This multi-disciplinary volume brings together international scholarship from across cultural studies, humanities and social sciences. It involves critical review of a comparatively neglected issue – the desexualization of older people – that itself forms part of an emerging field of knowledge that relates to older people’s sexuality and intimacy. Funnelling down from more general to more particular experiences (often related to identity difference), the volume explores the various ways that older people encounter constraints on their sexual and intimate self-expression. Indeed, risk and surve ... More

This multi-disciplinary volume brings together international scholarship from across cultural studies, humanities and social sciences. It involves critical review of a comparatively neglected issue – the desexualization of older people – that itself forms part of an emerging field of knowledge that relates to older people’s sexuality and intimacy. Funnelling down from more general to more particular experiences (often related to identity difference), the volume explores the various ways that older people encounter constraints on their sexual and intimate self-expression. Indeed, risk and surveillance can be seen as structuring conditions of ageing sexualities and the issues addressed concern difficulties in relation to consent, relating and relatives erotic aesthetics, gendered ageing sexuality (menopause), disabilities, dementia, care homes and their residents, sex and older lesbian, gay bisexual, trans and intersex people, and care services and ageing sexuality. As well as providing an overview of broader themes to which chapter point, the final chapter also outlines a research agenda that itself points towards creative forms of resexualization of diverse older selves. Although the volume’s focus is on desexualization, resexualization is to some extent acknowledged in each chapter.