Our Silence. Our Indifference. Our Failure.

In Australia, elderly people in privately-run care homes account for three quarters of COVID-10 deaths (via), in Canada it is 80% (via). In Massachusetts, the death rate from the virus in nursing homes is 90 times that of the statewide one (via). Nursing homes in Walnut Creek and Concord (California) account for 70% of COVID-19 deaths. In Conta Costra, 71 of 102 COVID-19 deaths involve care facilities (via). New York's COVID-19 death toll in nursing homes is one of the highest in the U.S. although only those are counted who die on nursing home property statistically ignoring those who are transported to hospitals and die there (via). As of July 2020, 30.000 more care home residents died during the COVID-10 outbreak in England and Wales than during the same period in 2019 (via). In Sweden we talk about 70% (via), in Italy, France, Ireland, Spain, and Belgium 42% to 57% of deaths from the virus took place in nursing homes ... a "silent massacre" as they say in Italy (via).

... in memoriam Rudi.

"Belgian society has decided that the lives of these confined elderly counted much less than those of the so-called ‘actives’."
Geoffrey Players

It was an ominous warning on March 27 that the deadly virus may have the ability to spread rapidly and invisibly among the most vulnerable. But it was a warning not heeded here: That very day, Massachusetts leaders unveiled a hastily arranged plan to shuffle hundreds of symptom-free — and untested — residents from one nursing home to others to clear room for older COVID-19 patients discharged from hospitals.

There was still time to hit the pause button. No one did.

And so it began. Over the next three cold and gloomy days, medical workers moved 137 elderly women and men, many with dementia, out of their familiar rooms at Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center in Worcester, loaded them into ambulances, and scattered them among 18 facilities. They were people like 92-year-old Frannie Trotto, who never recovered from the sudden and disorienting uprooting. Neither she nor the others were tested for COVID-19 because state guidelines at the time called for swabbing only those with a fever or cough. And some may have brought the virus to their new homes. (via)

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photograph by Harold Feinstein via

Men and Women Feeling Discomfort During Flights

According to a study, significantly more women than men report flight anxiety, and significantly more women than men become "quite much" or "very much" more afraid of flying after having children. Situations that score highest are turbulence, terrorism, highjacking, collision, and foreign objects in the engine. Men feel more confident that airline companies do enough to ensure safety. There are, however, no gender differences when estimating the frequency of flight accidents and the mortality rate in airplane accidents.



- Ekeberg, O., Fauske, B. & Berg-Hansen, B. (2014). Norwegian airline passengers are not more afraid of flying after the terror act of September 11. The flight anxiety, however, is significantly attributed to acts of terrorism. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 55, 464-468. LINK

- photograph (Olympic Airlines, 1969, designed by Pierre Cardin) via

Presidential

"Let us not be blind to our differences-but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
John F. Kennedy



photograph by Joel Meyerowitz (New York City, 1963) via

Special Needs: From Euphemism to Dysphemism.

Generally speaking, euphemisms are believed to protect both speaker and hearer, allowing them to think about issues that are otherwise avoided, at the same time making sure that neither speaker nor hearer lose face. There is, however, also the notion that euphemisms mostly tend to save the producer's face rather than the recipient's face. Furthermore, they can avoid but also cause offence, can be effective or ineffective.



There are a great many euphemism for disability, such as "special needs". According to disability advocates, this euphemism is inappropriate, unacceptable, offensive, patronising, distancing. This and a range of campaigns to remove it have not yet managed to convince parents of children with disabilities and professionals working with people with disabilities not to use it since they feel it sounds more positive than disability.

In their study, Gernsbacher et al. (2016) constructed vignettes describing different envisioned situations (being a university freshman living in the dormitories who chooses a roommate, being a second-grade teacher teaching a full-to-capacity class who chooses a new student, being a middle-age employee completing an important project who has to choose a co-worker). The person to be chosen was described to "have a disablity", "have a certain disability", "have special needs" (and no label for the control group). The characters that were most frequently chosen last were the ones with "special needs". When asked about associations, participants reported more negative ones with "special needs". The authors come to the conclusion that "special needs" is an ineffective euphemism and that it connotes segregation.

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- Gernsbacher, M. A., Raimond, A. R., Ballinghasay, M. T. & Jaxon, J. (2016). "Special needs" is an ineffective euphemism. Cognitive Research Principles and Implications, 1(1), 1-13. LINK
- image (Ironside) via

Feminism, too, is ageist.

Very little attention is given to older and old women and ageing by society including feminist scholars. Increases in numbers of people aged over 65 do not change this very fact. Feminists continue focusing on girls, young adult and middle-aged women. Old people are absent in feminists‘ research questions and theoretical approaches. They are invisible.



There is, e.g., literature on bodies but hardly any discussion of old bodies. When discussing the "male gaze" in visual media, for instance, their critiques focus on "the male defined nature of both cosmetic surgery and the skin-care industry". There is absolutely no discussion of the "gaze of youth" which like any other gaze "freezes a person as an object defined by subordinate status", conveying messages that are internalised; there is no exploration of what women feel when they are cast aside rather than objectified. The ageing process makes women grow invisible as sexual beings … "not only in terms of the disappearance of the desirous male gaze, for instance, but also in terms of neglect by younger members of the women’s movement and lesbian communities".

An inadvertent but pernicious ageism burdens much of women’s studies scholarship and activism. It stems from failing to study old people on their own terms and from failing to theorize age relations—the system of inequality, based on age, which privileges the not-old at the expense of the old (Calasanti 2003). Some feminists mention age-based oppression but treat it as a given—an “et cetera” on a list of oppressions, as if to indicate that we already know what it is. As a result, feminist work suffers, and we engage in our own oppression. Using scholarship on the body and carework as illustrative, this article explores both the absence of attention to the old and age relations, and how feminist scholarship can be transformed by the presence of such attention.

Feminists have analyzed how terms related to girls and women, such as “sissy” and “girly,” are used to put men and boys down and reinforce women’s inferiority. Yet we have not considered the age relations that use these terms to keep old and young groups in their respective places. For instance, we have been mostly silent about the divisive effects of the so-called “age war” in which the media fuel animosity between generations (…).

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- Calasanti, T., Slevin, K. F. & King, N. (2006). Ageism and Feminism: From "Et Cetera" to Center. Feminist Formations, 18(1), 13-30; LINK
- photograph by Joel Meyerowitz

Female + Attractive? Attributions of Personal Characteristics and Prison Sentences

232 students (178 female, 54 male) were presented a set of crime accounts (theft, fraud, drug crime, child abuse, child molestation/sexual abuse, homicide) with either accompanying women's or men's faces (all of them of Nordic appearance aged 20 to 26). The photographs were computer manipulated resulting in four new pictures for women: short hair + no cosmetics, short hair + cosmetics, long hair + no cosmetics, long hair + cosmetics and four new ones for men: short hair + no beard, short hair + beard, long hair + no beard, long hair + beard.



Each participant read a case summary, looked at the photograph and was asked to answer a questionnaire as a lay assessor who decides the innocence or guilt of the defendant, and to sentence them to a specific number of years of imprisonment.
The main result was that male defendants are evaluated more harshly and given longer sentences than female ones. The authors come to the conclusion that they were "in fact punished for their gender". There was also a slight tendency "towards more lenient appraisal of the more attractive women".



- Ahola, A. S., Christianson, S. & Hellström, Å. (2009). Justice Needs a Blindfold: Effects of Gender and Attractiveness on Prison Sentences and Attributions of Personal Characteristics in a Judicial Process. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 16(1), 90-100.
- photographs of Patrick McGoohan as "The Prisoner" via

Quoting Helena Bonham Carter

"There is no normality in life."
Helena Bonham Carter



photograph (Benjamin McMahon series) via

Ageism among Nurses. Excerpts.

Compared with other healthcare providers, nurses have less accurate knowledge about the aging process. They have also expressed higher levels of anxiety about aging, and have shown a tendency to assign a lower status to geriatric nursing (Wells et al. 2004).



A study conducted in the Netherlands found a correlation between nurses’ attitudes toward older patients and the quality of communication and care provided to them (Caris-Verhallen et al. 1999). The more negative the nurses’ attitudes, the shorter, more superficial, and more task-oriented their conversations with older patients were. The nurses tended to speak to older patients in a patronizing tone, and did not involve them in consultations or decisions. McLafferty and Morrison (2004) reached similar conclusions in a study conducted in Scotland. The nurses’ negative attitudes towards older patients were reflected in their low expectations for rehabilitation as well as in their detached treatment of the patients. The nurses used shallow language and shouted, without any humor and without even addressing the patients by name. In an updated systematic review of research conducted since 2000 in various countries (Eastern and Western countries such as Singapore, the US, Canada, and Australia), a steady decline from positive to more neutral attitudes towards older people over time was found among student nurses (Liu et al. 2012).



Risk factors for ageist attitudes among nursing students and registered nurses in Sweden include young age (25) and male gender (Soderhamn et al. 2001). Similar results have been found in Greece, where young age and male gender were positively associated with ageism as reflected in narrow knowledge about aging and negative attitudes towards older adults (Lambrinou et al. 2009). However, a recent systematic review of 25 studies carried out in different countries (such as Australia, UK, the US, and Taiwan) suggests that age and gender are not consistent predictors of nurses’ attitudes toward older patients, whereas preference for work with older patients and knowledge about old age are more consistent predictors of positive attitudes (Liu et al. 2013).

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- Ben-Harush, A., Shiovitz-Ezra, S., Doron, I., Alon, S. Leibovitz, A., Golander, H., Haron, Y. & Ayalon, L. (2017). Ageism among physicians, nurses, and social workers: findings from a qualitative study. European Journal of Ageing, 14(1), 39-48. LINK
- photographs (nurses uniforms by Pierre Cardin) via and via

Unmelting Images: Loud Italians, Drunk Irish, Evil Asians

"By and large, both film and television programming content provides viewers with the familiar images and ideas. Aimed at attracting the largest possible audience, programs provide what Dwight MacDonald called "trivial and comfortable culture products." Using film and television to relax or escape, Americans discover widely-held attitudes and easy stereotypes, and while this is true for most programming, it is especially noticeable in depictions of ethnic-Americans.



For generations of American movie viewers, for example, Italian families were loud and large, Irish fathers drank, Orientals were either houseboys or evil villains plotting to take over the world, and Blacks sang or danced. While the real world was often confusing, on the screen everyone had, and knew, his or her place. Film and television have provided Americans with a variety of ethnic images, and while the pictures change, stereotyping has been a consistent feature of prime-time ethnic-American ones."
(Holte, 1984:101)

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- Holte, J. C. (1984). Unmelting Images: Film, Television, and Ethnic Stereotyping. MELUS, 11(3), 101-108
- photograph via

Stereotypes of Older Lesbians and Gay Men

Abstract: This study examined stereotypes of older lesbians and gay men. Key findings are that older lesbians and gay men were perceived as similar to older heterosexual women and men with regard to aging stereotypes, such as being judicious. At the same time, sexual minorities were targets of unique stereotypes. Consistent with the implicit inversion theory, lesbians were conceived as similar to heterosexual men, and gay men similar to heterosexual women with regard to gender-stereotypic traits, and regardless of age. These findings suggest the persistence into late adulthood of the belief that lesbians and gay men are inverted females and males.
(Wright & Canetto, 2009)



- Wright, S. L. & Canetto, S. S. (2009). Stereotypes of Older Lesbians and Gay Men. Educational Gerontology, 35(5), 424-452.
- photograph of Rock Hudson and George Nader via