Two co-workers held a fascinating conversation behind me in my cubicle yesterday.
"This woman was married, but she'd sleep with anyone".
"This married man was with his wife at a party, and went off and disappeared for about half an hour with another women. Everybody tried to distract the man's husband so she wouldn't notice."
They went on to discuss how terrible it must be, to have to tell your spouse that you've been having an affair and picked up a disease...
Several weeks earlier, I had introduced one of these people to my girlfriend (without calling her my girlfriend -- the co-worker knows that I'm married and have a daughter). Funny: the college is very devoted to diversity. I attended an all-day diversity training session my fourth day on the job. I sat on a panel in front of a room full of people, talking about sexual identity. In a smaller group, I talked about being Wiccan, and mentioned polyamory. Everyone seemed very accepting -- though I noticed one woman left after our small group session...
Prejudice is all around. I encounter it everywhere. Two twenty-ish women at the training said they were offended by people treating them as if they were still children. A member of my coven who is over 70 has decided she'll never live in an assisted living home. "It isn't that I mind being old," she told us, "It's the way people treat me as an old person; the way they assume they know what I want."
I work on a college campus. Most students there are about twenty years old. Yesterday I thought: "Someday, I will be talking with a group of students. We'll really be hitting it off. But then we'll disagree about something; and someone will blame it on my age".
I am fifty. Two or three years ago, I spent many months dating a twenty-seven year old. She asked if I felt funny walking down the street with her. I said I didn't. I hadn't thought about it. There's another young women I like. She asked wouldn't I feel funny dating a twenty-year-old? I said no, I don't think much about age. But now I must admit that my seventy-something covenmate is looking better and better. She doesn't think about age either. It's all these other people!
I read recently that any man over forty who is still interested in sex is considered a "dirty old man". How sad that people should feel that way. Apparently there is an age (between maybe twenty-five and thirty-five) where you can actually do anything you want to. Otherwise people think you're either "too young" or "too old".
How sad -- prejudice! It cuts us off from our promise, our potential -- each other!