Another Wild Old Lady!

Does this prim little old lady look like a hell-raiser to you?

She was. She was also a bit of a cougar.

In her 1991 biography Maggie Kuhn writes of her forced retirement, "I was hurt, and then as time passed, outraged." So she called some friends over for a meeting.  "All were veteran activists," she said, and "all had energy to spare." In fact, they felt "more radical, and full of new ideas, more opinionated, and less constrained by convention" than when they were young.

So this group of friends went out and founded the Gray Panthers. They chose the name deliberately to reflect their solidarity with young people.

Maggie and her friends demonstrated with college students against the Vietnam War. They were assaulted by police in front of the white house. This surprised Maggie, who thought her age might confer some protection. In that regard, she's like Bill Ryan, the 97-year old who demonstrates for climate action. Bill remembers the police officer who dragged him away from a protest saying, "I don't care if you die."

Towards the end of the book, Maggie (who never married) reveals that in her 70s she had a yearlong love affair with a man 50 years younger than she was. She said when he was "unclothed" he looked like a Greek god and she thinks "Older women can help young men learn about sexuality without making them feel they have to perform."

Go Maggie!