Domaine: recherche

Aging with Pride: National Health, Aging, and Sexuality/Gender Study is the first federally funded study addressing aging among LGBTQ older adults throughout the United States. This article examine…

Historical, environmental, and cultural contexts intersect with aging, sexuality, and gender across communities and genera- tions. My scholarship investigates health and well-being over the life course across marginalized communities, including LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) midlife and older adults, native communities experiencing car- diovascular risk, and families in China living with HIV, in order to balance the realities of unique lives in contemporary society. By probing the intersection of age, sexuality, and gender, my analysis is informed by both personal and professional experiences. With the death of my partner occurring at a time of profound invisibility and silence before HIV/AIDS, I found my life out of sync, experiencing a loss without a name. My life was thrust into a paradox: My relationship was defined by a world that refused to recognize it. This essay provides an opportunity for me to weave together how such critical turn- ing points in my own life helped shape my approach to gerontology and how gerontology has informed my work and life. Reflecting on this journey, I illustrate the ways in which historical, structural, environmental, psychosocial, and biological factors affect equity, and the health-promoting and adverse pathways to health and well-being across marginalized com- munities. Although gerontology as a discipline has historically silenced the lives of marginalized older adults, it has much to learn from these communities. The growing and increasingly diverse older adult population provides us with unique opportunities to better understand both cultural variations and shared experiences in aging over the life course.

There remains a salient need to conceptualize lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) aging as an area of study. Although the limited body of theoretical literature in this field has delineated systemic silence or invisibility as a prominent feature of marginalization among LGBTQ elders, this model{&}nbsp;does not appear to account for mechanisms of surveillance and control that often regulate sexuality and gender identity in old age. This paper represents a preliminary attempt at developing a framework of LGBTQ aging that addresses social processes in which queerness{&}nbsp;and gender variance are monitored and limited in later stages of the life course. The analysis is guided by the Foucauldian notion of neoliberal governmentality, which enables consideration of bodies of discourse and technologies of power that together drive these systemic phenomena in contemporary political and economic contexts. The paper concludes with implications of this analysis on theory and empirical inquiry in the field of LGBTQ aging.

This article reflects on the experience of undertaking a knowledge exchange project with a local government authority to improve services for older lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) adults. It frames this project in terms of local government equality work, existing research and initiatives concerning older LGBT people and the coming of austerity. The project methodology is detailed, including discussion of the generation and measurement of impact. Some critical issues that arose during the project are considered, including suggestions that these may have been related to economic austerity. The article concludes that although knowledge exchange work with older LGBT people faces challenges in such times, future research and initiatives are warranted.