This Sex and Intimacy in Later Life book series will explore, interrogate and enlighten upon 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 in 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 issue within and beyond the ‘Western’ academy, from which it has emerged. Its earliest contributions, of which this volume are 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 fuels 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.

Obstetric research is vital. It provides insights into normal physiological responses of the body, the impact of pathology on those responses and understanding about how to diagnose and treat disease.

Given that the desexualisation of older people emerged as a dominant theme in the first volume (addressing diversity) in this book series, this volume was created specifically to probe this subject further and, in doing so, provide a coherent and critical overview of it as a possible basis for critique and action.

This volume has showcased a variety of work by emerging and established scholars (based in Argentina, Britain, Sweden and Spain). As such, it has featured a mix of theoretical and theoretically-informed empirical work that reflects theorising from social gerontology, social psychology, structuralism, poststructuralism and feminism and some combinations thereof. In various ways, all contributors have addressed the intersecting influences that help to make up later life sexuality. If the first volume in the book series addressed influences of age combined with gender, sexual identification, race and class, this volume has focused a bit more on age as it enmeshes with gender (see the chapter by Clare Anderson), with sexual identification (see the chapter by Jane Youell) and with disability/ableism (see the chapters by Susan Gillen and Paul Reynolds and by Linn J. Sandberg).

Moreover, the main foci of this volume have concerned the cross-cutting physical/embodied, relational, cultural, structural and policy and practice-related constraints on older people's intimate and sexual self-expression. Although such theorising indicates a fairly wide purview, this volume has presented key examples rather than a comprehensive survey of accounts of desexualisation. Nevertheless, it does provide considerable insight and critical reviews of the state of current scholarship on the subject of desexualisation in later life and prompts ideas for further research.

To avoid a simple recap of key points in individual chapters, this concluding section attempts more of a synthesis of overarching themes

and issues that the chapters point to, though, inevitably, we refer to individual authors. Subsequently, we move to discuss what this volume indicates about the state of scholarship in an emerging field of knowledge and how this suggests an agenda for research and serves as a precursor to a future volume addressing the resexualisation of the older self. Indeed, the agentic capacities of older people as sexual beings are visible in chapters in this volume, and the subject of resexualisation, often in the face of significant obstacles, appears to be much overlooked in analysis (Simpson et al, 2018).

It is impossible to talk about sex without talking about relationships or modes of relating, yet sexual relations are assumed to be the preserve of the young. So it seems when older people's attempts to express sexuality or intimacy are commonly met with ridicule, condescension and infantilisation (Simpson et al, 2017). The quote in the chapter title, though fictional, is no less believable, but might seem incredible if not offensive to quite a few older people. Indeed, we can see the mockery of ageing and later life, and particularly of a presumed cognitive, aesthetic, physical and sexual decline, writ large in birthday cards for those aged 40 plus (Bytheway, 1995; Simpson et al, 2018b). This mockery reveals the casual, normalised nature of ageism in consumerist societies, where ageing can be seen as an individual pathology to be avoided (Biggs and Daatland, 2006). The anxieties occasioned by consumerist-driven ageism could well be responsible for the proliferation of sales of agedefying (denying?) cosmetics, as well as the increase in ‘rejuvenating’ cosmetic surgery, which Eagleton (2003) has theorised as an attempt to deny or stave off mortality.

Unlike many other forms of prejudice, ageism directed towards older people seems to be fair game. It also operates more under the radar of consciousness. It is worth noting that ageism can affect the young, who can be defined as insubstantial, inexperienced and the like, though, unlike later life, youth can be regarded as a transitory, experimental stage en route to maturity and usually experiences ageism less intensely (Bytheway, 1995; Simpson, 2015). In terms of ageism as applied to sex and intimacy, older people are stereotypically cast as prudish and beyond interest in such matters (Mahieu et al, 2014). Such thinking informs pressures towards ‘compulsory non-sexuality’ among older

people (Simpson, 2021). Nevertheless, various, intersecting forms of differentiation (class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity) strongly influence the capacity to challenge ageism generally and the presumption of sexlessness or post-sexual status and lack of desirability in later life specifically.

It is also worth noting that ageism may be one of the factors behind the relative paucity of scholarship on an international scale, though a critical literature is beginning to emerge on later life sexuality, especially in Britain, Australasia, Europe and the United States.

Older people's sexual and intimate lives represent an emerging field of study that fuels demands for change across public, private and voluntary services and holds some promise for representing age as positive change (see the volume edited by Barrett and Hinchliff, 2017). Yet, there remain significant constraints on older individuals’ sexual expression and limitations in knowledge on sexuality in later life (Reynolds et al, 2021). Constraint on sexual and intimate selfexpression and practice, operating in diverse, intersectional modes, was a key motif that emerged in the first volume addressing diversity in this book series on Sex and Intimacy in Later Life. Older people (defined as aged 50 and over in the series introduction in this volume) remain the subject of stereotyping as non-sexual or ‘post-sexual’ (Simpson et al, 2018). Such a concept broadly refers to the process of desexualisation of older people that appears endemic in late modern societies and marks limits to who counts, age-wise, as a legitimate sexual being (Gatling et al, 2017).

Indeed, representations of age stress unsexy, sagging flesh, tarnished bodies, sexual dysfunction and absence of eroticism (Moore and Reynolds, 2016). More specifically, Gilleard and Higgs (2011) talk of how the leaky, less continent bodies of the oldest old are contrasted with the vital performances of younger adults, and Moore and Reynolds (2016) draw attention to a negative aesthetic that equates older people with ugliness and dearth, if not death, of desire. In light of such endemic pathologies and prejudices, it is tempting to believe that older people are generally not only thought of as no longer interested in engaging in sexual activity and pleasure but also are probably not even expected to think of it (Simpson et al, 2018; Bauer et al, 2016). Given the absence of more validating images of ageing sexuality, older people themselves can come to think of themselves in this way (Simpson et al, 2018). It is also quite likely that older people are excluded from the many and varied practices that constitute the ‘sex industry’, though ironically DIY porn sites indicate that older women can be fetishised in a niche way.

Key terms that populate this volume – later life, ageing, ageism, sex, intimacy and ageist erotophobia – were defined in the book series introduction in this volume.

If youth is associated with sexual vitality, older people are thought to represent the death of sexuality (Mahieu et al, 2014). There are few media images that validate older people as sexual beings, and the physical, aesthetic and status-related losses associated with age contribute to thinking of them as unattractive and thus uninterested in sex (Garrett, 2014). It is unsurprising then that older people come to internalise beliefs concerning their non-sexual or post-sexual status (Garret, 2014; Simpson et al, 2018).

The ageism just described appears thoroughly normalised. Indeed, what I term ‘ageist erotophobia’ (Simpson et al, 2018) that is disgust at, refusal or more often failure to imagine or acknowledge older people as sexual beings, finds resonance in the observation that sex and intimacy have largely been ‘designed out’ of social policy, care practice and academic research concerning later life (Hafford-Letchfield, 2008). See also Bauer et al (2012) in Australia, Doll (2012) in the US and Villar et al (2014) in Catalonia/Spain). Despite an emerging international scholarship on ageing sexuality, on rare occasions when the subject has been acknowledged in the professional practice literature, it has largely been framed as counterintuitive, inappropriate, or a threat or problem to be managed (Doll, 2012). This applies especially to individuals affected by a dementia/loss of cognition (Drakeford, 2006). Recognition as an older sexual being seems rare. At best, there appears grudging respect for if not pathologisation of the predatory, middle-aged, middle-class ‘cougar’ (Kaklamanidou, 2012) and the ‘randy old goat’ still interested in sex despite advancing years (Simpson et al, 2017). Yet, pressures towards what I would call ‘compulsory non-sexuality’ can have serious ramifications for the mental health/self-esteem and quality of life of older people (Hinchliff et al, 2019).

The stereotypical thinking outlined earlier is damaging not just because it demeans but also because it obscures understanding of the realities of older people's lives (Simpson et al, 2018). Older people's accounts range from elected or compulsory non-sexuality, to a desire for sexual opportunity, through to continuation of sexual relations (Bauer et al, 2012; Simpson et al, 2018). Indeed, it is possible that sexual experimentation may be more available to older people with more time and leisure than younger people with jobs, caring responsibilities and various social demands.