if you refer to me as senior, I get cranky. The other night, driving a friend to work, I was kept busy with lights reflecting in the rain. Trying to see the left-term lane, watching for traffic lights, cars passing on the right, and darkly-clad pedestrian scurrying across the intersection, my passengers remarked that I needed glasses. “It comes with aging,” she added and I didn’t like the inference. Could that be gerascophobia: a fear of, and aversion to, growing old?
There’s more to it, I think. It’s about how easily we categorize others while resenting being labelled ourselves. Each way, however practical and subconscious, creates barriers between the observer and the observed. Moving apart, our heart-minds go rigid and compassion shrinks.
Philosophers and feminists speak of othering when one group is seen as us/we and another as them, “a process that identifies those that are thought to be different from oneself or the mainstream, and it can reinforce and reproduce positions of domination and subordination” (source).
How many times in the course of a day do I slot someone as homeless, disabled, punk, sick, weird, ugly, sexy, foreign, or … dying for that matter? It’s so easy and happens automatically — until I pay attention.
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