Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on editors and contributors
- Series editors’ introduction
- Foreword
- 1 Sex and intimacy in later life: a survey of the terrain
- 2 Sexual expression and pleasure among black minority ethnic older women
- 3 Sexual desires and intimacy needs in older persons and towards the end of life
- 4 Heterosexual sex, love and intimacy in later life: what have older women got to say?
- 5 Sex and ageing in older heterosexual men
- 6 Sex and older gay men
- 7 Thinking the unthinkable: older lesbians, sex and violence
- 8 Splitting hairs: Michel Foucault’s ‘heterotopia’ and bisexuality in later life
- 9 The age of rediscovery: what is it like to gender transition when you are 50 plus?
- 10 Ageing asexually: exploring desexualisation and ageing intimacies
- 11 Older people, sex and social class: unusual bedfellows?
- 12 Final reflections: themes on sex and intimacy in later life
- Index
Series editors’ introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on editors and contributors
- Series editors’ introduction
- Foreword
- 1 Sex and intimacy in later life: a survey of the terrain
- 2 Sexual expression and pleasure among black minority ethnic older women
- 3 Sexual desires and intimacy needs in older persons and towards the end of life
- 4 Heterosexual sex, love and intimacy in later life: what have older women got to say?
- 5 Sex and ageing in older heterosexual men
- 6 Sex and older gay men
- 7 Thinking the unthinkable: older lesbians, sex and violence
- 8 Splitting hairs: Michel Foucault’s ‘heterotopia’ and bisexuality in later life
- 9 The age of rediscovery: what is it like to gender transition when you are 50 plus?
- 10 Ageing asexually: exploring desexualisation and ageing intimacies
- 11 Older people, sex and social class: unusual bedfellows?
- 12 Final reflections: themes on sex and intimacy in later life
- Index
Summary
This Sex and Intimacy in Later Life book series will explore, interrogate and enlighten on the sensual, sexual and intimate lives of older people. The motivation for launching this series was a concern with the relative lack of attention in public, professional and academic/intellectual spheres to sex and intimacy in later life (indicatively, Hafford-Letchfield, 2008; Simpson et al, 2018a, 2018b). The series is intended to contribute to and enrich the development of the field of studies composed of the intersections of age, sex, sexuality and intimacy as a critical and important area of scholarship. It is only beginning to be recognised as an important social, cultural and political domain of study within and beyond the ‘Western’ academy, from which it has emerged. Its earliest contributions, of which this volume is a part, are motivated by a desire to recognise and reject the pathologies and prejudices that have infused this intersection – what Simpson has termed ‘ageist erotophobia’ (Simpson et al, 2018b, p 1479) – and fuel the failure to acknowledge older people as sexual agents. This is both an intellectual and a political agenda, to question and evaluate the impact of real rather than assumed losses of cognitive, physical, social and sexual capacity, and to recuperate older people as sexual agents from dismissal, ridicule and trivialisation.
If the latter half of the twentieth century was characterised by challenges to the pathologies of social identities – particularly gender, ethnicity and race, disability, sexuality – and struggles for recognition, rights and liberties, more intersectional struggles and recognitions characterise the twenty-first century (on intersectionality, see indicatively Hancock, 2016; Hill Collins and Bilge, 2016). Significant among these has been the re-evaluation of what it is to age and to be an older agent in contemporary societies. Older people have historically experienced both veneration and respect and neglect and pathology, largely based on differing cultural stereotypes of the value of age (Ylanne, 2012). The most common characterisation is that older people are not sexual, past being sexual or represent a problematic sexuality – or their sexuality is a superficial concern and secondary to concerns of health, care, life course and support by public services and engagement and pensions/resources.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sex and Diversity in Later LifeCritical Perspectives, pp. xiv - xxivPublisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021