I am hearing increasing talk about “our elderly” in the current crisis.
As ever, language and clarity of expression are amongst the first victims of emergency.
I want to say a word or three about the indiscriminate use of “elderly” and particularly its emergence as a noun – as in “the elderly” or, even worse, Boris’s description of “our elderly” – poor, incompetents that we are, ready to be patronised by any passing do-gooder. Bah!
There are several different definitions of “elderly” underlying the current widespread use of the word. Regrettably, I fall into most of them. In the current, coronavirus, case, I’m also to some extent in the category of “vulnerable”. These words do not define who or what I am to a greater extent than any other characteristic – indeed, they say a lot less about me than some.
Nor am I owned by Boris Johnson, or the community in general or, indeed, by my “loved ones”. I am, unequivocally, only owned by me.
I have campaigned against the use of “the elderly” for at least 45 years. As with “the disabled” or “the mentally ill”, it reduces a person to one simple fact about them. And, of course, that fact isn’t usually very simple anyway. There are lots of types of disability or mental illness or, indeed, politics. That’s why organisations concerned with disability or ageing and older people have insisted that we always talk about older people, disabled people and so on. We are all people first; each an individual person. Shared facets of personality or experience come a long way after our individuality.