The Workshop:
The 4 participants will present an interactive workshop to raise awareness of age ideologies and of how age intersects with gender, race, class, and ablebodiedness to create an age-obsessed, age-phobic culture. In round table format, we will present our main points: 1) that age is a social construct, 2) that people younger and younger are taught to fear aging (as exemplified by girls and women of all ages, even pre-adolescents, being obsessed with having the “perfect” body); 3) that “generations” are in competition with each other (for example, “Gen-Xers” vs. “Boomers”); and 4) that aging means decline. Some myths of age are positive (for example, the old are “wise”) but they erase the lived experiences of human beings.

We will ask workshop participants to explore questions about age and ask for creative responses. We want participants to take away awareness of age oppression and strategies for opposing it.

This event connects to the USSF Crosscutting Themes of oppression and social justice.

Participants will be engaged by being asked to give examples of how this society is age-obsessed and age-phobic, and to suggest strategies of how to interrupt age stereotyping when they encounter it.

They will be engaged through open discussion and a question-and-answer session. They will also be asked to suggest strategies that participants will write on a board.

The language will be English. We have no equipment for simultaneous translation.

We will provide handouts in English, and we will provide our own copies.

The biggest challenge/ adversary our movement faces is the culture's unwillingness to take age oppression seriously. It is not discussed or studied as other forms of oppression.

Our concrete alternatives at present are to challenge age oppression, discrimination, and stereotyping wherever and whenever we encounter them, even/ especially among the liberal and radical. We intend to create wider awareness of age as an issue that needs to be addressed by all social justice organizations.

We need to be in an accessible space, as one of our group uses a wheelchair.