Being a sexually-active woman can be tough. Objectified and subjected to uninvited opinion, and then you hit 50 and you’re both invisible and officially too old for sex.
Yes, 50. Yes, officially. In Portugal, if you’re a woman over the age of 50 and have had children, your sex life is now over. Please pick up your knitting needles and your copy of People’s Friend on the way out. Thank you.
Portuguese judges recently ruled on a year-long compensation battle where the victim of a gynaecological surgical error 19 years ago was expected to receive 172,000 euros.
At the last minute the male judges, in their 50s and 60s, lowered the sum to 111,000 euros. Why? Because she was 50 at the time of the event and had already given birth to two children.
Their reasoning was that after a certain point a person’s “sex life isn’t as important as it is at an earlier age” and added that the desire for sex “diminishes as you get older”.
The victim, left with a permanent inability to have sex amongst other limitations, felt “diminished as a woman”. And no wonder. Sex means many things, above and beyond the purely procreational; a primal drive, a loving connection, a form of communication. The error didn’t just take away her ability to have sex; it robbed her of a primary way to express her sexuality.
But, because she was over 50, the male judges – her peers – deemed it a language she no longer had any cause to speak.
No wonder older women are turning to younger men so they may express their still-vibrant sexuality, if this is the opinion they face from men their own age.
It’s not just judges, either. As Erica Jagger, blogger at Huffington Post noted, her own (female) doctor told her that ‘women stop having sex at 65’.
But hey. It’s probably for the best. Who would want to see 56 year-old Madonna’s topless photos in a high-end fashion spread?
And who wants to see the latest Bond ‘girl’, 50 year-old Monica Bellucci, have steamy on-screen sex with the current 007, 46 year old Daniel Craig (does a mere four-year age-gap allow us to whisper the words, ‘Bond is a toyboy’)?
It’s almost certainly best not to tell 61 year-old Monica Porter, author of My Year of Dating Dangerously because it’s clear her lover didn’t enjoy his time with her AT ALL (spoiler alert; HE DID).
Because who on earth could want a (sex) life after 50 when there’s invisibility, knitting and People’s Friend instead?
