Something I've noticed ...

Wow. That woman claimed that you talking to her was RAPING her?
Speaking as someone who has actually been raped, that woman needs to be smacked upside the head 50 or 60 times.

I don't want to be a dick. I agree with most of what everyone has said in this thread, and I think it's been pretty well established that, when TN and I might like and respect each other in many other venues, we simply are never going to agree on what he calls "ageist" groups and what I call "a fun place for kids to hang out." No worries. A neat part of being human is being able to disagree with one's pals. That said, you keep whacking the same deceased equine, and everyone gets annoyed, so I'll put my whacking stick away after this post.

I did want to say, the only reason I went off a bit about the whole "young women being taught to dislike older men" is that i really think it's a red herring. Yes, some folks are dumb (like the "you raped me by saying hello" lady.). Some folks are evil. And mainly, folks is folks. As a bit of a knee-jerk woman-liker, I think there's actually **more** of a problem with young (or inexperienced, as per Kelly's story above) women not feeling comfortable setting boundaries and putting up with shit they shouldn't have to than with them being brain-washed into disliking men. Women are, largely, biologically programmed to respond to men. Yes, more so to men close to our age, but really, to any man who is strong and sexually viable. That's just part of being an animal. And socially, we are taught to be polite, not to make a fuss, etc. Yes, there are millions of exceptions, but in general, women in their 20s end up having sex they'd rather not have, or at the least, putting up with creepy behavior they'd rather not put up with, because we've been taught to be polite and we can't quite figure out how to draw boundaries without being jerks. Part of growing up is learning how to do that--and that sometimes it's okay to be a jerk if you feel threatened or harassed. I think it's in many cases a good sign that younger women are learning how to do that earlier.

And really. A bit of perspective. I went to those "ageist" groups until I aged out at 40. I still go to the ones that have a relaxed age limit, like Slap & Tickle. And I have literally never heard anyone talk about not liking older folks. They end to talk about how many of their play partners have been older, how they love certain older friends, but how sometimes it's fun to hang out with people your own age. In many years of hanging out in "ageist" circles I literally cannot remember one time of hearing someone go off about not playing with older people. One girl once I recall saying that it was weird that most of the women she liked playing with had kids and mortgages, and she found it hard to converse about stuff outside the hot sex. And that's the biggest gripe I think I've ever heard one of those brainwashed ageists make.

Rant off, horse buried. Now, how 'bout that local sports team, or those nubile young secretaries over there?

"Are you talking about ageist groups in the scene or just in general? "

The only ageist groups I know of are scene based or in court over it.

<<Someone getting older does not make them ... less attractive!>>

not automatically, no. But years of bad attitude, being beaten down by the system, or serial bad relationships do leave their tracks - as does every experience we have and our relationship to them. I think Lincoln made the comment that we're not responsible for our looks at 20 - but we are at 40.

Really, it's *our* fault they have that attitude. Because our generation(s) caused such a demographic bump, we were targeted heavily - and the "only the young are attractive" was part of that message. (ignoring the biological imperative which is often operational, of course.) We're like the firstborn who gets all the attention, blah blah - and they're (perhaps) like the secondborn who just resents the hell out of Big Sib for getting born first. And of course that all corresponded with the rise of television, which relies on least-common-denominator