He didn’t hang around school gates or do unsavoury or illegal things he just tried it on with every woman possessed of a pulse. But I had a dirty old man closer to home: my dad.
Benny Hill played one for laughs in his hit TV series The Benny Hill Show in the 1970s. When I was teenager, that was someone who hung around school gates and ogled young women. Of all the nasty names older men get called, dirty old man has to be the worst. Imagine the indignation if a 70-year-old man did that to a younger woman – the collective “yuck” would have rung out across the nation. When the then 70-year-old Dame Helen Mirren snogged the 51-year-old American presenter Steve Colbert when he introduced her as a guest on his chat show in 2016, nobody cried “yuck!” or thought Dame Helen was a dirty old woman. Older women with younger lovers are celebrated as “cougars” and seen as “empowered” older men with younger lovers are seen as dirty old men who are pathetic. We have a certain double-standard that discriminates against the older man. Older women have it a lot worse, don’t they? Not really.
Lets face it, men in my situation aren’t going to provoke much sympathy. Society is in denial for the simple reason that everyone who lives will grow old and still be sexually active to various degrees. Look at our popular culture – films, novels, theatre, advertising or TV dramas – and it’s rare to see older people even talking about sex, much less doing it. It is a subject surrounded by stigma and one we deal with by silence. Our youth-obsessed society feels uncomfortable with the reality that older men and women in their 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond are still sexual beings with needs, demands and imaginations. When it comes to sex, all behaviour by older people is inappropriate. I can admire the sexiness of older women too – is that prohibited? Of course admiration has to be tempered by good manners the older chap has to be careful not to cause any embarrassment or discomfort, but then so should his younger counterpart.īut this isn’t really about older men and younger women and inappropriate behaviour. However, the idea that I’m some sort of dirty old man, just because I can admire the sexiness of a younger woman, is unfair and offensive. I’m thinking of a certain dad who always flirts with his daughter’s young friends, right in front of her and the rest of the family. I hear this sort of talk all the time – so do lots of men of my age. If an older gay man remarked on the attractiveness of a younger man, would anyone cry “Yuck!”? No. These young people take pride in their tolerance of sexual difference and demands for inclusiveness – as long as it doesn’t include an old hetero like me. What really bothered me wasn’t their name calling, but their hypocrisy. Out came the predictable cry of “Yuck!” And my comment, I was informed, was not “age appropriate”. Recently, I was talking to a group of 20-somethings at a party and I said, apropos the Johnny Depp v Amber Heard defamation trial: “She may be a bit nutty, but you have to admit, she’s dead sexy.” As soon as I said it I wish I hadn’t. It was tricky back in the days before the #MeToo movement now the most innocent of remarks are not only a reflection of toxic masculinity but old guy toxic masculinity as well: that’s two toxics for the price of one. On reflection, maybe I have on occasion overstepped the mark, but it’s so hard to know where that mark is anymore. I’ve been called all of the above in my time and not for anything illegal, immoral or insensitive – but because I’m a 67-year-old man who likes to talk about sex, think about sex, joke about sex and have sex (sue me). At social occasions strangers are quick to dismiss us as dirty old men. Friends lecture us about not acting like an “old letch”.
At the slightest squeak of our sexuality, our teenage children accuse us of being “creepy” or “yucky”.
We think we’re being gallant the world thinks we’re being gross. We make people uncomfortable with our comments and compliments to women, young and old. Especially if, like me, you are over 60 and single. But this tolerance is sorely tested if you are a heterosexual male over the age of 60 and still keen on sex. You can be gay, lesbian, bisexual, polyamorous, in transition and non-binary you can have a fetish for feet, a passion for bondage or a love of leather, and no one bats an eye or passes judgment – at least not in public. When it comes to sex and sexuality, Britain has never been so open and so tolerant.