Opinion | Sean Penn's masculinity comment reminds me that many struggle with the changing culture — including myself - The Washington Post

It’s disheartening to watch the idols from my youth turn into old grumps. Reading Sean Penn’s recent comment that too many men have become “feminized” reminded me that some people struggle with change. But I know that, at 51, I am also out of step, and that many of my ideas are old-fashioned. And I rediscover this on an almost daily basis. How could it be otherwise? I work with predominantly younger people who are more than happy to remind me.

Not long ago, Betty White came up in conversation with a 22-year-old colleague. I was speaking reverently about White when I noticed the blank look on my colleague’s face. It was instantly clear to me that she had no idea who White was apart from an elderly actor who recently died. So, I told her about “The Golden Girls,” insisted that she watch it, told her where to find it and then assured her she would find it hilarious.

When I asked her about it a few days later, her face maintained the same blank expression it had before. She said she’d watched a few episodes and was “turned off” by the “slut shaming” and the “fat jokes.” She found them cruel. She didn’t understand how women could claim to be friends with one another and yet criticize each other’s physical appearances repeatedly.

I wanted to argue with her but stopped short because of one unbending reality: The culture changes. As it does, the roles of women and men change. Attitudes about what is funny and what is not also change.

Inspired by my colleague, I took the opportunity to review some of my favorite shows from the ’90s and saw it instantly: Much of the comedy, for lack of a better word, was mean-spirited. What was often considered funny a decade or two ago seems callous today.

I was reminded, too, of those sketches on “Saturday Night Live,” played by the actor Julia Sweeney in the early 1990s, about a person named Pat. The premise of the sketches was that no one could tell whether Pat was male or female; in every “Pat” skit, some outsider would go to great lengths trying to discern Pat’s sex. I didn’t think the gag was particularly funny. But I wasn’t offended by it, either. I just never thought about it.

I know now that there are human beings who endure this sort of mockery every day. It’s not at all comical to them. It can, in fact, be life-threatening.

These changes in our culture can be a test for people like me. Many older Americans can be quick to say how soft and sensitive younger Americans are. How they can’t take a joke and how we fear for the future in their delicate hands. But there is another way to think about this. Perhaps we older folks are mistaking the younger generation’s kindness for weakness. Being inclusive isn’t the same as being gullible. And there are plenty of ways to be funny without being mean.

You can dismiss young people as “too woke” if you want. But culture changes, and you can’t stop it.

Turning this around, it is often hard for younger people to understand how getting older is at times deeply disorienting. It often feels as though the earth is shifting constantly under your feet; things that were once perfectly acceptable can turn harmful. Getting older, I’m learning, can often seem as though much of the world is trying to push you out. You can feel the ground you once knew slipping away.

And, just like that, you find yourself out of step: In the past few years, I have been accused of sizeism, ableism and sexism for things that I’ve said and written that were once part of my daily vocabulary. The criticism angered me. If felt as though I was being called a bad person.

Many of us are experiencing some version of this as we age. We’re finding out that the old standards that we used to go by don’t apply anymore. And that the groups of people we used to make sport of want their full humanity to be respected.

Attitudes change. Language changes. At times, it can be a lot to understand. And it leaves me with two choices. I can try to learn the ways that our culture and our country are changing. And work to accept them with grace. Or I could rail against the sunrise every morning — and turn into an old grump myself.

The latter approach doesn’t sound productive to me.

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"Opinion" - Google News
February 13, 2022 at 08:02PM
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Opinion | Sean Penn's masculinity comment reminds me that many struggle with the changing culture — including myself - The Washington Post
"Opinion" - Google News
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