We're Doomed

submitted by Finnegan7921 from self.GenderCritical

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[–]MarkTwainiac 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I wasn't defending what Levine did with his mother. Nor did I touch on hospital closures, overcrowding, hospital-acquired infections, hospital errors, overworked hospital staff, and all the other stuff you go into in your second paragraph.

I also did not bring up the cultural role of the elderly in our species. Nor, again, did I make any comments on the changing modes of living that have resulted in many today getting care in nursing homes or from paid carers such as HHAs at home, when - according to you - the "manner of living our species used right up till the mid 20th century" was for care to be customarily provided by relatives at home occupied by multigenerational families. Nor, finally, did I say that nursing homes are either a or the answer/solution to the question of where and how to best house and care for elderly persons who do not want to live with their own adult children and be reliant on them for their care and needs.

I was simply responding to this one point you made in your earlier post:

First off, I sort of think there's something immoral about sticking your parents into nursing homes, especially if one is a doctor and can afford help and knows enough to help with their care.

Coz I thought - and still think - you were using what Levine did vis-à-vis his mum as an excuse to take a cheap shot at people who have "stuck" their parents in nursing homes - you called them "immoral," in fact. And coz I thought you were being ageist and condescending towards the parents themselves, suggesting that because they're now old and have health problems that make them dependent on others for care and assistance, they no longer have any say and no agency - they're simply pawns controlled by their children.

Your point at the end about how some elderly women would rather be caught dead that have to live with their adult children leave so much out of the context for that feeling that it is irrelevant. If they were fully independent the would not be in nursing homes. If they hate their kids or vice versa then nursing homes might be an answer but it's not a solution to a problem that might not have a solution. If they are just "too good" for a manner of living our species used right up till the mid 20th century, then that's perhaps more a reflection of capitalism control over our culture and our minds than any individual choice.

I never said that women who feel this way hate our children. You're the one who came up with that, and it's pure projection! And balderdash.

Actually, one of the reasons many of us don't want to live with our adult children is coz we don't want to burden them and interfere with their own families and personal lives. Coz we love them. A lot.

I was gonna go into reasons why elderly and infirm women would not want to live with our adult children out of love, amongst other reasons, but it got too long. So instead I'm going to start a separate thread.

I also never said that women who'd rather be caught dead than to have to live with their adult children are all choosing to live in nursing homes. You're the one who set up that either-or scenario. There are lots of other options for older and elderly women who require various kinds of care and assistance. I will set them out in the separate thread.

As for your claim that elderly women who don't want to live with our adult kids feel this way also coz we think we

are just "too good" for a manner of living our species used right up till the mid 20th century, then that's perhaps more a reflection of capitalism control over our culture and our minds than any individual choice.

I really am floored that anyone would not only think this, but that you'd write it out and post it publicly on a forum for feminists. Yikes. So elderly women aren't just hateful for not wanting live with and burden our adult children, but we're also mighty uppity too. Sounds like you've taken the sexist adage "a woman's place is in the home" and given it a new spin by adding an extra large helping of ageism: "an elderly woman's place is at home with her adult children." Double yikes.

As to your broader [sic,LOL] claim: if you really think that "right up till the mid 20th century" all elderly, infirm people everywhere else on earth, including in Western countries like the US and UK, lived at home with their adult children in happy extended families where everything was hunky dory for all, then you really have not looked into the history of what was actually the case.

I will post more about the history on the separate thread and include plenty of links. For now:

By the early 20th century care of an aged relative was regarded as the concern of the State. Relatives came to view admission of an older relation to a chronic sick bed as ‘a bed for life’, and the patient’s home was given up. Consequently, if they become well enough to be discharged they had no accommodation to return to. Relatives made every excuse for keeping their old folk in hospital. All too often patients became institutionalised and did not wish to be discharged.

https://www.bgs.org.uk/resources/a-brief-history-of-the-care-of-the-elderly

A great deal of information about the history of elder care and living arrangements in the US, and the true story of how today's "nursing home industrial complex" actually came to be, has been compiled by Karen Stevenson Brown for a website originally called elderweb.com that now has been incorporated into a special history section at seniorliving.org. There are separate sections for specific time periods, such as 1776-1799; 1800-1899; 1900-1929 and so on:

https://www.seniorliving.org/history/

Of course, you are free to continue believing and claiming that since the dawn of our species, elderly infirm people in all cultures around the world were treated with loving care until American-style capitalism in the mid-20th century swooped in and told paradise to get lost. Yeah, mid-20th century capitalism sure put the kibosh on the custom that was widely practiced until then - a custom in which kith and kin with only kindness in their hearts spent their time gathered 'round the family hearth singing Kumbaya in harmony whilst holding hands, exchanging hugs, thinking nothing but good thoughts about each other, and compassionately caring for their elderly and infirm relatives.

But if that was the case, how come senicide?

Also, please look into a form of male violence that has been on the rise in recent years: adult sons killing their retirement-age and elderly mothers.

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I love that you feel the need to put words in my mouth, such as the "loving care until American-style capitalism" and how you have to spin my words, which are already critical enough of nursing homes without the spin. Comments like yours are why i take good breaks from social media, to avoid reading them and to avoid making them. I think you lose the thread, or something, maybe credibility, when you try to make nursing homes into some kind of win for feminism. I think you are projecting a lot, like you are taking my comment personally when I can not know what your reasons are for anything you do.

If you think nursing homes are an improvement in our ability to deal with the elderly compassionately, and assuming you are not taking societies where the elderly walk off into the wilderness to die as the norm, then I simply think you are lying to yourself and no amount of rationalizing on your part will change my mind about it.

Quite simply, Cuomo's and PA governor's decision shows how disposable those in nursing homes are treated-- not by me, but by those who run our society. Even in Italy, which was hit by COVID very early due to the massive amount of tourism from China to Italy before the virus was common knowledge, the elderly were sacrificed. If there is anything that can be said about that choice they made, they at least feel shame guilt and remorse over it where in the US it is spun as heroic and wise without ever considering out that inflated the death toll used to justify more draconian measures.

[–]MarkTwainiac 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oh, come on. I wasn't standing up for US nursing homes. I was standing up for elderly, infirm and disabled women to have a measure of agency and autonomy, and for the right of older women with grown children such as myself and Dr Levine's mother not to want to or have to live the last years/period of our lives with our grown children and be under their eye and control - and for our grown children and their families to have a right to have their own private lives which are not under the eye and control of their parents, either.

I was also standing up for the right of Levine's mother to choose to live apart from her AGP TIM son both on a long-term and short-term basis. You strongly disapproved of this, coz you assumed that the only reason son and mother could be living apart was coz he'd made the "immoral" choice to "stick" her in a nursing home.

My view is decidedly in contrast to your view, which seems to be that the only persons in a family who should be considered to have moral agency and deserve decision-making powers are the children or relatives of elderly, infirm and dependent people - never ever the elderly, infirm and dependent persons themselves.

In the viewpoint you've put forward so far, older women should be treated as if we are either dementia patients or have always been total dummies from birth. Our fate should be left up to our adult children whose right it is to decide, or not to decide, to "stick" us into nursing homes.

The view you've put forward is that when it comes to those of us who have health conditions that make us dependent on care provided by others and are of "a certain age," it's always best that we live with our adult children and get our care only from them or carers whom they choose and control. Any other arrangement is "immoral."

If you think nursing homes are an improvement in our ability to deal with the elderly compassionately, and assuming you are not taking societies where the elderly walk off into the wilderness to die as the norm, then I simply think you are lying to yourself and no amount of rationalizing on your part will change my mind about it.

Now you're the one putting words into my mouth. But no worries. I am not trying to change your mind. I don't believe anyone can change another person's mind. We can only change our own minds - and in order for that to happen, we have to be open to hearing other views. My impression of your mind is that it's firmly shut, it's informed by very limited life experience and little knowledge of history, and it's quite small to boot.