If that is, indeed, the correct phrase. Sure there are people over 50 who aren’t sexual, just like there are people under 50 who aren’t sexual, but plenty of us are still interested in reading, writing and doing the sex.

Now…I’m going to go a little deeper, because this is just a fucking weird question. It is all but impossible, if you engage with pop culture at all, to be unaware that men over 50 like to consume and create porn. Jesus fucking Christ, if you watch TV at all, you know men over 50 feel sexual attraction in real life. There’s a whole branch of pharmacology dedicated to making sure they can act in that attraction. On this very hellsite, I’ve seen a lot of posts complaining about the age of actors compared to the age of the actresses playing their love interests. I can’t check my newsfeed without seeing a woman who is literally in the news because a man over 50 had sex with her and then paid her to not tell anyone about it.

Harvey Weinstein is 66, for fuck’s sake.

So I suspect the “people” you’re asking about are women, specifically women in fandom. I don’t know if I’m being asked to furnish proof that women over 50 aren’t really active in fan fiction and therefore what we say about fandom can be disregarded or if I’m being asked to furnish proof that women over 50 in fandom are actively sexual and therefore can be thought of as predatory, but either way, this is weird.

I’ve said this before, I know that having old people around when you are a young person can be weird and annoying. We can come off as judgmental, condescending and dismissive. Our weary cynicism can really harsh the buzz of youthful enthusiasm and that’s a drag sometimes. We post selfies and we have saggy boobs and grooves around our mouths and young women don’t always like seeing the future like that, especially when we also bitch about our health or our kids or jobs or the dreams we had to leave behind. Politically, especially if we’re white, we make you wonder who we voted for and if we really have your backs when it comes to social justice issues.

I get all that. And I could go on a rant about how important older women have been to fandom and how you literally would not have it if not for women who were in their fifties in 1975, but those rants are a dime a dozen on tumblr and while I do understand being uncomfortable around older women, I refuse to apologize for my presence in a space I have helped create over the years. I refuse to justify myself when I shouldn’t have to.

If this is a genuine question and you’re upset by my ranting, I do apologize. However, while it isn’t talked about much in Tumblr SJW circles, ageism is real and I see it all the time on this site. Think about all the misconceptions about your own generation and how annoying it is when some stupid article acts like you’re part of an Other monolith.

tl;dr: Many people over 50 enjoy reading and writing smut and many of them still feel sexual attraction. Thank you for asking this question, although since I a) list my age as 55 on my bio, b) link to my almost 3 millions words of smut on AO3, you had the answer to the first part, like, literally in front of you.

Though The Villages – which spans three counties with 40,000 homes and more than 70,000 residents – boasts 34 golf courses, nine country clubs, two downtown squares and a slew of restaurants and bars, getting lucky is one of the residents’ primary pastimes.

The huge complex began growing rapidly in the mid-1990s, and reported cases of gonorrhea rocketed from 152 to 245, of syphilis rose from 17 to 33, and of chlamydia from 52 to 115 among those 55 and older in Florida from 1995 to 2005.

We had an entire show in the 80s about this.

Tumblr is atrociously agesist and it’s the one phobia that’s never called out or rallied against. Instead it’s the opposite; 20-somethings try to make older people feel uncomfortable for living in a space they literally created. They accuse us of being predatory, or gross, for enjoying LGBT content as much as anyone else, because that LGBT content usually stars 20-somethings. Yet they refuse to acknowledge that older LGBT people are never portrayed in media and never represented – once again due to ageism, especially in women. So basically the voice of 20-somethings on tumblr says : “this stuff is too young for you old gross people, we don’t care that you made this space safe enough for this content to exist, we don’t care that you have no alternatives in your own age bracket – please just die”