Anja Meulenbelt went to the geriatrician this year with her painful knees. She also regularly forgets the names of people and things. If she can’t think of a word while writing – she is working on a book, her 53rd, “about feminism, among other things” – she puts an asterisk. The geriatrician examined her for a day. “That was a nice woman, a young woman too.” Nothing to worry about, said the nice young woman. “As long as the words come back, she said, and that is true, then it is not dementia.” She had to start moving a bit more. “I do chair yoga now.”
Anja Meulenbelt is first and foremost known as a feminist, she wrote with Beyond the shame (1976) the bible of the second wave of feminism and subsequently published dozens of titles about the subordination of women. But she also wrote about racism and injustice towards Palestinians and the exploitation of workers, was active in the BIJ1 party and, as an SP senator, she gave half her salary to the common fund for eight years, as party doctrine dictates. Nowadays she gives lectures about Gaza and is committed to a foundation that cares for single mothers.
But over the years, Anja Meulenbelt has also consistently ignored a disadvantaged group of people: “I never wondered how the elderly were actually doing,” she said two years ago in a podcast by the Flemish feminist organization Furia. Wrongly, she said. Older people fall prey to widespread age discrimination in the labor market and in daily life – they are called ‘old people’, ‘dry wood’, are ‘expired’ – and disappear from view as soon as they require a lot of help. “A blind spot.”
This week she turned eighty, but she didn’t feel like celebrating in a big way.
Why not?
“I don’t think it’s time to celebrate anything. I really don’t like it, the situation in the world, especially Gaza, really bothers me. And also that we in the Netherlands are again too lazy to take this seriously and see what we can do. And I don’t really care much about birthdays. A childhood trauma. January 6 is not a nice day to have a birthday because then you have had Sinterklaas, you have had Christmas, you have had New Year’s Eve. And then you hear your parents say: ‘Oh, that child still needs a present.’”
Do you feel 80?
“Well, I don’t understand. It is that I have a child of 62. From this I deduce that I am apparently a bit older.”
It is difficult to ‘feel’ the age?
“Yes, because my head doesn’t feel it. Only my body feels it. According to the geriatrician, I have the head of a fifty-year-old and the body of an eighty-year-old.”
She lives in Amsterdam, in an apartment that is part of a residential group for the elderly. The complex, consisting of fourteen apartments, is mainly inhabited by people over 80. They have each other’s keys, look out for each other, do errands for each other. Anja Meulenbelt is the only one who works that much, at least one morning or afternoon a day. “I don’t have to anymore,” she says, “but I think it’s necessary.” But after a lecture, after all that traveling and walking and standing, she is “a day off from work.” She tried out a walker in the geriatrician’s treatment room. Her first walker meters ever. It went easily. But she pushed the thing aside.
Because?
“I don’t want it yet, I don’t want it yet, I don’t want it yet.”
Why not?
“I don’t want to belong to that category yet. The category ‘old’. I mean, I call myself ‘old’ too. I don’t talk around that. I train myself to just say that I am turning eighty.”
That sounds rational.
Yes, that is rational. I was once on the tram, I was already in my seventies, and I saw an old man standing there. I wanted to stand up for him but then I thought: how old will he be? In my seventies, I guessed. Damn, I thought: that’s me too!”
In that podcast you said that you are bothered by so-called compliments such as: ‘But Anja, you still look so good!’ And: ‘You haven’t changed at all!’ You said: ‘As if I can’t just be old! Hello, I’m old.’ But that’s not how you feel at all.
“I don’t think I should deny my age. And I would rather not have the feeling ‘I don’t want a walker because that would make me an old woman’. Why shouldn’t you say to someone: ‘Wow, you’ve gotten old!’ Why isn’t that a compliment?”
Being old should become more accepted in society?
“We live in a society in which the elderly simply count less. I’m still working, I’m an exception in that regard. But there are also people who can no longer afford that. And there are elderly people, I know them very closely, who become quite depressed because of that emptiness. What am I living for, they wonder. Is there anyone else waiting for me? That says something about our society. I was once married to a Palestinian man, my mother-in-law lived in Gaza. She had a huge household, because she had five sons, who continued to live with their parents, the daughters married away. All those sons had children, my mother-in-law could barely keep count. And she sat at the door every morning with tea. And none of the sons who went to work passed her without having a cup of tea. She has saved many marriages. And she looked back at all those children to see if they were doing well.”
Why do you have to put aside someone over 67?
She had a position.
“She was a queen! Not that it is just ideal, by the way, all those generations together, I don’t claim that. But we also lost something.”
Namely?
“That you still belong. That you are appreciated for what you have done. Older people now often say: I want to live at home as long as possible, because the nursing home is not pleasant. Moreover, you now have to do quite a bit to get to the nursing home. So there is home, there is the nursing home, and there is a gap in between. There is no longer pleasant shelter for the elderly. Except for something like what we are trying to do with this residential group. There are many people who live at home alone and who are actually not doing well – a friend of mine was a community nurse, I know the stories first hand. People who simply have nothing to do anymore, who become invisible, who no longer belong anywhere, but who are ‘not yet bad enough’ for the nursing home.”
Why your decades-long blind spot for the position of the elderly?
I – and I think many people with me – have postponed old age. If you are black, you have known it all your life. If you are a woman, you cannot escape it. But you can postpone growing old. I find it significant that there is no movement of older people standing up for their position. Almost every disadvantaged group has united, sex workers, people with disabilities…
There is 50 plus, there is the ANBO-PCOB for the elderly?
“Yes, but I haven’t seen anything yet that makes me think: gosh, that’s fun and a bit militant.”
What injustice towards the elderly should be combated?
“Inequality and discrimination can be measured against three criteria,” says Nancy Fraser, an American philosopher and feminist. To the redistribution of work and income, to how a group is represented in politics and in the media and to the degree of appreciation. And in all three, the elderly generally fare poorly. Money: okay, there is an upper layer of wealthy elderly people, but many live only on their state pension and that is not nice. And many elderly people no longer get jobs, they have been put aside. Representation: meh. Certainly older women don’t. Take that journalistic program on Sunday morning…
Outside court?
“Outer court. Look, I couldn’t think of that name right now. Outside court yes. There are three presenters: two fairly old men and one young woman. When it comes to expertise, older men are more likely to be trusted than older women.”
And the rating?
“It is not ingrained in our culture as it is in Gaza or, say, in Suriname where it is the norm to respect your grandparents and even your ancestors. How the elderly were talked about during the corona crisis! That water language! They flooded the hospitals. I thought: flood? Is that me? And now too: the next cuts in elderly care have already been booked. If you don’t want to feel ashamed as a society, then you have to take care of your children, that is a collective matter, and you have to treat your elders decently. They should not feel like they are too much.”
“I wish it were arranged more flexibly. If people have had a heavy physical job, they should be allowed to stop much sooner than now. Because they simply don’t live as long. But as long as people want to continue and as long as there is plenty of work, I think: why do you have to put aside someone over 67?”
The Council for Public Health and Society calls vital elderly people the ‘gift of the century’: elderly people who can fill the workforce shortages, who can provide informal care and do voluntary work.
Not long ago, women were fired as soon as they got married. Now people are fired when they turn 67, even if they want to continue working. You say: abolish that age reduction?
“You have to have enough income to do volunteer work, of course. But certainly, I think: far too little attention is paid to the potential of the elderly. I would think it would be a great idea if grandma- and grandpa-like types would play a role in childcare – if they want to. Or in hospitals: elderly people who do have the time to make contact with patients – although that is a profession in itself. Also so that older people are simply more visible. That helps to think about them differently.”
There are critics who say: why do you have to be vital and useful again as an older person? Can’t you just be vulnerable? Can’t you just do nothing?
“There’s something in that. I had a grandmother who lived in a house and there was no TV yet. She looked in the usher to see which concerts she wanted to listen to. And she was also feeding peanuts to the great tits. She whistled it closer. She also had friends. She didn’t do much socially anymore, but she looked to me like she was having a good time, even when she became more vulnerable. That is also possible. I wouldn’t want to make it mandatory that everyone remains a powerhouse.”
You lead a free-spirited life. Free from marriage, from patriarchy, from the boss. But as you get older, even you will become more dependent. Is that a nightmare?
“In any case, I prefer not to be sick. I don’t really do that. So yes, I’m dreading it. I see people here in the living group who can no longer manage on their own. We have seen twice that someone was admitted to a nursing home.”
Would you do that?
“As I said, you must be doing quite a bit of damage for the nursing home. My father had severe dementia and had not arranged anything. He had to go to the nursing home and was very unhappy there for two years. That’s not going to happen to me. I already have an appointment with the doctor. As soon as we think dementia is involved, we investigate it. If so, we will have a conversation every month so that I can decide for myself: this far and no further.
Everything is going well for now, the geriatrician said.
“She asked me: what are your wishes? I said: give me ten more years. Ten active years. Then I think it was good.”
CV
Anja Meulenbelt
- Anja Meulenbelt (Utrecht, January 6, 1945) attended the Social Academy and graduated from the UvA in andragology (upbringing and training of adults).
- She gained fame as a feminist through the autobiographical novel Beyond the Shame (1976).
- She wrote 52 books, mainly non-fiction, about feminism, racism, class difference, the fate of Palestinians, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
- She taught women’s groups for twenty years. She was a member of the Senate for the SP (2003-2011), and active in BIJ1 from 2016 to 2023.
- Anja Meulenbelt lives in Amsterdam in a group home and has one son.