OLD PEOPLE’S TWO AGGRESSIVE SITUATIONS
Two situations need more aggressive action. The first is if you decide, for whatever reason, that you will live with your partner. Families tend to view this with contempt (although they accept that younger people do this quite often). Government authorities also tend to be censorious, even demanding access to your joint home to see if you share the same bed and, if you do, to reduce both your pensions. Older people should rebel against this invasion of their privacy. Neither your family, nor the state, nor the neighbours have any right to insist that you marry. It is your life, enjoy it – and ignore them!
The second problem is even more damaging. Many old people need to live in institutions because of increasing disability or because of poverty. Institutions and their managements are particularly censorious about sexuality. Not only are men and women segregated but, in some, husbands and wives are separated. This is inhumane. Any couple, whether married or not, who wish to share their lives and their bed should be encouraged to do so rather than being obstructed. By sharing their lives fully, they will enhance their sexuality, and increase the sense of their own value and their value to others. There is medical evidence that in institutions which allow their guests to live in this way, there is less depression, less need for drugs, less disability, and more happiness than in repressive, segregated homes. Although you may have to live in an institution, this does not make you less human, you have the same human rights as others outside. You have the same right to establish a relationship. You have the same right to privacy. You have the same right to dignity. You have the same right to be treated as a responsible adult.
*358/16/1*
