Sex and the Older Woman

In the first days of August, Scotland was agog over a sexual scandal involving a Socialist Member of the Scottish Assembly and a complex tale of alleged sexual frolics reported by a tabloid Sunday newspaper.

There was a libel case, which the Socialist, one Tommy Sheridan, won, assisted by the testament of his fragrant wife, and the display of his exceptionally hairy chest, a relevant point in the case. Much public fuss ensued.

But the funny thing about growing older is that you lose interest in the gossipy details of other people’s sex lives. That is not true for everyone, but it is so for me and most of my peers.

You lean towards the Mrs Patrick Campbell view of sexual shenanigans: the Edwardian actress famously said that she didn’t care what people did so long as they didn’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.

The singer George Michael, who has several times been apprehended for outdoor sexual activities - the custom is now called “dogging” – does contravene the Mrs Pat Campbell principle: it is in the category of frightening the horses. But, do we have to know all the squalid details?

The senior years are tolerant because they are mellow. They are also detached. Mr Sheridan’s private recreations, whatever they be, are of zilch interest to me. I thought it was Bill Clinton’s finest hour when he advised gays in the military: “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” Too right. All this making a song and dance about people’s sexuality only leads to prying, prurience, personal conflict and probably litigation.

Anyway, it is so narrow-minded to define a human being by their sexual orientation. It omits so many multifarious aspects of character. I can think of many instances where a person’s sexuality is the least fascinating thing about them.

The oldster’s loss of sexual edge can be a surprising form of liberation. Sex can be a barrier in the way people relate to one another. A simple example: it is difficult for a young woman to talk easily to anyone she meets on a bus or a train, and almost impossible to do so in those countries where young women are either seen as sexual prey or sources of temptation. A young woman who initiates conversations with strangers is regarded as “coming on”.

But an older woman can open up a conversation with anyone, anywhere without being suspected – for the most part – of trying to “pull”. This is why older women make great travellers: they can sleep among the Bedouin, or take the lone road to Samarkand without worrying whether strangers are in the market for a date. And because the red-alert areas of sexuality are removed, there is so much more freedom of association, of encounter, of conversation.

There are exceptions, but such exceptions often turn out to be poignantly sad. Jane Juska, an American academic, produced a best-seller by writing about her search for an active sex life at the age of 67. But if she was brave to advertise for virile lovers, her account of what followed revealed the vulnerability of sexual neediness. How pitiful a person seems in that situation. How easily they are hurt, rebuffed, rejected and even humiliated.

The same note was struck in Charlotte Rampling’s recent film Heading South, which was about a group of older women summering in Haiti, looking for encounters with young black men. It wasn’t liberated: it was pathetic. The neediness and loneliness of it all. And the exploitation. (One scene would have been regarded as alarmingly paedophile if it had involved an older man, rather than an older woman.)

An older woman must lose much of her dignity in such a frantic search for pleasure. Deep down, we know it is not the natural order: it is not what the grandmothers’ generation are for.

The mellowness more generally found in the senior years towards sexuality is not to be confused with an indifference to its implications. Older people see all too well the dangers that can proceed from desire. This strong drive, which runs hot in youth, is not a simple urge: it can be a rapturous thing, but it can also be destructive, pernicious, even murderous.

After a lifetime of reading problem letters, the agony aunt Irma Kurtz has concluded that anyone gripped by an intense sexual desire is clinically, if temporarily, insane.

We know there is no accounting for human tastes. But spare us the details. We’d rather raise our sights to something inspirational than lower our focus towards the basic instincts.

The Irish Independent Magazine 19 August 2006