Middle-Aged Gay Men, Ageing and Ageism

Over the Rainbow?

Paul Simpson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137435231
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137435248
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Is midlife for gay men the start of a slide towards the rejection, exclusion and misery associated with the spectre of the lonely old queen? Whilst exclusion is possible as gay men age, Middle Aged Gay Men, Ageing and Ageism offers a more nuanced view of gay ageing, using sociological tools to advance understanding beyond stereotypes.

1

Setting the Gay Scene: Orientation, Definitions and Themes

I’ve had younger men ask me on the dance floor, ‘What the hell are you doing here? This place isn’t for old men.’ Most of these young people when they see people like us, or me rather, they see their own fathers … [Laughs]. They don’t expect to find their parents or even their grandparents at the same disco, do they?

(Tony 59)

Context and motives for the book

Are middle-aged gay men ‘past it’ – socially and sexually – if not prematurely old? It has been said in gay male cultures individuals can begin to feel old after the age of 30 (Duncan and Barrett 2013). If this is so, can middle-aged gay men expect little more than rejection and isolation as they slide towards the ultimate misery represented by the epithet, ‘lonely old queen’? The stakes are high and, with such concerns in mind, this book examines midlife gay men’s experiences of growing older in Manchester, the third largest city in the United Kingdom (UK) and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGB&T) capital of the North of England. The city has a highly developed, differentiated gay scene. Its ‘gay village’ in the heart of the city is seen as the most visible aspect of a gay culture second in size to London, and provides all manner of social, political, cultural, sexual, economic and other opportunities. The village has grown exponentially since the mid-1990s, and (perhaps uniquely) since that time has proven highly popular with heterosexuals (Binnie and Skeggs 2004) seeking identification with its trendiness and tolerance of sexual difference.

This book was motivated by gaps in scholarship in the largely US-based studies of gay male ageing and theoretical works indirectly bearing on the understanding of gay ageing. These bodies of work are examined in Chapter 7, focusing on comparisons and contrasts with the Manchester experience. I was equally motivated by change of a personal–political nature, as reflected in this chapter’s epigraph from ‘Tony’. Although, there was no epiphanal moment that crystallized that I was no longer youngish, in my early forties I began to register changes in how younger gay men in particular were reacting to me whenever socializing on the gay bar scene. This was experienced not just in Manchester but also when visiting other towns and cities in Britain and Europe. I was beginning to sense something like the harsher scrutiny (or erasure) intimated in Tony’s words. My sense that I was losing value prompted me to ask myself some prickly, self-judgemental questions. Was my time on the ‘gay scene’ over? Was I so lacking in emotional resources that, in my early forties, what self-esteem I had built up actually rested on the unstable foundations of how my appearance and character were being read and dis/approved by unknown others? This shift in social positioning prompted me to engage with a world that was changing for me and presumably for others. Being simultaneously an insider (as a gay man) and now feeling like a relative outsider (on the grounds of age) but with access to sociological tools, I began to connect these anxieties to deeper, wider social, cultural and political issues and to recast my questions. Is appearance of heightened importance in gay male culture and if so why? What power relations inform this culture and why is it that midlife gay men figure lower down in its hierarchy of bodies or, indeed, do they? Why do older and younger gay men seem so divided? What quality of life or hopes for social and cultural inclusion can midlife gay men expect now and later on in various social spheres: ‘gay’, ‘straight’ or otherwise?

This chapter begins by situating the concerns of this book within the broader field of sexuality studies and contemporary studies of LGB&T ageing. I then proceed to outline the key arguments that underpin the book. By way of providing context and orientation for the reader, I then describe Manchester’s multiform gay culture, define key terms age/ageing and ageism and explain the methods used to generate men’s stories. Finally, I explain how arguments and themes are threaded through each chapter. Essentially, this book is about how middle-aged gay men differentiate themselves mainly from younger gay men and the power relations of gay ageism. Such fluid, contingent power relations are discernible in the everyday and spectacular accounts of self-presentation and relationships generated in interviews with 27 gay men aged between 39 and 61, who have some connections with various forms of Manchester’s gay culture, and 20 observation sessions in the village district.

Gay male ageing as a field of existence

The heterosexual fascination with Manchester’s gay village attracted (for about a decade) the critical gaze of a few empirically oriented scholars from various disciplines intrigued by the workings of complex power asymmetries in this cultural space. From a Bourdieusian perspective, and focusing on the politics of homophobia and gender/sexual hierarchy, Moran and colleagues (2004) have drawn attention to expressions of symbolic and physical violence expressed towards LGB&T individuals (which mainly occur just beyond the notional boundaries of the village). This work warns against individualizing such violence as the work of a few pathological, intolerant individuals, and attributes it to historical, structural–institutional influences and the ideologies they produce, which encourage the view of LGB&T individuals as second-class citizens. Moran and colleagues (2004) usefully mark the limits of tolerance and show how hierarchy is a product of intersections of various forms of difference – sexuality, class and gender combined. Although homophobia (fear of sexual difference that animates hostility, prejudice and discrimination) and heteronormativity (ingrained belief in heterosexuality as the gold standard of human sexuality) persist, such arguments have been partially eclipsed by legal and social change in more recent years. In a short period of time, we have witnessed the equalization of the age of consent for gay men (2001), extension of adoption rights to LGB&T individuals (2002) and civil marriage (2014). The Single Equalities Act 2010 extends legal rights to equal treatment in employment and the provision of goods and services to LGB&T and older individuals.

Conversely, Binnie and Skeggs (2004) have challenged the putatively cosmopolitan character of the gay village by focusing on the symbolic violence expressed by lesbian and gay patrons and their (middle-class) heterosexual allies towards working-class, heterosexual women (and young men). The latter are seen as lacking the appropriate (gendered) reputational and cultural capitals (that secure knowledge of how to behave in this field of existence) and thus are thought to embody matter out of place. For Binnie and Skeggs, such processes reflect the logic of contemporary capitalism that has accommodated more respectable, that is, economically and culturally resourced queers. In contrast, and stressing gay men’s individual capacities for agency, scholarship concerned with responses to a commercialized gay scene has explored how choices of which village bars to patronize reflect expressions of ‘communitas, individualism and diversity’ (Haslop et al. 1998: 320–1).

There have been some attempts to make comparisons between elements of Manchester’s gay male culture with those in cities outside Britain. Hughes (2006) has drawn attention to the costs of tolerance and how commodified ‘Pride’ parades – Manchester, New York, San Francisco and Sydney being famous examples – represent a shift from sexual politics to a more palatable ‘festivalization’ of gay culture. This loss of a more radical sexual and gender politics and assimilation into consumer culture has been taken up by Duggan (2012) in a US context. Some such spectacles have staged forms of conservative ‘homonationalism’ that align with post-imperialist discourse to portray the Islamic/(Middle) Eastern other as intrinsically homophobic, anachronistic, less civilized and infrahuman (Butler 2008; Haritaworn 2012; Puar 2007; 2013). Further, local authority marketing of the village as a tourist attraction and support from the Council and businesses for Pride events are also being bruited as totems of the city’s tolerance towards sexual difference. This has led to the conclusion that support from capital and government has encouraged the perception that equality on grounds of sexual difference has effectively been secured (Hughes 2006: 250). Whilst I agree that we are still far from a state of full erotic democracy, such thinking misses how men might escape commodification, or de-commodify the gay scene and wider gay culture through an everyday politics that involves love and friendship even in the more sexualized spaces of the village (see Chapters 3 and 7).

Further, Kitchin (2002) has compared and contrasted Manchester’s gay culture with gay cultures in Belfast and San Francisco. This nuanced analysis addresses how LGB&T cultures and place-making have been formed through distinct historical, economic and political influences and, in particular, through opportunity structures and conflict between the forces opposing sexual difference and organized queer resistance. In respect of contemporary Russia, Stella (2012; 2013) has productively challenged the narrow, ethnocentric – ‘Western’ – notion of visibility vis-à-vis queer spaces (like the village) understood as cosmopolitan and empowering. In Russia, globalized gayness is interpreted as a form of Western cultural imperialism that threatens the country’s social fabric and national identity. Stella (2013) not only draws attention to alternative forms of belonging (or not) as a socio-sexual citizen but also to the value of examining gay cultures holistically, and how particular histories and politics have influenced the emergence of more collective lesbian (and gay) cultures in Eastern Europe, occurring in informal, contingent spaces often invisible to outsiders. The works mentioned have variously illuminated the diversity of village life, queer cultures, commodification, gendered, raced and classed sexual citizenship, intersectionality and complex social divisions. However, none of them provides substantive analysis of the social division that appears most significant to gay men themselves – age!

The social relations of gay male ageing and ageism have not been completely neglected in studies of Manchester’s gay village. Indeed, one of the earliest studies, at the point when the village was beginning its growth spurt, did address antagonisms associated with age differences. Using neo-Marxist/Gramscian theory, Whittle (1994) reproduces a familiar story of the village/commercial gay scene as a space where young gay men’s physical/sexual capital is hegemonic and, in concert with their unquestioning commitment to consumerism, overwhelmingly excludes middle-aged/older gay men. Whilst age divisions are hard to ignore and age-exclusion keenly felt, such analysis overplays the economic, and fails to understand the social and cultural conditions that animate any such thought and action. However, I want to avoid the caricature of differently aged gay men, and move beyond simple binary accounts of gay youth as insensate dupes of capitalism and middle-aged/older men as victims of a youth-oriented gay scene.

Contribution of the book

Although this book has a specific focus, it contributes to the broader field of (gendered) sexuality studies. In recent years, this corpus of work has illuminated: challenges to hegemonic, white (Erel et al. 2010) and Western European/Anglophone expressions of queerness (Stella 2012; 2013); trans/queer forms of (sexual) citizenship in a society, culture and legal system dominated by gender binarism (Hines 2007; 2009); experiences of queer cultural spaces (Browne 2006; 2007; Caudwell and Browne 2013) and normatively heterosexual ones such as workplaces (Rumens 2008; 2010a; 2010b; 2011; 2012). Of particular significance are studies exploring how differences of gender, sexuality, class and race combine or ‘intersect’ to produce multiform identities and dis/advantage (see Erel et al. 2010; Taylor et al. 2010). Intersectional theorizing ‘reject[s] the separability of analytical and identity categories’ (McCall 2005: 1771) and sees sexuality, gender, class and so on as ‘intertwined’, resulting in dis/advantage depending on social positioning and context (Taylor 2010: 38). In Taylor’s Bourdieusian–feminist account, whilst class structure can secure the invisibilization or silencing of working-class lesbians, gender ideology combined with heteronormativity can delegitimize the cultural, socio-economic and reputational resources of middle-class lesbian individuals (Taylor 2010). Using insights from poststructuralist/queer theorizing, which stresses the discursively constructed character of social differences, Erel and colleagues (2008) have highlighted the othering of non-white queers on the grounds of race, combined with gender and sexuality. This work also challenges analyses that erase or downplay the significance of race within the mix. Further, Binnie (2004) and Haritaworn (2007) have drawn attention to how – in conditions of globalization – queer theory itself has ethnocentrically presumed the queer subject to be white and Western, thus occluding non-white others. Whether intersectional theorizing emphasizes social structure or discourse, the net result is often the same – exclusion. The reader will find traces of both theoretical approaches in this book as part of methodological strategy designed to understand the social realities of gay male ageing as heterogeneous.

I also hope to contribute from a midlife gay male perspective to a growing body of critical work emerging in the UK that registers and engages with a plurality of queer experiences of ageing. Intersectional analysis has been important here, and it is visible in work by Cronin and King (2010) and Heaphy (2008; 2009) that LGB&T ageing interacts with differences of class in particular to influence whether queer ageing and later life are experienced as fulfilling and valuing or demeaning and exclusionary. I also draw on Heaphy’s (2008; 2009) thinking that older LGB&T individuals develop ‘resources of ageing’ (inflected by class and gender) to negotiate later life substantially in response to heteronormativity, ageing and queer ageism. This work has also illuminated diverse forms of non-normative sexual citizenship – a concept that essentially concerns recognition of status as sexual beings. For Bell and Binnie (2000), sexuality is inevitably part of citizenship (though certain forms can be denied or severely punitively sanctioned). Evans (1993) describes sexual citizenship as intrinsically relational and co-constituted by moral (cultural/discursive) and economic (structural) dimensions. Plummer’s well-known appropriation (1995; 2003) shows how claims to valid sexuality are articulated by minoritized groups seeking to exert some control over their erotic lives, and how these experiences are understood and represented. In terms of lesbian ageing, Treais (2012) has highlighted the ‘triple invisibility’ of women on the intersecting grounds of age, gender and sexuality, and their unthinkability as socio-sexual beings in and outside of lesbian cultures. In contrast, Jones (2011) observes the challenge of bisexuals to more conventional notions of ageing, the life course and how they invoke a more fluid (ageing) sexual citizenship. Her work has illuminated how younger bisexuals can envision both normative (monogamous) and non-normative (polyamorous) futures (see Jones 2011). Whilst Hines has drawn attention to the difficulties of trans (sexual) citizenship in a rigidly binarized world (2007; 2009), Bailey (2012) has examined the idea of a liberating ‘second puberty’ experienced by some trans individuals. This can occur as the body develops the secondary sex characteristics associated with their new gender identity (through hormonal therapy) and, linked to this, as individuals undergo new social experiences navigating the world in their new gender. Bailey’s writing also highlights the socially constructed character of age and ageing, and how trans people can rework their meanings to disrupt conventional notions of these processes as fixed and inevitable.

My contribution to understanding gay male ageing (as a subfield of sexualities) in part builds on but also stands in opposition to some of the works discussed earlier in this chapter, and much of the existing literature on gay ageing as discussed in Chapter 7. In examining and presenting an underexplored (in the UK) everyday cultural politics of gay male ageing and embodiment (see Chapter 8), I go beyond analysis of the social relations that constitute the local gay scene (a particular field of existence) as either presenting danger/threat (Binnie and Skeggs 2004; Hughes 2006; Moran et al. 2004; Whittle 1994) or pleasure/opportunity (Haslop et al. 1998). Rather, my contribution concerns what I consider the more culturally and sociologically interesting stories in-between these two poles that include the ambivalences that characterize contemporary story-telling – sexual and otherwise (see Plummer 1995). I hope to offer a deeper, wider, more nuanced analysis of local gay male culture through the lens of midlife gay male ageing and, in particular, through study participants’ diverse stories occurring within a range of local and extra-local (online) gay cultural spaces. Indeed, my analysis includes but goes beyond the more locally focused scholarship’s narrow concern with the village – the most obvious expression of gay/queer life. This resonates with Browne’s and Bakshi’s (2011) thinking, which unsettles a rigid distinction between gay and straight spaces and the gay scene and ‘non-gay scene.’ It also resonates with Stella’s (2012) argument (based on research on queer spaces in sexually conservative Russia), about the need to explore less visible queer cultures beyond the more obvious ‘scene’ and ‘Pride’ demonstrations. I therefore examine social relations (of ageing, gender, sexuality, class, race and biography) in the less explored gay spaces of the home, those less accessible to heterosexuals (gay saunas, the online gay scene and gay social/support groups), various heterospaces (of work, rest and play) and gay kinship formations. In Chapter 7, I consider how local experiences resonate beyond the local context and how they compare with stories expressed in scholarship across the Anglophone world and mainly in the United States (US).

Moreover, I contribute to contemporary analysis of production, use of gay coded spaces and interrelationships between these spaces and gendered sexualities. Like Browne’s (2007) explorations of the queer spaces of Brighton and Dublin Pride events, my analysis complicates the spatiality of sexualities. Such a move avoids ghettoizing and homogenizing LGB&T individuals by locating them exclusively in or rendering such individuals synonymous with queer spaces. As will become evident, the book touches on the imbrication of different fields of existence. For instance, sexualized stories expressed in one realm of existence overlap and refer to other desires there and in other realms, such as the need for value, recognition and belonging. Also, practices conducted in the home can link with those deployed on the public gay scene or at the workplace, and what happens within these subfields can overlap with and mutually influence kinship practices often centred on the home that involve gay, straight and bisexual others. In an Australian context, Gorman-Murray (2007) has highlighted how aspects of the scene/gay culture are integrated into the home and vice versa. Influences of ageing and gendered sexuality enmesh or overlap with other influences such as class, ethnicity and differences of biography (being partnered or not, having being diagnosed with HIV+, etc.). But, again, few of these contributions address ageing and later life. To contribute specifically to knowledge about middle-aged gay men and ageing as a (sub)field of sexuality, at strategic points I highlight what is distinct about the men’s stories concerning their relations with younger gay men, their modes of self-presentation, how they negotiate ‘homospaces’ and ‘heterospaces’ and their kinship practices.

As already intimated, the spoken and bodily stories articulated in this book transcend local and national concerns. I am not saying that they could be replicated anywhere. They are, nevertheless, stories that could be heard and understood in urban areas with developing gay scenes and ‘villages’ in the UK, such as Belfast, Blackpool, Birmingham, Brighton, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool and Glasgow. It is worth noting that there are no specific studies of gay male ageing based on experiences in London, anywhere else in the UK or on mainland Europe. According to the extant literature on gay ageing, it is highly likely the same kind of stories – involving, loss, ambivalence and overcoming of ageism – could be heard in cities with established gay cultures in North America, much of Europe and Australasia. In effect, because most scholarship on gay male ageing is North American (with some con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• 1. Setting the Gay Scene: Orientation, Definitions and Themes
• 2. Work on the Body: Differentiating and Keeping Up Appearances
• 3. Village Life: Alienation, Ambivalence and Agency
• 4. Less Accessible ‘Homospaces’: The Online Gay Scene, Saunas and Social Groups
• 5. Negotiating ‘Heterospaces’: Tolerance, Conviviality and Resistance at Rest, Work and Play
• 6. The Scene at Home with Significant Others: Intimacy and Inclusion
• 7. Gay Ageing beyond Manchester: International Comparisons and Contrasts
• 8. Reimagining Politics and Power Relations
• Appendix 1: Interview Respondents (in Order of Interview) – Pen Portraits
• Appendix 2: Observation Venues – Pen Portraits
• Appendix 3: Map of Manchester’s Gay Village
• References
• Index