Dismissed By People like You

CN Spoilers for Grace and Frankie, NSFW, Discussions of Sex, Consent, Mentions of Rape

Note: The bottom quote does not include some of the text, but has been edited down to contain the relevant parts of the discussion.

Grace: What are we doing? I’ll tell you what we’re doing. We’re We’re making vibrators for women with arthritis.

Frankie: Yes! Vibrators! Brilliant!

Grace: Oh, grow up. Older women masturbate too.

Frankie: And we have vaginas.

Brianna:  I highly doubt there’s a vibrator market for geriatric women with arthritis.

Grace: There is. I’m in agony.

Frankie: It takes a lot longer for us to get off, Sol.

Grace: She’s right. Our blood doesn’t flow as easily – and our genital tissue is more delicate. I did some reading. The more effort it takes to orgasm, the more you irritate it, and the more it inflames your arthritis. And I mean shouldn’t older women have it better than that?

Mallory: How do I explain to my children that their grandma makes sex toys for other grandmas?

Grace: I’ll tell you what you can tell them, honey. We’re making things for people like us, because we are sick and tired of being dismissed by people like you.

So ends the second season of Grace and Frankie. The line “We’re making things for people like us, because we are sick and tired of being dismissed by people like you.” Seems to me like a perfect summary of the first two seasons of Grace and Frankie. Nominally the show is about two older women relearning how to live on their own after their husbands leave them for each other.

More than that, the show is about two older women realizing the extent to which they have been taken for granted, and the extent to which women past a certain age get treated as invisible and irrelevant. The level to which women’s identities are subsumed into that of their families and especially their husbands.

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Dismissed By People like You
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